Report: Christie, Ryan, Axelrod to headline Romney retreat

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), and Obama strategist David Axelrod will headline a retreat being planned by former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Boston Globe reports.

The June forum will also feature former senators Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who chaired their eponymous debt-reduction commission, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the chairman of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, according to an e-mail obtained by the newspaper.

“As I indicated in your invitation, I have drawn speakers from government and business to identify key opportunities ahead,” Romney writes. “And I have made sure to invite presenters from both sides of the aisle.”

The event, dubbed "Experts and Enthusiasts," will be held in Park City, Utah and is sponsored by Solamere Group, the private equity firm where Romney now serves as chairman. The firm was founded by Romney's son, Tagg, and Spence Zwick, the finance chair of his campaign.

Last year, Romney held a similar retreat in the Utah resort town for hundreds of his campaign's top donors. Campaign staff and major Republican political figures including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice briefed donors.

According to the Globe, attendance to the event is expected to run $5,000, although is not considered a political donation.

The event will be Romney's first foray back into public life since his electoral defeat, with the exception of an appearance earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference. At that time, Romney pledged to remain active in public life.

“I am sorry that I will not be your president,” he said. “But I will be your co-worker, and I will work shoulder-to-shoulder alongside you."

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Study: South American Glaciers In Historic Retreat

One of the more dramatic effects of global warming is shrinking glaciers around the globe. 10 to 20 percent of glacier ice in the European Alps, for example, has been lost in less than two decades, and half the volume of the mountain range’s glacier ice has melted away since 1850.

Thinning and melting rates in Alaskan glaciers more than doubled over the last decade, African glaciers have declined by 60 to 70 percent since the 1900s, and most Pacific glaciers are also receding. Summer ice coverage in the Arctic could disappear entirely within a decade, and Glacier National Park may not have any glaciers by 2030.

This isn’t just destructive to wildlife and ecosystems. Given their locations, glaciers can serve as crucial supplies of fresh water for various human populations — and as they shrink year after year, those supplies tighten.

The latest example comes from a new report by The Cryosphere, which documents the shrinkage of glaciers in the Andes mountain range of South America. The glaciers have shrunk by at least a third, and possibly as much as half, since the 1970s alone. And the worst loss has been seen in the smaller, lower altitude glaciers which supply fresh water for many of the continent’s residents, according to a round-up of the report by Reuters:

Climate change has shrunk Andean glaciers between 30 and 50% since the 1970s and could melt many of them away altogether in coming years, according to a study published on Tuesday in the journal Cryosphere.

Andean glaciers, a vital source of fresh water for tens of millions of South Americans, are retreating at their fastest rates in more than 300 years, according to the most comprehensive review of Andean ice loss so far.

The study included data on about half of all Andean glaciers in South America, and blamed the ice loss on an average temperature rise of 0.7 degree Celsius over the past 70 years. [...]

The researchers also warned that future warming could totally wipe out the smaller glaciers found at lower altitudes that store and release fresh water for downstream communities.

The plot above tracks the changes in surface area for the various glaciers in the Andes since the Little Ice Age in the mid-17th to early-18th centuries. The measurements prior to 1940 were put together from studies of debris associated with the glaciers, and reconstructed from aerial photographs after that point. The drop-off in the second half of the 20th Century is precipitous.

The Zongo Glacier (the red squares) managed to avoid the dramatic shrinkage of the other glaciers because it sits at a higher altitude. The lower altitude glaciers are more vulnerable to temperature shifts, and thus have seen the worst of the melting. They’re also the glaciers that supply fresh water for both the agriculture and consumption of large populations in the arid regions of Peru and Bolivia, serving as a buffer for those communities during the dry season from May/June to August/September.

As the glaciers recede, that buffer shrinks, leaving those water supplies ever more strained. Meanwhile, the tendency of global warming to drive more extreme weather patterns could exacerbate the severity of the dry season, dealing a double blow to the people of Peru and Bolivia.

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