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From here
DM2009 Project Summary
Project Number: 4311 Booth Number: 85
Saving Glaciers: Artisanal Industry Aims to Stop the Melt and Save Water
COUNTRY: Peru
ORGANIZATION: Glaciares Peru
FUNDING REQUEST: $200,000
OBJECTIVE: To create jobs in impoverished areas by establishing a sustainable artisanal industry aimed at
slowing glacial melting as a proactive adaptation to climate change. The approach, if successful, will not only
save tropical glaciers from extinction, but may also be able to regrow glacial mass, the most important form
of freshwater storage in the high Andes (and the world). If this approach decreases local (microclimate)
temperatures sufficiently to regrow glaciers, local water supplies will be enhanced and socioeconomic
benefits will follow. (Note that when freshwater stored as glacial mass melts, it constitutes the majority of
available dry-season flow in the region.)
RATIONALE: Increases in global temperatures due to climate change are creating large environmental
changes. One of the most serious is the melting of the worlds largest freshwater reservoirsglaciers.
Tropical glaciers are the most at risk, as they are located at latitudes where small temperature changes can
have large impacts, such as the loss of the only current source of reliable water supply.
INNOVATION: The project proposes to build a production facility to create a paintable white cover material.
The cover material will then be applied to exposed rock surrounding the glacier, or within recently glaciated
areas, in order to increase surface reflectance (albedo). This, in turn, will decrease microclimate
temperatures enough to stop glacial melting and may even allow for the regrowth of glacial mass. The
project also will attempt to have the change in albedo over a unit surface area equated with carbon credits
in order to generate a sustainable source of revenue generation for future project applications.
CONTACT: Eduardo Gold
[email protected]
So, actually its not a plan to save the world, its a local experiment in microclimates to see if the local water supply can be maintained and possibly enhanced for a cost of £135,000 (which seems pretty good value to me)
It is, however most definitely more utter gobsh*te from the Telegraph who seem to have got pretty vitriolic in their adoption of non stories to support their hidden agenda. It seems they are trying to win Daily Mail readers. |
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