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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When I look at these two comments,
1.) “Lonnie Thompson was science advisor to Gore on AIT”
2.) “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.”
I think Al Gore should sue Lonnie Thompson.
We all have been grossly misinformed.
.
Rick Bradford says:
> I’m not sure what Jones meant by “little warming.”
It’s a British euphemism. meaning ‘effectively none’.
—————————————————————
Agreed.
It often translates as a less blunt “none”, “zero” or “%*&@ur momisugly all”.
Anthony – you left a telephone number in your post – perhaps it needs deletion?
REPLY: No that’s on the press release from Thompson, so it gets published as is – Anthony
Regarding the “taken out of context” defence of the Warmistas, it appeaars to me that Climategate 2.0 IS the context of 1.0.
We see here the background chatter between the conspirators – the actual log of the conspiracy, that they themselves accept – the CAUSE .. discussing who would be a reliable member, etc.
Why is it that when religion is mentioned it’s only to provide canards like this? Look at doubting Thomas where Jesus did not gainsay his doubt (though Jesus did say that those who believed without firsthand knowledge would be blessed.) Or the case where Paul complimented the Bereans for not just accepting what he told them but searching to see if what he said was true or not (albeit true in the context of scripture… but what are we doing here except comparing what people say with what said in the past, etc.)
I would like to know who the charlatans are. Sublimation (direct transformation of ice into vapor) is controlled by the humidity of the surrounding atmosphere, that is, it should be really dry. Those conditions are prevalent in most of those ranges. And the dryness is consequence of the climate change consequence of the anthropogenic global warming. Eastern Africa, Central Asia, and the Pacific coast of South America are regions where dryness of the atmosphere has been notably exacerbated by the AGW.
Duh!
REPLY: you missed this, the “duh” is you -Anthony
This new doc-dump shows a picture that wasn’t clear in the previous one.
Namely, the top dogs at the center of the scam know the facts. They know the game is falling apart, but they don’t want to demoralize their foot-soldiers. They want to keep the money flowing as long as possible.
“And the dryness is consequence of the climate change consequence of the anthropogenic global warming. Eastern Africa, Central Asia, and the Pacific coast of South America are regions where dryness of the atmosphere has been notably exacerbated by the AGW.”
Frank,
But that’s not what the Alarmists have been peddling all these years; it’s quite the opposite. According to their theories, AGW leads to more GHG’s (ie CO2 and water vapor), which in turn cause more precipitation. The tropical and subtropical precipitation patterns would increase and not decrease. Depending on which Alarmist you read (and the year they published their “studies”), you can get different results. Now Lonnie Thompson has been out in front of tropical glacier trends for quite some time. And he attributes their waning to “increased temperatures due to AGW”, and not to land use changes of the local areas. When I first came across his studies some 10-12 years ago, I thought his conjecture was insane, as most of the high level glaciers remain well below freezing almost year around. The countervailing opinions blamed changes in ENSO; some posited that El Ninoesque conditions lead to less rainfall; but, still others (ie Pielke et als) blamed land-use changes. In the case of Mount Kilimanjaro, Pielke is stands vindicated. For almost a decade people like Steve McIntyre had attempted to get Dr Thompson to release his ice-cores to auditors; however, Thompson refuses. Now we know why.
The MSM seem more interested in 15 protesters getting non-lethal pepper gas in their eyes than evidence of scientific malfeasance. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.
Frank Rommey: Dryness is caused by coldness as we told by alarmists all the time when we point out that Antarctica ice cap is growing, we are told that is because it is warming and therefore can snow. We are are also told this about New York and Washington DC, it is snowing more there too because of warming making it moist.
Cold causes dryness.
Duh!
Alleagra says:
November 23, 2011 at 12:52 am
“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?
__________________________________
It is the usual pick and choose your data.
But think about it. Do we really WANT all the glaciers to start GROWING???? Growing glaciers ====> Next Ice age. But no one ever bothers to mention that little fact now do they.
12 More Glaciers that Haven’t Heard the News about Global Warming
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/12-more-glaciers-that-havent-heard-the-news-about-global-warming
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/pid/7209;jsessionid=CC7E877A0B626D1318754A8F913CEA1D
RE: Frank Rommey says:
November 23, 2011 at 6:01 am
Oh, Duh yourself. Do you really think you can pull out of a hat a statement such as, “Eastern Africa, Central Asia, and the Pacific coast of South America are regions where dryness of the atmosphere has been notably exacerbated by the AGW,” and get away with it, on this site?
First of all you need to supply a link to a published paper. It needs to date from before it was pointed out, to the chagrin of Al Gore, that sublimation and not melting was reducing the snow cover. It must be a paper that informs the public where and when the atmosphere will be drier, due to Global Warming. Preferably it will be based upon a computer model that actually got something right, and predicted correctly, for a change.
Even such a paper is refuted by the more environmentally-sound idea that the moisture atop Kilimanjaro is brought there by wind sweeping up the slopes, and if the slopes of the mountain have been deforested, there will be less moisture. This is a noticeable effect of over-lumbering and over-grazing, has led to hardships all over the world, may be a reason the Anasazi had to abandon their homelands, and has be countered by smart reforesting, (such as has happened in the Western Ghats of India, and has led to increased rainfall there.)
True environmentalists focus on pragmatic and practical measures that can help both wildlife and the poor, and make our planet more beautiful. However the real “Duh” is deserved by people such as you, who support the complete balderdash that gives other environmentalists a bad name, and is actually freezing poor people, starving poor people, and chopping up eagles with stupid windpower that makes no economic sense.
Please read the emails this post focuses on. They do not concentrate on Global-warming-caused sublimation, as you seem to assert. The clearly state the people in question knew balderdash was balderdash, but chose to withhold this information from you.
Little brother, you have been lied to.
Frank Rommey says:
November 23, 2011 at 6:01 am
I would like to know who the charlatans are. Sublimation (direct transformation of ice into vapor) is controlled by the humidity of the surrounding atmosphere, that is, it should be really dry. Those conditions are prevalent in most of those ranges. And the dryness is consequence of the climate change consequence of the anthropogenic global warming. Eastern Africa, Central Asia, and the Pacific coast of South America are regions where dryness of the atmosphere has been notably exacerbated by the AGW.
Duh!
______________________________________
You forget that Warmth ===> evaporation===> more rain ====> a WETTER CLIMATE. So you just “Proved” that it is getting colder.
In 1066.txt Georg Kaser, Institut fuer Geographie, Austria says
———————————–
“We show that the shrinkage of Tropical glaciers has the same time pattern and the same
magnitude as the shrinkage of glaciers in the mid latitudes since the “Littel Ice Age”.
They melt not more rapid than comparable glaciers somewhere else and not in an
unprecented way (e.g. shrinkage rates have been stronger in the 1940s).
There is only one exception: Kilimanjaro plateau. There, glacier shrinkage is NOT due to
20th century climate change. “
Caleb says:
November 23, 2011 at 7:18 am
True environmentalists focus on pragmatic and practical measures that can help both wildlife and the poor, and make our planet more beautiful. However the real “Duh” is deserved by people such as you, who support the complete balderdash that gives other environmentalists a bad name, and is actually freezing poor people, starving poor people, and chopping up eagles with stupid windpower that makes no economic sense.
_____________________________________
Well said!
Al Gore has PROVED himself to be a selfish greedy (self-snip) when the company his is president of , New Forest, had peasants removed burning down their homes and a child named Friday Mukamperezida burned to death. He is burning these people out so he can plant a nasty invasive monoculture tree that even a goat won’t eat so he can collect money for CARBON CREDITS.
While Al Gore was VP, I walked into the extension service office to find my Ag extension agent in a red hot rage. He had been to the presentation where Al Gore stated the following.
Well decades have gone by and now the other shoe has dropped. It has never been about the environment or the people, it has always been about MONEY.
African Land Grab – “Acres for a bottle of Scotch” http://www.zerohedge.com/article/african-land-grab-acres-bottle-scotch
Ugandan farmers kicked off their land for New Forests Company’s carbon project http://www.redd-monitor.org/2011/09/23/ugandan-farmers-kicked-off-their-land-for-new-forests-companys-carbon-project/
My research into the invasive tree:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/25/they-had-to-burn-the-village-to-save-it-from-global-warming/#comment-754959
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/13/borlaug-2-0/#comment-767559
These folks are lying at and cheating the taxpayers who fund their travelling of the world.
Can’t they be held responsible finally for such malignant behaviour? And don’t they have any shame, not to speak about ethics?
What a disservice to science at all.
It seems the MSM is already downplaying Climategate 2.0. Certainly the commentary is low-key, dismissive and off the main pages, though of course that could be the “BBC effect”. Therefore, I don’t think there’s much likelihood of this affecting public opinion on AGW or of science in general. I think people are already sceptical of scientists — every week there’s a “scientific study” telling us that what we thought was good for us is actually bad or vice versa — and this would simply be one more thing to add to that list.
So will this make much difference out in the real world? I don’t think so. In the hothouse (sic!) of AGW-ville it might make a few people embarrassed for a while, but then it’ll be back to business as usual. We’re not talking science and facts here, we’re talking a cause. While the funding flows they won’t let science get in the way of that cause, no matter what.
Unless you are informed of what altitude the freeze line is showing a picture of a glacier and saying the melting is caused by warming is ludicrous. Most or all of Mt K glacier is above the freeze line and cannot melt due to warming it is below freezing.
RE: Discover Magazine/Bad Astronomy
“However, like a bacterium festering away someplace dank and fetid, Climategate is poised to infect reality once again…”
With some of the most creative invective I have seen in some time, a writer at this site appears to be expressing his inconvenience at seeing Climategate, Release 2.
Climategate 2: More ado about nothing. Again.
Geez, this again? Seriously?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/11/22/climategate-2-more-ado-about-nothing-again/
You guys want to peer review? maybe you should! I invite you to the universities to do a peer review of all the data and judge ALL the data and you can come to your own conclusion, write your science papers and make your point… If you do not, then you guys are [trimmed] morons…
[Watch your language. Cursing isn’t needed, and it isn’t going to convince anyone of anything except the level of your own qualifications. Oh, by the way, trying to read the “university” documents IS what the FOIA requests were all about. Robt]
I am amazed at the ignorance of so many.
It has long been an undisputed fact that clear felling forests for whatever reason has a detrimental effect on precipitation in the area. The canopy of forests can be the major source of uplft which causes moisture to condense and rain – or snow. I thought this was a given as there is much data supporting the decreases in precipitation following clearing – especially here in Australia where mountains are not particularly high.
The principal reason for decreased glaciation in areas where the temperature rarely goes above freezing MUST be a combination of decreased precipitation which means the snowfields are “refreshed” less often allowing loss due to sublimation.
Are the proponents of melting at less than the freezing point spin doctors or simply dumb ?
And the fact that water does these amazing things demonstrate time and again that only a fool could not appreciate that WATER with its astounding properties and phase changes is the climate controller NOT a simple trace gas.
How do they miss that every major storm event brings large amounts of water – not CO2 ?
I also have a problem with the so called radiative balance – I think there never has been nor ever will be such a thing on Earth.
If the energy from the sun simply comes in, heats the surface which emits infrared which is absorbed by trace gases (even water vapour is really a trace gas) causing increased heating and ultimately radiated to space – where did the huge amounts of energy stored in the biosphere, both current and fossilized, come from if there such athing as “radiative balance”.
Mass stores enormous quantities of energy – even gases store enormous quantities as my 9 kg LPG gas bottle proves by boiling enormous quattities of water for tea and coffee.
One other thing I find incomprehensible – I once asked the CSIRO if the other gasses in the atmosphere became heated and emitted infrared. They apparently could not answer this simple question!
Most (maybe nearly all) of these glaciers began shrinking long before 1950, when manmade CO2 emissions became a significant factor in the atmosphere. Prof. Akasofu and others have documented this. Therefore it’s likely that natural variation accounts for most of their shrinking.
@Gail Combs – There are two companies with very similar names:
1) An Australia-based company called New Forests Pty Limited (http://bit.ly/t6dvVp) – David Blood and Al Gore’s investment company Generation Investment Management is one of the four shareholders in New Forests and David Blood sits on New Forests’ board; and
2) A UK-based company called New Forests Company (http://bit.ly/tN42e1) – which was founded by Julian Ozanne.
They are completely separate companies. The company operating in Uganda is the UK-based company.
Actually, you can look in the emails released in the latest FOIA batch. They discuss in those emails that there is no significant trend on land relative humidity measurements. None.