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…
December 14th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Max,
Ah. It seems that you have backed away from your original claim:
On to your specific evidence:
Al Gore does not state in the movie that anything will happen in the next few years. From what I understand, no time frame is given. The pictures of waves hitting New York City might be a little confusing, but Gore never claims that the sea will “swallow up New York City in 10 to 100 years”.
Re: Ban Ki Moon
The important thing to understand, as you pointed out, is that he is talking about the sudden break up of the WAIS. Here, Ban Ki Moon has set up a hypothetical scenario in which something that has happened in the past (and very quickly), might happen on a much larger scale:
You’ve compared this time frame (10 to 100 years) to 35,000 years, which you claim is from the IPCC. I assume this number is from calculating how long such an increase in sea level would take based on the current rate of sea level rise. This is much different than a fifth of the Antarctic ice sheet breaking off and plunging into the ocean, which as he said, could happen at any time, and very suddenly when it does.
I know this can be confusing, but you seem to have gotten caught up in the hype of climate skepticism. Everyone gets excited over proving Gore and others wrong, and in the process, they often misquote them or misrepresent their arguments. The reality of the situation is that Gore never made the claim that you attributed to him, and Ban Ki Moon was talking about the sudden collapse of a portion of an ice sheet, rather than the slow melting of the entire ice sheet.
December 14th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Max,
I can see that you either ignored or didn’t understand my argument about the limitations of SRALT data and the subsequent need for data from other methods in order to develop a more clear understanding of the mass balance of the GIS. This is why I have decided to move on.
December 14th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Hi Jason,
You wrote: “You’ve compared this time frame (10 to 100 years) to 35,000 years, which you claim is from the IPCC. I assume this number is from calculating how long such an increase in sea level would take based on the current rate of sea level rise. This is much different than a fifth of the Antarctic ice sheet breaking off and plunging into the ocean, which as he said, could happen at any time, and very suddenly when it does.”
You are correct. It is the IPCC’s number.
“Plunging into the ocean”??!! Get serious, Jason. Don’t make me laugh.
This is horror science fiction at its best.
Can’t you see how such balderdash can make any reasonable person skeptical?
Regards,
Max
December 14th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Max,
Laugh if you like, but as Ban Ki Moon said in his article, the Larsen ice shelf “vanished in less than three weeks”. The point is that it’s possible, and not much is known about when the same might happen to the WAIS. This statement made by Ban Ki Moon was quite different from the time frame for an equivalent rise in sea level based on our current rate. You have not argued against this fact and the fact that Gore did not make the claim you attributed to him. I assume then that you agree that they in fact DID NOT tell an “outright bald-faced lie”?
December 14th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Hi Jason,
You wrote: ‘I assume then that you agree that they in fact DID NOT tell an “outright bald-faced lie”’?
Of course not, Jason, because that is a lot closer to what they both did than “exaggerating a bit”.
Scare-mongering is usually based on lies or, at best, half-truths, whether we are talking “NYC getting swallowed by 6 meter waves” to justify a UN money-shuffling power gab or “mushroom cloud smoking gun projections based on weapons of mass destruction” to justify an Iraq invasion.
Lies are lies, no matter how glitzy you dress them up.
Regards,
Max
December 14th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Hi Jason,
You wrote: “Laugh if you like, but as Ban Ki Moon said in his article, the Larsen ice shelf ‘vanished in less than three weeks’”.
Yes, Jason, I do find it laughable. Even on his Larsen statement, the SG was definitely stretching the truth. If you check the reports you’ll see that the Larsen collapse occurred over a 3-MONTH period January-March 2002.
Depending on whose estimate you believe, it involved between 570 to 700 cubic km of ice, which would have raised sea level by 1.6 to 2.0 mm.
Takes a whole lot of Larsen ice shelves to swallow NYC in 6 meters of water (as I figure it, about 3,000 of them).
So the comparison of the dynamic ice flow of the Larsen ice shelf in 2002 with a disastrous plunging of thousands of times this amount of grounded WAIS ice into the ocean “almost overnight” (as the good SG warned) is again more than a “bit exaggerated”. It is pure hype and scare-mongering.
Regards,
Max
December 15th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Hi Jason,
Further to our exchange on the use of exaggeration and hype, I am curious what you really think about the AGW debate.
So I have put some of my thoughts together for you comment or input.
First you should check out http://un.by/en/news/statements
And scroll down to 28 November 2007
The UN blurb is short, so I have copied it below:
“Climate Change and Development: The central challenge of our timeImagine that a huge asteroid is hurtling towards Earth. Scientists tell us that there is a ten percent chance of a collision in 10 years and the consequences of its impact will be catastrophic. Your government advises you not to panic and reminds you that there is a 90 percent chance that the asteroid will miss the Earth. Do you decide not to worry, or do you demand that your government mobilizes all of the resources at its disposal to eliminate the risk?”
Let’s analyze this eye-catching “call to action”.
There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that there is a 10% (or even a 0.1%) chance of “catastrophic impact from anthropogenic greenhouse warming (AGW), a.k.a. ‘climate change’ in 10 years”.
So the analogy with the asteroid is absurd to start off with. (It is the same sort of hysterical hype by the UN SG that 6-meter sea level changes “could happen in 10 years”, which we have already discussed.)
Unfortunately, such flawed analogies are often used to frighten people to gather support for political measures, whether we are talking about “asteroids” or “smoking gun mushroom clouds” or any other imaginable horror.
But, putting aside the ridiculous analogy mentioned above, let’s say there are serious concerns by some scientists that the current warming trend could cause some unpleasant changes, if it continued over the next 100+ years and no countering measures were taken to slow down or adapt to these changes.
And let’s say we are convinced that we know at least part of the reason for this change, and it is related to the increased emission of carbon dioxide as our world increased its GDP from 1980 levels (around 19,000 billion US$) to today’s levels (48,000 billion US$), over the same period as temperatures rose by a few tenths of one degree Celsius.
We know that a large part of this increase occurred in the already developed nations (Europe, North America, etc.), but an ever-increasing amount has come as both giant nations, China and India, as well as other fast-growing nations have been able to increase their per-capita GDPs and prosperity at much higher than average rates.
World CO2 emissions totaled around 28 billion metric tons in 2005 (the last year for which detailed estimates are published). This grew from around 18 billion mt in 1980. See: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls
In 2006 China surpassed the USA for the first time as the largest emitter of CO2. Over the 10-year period 1996-2005 China’s rate of CO2 growth was around 6% per year; India showed a growth rate of 3%, the developing industrial nations of Asia showed 4% while Japan had around 2% and the USA and EU each showed an increase of around 1% per year.
So it is clear that CO2 emissions and economic growth and prosperity go hand in hand. As one increases, so does the other.
But the figures also show that CO2 emissions are growing more slowly (1.5 times 1980-2005) than the overall GDP (2.5 times 1980-2005).
This is due to the many energy conservation programs that countries and industries already have underway, as well as to the application of newer more energy efficient technologies and alternate energy sources, which do not generate CO2 (nuclear, hydroelectric, and to a smaller extent solar and wind).
So the good news is that, by the use of advanced technology, we can continue to grow our prosperity at a higher rate than the rate at which we increase our consumption of CO2 producing fossil fuels.
The poorest nations in Africa, Asia and elsewhere still need to develop and this will certainly involve more power generation plants to provide electricity and clean water to the hundreds of millions of people that are deprived of these basic needs today. This will involve increased CO2 emissions, as the GDP of these poor nations rise above the poverty level.
So the challenge we face is: how can we continue to increase our prosperity and ensure that the poorest nations rise above the poverty level and, at the same time, increase our energy efficiency, decrease our dependence on fossil fuels coming from politically unstable regions and prepare for any unpleasant changes that may come from a slightly warmer world?
This is the real “call for action” to which we should be responding when we “demand that our government mobilizes all of the resources at its disposal to eliminate the risk”.
It includes more money for better sea walls for places like New Orleans (or Bangladesh), if we believe that sea levels are likely to continue rising, incentives for research and development of economical renewable and sustainable energy sources and projects to achieve energy self-sufficiency, etc.
In my opinion, it does not include energy consuming carbon sequestering or injection schemes that bring whole new risks and no real solutions.
And it CERTAINLY does not include “cap and trade” regulations, carbon taxes, carbon offset schemes, etc. which all involve hundreds of billions of dollars being shuffled around by politicians, bureaucrats “get rich” hedge funds, or “Enron successors”.
These measures will not help anyone, with the possible exception of those doing the money shuffling.
Comments, Jason?
Regards,
Max
December 15th, 2007 at 5:08 am
Reasic December 14th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
YOU QUOTED MAX: “But with all the nice verbiage it does not change the fact that the ONLY reports that covered the same time period as the IPCC claim (1993-2003) were those of Johannessen and Zwally, and these reports showed a gain in mass, directly contradicting the IPCC claim.”
AND YOU RESPONDED: “I can see that you either ignored or didn’t understand my argument about the limitations of SRALT data and the subsequent need for data from other methods in order to develop a more clear understanding of the mass balance of the GIS. This is why I have decided to move on.”
REASIC PLEASE HEAR THIS:
Trying to get your “last-word-in” with a sneaky little extract is rather naughty….you need a good smack. It is also very misleading and does NOT actually address Max’s point which was about the TIME PERIOD, (1993-2003).
For instance you deflect to another topic; “SRALT has limitations”, and BTW we HAVE DISCUSSED that elsewhere. However, even Thomas, the LEAD AUTHOR for the IPCC, also describes limitations for ALL other available and relatively primitive methods. (Which were all he/NASA and colleagues had.) And don’t forget Zwally, you rascal!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You have been breaking word-count records before this in endless waffle, whilst ignoring some posts that only need a YES or NO answer. It is my intention to re-post them, so that they do not escape your attention.
Cheers, Black Wallaby
December 15th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Reasic, REUR December 14th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
YOU WROTE to Max:
“You have heard how the famous Larsen ice shelf collapsed and disappeared five years ago. A giant slab of ice 87-kilometers long - the size of some small countries - vanished in less than three weeks. What if this “Larsen effect” were to repeat itself on a vastly greater scale?
You’ve compared this time frame (10 to 100 years) to 35,000 years, which you claim is from the IPCC. I assume this number is from calculating how long such an increase in sea level would take based on the current rate of sea level rise. This is much different than a fifth of the Antarctic ice sheet breaking off and plunging into the ocean, which as he said, could happen at any time, and very suddenly when it does.
AND MAX RESPONDED with restraint:
“Plunging into the ocean”??!! Get serious, Jason. Don’t make me laugh. This is horror science fiction at its best.
REASIC, PLEASE BE ADVISED: The Larson ice-shelf, or in fact any ‘ice-shelf’, as distinct from any ‘ice-sheet’ cannot plunge into the Ocean, because it is already, by definition, floating on the ocean. Consequently, and as once described rather famously by a gentleman named Pythagoras, it has already displaced its own mass as water. Thus, if it breaks-up and disappears in warmer waters, it will have absolutely no effect on sea level, due to its melting.
As a civil engineer, you might also conceive that an ice-shelf is inherently unstable, and proportionally has little back pressure on the land based ice-sheet.
Perhaps too, when in shock-horror you lament the loss of a giant slab of ice 87 kilometres long, you should also retain a sense of scale, in that the total area of Antarctica is about 14 MILLION square kilometres, MOST of which is reportedly GROWING in ice cover.
It may help you understand more if you CAREFULLY READ, and COGITATE this link: First Iceberg in 75 Years Spotted From New Zealand Shore
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,230322,00.html
(Hint: icebergs come from ice-shelves…Should New Zealanders panic?)
Cheers, Black Wallaby
December 15th, 2007 at 6:10 am
Hi Max,
I don’t know if you have noticed, but there is a newish post on GO, entitled thus:
Environmental News: Al Gore’s Passionate Speech by wyspa.
This provides a link to a lively and international debate at the “London Times” including a guy from your home state.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3048561.ece
Although you and me may share some morbid-masochistic tendencies in talking with Reasic and the ‘motie-fundamentalists of this world, I just wondered if the recent Gory topic might be more entertaining on the much wider audience & posting in the blog above?
Hey this is post # 500, but this blog is not recommended by the editors, and is hidden from detection from potential interested visitors…..so what’s the point?
Why doesn’t Reasic expose himself in public?
Regards, Black Wallaby