Stories like this are dazzle meant to distract from human caused greenhouse gas emissions. Why was this published one week after thousands were killed by flooding in Nepal?
Its obv that ppl are destroying the Everest ecosystem, but claiming their urine melts the glacier a few days after such a devastating event? Shame on them.
Ah, so climate change is real, it’s just caused by piss and piss alone.
Everest is the Disney Land of mountaineering; 30,40 years ago I admired these climbers, today I just go: shit man whtaturdouing.
Most of these people don’t sumit, they just go to first base camp for insta pictures and leave.
Is that significant? I am too lazy to do the math, but 6 tons of urine at 37 temperature while cooling to whatever temperatures are there, could free 4kJ * 6k * 40 ~= 1GJ ~= 300 kW*h. Which is pathetically low in the scale of the mountain.
I do no math, isn’t this about a lower freezing point for water due to the extra chemicals?
I believe that effect would be even less noticeable.
Wouldnt 6 thousand liters of urine a day roughly melt 6 thousand liters of ice a day just in areas concentrated around the base camps if the ice isn’t colder than -37C?
And the title aside, I think the article mentioned the study included lots of heat sources, with urine being a smaller part.
Not exactly. The specific heat of ice is about half of the specific heat of water.
So 6 tonnes of urine at 37°C would take 12 tonnes of ice from -37°C to 0°C.
That’s still ice, though, and it takes way more energy to thaw ice that to warm ice from -37 to 0.
Actually, I’ll just do the math.
6 Mg piss * 37°C * 4.18 J/g°C = 929 MJ
Let’s say ambient ice temp is -20°C.
20°C * 2.05 J/g°C * X + 333.55 J/g * X = 929 MJ
X ~2.5 tonnes of ice melted.
Not too bad. I suspect the change in albedo is the real problem.
Another conspiracy hidden by Big Urine.
Lol. The news is getting so ridiculous I’m about to tap out.
