SF Chronicle: In China’s Anyemagen Mountains, melting glaciers spell trouble

Published: August 1, 2007, 11:05 am

Here’s an enterprising and well-reported piece by a roving Chronicle reporter and editor, Robert Collier. He reports from Qinghai Province, next to Tibet and mountainous in its own right, that glaciers are shrinking fast, that local and national officials all agree that it’s due to greenhouse warming, and that they say the plateau is warming faster than anywhere else in the world (really? Faster than the Antarctic Peninsula? If so, that is fast). The glaciers buffer and smooth the year-around flow of major rivers, including the Yellow. Without them hundreds of millions of people will suffer. Collier reports that such immediate evident impacts are bolstering a Chinese recognition that doing something about climate change is not just something for wealthier, longer-established industrial powers. One thinks that China’s smog would have been enough already. An aspect, the remarks by visiting US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, provides an extra, and surprising,

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