My understanding was that either through a mix up or intentional fibbing by someone wishing to hoard Iceland's once dense timber, Iceland and Greenland's names were reversed.

Oh won't it be wonderful if the Green leaders took a few deep breaths and exhaled while think of the WARM past - the Medieval WARMED Up Past!

Suggested Homework for anyone thinking about the Suisse, and their Alps! (On a personal note, as a young ski racer I attended a camp in 1972 and it was so warm that we had to limit our skiing at the resort Films to between 10k and 14k)

Now, for the suggested reading du Jour!

Gorner Glacier, Alps of Valais, Switzerland

Reference

Holzhauser, H., Magny, M. and Zumbuhl, H.J. 2005. Glacier and lake-level variations in west-central Europe over the last 3500 years. The Holocene 15: 789-801.

Description

Holzhauser et al. present a high-resolution record of glacial variation for Gorner glacier, in the Alps of Valis, Switzerland (~46.05°N, 7.62°E), as part of an effort to develop a 3500-year climate history of west-central Europe. In their estimation, "at no other glacier in the Swiss Alps ... [is] the Mediaeval Climatic Optimum so well documented as at the Gorner glacier," especially when the glacier retreated to levels beyond that of the present-day between AD 800 and 1100. Because glaciers in mountain areas are "highly sensitive to climate changes and thus provide one of nature's clearest signals of warming or cooling and/or dry and wet climate periods," as they describe it, "one can say that the quasi periodical fluctuations of Alpine glaciers were driven by glacier-hostile (warm/dry) and glacier-friendly (cool/wet) periods." On this basis, therefore, one can cautiously conclude that temperatures at Gorner Glacier were likely warmer during the Medieval Warm Period than they have been recently.