CNN news 2011-12-02
AZUZ: For some of the Peruvians who live near the Andes, life depends on the snow that`s usually on top of the mountains. There`s just one problem these days -- no snow.
Rafael Romo looks at a unique idea to try to solve the problem. It basically boils down to fake it till you make it.
RAFAEL ROMO, CNN REPORTER (voice-over): High in the Peruvian Andes, where it`s so dry and cold that very little vegetation grows, life depends on one animal, the alpaca. But in recent years, raising alpacas has become a greater challenge. Mountains that used to be covered with ice around the town of Licapa are now barren.
SALOMON PARCO, ALPACA SHEPHERD: (Speaking foreign language).
ROMO (voice-over): Shepherd like Salomon Parco say no ice means no water, and no water means no grass to feed the animals.
ROMO (voice-over): Eduardo Gold is the is the founder of Peru Glaciers. The organization`s goal is to bring the ice back to the mountains.
Gold`s idea is very simple: if dark mountains absorb more heat from the sun, white mountains will have the opposite effect. The solution is to make them white.
EDUARDO GOLD, PERU GLACIERS: It`s 78 Fahrenheit degrees, so that`s at the very dark rock right here.
Now let`s take a look at what happens when you point it towards the rocks that have been painted.
ROMO (voice-over): An infrared thermometer shows quite a difference in temperature between the white and dark rocks.
GOLD: So it`s a difference of 30 degrees Fahrenheit, about 10 or 12 Celsius.
ROMO (voice-over): A crew of five go around the mountain, splashing a mixture that turns the rocks white. The mixture is not paint, but a combination of water, sand and lime.
And it seems to be working. Gold find ice in a crevice between the rocks, something the locals say wasn`t there before.
So far, the crew has covered an area of roughly 15,000 square meter, almost the size of three football fields, still too small to determine if Gold`s idea will work in the long term. His goal is to cover 3 billion square meters, which would be much more than 500,000 football fields. For that, he would need about $1.5 billion spread over five years -- Rafael Romo, CNN, Licapa, Peru.