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26 Jan 10 - (Excerpts) - "Bolivia’s rapidly diminishing Chacaltaya glacier has been widely used as a symbol of Anthropogenic Global Warming (1)," says this article from the Institute for Advanced Development Studies in La Paz, Bolivia. "However, it is an unfortunate choice of symbol, because the retreat of this specific glacier is demonstrably not due to increasing temperatures caused by CO2 emissions."
Figure 1: Retreat of the Chacaltaya glacier, Bolivia, 1940 – 2005. "All long-run monthly temperature series for the Bolivian highlands, including the La Paz/El Alto station, which is located near Chacaltaya, show cooling trends over the last six decades of about -0.2ºC/decade." "These observed negative temperature trends in the Bolivian highlands beg two questions:
1. How can the falling temperatures in the Bolivian highlands
be reconciled with 2. Why are temperatures falling, when they are supposed to be increasing?
Here's what should be happening Here's what is actually happening "Instead we have observed decreasing cloud cover, decreasing average temperatures (likely the result of night time temperatures falling more than day time temperatures increased), and decreasing precipitation (italics added), all of which conspired to melt the glacier. "The observed evidence from Chacaltaya is thus inconsistent with the Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming (AGW) theory, or, at least, if there is an AGW signal, it is completely drowned by other climatic changes unrelated to AGW.
"It is ironic that the melting Chacaltaya glacier has become such an
important symbol of the AGW theory, when in fact the evidence from
Chacaltaya seems to refute this theory. (In contrast, the evidence from
Chacaltaya is fully consistent with Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory
(5), but that is another story)."
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