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Mountain Moisture Melting
felis_panthera writes "Yahoo! News has a Full Coverage story on how global warming is causing the ice cap atop Mt. Kilimanjaro to melt. It goes on to say that it has shrunk by 80% in the last century, and will probably be completely gone in another two decades. The ice cap is believed to have formed some eleven millenia ago. Some African rivers have already seen a decrease in volume, and it is feared that the loss of the ice cap will also cause a drop off in tourism."
Nothing to see here, move along!
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Interesting that they seem more worried about the percieved loss in tourism as opposed the potential for climatic devestation in the region if the rivers begin to run low/dry...
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
So there is ice melting at the top of a mountain in Africa... proof of global warming? Uhmm...
Could there be other factors to account for such a profound localized decrease (80%??). The polar icecaps certainly don't look 80% smaller to me...
Could it have something to do with more local climatalogical factors? Increased industrialization in Africa? Loss of vegetation on that continent?
Seems like an awfully high decline, that hasn't to my knowledge been demonstrated in other places in the world.
Sorry... too skeptical to buy this one.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
And how is that ice 11,000 years old when the earth is only ~6000?
Another pagan for my enemies list.
Why is Triangle Man so MEAN?
in danger of being killed by its own excretion, of dying from an illness closely analogous to uraemia. Humanity will be forced to invent some sort of planetary kidney - or it will die from its own waste products."
The statement he made looks strikingly true today...Today Kilimanjaro. Tomorrow???
"Do something man. Right now."
Actually, it was the lava scene out of Ice Age which they shot on location which wiped out most of the ice-cap. - end sarcasm.
Even if the world is 'warming up', the fact is that it's done this in the past and it will do it again in the future. I'm personally more concerned about a switch in the earth's magnetic poles, that's really going to upset my monitors!
However, this also is no reason to be complacent about pumping CO2 (and other such byproducts) into the atmosphere without care. We should still continue to make efforts to reduce our consumption of the resources on this planet.
Ice is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Ice community when last month Yahoo News confirmed that Ice accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all states of water. Coming on the heels of the latest Yahoo News story which plainly states that Ice has lost more mountains, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Ice is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent "will it live through fire" test.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
... or you might forever miss the chance to go to africa to see real snow.
I think the global warming effect is still underestimated. Tourism will be our (or our children) least problem.
There is no question of "if" this will be happening but only "when". We may still affect duration and intensity, but I have only little hope.
Yours, Martin
This is not to say that I don't think global warming is real. I've seen enough other proof to believe that it's real. It's just that this specific data on Kilmanjaro (at least, what I've seen so far) doesn't seem to say anything more than that the Killmanjaro glaciers are shrinking. I don't have enough data to tell if this shrinkage pattern is a good bad or neutral indicator.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Sorry... too skeptical to buy this one.
... what aren't you buying? There was no 'we're all going to die!!!' angle in the article - it was simply reporting a change in a single ecosystem.
Umm
Remember that the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are pretty unique - it's slap on the equator (so there's no winter/summer to allow the glaciers to grow and shrink), it's peak is 6km above sea level, where the atmospheric pressure is ~50% of sea level (how does that effect the melting point?), and the glaciers are a side effect of what happened about 10000 years ago.
Because it's a single (well, ok, actually a triple) peak, not in a mountain range, there aren't going to be any particular wierd weather patterns around it, so it's probably quite a good gauge of what's happening 6000m above us. How changes in the atmosphere up there effect us down here is, of course, the subject of heated (sorry) debate.
I actually climbed up in 1996 and was quite surprised that i didn't come across any snow at all - but you could walk right up to the base of bits of the glaciers. Still bloody cold though - especially as everyone climbs up the last bit in the night (to see dawn break from the top).
Could some rabid conservative please post the party line that global warming is the only thing holding off another ice age?
Okay, I'll bite. Not really a hard line conservative, but certainly far enough over on the right to take this one on.
First off, anyone claiming that global warming is going to hold off an ice age couldn't possibly be bright enough to hold any kind of political position. Furthermore, if we're just talking about straight party line, that is NOT the position conservatives take on the matter.
The argument from the right is that humans just aren't capable of causing the massive changes being claimed. If warming is happening, the causes are most likely due to cyclical changes our environment goes through. Burn what ya like, it won't make a lick of difference.
Of course, over on the left we're all doomed unless nobody ever burns anything ever again. Every match that's struck or deoderant sprayed is going to lift the average temperature to the 100's of degrees.
Personally, I'm strongly of the opinion that both of these viewpoints are harmful. Over on the right there seems to be a lack of consideration for other very localized harm burning nasty stuff can cause. As a lifelong inhabitant of Los Angeles I've seen this first hand.
The view on the left is just as harmful though. First, the non-stop claims about so many different dangers goes a long way to desensitizing the populace, as well as policy makers. The enviromentalists are a political movement, not a scientific body. Need to do something about the problem NOW, regardless if we really understand the problem or not.
When it comes right down to it, I don't believe we have conclusively proven two very key points. Is the global temperature really increasing? That seems to depend on which group of scientists looking at which data, then filtered through a LOT of political interests.
The second point; if it is warming, what exactly is causing it? The right claims not us humans, the left claims they've got it all figured out. In truth, we really don't know what in the heck is going on. It may very well be a combination of cyclical changes along with human factors. Meterology is a damn complex science, and one we're still trying to figure out.
Okay, so I probably wouldn't get invited to too many conservative parties with this post. I suppose calling for "rabid conservatives" gets a pass to the "kneejerk liberal" get togethers though.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
it is feared that the loss of the ice cap will also cause a drop off in tourism
They'll come running back to high ground when the polar ice caps start melting.
No sig to see here. Move along.
That has happened with PCB, DDT, CRC and other fine chemichals in past.
Here's the problem with panic now, think later... it can cause FAR more harm. Case in point, DDT.
DDT single handedly killed maleria in the areas where it was used, due to it's very effective control of mosquitos. Thousands of lives saved. Then the panic kicked in.
First, the panic was that it was toxic, and killing people. Turns out not to be true at all.
Second panic was that it was destroying the eggs of birds in the areas that it was used. This turned out to be valid. Unfortunately not as valid as the reaction... banning it entirely.
What could have happened was using it in a far more targetted manner, rather than dumping it in large quantities without further consideration. Nope, had to pass laws, panic now, think later.
It's later, and maleria related deaths are on the rise again. Birds are fine though.
I honestly don't understand one thing. Why is it that in almost any other human endeavor problem solving involves actually figuring out what the problem truly is before taking corrective action. When it comes to how we get along with the environment around us we're all too easily lulled into the notion that problem definition can be waved for the greater good.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
However, this article makes it clear the author blames a good portion of the recent loss on global warming.
It also tells a dramatic story of environmental disaster not caused by people, both fairly recently:
- The core data showed that in 1790, the cycle changed, the rains lessened and drought took hold in the region, a condition that continued for seven years until 1796 when the monsoons returned.
as well as 4,000 years ago:"That event was major," Thompson said. "It killed more than 600,000 people in one region of India alone. And that was at a time when global populations were much less than they are today." (Estimates place the world population in 1800 at 980 million.) "If a similar event occurred today, the social and economic disruptions would be horrendous," he said. Current world population is just over 6 billion people.
- That wet period ended and the ice corings show that Africa slid into a deep drought about 4,000 years ago.
This dry period, said Thompson, is also found in other records, including some written history.
So, yeah, global warming is pretty important. But compared to Mother Nature, we look like rank amateurs. But that's ok... we appear to be rapidly catching up."This dry period appears in the historic record in Egypt," he said. "Writings on tombs talk about sand dunes moving across the Nile and people migrating. Some have called this the Earth's first dark age."
Africa was not alone in the global drought. Thompson said other records show that civilizations during this period collapsed in India, the Middle East and South America.
For everybody who's head is spinning over the loss of tourist revenue bit... This is related more to the decrease in river runoff than the loss of the icecap.
Kili is in Africa and in Africa NOTHING is as simple as it seems. Aside from global climate change, there is some local climate change going on at the foot of the mountain. Specifically, a large rainforest is being clear-cut for timber. Loss of this forest is changing local rainfall patterns--i.e. the forest isn't "catching" the airborne moisture anymore, and so either the rain isn't falling or it's falling but not being absorbed by the forest and running off. Less rain, less water in the river, and also increased sedimentation of the riverbanks. After this, obviously the tourists don't want to see a clear-cut mountain, and the reduced rain and increased silting irritates the farmers who live at the base of the mountain.
So there's a fight going on between the loggers, farmers, and tourism people. Some of the farmers actually double as tour guides on the mountain; when I was in Tanzania a couple of years ago I took a guided tour from a farmer who earned some extra income (1 US$=750 Tanzanian shillings at the time) by hauling white folk around the mountain. And loss of tourism revenue in that area is a big deal. For a town where the richest man in town is the richest because he owns a truck and carries the farmers' bananas 6 hours by road to the capital Dar es Salaam, tourism and farming interests really, really, really want to keep their income flowing. At the same time the loggers want to keep their jobs. No easy answer here.
yellowcat ^_^ ??
"The other bad thing about tourists on Kilimanjaro is all the trash they leave behind. People are simply not capable of cleaning up after themselves. People should not be allowed to climb such a wonderful mountain if they are not going to use it responsibly. Read the rest here."
It is really disgusting to see these "3xtr3m3" travellers go to exiting Kilimanjaro trips - in colonnial spirit, latest hightech equipment, a few slaves carrying everything and enjoying gourmet dinners while on the way to top. I mean there is nothing wrong if you respect the environment and don't throw trash around. But the latest megatrend that every IT manager has to climb Kilimanjaro to be something is rather amusing in it's sickness.
Shucks. I just do the kneejerk liberal thing to pick up chicks.
:)
If ever there were a noble reason to be a kneejerk liberal, that'd do it.
You have regained my respect sir
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
The story on CNN:
n jaro.thaw.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/17/kilima
If African rivers are seeing a decrease in volume then the ice must be melting at a reduced rate. Perhaps there is less snow being deposited atop the mountain but at least question the claims with a critical eye.
Oh, the earth will most certainly survive. At least some cockroaches, for sure. But certainly a lot more.
>Having studied the bio sciences...
Then you most certainly came across differential equations? (Hunter/Gatherer comes to mind)
> (which the ocean should buffer quite nicely, considering it covers 75% of the earth's surface)
The problem is, that blue algea and corals are highly suspectible to changes in temperature.
(Hint: they don't thrive on rising temperature)
> I'm not certain global warming has been proven to the bulk of the scientific community's satisfaction.
The majority of climatologists consider human induced global warming a fact (that's a Saddam Hussein election-like majority, not a more than 50% majority)
The amount of increase and influence is debated about.
>[...] you cannot extrapolate from a single mountain [...] though I'm sure global warming proponents will try.
Every time, I've heard a climatologist speaking about such a phenomenom (polar glaciers, Alpen glaciers, El Niño, large storms, floodings and droughts) , he says almost the same, something along the line: "It's a single incident, and, standing alone, it proves nothing. And saying, this is a prove for global warming is nonesense. But as a part of a larger statistic, it leads us to the consequence, that there is a global warming.
> [...] !EARTHFIRST!" communique about the plant's imminent demise... feh. Earth is tougher than we are [...]
Those people aren't as altruistic as you may think. They are fearing the planet's demise, but it's a demise from our perspective.
How will the planet react towards a sudden climatic change? Well, like it ever reacted, a "reboot". Will this make life extinct, most certainly not. But what about us humans?
The more complicated a system, the more likey it will fail. And human society is fairly complicated.
How many people you know are actually working for the survival of the human-kind? Not directly or indirectly for an advancement of society, but only for actual survival?
Certainly, fairly few.
We've achieved and rely on a highly efficient system, which provides us with all the neccessities for survival and allows us to maintain us a lot of "unnecessary" things, in other words a culture.
We cannot maintain such efficiency under a fast changing climate. (The marches of Sibiria won't become fertile, just because it becomes warmer. Still the deserts become larger)
Even in the current situation the global society isn't as stable as one liked it to be.
The G7 are building walls to protect their wealth from the poorer nations. In case of the US, you can even take it literally (Mexican border).
Will those walls previal in case of an even increased discrepancy between the wealthy and the poor?
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
In a far reaching manuever, the UN has voted to ban CO2 emmisions from all sources. Scientists have been given 5 years to find a replacement gas for exhalation by humans and other living creatures.
Dr. Ivan Onlyinhale says this should not be to much of a problem. "If nothing else, the sanctions that will be imposed if we don't find a replacement gas for exhalation will solve our population explosion".
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
On the other hand, people was going somewhat overboard in their enthusiasm of spraying with DDT, and the long time for natural decomposition meant it would accumulate through the food chain. One of the effects spotted was weaker eggs in birds of prey, especially those eating fish, such as in the antarctic region. As usual, it was the continued increased exposure that worried scientists, not the short-term effects (and yes, we live on top of the food-chain too).
Oblinks:
So, it seems reasonable that we could continue to use some DDT, but because of the worrying long-term effects, it shouldn't be used as freely as in the 40's and 50's. The fact that we are still debating it's effects after 60 years shows us that Malaria/DDT is not an easy issue. As an added complication comes the economic divide between north and south, if it was us living in malaria-infected areas, we would probably have kept spraying...
That's kinda funny, but far more damage is contributed by stationary polluting sources, like factories. FAR more than any vehicles made in the last 10 years.
We are rapidly approaching a time when most cars will be coming out with zero or near-zero emissions systems. Some are already out now.
Aim your bitching more towards the factories and coal burners of the world. The car companies are literally cleaning up their acts.
"And like that
> Some African rivers have already seen a decrease
> in volume...
Uhm. If the ice cap is in the process of melting, those rivers should be seeing an INCREASE in volume. The fact that the volume is going down indicates either:
(1) That ice cap has been melting for a LONG time, and is only now running out, putting a crack in the theory that global warming has recently become significant, or
(2) The rivers are decreasing in volume for some other reason, most likely drought; that drought might also be responsible for the decrease in the size of the ice cap, since melt would not be replenished as quickly. The drought is definitely a change in climate, but blaming it on "global warming" is about as unscientific as the argument, "ice melts because things get hotter. Must be global warming."
Personally, I'm strongly of the opinion that both of these viewpoints are harmful. Over on the right there seems to be a lack of consideration for other very localized harm burning nasty stuff can cause. As a lifelong inhabitant of Los Angeles I've seen this first hand.
As someone married to an American Indian, who grew up on a west-coast reservation (of a different tribe - her mom was a teacher) with degree in history among her collection (and her dad was a history professor), let me tell you something about Los Angeles (that she brings up whenever it an air pollution are mentioned together B-) ).
Seems the local Indian name for the area translates to "Valley of the Smokes". The shape of the land and the wind patterns over much of the year trap airborne pollution - so badly that a single campfire would smoke it up for a day or more.
It's a testimony to US automobile technology (even if driven by legislation) that so many cars can now operate in that valley without photochemical smog being so thick that the light is blocked.
By the way: DON'T call them "Native Americans". It annoys them. (If you're born here YOU are a "Native American".) "American Indians", however, is a running "ignorant/stupid/crazy European invaders" joke: They were so dumb they thought they were in India - half a world away, Ho Ho! B-) (A poll of members of a large number of tribes showed the preference for "A. I." over "N. A." runs in the 80s-90s% range.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At that altitude, the ice and snow don't melt, they evaporate into the air, and thus don't feed the rivers.
There's only a small "sweatband" of snow left on Kilimanjaro, the rest is (steep) scree and rock slopes.
So much for the pleasure of glissading back down after you summit!
To hear ecowackjobs tell it you'd assume there were humans around polluting 12,000 years ago and they all suddenly died off so that the ice cap could form. Jesus, people, the Earth changes all the time, sometimes wetter and sometimes drier, sometimes warmer and sometimes cooler, and sometimes in different ways in different places at the same time.
I am not a Republican. I do not drive a SUV. I am, however, a thinking man not prone to wild-eyed fanaticism over things I cannot claim to understand.
This is what Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz had to say about this way back in 1973-"Human culture, after enveloping and filling the whole globe, is in danger of being killed by its own excretion, of dying from an illness closely analogous to uraemia.
"Human Culture"? Yes, some of them will change. Some will die off or mutate, some will grow or shrink, some new ones will from. They do that from time to time - often on a scale of hundreds of years or less.
Human Beings, and extinction? Hardly. (Though the current enormous population is supported by farm, transport, and food preservation technologies - so a loss of this tech or an increase in its price, through economic collapse or regulation, means a significant die-off.)
Humans started out as a handfull of hunter-gatherers, before or during the last ice age. They expanded to inhabit essentially every bit of land area and floating ice except Antarctica BEFORE they developed industrial civilization and the scientific method. (Name another animal - other than human parasites - that managed that.)
Plains, deserts, steppes, mountains, ice caps... I doubt humanity could be wiped out by any climatic change that didn't boil or freeze ALL the water or eliminate all oxygen from the air.
The planet finally coming the rest of the way out of the last Ice Age - with the temperate zones shifting a couple hundred miles further from the equator and steaming jungles expanding beyond Brazil and central Africa - doesn't even qualify. (Heck: For raw biomass, suitably modified crops, or even CURRENT crops, it's probably a significant improvement.) And some of us would count the loss of the outer edge of certain seacoast cities to be a bonus. B-) Going back into a full Ice Age is more of a problem - though the greening of the equatorial deserts might make up for the loss of some more poleward land to glaciers.
Of course, if temperature shifts actually become a problem we can fix them directly, without screwing around with the CO2 level of the atmosphere. Just orbit a few hundred square miles of aluminized mylar, suitably located and oriented to provide a bit of shade if things are getting too hot, a bit of extra sunlight if they're getting too cold. Or whatever hack the rocket scientists come up with that's cheaper.
You want a robust space program anyhow - so you have something to spot and deflect the next incoming asteroid or comet fragment. Such an impact turning the whole planet into a broiler-oven for a day or so is the REAL threat of "global warming". THAT would once again reduce the ecosystem to plants with very robust seeds and resistance to PH variatioins and mouse-sized animals that happened to be underground at the time. (And maybe a few humans who had hung out in underground sites that didn't collapse and squirreled away a few years of supplies to last until they could grow something to eat.)
But I doubt temperature shifts (let alone the handfull of degrees that has the lefties drooling for more power and the media paniced) will be a problem for food production at all. Most of the food production of the world is now essentially an industrial operation, while the rest benefits from the tech. A few degrees of temperature change just means you change which crops - or which strains of a particular crop - you grow in a particular field. Shifts in weather patterns ditto, maybe with a change in irrigation or include the crops' water usage in the selection criteria, a few marginal plots going out of production, and new land becoming able to support crops.
Humanity will be forced to invent some sort of planetary kidney - or it will die from its own waste products."
Now that's true. But we've been doing EXACTLY THAT for quite a while now. When any given type of pollution becomes enough of a problem to bother with, we FIX it. Baby Boomers are old enough to remember Los Angeles smog before auto industry folk (including me) fixed up the engines. But that's NOTHING compared to, say, the killer fogs of London (driven by high-sulfur heating coal). Or just the indoor air of any human habitation in a cold climate before gas heat. And just think a moment about the streets of a city served only by horse- and ox-drawn vehicles. Talk about pollution...
Tech sometimes creates a new sort, or new amount, of pollution - "excretion" in Lorenz's vocabulary. But once it becomes a problem, more tech generally solves it (sometimes after quite a few years of griping by the people for whom it is a problem.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
OK: so we've proven, conclusively that we can make massive changes in the local ecology. The fact that we can undeniably do it on a local scale adds credence to the idea that we can do the same on a global scale, rather than taking away.
The view on the left is just as harmful though. First, the non-stop claims about so many different dangers goes a long way to desensitizing the populace, as well as policy makers. The enviromentalists are a political movement, not a scientific body. Need to do something about the problem NOW, regardless if we really understand the problem or not.
This isn't a left problem. It's a press problem and a math problem. People don't understand mathematics and statistics. The press plays on this in their sensationalism. Both the right and the left play off of this. As an example: Smoking kills 7000 people a week. This is more than twice what was killed on Sept. 11. Unfortunately someone dieing of cancer or in a smoking related fire is very hard to get sensational film on...
The problem with global warning -- like with smoking -- is that the obvious response time is not instantaneous. A kid who starts smoking in 2000 isn't likely to die of cancer for at least 20 years -- the smoking/cancer ratio also isn't 1-1. This has allowed the Tobacco companies to hide behind plausable deniablility for decades. (that and the fact that some publishers are scared of losing the very substantial and consistent income that they get from those companies, which can leave them careful about pushing the issue)
Similarly, with global warming, Driving your car 2 blocks to the corner store doesn't suddenly cause a drought. This is rather like a slow stream of water cutting through a rock. The results aren't obvious on the first day -- or even the first decade -- but we're no longer questioning whether it happens.
When it comes right down to it, I don't believe we have conclusively proven two very key points. Is the global temperature really increasing? That seems to depend on which group of scientists looking at which data, then filtered through a LOT of political interests.
GLobal warming was considered an interesting and plausable -- but unproven -- theory in the early '70s. It had, however, passed the first scientific milestone of scientific plausability. It had proven consistent with past observations and generally accepted rules. The second step was to predict certain results that hadn't been observed so far. and wouldn't happen if the theory was wrong.
This is where we run into the long response cycle of Global warming: It took years and decades to collect evidence for/against the theory of global warming, but the proponderance of evidence so far has been strongly for that global warming is really happaning. The question is no longer 'if'. It is now a question of what will be the effects and what can/should we do about it.
Like water on the stone where there is no 'the' droplet which you can not drop on the stone to prevent the wearing, Driving to the store or using hairspray does make a difference. There is that final droplet the dropping of which will cause the two halves of the rock to split apart -- but by that time it's too late to save the rock. Similarly, with global warning, by the time the results are catastrophic, it will be too late for us to reverse the process.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
All your examples are local or regional.
For the last 420,000 years, atmospheric CO2 concentration has remained in a semistable equilibrium, between 180 and 280 ppm. Since 1750 the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has risen to 367 ppm. That's a global change.
If we wanted to raise or lower sea level by a meter, could we do it? Can we stop a hurricane from destroying Lousiana, or cause some flooding to occur in northwestern Mexico that needs it? No.
I guess you're saying the planet can't be getting hotter because we can't steer hurricanes around? Our lack of fine grained control over weather events doesn't somehow imply that we have no influence over climate in general.