A Trib Editorial: What Happens When Science is Misquoted

The Pittsburgh Tribue-Review's Editorial Board chimes in on Kilimanjaro and global warming this morning.

The board uses (misuses is a better word) this article in the journal "The American Scientist" to support this hypothesis about climate change:

The only thing settled about global warming is that it's unsettled science.

They point out:

Kilimanjaro is a poster child for those who believe man-made global warming is causing Mother Nature's meltdown. However, air temperatures measured at the altitude of the glaciers and ice cap on Kilimanjaro are almost always substantially below freezing. Thus, the air by itself cannot warm ice to melting, the magazine reported in its latest edition.

And:

If human-induced global warming has played any role in the shrinkage of Kilimanjaro's ice, it could only have joined the game quite late after the result already was clearly decided, say the authors.

Which leads to the last paragragh:

So, what's happening? Deforestation, the Earth's cycles or other factors could affect the snows of Kilimanjaro, scientists suggest. Which also suggests the hysterical green Chicken Littles should consider all scientific possibilities before making unsettling squawks that the sky is falling.[emphasis in original]

In fact, the article makes a more complicated case than what the Trib editors want you to think it makes. A glacier is always in flux based on how much mass it accumulates, via new snow and how much it looses, via melting (when the ice turns to water) or sublimation (when the ice turns to water vapor).

The observations described above point to a combination of factors other than warming air—chiefly a drying of the surrounding air that reduced accumulation and increased ablation—as responsible for the decline of the ice on Kilimanjaro since the first observations in the 1880s. The mass balance is dominated by sublimation, which requires much more energy per unit mass than melting; this energy is supplied by solar radiation.

They're hoping you think that since the situation on Kilimanjaro is more complicated than previously thought, you'd drink the kool-aid and conclude that the global warming sky isn't falling.

But take a look at the stuff they don't mention from the American Science article.

The fact that the loss of ice on Mount Kilimanjaro cannot be used as proof of global warming does not mean that the Earth is not warming. There is ample and conclusive evidence that Earth's average temperature has increased in the past 100 years, and the decline of mid- and high-latitude glaciers is a major piece of evidence. But the special conditions on Kilimanjaro make it unlike the higher-latitude mountains, whose glaciers are shrinking because of rising atmospheric temperatures. Mass- and energy-balance considerations and the shapes of features all point in the same direction, suggesting an insignificant role for atmospheric temperature in the fluctuations of Kilimanjaro's ice. [emphasis added]

What was the word the "scientists" at the Trib used? Unsettled?

Too bad they're just not being honest about things. Furthermore, it's unsettling when a newspaper's editorial board decides that it's perfectly OK to misuse science to manipulate its readers.

UPDATE: Here's the link to the PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE REVIEW Editorial.