A snow-capped mountain on the equator? "Impossible," declared the learned gentlemen of the Royal Geographical Society in London. In 1848, the Swiss missionary and explorer Johannes Rebmann had become the first European to gaze upon the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro. But when his account reached London, some of the society's members refused to believe him. One even suggested that Rebmann's eyesight must be deficient. Today the mountain is once again the centre of controversy. Its ice cap and the glaciers that flow from it are disappearing fast. Global warming can be intangible, but melting ice: that we can see. Many climate change activists have seized upon Kilimanjaro as a striking symbol of global warming, a poster child for the shrinking ice caps and glaciers around the world.
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