(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)
Objection: When the Vikings settled it, Greenland was a lovely, hospitable island, not the frozen wasteland it is today. It was not until the Little Ice Age that it got so cold they abandoned it.
Answer: First, Greenland is part of a single region. It can not be necessarily taken to represent a global climate shift. See the post on the Medieval Warm Period for a global perspective on this time period. Briefly, the available proxy evidence indicates that global warmth during this period was not particularly pronounced, though some regions may have experienced greater warming than others.
Second, a quick reality check shows that Greenland's ice cap is hundreds of thousands of years old and covers over 80% of the island. The vast majority of land not under the ice sheet is rock and permafrost in the far north. How different could it have been just 1,000 years ago?
Below is a brief account of the Viking settlement, based on Jared Diamond's "Collapse".
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.)
Instead of hunting whales in kayaks, they farmed cattle, goats, and sheep -- despite having to keep them in a barn 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a full 5 months out of the year. It was a constant challenge to get enough fodder for the winter. Starvation of the animals was frequent, emaciation routine. Grazing requirements and growing fodder for the winter led to over-production of pastures, erosion, and the need to go further and further afield to sustain the animals. Deforestation for pastures and firewood proceeded at unsustainable rates. After a couple of centuries, it led to such desperate measures as cutting precious sod for housing construction and even burning it for cooking and heating fuel.
When finally confronted with several severe winters in a row, they, along with the little remaining livestock, simply starved before spring arrived.
The moral of the story for the climate controversy? Much as you can not judge a book by its cover, you can't judge the climate of Greenland by its name.
A bit of related trivia, and further indication of the Vikings' stubborn reluctance to learn from the Inuit: there is no evidence of any trade whatsoever, despite centuries of cohabitation. In fact, the first of only three Norse accounts of encounters with the natives refers to them as "skraelings" (wretches), and describes matter of factly how strangely they bleed when stabbed. How's that for diplomacy?
See also the entry on Vineland if it happens to come up.
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Delay And Deny Posted 8:27 pm
16 Dec 2006
Grist continues to belittle and suppress the diversity of opinion about Global Warming.
For myself, my position has always be "great, it's too cold on this planet". I think that we've been in an Ice Age too long, for the whole 10,000 of recorded civilization, and that warmer weather worldwide will be a boon.
And if we increase our population to 9 Billion, we'll need more land and more fertile ground to plant.
See -- why is it that one the hand, all you eco-spiritualists talk about Gaia and the intelligence of the Earth and then on the other hand you talk as if nature is a retard that needs to be coaxed and educated every step of the way...as if there is no balance at all!
Mabye Global Warming is exactly what is needed right now...and maybe it wasn't like when it was in the days of the Vikings...but guess what --- there's no Vikings!
See, that's another thing. You people completely deny the very design of 21st Century human living. You assume that it should all "go away" instead of trying to figure out how to propel civilization forward. You'd do more to help a polar bear than you would a 10 year old human child.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.
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Coby Beck Posted 2:23 pm
17 Dec 2006
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/whats-wrong-wit...
which will be republished here shortly.
Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!
-- Anonymous
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caniscandida Posted 5:46 pm
17 Dec 2006
As I remember him saying, before they finally either departed or died, in the 14th or 15th century, the Orders of the Catholic "priests" were no longer valid, since there had been no contact with a European bishop for a very long time. Also, at the end, these priests celebrated the Eucharist using as the material objects to be consecrated not the canonical bread and wine, which of course were unavailable, but whale blubber and water.
That detail about blubber would suggest that at some point, they got the idea to go whaling, whether on their own initiative or influenced by the Greenland Inuit.
Scandinavians had been hunting whales in Arctic waters for some time, anyway. Medieval narwhal tusks are preserved in a number of museums; of course, they were originally identified and marketed as "unicorn horns."
In general, it strikes me as very very odd, that descendants of Scandinavians should not have wanted to go fishing. "A bit of a mystery to this day" indeed! The High Middle Ages was the period when the Basques and Portuguese especially, along with other Europeans, were developing the cod fishery in the northwest Atlantic.
My guess is, first, for one reason or another, there were difficulties or misunderstandings between the Greenlanders and the Greenland Inuit, so that the former were turned in upon themselves, futilely; then, the destruction of the few trees in Greenland, with which they might build ships, effectively stranded them there.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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wiscidea Posted 5:50 am
18 Dec 2006
Anyway... apparently the Greenland Vikings also focused on exporting furs to Europe and importing luxury goods for the upper class and their churches when they should have been focusing on securing shelter and food for the long winter. I just wish I could hear what the Inuit were thinking as they watched the Vikings sentence themselves to death.
Oh... and the fish. It is a mystery. But the Vikings also had a strong preference for -- I think -- beef. Jared Diamond covers this. They insisted on trying to raise cattle, which were far less suitable for Greenland and more demanding, than sheep or goat for food. And they ate the local fauna only as a last resort. They apparently viewed themselves far too superior to consume peasant food, even if it might have kept them alive.
I think there is a lesson here, but I doubt the majority of people alive today are interested in learning from the mistakes of those who lived before us.
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jjwfmme Posted 1:33 am
19 Dec 2006
http://www.pkarchive.org/column/080803.html
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Ivriniel Posted 5:58 am
24 Feb 2007
Seal bones were definately found, with the poorest people eating mostly seal. This is probably the source of your blubber. (I mean, the blubber mentioned in the book, not any personal blubber you may or may not have. ;) ). These seal were hunted from the rocks though, not from the sea.
The Norse diet seems to have been mostly a yogurt-like product produced from sheep and cow milk, and meat.
Also as far as wood goes, metal was a far bigger limiting factor. The Norse obtained iron from bog iron, which is a poor source requiring a lot of smelting to get small quantities of usable metal. At one point a medieval chronicler reports people in Iceland being shocked by a boat from Greenland that arrived at their port. The boat didn't have any nails..It was entirely held together with wooden pegs. It's believed that the Norse could obtain plenty of wood from nearby "Markland." As long as they had 1 working ship, they could obtain more wood.
In any case, for more on the Greenland Norse, I would suggest that you read the full chapter (if not the whole book) in Colapse by Jared Diamond. It's fascinating.
Ivriniel
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Paul Wagner Posted 9:29 am
18 Jun 2007
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Douga179 Posted 5:38 am
12 Jul 2007
You've obviously not read much about fertile ground and the effect that human activity has on farm land. The way we live and consume is having a direct impact on the climate. Here are couple of facts about one small aspect of human activity - the beef industry - for you to chew on:
Cause of global warming: greenhouse effect
Primary cause of greenhouse effect: carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels
Fossil fuels needed to produce meat-centered diet vs. a meat-free diet: 3 times more
Percentage of U.S. topsoil lost to date: 75
Percentage of U.S. topsoil loss directly related to livestock raising: 85
Number of acres of U.S. forest cleared for cropland to produce meat-centered diet: 260 million
Amount of meat imported to U.S. annually from Central and South America: 300,000,000 pounds
Percentage of Central American children under the age of five who are undernourished: 75
Area of tropical rainforest consumed in every quarter-pound of rainforest beef: 55 square feet
Current rate of species extinction due to destruction of tropical rainforests for meat grazing and other uses: 1,000 per year
There are literally thousands of articles and sites that support these facts:
http://www.ipcc.ch/
http://www.realclimate.org/
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//004469.html
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/ch ...
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//001900.html
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006967.html
I could quote study after peer reviewed study that says warmer global temperatures are extremely bad for our future as a species. But if you want to ignore the facts go right ahead - but like many others out there we aren't just interested in saving the polar bears - I for one am interested in ensuring my children (one of whom is ten) will have a habitable planet to raise his children on in 20 years time.
Besides your view isn't an "opinion". Saying global warming is good for the planet is about as dumb as saying the world is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. Wake up and smell the planet burning. If you truly want to help 10 year old children, get out there and make a difference:
http://wip.warnerbros.com/11thhour/
http://www.liveearth.org/news.php
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Douga179 Posted 5:39 am
12 Jul 2007
Cause of global warming: greenhouse effect
Primary cause of greenhouse effect: carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels
Fossil fuels needed to produce meat-centered diet vs. a meat-free diet: 3 times more
Percentage of U.S. topsoil lost to date: 75
Percentage of U.S. topsoil loss directly related to livestock raising: 85
Number of acres of U.S. forest cleared for cropland to produce meat-centered diet: 260 million
Amount of meat imported to U.S. annually from Central and South America: 300,000,000 pounds
Percentage of Central American children under the age of five who are undernourished: 75
Area of tropical rainforest consumed in every quarter-pound of rainforest beef: 55 square feet
Current rate of species extinction due to destruction of tropical rainforests for meat grazing and other uses: 1,000 per year
There are literally thousands of articles and sites that support these facts:
http://www.ipcc.ch/
http://www.realclimate.org/
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//004469.html
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/ch ...
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//001900.html
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006967.html
I could quote study after peer reviewed study that says warmer global temperatures are extremely bad for our future as a species. But if you want to ignore the facts go right ahead - but like many others out there we aren't just interested in saving the polar bears - I for one am interested in ensuring my children (one of whom is ten) will have a habitable planet to raise his children on in 20 years time.
Besides your view isn't an "opinion". Saying global warming is good for the planet is about as dumb as saying the world is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. Wake up and smell the planet burning. If you truly want to help 10 year old children, get out there and make a difference:
http://wip.warnerbros.com/11thhour/
http://www.liveearth.org/news.php
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Sarit Posted 7:22 am
08 Nov 2007
If you read the Omnivore's Dilemma, it talks about a new way of raising cattle/pigs/chickens that involves aggressively rotating different animals through a pasture in specific orders to promote soil enrichment. Over time the topsoil layer actually gets thicker. Since these cows are grass fed not corn fed the only fossil fuels used are those used to in providing electricity to their electrical moving fence (which could be powered by non-fossil fuel based ways) (FYI, corn is a fossil fuel intensive crop).
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Goodpoint Posted 3:20 pm
28 Jan 2008
http://www.thelostsquadron.com/.
Apparently Greenland's ice cap had grown 268 feet between 1942 and 1992!!! That's over 5 feet/year average.
So, it would be reasonable to say that Greenland was probably quite different 1,000 years ago.
What truly "inconvenient truths" we can discover by simply asking questions and not going along with the "sky is falling" clique.
D N Jones
Always think.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 4:22 pm
28 Jan 2008
Uh-huh, and, pray tell, what happened after 1992? Ya know, that bein' 'bout 16 years ago and all?
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Goodpoint Posted 3:52 am
29 Jan 2008
The answer to that is: 1000 years ago, the ice cap was significantly smaller than it is today.
And to answer you question, the ice has gained only about 20 feet since 1992. 'cause the planets warmin' up, dontcha know?!?
D N Jones
Always think.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 4:05 am
30 Jan 2008
Then the rate of growth has slowed. If the growth rate as a whole is a natural occurance (as ya seem to suggest), then don't ya think the slow-down in growth could be contributed to climate change? * rolls eyes *
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Goodpoint Posted 7:33 am
30 Jan 2008
But, I think we're being incredibly arrogant to think mankind could have such a major effect on our big ol' planet.
This whole debate is so polarizing. Both sides think the other is a step under grasshoppers in the intelligence department...
And these arguments from the Suzuki/Gore side: They're just as lame as the ones from the other side that did "the Great Global Warming Swindle".
Do your own research on the topic. Avoid information from biased sources on both sides.
Gore/Suzuki/"Climate Change Scientists" are making the fight against climate change into a multi billion dollar industry. They get paid for backing their side of the debate just like the other side has scientists and other "experts" being paid by Big Oil and other energy interests.
So check out sources that have nothing to lose either way.
The government of Switzerland has been keeping records of their glaciers as far back as the 1600's when towns started getting wiped out as the glaciers advanced. (And, they ARE receding just as fast NOW as they advanced THEN.)
Articles like the one on "the Missing Squadron" show how quickly ice can form. (So, how long has Greenland really been ice covered??? Maybe only 200 years) And again, these guys who dug down to find those planes wouldn't lie about the depth they found them at. They have nothing to lose in the global warming debate.
There are so many examples...
Just do a little research, I think you'll see this is a natural unstoppable cycle and we are going to have to act quickly to prepare for the coming changes or we're going to be as screwed as the polar bears.
D N Jones
Always think.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 7:40 am
30 Jan 2008
On the issue of global climate change, most here will tell ya that it's both a combination of human and natural factors, but that the human factors have tipped it to a point where it's happenin' much faster than it should naturally occur.
Yes, the planet is quite large, but that doesn't mean that we don't have much of an impact on it. Despite this planet's large size, more than half of it's landmass has now been altered or modified for a variety of human uses, and alone has altered our environment and our climate in massive ways.
Though nature is force that trumps and beats all, that doesn't mean that we still can't screw it up.
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cce Posted 3:08 pm
14 Mar 2008
We know the Greenland Ice Sheet is at least 125,000 years old because that is the age of the oldest core. These are drilled from "domes" that are in the center of the ice sheet(ie not at an incline) and thus hardly move at all.
FWIW, the planes landed on the south-eastern edge of Greenland, which just happens to be the spot where Greenland is losing the most ice.
The crash site is shown here:
http://p38assn.org/images/p38s/gg/greenland.jpg
And this shows the Greenland mass balance from GRACE
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/160991main_mass_trend_ ...
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Ilf Posted 5:33 am
10 May 2008
This is simply not plausible. For starters, that people coming from Iceland and Norway, countries with a strong fish-eating tradition, should abandon this tradition out of some fancied cultural superiority over the local inhabitants is intrinsically completely improbable. For one thing, they appear to have had very little contact with the Inuit in the early years. Another point that I haven't seen mentioned is that these people appear to have been devout Christians: what are they supposed to have eaten on Fridays and during Lent and Advent? It is just not credible that they would have disobeyed the injunction to fast, and for Christians everywhere fasting meant eating fish.
The belief that the Greenlanders didn't eat seafood is based on the fact that few fish bones have been found in their middens; there could however be many reasons for that. But in any case, Danish and and Icelandic scientists have carried out isotopic analysis of the bones of the settlers, and have found that they did indeed eat food from the sea in ever increasing amounts. This appears far more conclusive evidence than the simple lack of fish bones.
"The isotope analysis indicates that the Norsemen changed their dietary habits. The diet of the first settlers consisted of 80% agricultural products and 20% food from the surrounding sea. But seafood played an increasing role, such that the pattern was completely turned around towards the end of the period--from the 1300's the Greenland Norse had 50-80% of their diet from the marine food chain. In simplified terms: they started out as farmers but ended up as hunters/fishers. Some archeologists have claimed that the Greenland Norsemen succumbed because they--being culturally inflexible--either could not or would not adapt to changing conditions and therefore came to a catastrophic end, triggered by deteriorating climate. This hypothesis may now be refuted."
and
"It is not certain what proportion of bones from the various food sources actually ended up in the midden and if so, to what extent they have survived decomposition. For example, the absence of fishbone in the middens does not prove that the Norse did not eat fish. Not only will fishbone rapidly decay in a midden, more likely they never got there in the first place--fishbone is a food source highly appreciated by, e.g., birds, dogs and pigs."
"...the present research at least can refute current speculations that the Norse finally succumbed because they were unable or unwilling to adapt to harsher climatic conditions by exploiting the rich resources of the sea."
europhysicsnews
This research was carried out before Diamond wrote his book. Why he disregards it I can't say. Not that any of this has any bearing on the question of the greenness of Greenland at the time. It does make the decline of the Norse settlement even more mysterious.
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Ilf Posted 5:37 am
10 May 2008
There were other attempts to settle Greenland at the same time, and they ended in miserable failure because of the bitter climate. We have descriptions of these attempts in the sagas, which are also the source of what we know about Eirik's settlement of Greenland. In 978 (a couple of years before Eirik) Snæbjorn Galti investigated the possibility of settling Greenland. A shipload of prospective colonists landed on the bitterly inhospitable east coast, and spent an appalling winter snowed up there. They had to return to Iceland the next year. Floamanna's Saga tells of another man called Thorgils, who set sail in order to settle in Greenland. On the way his ship ran into difficulties and his crew faced starvation in the frozen sea. They finally made land in Greenland, but life there was harder than he'd expected, and bitterly disillusioned he returned to Iceland.
Eirik's exploration of Greenland is described in Eirik's Saga, where you can read the following description of his first trip: "Eirik put out to sea past Snæfells Glacier [in Iceland], and made land [in Greenland] near the glacier that is known as Blaserk." So there was a conspicuous glacier there when he arrived.
One final point: what people don't seem to take into acount is that Eirik was a desperate man, desperate to find somewhere to settle. He'd had to flee Norway and tried to find land in Iceland; here too his quarrelsome nature soon caused him to be banished. He had nowhere else to go, and had to make the best of what must have been a very difficult situation. He would have known he stood no chance of surviving alone in Greenland, so had every incentive to paint the possibilities of the place in the best possible light, hence the name.
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Delay And Deny Posted 7:04 am
10 May 2008
Oh, you finally started to think that way. Then how about not thinking about Antarctica as a "single region" as in, if the smallest part of it, the peninsula, as a little bit of melt, stop claiming that "Antarctica" is melting?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24520668/
Antarctica hasn't warmed as much over the last century as climate models had originally predicted, a new study finds.
Climate change's effects on Antarctica are of particular interest because of the substantial amount of water locked up in its ice sheets. Should that water begin to melt, sea levels around the globe could rise and inundate low-lying coastal areas.
The new study, detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, marks the first time that researchers have been able to give a progress report on Antarctic climate model projections by comparing climate records to model simulations (these comparisons have been done for the other six continents). Information about Antarctica's harsh weather patterns has traditionally been limited, but temperature records from ice cores and ground weather stations have recently been constructed, giving scientists the missing information they needed.
Texeme.Construct(Participant)
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caniscandida Posted 7:30 am
10 May 2008
The assertion that the Norse settlers in Greenland did not eat fish struck me too as very odd.
It is certainly true that Scandinavians were eating a lot of fish already in the early Middle Ages, and probably earlier. In "The Unnatural History of the Sea," Callum Roberts says that Western Europeans had overfished their rivers, and so began to eat cod and other marine fish, through the influence of Vikings trading and settling amongst them.
He also says that the earliest written account of whaling is in the travel narrative of Ohthere of Halogaland, in far northern Norway, recorded by King Alfred, whom Ohthere visited:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohthere_from_H%C3%A5logaland ....
In Jane Smiley's great historical novel, "The Greenlanders," about the last days of the Norse settlement, the characters definitely are eating whale blubber. The incorrectly ordained priests are reduced to using blubber and water as the Eucharistic elements at Mass, instead of bread and wine.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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yato Posted 12:38 pm
13 Aug 2008
mac dvd ripper
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yato Posted 12:40 pm
13 Aug 2008
mac dvd ripper
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