Swiss Heatwave Prompts Evacuations, Glacial Collapse

[hatrack]

Swiss Alps Crumbling in Heat Wave; Climbers Evacuated, AFP Says

July 14 (Bloomberg) - "A heat wave is melting Switzerland's glaciers and causing chunks of the Swiss Alps to break off, prompting the evacuation of climbers and hikers, Agence France-Press reported.

In southern Switzerland, helicopters ferried about 70 people from the Matterhorn after a rock face on the 3,400-meter (11,155-foot) peak crumbled, AFP said. A portion of a glacier near the Alpine resort of Grindelwald also broke away and fell into the Luetschine River, causing a surge of water downstream. Police warned people several miles away to stay away from the river, AFP cited the Swiss news agency ATS as saying.

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Daytime temperatures for most of Switzerland have stayed above 30 degrees centigrade (86 degrees Farenheit) for most of the past five weeks and June was the hottest month on record since weather observations began in 1864, AFP cited the Swiss weather agency, MeteoSuisse, as saying."

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Bloomberg News

[LuminousX]

1. Climate Change

What Climate Change? Keep burning those fossil fuels, they are only whackos.

[Divernan]

2. Didn't you recently post a story that it was the rainiest spring there

also? Then we see a record blizzard in New Zealand. Isn't it great that we have Bush and James Connaughton, Jr., chairman of his White House Environmental policy committee, gutting the EPA report re global warming? I watched Out of Africa on tv last night for the first time in about ten years - The Robert Redford character, Dennis, takes Meryl/Baroness von Blixen on a wonderful driving expedition through the magnificent, lush African plains, telling her she must see it now because it won't be here much longer. He was talking about the great herds of wildlife. Now we're talking about the landscape crumbling, washing away.