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COMMENT

A Warmer World

by Claude Martin
***Glaciers represent a tort of natural calculator. What they art telling us now has prompted even the conservative and extremely cautious Federal Institute of Glaciology in Switzerland to conclude that the global climate Is warming considerably.ITS is 30 years since 1 first became addicted to what some would call the masochistic habit of climbing mountains. But when you love nature and. more particularly, when you have one of Europe's most Important wildernesses on your doorstep — the Alps — the call of the mountains becomes irresistible.
Of course, during those three decades, my mountaineering habits have changed These days I tend to avoid the steep rocks and content myself with the gentler snowy slopes and glaciers. That is a matter of age, but increasingly it is becoming less of an option for greater safety.
The glaciers I have known for many years are now treacherous to cross in summertime They are what we
call open' : bare of snow cover, just an expanse of blue ice pitted with gaping crevasses. In some cases, indeed, my familiar glaciers are not crossable at all. for the simple reason that they are no longer where they were
As the World Wide Fund For Nature pointed out in an important leaflet last Decem-
ber, glaciers have shrunk by 30 to 40 per cent In surface area and 50 per cent in volume during the past century. And evidence from the UN World Glacier Monitoring Service suggests that the rate, of shrinkage is accelerating. Since 1980. between 10 and 20 per cent of the remaining 6lacier volume in the Aips as been lost, indicating a situation poised to exceed the range of natural variability known over the past 10.000 years
This is something of which mankind would do well to take note. Glaciers represent a sort of natural calculator, adding up over the years the effects of changes in temperature, whether natural or induced by the activities of our industrious species. What they are telling us now has prompted even the conservative and extremely cautious Federal Institute of Glaciology in Switzerland to conclude that the glob* climate is warming considerably.
For many of us, this comes as no surprise. Reports of climate change have been appearing regularly for the best part of 20 years and the current condition of glaciers — which. I empha sise. affects not Just the Alps but the whole world — simply underpins the urgent messages about global warming that we have been hearing since the late 1980s.
We have, as I say, been hearing those message How we have been responding to them, and especially to the accompanying warnings about emissions of so-called greenhouse gases' is more problematic.
Certain facts are clear.
The limit of the earth's inner atmosphere is a mere 12 miles from Ms surface, and into that small area are pumped some six billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. Is it. then, just a coincidence that the third Inescapable fact la that the 10 hottest year recorded in the entire History of the world have occurred since 1980?
From here, though, we move into what is termed a debate, which is in feet another way of saying a sus-tained. self-interested cam-paign of denial.
Climate change has far-reaching consequences, with serious Implications for not only our concepts of industrial development and economic growth but also our every ways and places of living Admit that global warming is taking place, and that we are at least partly respon sible for it. and we then have to address some exceedingly hard questions. That is something to many people would prefer not to do. ,
Oh. we have given a few nods in the direction of the growing body of evidence. We have signed conventions to limit or eliminate emissions of greenhouse gases.We have admitted that carbon taxes might be a good idea though we nave yet agree on bow and at what level to-impose them, or Indeed how to determine what their effects might be. There is so far little more indication that we are prepared officially to take seriously the threat of climate change.
Far from it. MiHions of dollars are being spent each year on feeding masses of information Into the debate',— most of ft designed to reMs-sure an Increasingly anxious Kublic that nothing bad will appen if we carry on more or less as we are. or simply react at the margins of our activities, and that those who suggest otherwise are deluded doomsayers ,.
Climate change is happening. and the conspiracy of denial we are witnessing will only serve to make its effects worse. WWFPUaturm The writer U Director
General of the World Wide Fund Fbr Nature In Gland