GREENLAND & GLOBAL WARMING
I have one question to ask anyone who is crying about Global Warming. How the you know what do you think Greenland received its name? Global Warming advocates go wrong by relying simply on weather charts that are recorded, i.e from the past few hundred years. They are not paying enough attention to historical climate, the ebb and flow and the raise and fall of temperatures. If they were, they would find we are in a time frame where we are still recovering from the last Little Ice Age, which was brought about primarily by intensive volcanic activity. The way the "Ring of Fire" has been acting, I think all bets are off when it goes to "Global Warming". One good dirty volcanic eruption and we are back to much colder temps. It is entirely possible that warmer climes are more than normal during the scope of human occupation of Earth. We need a detailed history of climate.
Paleo historical approach
Today the NY Times has a feature about things warming up (back to normal) in Greenland to the point where they can grow strawberries and crops.
“…Cod, which prefer warmer waters, have started appearing off the coast again. Ewes are having fatter lambs, and more of them every season. The growing season, such as it is, now lasts roughly from mid-May through mid-September, about three weeks longer than a decade ago. “Now spring is coming earlier, and you can have earlier lambings and longer grazing periods,” said Eenoraq Frederiksen, 68, a sheep farmer whose farm, near Qassiarsuk, is accessible by a harrowing drive across a rudimentary road plowed in the hillside. “Young people now have a lot of possibilities for the future.”
Scattered reports of successful strawberry crops in the odd home garden are heard, although it helps to keep them in perspective. As Hans Gronborg, a Danish horticulturist, put it, laughing, “They know whether they’ve harvested 20 strawberries, or 25.” He works at Upernaviarsuk, an agricultural research station near Qaqortoq, one of the largest towns in the south. Like everywhere else, it is accessible only by boat or helicopter. As a rule, no roads connect Greenland towns. As if visiting the zoo, people come from all over to gape at the varieties of grass in the fields and to see what is growing here, among other things, 15 strains of potatoes and, for the first time, annual flowers: chrysanthemums, violas, petunias. Mr. Gronborg plucked a head of cauliflower from its nest of leaves. It had a rich, almost sweet flavor — the result, he explained, of slow growth, long summer days of 20 hours of light, and wide swings in temperature from day to night. “It’s small, but it means you get all that flavor concentrated in one-third the size of a regular cauliflower,” he said….”
Scattered reports of successful strawberry crops in the odd home garden are heard, although it helps to keep them in perspective. As Hans Gronborg, a Danish horticulturist, put it, laughing, “They know whether they’ve harvested 20 strawberries, or 25.” He works at Upernaviarsuk, an agricultural research station near Qaqortoq, one of the largest towns in the south. Like everywhere else, it is accessible only by boat or helicopter. As a rule, no roads connect Greenland towns. As if visiting the zoo, people come from all over to gape at the varieties of grass in the fields and to see what is growing here, among other things, 15 strains of potatoes and, for the first time, annual flowers: chrysanthemums, violas, petunias. Mr. Gronborg plucked a head of cauliflower from its nest of leaves. It had a rich, almost sweet flavor — the result, he explained, of slow growth, long summer days of 20 hours of light, and wide swings in temperature from day to night. “It’s small, but it means you get all that flavor concentrated in one-third the size of a regular cauliflower,” he said….”
The historical background
“…In about A.D. 982, the Norseman Eirik Thorvaldsson the Red sailed west from Iceland to explore the mysterious lands that sometimes ap peared on the far horizon when the winds blew from the north. Three years later he and his men returned with stories of a fertile uninhabited land where fish were plentiful and the grazing grass lush and green. Eirik named it the Green Land, "for he said that people would be much more tempted to go there if it had an attractive name."
Eirik persuaded twenty-five shiploads of settlers to sail for Green land in 986. They founded the village of Brattahlid in the southwest and a "Western Settlement" at Gotthab some 650 kilometers to the north. Life was never easy. The restless and adventurous Greenlanders occupied lowland areas around the inner shores of fjords, where they could pasture their stock and perhaps attempt to grow corn. All animals lived inside during the long winters, when the settlers lived off dried meat, fish, and stored dairy products. Their staple diet was seal meat, collected by the ton when harp seals migrated northward along the west coast in May and June.
The Greenland Norse always lived on the edge. Their lives de pended on making full use of seasonal migrations of harp seal and caribou to obtain winter meat supplies. During the summers, the settlers mounted polar bear and walrus hunting expeditions to Nordsetur, the "northern coast" around Disko Bay, more than eight hundred kilometers north of the main western settlements. Bearskins and walrus tusks were the only trade goods of interest to the outside world. The Greenland Norse paid their annual church tithe to distant Norway in walrus tusks. Sometimes the tithe was more than four hundred tusks, far more than they could collect around their own settlements.
The colonists were expert seamen who explored every fjord and bay of western Greenland. Very early on, bold young men ventured far north toward the arctic ice and across the foggy and hazardous Davis Strait to the Ubygdir, the "unpeopled tracts," new lands beyond the western horizon.
During the 990s, Leif Eiriksson, son of Eirik the Red, sailed across to Baffinland, then southward in front of a northeast wind along the Labrador Coast to Newfoundland and the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River. Eiriksson wintered over in a wooded land he named Vinland, after the wild grapes that grew there, perhaps in Passamaquoddy Bay in northern Maine. The following year he and his thirty‑five men returned safely to Greenland with a full load of timber.
The Norse never settled permanently in North America. They could survive on harsh Greenland coasts as long as the climate was relatively predictable, but they lacked the numbers and resources to expand and maintain pioneer settlements far to the west, where they had to compete with large indigenous populations and sail on ice- strewn, hazardous seas. Nor were there strong motives for coloniza tion-- such as religious persecution at home, or promises of gold and fertile land to attract greedy adventurers. So the Norse voyaged west ward sporadically in search of timber, which was in short supply in Greenland.
The Greenlanders depended on the constancy of temperature swings and ice conditions from one season to the next. Even small perturbations greatly affected the abundance of food. During a cycle of slightly cooler years between 1954 and 1974, for instance, summer harp seal catches in the Gotthab area of western Greenland declined sharply. Further north, the Kapisigdlit station, situated in a sheltered fjord, saw the percentage of harp seals in the annual catch fall from 30 percent to a mere 4 percent. If even this minor cooling caused such a profound drop, we can only imagine the consequences of a more prolonged and severe cold snap on a population living close to the edge. At the same time the harp seal catch was failing, longer win ters would have required that domesticated animals be kept indoors longer in years when a shorter growing season had yielded much less hay. Colder and longer winters could also have deepened the snow cover, leading, in turn, to a dramatic reduction, even the temporary extinction, of caribou in parts of southwestern Greenland.
With their food base thus contracted, Norse fortunes declined rapidly. Malnutrition and premature deaths plagued even well-established settlements. Isolated communities became more vulnerable to attack from hostile Inuit groups. Meanwhile, the Inuit flour ished in the cooler conditions, for they had adapted to Greenland's harsh and unpredictable environment for many thousands of years. They wore layered, tailored skin clothing that allowed them to hunt in subzero temperatures. Light Inuit skin boats and kayaks were ideal for operating in ice‑strewn waters. Their harpoon technology, fash ioned from bone and ivory, was among the most sophisticated in the world, so they could hunt cold-loving ring seal and fish through the ice in the depths of winter. Unlike the Norse, they were not solely de pendent on the summer‑migrating harp seal.
Unable to hunt sea mammals in winter, and apparently reluctant to change their lifeway, the Norse succumbed to climatic stress. By 1350 they had abandoned the Gotthab settlement, perhaps after an attack by local Inuit. By 1500 the larger eastern settlement was also empty. When the ice spread farther south and endangered the most direct sailing route to the Green Land, even the most tenuous links evaporated as the bitter cold of the Little Ice Age caused major economic disruption throughout Europe.
Like the Greenlanders, Icelanders were at the mercy of sudden climatic changes. They subsisted mainly on fish and cattle, so land and sea temperatures and hay harvest yields were of vital concern. Hay grass is highly sensitive to air temperatures. Colder-than-average winters with intense frosts and deep snow cover can retard growth or even kill off the grass crop before summer. The soil may stay frozen until late spring, when a quick thaw floods the ground and kills the new grass all at once. In the exceptionally cold 1967 growing season, for example, hay production fell by one-fifth, with yields of 870 kilograms less per hectare than normal. Experts have calculated that a tempera ture deviation of one degree Celsius from the 1901-1930 norm of 3.2 degrees Celsius reduces the carrying capacity of the land by 30 percent. Despite modern farming practices, the Icelandic government still has to purchase and transport hay in cold years, at enormous expense.
Sea temperatures around Greenland and Iceland dropped precipi tously for much of the time between 1600 and 1830, decimating cod populations, another staple of the Icelandic diet. Cod flourish in wa ters between two and thirteen degrees Celsius, but their kidneys do not function in colder water. Even a minor shift in polar water causes the fish to follow warmth. The Norse had subsisted off cod during the heyday of their settlements in Greenland, but there were no stocks off Greenland during the Little Ice Age. Cod disappeared completely from the Norwegian Sea during the seventeenth century as polar water spread southward.
Iceland has exported fish since the fourteenth century, although the size of cargoes was limited until the introduction of decked ships in 1890. But the industry has always been at the mercy of cooler sea temperatures. Even with modern industrial-scale fishing, herring and cod catches rise and fall with water temperatures. One of the major reasons for Iceland's bitter confrontations with Britain in the 1960s over fishing rights was the deterioration of fish stocks around Iceland as a result of falling sea temperatures. Iceland's dependence on cod and herring has made it vulnerable to sudden climatic change and resulted in firm, even extreme, political stands on fishing rights.
Until the onset of the Little Ice Age, the Icelanders also grew a hardy strain of barley in the north, south, and southeast of their homeland. However, the farmers had abandoned barley cultivation in the north by the end of the twelfth century. By the fifteenth century, no one grew cereal crops. Despite occasional experiments, barley did not return for eight centuries.
The Little Ice Age caused great suffering in Iceland from the sev enteenth to the nineteenth century, a period during which mountain glaciers advanced, hay crops fell sharply, and thousands of cattle died of hunger and cold. In 1757 the sheriff of Salasysla in the northwest reported that "just in this year 21 cows and bulls, 1,292 sheep, 3,209 young lambs, and 151 horses have died in this one district. Forty-five people have died of hunger and wretchedness, and 15 dwellings have been deserted." He also reported poor fishing and noted that it "will be a pure miracle if a third of the population does not die of hunger." The Icelanders fished from open boats. Even when they could launch their vessels into the ice-strewn water, they could not venture far from land. In the brutally cold years from 1750 to 1758, many fisherfolk moved inland and descended on hungry farming rel atives. Nearly seventeen thousand people out of an island population of fifty thousand souls perished of hunger and associated ailments.
The start of the Little Ice Age had an immediate effect on European agriculture. Northern European vineyards went out of production between 1300 and 1310. Between 1313 and 1317, a series of exception ally wet and unusually cold summers caused widespread crop failures and famine that killed thousands of people. There were outbreaks of cannibalism, and entire villages were abandoned or their populations decimated. The wet, cool summers and disastrous harvests under mined the viability of many small farming villages. Thirty years later the Black Death savaged Europe. Many of the hardest hit were those weakened by earlier famines….”
It appears to me that people in Greenland today are quite pleased with Global Warming. During the Medieval Warming period Vikings traveled from Scandinavia to North America. Eirik persuaded twenty-five shiploads of settlers to sail for Green land in 986. They founded the village of Brattahlid in the southwest and a "Western Settlement" at Gotthab some 650 kilometers to the north. Life was never easy. The restless and adventurous Greenlanders occupied lowland areas around the inner shores of fjords, where they could pasture their stock and perhaps attempt to grow corn. All animals lived inside during the long winters, when the settlers lived off dried meat, fish, and stored dairy products. Their staple diet was seal meat, collected by the ton when harp seals migrated northward along the west coast in May and June.
The Greenland Norse always lived on the edge. Their lives de pended on making full use of seasonal migrations of harp seal and caribou to obtain winter meat supplies. During the summers, the settlers mounted polar bear and walrus hunting expeditions to Nordsetur, the "northern coast" around Disko Bay, more than eight hundred kilometers north of the main western settlements. Bearskins and walrus tusks were the only trade goods of interest to the outside world. The Greenland Norse paid their annual church tithe to distant Norway in walrus tusks. Sometimes the tithe was more than four hundred tusks, far more than they could collect around their own settlements.
The colonists were expert seamen who explored every fjord and bay of western Greenland. Very early on, bold young men ventured far north toward the arctic ice and across the foggy and hazardous Davis Strait to the Ubygdir, the "unpeopled tracts," new lands beyond the western horizon.
During the 990s, Leif Eiriksson, son of Eirik the Red, sailed across to Baffinland, then southward in front of a northeast wind along the Labrador Coast to Newfoundland and the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River. Eiriksson wintered over in a wooded land he named Vinland, after the wild grapes that grew there, perhaps in Passamaquoddy Bay in northern Maine. The following year he and his thirty‑five men returned safely to Greenland with a full load of timber.
The Norse never settled permanently in North America. They could survive on harsh Greenland coasts as long as the climate was relatively predictable, but they lacked the numbers and resources to expand and maintain pioneer settlements far to the west, where they had to compete with large indigenous populations and sail on ice- strewn, hazardous seas. Nor were there strong motives for coloniza tion-- such as religious persecution at home, or promises of gold and fertile land to attract greedy adventurers. So the Norse voyaged west ward sporadically in search of timber, which was in short supply in Greenland.
The Greenlanders depended on the constancy of temperature swings and ice conditions from one season to the next. Even small perturbations greatly affected the abundance of food. During a cycle of slightly cooler years between 1954 and 1974, for instance, summer harp seal catches in the Gotthab area of western Greenland declined sharply. Further north, the Kapisigdlit station, situated in a sheltered fjord, saw the percentage of harp seals in the annual catch fall from 30 percent to a mere 4 percent. If even this minor cooling caused such a profound drop, we can only imagine the consequences of a more prolonged and severe cold snap on a population living close to the edge. At the same time the harp seal catch was failing, longer win ters would have required that domesticated animals be kept indoors longer in years when a shorter growing season had yielded much less hay. Colder and longer winters could also have deepened the snow cover, leading, in turn, to a dramatic reduction, even the temporary extinction, of caribou in parts of southwestern Greenland.
With their food base thus contracted, Norse fortunes declined rapidly. Malnutrition and premature deaths plagued even well-established settlements. Isolated communities became more vulnerable to attack from hostile Inuit groups. Meanwhile, the Inuit flour ished in the cooler conditions, for they had adapted to Greenland's harsh and unpredictable environment for many thousands of years. They wore layered, tailored skin clothing that allowed them to hunt in subzero temperatures. Light Inuit skin boats and kayaks were ideal for operating in ice‑strewn waters. Their harpoon technology, fash ioned from bone and ivory, was among the most sophisticated in the world, so they could hunt cold-loving ring seal and fish through the ice in the depths of winter. Unlike the Norse, they were not solely de pendent on the summer‑migrating harp seal.
Unable to hunt sea mammals in winter, and apparently reluctant to change their lifeway, the Norse succumbed to climatic stress. By 1350 they had abandoned the Gotthab settlement, perhaps after an attack by local Inuit. By 1500 the larger eastern settlement was also empty. When the ice spread farther south and endangered the most direct sailing route to the Green Land, even the most tenuous links evaporated as the bitter cold of the Little Ice Age caused major economic disruption throughout Europe.
Like the Greenlanders, Icelanders were at the mercy of sudden climatic changes. They subsisted mainly on fish and cattle, so land and sea temperatures and hay harvest yields were of vital concern. Hay grass is highly sensitive to air temperatures. Colder-than-average winters with intense frosts and deep snow cover can retard growth or even kill off the grass crop before summer. The soil may stay frozen until late spring, when a quick thaw floods the ground and kills the new grass all at once. In the exceptionally cold 1967 growing season, for example, hay production fell by one-fifth, with yields of 870 kilograms less per hectare than normal. Experts have calculated that a tempera ture deviation of one degree Celsius from the 1901-1930 norm of 3.2 degrees Celsius reduces the carrying capacity of the land by 30 percent. Despite modern farming practices, the Icelandic government still has to purchase and transport hay in cold years, at enormous expense.
Sea temperatures around Greenland and Iceland dropped precipi tously for much of the time between 1600 and 1830, decimating cod populations, another staple of the Icelandic diet. Cod flourish in wa ters between two and thirteen degrees Celsius, but their kidneys do not function in colder water. Even a minor shift in polar water causes the fish to follow warmth. The Norse had subsisted off cod during the heyday of their settlements in Greenland, but there were no stocks off Greenland during the Little Ice Age. Cod disappeared completely from the Norwegian Sea during the seventeenth century as polar water spread southward.
Iceland has exported fish since the fourteenth century, although the size of cargoes was limited until the introduction of decked ships in 1890. But the industry has always been at the mercy of cooler sea temperatures. Even with modern industrial-scale fishing, herring and cod catches rise and fall with water temperatures. One of the major reasons for Iceland's bitter confrontations with Britain in the 1960s over fishing rights was the deterioration of fish stocks around Iceland as a result of falling sea temperatures. Iceland's dependence on cod and herring has made it vulnerable to sudden climatic change and resulted in firm, even extreme, political stands on fishing rights.
Until the onset of the Little Ice Age, the Icelanders also grew a hardy strain of barley in the north, south, and southeast of their homeland. However, the farmers had abandoned barley cultivation in the north by the end of the twelfth century. By the fifteenth century, no one grew cereal crops. Despite occasional experiments, barley did not return for eight centuries.
The Little Ice Age caused great suffering in Iceland from the sev enteenth to the nineteenth century, a period during which mountain glaciers advanced, hay crops fell sharply, and thousands of cattle died of hunger and cold. In 1757 the sheriff of Salasysla in the northwest reported that "just in this year 21 cows and bulls, 1,292 sheep, 3,209 young lambs, and 151 horses have died in this one district. Forty-five people have died of hunger and wretchedness, and 15 dwellings have been deserted." He also reported poor fishing and noted that it "will be a pure miracle if a third of the population does not die of hunger." The Icelanders fished from open boats. Even when they could launch their vessels into the ice-strewn water, they could not venture far from land. In the brutally cold years from 1750 to 1758, many fisherfolk moved inland and descended on hungry farming rel atives. Nearly seventeen thousand people out of an island population of fifty thousand souls perished of hunger and associated ailments.
The start of the Little Ice Age had an immediate effect on European agriculture. Northern European vineyards went out of production between 1300 and 1310. Between 1313 and 1317, a series of exception ally wet and unusually cold summers caused widespread crop failures and famine that killed thousands of people. There were outbreaks of cannibalism, and entire villages were abandoned or their populations decimated. The wet, cool summers and disastrous harvests under mined the viability of many small farming villages. Thirty years later the Black Death savaged Europe. Many of the hardest hit were those weakened by earlier famines….”
Their age of exploration came to an abrupt end with the advent of the Little Ice Age in Europe. What was the Little Ice Age? Climatologists can give all the excuses they want for the causes of the Little Ice Age but one thing is certain. It was a period of increased volcanic activity.
“…Throughout the Little Ice Age, the world also experienced heightened volcanic activity.[25] When a volcano erupts, its ash reaches high into the atmosphere and can spread to cover the whole of Earth. This ash cloud blocks out some of the incoming solar radiation, leading to worldwide cooling that can last up to two years after an eruption. Also emitted by eruptions is sulfur in the form of SO2 gas. When this gas reaches the stratosphere, it turns into sulfuric acid particles, which reflect the sun's rays, further reducing the amount of radiation reaching Earth's surface. The 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia blanketed the atmosphere with ash; the following year, 1816, came to be known as the Year Without A Summer, when frost and snow were reported in June and July in both New England and Northern Europe….”
There is also a link between decreased solar activity and the Little Ice Age.
“…During the period 1645–1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. The physical link between low sunspot activity and cooling temperatures has not been established, but the coincidence of the Maunder Minimum with the deepest trough of the Little Ice Age is suggestive of such a connection.[23] The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period near the beginning of the Little Ice Age. Other indicators of low solar activity during this period are levels of the isotopes carbon-14 and beryllium-10….”
Based on what I know about history I am one of those who hold with the theory that we are still recovering from the Little Ice Age.
“…Beginning around 1850, the climate began warming and the Little Ice Age ended. Some global warming critics believe that Earth's climate is still recovering from the Little Ice Age and that human activity is not the decisive factor in present temperature trends,[26][27] but this idea is not widely accepted. Instead, mainstream scientific opinion on climate change is that warming over the last 50 years is caused primarily by the increased proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere caused by human activity. There is less agreement over the warming from 1850 to 1950….”
“…Dr. Akasofu, the founder of the International Arctic Research Center and a giant in Arctic research since his discovery in 1964 of the origin of storms in the aurora borealis, postulates a startlingly straightforward explanation of the warming Earth has seen in the 20th century. The long slow climb out of the Little Ice Age, he states, is typically thought to have ended in 1900. Chances are good that it didn't. "The Earth may still be recovering from the Little Ice Age," he says, pointing to the consistent rate of warming over the centuries. Although Dr. Akasofu thinks a continuation of the Little Ice Age can explain the 20th-century warming, he believes other explanations may also be valid. Any explanation, however, would point to a natural process, and not manmade CO2. The evidence for this lies in the Arctic, which magnifies temperature fluctuations seen at lower latitudes, highlighting temperature changes that might otherwise seem unremarkable. Arctic data, for example, shows a very large rise and then fall in temperature between 1910 and 1975, while the global average data shows this fluctuation as more a minor blip, peaking at 1940. A second temperature fluctuation involves a rise after 1975….”
The volcanic connection
“…The Little Ice Age witnessed remarkable volcanic activity: an aver age of five major eruptions per century that equaled the intensity of the Krakatoa eruption in 1883. Such episodes inject massive quanti ties of microparticles and gases into the atmosphere, causing massive dust veils that dim the moon and sun and affect global temperatures. The ash content of a central Greenland ice core shows that the years of the Medieval Warm Period between 1100 to 1250 were quiet volcanically. Between 1250 and 1500 and between 1550 and 1700, how ever, there were many eruptions, including a massive one in 1600 at an unknown location. Many scientists are sure that volcanic activity produced brief climatic extremes during the five cold centuries. They know the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 low ered the world's average temperature by about one degree for two years. They also point to 1816, "the year without a summer," as proof of the power of volcanic activity.
Between April and June 1815, Mount Tambora, a volcano on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia, erupted massively. The explosion was heard in Sumatra, sixteen hundred kilometers away. Only twenty-six of the island's twelve thousand people survived. Ash clouds fell in Java, over five hundred kilometers away. Tambora was the largest volcanic eruption in modern times. The exploding volcano pumped into the atmosphere ten times the amount of ash produced by the notorious Krakatoa. Huge quantities of dust and sul phur dioxide produced a reverse greenhouse effect, forming in effect a sunscreen around the earth. Europe and North America shivered in 1816. Glaciers in the European Alps advanced vigorously. Snow fell in New England in June and July, crops failed throughout Europe, and famine was widespread. The raw summer weather caused the vacationing English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary to stay indoors during their holiday on the shores of Lake Geneva. They entertained their friends by telling horror stories. Mary dazzled her audience with one called Frankenstein, about a monster that perishes with its creator in the frozen arctic.
Perhaps a dimmer sun and intense volcanic activity were players in the Little Ice Age equation. Whatever its cause, the five centuries of cooler weather brought profound changes in European history….”
Between April and June 1815, Mount Tambora, a volcano on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia, erupted massively. The explosion was heard in Sumatra, sixteen hundred kilometers away. Only twenty-six of the island's twelve thousand people survived. Ash clouds fell in Java, over five hundred kilometers away. Tambora was the largest volcanic eruption in modern times. The exploding volcano pumped into the atmosphere ten times the amount of ash produced by the notorious Krakatoa. Huge quantities of dust and sul phur dioxide produced a reverse greenhouse effect, forming in effect a sunscreen around the earth. Europe and North America shivered in 1816. Glaciers in the European Alps advanced vigorously. Snow fell in New England in June and July, crops failed throughout Europe, and famine was widespread. The raw summer weather caused the vacationing English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary to stay indoors during their holiday on the shores of Lake Geneva. They entertained their friends by telling horror stories. Mary dazzled her audience with one called Frankenstein, about a monster that perishes with its creator in the frozen arctic.
Perhaps a dimmer sun and intense volcanic activity were players in the Little Ice Age equation. Whatever its cause, the five centuries of cooler weather brought profound changes in European history….”
Brian Fagan, in his classic study of El Nino noted a cyclical history of climatic changes, often based on El Nino.
“…As Maya civilization collapsed in A.D. 900 and the Anasazi suffered through the great drought of the twelfth century, Europe enjoyed five and a half centuries of warmer temperatures and ample rainfall, commonly called the Medieval Warm Period. Average temperatures in the British Isles between 1140 and 1300 were up to 0.8 degrees C higher than those of 1900 to 1950. Only today are some summer temperatures reaching Medieval Warm Period levels.
Greenland ice sheets tell us there was a burst of warmer weather the far north between A.D. 600 and 650, followed by a more pr longed warm period that began about 800 and climaxed between 1150 and 1300. Norwegian farmers grew wheat north of Trondheim at an unprecedented sixty-four degrees north. English vintners planted grapes as far north as Herefordshire in western England at altitude of 200 meters above sea level. Landowners in the Lammermuir Hills of southeastern Scotland grew crops at 425 meters above sea level, during a golden age of Scottish history when interclan war fare was virtually unheard of. A burst of cathedral building spread across Medieval Europe in the twelfth century. Chartres Cathedral, built in a mere quarter-century after 1195, is a miracle in glass and stone, where ten thousand worshipers from the surrounding country side once gathered on festival days to pour out their love for God. Chartres and its contemporaries, were celebrations of the bounty of the soil, of generations of prosperity.
These were the climatically benign centuries when the Norse colo nized Greenland and voyaged west to North America, William the Conqueror landed in Britain and imposed Norman rule, and Inca civilization rose to prominence in the high Andes. Warmer tempera tures and higher sea levels affected New Zealand and the southwest Pacific, perhaps stimulating widespread Polynesian voyaging. It may be no coincidence that canoe travelers from the Society Islands set tled New Zealand's North Island during this period, although the ex act date of first settlement is unknown.
But the climate became more erratic during the thirteenth century. Alpine glaciers began to advance, and seasonal temperature changes became more extreme. As Arctic regions cooled, the thermal con trast between the Greenland‑Iceland region and middle Atlantic lati tudes steepened, causing greater storminess. Great westerly gales conspired with the prevailing high sea levels to cause vast destruc tion. Powerful wind storms and surging sea floods inundated low- lying North Sea coasts, drowning hundreds of thousands of people in some of the worst weather disasters ever recorded. The floods of 1240 and 1362 saw over sixty parishes in southern Denmark's dio cese of Slesvig "swallowed by the salt sea." To add to the difficulties, tidal ranges increased after 1300, reaching a peak in 1400.
The Little Ice Age had begun….”
Greenland ice sheets tell us there was a burst of warmer weather the far north between A.D. 600 and 650, followed by a more pr longed warm period that began about 800 and climaxed between 1150 and 1300. Norwegian farmers grew wheat north of Trondheim at an unprecedented sixty-four degrees north. English vintners planted grapes as far north as Herefordshire in western England at altitude of 200 meters above sea level. Landowners in the Lammermuir Hills of southeastern Scotland grew crops at 425 meters above sea level, during a golden age of Scottish history when interclan war fare was virtually unheard of. A burst of cathedral building spread across Medieval Europe in the twelfth century. Chartres Cathedral, built in a mere quarter-century after 1195, is a miracle in glass and stone, where ten thousand worshipers from the surrounding country side once gathered on festival days to pour out their love for God. Chartres and its contemporaries, were celebrations of the bounty of the soil, of generations of prosperity.
These were the climatically benign centuries when the Norse colo nized Greenland and voyaged west to North America, William the Conqueror landed in Britain and imposed Norman rule, and Inca civilization rose to prominence in the high Andes. Warmer tempera tures and higher sea levels affected New Zealand and the southwest Pacific, perhaps stimulating widespread Polynesian voyaging. It may be no coincidence that canoe travelers from the Society Islands set tled New Zealand's North Island during this period, although the ex act date of first settlement is unknown.
But the climate became more erratic during the thirteenth century. Alpine glaciers began to advance, and seasonal temperature changes became more extreme. As Arctic regions cooled, the thermal con trast between the Greenland‑Iceland region and middle Atlantic lati tudes steepened, causing greater storminess. Great westerly gales conspired with the prevailing high sea levels to cause vast destruc tion. Powerful wind storms and surging sea floods inundated low- lying North Sea coasts, drowning hundreds of thousands of people in some of the worst weather disasters ever recorded. The floods of 1240 and 1362 saw over sixty parishes in southern Denmark's dio cese of Slesvig "swallowed by the salt sea." To add to the difficulties, tidal ranges increased after 1300, reaching a peak in 1400.
The Little Ice Age had begun….”
CLIMATE DURING ROMAN EMPIRE
During the Roman Empire the climate was a bit warmer than it is now, to the point where the “Alps” were green! The Liberty Corner has an excellent scientific breakdown of climate and population growth.
Climate during the Roman Empire. Bottom line is it was warmer than things are today!
“…The width of Californian tree-rings reflects the comparative vigour of their growth, and thus, by implication, the variations of climatic conditions. Their pattern correlates well with the known temperatures of historical times, as well as the much longer record of solar radiation; the peak marking the medieval warm period is particularly apparent. It is clear that the beginning of the Roman empire coincided with a peak in temperature similar to that centred upon AD ~ 200. Despite the problems of converting evidence of temperature into weather and climate, it seems reasonable to accept that the known advantages for agriculture and settlement which occurred in the medieval optimum may also have operated in the early Roman empire. Indeed, Denton and Karlen concluded that: 'Extended into the future, the Holocene pattern of climatic change implies that the Little Ice Age, if it is not already over, will be succeeded by a climate regime similar to that of the Roman Empire and Middle Ages'.
The records of the effects of the Little Ice Age are well recorded. During the peak in temperature around AD 200, the effects on agriculture in England were dramatic; vines grew in many parts of England, and fields extended well above the altitude reached by post-medieval cultivation. The population rose, and settlement extended to many marginal lands, only to be deserted in later centuries. During the Little Ice Age, the Thames froze regularly enough for fairs to be held on the ice. A study of Le Roy Ladurie's carefully collected documentary data on wine production in France has demonstrated a statistical correlation between the early date of harvests, high yields, and good wine vintage. A period of relatively favourable results recorded b these indicators occurred between AD 1500 and 1600, at which time a small peak appears clearly in the records of both tree-ring growth and solar radiation. It has sometimes been con cluded that because Roman conditions were not unlike those of today, the subject does not require much attention; this attitude obscures the vital fact that our own century has been warmer than any period since the thirteenth century AD. In fact, Roman conditions implied by the long, large peals on the graphs must have been especially favourable to agriculture, particularly m the north-western provinces of the empire.
Although it may be possible to establish a general outline of past climate, it should noe be forgotten that an outline obscures detailed fluctuations, which can only be measured accurately in recent historical periods. The winter of 1984-85 caused severe damage to olive and citrus fruit trees around the Mediterranean and in America; one such winter in the middle of a generally warm phase of the Roman period would not be detectable without lrterary evidence, but could have had severe effects upon areas like southern Spain where olive oil was produced intensively. Furthermore, temperatures have complex effects on weather and patterns of rainfall; only a few degrees difference are required to produce dramatic results….
1. On the evidence of global temperature indicators, the period from c. 500 BC-AD 500 included a peak in clement conditions similar to the experienced in Britain around AD 1200….”
The records of the effects of the Little Ice Age are well recorded. During the peak in temperature around AD 200, the effects on agriculture in England were dramatic; vines grew in many parts of England, and fields extended well above the altitude reached by post-medieval cultivation. The population rose, and settlement extended to many marginal lands, only to be deserted in later centuries. During the Little Ice Age, the Thames froze regularly enough for fairs to be held on the ice. A study of Le Roy Ladurie's carefully collected documentary data on wine production in France has demonstrated a statistical correlation between the early date of harvests, high yields, and good wine vintage. A period of relatively favourable results recorded b these indicators occurred between AD 1500 and 1600, at which time a small peak appears clearly in the records of both tree-ring growth and solar radiation. It has sometimes been con cluded that because Roman conditions were not unlike those of today, the subject does not require much attention; this attitude obscures the vital fact that our own century has been warmer than any period since the thirteenth century AD. In fact, Roman conditions implied by the long, large peals on the graphs must have been especially favourable to agriculture, particularly m the north-western provinces of the empire.
Although it may be possible to establish a general outline of past climate, it should noe be forgotten that an outline obscures detailed fluctuations, which can only be measured accurately in recent historical periods. The winter of 1984-85 caused severe damage to olive and citrus fruit trees around the Mediterranean and in America; one such winter in the middle of a generally warm phase of the Roman period would not be detectable without lrterary evidence, but could have had severe effects upon areas like southern Spain where olive oil was produced intensively. Furthermore, temperatures have complex effects on weather and patterns of rainfall; only a few degrees difference are required to produce dramatic results….
1. On the evidence of global temperature indicators, the period from c. 500 BC-AD 500 included a peak in clement conditions similar to the experienced in Britain around AD 1200….”
The warmth of the Roman era came to an end that is an ironic coincidence with the “fall of the Roman Empire”. There is at least a metaphorical coincidence with La Morte d’Arthur, that may have been actual. The bottom line is Why? Keys speculates on several scenarios, all of which PROVE, global warming, historically, is a farce.
“…David Keys, Catastrophe. Arrow, 2000. ISBN: 0099409844. (In 536AD, a volcanic eruption meant our planet was enveloped by a cloak of lethal dust which changed the climate for decades. The sun's rays grew dim and total darkness reigned for days. It was a catastrophe of unparalleled proportions. Tens of millions of people died around the globe as a bubonic plague epidemic broke out. There followed waves of migration and the military, political and religious changes which the disaster set in motion re-ordered society throughout the world: the collapse of the Roman Empire, the invasion of the barbarian hordes and the rise of apocalypse-inspired Islam. It was the nearest humankind has ever come to Doomsday and it marked the real beginning of the modern era. The author sets the record straight by placing the pivotal point in world history as the mid-6th-century Dark Ages and shows how our fragile civilisation almost ended.)
535AD: Documentary screened by SBS TV in Australia on 14 January 2001. Two-part documentary: A British researcher becomes fascinated by tree-ring evidence of dramatic climatic change between 535-542AD and tries to find explanations. He rejects scenarios such as comets or asteroid bombardment, and coms up with a view on a massive eruption that produces enough volcanic ash to pollute the entire globe's atmosphere for decades and from which natural systems took over a century to recover. Other interesting events are occurring worldwide, simultaneously, and he tries to find causal connections. They range from other climatic disasters (floods, droughts, the abandonment of a major city in the Central Mexican plains etc.), to the collapse of the remains of the Roman empire and the overrunning of Europe by barbarians. This also coincided with an outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe that was introduced to Britain via contact of Western Britons with merchant mariners. The eastern Anglo-Saxons (who were dealing mainly with Northern Europe and Scandinavia) were not as affected and were able to finally conquer the last of the Gaelic Britons. (Does the death of King Arthur stem from this time?) Also, literary evidence and legends refers to darkness, cold, winter, almost-apocalypse. This series of events (which could be closely linked) overturned the 'old-world', the ancient world, and provided a transition to the forerunner of the modern world we now have. The researcher's explanations did appear plausible. He threw some religion in here too - for instance, the ancestors of Mohammed moved from Yemen (then the richest, most fertile part of the Arabian peninsula) where the Marib Dam was fatally breached and not repaired again - hence drought and fleeing of the population - to the area around Mecca. Later with Mohammed came the emergence of Islam. The timing of this coincides with the other events. One conclusion: The ability of natural forces to change the courses of history needs more attention from historians. Submitted by Brian Bailey in January 2001….”
535AD: Documentary screened by SBS TV in Australia on 14 January 2001. Two-part documentary: A British researcher becomes fascinated by tree-ring evidence of dramatic climatic change between 535-542AD and tries to find explanations. He rejects scenarios such as comets or asteroid bombardment, and coms up with a view on a massive eruption that produces enough volcanic ash to pollute the entire globe's atmosphere for decades and from which natural systems took over a century to recover. Other interesting events are occurring worldwide, simultaneously, and he tries to find causal connections. They range from other climatic disasters (floods, droughts, the abandonment of a major city in the Central Mexican plains etc.), to the collapse of the remains of the Roman empire and the overrunning of Europe by barbarians. This also coincided with an outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe that was introduced to Britain via contact of Western Britons with merchant mariners. The eastern Anglo-Saxons (who were dealing mainly with Northern Europe and Scandinavia) were not as affected and were able to finally conquer the last of the Gaelic Britons. (Does the death of King Arthur stem from this time?) Also, literary evidence and legends refers to darkness, cold, winter, almost-apocalypse. This series of events (which could be closely linked) overturned the 'old-world', the ancient world, and provided a transition to the forerunner of the modern world we now have. The researcher's explanations did appear plausible. He threw some religion in here too - for instance, the ancestors of Mohammed moved from Yemen (then the richest, most fertile part of the Arabian peninsula) where the Marib Dam was fatally breached and not repaired again - hence drought and fleeing of the population - to the area around Mecca. Later with Mohammed came the emergence of Islam. The timing of this coincides with the other events. One conclusion: The ability of natural forces to change the courses of history needs more attention from historians. Submitted by Brian Bailey in January 2001….”
And there is more.
Trackposted to Perri Nelson's Website, third world county, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, DragonLady's World, Pirate's Cove, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Big Dog's Weblog, Adeline and Hazel, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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