Melting Mountains
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. … live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.- Wendell Berry
The Himalayan range encompasses about 15,000 glaciers, which store about 12,000 km3 of freshwater. The 70 km-long Siachen Glacier at the India-Pakistan border is the second longest glacier in the world outside the polar region.
Then and Now: The Retreating Glaciers.
David Breashears The eroding Rongbuk glacier in the Himalayas, in 1921 and today.
In 1921, George Mallory, a British mountaineer, took a black-and-white photograph of Mount Everest. The photo, now legendary, shows the world’s highest peak in the distance and an S-shaped river of ice running toward the foreground: the Rongbuk glacier.
Three years ago, David Breashears, a mountaineer, photographer and filmmaker, returned to the very spot where Mr. Mallory stood to take the photograph and updated the vista. The change is sobering.
Rather than ancient snow pack, only an empty rock-strewn riverbed remains: the glacier has lost 320 vertical feet of ice mass in the intervening years in what researchers describe as a striking effect of global warming.
(An interactive graphic comparing the images is available.)
Recently Asia Society opened an exhibition in Manhattan of a series of photographs by Mr. Breashears, who reshot many famous mountaineer photographs from earlier decades to illustrate just how swiftly the changes in the Earth’s atmosphere are taking a toll on glaciers. Glaciers play a crucial role in providing fresh water to Asian populations.
“The snow and ice stored within the magnificent arc of high-altitude glaciers in the Greater Himalaya are crucial sources of seasonal water for almost every major river system of Asia,” the society says in materials promoting the exhibition. “If current melt rates continue, these glaciers will be unable to maintain mass balance, ultimately disrupting the water supply to hundreds of millions of people downstream.”
Here’s a video in which Mr. Breashears describes his glacier research and photography.
NYT Green Blog ©By LESLIE KAUFMAN
on 20 Jul 2010 at 3:08 am 1.Hershal Pandya said …
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