The Illusionists

I've been reading over the research on tropical glaciers of late ("Good God man, why?), and I've come to one inescapable conclusion; both of the die hard camps are full of it. It seems clear that temperature change is not to blame for the retreat of glaciers like the one found on Kilimanjaro. No one really disagrees with that point (particularly since the glacier has been retreating since the late 19th century.) Factors like precipitation levels and humidity seem to be of primary importance. The question becomes, is global warming causing changes in those two factors?

Neither side seems to be able to look at this question in a scientific manner. (See here and here for typical garbage from both sides.)

On balance I would say that the global warming side comes off worse, but that is mainly due to their "fundamentalistic" approach to every question. Dissent is strictly verboten. Any data that doesn't confirm dogma in ANY particular is basically spun out of existence.

Besides they are masters of misdirection and deception. For example, to show how dastardly global warming is they present this image:



Real dramatic "proof", right?

Although there is something strange about the photos. Obviously there is more snow in the 1960 photo. It is very obvious in the unglaciated sections of the mountain, while the 1906 and 1994 photos have little to none. Would the earlier and later photos have given a different impression if they were taken immediately after a snowfall? Most probably. So lets stick to an apples to apples comparison, the 1906 and 1994 photos.







Can't get more conclusive than that...or can you. One thing you notice about the two photos is how much more of the mountain you can see in the 1994 photo. Is there a chance that showing more bare mountain gives a false impression here? Well, lets see!



and the 1994 cropped:



There you finally have an apples to apples that show unmistakably that the glacier is smaller, and by exactly how much. Right?

Well yes and no. Look at the photos and tell me if anything looks odd about them. No? Well pick out any narrow feature on the 1906 photo and compare it to the 1994 photo. Do they seem broader in the 1994 photo? They sure do to me. Look at the notch in the ridge line to the right of the peak in the 1906 photo. That notch is no where to be seen in my cropping of the 1994 photo (which kept the aspect ratio of the photo posted online), even though it shows the same amount of mountain top to bottom (as best as I could approximate it). In other words the 1994 photo looks stretched compared to the 1906. Look at the non-cropped 1994 photo for the same notch and tell me how different it looks, even though the photos seem to be taken from a similar vantage point. (The ridge line even rises at a dramatically reduced angle!)

It seems obvious that these two photos have very different aspect ratios vis-a-vis the originals. I'd say that the 1994 is stretched around 20% or so.



This is the 1994 photo less 20% on the width. It looks a hell of a lot more like the mountain in the 1906 photo, and the glacier (still noticeably smaller) seems to extend further down the mountain.

Now, I have no way of knowing if this was done on purpose. Maybe somebody goofed up when these older photos were scanned for the first time, or maybe the lens used in the 1906 photo was sufficiently different to cause the effect. In any event, the idea seems to be to get everyone to dismiss the possibility that the glacier here could be in its current state through natural agency.

I haven't seen anything that makes me think that natural agency isn't the probable reason for tropical glacier retreats. I can be convinced otherwise, but not by anybody's dogma.