NZ glaciers are shrinking along with global warming.  The two satellite pictures above show the change over 17 years.  We walked up to look at Tasman Lake, which now (2012) has shrunk further back to the sharp valley opposite the Murchison river.

Glaciers now just can’t survive at 720 metres, the climate is too warm, so the NZ glaciers are shrinking.

In 1985 I went up the Franz Josef glacier on the West Coast.  20 years later I visited again with Katie.  What really surprised me, and brought home forcefully what global warming means, was the extent to which the glacier had shrunk.  In 1985 I walked up a creek to get to the glacier face.  20 years later that creek was about 1km from the face.  Glaciers are immense when you get to them – a vast wall of ice, seemingly unstoppable and permanent.  But it isn’t.  That vast structure had simply melted away.