Global Warming in Chile
Chile's Rising Waters and Frozen Avocados - 12/23/07
CHILEANS have long boasted of the untold riches of our lands, our fertile soil and our pristine air. For centuries we thought that our robust natural landscape and way of life served to compensate us for the geography that separated us from the rest of the planet.
In this small country at the far edge of the world, we always believed that at the very least we were protected from plagues and epidemics.
But distance, it seems, does not protect us from climate change. While Chile has a blazing desert at its head, its feet lie beneath ice, with 7,000 square miles of continental ice masses and the hundreds of thousands of square miles of Antarctica that we claim.
Compared to that of other countries, Chile's contribution to the scourge of global warming is relatively low, at just 0.2 percent, yet we will pay a big price. Global warming is melting Antarctica, and as a result large quantities of water will inundate our coastline.
The climate change has done serious damage to fruit and vegetable crops, most particularly my favorite, the "palta," or avocado. An exporter I know told me that this season's uncharacteristic frosts ruined 40 percent of his crop. Among farmers a feeling of apprehension has taken hold; the weather has always been slightly capricious, but of late it has become altogether unpredictable.
Chilean Lake Disappears, Thanks to Global Warming - 7/20/07
The lake, some 20,000 square metres in area, in the Bernardo O'Higgins National Park in Patagonia, chile, was last seen in March.
By May, all that was left was a crater and a few strands of floating ice. A river running from it had also reduced to a trickle, according to the park rangers of the southernmost region of Magallanes.
The lake had simply disappeared,' said Juan Jose Romero, regional director of chiles National Forest Service. No one knows what happened.'
'This is the first time our park rangers have recorded anything like this. However, we are not specialists, and we prefer not to speculate about the cause at this point, said Romero.
After flying over the lake on Tuesday, scientists said they were able to draw preliminary conclusions that point to climate change as the leading culprit for the lake's disappearance.
Chilean glaciologist Gino Casassa, one of the 63 experts who participated in the second UN report on global warming, had observed in May itself possibly the lake disappeared due to a relatively common glacial phenomenon: a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF).
Chile Looses Tie to Fight Global Warming - 1/22/07
While the northern hemisphere is turning up the heaters, South America is passing by the hottest summer times of the year. And with the rising temperatures of the past years -in Argentina it got to 44 degrees Celsius this month-, the use of air conditioning has spread rapidly over the countries.
In Chile, for example, over 215000 equipments were imported from 1996 to 2006. So in order to save some of the enormous amounts of energy used to cool air in the offices, the executive director of the Chilean Energy Efficiency Program (PPEE), Nicola Borregaard, has urged city employees to loose jackets and ties to work.
The proposal is named "Summer without tie", and even though it's a public initiative, she expects every company will follow up. "We hope directors from all working activities join this proposal, so that this can become a habit for every Chilean worker", she said. Chile is a conservative country where men usually dress formally for work.
According to the PPEE, air conditioning can represent an office's 30 to 60% amount of the total energy consume. With this program, the organism hopes to save 17,2 to 34,4 GWh energy, if every one of the 215.000 equipments imported in the past ten years could be switched off just 2 hours every day, for 40 days.
