The Truth be Told, It’s Not Global Warming

The truth be told, I’m a global warming agnostic. While some people enjoy the taste, Kool Aid (actually Flavor Aid was administered in Jonestown, but that’s another story) is nearly totally lacking in nutritional value.

Also totally lacking in value, of the scientific variety, are the views espoused by Al Gore and his minions:

The shrinking snowcap atop Mount Kilimanjaro has become an icon of global warming.

Pictures of the African peak, which has lost 90 percent of its ice cover, were featured in Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Greenpeace activists once held a satellite news conference on the summit to sway participants in an international climate conference.

But most scientists who study Kilimanjaro’s glaciers have long been uneasy with the volcano’s poster-child status.

Yes, ice cover has shrunk by 90 percent, they say.

But no, the buildup of greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and factories is not to blame.

“Kilimanjaro is a grossly overused mis-example of the effects of climate change,” said University of Washington climate scientist Philip Mote, co-author of an article in the July/August issue of American Scientist magazine.

Anyone that has ever had the opportunity to play with a chunk of dry ice can attest to the fact that if left exposed on a countertop; as it melts, you are not left with a puddle to mop up afterwards. It simple changes from one state, a solid, into another state, a gas, and floats away. The term for this is sublimation.

On Kilimanjaro, ice loss seems to be driven by two factors: a lack of snowfall and sublimation, the same process that causes freezer burn by sucking moisture out of leftovers.

Researchers believe Kilimanjaro’s glaciers formed about 11,000 years ago, when the region was undergoing a period of wet weather that allowed snow to accumulate. But even before the first Europeans reached the summit in 1889, the weather has been dry in Eastern Africa. There simply hasn’t been enough snowfall to keep up with the loss of ice due to sublimation, Kaser explained.

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But why let actual science get in the way of a good (and extremely profitable, for Al Gore) story?