Global warming ‘will destroy Pyrenean glaciers’

29 September 2004

MADRID – The glaciers in Spain’s Pyrenees have melted by 85 percent in the last century, the environmental group Greenpeace said Wednesday.

The surface of the glaciers of the Pyrenees on the Spanish side went from 1,779 hectares (4,394 acres) in 1894 to 290 acres in 2000,” the group said in a report on the subject.

“That infers a loss of 85 percent of the surface of the glaciers in the last century, with the process accelerating in the last 20 years,” the report says.

It said that if global warming continues only 65 hectares (160 acres) of glaciers would remain in the Spanish Pyrenees by 2005, barely nine percent by 2050 and nothing by 2070.

“The disappearance of the glaciers comes as a result of climate change and we want to sound the alarm around the globe about the consequences, both on the environment and society,” said Emilio Rull, of the group’s office in Spain.

The report includes photographs taken this year by Greenpeace during an expedition to Monte Perdido, the third highest mountain in the Pyrenees.

The pictures are a stark contrast to photographs of the site taken at the start of the 20th century.

Greenpeace in its report urged the United States and Russia to ratify the Kyoto global warming pact.

The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialised signatory countries to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, the carbon-based pollution that is a by-product of burning fossil fuels and which is blamed for driving climate change.
 
[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news