As globe warms, melting glaciers revealing more than bare earth By Tim Johnson - McClatchy Foreign Staff As a result of warming temperatures, Mexico’s tallest volcano, Pico de Orizaba, is performing an all-natural striptease, the ice patches near its summit melting away to bare rock. The same process is taking place in the permafrost of Russia, the ice fields of the Yukon and the glaciers of New Zealand. And as the once-frozen world emerges from slumber, it’s yielding relics, debris – and corpses – that have laid hidden for decades, even millennia. The thaw has unnerved archaeologists, given hope to relatives of lost mountain climbers and solved the mysteries of old plane crashes. What emerges is not always apparent – or even pleasant. That pungent smell? It’s a massive deposit of caribou dung in the Yukon that had been frozen for thousands of years, and now is decomposing in the air, its sharp odor unlocked. Pico de Orizaba towers above all other mountains in Mexico at 18,491 feet. It is the highest peak in North America after Mount McKinley in Alaska and Mount Logan in Canada’s Yukon Territory. A challenging dormant volcano, Orizaba is a training ground for those interested in high-altitude climbing. For a handful of climbers, it has been their last peak. They’ve been buried by avalanches or swallowed by crevasses. Now, the mountain is spitting back their bodies. Late in February, a climbing party circled the jagged crater atop Orizaba. “One of them slipped, and they later said he skidded down and came to a stop. When he got up, he saw a head poking out of the snow,” said Hilario Aguilar Aguilar, a veteran climber. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article25186561.html#storylink=cpy ====== Fascinating, macabre, grotesque and, more than anything, frightening because this is more of what we've got in our future. More bodies are in view on Mt Everest as well. Frankly, I have absolutely no hope that the US will do anything to help save the planet. There's no Planet B.
Must be gettin' warmer... Strange Sea Creatures Near Alaska Baffle Scientists July 03, 2017 — Strange sea creatures that resemble large pink thimbles are showing up on the coast of southeast Alaska for the first time after making their way north along the West Coast for the last few years. See also: Indigenous Knowledge Crucial to Tackling Climate Change, Experts Say June 29, 2017 — In the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, indigenous farmers gather at the top of mountains the night after the winter solstice — not to enjoy the view, but to forecast the timing and quantity of rains.
Much of South Asia Could Be Too Hot to Live in by 2100... Study: Just going outdoors could become deadly in South Asia Aug 2,`17 -- Venturing outdoors may become deadly across wide swaths of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by the end of the century as climate change drives heat and humidity to new extremes, according to a new study. See also: Scientists: Much of South Asia Could Be Too Hot to Live in by 2100 August 02, 2017 — Climate change could make much of South Asia, home to a fifth of the world's population, too hot for human survival by the end of this century, scientists warned Wednesday.
I heard this report on NPR. They mentioned the potential for unearthing diseases from yesteryear that mankind no longer has immunity to...