Posted on 07/16/2010 2:11:05 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (AFP) – When British climbing legend George Mallory took his iconic 1921 photo of Mount Everest's north face, the mighty, river-shaped glacier snaking under his feet seemed eternal.
Decades of pollution and global warming later, modern mountaineer David Breashears has reshot the picture at the same spot -- and proved an alarming reality.
Instead of the powerful, white, S-shaped sweep of ice witnessed by Mallory before he died on his conquest of Everest, the Main Rongbuk Glacier today is shrunken and withered.
The frozen waves of ice pinnacles -- many .. the size of office buildings -- are still there. But they are far fewer, lower and confined to a narrow line.
Comparing precisely matched photographs, Breashears determined that the Rongbuk had dropped some 320 feet (97 meters) in depth.
"The melt rate in this region of central and eastern Himalaya is extreme and is devastating," Breashears said Wednesday at New York's Asia Society, which is hosting the exhibition July 13 to August 15.
Amid bad-tempered political debates over the causes and reality of global warming, Breashears speaks literally from the ground.
He went in the footsteps of three great early mountaineer-photographers: Mallory, Canadian-born mapping pioneer Edward Wheeler, and Italy's Vittorio Sella, whose work spanned the 19th and 20th centuries.
The result is then-and-now sets from Tibet, Nepal and near K2 in Pakistan showing seven glaciers in retreat -- not only much diminished, but in one case having dissolved into a lake.
"If this isn't evidence of the glaciers in serious decline, I don't know what is," the soft-spoken Breashears said.
...
Himalayan glaciers are the world's third largest reserve of ice after the north and south poles, and their seasonal melt water is a crucial source for Asia's great rivers, including the Ganges, Indus, Mekong and Yellow.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
A 1921 view taken by George Mallory of the Main Rongbuk Glacier (left), on the northern slope of Mount Everest and a 2007 view of the same glacier taken by David Breashears, courtesy of GlacierWorks. Decades of pollution and global warming appear to have left the glacier shrunken and withered. (AFP/Asia Society)
Looks about the same if not bigger to me......
Are you kidding me? I don’t see any major differences between the two photos at all. What I do see are some minor differences in ice and snow coverage and some illusions created by black and white vs color, and by the difference in exposure (such as an area on the slope to the left that appears to be snow or ice in the 1921 photo, but which is actually just a difference in shading of the dirt or rock below it.
As far as the glacier, it actually looks wider today to me than it did in 1921. Am I missing something?
NTSA !!
Seems to me that any ‘warmth’ would have affected the whole area. When you look at the outlines of the other areas -— they seem the same. What time of year were the first pics and what time the 2nd?
And the Abominable Snowman will have nowhere to go!
The difference between a fresh hard snowfall and a summertime snow draught....this is just more bullshit ecoterrorist reporting.
Were these shot at the same time of the year?
They were clearly not shot with the same type of gear or film.
The B&W shot was shot with orthochromatic film, which was not sensitive to all colors in the spectrum.
On top of that, the two photos were shot with different focal length lenses, with changes most evident in the foreground.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, Vikings were living on the West coast of Greenland growing row crops and raising livestock outdoors. Seal and Walrus hunters ventured high into the Arctic in search of prey as late as October. Archaeological findings show Western explorers overwintered on the north coasts of Baffin Island and Hudson Bay.
Proof! Proof! that we need to elect more Democrats. Don't delay, the fate of the entire solar system depends upon it.
Guess I'd better increase the output on my ice maker!
not sure of time of year taken or specific equipment. I just post ‘em, and only sometimes research them.. :-}
This thread is destined for the cheese file.
Well the mountains are much more bare.
Were the pictures both taken at the same time of the year? Were the preceding snowy periods as heavy?
Much to the chagrin of the French, brandy was first distilled in Ireland from Irish grapes.
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