Well yes, I know this about the glaciers, and it sure isn't atmospheric cooling no. So yes, as I said... global warming IS happening, and the question remains "what effect have humans had on this rate?" We may not be having that much of an effect, no... but ya know the thing is, we just don't know. And we also don't accurately know the lag time it takes for the atmosphere to catch up to the additional carbon dioxide. It only took a 6 degree world drop in ave. temperature to create the last Ige Age.... if we have possibly risen the temp. 1 degree in 100+ years, that can't be a good thing.
Truth seems to be that the warming issue is just a fad. Remember the hole in the Ozone?... that was paramount in its day.... humans responded and adjusted CFC use, now the hole is shrinking and the entire interest in the issue has waned. I remember a lot of folks doing the same thing back then: "No way, what a load of crap, hole in the ozone, etc." Well it was true, and all we had to do was adjust a little and the problem was essentially solved for now. Same with global warming, we may find out that we need to get with reality and cut back on some things, and once we do this the issue will fade away as progress is made.
First, I could care less about the mountain. I do believe past measurements have been off, and now that GPS units are out (go geocache!), we can measure height to millimeters. (Some of the most precise units come from coastal research facilities and tectonic boundries monitored by the USGS where changes need to be measured in very very small amounts, cool stuff!) 21,000?... over 29,000 feet... but really the relief isn't anywhere near that much, the plateau is so darn high itself.
As for global warming/not-warming, I aim to read Crichton's book pretty soon. I heard him being interviewed and will trust his take on it.
On Everest's height, there's clearly some sort of measurement problem. No way on earth does tectonics account for a 30 foot (10 meter) difference in some of the measurements.
Placing devices on the summit will clearly affect readings, and that's what they did in 1999 (there's an expedition DVD out there, I watched it just a few weeks ago). Newer studies have placed the GPS just below the summit on the windscoured Bishop's Ledge. How far below the summit is that? They don't precisely know, because the summit is always covered with snowpack.
So I think one major problem with accuracy is that they don't exactly know where the "true summit" actually is. Measuring snowpack is not going to produce precise year-to-year accuracy.
If you are trying to pull causation out of this correlation, you aren't a scientist, you are a witch doctor.