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 30th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Themotie
Why?
BobFJ….Puzzled.
August 30th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Themotie, Jason, Reasic.
Some more philosophy:
QUOTE Themotie [to me]: I really, really wish you were right though. If you were, the future of my children and grandchildren would look much brighter. I’m rather convinced we won’t do enough in time to reverse the effects of anthropogenic global warming, so I’m reasonably convinced my son and daughter are f***ed (and their children even more so). And deniers like you are partly to blame. UNQUOTE
I wish to say that if this is how Themotie (or any of you) feels, that I sincerely feel very sad about it. Truly…. why should you be so stressed out! However, I am trying to point out to you, that the assertions of the IPCC and the thousands of “climatologists and modelers etc” whom ALL HAVE VESTED INTERESTS (career funded), are very clearly tainted by launching deception upon policymakers and media. (Would you like further clarification?)
You may think that I’m a big-oil executive, but all I can claim is that I have been retired from totally different employment or consultation for about twelve years. However, I take a CONTINUED interest in multi-disciplinary science, in part, to keep my grey-matter moving…..I hope to not go like Ronnie Reagan!…..I have NO VESTED interests.
Consequently, I may have more time than you to research and present clear evidence and facts about the IPCC’s ideological “Manna” deception centered upon the hockey-stick, (but that is only the tip of the iceberg…a few steps at a time if you are interested), but you seem to be unwilling to accept the evidence.
Let me tell you a story about my very close involvement with a family in Adelaide (Australia). (I married one of them). They were Christadelphians. (a Christian church with very strong leanings towards the Old Testament). Part of the family created a schism, and moved into the hills above Adelaide in 1999 because they were convinced that in 2000, the sinful city of Adelaide would get its Armageddon. They were terribly disappointed when it did not happen, and some of their kids subsequently “came-out” but were “withdrawn-from”…that being a terrible punishment to any of the unfaithful in the church! This fundamentalist schism was convinced that the Book of Daniel did prophesy of Adelaide’s 2000 doom, and the building of a new Temple in Jerusalem. To some of them, I pointed out but to no avail, the very many internal errors in Daniel. For instance, in chapter 1 Daniel is a raw youth speaking only Hebrew, but in chapter 2 somewhat earlier in the reign of the same Nebuchadnezzar he is a tri-lingual confidant, and wiser than all the wizards in the king’s court. The Jews treat the book as literature, and biblical scholars widely agree it was written in 164 or 165 BC, by virtue of its overwhelming internal evidence. I have written an unpublished book on this, which I eventually withheld.
My point in mentioning this is that it seems to be a human condition that unshakable beliefs can dominate over any contrary evidence that may be presented.
Rather than brood on Armageddon, why not discover some good news?
What about the MILLIONS dying from AIDS, no clean water, TB, malaria etc etc etc?
What about the second anniversary of Katrina?
What are the real priorities?
Neo-cons oil?
Regards, BobFJ
August 30th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Message to themotie
QUOTE “I compose my posts reasonably fast because a) I know the subject really well, and b) I write for a living. I’m a physicist and work as a science writer. And “rational” and “unprejudicial” are in the eye of the beholder, I assure you. I understand you do not believe this, but reality is not determined by your beliefs. I also understand you’ll never give up your beliefs though, so I see this discussion as increasingly pointless. I really, really wish you were right though. If you were, the future of my children and grandchildren would look much brighter. I’m rather convinced we won’t do enough in time to reverse the effects of anthropogenic global warming, so I’m reasonably convinced my son and daughter are f***ed (and their children even more so). And deniers like you are partly to blame. Sleep well.”
Sorry for cutting into your exchange with BobFJ, but your above statement caught my attention. It is pretty clear that your beliefs are driven by fear (an emotion), which makes it hard for me to believe that they can be 100% “rational”. The 2007 IPCC SPM report has obviously had its desired effect on you, as have apparently the many impending disaster stories spread by the media and politicians. Despite your pessimism and the self-serving IPCC hyperbole, I am personally not concerned about my children and grandchildren facing a man-made climate disaster since I believe BobFJ and a whole lot of other people are right on this one: there is no disaster on the way, it’s just a bunch of hot air.
Just one question: are you one of the “science writers” that is helping to spread this message of impending disaster? If so, tsk, tsk!
Max
September 1st, 2007 at 9:11 am
Hey Max,
Very well put!
Your use of “tsk,tsk!” I guess is the equivalent of “tut tut” in England and Australia, and I have not seen it before. What State do you hail from?
In the 80’s I dwelt in North America mostly in the California Bay Area, Detroit, and Windsor-Canada, totalling in many “business trips” around 3 years.
Max, no need to apologize….get in there….I need your help!
regards, BobFJ
September 1st, 2007 at 9:40 am
Memo: there was a post from Jason Leggett of August 9, that is no longer displayed.
September 1st, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Are you thinking of the Occam’s Razor post? That still up (it was published on Aug. 8): http://greenoptions.com/2007/08/08/green_myth_busting_occams_razor
_______________________________________
Jeff McIntire-Strasburg
Senior Editor
Green Options
jeff@greenoptions.com
September 1st, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Reply to BobFJ
Hi BobFJ
Actually came from Tennessee originally (guess that’s where the “tsk, tsk” came from) but have been living in Switzerland for many years (where my Swiss wife tells me they seem to prefer an inhaled “tzt, tzt, tzt”).
As far as the current anthropocentric global warming hysteria goes, I wonder how long it will take for this one to blow over and a new scare to grab the political and media headlines. What do you think?
The unfortunate fall-out from this hysteria is that a lot of money is being wasted that could be put to better use addressing the real problems, many of which you have listed.
Glad there are rational skeptics out there like yourself to try to tone down the hysteria by bringing in some reason. Somebody has to keep the scare-mongers honest.
Regards,
Max
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:44 am
Hi Max,
Your Swiss equivalent of Tut! Tut! is fascinating, and it now reminds me of something rather similar here. Occasionally, I’ve encountered T! T! T! (sort-of) although I can’t think where in our multi-cultural society it presides. It is sounded by snapping the tongue away from the palate. What sort of Swiss is yours?….I imagine German.
I fell in love with the city of Berne and a Swiss girl many years ago. (She was “Italian” with BLACK hair, pale skin, AND piercing blue eyes).
I also love Torino, (Turin) just across the border, (and its convenient access to other parts) and dwelled there periodically on business for a total, of ~18 months during the 80’s.
You pose how long will the CO2 fundamentalism and hype last? Gee that’s a really tough one!
Henrik Svensmark has persuaded CERN to commit to a major programme to expand on some experiments he made in his cellar, showing that galactic cosmic rays (GCR) probably contribute in low-level cloud formation. Also, the magnetic field cycle of the Sun, which probably influences GCR concentrations, is twice the duration of the ~11 year sunspot activity and apparently replaces the firstly suspected sunspots, as controllers of GCR’s.
If you are not familiar with this stuff, I recommend you try the link below, trust me, it does odd things, like minimising down to the status bar, and fibbing about its status, but it ended up OK when I tested it here.
Cosmoclimatology:anewtheoryemerges
If you get frustrated, you could explore the following, but it failed when I tried it here:
http://www.spacecenter.dk/…/sun-climate/Scientific%20work%20and%20publications/svensmark_2007cosmoClimatology.pdf
Oh, where was I? How long to rationality? I guess that in another 5 years the CERN data ought put it to bed. But, unfortunately, in many fields of fundamentalism, any contrary facts are simply denied, under a verbal process known here sometimes as “Gobbledegook”.
For instance, in the Book of Daniel, that I briefly discussed above, that book finally collapses when, in about 165 BC, it describes an imminent and final vast battle between the king of the North, with the king of the South*, in which very many chariots and ships are involved. (Armageddon)
In 165 BC, horse drawn chariots were very powerful weapons, and might be argued today by fundamentalists as the synonym for tanks, but there is no hint in Daniel of today’s awesome weapons such as in airpower etc. Nevertheless, various Christian fundamentalists insist that this final battle with chariots and ships will finally come, and thus release them into their rapture!
* These “kings” were the progeny of the generals of Alexander the Great, whom divided up his empire upon his sudden early death. King of the North is of Syria, and of the South is Egypt. (with Jerusalem’s scribes in the middle)
You mentioned priorities:
What really baffles me is that the threat of mutant bird flu pandemic pales the CO2 hype into nothingness. I would be OK for ME in that event, because I’m old with a weak immune system, and can escape to a remote lovely area in my mobile home. (large camper-van) However, this potential flu (if it is typical of 1918>) would maybe kill 25-50 millions of mostly young people whom have a strongly-over-reactive immune system. (resulting in reactive vital organ destruction)
Imagine what it might be like if suddenly 10% of the youngish people in New York went down with it with very high mortality? Where is the bed-space etc?
What insurance has been taken out on this far greater risk?
Regards BobFJ
September 4th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Perhaps I was a bit short in my initial esponse, so let me briefly quote Andrew Lacis in some of his expert review comments for IPCC 2007, WG1.
He is NOT a declared skeptic, works at GISS with the famous James Hansen, and they have jointly published works:
2-2308
“… obvious that any gas that absorbs thermal radiation is a greenhouse gas, and that its ability to contribute to the greenhouse effect depends on the strength of its absorption bands, its atmospheric concentration, and its local temperature difference with the ground surface.” [Andrew Lacis] …..Please NOTICE, Themotie: local T difference with ground!
1-760
“…the atmospheric greenhouse effect works the same way that thermal insulation around a hot steam pipe reduces the rate of heat energy escape.
… The only significant difference is that thermal insulation restricts energy transport carried by conduction, while absorbing gases in the atmosphere restrict energy transport by radiation … However, because of the fluid nature of the atmosphere, heat energy can also be transported by…” [Andrew Lacis]
His comments cut across the long-standing mainstream climatologist’s hypothesis that the greenhouse effect is caused by EMR back-radiation, or that cold air and clouds heat the warmer ground below. This would be the equivalent of insisting that adding an additional blanket to a bed on a cold night results in that blanket heating the bed. The “misconception” appears to arise from a belief that EMR = HEAT, but in fact, they are two different forms of energy. Additionally, the physics of HEAT conduction in MOST materials is somewhat similar to HEAT transfer through an absorbent gas, via EMR absorption as HEAT and reemission. In the former, the quanta are phonons, and the latter, photons.
Another thing that angers rational scientists is the IPCC dogma of treating anthropogenic greenhouse gasses etc as “forcings”, but water with its far greater effects, are dismissed as “feedbacks”, and are treated only cursorily. This is despite that anthropogenic changes to water vapour levels, are also obviously evident, such as in tree clearing and aerosol seeded cloud formation. The difficulty of course is that the water “forcings” are immensely complicated and beyond quantification. Note that most of the CO2 in the atmosphere is natural, but is not and cannot be considered separately to the man-made. Neither should water be considered separately because it is interactive with the radiative and the other greater surface cooling effects, but, of course, it is all too hard.
Some expert review comments for IPCC 2007 WG1 follow:
SPM-356
“There are major forcing agents excluded from this diagram. They are water
vapour and clouds.. It is absurd to regard these as “feedbacks” to carbon dioxide.
They have forcing effects in their own right… The only reason you
omit them from this diagram is that their effects are so little known that the
uncertainties would swamp every other forcing agent and render the whole
exercise superfluous.” [Vincent Gray]
2-280
This is a MAJOR comment. You will cause immense confusion with the reference to
water vapour like this - without making it clear that there is an anthropogenically driven
component of water vapour change via temperature changes. I have seen this confusion
(and indeed wanton misrepresentation) in discussions of previous IPCC reports.
[Keith Shine]
1-76
“The start of this draft Answer is so wrong that it beggars belief (it should be given a ‘fail’
grade if submitted as answer to an assignment by an undergraduate). The following
change is the minimum required to raise the start of this draft Answer to an acceptable
standard.
Replace the phrase, “The Earth has a natural greenhouse effect” with the following:
“The greenhouse effect of the Earth is the increase to the Earth’s surface temperature that
results from the presence of the Earth’s atmosphere. This rise in temperature is caused by
several effects, notably the radiative, convective and evaporative components…” [Richard S. Courtney]
2-84 [shortened by about 75%, partly due “difficult” English]
The Goody-Yung analytic solution of the Schwarzchild radiation transfer equation is only
approximative (Eddington- or semi-infinite approximation). In the theory there is still an
inexplicable temperature discontinuity at the ground, which does not appear in the praxis.
… There are no sound computational basis behind Trenberth’s statement on H2O / CO2 60% / 26% RF ratio (Chapter 1, Page 41, Line 21). Miskolczi (according to his HARTCODE high resolution radiative transfer code gives 9% for CO2 RF relative to total…
[MIKLOS ZAGONI]
2-562
it should be emphasized that the presently shown large uncertainty to simulate future scenarios of climate change relates to an insufficient understanding of several strong feedback mechanisms (involving for an example the land, ocean, sea ice and clouds) within the climate system of study, and therefore to an inadequate description of these processes in our models. [Caroline Leck]
2-1
The chief defect of this Chapter is the total absence of the main greenhouse gas, water
vapour, By comparison, the others are insignificant. The usual excuse for this blatant
omission is that computer models are so defective that the only way they can deal with the
undoubted importance of water vapour is to relegate it to the status of a “feedback”, and
so remove its importance from public scrutiny … You will, of course, have to admit that we know very little about its average or local concentration either recently or historically, and you may well conclude that this ignorance is an overwhelming liability… [Vincent Gray]
I’ve kept it short…..Regards BobFJ
September 9th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
To Jason Leggett
Hi Jason, wherefore and howfore art thou?
Since Themotie migrated from the “Reasic blog” and took-over from you on this here thread on August 20, you seem to have retired from the debate.
I hope all is well with you.
I wisheth thou the bestest.
Regards, BobFJ