We start our post in a place that unless you are a Hemingway fan is not usually associated with glaciers and ice fields. Africa. Hemingway fans will of course remember the short story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

The thickness of Kilimanjaro’s ice fields and glaciers is deteriorating at an alarming rate measured in meters every year.

The effect of this ice loss continuing is loss of tourism and perhaps loss of drinking water sources to the residents that live around the base of the mountain. The tourism factor is the oddity of glaciers and ice fields so close to the equator and the fact that Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa. Fact: About 82 percent of the ice fields were lost between the time they were first mapped in 1912 and 2000. Predictions that the ice fields and glaciers capping the mountain would disappear between 2015 and 2020, the victims, at least in part, of global warming are not out of line at all.

On a global scale now, more then 2 trillion tons of land ice in Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica has melted since 2003.

Now let’s move a little closer to the USA, the Arctic.

Besides the loss of land ice in places like Alaska and Greenland, the Arctic ice pack is pulling out from the land earlier in the spring and returning later in the fall. The effect of global warming in Alaska could spell disaster to the Polar Bears and a disaster of huge proportions if the permafrost, a permanently frozen part of the soil melts. Why you ask? Because it would release huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere further speeding up the global warming process.

Let’s try to put some of this in perspective. The water from the melting ice in just Greenland alone in the past 5 years would fill up Chesapeake Bay 11 times!

If the ice in the Arctic melts away we will be losing Mother Natures huge air conditioner, so besides all of the flooding along low lying coastal areas, well all I can say is, hope you like Yuma in the summer.

In the past 8 years Dictator Bush has always said in effect screw the environment, because if we try to get all green it would hurt the economy. Well, he did nothing to help the environment and look at the economy now.

Various online sources were used including Ohio State University for the Kilimanjaro part.

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