One of Mount Kilimanjaro's most dramatic features is its breathtaking glaciers, which slither across its dormant volcanic plateau and down its crater slope in frigid shades of bluish-green.

And one of the saddest claims of some scientists and environmental activists is that those glaciers are disappearing, perhaps before the end of the decade, another victim of rising global temperatures.

Athumani Juma doesn't believe it. A guide who's been hiking the mountain for the past seven years, he laughed when he was asked about the likelihood that Kilimanjaro's snowcap would disappear soon. The glaciers, he claimed, no longer are shrinking, but growing.