Yep! Greenland is Ice and Iceland is Green!
Loooooong time lurker, first time poster. I actually signed up to respond to this.
When I was in the public education system (the 80s and early 90s), we were taught the naming convention was an elaborate ruse to fool any invaders into attacking Greenland, thinking it would be nothing but verdant fields, and therefore worth attacking, while Iceland would remain protected. I guess this wouldn’t work so well if the attackers didn’t speak the language, or didn’t have a map with the names written on them.
This is absolutely what I was taught.
Thanks very much for the post,
-B
I’m not sure there is anyone claiming “the earth’s climate has been perfectly static forever, and humans broke it!” (well, some stupid people, but that’s beside the point). The argument is just that CO2 (and other gases, like methane or water vapor) don’t allow longer-wavelength radiation to escape into space (like the glass panels in a greenhouse - it acts kind of like a 1-way valve for radiation). The million-dollar question is: Is the amount of extra ‘greenhouse’ gas we’ve vented into the atmosphere causing significant amounts of extra radiation to be captured? (to the point where it would actually increase the earth’s average temperature and cause changing weather patterns, in addition to other ecological nastiness).
Theoretically, it’s very possible. If we put a giant glass dome over the earth, it would be hot as heck here. If you changed the atmosphere to half-methane, it would probably have a similar effect. That’s sound science (try it yourself, build a greenhouse!).
Now should we go crazy and destroy our industrial infrastructure? No, that’s stupid, and only stupid hippies are in favor of that. But it’s worth keeping an eye on it. If anyone *actually* believed global warming was an issue, and *actually* wanted to do anything about it, we would be building nuclear powerplants as fast as we could pour the concrete, because nuclear waste is a pretty easily manageable problem compared to a superheated planet.
If any of your friends believe in global warming, smile and say “then why aren’t you for nuclear power?” Trying to sound clever and say “hey look, it was warmer at some point in the past” is a silly argument to anyone with any kind of scientific training, and it makes people dismiss your argument.