thebigthawtheclimateischangingatanunnervingpace（thebigthawtheclimateischangingatanunnervingpace）.docVIP

The big thaw: the climate is changing at an unnerving pace. Glaciers are retreating, ice shelves are fracturing, sea level is rising, permafrost is melting. What role do humans play?(Geo Signs)(Cover Story) Glick, Daniel.?The big thaw: the climate is changing at an unnerving pace. Glaciers are retreating, ice shelves are fracturing, sea level is rising, permafrost is melting. What role do humans play?(Geo Signs)(Cover Story).?National Geographic?206.3?(Sept 2004):?12(22).?InfoTrac OneFile.?Thomson Gale.?University of Arizona Library.?12 Sep. 2006?/itx/infomark.do?contentSet=IAC-Documentstype=retrievetabID=T003prodId=ITOFdocId=A122104605source=galesrcprod=ITOFuserGroupName=uarizona_mainversion=1.0. Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2004 National Geographic Society If we dont have it, we dont need it pronounces Daniel Fagre as we throw on our backpacks. Were armed with crampons, ice axes, rope, GPS receivers, and bear spray to ward off grizzlies, and were trudging toward Sperry Glacier in Glacier National Park, Montana. I fall in step with Fagre and two other research scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey Global Change Research Program. Theyre doing what theyve been doing for more than a decade: measuring how the parks storied glaciers are melting. So far, the results have been positively chilling. When President Taft created Glacier National Park in 1910, it was home to an estimated 150 glaciers. Since then the number has decreased to fewer than 30, and most of those remaining have shrunk in area by two-thirds. Fagre predicts that within 30 years most if not all of the parks namesake glaciers will disappear. Things that normally happen in geologic time are happening during the span of a human lifetime ays Fagre. Its like watching the Statue of Liberty melt. Scientists who assess the planets health see indisputable evidence that Earth has been getting warmer, in some cases rapidly. Most believe that human activity, in particular the burning of fossil fuels and the re