Peru's glaciers are disappearing and for those who live near one lost glacier on the Chalon Sombrero peak the nights are colder and the days hotter and the river which depends on the mountain for water is lower that ever before. One man, Eduardo Gold, has decided to change things for the better by painting the mountains white, a mad scientist idea and wonderful if it works.
He plans to change the albedo (a measure of how strongly the object relects light): "Cold generates more cold, just as heat generates more heat, I am hopeful that we could re-grow a glacier here because we would be recreating all the climatic conditions necessary for a glacier to form."
Archeologists today coming across a mountain painted white by people many thousands of years ago might guess it was an early gesture to the gods.
This rock painting in the mountains reminds me of the rock art in the Sahara of the swimmers.
Almasy, who discovered them in 1933, thought they dated to 10,000 years ago during the last ice age when there was water there. Perhaps it was painted as things began to change to bring the water back.
This cross over between science and superstition is interesting. Sometimes what looks like superstition is science and sometimes what looks like science is superstition.
Confusing superstition for science can have terrible results, as in the case of the British company selling bomb detecting dowsing rods. This device, just a rod swivelling on a box, is super cheap to produce and super expensive to buy; it is based on a profitable mixture of superstition, disregard for human life and deceit.
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