Apocalyptic Planet - Chapter 2 Ice Collapses: Northern Patagonia, Chile

We started this week’s class with a definition of GLOF which = glacier lake over flow and marveled at Jonathan’s description of a glacial lake that was in place two weeks before the team’s arrival.  With evidence of a significant flood around them the team is amazed that such a change can happen so quickly.

 

Several students agreed with Childs’ description of the sound and movement of ice.  We were also all surprised at the midlatitude ice loss in So America, Himalayas, Alps, Rockies, Cascades and Mt. Kilimanjaro.  A few of us have driven the “Highway to the Sun” road in Glacier National Park and are sadden to know that Park glaciers have declined from 150 in 1850 to 26 today!!

We learned that the Patagonian Ice Field is the largest non-polar ice mass on the planet. 

Participants were happy to read that Childs was with a team working on a documentary video project as opposed to Chapter 1 where he and his buddy were taking a jaunt through the desert.  The video project was protesting a series of hydroelectric dams being proposed.  I shared the story of the Hilton Hotel hoping to build on the Gulfo Dulce in Costa Rica….one of the only tropical fjords where whales from both the northern and southern hemispheres come to birth their young.  Locals feared the construction would destroy the environment the whales need for their birthing. 

Other topics included a discussion of the ice coverage of North America 3 million years ago.  We all know of the ‘inland lake/sea’ that covered middle North America.  Chapter 2 provided additional details that few of us were familiar with.  He described the climate cycle as a ‘ping-pong’ cycle over 65 million years and how that cycle is now more rapid than throughout history.  Childs claims that the ping-pong effect is over turning atmospheric chemistry.

Also, as a result of declining ice fields which allows the mountains to rise which in turn allows more earthquakes and more volcanic eruptions – 6xs more eruptions as the ice disappears.

We discussed how frustrating it is to read of the various predictions of catastrophic change – from 50 years via a drunk soil expert to 1000s of years by some, to others who claim the entire topic is a hoax!  Hard to understand that thinking when there are measurements capturing a rate of glacier melt at 10’/month.