> Between 1952 and 2019 alone, Venezuela’s glacier surface went from 2,317 square kilometers to just 0.046 square kilometers, according to a 2020 study.
Checked the study because those numbers seemed suspect. That's 2.3 square kilometers, not 2300.
Checked the study because those numbers seemed suspect. That's 2.3 square kilometers, not 2300.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15230430.2020.1...
Quote from the abstract:
> In Venezuela, glacial area has decreased 98 percent between 1952 and 2019 (from 2.317 km2 to 0.046 km2).
So it appears you are correct. I looked it up because I was skeptical of your skepticism - Washington state is at a very different latitude, but at 1/5 the area of Venezuela has ~450 sq km of glaciers. Mt Rainier alone has 90 sq km.
https://glaciers.us/glaciers.research.pdx.edu/Glaciers-Washi...
There’s no arguing against extreme glacial retreat (I started this by fact-checking your downplay), but this article does feel pretty sensational about a place that didn’t really have glaciers to begin with.
The article being off by three orders of magnitude annoyed me because the loss of that quantity of ice in one location in just 70 years would be catastrophic; if we assume 40 meter thickness, that's 58 cubic kilometers of water added into the local watershed.
As it stands, the statistic is "just" depressing.
Because they also wrote "0.046".