Pakistan, Sept. 28 -- Pakistan's glaciers are changing at a pace official planning appears increasingly hard-pressed to follow. In early June, Suparco found 24 of 130 potentially dangerous glacial lakes unfrozen. By early July, the number under observation had climbed to 40. The latest assessment puts it at 105, with several lakes extending beyond their previously recorded limits. For years, glacial lake outburst floods have tended to command national attention after a road is washed away, a bridge collapses, or a village is cut off. That is too narrow a way to read what is happening. The same heat swelling these lakes is also altering the snow and glacier melt on which the Indus system depends.

That should concern far more than the peop...