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September 23, 2006
The Pasterze Glacier in Austria, shown here in 1875 and 2004, is one of many around the world that have been retreating, exposing rock that has not seen daylight for thousands of years.
The image does more than illustrate the glacial retreat that is an effect of global warming. The retreat of glaciers in mountain regions is one of the most visually compelling examples of recent climate change.
The planet's many thousands of glaciers have been stable or in slow retreat for more than 100 years but since around 1980 they have mostly been retreating drastically. The fastest decline is in the Himalayas, the Arctic, the Alps, the Rockies and the tropics.
Robert Simmon, NASA's Earth Observatory, The Pasterze Glacier in western Austria
My guess is that though people heard the warnings and read newspaper columns about the reports most of it has yet to really sink in. Big Oil is out in the public domain casting doubt over climate change in a similar fashion to the way m Big Tobacco did over the dangers of smoking. What will convince them: an ice-free Arctic? Well, this story says that European scientists had viewed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole.
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