[Buddha-l] EARTH HOUR 2012

[Luc Tartar]

> On Mar 31, 2012, at 16:59, Richard Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu> wrote:

> To say that the global warming hypothesis is, like any scientific hypothesis, possibly wrong in some of its details is an intelligent thing to say. To dismiss it as a hoax, as if it were a practical joke such as Piltdown Man, is, I'm afraid, a rather stupid thing to say. (I am reasonably confident you used the word in jest, Dr Ziobro, so I am not accusing you of saying something stupid. If you were not joking, then I take it back; you were saying something stupid after all.)

It is the first time that I try to post my opinion on Buddha-L, since
I only read a few posts, and I am not really a Buddhist.

Having read many of Richard's posts, I must say that I learned a lot
from him on various subjects which I was not so knowledgeable about. I
have usually agreed with him when he wrote on subjects which (I think)
I understand, and again I entirely agree with him here, and I want to
state a few facts which I observed directly.

A little more than two weeks ago, I went to Chamonix (France) to see
the "mer de glace" (which means sea of ice), which is one of the
glaciers coming out of the area of the Mont Blanc, the highest point
in Europe. I had not been there since 1992, and since I had read
recently that the level of the glacier has been going down for about
four or five meters every year since the mid 1990s, I wanted to check
by myself. In Chamonix, one takes a cog-wheel train, which was
inaugurated in 1910 by the president of the republic, Fallières, with
a picture at the bottom of the following page (in French) which shows
the level of the glacier then.

http://chamonicime-cochamon.edres74.ac-grenoble.fr/remontee/comonte.htm

On the following image, one can see the situation in 2009: there is a
cable car for going down to the glacier.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loose_grip_99/3599089108/

I do not know when the cable car was built, but it was not there on my
first visit in 1969, and I took it on my second visit in 1992. Now, at
the bottom of the cable car, one still has to go down 350 steps, and
one sees signs showing the level of the glacier in 1990, 2000, et
caetera.

In 1969, there were a few wooden steps to go down to the glacier, and
my brother who had been there in 1955 said that he did not remember
seeing those steps on his first visit.

I gather from all that information that the melting of the glacier was
still slow in the 1950s, and has accelerated recently.

---

I think that one should not talk about the evolution of climate
without having read a book written in the mid 1960s by a French
historian, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, "Histoire du climat depuis l'an
mil (which means history of the climate since year thousand),
translated into English as "Times of feast, times of famine: A history
of climate since the year 1000".