Posted on 07/07/2007 12:13:53 PM PDT by lowbridge
Posted by Noel Sheppard on July 7, 2007 - 10:19.
Just in time for worldwide concerts to draw attention to the planet’s imminent doom at the hands of anthropogenic global warming, a new find in Greenland suggests that much of the hysteria in Al Gore’s schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth” has absolutely no basis in scientific fact.
Even though this study will likely get little to no attention from a media in full fawn mode over Gore and his Live Earth concerts, the findings throw a huge monkey wrench into alarmist warnings of climate-related devastation to the planet and species offered as reasons for developed nations to radically change behavior.
As marvelously reported by the Boston Globe Friday (h/t Benny Peiser, emphasis added throughout):
An international team of scientists, drilling deep into the ice layers of Greenland, has found DNA from ancient spiders and trees, evidence that suggests the frozen shield covering the immense island survived the earth's last period of global warming.
The findings, published today in the journal Science, indicate Greenland's ice may be less susceptible to the massive meltdown predicted by computer models of climate change, the article's main author said in an interview.
"If our data is correct, and I believe it is, then this means the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought," said Eske Willerslev, research leader and professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Copenhagen. "This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming. They may withstand rising temperatures."
How can that be? After all, soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore – who has had absolutely no training in the relevant areas of science despite the media belief that he is indeed the foremost expert on the subject – says Greenland is going to thaw in the near future with devastating repercussions. Surely he can’t be wrong:
A painstaking analysis of surviving genetic fragments locked in the ice of southern Greenland shows that somewhere between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago, the world's largest island had a climate much like that of Northern New England, the researchers said. Butterflies fluttered over lush meadows interspersed with stands of pine, spruce, and alder.
Greenland really was green, before Ice Age glaciers enshrouded vast swaths of the Northern Hemisphere.
Wait. Isn’t the debate over and the science settled on this issue? It appears not:
More controversially -- and as an example of how research in one realm of science can unexpectedly affect assumptions in another -- the discovery of microscopic bits of organic matter retrieved from ice 1.2 miles beneath the surface indicates that the ice fields of southern Greenland may be more resilient to rising global temperatures than has been forecast. The DNA could have been preserved only if the ice layers remained largely intact.
A scenario often raised by global warming specialists is that Greenland's ice trove will turn liquid in the rising temperatures of coming decades, with hundreds of trillions of gallons of water spilling into the Atlantic. This could cause ocean levels worldwide to rise anywhere from 3 to 20 feet, according to computer projections -- bad news for seaport cities like Boston.
But the discovery of organic matter in ice dating from half-a-million years ago offers evidence that the Greenland ice shield remained frozen even during the earth's last "interglacial period" -- some 120,000 years ago -- when average temperatures were 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they are now. That's slightly higher than the average temperatures foreseen by most scientists for the end of this century, although some environmentalists warn it might get even hotter.
Incredible. And, as many scientists have been claiming regardless of such falling on deaf press ears, this indicates just how nonsensical and worthless climate models proclaiming imminent planetary doom are:
Researchers from the Danish-led team said the unanticipated findings appear to fly in the face of prevailing scientific views about the likely fate of Greenland's thickly-layered ice, although Willerslev stressed that the findings do not contradict the basic premise that the earth's temperature is rising to worrisome levels, with gases emitted by industry, cars, and other human activity playing a big role.
"But it suggests a problem with the [computer] models" that predict melting ice from Greenland could drown cities and destroy civilizations, according to Willerslev.
Think this will be headline news during Live Earth weekend?
No. Neither do I. Regardless, it certainly makes watching the concerts more comical!
If this is so and the Greenland and Antarctica ice shelves are stable even in major warming periods, then the global warming movement's primary means of terrifying people--"rising sea levels that will inundate the planet"--disappears.
read later
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New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
I'm pretty sure we were taught exactly that in elementary school back in the late-60's, while studying the Vikings. Because I've grown up always believing (knowing) that Greenland was once green.
I haven't read the collected works of Al Gore or seen his fictomentaries, has he been asserting that Greenland was always and forever covered with ice?
Seems like the kind of statement that even a 6th grader might find odd. "Then why is it called Greenland, Mr. Gore?"
And God forbid...the dinosours were no more. (They f*** a lot.) Save the dinosours!! They take a lot of space so they'd get a designated USA area from the 38th meridian to the 50th.
The whole idea that we can stop the natural workings of the universe is an absolute absurdity.
rottndog, why was Greenland green? It certainly wasn’t because the ice shelf had melted. The study just mentioned shows the ice shelf has been around for half a million years. The reason is because Erik the Red was a great real estate agent. He figured out that persuading all his friends to migrate to “Freezingcoldiceshelfland” was hardly going to attract big buyers. :-)
Okay, I’m being slightly facetious (although there is a myth that Erik the Red did over-exagerate Greenland’s lushness). There was a warm medieval period back around 900 years ago. Climate does change naturally - the sun was warmer back then, it got colder during the 1800’s when the little ice age hit us, then got warmer in the early 20th century. The sun has been the major driver of temperature over the past 1000 years.
But the correlation between solar activity and temperature ended in 1975 when temperatures started rising - solar levels have been steady since the 1950’s. So the question isn’t ‘has climate changed naturally in the past?’ but ‘what’s causing global warming now?’ The usual suspects - solar variations, volcanoes, Milankovitch cycles - are conspicuously absent.
While the destruction of the environment is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, the people that preach to us are living the most opulent lifestyles that kings and tyrants from long ago could not even dream of. Their industries pollute and use massive amounts of energy and the cash they rake in comes directly from the cultures that burn oil and coal by the tanker load.
Sawdring, I make it a point to listen to what the scientists (and more to the point peer reviewed journals) are saying about global warming rather than be distracted by politicians or their lifestyles. The question of what’s causing global warming is a purely scientific question.
It is a purely scientific question, but many of these pure scientists are funded by these politicians who have an agenda of social change through confiscation and redistribution of wealth.
Sawdring, maybe that’s the case. I’ve tried to steer away from the ad hominem arguments that seem to pervade global warming discussions. This guy was funded by big oil, that guy was funded by left wing socialists. You get nowhere attacking the person. If you’re genuinely interested in finding the truth of the matter, discuss the science, not the people and read the peer reviewed scientific papers. If you’re keen and absolutely paranoid about a scientific conspiracy, download the data and look at it yourself. The data for solar activity (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/solarda3.html) and global temperatures (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/) are easily downloaded and you can quite clearly see the close correlation between temperature and solar activity over the past 100 years and crucially, the lack of correlation after 1975. If you are interested, I’d be happy to email you an Excel spreadsheet of the data (including a nifty little graph).
Truth bump. Globaloney bump. Green heresy bump.
Unless you have prayed at the foot of a new Philips EcoBulb floor lamp, you have NO IDEA what you are talking about.
Amen...../s
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