where there was once ice, there is now rock

Es­ti­mated reading time is 2 min­utes.

YOU BROKE OUR GLACIER! That’s a damn clever teaser to get someone surfing the in­ternet to stop a mo­ment and check out the web­site. The ar­ti­cle’s full title is “You broke our glacier: the Mont Blanc re­sort on the cli­mate front­line” by An­gela Giuf­frida for The Guardian (Sep­tember 28, 2019). The sub­title is “Re­ports that a mass of ice is in danger of breaking away have spurred res­i­dents of nearby Cour­mayeur to de­mand action.”

“Like mil­lions of their com­pa­triots around the globe, the chil­dren of Cour­mayeur marched last Friday to protest against the cli­mate crisis. The group of 160 or so pupils, some as young as six, turned out with ban­ners and slo­gans, re­peat­edly shouting: Ban plastic, save our planet. But their most promi­nent placard mes­sage showed that for the young­sters of this small Italian re­sort town at the foot of Mont Blanc, the threat of cli­mate change is par­tic­u­larly close to home. You broke our glacier, it read.

“The ac­tivists were re­fer­ring to Plan­pin­cieux, a glacier on the nearby Grandes Jo­rasses peak that is changing so rapidly that ex­perts warned last week that a huge por­tion of ice was in danger of breaking away.

“Ex­perts at the Fon­dazione Mon­tagna Si­cura (Safe Moun­tain Foun­da­tion) in the Aosta Valley said up to 250,000 cubic me­tres of ice were at risk of sliding off the Plan­pin­cieux. The glacier is pop­ular with hikers, so as a safety pre­cau­tion Mis­e­rocchi closed moun­tain refuges and part of a road upon which the ice could di­rectly fall.

“ ‘Each year you see how much the glacier changes,’ said Cour­mayeur mayor Ste­fano Mis­e­rocchi. ‘The av­erage tem­per­a­ture has risen to the point where, in winter, ice is no longer being recre­ated be­cause even though it snows, the tem­per­a­ture doesn’t get cold enough. Where there was once ice, there is now rock.’”

To read the rest of the ar­ticle, click  HERE.

Ice is no longer being recre­ated be­cause even though it snows, the tem­per­a­ture doesn’t get cold enough. Where there was once ice, there is now rock. Click To Tweet

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FEA­TURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page is Plan­pin­cieux glacier on the Italian side of Mont Blanc, which is in danger of col­lapse. It was taken by Yara Nardi for Reuters.

 

 

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