A Message from the Melting
Slopes of Everest. By Cahal Milmo and Sam Relph,
London Independent, July 6, 2007. "The sons of Hillary and Tenzing speak
out about climate change: 'Believe us, it's a reality'... Fifty-four years after
Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to scale Everest,
their sons have said the mountain is now so ravaged by climate change that they
would no longer recognise it. On the eve of the Live Earth concerts... Peter
Hillary and Jamling Tenzing issued a timely warning [in July, 2007] that global
warming is rapidly changing the face of the world's highest mountain and
threatening the survival of billions of people who rely on its glaciers for
drinking water. The base camp where Sir Edmund and Norgay began their ascent is
40 metres lower than it was in 1953. The glacier on which it stands, and those
around it, are melting at such a rate that scientists believe the mountain,
whose Nepalese name, Qomolangma, means Mother of the World, could be barren rock
by 2050."