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Massive white tarpaulins are being used to protect Alpine glaciers from melting over the summer.
In northern Italy, the Presena glacier has lost more than one third of its volume since 1993.
Once the ski season is over and cable cars are berthed, conservationists race to try and stop it melting by using white tarps that block the sun's rays.
"This area is continuously shrinking, so we cover as much of it as possible," explains Davide Panizza, 34, who heads the Carosello-Tonale company that does the work.
From around 30,000 square metres (36,000 square yards) covered in 2008 when the project began, his team now places 100,000 square metres under wraps.
The tarps themselves are "geotextile tarpaulins that reflect sunlight, maintaining a temperature lower than the external one, and thus preserving as much snow as possible," according to Panizza.
Installation and removal of the tarps takes approximately six weeks each to complete. Similar systems are in place on a few Austrian glaciers as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @05:19AM (6 children)
I wonder how the earth survived at all when oxygen was basically a waste gas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @07:58AM (5 children)
The Earth is an eight thousand mile diameter rock with a metal core. It doesn't give a shit whether its surface temperature is -200 or +2000 degrees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @08:40AM (2 children)
I'm pretty sure he was being snarky, emphasizing that life goes on (or emerges) regardless. If the dinos had managed to develop a way to deal with asteroids (or gamma ray bursts as it may be) we probably wouldn't exist today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @10:19PM (1 child)
Do you actually use the word "snarky" in real life? I almost never hear or read this word being used outside of Slashdot and Soylentnews and don't understand why it's used so frequently here. I pretty much assume that anyone using it is probably incredibly insufferable in real life.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @12:32AM
Oooh you snarky bitch.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday June 22 2020, @10:04AM (1 child)
when oxygen was a waste gas I guess the temperature at the surface was neither 2000 nor -200 (nor anything in between, because the temperature measurement needs a unit...).
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @11:47AM
That would be degrees.
Celsius in the civilised world, Fahrenheit in the USA. Either works within the context of the comment.