Yes, the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are melting, but global warming isn't to blame,?

Question

StarTribune.com
Kilimanjaro's snows melting, but ...

Yes, the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are melting, but global warming isn't to blame, some scientists say.

By Sandi Doughton, McClatchy News Service

Last update: June 12, 2007 – 11:22 PM
SEATTLE

The shrinking snow cap atop Mount Kilimanjaro has become an icon of global warming. Pictures of the African peak, which has lost 90 percent of its ice cover, were featured in Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." Greenpeace activists once held a satellite news conference on the summit to sway participants in an international climate conference.

But most scientists who study Kilimanjaro's glaciers have long been uneasy with the volcano's poster-child status. Yes, ice cover has shrunk by 90 percent, they say.

But no, the buildup of greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and factories is not to blame.

"Kilimanjaro is a grossly overused mis-example of the effects of climate change," said University of Washington climate scientist Philip Mote, co-author of an article in the July/August issue of American Scientist magazine.

Mote is concerned that critics will try to use the article to debunk broader climate-change trends.

He hastens to add that global warming is, indeed, responsible for the fact that nearly every other glacier around the globe is melting away. Kilimanjaro just happens to be the worst possible case study.

Rising nearly 4 miles from the plains of eastern Tanzania, the 19,340-foot Kilimanjaro has seen its glaciers decline steadily for well over a century -- since long before humans began pumping large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Mote points out.

Most of the world's glaciers didn't begin their precipitous declines until the 1970s, when measurable global warming first appeared.

Also, recent data show temperatures on the volcano never dip below freezing. So melting triggered by a warmer atmosphere can't be the reason the small summit ice sheet is retreating about 3 feet a year, said Georg Kaser, co-author of the article and a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Most glaciers in temperate zones, like those on Mount Rainier, extend to lower elevations where their terminus is warmed to the melting point in summer.

On Kilimanjaro, ice loss seems to be driven by two factors: a lack of snowfall and sublimation, the same process that causes freezer burn by sucking moisture out of food.

Researchers believe Kilimanjaro's glaciers formed about 11,000 years ago, when the region was undergoing a period of wet weather that allowed snow to accumulate. But even before the first Europeans reached the summit in 1889, the weather has been dry in Eastern Africa. There simply hasn't been enough snowfall to keep up with the loss of ice due to sublimation, Kaser explained.

Sublimation, caused by exposure to sunlight and dry air, occurs when ice essentially skips the melting step and evaporates.

Kaser, who climbs Kilimanjaro twice a year to gather data, says the ice topography shows little evidence that melting is anything but a minor force. Jagged spires and cliffs made of ice up to 120 feet tall are not softened around the edges.

Even though the mountain presents an interesting scientific puzzle, it's an anomaly compared with what's happening with other glaciers, said Douglas Hardy, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Massachusetts. The new article will be seized on by "global warming naysayers" and could give people the mistaken impression that it calls global warming into question, Hardy predicted.

"What value to society does that serve?" he asked.

© 2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

Answer 1

You are correct, of course.

The fact that Al Gore and other Global Warming Alarmists use pictures of Kilimanjaro as “shocking evidence” of global warming, just goes to show how dishonest these people are. Are we really expected to believe that they simply neglected to ask anybody? Of course they asked. They knew they were lying, but the pictures are so good that they just couldn’t resist.

In fact, Al Gore himself admits he’s lying. He says; “…I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual solutions on how dangerous it (global warming) is…” (See http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4938 ) An “over-representation of factual solutions” is, in layman’s terms, “a lie”.

“The end justifies the means” I imagine they would say in their defence. I disagree. This tendency to lie shows that the whole global warming debate is propaganda, not science.

Another point that I’d like to make concerns the comment you posted by Philip Mote that was picked up by 3DM, above…

“nearly every other glacier around the globe is melting away.”

Really? Let’s analyse that statement, shall we?

There are around 160,000 glaciers on planet Earth. 90% of them are in Antarctica. And Antarctica is *not* melting – even the IPCC admit this (http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf see the bottom of page 9)

So, even if we assume that every glacier outside of Antarctica is melting (which they’re not) that still means that only 1 in 10 glaciers is melting.

Does “1 in 10” sound about equal to “nearly every”? Hardly. But Philip Mote is a University of Washington climate scientist, so he should know the facts I’ve stated above. So that means he’s lying too, doesn’t it?

All this leaves us with the question: why? Why do all these Global Warming Alarmists feel the need to lie? The obvious answer is: because the whole “global warming is a manmade catastrophe” idea simply isn’t true, that’s why.

As ever with global warming - don't believe the hype.

Answer 2

They will continue to use Mt K. as an example till someone brings up this article, then they'll home in on this:

"Mote is concerned that critics will try to use the article to debunk broader climate-change trends.

He hastens to add that global warming is, indeed, responsible for the fact that nearly every other glacier around the globe is melting away. Kilimanjaro just happens to be the worst possible case study."

You can't focus on any single incidence of warming or colling on the planet unless you believe in AGW - then you get a free pass.

Answer 3

Al Gore uses Kilimanjaro in his video and book but then he's not a scientist. Several other presentations also use the mountain but then they're not the presentations of scientists.

I don't use it, no other climate scientist I know uses it, the IPCC doesn't use it, the professional climate websites don't use it. It may be referred to for illustrative purposes or to demonstrate possible future scenarios but I honestly can't think of a credible source that cites the melting of the Kibo ice as being solely attributable to global warming.

We know why the ice is melting - partly global warming, partly insolation but largely due to changes in the micro climates resulting from ecological and agricultural changes on the slopes and in the vicinity of the mountain.

Answer 4

Gee U wrote a short novel... How kind of U George.