Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The Snows of Mount Kilimanjaro
the western world and made the Kiliman-
jaro National Park one of Africa's prime
tourist destinations.
Claude Allègre, geochemist and former
French minister of education, penned an
op-ed piece in 2006 for the French weekly
L' E x pre s s
in which he argued that the snows
of Kilimanjaro are disappearing because
of natural factors and that the cause of
global warming is unknown. Allègre also
wrote the topic
L' imposture climatique
(The
Climatic Deception, 2010) in which he
downplayed the role of carbon dioxide in
global warming, arguing instead that cli-
mate change had more to do with clouds
and solar activity. His work aroused such
controversy in France that the Academy of
Sciences, of which he is a member, held a
debate on climate change science, includ-
ing the fate of the ice on Kilimanjaro. The
Academy of Sciences issued a report in Oc-
tober 2010 in which it concluded that in-
creased warming between 1975 and 2003
was mainly due to increased CO
2
. The re-
port stressed further that the increase in
CO
2
and other greenhouse gases is unequiv-
ocally due to human activity.
The controversy over whether the loss
of ice on Kilimanjaro is related to global
warming illustrates a perception problem
connected to global warming. It is much
easier to observe and document climate
changes on a continental scale than on a
local scale. No one can reasonably deny that
most mountain glaciers are shrinking and
that this reality is a strong and irrefutable
argument that the globe is warming. But
Mountain glaciers are disappearing all over
the world; perhaps 95% of them are shrink-
ing, and those on Mount Kilimanjaro are
no exception. Kilimanjaro is the highest
mountain in Africa. At an elevation of 5,695
meters (19,340 feet), the mountain rises an
imposing 4,572 meters (15,000 feet) above
the plains that surround it. Like Mount
Fuji and Mount St. Helens, Kilimanjaro
is a strato-volcano consisting of alternat-
ing layers of lava and volcanic ash. Lo-
cated in northern Tanzania, only 3 degrees
of latitude south of the equator, it is one
of the prime lines of evidence that global
change is not just a phenomenon of the
polar regions. The mountain's permanent
ice cover must have been a jarring sight to
the earliest Europeans traveling through
the African tropics. Geologic evidence in-
dicates that the ice cover has existed on the
mountaintop without interruption since it
first began to accumulate eleven thousand
years ago. In recent decades the ice began to
shrink dramatically, and by the beginning
of the twenty-irst century, between 80%
and 90% of the mountain's ice had melted
away. The remainder is projected to dis-
appear within ten to forty years. The dis-
appearance of the ice is widely believed to
be caused by global warming.
The loss of the ice is a particular prob-
lem for the tourist industry of Tanzania.
“The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” one of Ernest
Hemingway's most famous short stories,
immortalized the mountain in the eyes of
