Fossil DNA Proves Greenland Once Had Lush Forests; Ice Sheet Is Surprisingly Stable

Science Daily ^ | 7-5-2007 | University Of Copenhagen

[blam]

All sounds very exciting.

" Been there and know for a fact that the Caribou have benefited from the Alaska Pipeline."

I've read that the Caribou females have taken to calving under the pipeline where it is much warmer and many more of the calves survive as a consequence.

[John Cook]

I recommend reading what the authors are actually saying about their own study. The study connects past warming to natural variations in Earth's orbit—obliquity, or how tilted the planet is in relation to the sun. Author Martin Sharp points out "One could argue that this shows that natural forcing could account for the current warm conditions, but the current orbital configuration does not support this, even when other natural forcings are taken into account." In other words, their study "really has nothing to say about the mechanisms driving the current warming."

They discovered the Greenland ice shelf is at least 400,00 to 800,000 years old. Certainly it was around the time Erik the Red named the island. According to author Eske Willerslev, the Greenland ice shelf "has not contributed to global sea level rise during the last interglacial. 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."

Finally, Martin Sharp warns the study "does not prove the current global warming trend is not human induced". If anything, "we may be heading for even bigger temperature increases than we previously thought".

[SunkenCiv]

Ancient Greenland was actually green!
MSNBC | 7-05-07 | By Ker Than
Posted on 07/05/2007 5:54:18 PM EDT by Ancient Drive
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1861403/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Fraxinus, only going to ping the oldest one though. :')

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[Young Werther]

In May of 1969 I watched the caribou migration as they came down onto the Arctic Plain after their winter sojurn in the Brooks Range. It was a river of animals. The foxes and wolves were following the herd. The herd was estimated to be 40,000. Today the herd is over 120,000 and the park rangers of the ANWAR observed the calving under the pipeline where the oil is approximately 200F. More calves and old folk survive the winter thus the herd thrives. Would that humanity were as “smart”!

[MNJohnnie]

His Hilliness Pope Albert Gore the 1st of the Church of Man Made Global warming, has pronounced anathema on the heretics responsible for this study.

[MNJohnnie]

So, in other words, to be a good little piggy, with the rest of the little pigs, and keep feeing at the trough of Govt Funding, Mr Short has to keep spining the myth of man made global warming. So despite the fact his study DOES NOT support the myth, he manufactures some mythical reasons to explain why his study does not really mean what it says.

Question. HOW does he KNOW what the orbital configuration were 10,000 years ago?

That right, he cannot.

[neverdem]

bump & a ping

[Maelstorm]

Any scientist who has bothered to check knows that it has been a lot warmer. The steady state climate advocates are idiots there is really no other way to describe them.

[John Cook]

MNJohnnie, the “mythical reasons” are called Milankovich cycles which have been known for decades to cause the advance and retreat of the polar ice caps. We can calculate the long term trends in Earth’s orbit by factoring in the various gravitational influences from the moon, sun, etc. Those calculations match with paleoclimate data that shows interglacials occuring every 120,000 years.

hsalaw, you mention “steady state climate advocates” - I wasn’t aware there was such a thing. Advocates of AGW don’t say climate doesn’t change naturally - to say otherwise is a straw man argument. The question isn’t “does climate change naturally?” as of course it does. The question is “what’s causing the climate change now?” The authors of the Greenland study are making the obvious point that the cause of current global warming isn’t Milankovich cycles - which cause long term warming over thousands of years, not a sharp upturn over a few decades.

[GodGunsGuts]

A little commentary on the Science Daily article from CreationSafaris.com:

Ignore the dating methods, since whenever they try to get two ends to meet, it breaks in the middle. Being off by 300% tells you something about dating methods. Hasn’t Willerslev heard that the molecular clock is broken? You can’t build anything solid on Darwin quicksand.

Notice how global warming was not caused by humans even with their own evidence and reasoning. That did not stop Nature and Science from publishing more scare hype about human-caused global warming this week.

http://creationsafaris.com/crev200707.htm#20070706a

[GodGunsGuts]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1861474/posts?page=31#31

[SunkenCiv]

DNA reveals a green Greenland
by Louis Buckley
July 5, 2007

Scientists have drilled through two kilometres of ice in southern Greenland and retrieved DNA from the pine forest that once existed there, buzzing with prehistoric insect life. Dated to between 450,000 and 800,000 years old, the DNA is among the oldest ever found... plant fossils dating to 2.4 million years ago have been found in the far northeast of the country. But, surprisingly, the DNA evidence for plant life stops at 450,000 years ago. Researchers say the lack of younger DNA suggests that this portion of the land has been covered by ice ever since -- and that goes against the prevailing view of Greenland's climatic history. During the last interglacial period (130-116 thousand years ago), the climate was 5 °C warmer than it is today, says Eske Willerslev, director of the centre for ancient genetics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "Sea levels were 5-6 metres higher, and most scientific models have assumed that the melting of the southern Greenland ice cap was responsible. But our data suggest that this was not the case."

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!