John McCain is a Global Warming believer. Why? Because he doesn't want other politicians to call him a denier. He has been in Congress so long that he is more worried about what his "Friends" think about him he has forgotten to represent the people of Arizona! Here is an article from The Heartland Institute concerning the melting snowcap on Kilimanjaro! (I'm sure you all already know about this :)
New Studies Further Debunk Kilimanjaro
A new study in the March issue of International Journal of Climatology further debunked alarmist claims that global warming is causing a retreat of the famous alpine glacier atop Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro.
Alarmists have recently used the backdrop of Mount Kilimanjaro to gain international media coverage for their predictions of catastrophic human-induced climate change. Showing photographs they claim document a significant decline in Kilimanjaro's snowcap over recent decades, alarmists have used Kilimanjaro as an effective visual-byte for "irrefutable evidence" that significant global warming is occurring.
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) displayed such before-and-after Kilimanjaro photos in support of his unsuccessful recent attempt to pass a global warming bill in the U.S. Senate. (See "Global Warming Bill Defeated in Senate," Environment & Climate News, November 2003.)
According to the new study, however, reductions in the Kilimanjaro snowpack are due to regional recent dry weather patterns rather than a warming of the atmosphere. The study's authors found no evidence that human factors have played any role in the regional dry spell or any other factor associated with the retreat of the Kilimanjaro glacier.
"Now the pendulum has swung," commented the March 23 New York Times. "The authors wrote that the dry weather both limited the snows that help sustain tropical glaciers and, by reducing cloud cover, allowed more solar energy to bathe the glacier. In dry, cold conditions, the ice vaporized without melting first, a process called sublimation. There was no evidence that rising temperatures had caused the melting."
The International Journal of Climatology study supports the conclusions of other recent studies that have cast doubt on the asserted link between global warming and the retreat of the Kilimanjaro snowpack.
According to a November 24, 2003 article published in Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the (Kilimanjaro) ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."
Added S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and president of the nonprofit Science & Environmental Policy Project in Arlington, Virginia, "Surface measurements of East Africa show no warming trend. Weather satellites show a pronounced cooling trend of the atmosphere there. No one has questioned these data."
"Kilimanjaro turns out to be just another snow job, precipitated by a journalistic community that has lost its desire for critical factual investigation when it comes to our globe's environment," summarized Pat Michaels, research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists.
The Global Warming lies are falling apart! Keep exposing the propaganda! Now that's the All Right Idea!