I’ve said many times that the claims of receding glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro by Al Gore in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth, and by extension, the claims of Dr. Lonnie Thompson are nothing more than alarmist hype. The cause, deforestation leading to reduced evapotranspiration of moisture, rendering upslope winds less moisture laden, and thus depositing less precipitation on the summit. The ice then sublimates away. “Global warming” hasn’t anything to do with it.
A Climategate 2 email shows that Dr. Lonnie Thompson agrees privately, but spouts alarmism publicly. Now we have more on the story from the Miami Herald. It seems tour guides are seeing increased glacier growth now.
Excerpt:
…one of the saddest claims of some scientists and environmental activists is that those glaciers are disappearing, perhaps before the end of the decade, another victim of rising global temperatures.
Athumani Juma doesn’t believe it. A guide who’s been hiking the mountain for the past seven years, he laughed when he was asked about the likelihood that Kilimanjaro’s snowcap would disappear soon. The glaciers, he claimed, no longer are shrinking, but growing.
“Before, we were seeing glaciers melting,” he explained during a recent descent from the summit. “But from 2010 to now, we have been seeing new glaciers.”
So is one of the most popularly cited examples of the adverse effects of man-made climate change, Kilimanjaro’s great melt, a myth?
Yes and no, said Georg Kaser, a professor at Innsbruck University in Austria who’s a leading expert on low-latitude glaciers, including Kilimanjaro’s.
The glaciers atop Kilimanjaro’s highest peak, Kibo, are indeed melting, but not because of climate change, he said. They’ve been receding steadily since at least 1880.
“According to our understanding, the Kibo glaciers shrink and will disappear not because of changing climate conditions but because of conditions that are unfavorable in principle: It is simply too dry for these glaciers to exist under normal Holocene conditions,” he emailed. The Holocene is how geologists refer to the period from the last Ice Age until now.
“The much less clear question is on how the glaciers came to exist, and there are indications that a series of exceptional wet years allowed them to build up during the first half of the 19th century,” Kaser wrote.
Kilimanjaro visitors don’t need to worry about the rare tropical glaciers vanishing in the next several years, but the summit will continue to gradually lose more and more of its icy grandeur. Projections suggest that the glaciers will disappear by 2046, give or take 10 or 20 years, Kaser said.
That’s because the atmosphere around Kilimanjaro doesn’t contain enough water to sustain large ice bodies, according to Kaser’s research. Climate change might have affected the precipitation patterns in the region, but local temperatures don’t appear to be a driving factor in the glacier retreat.
A separate study published in the journal Global and Planetary Change in November 2010 suggested that deforestation in Kilimanjaro’s lower rain forests could be accelerating the glaciers’ retreat because it leads to drier air around the mountain’s peak.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/18/2595738/are-the-snows-of-kilimanjaro-returning.html#storylink=cpy
Here are some previous WUWT articles:
Oh no, not this Kilimanjaro ice rubbish again!
Gore wrong on Kilimanjaro snow: Its the trees and “freezer burn”
Gore globaloney gets pushback from school kids:
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/50033#more-50033
The kids have more on the ball than ‘a physicist’ and Jack Greer!☺
“A Physicist” does not acknowledge that there are two major aspects of global warming, and WUWT is interested in both.
Firstly, though still in its infancy, there is real climate science, and people interested in the real science blog here. The free flow of information on climate science here has helped advance our understanding of the Earth’s climate system.
Secondly, there is an apocalyptic political movement dedicated to “the cause” of blaimng humans for a prophesied disatrous set of climate changes centered on positive feedback effects from anthropogenic rising atmospheric CO2 levels. This political movement is flet by most skeptics here to be destructive and anti-human, based on falsified “science”. The discussions at this site of Post Normal Science get to the heart of this political process.
WUWT has been dedicated to exposing and countering the false political movement by doing good science. Al Gore has been a the fore of the political movement, and discrediting his phony science is important.
Kwinterkorn, you make a very good point — and it’s clearly expressed too — and yet it seems to me that criticizing Al Gore’s weak brand of politics is not strong skepticism, any more than criticizing Al Gore’s weak science is strong skepticism.
For strong science united with a strong political vision, it’s hard to beat the videos by James Hansen and by RADM David Title, USN that are popping up on YouTube.
And yet, I give even more respect to the ongoing scientific/political work by this planet’s senior biologists like Jane Goodall and Ed Wilson … as shown here, for example … who are persons who “See what everyone has seen, and think what no one has thought, and launch enterprises that no one has imagined” … this criterion expressing (for me) the essence of great science and great political leadership.
A physicist says:
January 20, 2012 at 8:15 am
When a politician (like Al Gore) comments upon the rapid melting of one single glacier (like Kilimanjaro) that’s not strong science.
Agreed – when you are right, you are right.
And similarly, criticizing that politician’s commentary, or predictions regarding one single glacier’s melting rate, is not strong skepticism.
Nope – when you are wrong, you are wrong.
The majority of the US’s main stream media will carry, emphasize, and amplify Gore’s comments. A skeptic will point out the poor science being promoted by the politician (in this case, Gore).
Remember, Gore isn’t simply commenting on the melting of the single glacier, he is stating emphatically the cause, and he is wrong.
What kine of person recognizes that Gore’s comments are not strong science, yet doesn’t challenge those comments with strong science based skepticism?
Answer: one who really does not care about proper science at all.
@JohnWho
It is also worth mentioning that many of those who are stating emphatically the cause, stand to make or indend to make large sums of money trading solutions to the masses who they hope will believe those same emphatic statements. There is no one more personally interested in demonising CO2 than a CO2 offset vendor.
Anthony,
You say “The cause”, no plural. A you suggesting deforestation is the only cause? Wouldn’t it be hard for deforestation to start shrinking the glacier decades before its commencement?
One look at Al D. Gore’s college records would tell you much about what is going on with ‘Global warming and hype. D, Gore got a ‘D’ in his only science class in college, something called ‘Natural Science’. I suppose it did not go much further than watching ice cubes melt in daiquiris and burning their own fingers with safety matches. This carbon tax credit-global warming-reading the bones hocus pocus program was enough to convince the queen of England that such a campaign, led by Al D. Gore, the wizard, would bring in much new revenue for the fast sinking British empire, for a nominal fee, of course. Al D. Gore made his house payments and the queen has been made a doddering fool. Chaaallz and the two sons wearing the “Me First” sashes will have to take it on the chin. They are obsolete and overpaid and have a pedigree following satanism in all its negative ramifications that we have seen in the past, and we see here today, with their proxy, the Obamanation at the helm. Obama is so out of touch with reality, he MUST have been worked on.
A physicist says:
January 20, 2012 at 10:46 am
For strong science united with a strong political vision, it’s hard to beat the videos by James Hansen and by RADM David Title, USN that are popping up on YouTube.
I disagree vehemently. This is pure spin. Combining thinly veiled AdHom with clearly ridiculous statements about boiling oceans is neither strong science nor strong political vision. Delivered with pompous disdain towards the unwashed masses, who stand to lose the most if policy derived from this agenda comes to force.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
January 20, 2012 at 12:09 pm
“There is no one more personally interested in demonising CO2 than a CO2 offset vendor.”
So what exactly do oil, gas and electric companies do Crispin?
John Marshall says
Summit temperatures refuse to rise above -7C so melting is not the reason for ice loss. The above post explains very well the reasons why.
———-
Well the general prediction is that glaciers will increase due to AGW, IIIFFF the temperatures on the glacier stay below freezing. The reason of course is increased atmospheric moisture at the higher temperatures.
Therefore the claim of the summit temperature not changing is of some interest. However what would be of more relevance would be the temperature profile with altitude and whether that is changing. This profile and any changes it undergoes ,will determine the growth or loss at the ice sheet margin.
The sublimation idea would be justifiable if the ice had disappeared from areas on the mountain where the temperature was still below zero Celcius.
The article itself does not illuminate any of this. On the one hand we have a, possibly unreliable, tour guide saying the glacier is increasing. Then we have a contradiction from a glacier specialist claiming it is decreasing.
Somehow these contradictory positions simultaneously are supposed to discredit Al Gore who is a not a scientist, but a communicator who simply passes on what scientists tell him.
@Nick Shaw
“David L and Dodgy Geezer
Why can’t we take the word of Athumani Juma just because he’s a tour guide?
The railroad engineer appears to be quite comfortable taking the word of and, in fact, publishing the views of “tour guides” as fact.
If we are going to throw stones or even bombs, at least they should be of equal weight, no? ;-)”
Ah, Mr Shaw,
I quite see your point. But I thought that Anthony had set up this blog for more-or-less scientific discussion. My problem with the ‘science’ of climate change is not so much that it is provably wrong, and has already cost humanity many billions in wasted work, but that its proponents strike at the heart of science itself by mixing it so closely with professional activism.
I believe that they are endangering all science in this way, and that if we descend to their level we are simply becoming political activists ourselves, and adding to this damage…
I notice from my tables
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
a) there is no warming in the SH
b) humidity has been dropping globally at an average rate of -0.02% RH/annum since 1974
Ergo, my observations confirm the conclusions of this post.
Sources disagree when the glaciers will be gone due to melting. In 2002, a study led by Ohio State University ice core paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson predicted that ice on top of Africa’s tallest peak would be gone between 2015 and 2020. In 2007, a team of Austrian scientists from University of Innsbruck predicted that the plateau ice cap will be gone by 2040, but some ice on the slope will remain longer due to local weather conditions.Yet, another, the California Academy of Sciences, predicts that the [glaciers] will be gone by 2050. A comparison of ice core records suggests conditions today are returning to those of 11,000 years ago. A study by Philip Mote of the University of Washington in the United States and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck in Austria concludes that the shrinking of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap is not directly due to rising temperature but rather to decreased precipitation. In May 2008 The Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources, Ms Shamsa Mwangunga, said that there were indications that snow cover on the mountain was actually increasing. In January 2006, the Western Breach route was closed by the Tanzanian government following a rockslide that killed four people at Arrow Glacier Camp. On December 1, 2007 the Western Breach route was reopened for climbing.
Sugel says
that the shrinking of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap is not directly due to rising temperature but rather to decreased precipitation
Henry@Sugel
my observations (from the results of ca. 20 weather stations) do not confirm this (globally),
but it IS getting drier, as reported by me, and
as shown by the msg in this post:
“It is simply too dry for these glaciers to exist under normal Holocene conditions,” he emailed.
Do you understand that there is a difference between dropping RH and (very slight) increasing precipitation?
But the Kilimanjaro meme will live on forever.
For instance, in today in the Montreal Gazette (illustration photo):
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Global+warming+Welcome/6028981/story.html
Henry@Espen
What a load of nonsense in that article in the Gazette.
I could not get registered, to leave a comment,
but if you are already registered there,
tell them that man made climate change is a man made myth,
to keep “green” jobs.
as I found out
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok