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Mt Everest Glaciers Mostly Gone by 2100


Devil may care climbers beware, you might have to start climbing Mt Everest like a regular rock if humans continue to even exist.
According to a study published in The Cyrosphere, Mt Everest is going to change drastically due to climate change. If Dr. Joseph Shea and the co-authors of this study are to be believed, industry continually to operating like it has for years will shrink the glaciers around Mt Everest by 99 percent. Even if there is a moderate reduction of greenhouse gas emissions Mt Everest is estimated to lose around 70 percent of its natural beauty.

This has shocked the team of researchers with Dr. Shea telling the New York Times, “We did not expect to see glaciers reduced at such a large scale…The numbers are quite frightening.” A forbidding sign indeed.

The findings come from a computer model of glaciers the team built, that took into account the higher temperatures causing the ice to melt and how much gain there would be from snowfall and precipitation. Even with continued snowfall there was still a downward trend in glacier size. If humanity is able to put reductions in place by 2050, climate change will still reduce the glaciers around Mt Everest to almost zero by 2100.

While the landscape would be forever changed, this could end up making the region safer for mountain climbers, as the majority of the 250 people that have died trying to reach the peak of Mt Everest have died due to either avalanche or exposure. Of course, not only will the glaciers melting bring the actual mountain into view but also bring to light the tons of garbage left by climbers that is already visible. The garbage is such a problem that the Indian Army went out in April of this year to try and remove some of it.

Dr Shea admitted to the New York Times that computer models are never exact and that even while agreeing with field evidence that leave too many unknowns to be completely accurate. So there may be hope yet, if all of science is wrong about climate change. The chances of 97 percent of them being wrong however, is minimal.

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