This Swiss Village Was Buried by a Glacier. Climate Change Deniers Should Take Notice.
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We are now yodeling our way to disaster. From Reuters:
A huge chunk of a glacier in the Swiss Alps broke off on Wednesday, causing a deluge of ice, mud, and rock that buried most of a mountain village that had been evacuated due to the risk of a rockslide, authorities said. Drone footage broadcast by Swiss national broadcaster SRF showed a vast plain of mud and soil completely covering part of the southwestern village of Blatten, the river running through it and the wooded sides of the surrounding valley.
The videos are terrifying. It looks like half a mountain pours down into the village. The climate crisis has been hell on the world’s glaciers. One report from Nature states that glaciers have lost 5 percent of their ice globally since 2000. Just in the past month, we saw massive icebergs break off from glaciers in Argentina and in Antarctica. According to the Nature report:
Glaciers are indicators of ongoing anthropogenic climate change. Their melting leads to increased local geohazards, and impacts marine and terrestrial ecosystems, regional freshwater resources, and both global water and energy cycles. Together with the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, glaciers are essential drivers of present and future sea-level rise.
Scientists are being cautious about attributing the vanishing of Blatten to the climate crisis. Caution, however, is not denial, although too many people in this country think they are synonyms.
Experts consulted by Reuters said it was difficult to assess the extent to which rising temperatures spurred by climate change had triggered the collapse because of the role the crumbling mountainside had played. Christian Huggel, a professor of environment and climate at the University of Zurich, said while various factors were at play in Blatten, it was known that local permafrost had been affected by warmer temperatures in the Alps. The loss of permafrost can negatively affect the stability of the mountain rock which is why climate change had likely played a part in the deluge, Huggel said.
It is true that the retreating glaciers have been a boon to archaeologists, and people have made interesting discoveries from the melting permafrost (although that whole dormant-virus business does give one pause). But trading entire villages for a chance to find some Iron Age cutlery seems to me to be not worth the candle.
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