Al Gore said in his AIT bag of BS that Mount Kilimanjaro was losing its snow/ice cover due to global warming. Here’s the Transcript of “An Inconvenient Truth”:
Effects of Global Warming
And now we’re beginning to see the impact in the real world. This is Mount Kilimanjaro more than 30 years ago, and more recently. And a friend of mine just came back from Kilimanjaro with a picture he took a couple of months ago. Another friend of mine Lonnie Thompson studies glaciers. Here’s Lonnie with a sliver of a once mighty glacier. Within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.
I’ve said this many times, Kilimanjaro’s loss of ice cover has to do with sublimation, not warming. The picture of Thompson next to the sliver of ice proves it. Note there’s no meltwater near him. That sliver is a symptom of sublimation – ice evaporating directly into the air, just like ice cubes shrink when left in the freezer too long.
Almost a year ago I wrote this:
This is an OSU press release, timed to appear in Eurekalert for Cancun’s COP16 on December 8th, and reposted here verbatim, including the all caps headline. Even though the “melting on Kilimanjaro due to global warming” has been fully debunked by a recent peer reviewed paper (see Kilimanjaro’s snow – it’s about land use change, tree cutting) Dr. Thompson continues to push this false information.
For example, this is a photo (at left) of Dr. Thompson standing next to an ice spire on Kilimanjaro. Notice any meltwater pools nearby? You won’t, because they aren’t there. Read this quote from this entry to understand why:
The ice cap on Kilimanjaro consists of ice on the 5,700-meter-high flat summit, some with vertical edges, and several slope glaciers, mostly at altitudes where temperatures stay well below freezing and the major source of energy is solar radiation. Considerable infrared radiation is emitted from the glacier surface into the surrounding air, and the glaciers lose the most mass through sublimation-the direct conversion of ice to water vapor. Observers have seen only a trickle of meltwater.
Dr. Thompson seems not to want to understand the process of sublimation on Kilimanjaro
And now today, here’s indication in the Climategate 2.0 emails that I was right.
5315.txt
date: Sat Sep 18 08:48:09 2004
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.xx.xx>
subject: Re: kilimanjaro
to: “Jenkins, Geoff” <geoff.jenkins@metoffice.xx.xx>
Geoff,
The data that are used for the grid box should be within the grid box. They will be low
elevation sites though, and this may be part of the reason. It might be worth seeing if
there is anything in the U/A data – but I reckon there won’t be much in that region.
I’ve heard Lonnie Thompson talk about the Kilimanjaro core and he got some local temperatures – that we don’t have access to, and there was little warming in them. The same situation applies for Quelccaya in Peru and also some of his Tibet sites. Lonnie thinks they are disappearing because of sublimation, but he can’t pin anything down. They are going though.
Lonnie’s email is “Lonnie G. Thompson” <thompson.3@osu.xxx.xxx>
You could try emailing Ellen as well both might be in the field.
Ellen Mosley-Thompson <thompson.4@osu.xxx.xxx>
I’m off much of the next 6 weeks at meetings.
I hear you’re retiring soon – hope all goes well ! I’m sure you’ll still be in the field somewhere.
Cheers
Phil
At 10:32 16/09/2004, you wrote:
phil
<<kilimanjaro.doc>>
we have been concerned that people often use the melting glacier on kilimanjaro as an
example of impacts of man-made warming. you may have seen some stories countering this on the sceptics websites.
I got philip brohan to look at temps there (see attached) and there isnt any convincing consistent recent warming in the station data. but your gridded CRUtem2V does show a recent warming. presumably that is because (as philip suggests) the gridded stuff has influences from quite a large radius, and hence may reflect warming at stations a long way from kilimanjaro?
would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?
be grateful for your help
cheers
geoff
Dr Geoff Jenkins
Head, Climate Prediction Programme
Hadley Centre
Met Office
FitzRoy Road, EXETER, EX1 3PB, UK
tel: +44 (0) 1392 xxxxxx
mobile: 0787 966 1136
[1]www.hadleycentre.xxxx.xx
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
NR4 7TJ
UK
—————————————————————————-
Compare that to this press release Dr. Thompson put out a year ago right before COP16 in Cancun.
================================================================
CLIMATE SCIENTIST WARNS WORLD OF WIDESPREAD SUFFERING IF FURTHER CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT FORESTALLED.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – One of the world’s foremost experts on climate change is warning that if humans don’t moderate their use of fossil fuels, there is a real possibility that we will face the environmental, societal and economic consequences of climate change faster than we can adapt to them.
Lonnie Thompson, distinguished university professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University, posed that possibility in a just-released special climate-change edition of the journal The Behavior Analyst.
He also discussed how the rapid and accelerating retreat of the world’s glaciers and ice sheets dramatically illustrates the nature of the changing climate.
 |
| Lonnie Thompson |
|
Photo by Thomas Nash
|
It is the first time in a published paper that he has recommended specific action to forestall the growing effects of climate change. During the last three decades, Thompson has led 57 expeditions to some of the world’s most remote high altitude regions to retrieve cores from glaciers and ice caps that preserve a record of ancient climate.
In the past Thompson has let his research data and conclusions speak for him but in this paper, intended for social scientists and behavior experts, he voiced his concern regarding the risks that ignoring the evidence of climate change may bring.
“Unless large numbers of people take appropriate steps, including supporting governmental regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, our only options will be adaptation and suffering,” he wrote in the concluding paragraph.
“And the longer we delay, the more unpleasant the adaptations and the greater the suffering will be.”
In the paper (available here), Thompson said that virtually all climate researchers “are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.”
His opinion isn’t hyperbole, he said, but instead is based on a “very clear pattern in the scientific evidence documenting that the Earth is warming, that the warming is due largely to human activity, that warming is causing important changes to many of the Earth’s support systems, and that rapid and potentially catastrophic changes in the near future are possible.
|
“Unless large numbers of people take appropriate steps, including supporting governmental regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, our only options will be adaptation and suffering.” |
“Such future scenarios,” he says, “emerge not, as is often suggested, simply from computer simulations, but from the weight and balance of the empirical evidence as well.”
Thompson listed three options humanity has for dealing with global warming which, he says, “is here and is already affecting our climate, so prevention is no longer an option.”
“Clearly mitigation is our best option, but so far most societies around the world, including the United States and the other largest emitters of greenhouse gases, have done little more than talk about the importance of mitigation,” he says.
He says that there are currently no technological quick fixes for global warming.
“Our best hope,” he says, “is to change our behavior in ways that significantly slow the rate of global warming, thereby giving engineers and scientists time to devise, develop, and deploy technological solutions where possible.”
Thompson prefaced his advice with examples of the Earth’s diminishing ice cover, examples that constitute some of the strongest supporting evidence of the current threat of global climate change:
– The ice fields atop Mount Kilimanjaro have lost 85 percent of their coverage since 1912;
– The Quelccaya ice cap in southern Peru – the largest tropical ice field on Earth, has retreated 25 percent since 1978;
– Ice fields in the Himalayas that have long shown traces of the radioactive bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s have since lost that signal as surface melting has removed the upper layers and thereby reduced the thickness of these glaciers;
– All of the glaciers in Alaska’s vast Brooks Range are retreating, as are 98 percent of those in southeastern Alaska. And 99 percent of glaciers in the Alps, 100 percent of those in Peru and 92 percent in the Andes of Chile are likewise retreating;
– Sea levels are rising and the loss of ice coverage in the North Polar region continues to increase annually.
“Everyone will be affected by global warming,” Thompson wrote. “But those with the fewest resources for adapting will suffer the most.”
A research scientist with Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center, Thompson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2007, he received the National Medal of Science, the highest honor the United States gives to American scientists.
#
Contact: Lonnie Thompson, (614) 292-6652: Thompson.3@osu.edu
Written by Earle Holland, (614) 292-8384; Holland.8@osu.edu.
=================================================================
I got into a tiff with Earle Holland in comments over my post on it. The point of all this is that Kilimanjaro has lost much of the lowland surround forest due to firewood cutting and land clearing for Agriculture. This limits the evapotranspiration available to upslope winds, the wind carry less moisture, less moisture falls on the top due to orographic lifting effect creating precipitation.
It’s just that simple, and “global warming” does not have one damn thing to do with it.
Dr. Thompson, you need to come clean and stop pushing this disinformation. Ditto for Mr. Holland. To say Kilimanjaro is losing its ice due to “global warming” is patently false.
Ditto for Gore, but he has no scruples so I don’t expect him to acknowledge it at all.
UPDATE: I’m reminded by “jeez” that Dr. Lonnie Thompson and his wife served as advisors for Gore’s AIT movie as mentioned in this glowing press release from OSU:
Lonnie and Ellen both served as advisers to former Vice President Al Gore in the production of his 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore said, “Lonnie Thompson’s research has yielded some of clearest, most definitive evidence of the dangerous state of global climate change that we’re all facing.
…
Thompson shocked the scientific community in 2001 when he predicted that the famed snows of Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania would melt within the next 20 years, a victim of climate change across the tropics. Return expeditions to that same mountain have shown that changes in the mountain’s ice fields may signal an even quicker demise of its snowy cover.
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Who’s now writing CLIMATEGATE VOLUME II (or III)?
Anyway this was a good timing because I’m finishing, in a couple of weeks, a (Japanese) book on the AGW scam, where a chapter deals with Climategate.
Many thanks to Anthony and Team.
I am still amazed that the scientific community hasn’t come down harder on these charlatans. Don’t they realize that in the public eyes they are all seen as one?
If I were a scientist, I would throwing every climate scientist under a bus just to perserve some sort of credibility for the institution. Much more of this climate nonsense and you’ll be hearing about “Occupy Academia”.
I think misterjohnpublic, they would but afraid their grants etc., will be prejudiced. Interesting in New Zealand, they announced earlier this year, that some glaciers were not melting they were eroding. I think we have to worry more about glaciers (land ones) not sea ice, expanding.
As far as academia is concerned it’s not important until it starts to effect their funding.
It is new to me that the sublimation can occur without heat, I don’t why that occurs only on Kilimanjaro glacier. Since we can see ice on the mountain, I assume it must be cold out there. Ice is disappearing from the tops of the mountains all over the world even from the Mount Everest. Ice is disappearing slowly although it is cold over there; very simple, it is so because ice is not added regularly as used to be in old days. And, it is so because the frequency of rain cycle is decreasing. IPCC or Mr. Algore or Dr. Pachauri are not reaching to the solution to climate change just because they are wrong to blame gases. Gases cannot cause GW or CC. They have not given a single scientific reason behind their claims. They are misleading the world. For details and to email me please click on my name.
I did my share and immediately fired off an email to this butt head (snip – over the top)
PS just got an Auto reply
I will be away from email until December 1 and will respond to your message at that time.
So, Dr. Lonnie Thompson is telling Phil Jones that he thinks Kilimanjaro is going due to sublimation, meanwhile he is telling the public that it is an example of global warming …
He should lose his job for that.
Seriously. I would.
Anthony, forget about that break that you need. This is all just too juicy.
Perhaps we could call it the Watts effect. Every time you say you need to take a break, there’s action aplenty!
I’m on my mobile phone and just skimmed this article, but did you mention that Lonnie Thompson was science advisor to Gore on AIT?
Jeez thanks for the reminder will add an update
(snip – I agree comment you object to snipped upstream – Anthony)
Please Sir? Can we use the “f” word?
REPLY: To paraphrase Ben Santer: “I’m tempted, very tempted”.
-Anthony
Al Gore is a simpleton. He could be in a quote contest with Dan Quayle and lose by a mile. Oh wait….he did.
Not saying much there.
Apparently Ben Santer and Simon the Hippo disagree.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7zMQII8qOo&w=420&h=315%5D
Look at those dates! It’s 2004! Have the Pathetics known this all along? LT is on the edge of scientific forgery if that’s true.
If you look again there’s a couple of Austrian researchers making the same point about sublimation and Kilimanjaro in another email, from 2005 or thereby.
Some have said, with good cause, that there is no room in science for hiding things.
I disagree; I think those involved in this climate conspiracy should hide their heads in abject shame.
I have a suspicion; that the password protected emails will be even more devastating than what we have seen so far. I look forward to that day.
Mr. Watts, in a just world, it would be you and your fellow truth-seekers who would receive the Nobel prize, not charlatans such Gore. Thank you, Mr. Watts, and to all involved (including FOIA) for all you have done. You have made a true difference, for I believe the carbon tax would have passed in the US to wreak havoc on our economy were it not for the work you and others did.
all these fraudsters will one day will be tried for treason against the state and sent to jail but alas all the jails are full
“All of the glaciers in Alaska’s vast Brooks Range are retreating, as are 98 percent of those in southeastern Alaska. And 99 percent of glaciers in the Alps, 100 percent of those in Peru and 92 percent in the Andes of Chile are likewise retreating;”
Never mind Kilimanjaro, what about these other assertions?
date: Sat Sep 18 08:48:09 2004
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: kilimanjaro
to: “Jenkins, Geoff”
“I’ve heard Lonnie Thompson talk about the Kilimanjaro core and he got some local temperatures – that we don’t have access to, and there was little warming in them.”
Is this really a conversation-stopper? I’m not sure what Jones meant by “little warming.” Slightly less than expected? Considerably less than expected? If he’d said NO warming, the meaning would have been crystal clear, and we would have had a smoking gun. Or at least a sublimating gun. 🙂
Gravity dictates that glaciers flow down the mountain sides to warmer areas and melt. To exist for more than one season the ice must be replenished by precipitation, ie snow. Without this on a regular basis seasonally then the glaciers will reduce as we see on Kilimanjaro. The snows stopped there due to de-forestation of the lower slopes, for firewood, which caused the reduction of evapotranspiration which caused a fall in precipitation levels.
Perhaps the dawn is breaking over at UEA butI doubt it.
Have I mentioned that jeez is always supposed to be lowercase? I’m a dotcom baby. I know ctm feels the same way, but no one ever listens to him either.
The anger one feels when you see propaganda knowingly fed to children by the willing co-operation of Ben Santer. this is the great harm that has been done in trying to set children on the wrong path with their” wayward energy guzzling parents” – low life attempt at mind control of the young – words fail me, I can only think disgusting fail Santer!!
> I’m not sure what Jones meant by “little warming.”
It’s a British euphemism. meaning ‘effectively none’.
Similarly, a British writer might say that “Thompson has shown little inclination to put the story straight about Kilimanjaro.”
Loonie Thompson, does his wife even listen to him anymore?
John Marshall your right and its that has clear for sometime , but like polar bears and the ‘stick’ ,Kilimanjaro’s snows became an icon of the AGW faith and therefore even if they knew it was lie they could no admit to it for fear of undermining the ‘faith’ .
A lot of this behavior makes better sense if you stop thinking science ,were doubt is the norm, and start thinking religion were doubt is not just unwelcome but seen as ‘evil’ , they you understand why they react in the way the do .
– Ice fields in the Himalayas that have long shown traces of the radioactive bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s have since lost that signal as surface melting has removed the upper layers and thereby reduced the thickness of these glaciers;
Heck it must be getting hot there if even radio-active material is evaporating. If not then surely when the ice melts or sublimates, the radiation would be left behind.