
Where Glaciers Melt Away, Switzerland Sees Opportunity - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/13/climate/switzerland-glaciers-climate-change.html
======
lordnacho
The glacier melting trend is actually incredibly fast.

Before I moved to Switzerland at the start of this decade, I visited the Rhone
glacier. It's a stunning drive, well worth the trip. When I got there, it
looked like a frozen waterfall, coming over the edge of the cliff where the
tourist vantage point is.

It's only open in the summer, so I'd drive down there each summer.

Each summer, it was like going to a new glacier. It retreated by a lot each
time. You didn't need photos to notice that it was a good 10-20m shorter each
time. The last time I went a few years ago the rocks on the edge were
completely exposed and you had to walk a fair bit to where the ice was thick
enough to carve a tunnel into.

If you looked in the tourist shops and the old hotel, you could see paintings
of the glacier in the 1800s. Back then it filled up the whole valley. Nowaways
you can see young trees there.

~~~
piquadrat
If you are ever in the Engadin valley, I can recommend the Morteratsch Glacier
trail. There are signs along the trail to indicate the historic positions of
the glacier. It's incredibly impressive how much the glacier retreated over
the last few decades. It also really drives the point home that climate change
isn't a new phenomenon, we've been at it for a couple centuries now. But it
picked up a lot of speed recently.

~~~
cm2187
I read that the retreat of some glaciers in the Alps uncovered ancient Roman
artefacts like coins. So it is probably not the first time they retreat
either.

~~~
ggm
Do you believe inside the next 2000 years they will recover? The underlying
premise is not that climate has not changed before. The premise is that there
is no strong belief the cyclic nature of glacial retreat will be seen in any
sensible timeframe (tens of thousands of years)

~~~
alexis_fr
There are hypotheses that the last mini ice age was caused by slaughtering
native am populations in the 1500s, causing their crops to grow back.

I’m not going to suggest a slaughter obviously, but an extremely strong
economic recession could bring us back to pre-1990 carbon levels (when they
were balanced, as per IPCC).

~~~
graeme
You're mixing up stocks and flows. Emissions are a flow. Co2 level is a stock.
A recession will reduce the flow, but the stock will still increase.

The hypothesized decrease of co2 in the 1500s from native american death was a
decrease in the stock. Farmlands returned to wild states and sequestered
carbon.

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__mp
A fact missing in this article is that dams in Switzerland are used for energy
storage nowadays. It used to be the case that during lunchtime hydro produced
most of the peak energy. Atomic power was used to pump the water into the dams
during the night. Nowadays solar and wind, mostly from northern Germany,
provide so much energy througout the day that it is more efficient to pump
water into dams during lunchtime. It is unclear if these big dams can be run
profitably.

More context: [https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/aktuelle-
themen/pumpspeicherwerk-...](https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/aktuelle-
themen/pumpspeicherwerk-linth-limmern-die-batterie-im-berg-ld.114664) (German)

------
growlist
Thankfully Switzerland has the resources to manage this phenomenon - one of
the more hair raising natural disasters are glacial lake outbursts, capable of
unleashing a wall of water down mountain valleys:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_lake_outburst_flood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_lake_outburst_flood)

You really don't want to be a poor Nepalese villager living in one of these
valleys when that happens.

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niftich
The site in question is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site 'Swiss Alps
Jungfrau-Aletsch'; its description by UNESCO [1] mentions, in part:

" _It features a wide diversity of ecosystems, including successional stages
due particularly to the retreat of glaciers resulting from climate change. The
site is of outstanding universal value both for its beauty and for the wealth
of information it contains about the formation of mountains and glaciers, as
well as ongoing climate change._ " [1]

Not entirely sure how a new dam would be compatible with its heritage
designation, but it would certainly continue to illustrate ongoing climate
change.

[1] UNESCO World Heritage List, 'Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch'
[https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1037/](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1037/)

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Udik
I don't get it. From the point of view of electricity generation and
freshwater flow, what is the difference between a stable glacier and no
glacier at all? I am probably missing something, because assuming constant
rainfall, a stable glacier's contribution should be neutral.

Shouldn't we say that, from the point of view of energy generation and
freshwater flow, climate change has been a net benefit so far, which we'll
stop enjoying in the foreseeable future?

~~~
matt4077
Rain/snowfall is limited to a small(ish) number of days, while meltwater is on
a predictable 12-month cycle. With rain that just flows down the mountain, you
get a few days of far too much water, and the rest is dry.

The glacier (and snow) average out flow over time. It acts as a natural
holding pool.

~~~
Udik
I thought about that, but while it's true that a glacier acts as a buffer, I
guess that rain at those altitudes always falls as snow- for the majority of
the year but probably in the summer as well- then proceeds to melt away during
the summer. So the buffer effect shouldn't be entirely gone.

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SwetDrems
I loved the experience of reading this article. The flow through the images,
animations, and text all controlled without thinking only using one input-
device was executed perfectly. There was a strong connection between the text
and the image media where one would give way to the other but at the same time
supported each other throughout without taking control away from the user.

~~~
NullPrefix
Fascinating

[https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/1107934...](https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/11079349-2d78-4103-876e-cde093151669.png)

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mempko
Yes while some will temporarily benefit from global warming, the vast majority
of humanity will suffer. We need articles about THAT story. Given that we are
now in a mass extinction event (60% of animals gone in last 30 years, looking
like 80% of bugs) people need to start doing some serious research into why,
particularly how global warming is involved. It's likely very much involved.
The recent research about the 98% drop in bugs in the Puerto Rican rainforest
found that global warming seems to be the main cause, with extremely hot days
becoming very frequent.

Edit: Nobody likes the gloom and doom stuff I guess. Nothing to see here,
everything is fine.

~~~
dmurray
> Yes while some will temporarily benefit from global warming, the vast
> majority of humanity will suffer. We need articles about THAT story...Nobody
> likes the gloom and doom stuff

That's exactly the balance I see in climate change reporting. It's almost all
doom and gloom. Articles like this one, which shows both positives and
negatives, are an oddity.

~~~
fredley
There are positives if you live on an ice-clad mountain, or a country that's
mostly ice-clad mountains.

There aren't many if you live in a river delta, or a country that's mostly
river-delta.

8.5m people live in Switzerland, 165m in Bangladesh, to pick two examples.

~~~
mcny
I'd say the benefits are dubious even for countries with mountains. You don't
own your country. If people in Bangladesh are displaced because of global
warming, they have a right to move into neighboring places in India, Nepal,
Bhutan, and Tibet. I think the same is true for the Arabian peninsula and
Central Europe. What are you going to do? Shoot and kill refugees?

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dwd
It wasn't mentioned in the article, but high altitude lakes are perfect for
pumped hydro and with enough excess capacity in the system they should be able
to mitigate the issue of declining meltwater by pumping water back to the top.

~~~
pimmen
But wouldn't they expend more energy moving the water up the mountain than
what it will generate? Second law of thermodynamics and all, I don't see how
you can give water the same potential energy it had before it flowed through
the turbines.

~~~
peterbraden
Of course, but pumped storage is about energy storage, not generation. It
allows energy to be stored when generation is cheap, and then released at peak
hours. It's remarkably efficient compared to most other storage systems.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Are there numbers for that? I'm thinking of comparing that to a flywheel or
even just different electrical storage options.

~~~
MagnumOpus
Flywheels, superconductor storage or supercapacitors are somewhat more
efficient [1], but they are an order of magnitude more expensive per unit of
energy they can store. (Thousands of dollars per kWh capacity, rather than
$200-$300.)

The real competitor is Li-Ion batteries which now cost about the same as
pumped storage, and have similar cycle efficiency. Problem is the capacity
decline after a few hundred cycles, which is unfortunate if you want to build
infrastructure that is low-maintenance and survives decades.

If you are interested in the area, this blog post gives some thoughts to
implications [2] though it is a bit outdated by now.

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-various-
EE...](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-various-EES-
technologies-in-cycle-efficiencies-4_fig5_283831474) [2]
[https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/nation-sized-
battery/](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/)

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EricE
Ugh - more retreating from nuclear caused by ignorant fear mongering :(

~~~
progfix
Why would someone prefer a nuclear plant over a hydro plant?

~~~
piquadrat
Hydro plants (specifically, dams) can be very disruptive to the local
environment. You're flooding entire valleys.

They can also pose a substantial danger in the case of failure, see e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam)
(~2000 casualties, vs Fukushima Daiichi's estimated death toll of ~500).

(I'm a big fan of hydro power, just saying it also has its draw backs)

~~~
Udik
While the death toll of nuclear accidents is relatively low, their economic
cost seems to be staggering. The Japanese authorities enforced a 30km
exclusion zone around Fukushima; if an accident of similar size had happened
to the Beznau nuclear plant, the entire city of Zürich could have fallen
inside the exclusion zone. Just think of the real estate value vaporized. Even
if it's one event in a thousand years, I'm not sure it's worth the risk.

~~~
piquadrat
Fun fact, there were serious plans in the 1950ies to build a nuclear power
plant right _in_ Zurich, primarily as district heating for ETH Zurich.

[https://www.research-
collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20....](https://www.research-
collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/88080/eth-30387-01.pdf) (page
83, German)

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sliken
I hate this new trend where existing text you are reading is faded out and
replaced with an ad. So you have to scroll up to read what you were reading,
then hit the ad again.... only to scroll past the ad and realize they don't
show the previous paragraph... to hit the ad again.

I'm sure it's great for ad impressions, but the hate it generates surely
outweighs any possible benefit to the advertiser.

No wonder revenue per ad is dropping.

~~~
oAlbe
I'm surprised every time I read about people's disappointment about ads,
especially on HN. Not because I have problems with their disappointment, but
because it genuinely surprises me to discover people that don't use ad
blockers, even more on HN.

What's the reason for this? What moves so many people to opt against using an
ad blocker? It surely can't be lack of awareness that such tools exist, not
for an audience like that of HN.

~~~
matt4077
Awareness that free content won’t exist in a world where everyone uses ad
blocker?

I sometimes find ads annoying when, fir example, they change the layout. But I
leave it in by default.

What I don’t understand is what you think you have to gain from advertising ad
blockers? If people subsidize your entertainment, shouldn’t you be happy?

~~~
gpvos
As far as I'm concerned, I'm not using an ad blocker, I'm using a _third party
tracker_ blocker. A reasonable number of ads, even in the middle of an
article, are fine with me (well, as long as they don't pop up, obscure
content, move or animate, or make sound). The name of the former extension
"RequestPolicy" neatly sums up what I want: to be able to tell my browser to
contact only hosts that I want it to contact. Also, malware blocker and CPU
cycle saver.

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User23
This presentation is openly contemptuous of its readers. No thanks.

