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Mt. Kilimanjaro’s glaciers are melting away

Approaching the Kilimanjaro summits

“Hot tea and biscuits,”

came the muted voice from outside my tent. The time was a little past midnight, but yet it didn’t wake me, as I hadn’t slept a wink since first settling in to my sleeping bag five hours prior to this moment. My excitement and anxiousness prevented me from dropping off into unconciousness.

But any notion of sleeping anyway was negated by the fact that my tent was pitched on a surface of broken rocks at the debilitating altitude of 16,000 feet. In addition, feet-numbing cold embraced the air, as well as the incessant washing sound of the wind as it blew up from the warmer elevations of southern Tanzania, which lay in an inky darkness below.

It was time to rouse myself from the relative warmth of my bag and get dressed. It was time to climb! Summit day on Kilimanjaro comes early, as it often does on the high peaks of the world.

I had come here to east Africa to climb Kilimanjaro – a lifelong dream of mine – with a sense of urgency. Its famed glaciers are melting, and if the scientists are to be believed, these stunning features on an equally stunning and fantastic mountain will be gone in 15-20 years. I wanted to see them glistening in the sun while they are still with us, both from the wildlife-rich plains below and from above on the roof top of Africa.

Mama Cheetah and her five cubs look on

Since Kilimanjaro is a seven-summits peak, in the middle of an exotic utopia of wild animals and strange people with strange customs, the mountain is a focus for many people – suburbanite trekkers just happy to be there, armchair mountaineers with little actual experience, weekend warriors for whom Kilimanjaro will be their biggest life prize, and a small number of “hardcores” who are gunning for every big peak in the world.

If you go to Kilimanjaro and Tanzania expecting to find a nice wilderness experience on a giant exotic mountain in an Eden of savages and wild things, then think again. This isn’t the Kilimanjaro of Hemingway and Livingstone. But it’s definitely a grand life adventure in a world becoming increasing bereft of it.

As I exited the tent, I was greeted by the night-time firmament dotted and pierced by innumerable pinpricks of light. The starry constellations formed an ethereal panorama and served as a welcome foreboding of good things to come. My small climbing team, comprised of a 33 year old computer programmer named Sean from Calgary and Katherine, a 31 year old marketing executive from London, led by our stout guide John Minja, began our final 3,000 foot push to the summit via the Western Breach, Kili’s hardest non-technical route. The Breach is a large pile of scree and stone, punctuated by bands of cliffs, and being guided by headlamps, we picked our way through the rubble and made progress towards the crater rim at 18,000 feet. This was our 6th day on the mountain, and we were honed in on putting one step in front of the other in the slow manner of pole pole.

“Pole pole” is the most ubiquitous phrase on the mountain, and you hear it mentioned from the moment you step foot at the trailhead to within the last 100 feet of the top. It means “go slowly” in Swahili, and while one grows indifferent to hearing it spring from the lips of your guides every hour or so as you speed up the trail, it really does make a difference on summit day. Not that the altitude gives you much of a choice. It limits you to taking a few small steps at a time and then stopping for a mandatory gulp of air that is harder to come by the higher up you go. Half way up the rocky amphitheatre, our water bottles froze, leaving us thirsting in the deprived early morning air. Bright shooting stars flamed across the sky, some leaving long contrails marking their passage. Six hours of “pole pole later, we crested the crater rim almost to the minute that the sun crested the eastern horizon,

African Acacia Trees

Kilimanjaro is a voluptuous upheaval of rock and forest, accentuated by its gleaming white equatorial ice. Found snaking up and around its imposing dome are eight major trekking routes, but only three that lead to the summit, with most routes requiring 6-7 days to complete the climb. I chose arguably the most scenic – the Machame Route on Kili’s southern slopes. Kilimanjaro is unique in that due to its proximity to the equator, only 200 miles south of its bulging line, one travels thru all of the world’s climatic zones – it’s akin to experiencing all four seasons on a single climb.

The first white man to lay eyes on the mountain in 1849 – a Christian missionary by the name of Johann Rebmann couldn’t believe that he was seeing snow so close to the equator, and when he reported the spectacle back home in England, he was ostracized as crazy and delusional. The trail starts at roughly 7,000 feet in thick and lush rainforest and progresses up thru scant heather, sparse moorland, dry alpine desert and finally reaching arctic, icy conditions at the summit. We were doing the Western Breach variation of the Machame Route, which splits from the regular route near Lava Tower Camp two-thirds of the way up the mountain.

Kili’s glaciers flow from its summit like an elegant bridal veil, but they are quickly disintegrating under the African sun. Snowfall during the rainy season isn’t keeping pace with the melting that occurs during the dry season, and this lack of replenishment is taking its toll. Many scientists attribute this phenomenon to global warming. There is not a single place on earth, be it the rugged grandeur of the Alps, the vast Amazon Basin, the glacial fjords of Alaska or here in east Africa that is immune. With the recent devastation and increased ferocity of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean being attributed to global warming, climate change has the potential to drastically alter the way we live.

On Kilimanjaro, global warming affects not only the aesthetic beauty of the mountain, but also the livelihood of its local people who have lived and farmed on its lower slopes for hundreds of years. According to John Minja, a long-time guide and porter on the mountain, the shrinking glaciers means less snowmelt, which affects irrigation that is needed to water coffee plantations and gardens that provide cash crops, income, and food for local consumption. Even some of the major rivers tumbling down from the summit, such as the Umbwe, which used to run year-round, are now sometimes dry during certain times of the season.

Young faces of Tanzania

One native Chagga tribe member, Mr. John Minja, who was born and grew up in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, and who has been guiding on the mountain for seven years, indicates that within the past five years, he began noticing the glaciers visibly disappearing at an alarming rate. He has heard that in the past 50 years, the mountain has lost a third of its glacial ice.

Mr. Minja doesn’t know how losing the glaciers will affect the local tourism industry on Kilimanjaro, but he thinks tourism in general in Tanzania is good, as it creates jobs, contributes to the preservation of wildlife, increases education to the locals who live and work in the major tourism centers, and demands better management efficiency from park service managers and planners. Whether or not global warming is caused by human practices or just a part of the natural cycle of the planet is highly debatable, but regardless, the “eternal snows of Kilimanjaro” that Hemingway spoke so eloquently of are now just a few years away from disappearing altogether.

The sun rising up behind Kili’s eastern shoulder cast a spell on us. Sunrise from 18,000 feet is a wonderous spectacle, and we witnessed Kilimanjaro’s pyramidal shadow spread across the skirted clouds below. The three-story-high sheer face of the Furtwangler Glacier appeared instantly as we crested the volcanic rim. It’s an odd feature – a giant piece of ice sitting squarely on dirt. At one time not long ago, its translucent fingers spilled down the Western Breach, grabbing at solidified lava, but now it is just an oddly shaped chunk of shrinking ice sitting on the periphery of the crater. Two years ago a large section of this frozen mass caved in, accelerating its pending demise. This was the catalyst that spurred me to action.

The author stands next to the Furtwangler glacier

I had to go to Kilimanjaro soon to behold this ice cube before the last of its ice melted and flowed downstream, ending up as irrigation water for cultivated coffee plantations in Moshi township. And here I was now, touching it, feeling its surface, knowing that Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, for the time being, are holding on to existence.

The trudge up the remaining 800 feet of scree was a challenge, done with legs that felt like lead pipes and a brain clouded in drunken stupor. At the summit, the famous sign was limping and covered with bumper stickers. All of us were dazed and filled with a quiet sense of achievement. At that altitude, all I was thinking about was getting down to lower altitudes to relieve a pounding headache. The sun was shining, but at that moment, at the apex of the biggest adventure of my life, I was dreaming not of melting glaciers and over-crowding, but instead was lost in a daydream of the tropical white sands and coconut palms of Zanzibar.

How long the glaciers of Kilimanjaro continue to paint the summit with heavenly white is a question that should concern us all. Not because the mountain’s terrific height has been written about in descriptive narratives and dreamed about by countless adventurers, but because it’s a harbinger of greater environmental devastation looming on the horizon in a changing world of gas-guzzling automobiles and a society dominated by industrial progress. But at what price? The loss of Africa’s ethereal glaciers for one.

Dan Hall is a photo-journalist living in Sacramento, California

REFERENCES

- World Data Center for Paleoclimatology

- Kilimanjaro Data from University of Massachusetts Geosciences

- United Nations Environmental Program – Kilimanjaro Data

SERIES HYBRID CAR BASIC CONVERSION (top view)

Elec. motor to existing drive train generator on side of truck bed batteries on undercarriage (elec=R, batt=G, diesel=O)

Hybrid cars, which combine the power of an electric motor with a gasoline engine, are often presented as a transitional technology that will eventually be supplanted by fuel cell cars. This argument rests on an assumption which may or may not be valid – that on-board hydrogen, used to create electricity using fuel cells – is a better electricity storage medium than batteries. Examining this assumption reveals some strong challenges to the idea that batteries are going to go away, or that hydrogen fuel cells are the ultimate vehicle technology.

The first thing to understand is that hydrogen – at least green and renewable hydrogen – generally requires electricity to exist. While hydrogen can be extracted from some crops, it is impossible to grow enough crops to supply the world with clean hydrogen energy. To extract hydrogen from fossil fuel may result in cleaner energy production than simply burning the fossil fuel, but fossil fuel isn’t renewable. The only way hydrogen, theoretically, can be supplied in the quantities necessary for it to become the primary fuel used in the world is to manufacture hydrogen via electrolysis. This is the process whereby electricity and water are combined to separate the hydrogen from the water.

In all its forms, therefore, hydrogen is a fuel that’s manufactured from other fuels, either biomass, fossil fuel, or electricity. In this sense hydrogen is similar to electricity, since electricity also requires some other fuel to create it.

When one considers hydrogen-powered cars, one must ask where all the electricity is going to come from to produce all the hydrogen. One must also ask whether or not hydrogen is a better carrier to store electricity than the common battery. The problem with batteries isn’t their expense – fuel cells cost orders of magnitude more than batteries do. Moreover, the problem with batteries isn’t their efficiency storing electricity – a battery will discharge to an electric motor 90% of the electricity used to charge it. If that same electricity were used to electrolyse hydrogen, at least 30% of the energy would be lost, and if that hydrogen were then ran through an on-board fuel cell to power an electric motor, another 40% of the energy would be lost. That is, if you put 100 kilowatt-hours into a battery, you’ll get 90 kilowatt-hours back to power your motor. If on the other hand, you put 100 kilowatt-hours into electrolysing hydrogen, then in-turn convert that hydrogen back into electricity to power your motor, you will only have 42 kilowatt-hours available from your original 100. For storing electricity, a battery is more than twice as efficient as a fuel cell.

SERIES HYBRID CAR ADVANCED PROTOTYPE (top view)

Four powerful in-wheel motors independent 360 degree steering (elec=R, batt=G, diesel=O)

So why don’t we use all this technology to manufacture cars powered exclusively by batteries? The answer is batteries weigh too much, but this is changing. Typical lead-acid batteries get about 60 watt-hours to the kilogram. The newer nickel metal hydride batteries used to power hybrid cars get up to 120 watt-hours to the kilogram. Still further advanced lithium-ion batteries are approaching 200 watt-hours to the kilogram. This means that whatever range an electric car may have had using lead-acid batteries can now be doubled, or even tripled.

Advances in battery technology spurred by hybrid vehicle development may lead to the hybrid car not giving way to a fuel cell car, but, at least for many applications, to a 100% electric car. It isn’t like this hasn’t been tried before. General Motor’s EV-1 is a legendary example of an electric car that was ahead of its time. This vehicle had a range of 100 miles on a charge, and it had a top speed on 180 MPH! The car was equipped with a governor to keep the drivers from going that fast. When GM made the heartbreaking decision to discontinue the EV-1, it looked like electric cars would go the way of the steam locomotive. But with advances in battery technology, electric cars are making a comeback.

Today there are hybrid car owners who are making their hybrid cars capable of being plugged in. Other tinkerers are adding additional batteries to their hybrid cars. But why not go 100% electric? Just think – no twin drive train for the gas engine and the electric motor, no transmission, and a far less complex power-management system. Why wouldn’t someone want to just come home and plug their car in? No more gas stations. No more expensive gas.

HOW MUCH WOULD IT COST TO DRIVE A 100% ELECTRIC CAR?

At $.06 US per KWh, a battery-powered car costs $.02 per mile on grid electricity

As the table shows, not only are batteries very efficient ways to store electricity, but electric motors are very efficient ways to convert electricity to traction. Unlike internal combustion engines, which at best might convert 35% of the energy in gasoline into horsepower, an electric motor will convert 90% of the electrical input into horsepower. Since a kilowatt of output is equivalent to 1.341 horsepower of output, it is possible to calculate how a given amount of grid electricity – expressed in kilowatt-hours – will be available in the form of “horsepower-hours” to power a vehicle.

In the example above, the average car requires 20 horsepower to drive at a speed of 50 miles-per-hour on a level surface. On this basis, the average car requires 370 watt-hours of power to go one mile. At $10 per kilowatt-hour, it only costs you 3.7 cents to travel one mile. Compare this to an economy sedan that gets 30 miles per gallon. At $3.00 per gallon gasoline, it will cost nearly three times as much, $.10 per mile, to drive this car using gasoline. And at night when electric cars are being charged, electricity rates are often much lower than $.10 per kilowatt-hour. It is possible to drive an electric car for as little as $.02 per mile! This arbitrage between the cost per mile of gasoline power vs. the cost per mile of electrical power is an awesome opportunity, but only one that can be exploited by battery-powered cars, which can convert 90% of grid electricity into power going into the motor, compared to the electrolyser / fuel cell combination, which only can deliver 42% of grid electricity into power going into the motor.

ELECTRIC CAR RANGE WITH A 1,000 POUND BATTERY PACK

At only 100 watt-hours per KG, 1,000 lbs. of batteries gets 123 miles

Advances in battery technology are inevitable, as hybrid cars enter the mainstream of automotive technology. Toyota is planning on manufacturing, per year, over one million hybrid cars by 2010. Other manufacturers are following suit. At the least, vehicle batteries are going to get cheaper, more temperature tolerant, longer lasting, and cleaner to recycle and reprocess. At best, vehicle batteries, such as the lithium ion batteries, will enter mass production, allowing 200+ watt-hour per kilogram batteries to power electric cars. Weight as a core problem for electric cars will begin to disappear entirely if lithium ion batteries ever enter mass production.

In the meantime, it’s safe to say nickel metal hydride batteries are here to stay, and they are becoming increasingly available, durable, and cheap. The EV-1 had a battery pack that weighed 1,600 pounds. This is quite a payload. Using nickel metal hydride batteries, the battery payload can be reduced to 1,000 pounds, concentrated along the center spine of the car. Assuming 100 watt-hours per kilogram, which is easily attainable using today’s nickel metal hydride batteries, such a car fully charged would have 45 kilowatt-hours available to power the motor. Assuming 2.7 miles per kilowatt-hour, a car with a 1,000 pound battery payload at 100 watt-hours per kilogram of batteries will have a range of 123 miles. Is this great? No. Is this enough to get to work and back? At two cents per mile, you bet it is, and all you do is plug the car in at night. No more gas stations.

SERIES HYBRID CAR ADVANCED PROTOTYPE (side view)

photovoltaic skin optimally aerodynamic (elec=R, batt=G, diesel=O)

The biggest problem with electric cars, unlike gasoline powered cars – or hydrogen-powered cars, for that matter – is the time it takes to recharge the batteries. This is why gasoline-electric hybrids are getting an early foothold in the battle for the car of the future. When a gas/electric hybrid’s batteries run out of juice, the car can still limp along, powered solely by the gasoline engine. This is also why hybrid mileage is somewhat misleading. The more battery power is used, the better the mileage. For stop and go, low speed driving, the gasoline engine can divert energy to recharging the batteries faster than they’re being depleted. On extended runs at high speeds, or up hills, however, the gasoline engine must use all its energy to power the car, assisted by the battery-powered electric motor. This drains the batteries and turns the hybrid, basically, into an underpowered gas-powered car that has to carry a lot of dead weight. In these scenarios, mileage plummets. In a nutshell, the hybrid car has a lot of the same weaknesses as a battery-powered car, except it won’t leave you stranded when the batteries run low, just hobbled.

The idea that a 100% battery-powered car isn’t a viable vehicle solution because of its limited range, however, is to ignore the duty cycle that the vast majority of vehicle trips entails – a short range errand or commute. Most American families have two cars. Why wouldn’t it make sense – particularly at two-cents per mile – for one of those two cars be a 100% electric car?

If an electric car is defined as a vehicle that derives 100% of its horsepower from an electric motor, there are many ways to supplement the cars range. For example, a hybrid car typically depends on two engines to power the vehicle, an electric motor combined with a gasoline engine usually between 40-60 horsepower. But what if a gasoline engine, perhaps a highly efficient biodiesel engine, were used to power an onboard generator and was completely disconnected from the drive train?

RANGE ADDED WITH AN ONBOARD DIESEL GENERATOR

An on-board 20 horsepower generator doubles the range of batteries

This is the case for the serial hybrid. An ultra-efficient, steady-RPM clean diesel motor – turning an electric generator – running whenever the car was operating, could recharge on-board batteries at a rate at or near the amount they’re depleted. If only a ten horsepower generator were used, assuming a generator efficiency of 90%, then for every hour on the road, 18 miles of range would be added. Using the example above, a car with a 1,000 lb. battery pack has a range of 123 miles per charge; at 60 mph the car has extended its range another 47 miles (or so), which means that now the car can go 170 miles on a charge – with a few gallons of biodiesel. Remember, this engine is less than one fourth the size of the already tiny gas engines in hybrid cars.

If in your serial-hybrid car – where a diesel powered generator powers a battery-pack that powers an electric motor – you use a 20 horsepower diesel powered on-board generator, the range becomes very practical. Running a 20 horsepower generator, still a very small engine, will allow you to add 36 miles of range for every hour your battery-powered car is driven. Now you can drive your car 250 miles on a charge. Such a trip would require four gallons of gas and 45 kilowatt-hours of grid electricity. At $3.00 per gallon & .10 per kilowatt-hour, your combined-fuel cost per mile would be about five cents.

The advanced electric car can be built using advanced technology and materials – a lightweight ultra-strong frame, aerodynamic exoskeleton, in-wheel motors with independent 360 degree wheel rotation in all four wheels, driver control by wire, autopilot, lithium ion batteries, photovoltaic sides and windows, the works.

SERIES HYBRID CAR BASIC CONVERSION (side view)

Generic photovoltaic flat-panels placed on cover to truck bed. (elec=R, batt=G, diesel=O)

But a practical electric car can also be built by converting a small gasoline pickup truck, removing the gas engine and replacing it with an electric one. The transmission could be replaced by a single-speed reduction box that would last forever. In the bed of the pickup a 10-20 horsepower diesel generator could be bolted on, to power a battery-pack which would fill much of the rest of the bed of the pickup. Additional batteries could be installed on racks riding on the car’s undercarriage starting where the gas tank is removed. The top of the bed of the pickup would have a flat hood covered completely with photovoltaic panels, enough to add scores of miles per day of range to the battery pack. You would have a commuting truck you could refuel with either a plug into the wall, a pump at the gas station, or parking in the sun.

Entrepreneurs, investors, electrical engineers, auto-mechanics: All you need are used gasoline cars, electric motors and batteries. Who will make the electric car that refuels in the sun?

REFERENCES

- Electric Motor Efficiency

- Internal Combustion Engine Efficiency

- Diesel Engine Efficiency

- Average Horsepower Utilization

- How to Build an Electric Car

- Electric Cars: Battery, Hybrid & Fuel-Cell Cars (Amazon Affiliate)