Just throwing out a question to the BAUT board out there.

Has anyone here ever seen an African Glacier up close? I was looking into Kilimanjaro the other day, on the Wikipedia, as I thought it was the only place in Africa that had a glacier.

I was slightly surprised to learn that indeed it is but 1 of 3 places. Mount Kenya also has a small glacier, just to the north of Kilimanjaro, and also the Rwenzori mountain range to the West - on the border of Uganda & Congo also has a number of small glaciers.

It seems though that all the above glaciers may not have long left. It is a little bit sad I guess that these glaciers appear to all be melting away and will be gone within 10-15 years, but that's progress I guess.

Just wondering if I should make a point of getting over to Africa and standing on some of these glaciers before its too late.

Anyone been to any of them?

__________________
BugMeNot A portal to bypass free-site registration.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer - renowned 19th Century German philosopher.

Hurry up, don´t delay.

__________________
If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

A nice article on the melting associated with the Kilimanjaro glacier.

Interesting read, it sounds reasonable - I guess they may well be correct in their assertion. Personally, I wouldn't associate a lack of tropical glaciers with proof of the dangers of climate change/global warming. Global warming may have something to do with it, if they're right it may not - doesn't worry me or bother me either way.

Having glaciers in Africa is the weird thing to me, and it may well be that for whatever localised or broader reason - these glaciers might not be there for much longer.

Much closer to home, there're a few other tropical glaciers in West Papua, Indonesia - but given all the local difficulties in that region I think I'd rather go to Africa for a tropical glacier experience rather than venture a few thousand kilometres northward.

__________________
BugMeNot A portal to bypass free-site registration.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer - renowned 19th Century German philosopher.

How to Climb Mountains

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A617041

I tried to open the article, but it was taking forever, so . . . .

I'm curious about your take on it. I'm seeing a couple of your statements as contradictions (could be because I can't see what you read in the article). You say it is interesting, and that they may be correct. Then later say global warming may have something to do with it, if they're right it may not.

Your other statements seem rather cavalier, kind of an Oh well, that's the way it is take on it. Are you brushing off the importance of the topic, or your disbelief in the validity of the claim that we are experiencing global warming?

Especially in the comment on wierdness of glaciers in Africa. It appears you are saying that because you think glaciers in Africa are wierd, that if they are disappearing, even if it is from global warming, it is not a big deal - because, they are in Africa.

__________________
Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Africa on Earth Mk 2 had Glaciers. Slartibartfast liked them.

__________________
'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

Didn't he use them to craft the fjords? Or was he just pining for them?

Meanwhile, BOT, what's the big deal about glaciers in Africa? Heck, South America has plenty of them right on the equator (in Ecuador) as well as in the rest of the Andes in the tropical regions.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Jambo, bwana. How close? I lived in Kenya for a couple of years and viewed Mt. Kenya and Kilimanjaro on numerous occasions... but never climbed them. I understand Mt. Kenya is a very challenging technical climb, but you can pretty much just walk up Kilimanjaro. I did a bit of hiking up the side of Mt. Kenya, but to a very lush rain forest, not the glacier...

__________________
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

CNN citing an article to be issued by the American Scientist magazine:

Kilimanjaro's shrinking snow not sign of warming

__________________
If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

I hate it when stuff like that happens. Especially all the people who died of amoebic dysentary before the amoeba was discovered.

I wonder if they think the glaciers that used to be right where I'm sitting now didn't disapear because of warming but just went away for another reason altogether?

Yeah, because if we didn't measure it, it didn't happen. I mean, there was no temeperature at all before the thermometer was invented, right?
(sarcasm)

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I read the article and that actually is pretty interesting for finding an answer to a random question...

__________________
The Union Why06

Their argument is that the temps have never been above freezing at the top of the mountain, so there wouldn´t be a melting, but a sublimation instead. We have to wait for the publication of the article to make a deeper judgment.

__________________
If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

Is there any chance that Kilimanjaro could become active? All the info I can find on it's current geologic status is that it is extinct. Is there any research in it's future status?

__________________
I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

Wikipedia says there's no eruption in recorded history, but there are currently some concerns. (I'd have to check a map of plate boundaries, but the description made it sound like it's not on a hot spot a la Hawaii.)

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Its funky shape suggests it's not a shield volcanoe a la Hawaii but an Andesitic stratovolcano. And don't worry, it is near a rift. Africa is pulling itself apart. In fact we and the African rifts go way back. It was the playground of protohumanity. I remember back when it was the Olduvai gorge was just the Olduvai crack in the ground.

My visual sense of African geography isn't very good; if I'd kept researching, I'd've figured all that out.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Don't bother improving it. In a hundred million years it will be all different anyway.

Isn't sublimation also caused by warming? Would ice sublimate even well below freezing? Wouldn't warming be the basic cause of any glacier shrinkage, be it evaporation or sublimation?

__________________
Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley