Anyone who follows this stuff knows that there has been a huge kafuffle over the inclusion in the UN's 2007 report on climate change of an admittedly inaccurate claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.
The deniers of climate change tout this as the final nail in the coffin of climate change. More temperate voices say the overall conclusion of the report - that climate change is happening -- was not wrong, just that it was a mistake to include that bit about the glaciers disappearing in 2035.
Okay, so the Himalayan glaciers won't be disappearing any time soon. So what is going on with them? Well, despite the fact that glaciers are pretty big, it turns out that keeping track of what they are up to isn't as easy as it seems.
The biggest problem is that most of them are hard to get to. The other thing is that glaciers react differently to climate change. Some shrink, sure enough, but others grow. To the people who live near them growing glaciers are just as much of a problem as shrinking glaciers.
I learned a lot from shoveling my driveway during the recent snowpocalypse. I can tell you that snow crud lingers for days at the top of my driveway while it is gone on the same day I shovel it at the bottom. The difference: the amount of sun that reaches the blacktop. Now that is two very distinct micro-climes within 30 feet. Small wonder we have trouble figuring out how a massive structure like the Himalaya is reacting.
The one constant in all these reports is that climate change is real, it is happening faster than expected, with results that are hard to predict. That doesn't make it any easier to convince a reluctant American public that climate change is worth worrying about. But you won't have any trouble selling that bridge to the folks in the Himalayas.
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