Green Myth-Busting: Greenland was Once Green
Greenland MYTH: When Eric the Red and his Viking buddies settled Greenland, it was a lush pastoral paradise fit for farming and raising animals.
Facts: As climate change skepticism has developed into a full-blown industry, a number of myths have filtered out about historical patterns of warming and cooling: just mention the “Little Ice Age” or the “Medieval Warm Period” to your favorite skeptic, and let ‘em go…
As a history buff, I always found today’s myth fascinating. As Coby Beck at Grist notes, Viking leader Eric the Red gave Greenland its name not because it was lush and green, but because he wanted folks back home to think it was:
Greenland was called Greenland by Erik the Red (was he red?), who was in exile and wanted to attract people to a new colony. He thought you should give a land a good name so people would want to go there! It likely was a bit warmer when he landed for the first time than it was when the last settlers starved due to a number of factors — climate change, or at least some bad weather, a major one.
But it was never lush, and their existence was always harsh and meager, especially due to the Viking’s disdain for other peoples and ways of living. They attempted to live a European lifestyle in an arctic climate, side by side with Inuit who easily outlasted them. They starved surrounded by oceans and yet never ate fish! (Note: this was not a typical European behavior, and is a bit of a mystery to this day.)
The issue here, of course, really isn’t Greenland’s name; it’s the idea of a Medieval Warm Period that skeptics claim was comparable to the present day in terms of the average temperature (or even warmer!). By extension, ice melts on Greenland aren’t that big a deal: it’s happened before.
Coby has thoughts on the Medieval Warm Period, and points to information from NOAA. RealClimate, the blog for anyone interested in hardcore climate science, also presents a number of reasons why the perception skeptics have about the Medieval Warm Period are likely incorrect.
Greenland wasn’t green in the tenth century… and we don’t want it to become green this century…
May 1st, 2007 at 10:11 am
Wow! What a neat theory. Greenland really wasn’t “green”, it was only a PR job by Eric the Red to get settlers to move there. Fantastic bit of non-research to disprove an “Inconvenenient Truth”.
Don’t think you have to worry too much about it becoming green in this century either. ESA has shown that the Greenland ice sheet has actually grown between 1993 and 2003, contrary to what the IPCC claims in its latest report.
But back to the Medieval Warm Period.
What caused the Medieval Warm Period, with a “green” Greenland, oranges growing in northeast China, wild grapes growing in Newfoundland (Vinland) and global temperatures a few degrees warmer than today?
Or the earlier Roman Optimum, also with higher temperatures than today and civilizations flourishing in areas that are now covered by deserts?
Contrary to the IPCC statements that “the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1300 years” and “Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1300 years”, studies of the historical record have shown that global 20th-century temperatures are cooler than during the medieval warmth and not unusual. (http://w3g.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/soon+baliunas.cr.2003.pdf )
Please don’t fall into the trap of digging up the Mann “hockey stick” curve to deny that these warmer periods existed. It has already been buried as a fraud, even though the IPCC apparently still believes in it.
Max
May 8th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I am suprised at your comments on climate change skepticism. Why should we disseminate blatantly false information or accept statistics and information presented without evidence to back it up? What’s wrong with asking questions?
Climate change skepticism in society is not well understood. The role of skepticism begins with the following basic principle, When a body of science comes to have public policy implications it must undergo a higher level of scrutiny. “Higher” here means more rigorous that is the norm in the scientific community. The rationality of this principle is obvious. In pure science a big mistake is seldom harmful, but in public policy it can be disastrous. Pure science encourages speculation, and following promising but untried lines of exploration. Public policy, because it mobilizes vast forces, necessarily operates under a far stricter standard of certitude.
The role of the skeptic is to implement the principle of assessment. One does this by testing the claims, probing the foundations, cataloging the uncertainties, seeking out disagreement, etc. In short the skeptic is an investigator, not of climate but of climate science. Needless to say, the scrutiny is not part of the science. This is the fact that confuses most people, because science does include a degree of internal scrutiny, including peer review. But skepticism is a different approach, because it is implementing a much higher standard of scrutiny — the public policy standard - or what should be the public policy standard!
It is for this reason that the skeptic’s findings do not belong in peer reviewed climate science journals, and do not appear there. The skeptic is not doing climate science. Research yes, but research into the climate science per se, the logic of the science if you like, not research into the climate. In logic, this distinction between studying climate and studying, or assessing, climate science is called an object level, meta level distinction. A simple example is the difference between the object level statement that “the earth is warming” (climate science) and the meta level statement that “some scientists do not believe that the earth is warming” (assessment of climate science). Assessment is not a science, or if it is, it is not a physical science. Skeptics are doing assessment.
Moreover, the skeptics’ principal audience is not the scientific community, it is the public policy community. The policy community wants to know if the science meets its standard of certitude. This fact gets confused because some of the most prominent scientists defend the science, while others are skeptics. In addition, many of the statements that the skeptics are questioning are made in the peer reviewed scientific literature, which often mixes object and meta level statements indiscriminately. Likewise, in the press, adding meta level interpretation of science, often by scientists, creates “spin”.
Climate change skeptics are expert witnesses for the defense in an adversarial policy process. Their job is to scrutinize the science for weakness, not to do the science or rectify the weakness. The process is the best we know of, its name being democracy, it’s product being reason. And within it the skeptic’s calling is a noble one.
May 8th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Reply to BSkpt
Thanks for a well thought out and expressed opinion on what the role of the skeptic is in the current debate. In a simplified way it is like CNN likes to say in their newscasts “keeping them honest”. And, as you have very well expressed, reason is certainly a cornerstone of democracy.
Max
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Max,
There was no global Medieval Warm Period. There may have been some areas that were a bit warmer, but proxy evidence from around the world has indicated that there was no global MWP.
Also, Mann's "hockey stick" graph, also known as an extremely robust and verified northern hemisphere temperature reconstruction, has not been "buried as a fraud" - far from it. It is true that some small statistical errors were found by an economist and a former mining executive, but these changes were addressed by Mann and did not change the results. As a matter of fact, there have since been several other similar studies performed, and each arrived at a similar curve with no pronouned medieval warming. Also, no one has produced a similar temperature reconstruction that DOES show a medieval warm period. Most skeptics have only tried unsuccessfully to find fault in Mann's work, rather than performing research of their own.
So, where did this idea of a MWP come from? It's actually a misrepresentation of an old IPCC graph, which has subsequently been supported by nothing more than anecdotal evidence (vikings in Greenland, vineyards in England, etc.).
http://reasic.com/2007/05/30/hockey-stick-myths/
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
BSkpt,
I both agree and disagree with you. I agree with you that skepticism is very important when it comes to climate science. However, I would add that this skepticism is only valuable in cases where said skepticism has been applied evenly and objectively across the board. This is where much global warming "skepticism" has gone awry, and I think this is the type of skepticism that has been reacted to here. Many global warming skeptics spout blatantly false myths about our climate, demonstrating that they are not truly skeptical of all theories, but are instead only applying skepticism to mainstream theories.
For example, I can't tell you how many "skeptics" have mentioned to me that carbon dioxide has a very small effect on our climate and instead, water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the total greenhouse effect. Then, since water vapor occurs naturally, they conclude that the effects of CO2 have been blown out of proportion. How could the IPCC have missed something so simple? They must surely be biased! (Insert collective gasp here.)
The problem with this "theory", propagated by Monte Hieb, is that water vapor is what is known as a feedback, rather than a forcing. A forcing is a component that causes climate change. A feedback is a component that reacts to a forcing, and therefore cannot cause change itself. The reason that water vapor is a feedback is primarily because of its very short atmospheric lifetime (residence time). It only stays in the atmosphere for a little over a week, versus over 100 years for carbon dioxide. So, while it is true that there is an abundance of water vapor in the atmosphere, and that it contributes greatly to the total greenhouse effect, it cannot cause a CHANGE in our climate because of its short lifetime. When temperatures drop, water vapor concentrations decrease, and when temperatures rise, more water vapor enters the atmosphere.
This is only one example. There are plenty more which are not effectively scrutinized by "skeptics", who are themselves biased. I assure you a true skeptic, applying a fair amount of skepticism to both sides of the argument, would arrive at the conclusion that human activity is, at least most likely, the primary cause of global warming. Therefore, consider me a true global warming skeptic.
July 10th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
To Jason Leggett
“There was no global Medieval Warm Period. There may have been some areas that were a bit warmer, but proxy evidence from around the world has indicated that there was NO GLOBAL MWP.”
Oh, really?
Searching through Internet I read, in Wikipedia - Medieval Warm Period item, about evidences of MWP found in:
———————————-
US Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay,
sediments in Piermont Marsh of the lower Hudson Valley,
Alaska,
Sargasso Sea,
Bransfield Basin, Antarctic Peninsula,
in Lake Nakatsuna in central Japan
———————————-
looking further I find:
Indonesia (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/newton2006/newton2006.html)
China
(http://scholar.ilib.cn/Abstract.aspx?A=zrkxjz-e200408015)
———————————-
seems quite global to me, unless you think that local means - limited to Earth, and global means - all the Solar System.
Certainly, we have no evidences of MWP or LIA on Mars or Venus
August 5th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Jason Legget, if you are not convinced by the work of McIntyre and McItrick, it may be that it is too complicated, and thus capable of complex evasions. (Or maybe you have only accepted the IPCC’s account of their early work?)
However, the fraud is evident in a far simpler way. If you study the hockeystick, notice that the blue proxy data stops short at ~1980, with an unresolved down-trend, whilst the published temperatures, red, are implied to merge and replicate, rocketing up to the record spike of 1998. So what happened to the missing ~20 years of proxy data and why is it NOT explained in the defining papers (MBH 1998 + 1999)? It’s simple, the missing data, which was freely available, eg.Briffa 1999, had a continuing down-trend all the way, and its inclusion would have destroyed the credibility of the hockeystick, and it’s intent.
Of course decreasing tree-ring growth during increasing temperatures together with increasing feedstock CO2 is counter intuitive, and this is still known as ‘The Divergence Problem’. (unsolved) Perhaps the most useful paper detailing most of the competing divergence hypothesies is D’Arrigo et al 2007. If you’d like a good laugh go to the second link for the Hughes,(from Mann et al), earlier hypothesis of July 1999. www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~liepert/pdf/DArrigo_GPC2007.pdf
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/07/990707181851.htm
You made some other points suggesting that you have not done much research, and rely on IPCC theology. I may make a later post on these.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:26 am
BSkpt: what an excellent analysis by you, and Jason partly agreed! Wow!
He then gives an example of how skeptics annoy him, when they bring up the role of water vapour. (this is also largely “overlooked” by the IPCC).
Just ONE OF THE THINGS he does not seem to understand is that the cycle-time of evaporation/expiration - precipitation does not per se control the average concentration of water vapour in the atmosphere. (It is huge compared with the trace gas CO2, and with a much broader IR absorption spectrum).
In fact, the shorter the cycle is, the greater is the rate of latent heat and conductive/convective heat transfer upwards, that being greater and negative to “greenhouse”
Also, there are clouds of various kinds that need water vapour, and they are rather important!
August 6th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Attention Jeff McIntyre-Strasburg, Jason Leggett & Max
Adding to Max’s comments of May 1:
OK, let’s hypothesise that Eric the Red spakest untruths to his Norse buddies, and upon landing they found that Greenland was not entirely as he had described. Is there any record that Eric was lynched, or chastised in any way? Why would he take such a risky path without exclusively carrying an AK47? (Back in those days, people were not very forgiving or life-sparing!) Also, if it was too bad, why did they hang around for some 4 centuries, or maybe 16 generations?
If you were to research the literature there are archaeological records of their trading overseas and then finally their stunted skeletons, suggesting malnutrition, which coincided with their disappearance and proxy data of cold. It has also been suggested that their culture could not adapt to the Inuit way, which might have saved them when things got cold.
If you would like a good historical compilation about the MWP and LIA, an excellent starting point is page 15 of:
www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/132.pdf
It is a big paper, (67 pages), mostly compiling and comparing hundreds of proxy studies from around the world that you may be blissfully unaware of. Even if you may not entirely agree with their VERY FEW opinions and conclusions, there is a LOT of thought provoking stuff, and research references that you could follow-up if you have the resolve to study the SCIENTIFIC evidence.
August 7th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Jason Leggett reur July 3:
You are right to insert a collective gasp, and it’s coming from the skeptics! Water vapour is usually measured in percent (parts per hundred), whereas CO2 is measured in parts per million. The H20 molecule absorbs infra red radiation as heat over a much broader spectrum than CO2, so not only is there much more of it, but it is also a far more powerful greenhouse gas. Thus, the proportion of greenhouse effect from CO2 intuitively must be very much smaller than H20. How much is not known because it is immensely complicated and cannot be calculated using any sensible assumptions. Furthermore, in terms of total thermal effects of water, it becomes tinier still. For instance, the proportion of HEAT that leaves the surface as infra red radiation is thought to be only about 40%, largely because of some other cooling effects of water, like evaporation-precipitation. (See figure FAQ 1.1 IPCC AR4 scientific basis, but don’t be fooled by the back-radiation depiction. That is not HEAT…try NASA’s clean version) Then of course, there are clouds which are very important.
“Forcing” is a simplification concept created by the IPCC, where individual effects are considered separately, assumed to be linear, and to have no interaction with other forcings. For instance, the effect of CO2 and H20 mixed together in varying parameters is too hard, so they are considered separately. An example of negative forcing is with sulphur aerosols which have a cooling effect, but how much, is based on assumptions and estimates!
Your second paragraph below is puzzling. What has the residence time got to do with the AMOUNT OF WATER in the atmosphere when it is just a parameter in a fundamentally balanced, if regionally chaotic cycle?
How many people have claimed that global warming has been initiated by water?