Proof on Ice: Southern Greenland Was Once Green; Earth Warmer

Scientific American ^ | July 5, 2007 | David Biello

[Islander7]

The ice sheet on Greenland, therefore, is more stable than some scientists previously believed and "has not contributed to global sea level rise during the last interglacial," Willerslev says. "Importantly, it does not mean that we should not be worried about future global warming as the sea level rise of five to six meters during the last interglacial must have come from somewhere."

[Asclepius]

It must have come from somewhere, but where!? If this doesn’t convince you that intelligent design is neither intelligent nor is it design, I don’t know what will, because the only sequitors I recognize are the non-sequitors, if you follow me.

[Bigh4u2]

Dinosaur farts..

[SkyDancer]

Global warming and also Bush’s fault .....

[sourcery]

Lawrence Solomon's "The Deniers" (a series of articles on the view of scientists who have been labelled "Global Warming Deniers"):

• Science, not politics
• Statistics needed
• The original denier: into the cold
• End the chill
• They call this a consensus?
• The limits of predictability
• Unsettled science
• The ice-core man
• The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science
• Polar scientists on thin ice
• The sun moves climate change
• Bright sun, warm Earth. Coincidence?
• Look to Mars for the truth on global warming
• Read the sunspots
• Forget warming - beware the new ice age
• Little Ice Age is still with us
• Fighting climate 'fluff'

Other References:

• Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny
• The Global Warming Myth
• Father of Climatology Throws Up at the Thought of Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'
• IPCC Scientists Challenge Al Gore’s View of Global Warming Consensus
• Swedish Scientist Accuses UN's IPCC of Falsifying Data and Destroying Evidence
• Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
• Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat
• Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development (PDF)
• The Real 'Inconvenient Truth'
• New findings indicate today's greenhouse gas levels not unusual
• Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2
• Global Warming as a Religion
• I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train (By David Evans)
• Still Waiting for Greenhouse
• GREENIE WATCH
• Why Global Warming Would be Good for You
• Temperature vs. Cosmic Ray Flux
• Global Warming Primer (PDF)
• Global Warming: An Official Pseudoscience
• Fiddler On The Roof
• Debating Global Warming
• Climate Resistance

[LasVegasMac]

I think it's best to keep this under wraps, not sure if I want to see reality confront junk science.

Think of the carnage: Dr. Heidi, Al Gore, those 2,000 other "scientists", the UN, TWC, etc., and a crap load of ordinary schmucks that you and I see every day.

What ever will they do?

What ever it is, it ain't going to be pretty.

Yes, best to keep this on the QT.

[VOA]

bump

[LasVegasMac]

Nice list! Thanks.

[colorado tanker]

Well, the earth was warmer before going into the cycle of glacials and interglacials its experienced the last few hundred thousand years.

[norton]

It only took you to the second post to drag ice cores and global warming into evolution versus ID...?

Must be a record, also a non-sequitor, if you follow me.

[Gritty]

These upstart scientists should stop slowing down the global warming gravy train with facts and evidence. There is too much money to be made out there in “investigating” and “fixing” the problem.

[Asclepius]

Must be a record, also a non-sequitor, if you follow me.

And a joke, if you follow me.

[norton]

You have gone above and beyond the call.....
humor can be a cruel master.

[Publius6961]

Proof on Ice: Southern Greenland Was Once Green; Earth Warmer

I've always known that, or simply assumed whoever named the place originally was neither sensory-challenged nor retarded...
I never saw the Viking explorers are either practical jokers or whimsical.

[mad_as_he$$]

DUH! When the vikings settles Greenland it was green!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

That pesky “last interglacial,” again.

[BJClinton]

wiki:

The name "Greenland" comes from Scandinavian settlers. In the Icelandic sagas, it is said that Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder. He, along with his extended family and thralls, set out in ships to find the land that was rumoured to be to the northwest. After settling there, he named the land Grænland ("Greenland"), possibly in order to attract more people to settle there.[1] Greenland was also called Gruntland ("Ground-land") and Engronelant (or Engroneland) on early maps. Whether "Green" is an erroneous transcription of Grunt ("Ground"), which refers to shallow bays, or vice versa, is not known. It should also be noted, however, that the southern portion of Greenland (not covered by glacier) is indeed very green in the summer, and was likely even greener in Erik's time because of the Medieval Warm Period.

[Fred Nerks]

Biologist Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen and an international team of colleagues discovered DNA from alder, spruce, pine and yew trees at the glacier's base as well as insects ranging from butterflies to spiders. This is the "first evidence for a forested southern Greenland," Willerslev says. And based on the tree species found, Greenland must have been warmer than 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) in summer and never colder than one degree F (–17 degrees C) in winter, much warmer than present conditions.

butterflies and spiders trapped in ice - the 'climate' must have changed very quickly, blitzschnell and catastrophic.

[Cracker Jack]

It should also be noted, however, that the southern portion of Greenland (not covered by glacier) is indeed very green in the summer, and was likely even greener in Erik's time because of the Medieval Warm Period.

Lots of sites give some Greenland history. One site is the American Heritage dictionary:

"WORD HISTORY How did a glacier-covered island get the name Greenland? In Norse legends written in the 12th century and later, it is told that Eric the Red explored the southeast and southwest coasts of Greenland in A.D. 983-986 and gave the country its name because people would be more likely to go there if it had an attractive name. Greenland was warmer in the tenth century than it is now. There were many islands teeming with birds off its western coast; the sea was excellent for fishing; and the coast of Greenland itself had many fjords where anchorage was good. At the head of the fjords there were enormous meadows full of grass, willows, junipers, birch, and wild berries. Thus Greenland actually deserved its name. Another attraction of Greenland was that Iceland and northwestern Europe, including England, had a grievous year of famine in 976, and people were hungry for food as well as land."

Another site covers the fact that Greenland settlements of Europeans were abandoned about 1400, during the Little Ice Age. It is still colder in Greenland now than when Eric the Red was there.

From the Smithsonian Institute,

http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/greenland/environment.html

"Studies of environmental conditions, climate, and their interactions have produced important new information relevant to Norse extinction in Greenland. Most revealing is the detailed evidence of climatic changes that occurred in the northwestern Atlantic beginning in the early 1300s. Changes in atmospheric temperature are recorded in such diverse materials as glacier ice derived from snow falling on the Greenland Ice Cap, fossil vegetation and pollen deposited annually in lake sediments, chemical signatures in isotopic composition of sea sediments, animal and human bones, and even the species of insect pests that accompanied Vikings and their animals as they settled new lands. These indicators clearly suggest that the climate was cooling in the 14th century, and that the Greenlandic environment had been depleted of its "natural capital"--its previously untapped grasslands and animal resources-over 500 years of farming practices in this delicate arctic climate."

Other references discuss written directions for how to reach Greenland. Around 1200 the directions started to mention avoiding the icebergs, a caution that was missing from earlier instructions. The record, both written and from core samples, shows that Greenland has been warmer in the last 1000 years than it is now. The alarms about global warming aren't supported by Greenland's history.

"Global warming" is a study in political opinion manipulation, not science.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Rudder]

Back in 1961 in a course in field botany our class spent the day in a bog located on Buckeye lake near Columbus, Ohio. Growing on the bog were tropical plants kept warm by the decomposing bog. The bog had come from the Arctic region by being transported by the great glaciers which covered northern America. The region from which they came was once a tropic.

That lesson in climatology was 46 years ago. Now, why is this article, "news?"