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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Michael Mann

Nepal’s glacial collapse foreshadowed a future of climate disaster

people prepare supplies for flood victims
‘The Nepal flooding was was the exclamation point on a summer of extremes.’ Photograph: Prabin Ranabhat/AFP/Getty Images

For millennia, the high peaks of the Himalayas were held together by an invisible, frozen cement – permafrost and glacial ice that bound ancient rock into seemingly unshakable fortresses. But as the planet continues to warm, this alpine glue is liquefying.

The glacial collapse and deluge in Nepal and Tibet was not a freak weather event; it was the structural failure of a mountain itself, nature’s latest commentary on the deadly consequences of human-caused planetary warming. And it was the exclamation point on a summer of extremes, illustrating with a sole unnatural disaster the apocalyptic future that lies in store if we fail to take dramatic climate action.

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