Friday, May 13, 2005
Friday, May 13, 2005 |
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BERLIN: It is one of Switzerland's most picturesque ski resorts. But over the past two decades the Gurschen glacier above the village of Andermatt has been melting, forcing locals at the beginning of every ski season to build an artificial snow ramp. Now, however, the resort's organisers have come up with a novel way of protecting their mountain from global warming — they have wrapped it in clingfilm. On Wednesday workmen were putting the finishing touches to a 2,500 sq metre plastic sheet which has been wrapped over a stretch of ice used by skiers to get from the cable-car station to the mountain's ski-routes. The idea was to stop the ice melting during the summer season, organisers explained. ``We have lots of snow. The problem isn't with the snow but with the ice. It melts in the summer,'' a spokeswoman for the resort, Andermatt Gotthard Sportbahnen AG, said. ``Until now we've been building an artificial ramp at the beginning of each winter season, but this is a lot of effort. The sheet should stop the ice from melting.'' The move has been controversial. Greenpeace in Switzerland staged its own protest on the mountain as the sheet was pegged into place, unveiling placards with the slogans: ``Reduce CO2'' and ``Climate protection now''. Experts at Zurich University recently estimated that Swiss glaciers had lost about a fifth of their surface area in the past 15 years. In that time, the 2,961-metre high Gurschen glacier has sunk by 20 metres.
- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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