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Climate change forming dangerous high-altitude lakes
Written by: Richard Meares
LONDON (AlertNet) - Melting glaciers and landslides are combining to create huge high-altitude lakes in the Himalayas that could cut off water to millions of people - and then sweep away towns when they collapse, a leading geologist said. Quakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides and tsunamis may become more frequent as global warming changes the earth's crust itself, scientists heard on Sept. 16 at a conference on the climate's effects on geology. "The most likely thing we are going to see soon is an increased level in giant landslides in mountainous terrains, huge collapses, millions of cubic metres of rock," Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London, told AlertNet. He said these had already happened in recent years in places like Alaska and the Caucasus, and that in the world's biggest mountain range in Asia, landslides combined with melting glaciers could pose a lethal threat. "In the Himalayas you have not only more big landslides but they may provide dams for glacial melt," he said. "So you get these huge glacial lakes building up behind landslides -- and then eventually catastrophically failing and hurtling down into the towns and cities below." Places like Nepal and Bhutan would be affected first but many population centres in India and China also depend on the glacier waters for survival. "That is the first phase of the problem in the Himalayas. After that you have the loss of glacial water that feeds 40 percent of the world's population," McGuire said. "That is where climate change really destroys any chance of maintaining the global economic and social framework - if you can't feed 40 percent of the world's population." Geological changes will affect rich countries too, with collapsing ice shelves threatening tsunamis in eastern Canada and New Zealand, for example, but McGuire pointed out that less developed countries would be least prepared to adapt. "All disasters affect poor people more than rich people. Disasters in developed countries usually mean loss of wealth and in developing countries they mean loss of life," he said. For the main story from the Sept. 16 conference on the climate's effects on geology please click here
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