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…
August 14th, 2007 at 8:31 am
I don’t get it!
BobFJ carefully lists a whole series of FACTS, not opinion, not a new theory or anything like that, but FACTS, and all you can do is jeer, and avoid those FACTS.
I’m reminded that some people believe that the Grand Canyon is only about 4000 years old, as a result of a 40 day Flood.
When unavoidable evidence in geology is shown to them, that the earth is in FACT millions of years old, they insist that it can’t be true, because the Bible says otherwise.
Is the IPCC report, your Bible, your faith?
Do you think the earth is only about 10,000 years old?
BobFJ, congratulations on your concise listing of some very ‘Inconvenient’ FACTS!
August 15th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Hi Patpat,
Welcome aboard, and thanks your support.
I hope your analogy does not apply here though.
BTW; did you know that Jason Leggett has his own blog, including Themotie. You might find this thread interesting:
http://reasic.com/2007/03/15/800-year-co2-lag-explained/
Regards BobFJ
August 15th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Themotie Reur Aug. 13
I’m busy, but couldn’t help taking an early peep at the blog, hoping that you would still be thinking about it, and taking your time till next Monday, as I suggested. But, you imply that I speak with forked tongue, so I’m making time to respond to that. Quoting you in part:
QUOTE [1]: The world’s hydrologists don’t know how the water cycle works. BobFJ does. UNQUOTE
Where do I claim to be more expert than the experts? Would you like some references where the experts admit great difficulty on some issues, such as cloud physics? What I can do is point out to you, some existing basic estimated data, that water has a much greater role in stabilizing the world’s temperature than is freely discussed by the IPCC. For instance, if you go to the widely referenced NASA “Earth’s Energy Budget Diagram” at:
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/images/Erb/components2.gif
You will see that it is proposed that 51% of solar energy is absorbed by the earth’s surface as HEAT, and that 21% of solar is then reemitted via EMR in the infra red. It is this EMR which is partly absorbed by greenhouse gasses before a delayed escape to space. According to NASA, only 15% of ex-solar is greenhouse absorbed and progressively reemitted-absorbed-reemitted in HEAT transfer progressively upwards to a colder sink. Meanwhile 6% escapes as EMR directly to space mainly through what are known as windows in the absorption spectra. What is seldom mentioned is that a much larger 23% of solar input escapes as HEAT via evaporation and transpiration of water. Furthermore, there is an additional 7% of solar loss as HEAT via conduction and natural convection which are mutually responsive, and enhanced by increasing water vapour. (DRY air is a poor heat conductor). You, have stated elsewhere that as T’s rise there will be increased water vapour, and as a broad statement this is true. Consequently, there would be increased cooling in what is already a greater proportion of HEAT loss than is the result of IR. Capisce?
Water has a number of other complex interactions….but will that do for now?
Oh BTW, I did not refer you to the IPCC “Global Energy Diagram”, because it is um…more difficult/misleading.
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QUOTE [2]: The world’s atmospheric physicists and chemists don’t know how CO2 absorption works. BobFJ does. UNQUOTE
Where did I contradict the experts? I have never discussed or disputed that when EMR impacts a molecule that is absorptive to certain wavelengths, by virtue of its molecular structure, then that molecule’s energy level (HEAT) will be raised. (providing that it is at a lower T than the source of the radiation).
I have pointed out that there is a lot more water (in gaseous phase), than CO2, and that it has a much broader absorption spectrum. (Partly because, according to my reading, the two hydrogen molecules have the lowest inertia and are more easily excited)
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QUOTE [3]: The worlds dendroclimatologists don’t know how dendroclimatology works. BobFJ does. UNQUOTE.
Where did I say that? There are a lot of things in dendro-climatology I don’t understand, and the semi independent Swiss group also describes some problems too. For instance, See “…Selected Issues and Uncertainties…2007” at:
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/Esper_2007_Land.pdf
Am I wrong to point out that even Mann et al (Realclimate) admit that there are problems with sample size, and spatial and temporal relevance in their own tree-ring work, prior to 1400 AD?
Do you not agree for example that is a fact that trees don’t grow in winter or at night, (temporal problem), and don’t grow in the ocean, (71% spatial problem)…..(for example)?
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QUOTE [4]: Historians don’t know history. BobFJ does. UNQUOTE
Did I say something wrong? Examples please!
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QUOTE [5]: …in the few instances where I readily can check, like the 100 % CO2 absorption (”the relatively few and small absorption bands in CO2 are mostly 100% absorbing anyway”), he is totally off and apparently does not have a clue what he is speaking about. UNQUOTE.
A fuller version of what I said is: “…there are sources showing that the relatively few and small absorption bands in CO2 are mostly 100% absorbing anyway, although the altitude at which this occurs is not consistently given”
Here is one such source showing the combined absorption of various gasses, which is more informative than showing them individually. Please go to page 12 of:
http://instaar.colorado.edu/lehman/GEOL1060/documents/1060SJL05comp.pdf
Notice that most of the CO2 bands are showing 100% and also the much greater H2O bands, some overlapping the CO2.
There are some complications, but let’s not go there at this time.
Could you please quote your sources that contradict this….I’m truly interested?
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QUOTE [6] I also checked one of his references (D’Arrigo et al 2007), which wasn’t nearly as convincing an argument as he made it out to be. UNQUOTE
What I said was: “This still unresolved problem is known as “The Divergence Problem”, and perhaps the most useful summary paper on its status is”: (Re D’Arrigo et al 2007)
What are you saying? There is no divergence problem? The divergence problem has been solved?
I made no claims for the paper. Remember too, that Hughes from Mann et al discussed the problem in Nature, July 1999.
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BobFJ
August 17th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Thanks Unregistered User (not verified) above.
You are welcome to on-post any of my stuff if you would like, but I may not be able to respond to any enquiries. I’ve not looked at youtube properly yet.
regards BobFJ
August 17th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Thanks Unregistered User (not verified) above.
You are welcome to on-post my stuff anywhere that you think might be useful, but I may not have time to respond to much.
I don’t know much about youtube.
regards, BobFJ
August 20th, 2007 at 7:44 am
BobFJ,
No, I don’t really think you speak with a forked tongue (that is, I don’t think you consciously lie). I do however believe that your urge to find fault with the IPCC position is stronger than your grasp of the scientific process. I do also believe that your urge to find fault with the IPCC position is stronger than your humility, or possibly that you believe all contributors to the IPCC reports are paid hacks (that is, corrupt and willfully lie) or incompetent. Until I feel I know more about this I feel it’s not worthwhile to go too deep into why I’m skeptical about your attempts to pick holes in the science of a large group of well respected scientists from many disciplines.
There are some statements of yours that would point to (at least) number one above. Take the D’Arrigo paper. Yes, it points to a divergence problem _which is well known_ and no-one is attempting to sweep it under the rug, as you imply. “Problem” does not necessarily mean it is a problem in the sense you are making it out to be, though. D’Arrigo leaves plenty of room for explanations that are unproblematic from IPCC’s point of view. Therefore D’Arrigo does not support your (contrarian) point of view. Hence my feeling that you used the D’Arrigo paper to mean something it didn’t necessarily do.
This is science. Of course there are problems! It wouldn’t BE science if all problems were resolved. In all scientific questions there are “problems” and more or fewer scientists that disagree. Some scientists believe Einstein’s theory of gravity don’t work on very large scales. Most do. There is a “problem” in how galaxies interact at great distances. This does not prevent cosmology from being able to make all sorts of predictions, even at great distances, and doesn’t prevent cosmology from coming up with plausible explanations for the origin and development of the universe. They just don’t know everything they’d like to know. “Problems” are not always the kind of hurdles you seem to make them out to be. Hence my guess that your urge to find fault with the IPCC position is stronger than your grasp of the scientific process.
As to CO2 absorption. You said: “Could you please quote your sources that contradict this….I’m truly interested?” I won’t give you a quote. This is basic atmospheric physics. So I’ll explain instead.
This is an example of where you are completely correct, but it’s irrelevant to the discussion. IE you are “totally off”. Excuse me for a maybe impolite choice of words, but sometimes I really get tired of know-it-all’s who know enough to find and cite a science paper, but really don’t know enough to understand what it really says, and who are so happy they’ve found something to support their often ideological dissatisfaction with AGW so they can’t be bothered to try to spend an equal amount of time to find out what the scientists are really saying. This is not unusual in these discussions. The Great Global Warming Swindle, for example, is overflowing with this, factually correct statements that are meaningless or misleading in the context and the discussion at hand. I’ve run across this particular statement, about CO2 absorption, several times.
This is how it works: Light hits the surface of the Earth, which warms up, emitting IR. The IR is absorbed by a CO2 molecule rather quickly, after somewhere in the region of a hundred meters. The CO2 molecule is excited (popped to a higher energy level), but almost immediately pops down again, emitting an identical IR photon. That IR photon is rather quickly absorbed by another CO2 molecule, which is excited, but soon de-excites, emitting an identical IR photon. So it goes on, until after many absorptions and emissions (by “random walking”) the IR photon is emitted at a high enough altitude to be able to escape the Earth atmosphere, into space.
More CO2 in the atmosphere cause this process to take longer, since the distance between absorptions decrease. So the IR photon stays in the atmosphere for a longer period. More IR photons in the atmosphere equals a warmer atmosphere: Global warming.
August 20th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Themotie, REUR Aug 19.
The one thing you said that really caught my eye was this:
QUOTE: This is how it works: Light hits the surface of the Earth, which warms up, emitting IR. The IR is absorbed by a CO2 molecule rather quickly, after somewhere in the region of a hundred meters. The CO2 molecule is excited (popped to a higher energy level), but almost immediately pops down again, emitting an identical IR photon. That IR photon is rather quickly absorbed by another CO2 molecule, which is excited, but soon de-excites, emitting an identical IR photon. So it goes on, until after many absorptions and emissions (by “random walking”) the IR photon is emitted at a high enough altitude to be able to escape the Earth atmosphere, into space. UNQUOTE.
You say that the photon free paths, presumably at normal ground atmospheric pressure, are around 100m. I am genuinely interested in this, and would appreciate a reference as to where you found the information. I have searched for it, and have been mystified by it for a long time.
Just to refine your “how it works” a little; the first photon from ground will either go unimpeded out to space, be absorbed as HEAT by a CO2 molecule, be absorbed as HEAT by an H2O molecule, (or some lesser absorbent gas), or be scattered. The direction of travel may be in any direction, so the net height gained towards the upwards cold sink varies, as can the photon free path length because whenever an ideal meeting with an absorbent molecule takes place is a matter of chance. Upon the first reemission from whatever absorptive molecule, the EMR is free to travel in ALL directions. If that first reemission is upwards the process is much the same as the initial from ground except that the photon would on average have a lower energy level, because it should nominally be from a colder source, at the higher altitude. However, there is a nominally uniform temperature gradient in all the air, which may not be satisfied by the other heat transport processes going on simultaneously, and it seems likely that higher level absorbent molecules would excite the other gasses by conduction, or vice versa. If the first reemission is downwards, it will have to change direction upwards before it can do any of the above. (There can be no HEAT transfer downwards, per 2nd law of thermodynamics.). As the progressive activity gains altitude, the photon free paths rapidly increase in length, randomly, because of reducing gas density. (because the molecules are further apart)
OH, I’ve just noticed the time! Goodnight, BobFJ
August 20th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Themotie, REUR Aug 19.
The one thing you said that really caught my eye was this:
QUOTE: This is how it works: Light hits the surface of the Earth, which warms up, emitting IR. The IR is absorbed by a CO2 molecule rather quickly, after somewhere in the region of a hundred meters. The CO2 molecule is excited (popped to a higher energy level), but almost immediately pops down again, emitting an identical IR photon. That IR photon is rather quickly absorbed by another CO2 molecule, which is excited, but soon de-excites, emitting an identical IR photon. So it goes on, until after many absorptions and emissions (by “random walking”) the IR photon is emitted at a high enough altitude to be able to escape the Earth atmosphere, into space. UNQUOTE.
You say that the photon free paths, presumably at normal ground atmospheric pressure, are around 100m. I am genuinely interested in this, and would appreciate a reference as to where you found the information. I have searched for it, and have been mystified by it for a long time.
Just to refine your “how it works” a little; the first photon from ground will either go unimpeded out to space, be absorbed as HEAT by a CO2 molecule, be absorbed as HEAT by an H2O molecule, (or some lesser absorbent gas), or be scattered. The direction of travel may be in any direction, so the net height gained towards the upwards cold sink varies, as can the photon free path length because whenever an ideal meeting with an absorbent molecule takes place is a matter of chance. Upon the first reemission from whatever absorptive molecule, the EMR is free to travel in ALL directions. If that first reemission is upwards the process is much the same as the initial from ground except that the photon would on average have a lower energy level, because it should nominally be from a colder source, at the higher altitude. However, there is a nominally uniform temperature gradient in all the air, which may not be satisfied by the other heat transport processes going on simultaneously, and it seems likely that higher level absorbent molecules would excite the other gasses by conduction, or vice versa. If the first reemission is downwards, it will have to change direction upwards before it can do any of the above. (There can be no HEAT transfer downwards, per 2nd law of thermodynamics.). As the progressive activity gains altitude, the photon free paths rapidly increase in length, randomly, because of reducing gas density. (because the molecules are further apart)
OH, I’ve just noticed the time! Goodnight, BobFJ
August 20th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
BobFJ,
I’m finally getting around to answering your rather lengthy comment from August 12. The comment was meant to be proof that the IPCC is deceptive. I’ll just take the examples one at a time.
Ex. 1:
It seems that you are blaming Mann for ending his graph his latest data. I don’t really see what the beef is here. The IPCC, then, only endeavors to describe the state of climate science, based on an examination of the relevant peer-reviewed scientific research on the subject. They are not producing their own research, and they are not editing other’s works. To think that this is deceptive is to believe in conspiracy theories, which I generally do not.
On a side note, you seem to be opposed to the 40-year smoothing line stopping 20 years before the end of the data. I find this very interesting, because in your example 3, you explain exactly why one would do such a thing:
Ex. 2:
I’ve read most of the D’Arrigo paper that you linked to, and I didn’t think it was nearly as helpful to your case as you made it out to be. The paper stated several possible explanations for the divergence, including drought stress, physiological theshold effects, changing stratospheric ozone levels, and global dimming. Each of these seem to indicate a good reason that more recent proxy data has been less predictable as that of the past, making it perfectly reasonable to set aside such anomolous data. According to D’Arrigo, this issue will continually be studied, but nowhere is there any indication that any recent dendroclimatological studies should be questioned due to this divergence.
Ex. 3:
Here, you are once again consumed with the blue data versus red data issue. You’ll notice that the red data overlaps the blue data for about 70 years, and follows pretty much the same trend. Again, to claim that this inclusion of temperature data is “scientifically illegal”, and yet it somehow made it through peer-review, is to believe in a massive conspiracy theory. This was a study of the history of Northern Hemispheric temperatures. Past temperatures were gained from proxy data. For more recent temps, Mann used the instrumental temp record. Is that illegal? Most definitely not.
Ex. 4:
More Mann “hockey-stick”.
Ex. 5:
“Hockey-stick” again.
Ex. 6:
Guess what this one is about?
This is just silly, Bob. Others have tried to explain to you that the “hockey-stick” graph is not at all central to the IPCC report and its conclusions. All you’ve done is try to poke holes in a very large report via one very small and outdated portion of it “Mann’s work”, and it has not been effective.
August 20th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
“I am genuinely interested in this, and would appreciate a reference as to where you found the information. I have searched for it, and have been mystified by it for a long time.”
I actually asked a scientist. I assume I could have looked in a suitable physics book in my attic. Self-evident, though, after the fact. I’m a bit ashamed I didn’t get it myself
“Just to refine your “how it works” a little; the first photon from ground will either go unimpeded out to space,”
No, no chance of that. As you yourself pointed out the absorption when you count the whole column of the atmosphere is total.
“be absorbed as HEAT by a CO2 molecule,”
Depends on what you mean by “HEAT”. A photon is a photon. From what you write below I can guess you by “HEAT” means the energy is absorbed as kinetic energy? In that case, no it’s not.
“be absorbed as HEAT by an H2O molecule, (or some lesser absorbent gas),”
As long as there is an overlap in absorption, yes. That is, if H2O can absorb at that particular wavelength. I’m sure there is some overlap. I’m also sure there are wavelenghts where there is no overlap.
“or be scattered.”
Technically. But I believe that is irrelevant, since it will be the same photon afterwards, waiting to be absorbed.
“except that the photon would on average have a lower energy level, because it should nominally be from a colder source, at the higher altitude.”
No, this is a misunderstanding of the basic physics. The emitted photon would have EXACTLY the same energy as the absorbed photon. The temperature of the CO2 molecule is irrelevant. It is a vibrational (or rotational, I’m not sure) excitation that has nothing to to with the temperature (i.e. speed, kinetic energy) of the CO2 molecule. Also, excitation and de-excitation takes place so rapidly that the molecule won’t have time to move much.
“There can be no HEAT transfer downwards, per 2nd law of thermodynamics.”
Yes it can … I don’t know where you get that idea? Also, the second law is a statistical law. It is very frequently abused because people don’t understand when it is applicable. As I were saying …
“As the progressive activity gains altitude, the photon free paths rapidly increase in length, randomly, because of reducing gas density.”
Quite. Until it escapes.