Planetary destruction on fast-forward': witnessing the disappearance of Indonesia's eternity glaciers'

Expedition documentation of the last tropical glaciers in Oceania shows rapid shrinkage and impending loss. On Puncak Jaya in West Papua, Indonesia, the ice sheets have persisted beyond earlier projections but now occupy only a fraction of their original size. The larger of the two remaining glaciers, locally known as eternal snow and called the eternity glaciers in English, has lost 95% of its area since 2002. Tropical glaciers elsewhere, including the Andes, East Africa, and Indonesia, are also rapidly losing mass as fossil fuel pollution heats the planet and melts ice. The expedition’s filming and clear-sky conditions underscore the urgency of the disappearance timeline.

"The once-mighty ice sheets on Puncak Jaya, a mountain surrounded by dense rainforests in West Papua, Indonesia, have survived beyond projections they would disappear by 2026 but have shrunk to a fraction of their original size. The most significant of the two remaining glaciers, which are known locally as eternal snow and referred to in English as the eternity glaciers, has lost 95% of its area since 2002, the expedition found."

"The ice will be gone: it's not a question of if, it's a question of when, said Klaus Thymann, a Danish explorer and the founder of Project Pressure, an environmental charity. And when' is coming very, very soon. Tropical glaciers are mostly found in the Andes, but also exist in East Africa and Indonesia. They are rapidly losing mass as fossil fuel pollution heats the planet and melts the ice."

"Thymann said it might be weird to have an emotional reaction to an inanimate object but documenting the loss of the eternity glaciers had left him tearful as he returned to camp after filming on a rare morning of clear skies. On a philosophical level, you take eternity something that's an abstract, human construct and we are even now killing our own constructs, he said."

"It raises some very interesting questions, I think, around the little speck we are in geological time, and what amount of chaos we've managed to do in such little time. A screengrab showing the Puncak Jaya glacier from the Project Pressure expedition. Photograph: Project Pressure The remote Puncak Jaya mountain sits in the disputed territory on the island of New Guinea, where there have been decades of conflict and human rights abuses after Indonesia invaded the former Dutch colony in 1963."

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