"Bolivia's Chacaltaya range has succumbed to the precipitous melting of glaciers, AFP reported.
The site was once home to the highest ski-run in the world as it was perched on the Chacaltaya glacier nearly 17,390 feet high, but now all that remains is a rusted skilift.
Only 538 square feet of snow remains on the magnificent Chacaltaya glacier.
[...]
An international team of scientists is now studying the Tropical Andes stretch of mountain range on horseback in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
The team has studied Chacaltaya for the past 15-20 years, and had forecast it would completely disappear in 2015. But with accelerated global warming spurring the ice to melt at the rate of 20 feet per year compared to about a meter in the 1940s, its demise has come six years earlier than they anticipated.
[...]
The humanitarian group Oxfam noted in a report published ahead of key UN-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen next month that Bolivia only emitted 0.35 percent of the world's greenhouse gases in 2000.
Oxfam warned that Bolivia will be hit disproportionately as thousands of Andean farmers and La Paz residents depend on melt waters from the glaciers, which accounts for 15 percent of the capital's supply.
Hydroelectric sources account for nearly half of the country's energy supply [...]"
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário