Experts Say Alps Glaciers Will Melt by 2050 VIENNA, Austria --
Glaciers will all but disappear from the Alps by 2050,
scientists warned Monday, basing their bleak outlook on mounting
evidence of slow but steady melting of the continental ice
sheets. In western Austria's Alpine province of Tyrol, glaciers
have been shrinking by about 3 percent a year, said Roland
Psenner of the University of Innsbruck's Institute for Ecology.
And 2050 is a conservative estimate, he said: If they keep
melting at that rate, most glaciers could vanish by 2037. "The
future looks rather liquid," he said. Experts at a regional
conference on the Alps, held annually in the mountain resort of
Alpbach, stopped short of blaming global warming. But they
called for a review of preventive measures to protect people
living in valleys at risk of dangerous flooding. Runoff from
melting glaciers caused severe flooding that devastated parts of
Switzerland in the summer of 2005. Glacial melting is a global
problem, according to the Zurich-based W