Bjorn Lomborg writes about a poor, AIDS stricken woman who lives nearby.

She has heard talk of melting ice on Mount Kilimanjaro, and she has noticed less snow and rain and drier conditions since she was a child. “It worries me.”

This, according to climate groups, is a critical and urgent problem. Greenpeace warns there could be no ice left on the mountain within just eight years. “This is the price we pay if climate change is allowed to go unchecked,” warns the group.

Climate activists claim the receding ice is evidence of the need for developed countries to reduce carbon output. Actually, the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro have been receding since 1890, according to research by G. Kaser, et al., published in the International Journal of Climatology (2004). They note that when Ernest Hemingway published “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in 1936, the mountain had already lost more than half its surface ice area in the previous 56 years. This is more than it has lost in the 70 years since.

According to this study, and another published in Geophysical Research Letters (2006) by N.J. Kullen, et al., the reason the ice is disappearing is not warming temperatures, but a shift around 1880 toward drier climates. What we see today is a hangover from that climactic shift.

Even if some of their claims are questionable, climate activists have managed to promote local tourism and have done a great job at bringing the world’s attention to the mountain’s glaciers. But they are doing a poor job at bringing attention to the actual people of Tanzania.