
The Last Glacier of Venezuela - fern12
https://daily.jstor.org/the-last-glacier-of-venezuela/
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silveira
Slightly unrelated: when juxtaposing pictures in a before-after presentation,
but the before picture before (left), and the after picture, after (right).

In the original picture from Wikimedia used in this article
([https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pico_Bol%C3%ADvar_19...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pico_Bol%C3%ADvar_1950-2011.jpg)),
it was already in left-to-right order, someone took the effort to invert it.

Unless you are writing to an audience that have a right-to-left writing
system, in that case invert what I suggested, I suppose.

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omegaworks
Kind of makes sense with the F-shaped eye line. [0] Most people are going to
see the title of the article click on it and immediately see the little itty
bitty glacier on the full color picture of the mountain. This helps cement the
idea that this is an article about the current state of the mountain and not a
historical piece.

0\. [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-
we...](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/)

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pm90
I am definitely a climate change believing liberal whatever, but looking at
this phenomena over a long term... haven't we had ice ages in the past where
there were a lot more glaciers? I guess my question really is: is this
something we should be sad about, or just accept as a part of the cycle of the
earth (albeit this time being caused due to man-made causes)?

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sapienthomo
We are still in this ice age, technically speaking, but it is waning. At the
peak of this ice age the ice was 2-3 _miles_ high across much of North
America. But human population exploded during this interglacial period, which
is clearly favorable to us. The population of humans on earth has increased
20x in the last 1000 years, a rate of increase that relies in large part on
fossil water. When the ice age ends and the glaciers are gone what are all
those people going to drink? Humanity faces a monumental technical challenge
in providing for themselves that which nature has heretofore provided, else it
faces a significant reduction in population.

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stale2002
Lol, wut. You do know that most people do not get their drinking water from
glaciers, right?

Water is fairly cheap, in the modern era. And even if those "cheap" sources of
water disappear, all we have to do is look at how current water sparse areas
get their water.

Perhaps water prices might double in the next 100 years, but that really isn't
a big deal because our economy is growing much quicker than that.

This is also completely missing the point that human consumption of water is a
very small proportion of water use. Major city centers are never going to
literally run out of water to drink.

Very worse case scenario, we'll have to reduce the amount of meat that we
consume a bit, as meat prices go up due to the water price increase. (most
water is consumed by farming applications).

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sapienthomo
Hundreds of millions of people rely on Himalayan glacier melt for their water.
These nations also happen to be the least-able to diplomatically handle
international river resource disputes.

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rhombocombus
I have been fascinated with glaciers my entire life. I live in the Pacific
Northwest, and it is fortunate that we still have them. It is a shame that my
grandchildren might not get to experience their beauty and splendor.

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nathancahill
Shame. I biked up to one of the last glaciers in Colombia. Got to see them
before they are gone.

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dfps
... for now

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omegaworks
How will this impact the sustainability of Venezuela as an independent
country? Will it still be able to feed its people without glacier water?

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anodari
>Mountain glaciers serve as a crucial buffer as they help to provide water (as
melt water) when rainfall is minimal or nonexistent (Vuille et al., 2008),
such as during the dry season or during drought conditions. This implies that
some melting is necessary to fuel the existing hydrologic processes and fulfil
consumption needs.

[https://na.unep.net/geas/getUNEPPageWithArticleIDScript.php?...](https://na.unep.net/geas/getUNEPPageWithArticleIDScript.php?article_id=104)

