In an article written for the "Grassroot Institute," a conservative "thinktank," Michael R Fox quotes Dr Robert Balling's claim that Al Gore misleads his audience by referencing glacial recession on Mt Kilamanjaro. Balling's article states:
2) Gore discusses glacial and snowpack retreats atop Mt. Kilimanjaro, implying that human induced global warming is to blame. But Gore fails to mention that the snows of Kilimanjaro have been retreating for more than 100 years, largely due to declining atmospheric moisture, not global warming. Gore does not acknowledge the two major articles on the subject published in 2004 in the International Journal of Climatology and the Journal of Geophysical Research showing that modern glacier retreat on Kilimanjaro was initiated by a reduction in precipitation at the end of the nineteenth century and not by local or global warming.
Perhaps Balling does not want to get caught red-handed in a bald faced lie, after the way the Competitive Enterprise Instute has humiliated itself and its funders, like Exxon Mobil, with their highly misleading advertisement. In any case, having had to do some extra work because Fox did not provide authors or a title, I am presuming that Fox is referring to this paper discussing whether factors beyond global warming. That article got alot of attention after it was cited in a "Greening Earth Society," which also receives funds from Exxon Mobil, newsletter as "debunking" anthropogenic global warming. The article was titled, "Snow Fooling!: Mount Kilamanjaro's glacier retreat is not related to global warming." That article's false interpretation that the study contradicts the view that global warming is causing Kilimanjaro's glacial retreat has now been widely circulated online amoung groups that demagogue climate scientists and environmentalists.
However, Dr. Georg Kaser, the lead author of the study that was cited, contradicted the Exxon funded interpretation:
"We are entirely against the black-and-white picture that says it is either global warming or not global warming."
This appears to be another case of global warming deniers misrepresenting scientific research. Dr. Douglas R Hardy, another author on the Kilimanjaro study, has commented (my emphasis):
We have a mere 2.5 years of actual field measurements from Kilimanjaro glaciers, unlike many other regions, so our understanding of their relationship with climate and the volcano is just beginning to develop. Using these preliminary findings to refute or even question global warming borders on the absurd.
The work of Kaser et al is advancing and refining the understanding of Kilimanjaro in particular. None of the authors think their work is conclusive and none think that it contradicts in any way the global consensus reflected in the "Joint science academies' statement: Global response to climate change" calling for action to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Furthermore, the balance of research on Kilimanjaro and on glaciers in the tropics in general suggest a strong role of global warming. Dr. Lonnie G Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University, who has collected data from ice cores that go much further back than 2.5 years has maintained that in the last 20 years climate change has played a major role in the glacial recession on Kilimanjaro. Dr. Stefan Hastenrath has shown that on other tropical glaciers patterns of melting changed in 1962. Prior to that, in areas of the mountain that were shaded the melting had not been occuring, but after 1962 melting occured even in the shaded regions, suggesting that climate change began playing a significant role in the 1960s. Gore's movie is a documentary on global warming, not just Kilimanjaro. He might have spent 2 or 3 hours giving an account of all research on Kilimanjaro including the preliminary and tentative research of Kaser et al on factors in addition to global warming, but the science as a whole supports the claim that the glaciers are melting because of glogal warming. Dr Hastenrath describes how global warming is accelerating the melting of the glaciers (emphasis added):
"The warming increases humidity, and as the air gets more moist, it hinders evaporation. The energy saved from evaporation is instead spent on melting. That might seem like a good thing--to stop evaporation of the glaciers--but it's certainly not. Melting is eight times more energy-efficient than evaporation, so now, with global warming, the glaciers are disappearing eight times faster than before."
Compared to the misinformation put out by the groups funded by Exxon, which according to the authors of the studies themselves in two cases now, grossly misrepresent the significance of the work that has been cited, Gore's movie helps close the gap between what science knows about global warming and what the public understands.
If-Then Knots
DKos Environmentalists