Posted on 09/13/2018 10:46:10 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
In the summer of 1987, a woman visiting Alaska was crushed by a 1,000-pound chunk of ice. According to news reports at the time, Thais Grabenauer, 59, had been taking pictures with her husband at the foot of Exit Glacier, a towering wall of ice that’s one of the most popular attractions in Kenai Fjords National Park. A half-ton piece of the glacier calved off as the couple was snapping, killing Grabenauer and injuring her husband.
It was one of those wrong place, wrong time tragedies that seem unlikely to happen again. But in the three decades since Grabenauer’s death, it has happened again - in Alaska and around the rest of the world. In 2009, for instance, two brothers crossed a safety barrier on New Zealand’s Fox Glacier and were buried under a collapsing ice shelf.
Deaths like these remain rare, but they’re also telling cases of a broader trend. In recent years, people have been increasingly flocking to the world’s glaciers. This boom in “glacier tourism” seems to be dually spurred, at least in part, by climate change: For one, people seem eager to glimpse the majestic monuments of ice before they melt away. And as ice sheets disappear, many glaciers are becoming more accessible - and unstable. T
Still, it’s likely that people visiting glaciers may not anticipate consequences quite as immediate as dislodged half-ton chunks of ice. The growing risks to travelers on melting glaciers are cruel reminders of all the smaller-scale and sometimes unpredictable damages climate change can inflict—even in the places where its broadest impacts are most visible.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Another “dog bites man” non-story. Who hasn’t been struck by a glacier at some point in his life?
She was penalized for “icing”.
As most of us who are in our 50s and beyond can remember, the last climate scare was that there was going to be another ice age. Pollution was said to be the cause of that crisis as well. Pollution was keeping the suns rays from warming the planet.
The glaciers near where we live were all growing at that time. I had a science teacher who took students up to Mt. Rainier every summer to map out how much closer the Carbon Glacier was getting to once again swallowing up the area where our fine city sat.
I went up there three years in a row, but none of us ever were stupid enough to stand in front of the glacier. There was constant ice and giant rocks falling off of it. We did hike up and walk out on it a ways a mile or two back from the edge, but even that was dangerous because crevices were constantly opening up during the summer.
Indeed: the problem here is Catastrophic Human Stoopiding. . .
The glacier falling is a subset of a far worse problem i.e. the sky is falling.
Well played sir!
Didn't a couple of them get wiped out about 30 years ago when they chose a poor time to visit one?
>>> Gife it a rest already. <<<
Covfefe!
We enjoy mocking and debunking the global warming/climate change stories.
Have they blamed the Sinking of the Titanic on Climate Change yet?
That Iceberg had no business being there.
Yep. There were not a lot of people killed in car crashes in the early 20’s either.
Back in the day, falling ice was the reason I stopped rock climbing in the Spring. Trying to figure out which way to move to avoid getting hit by a one or two pound chunk sliding down the cliff face gets the adrenaline going!
In the late 1980s, the then-wife and I took a helo flight up that glacier. We landed on it. And yeah, they packed the helo.
Can't remember the other glacier, but I had her stand behind the warning sign. It was receding glacier, and the danger zone was much farther back.
You know....eighty years ago
When I consider time progression - the world my grandfather was born into in 1889 is much closer to life 2000 years ago than it is to ours.
“In other words, people get hurt when they ignore danger signs. Glaciers have been calving since the first one formed millions of years ago. The only difference today is we have people stupid enough to stand under them. “
BINGO! You’ve cracked an unreported consequence of climate change. It’s making people stupider.
This “study” comes from a lost Roadrunner episode. I am not at liberty to divulge whether a chunk of the Wile E. Coyote Glacier squished the bird or not. Beep! Beep!
They had to burn the episode, because THIS time, the bird got whacked. lol
Glaciers are moving bodies. They break off as they move. That’s what they do.
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