Saturday, January 05, 2008
Breaking news from the 15th century
More than six centuries ago, the climate changed and people moved:
The Greenland Norse colonized North America 500 years before Christopher Columbus "discovered" it, establishing farms in the sheltered fjords of southern Greenland, exploring Labrador and the Canadian Arctic, and setting up a short-lived outpost in Newfoundland.
But by 1450, they were gone, posing one of history's most intriguing mysteries: What happened to the Greenland Norse?
There are many theories: They were starved off by a cooling climate, wiped out by pirates or Inuit hunters, or perhaps blended into Inuit society as their own came unglued.
Now scientists are pretty sure they have the answer: They simply up and left.
"When the climate deteriorated, and their way of life became more difficult, they did what people have done throughout the ages: They looked for a more opportune place to live," says Niels Lynnerup, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark who studies the Norse.
Climate change was clearly driving the Norse, with their sheep- and cattle-farming traditions, to the edge of survival. With the onset of the Little Ice Age (from 1300 to 1850), conditions deteriorated across the Norse lands, particularly for people living on marginal farmland in Iceland, northern Norway, and Greenland.
Of course, the fact that Greenland was much warmer 600 years ago than it has been since we began measuring temperatures accurately in the 19th century does not mean that the planet is not generally warmer today than in 1350. Perhaps Greenland and the rest of the north Atlantic was idiosyncratically warm during the Middle Ages. Or perhaps not.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
6 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Jan 05, 03:17:00 PM:
Actually, I'm a little embarrassed.
Here I've been mocking so-called global warming all this time, and just now, this very minute, I was faced with clear, unblinking, demonstrative proof that global warming exists.
The temperature right now where Tiger lives is a bone-numbing 43 degrees. "Feels like 40". Another typical biting cold January day.
And yet here I am, living in the same country, and while I should be partaking in the same ugly, bitter cold, do you know what I heard outside my boat just now, here in the Florida Keys?
The ice cream truck and its merry little tune.
Clear, demonstrative proof, indeed, I'm afraid to say.
Sorry to spoil the party, everybody. :(
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Jan 05, 03:33:00 PM:
Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences:
"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.
"Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells."
Link:
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html
By , at
Sat Jan 05, 04:12:00 PM:
In all truth, most of what we "know" about climate and global weather is anecdotal in nature.
We don't really "know" what global norms are, or what reasonable, cyclic deviations from those norms are.
How variable is the Sun's output, over millenia?
What triggers Ice Age transitions?
What ends an Ice Age?
Lots of thoughtful hypothesis' out there, and smart people working on it, but KNOWING is different than making an informed, scientific "guess".
-David
By , at
Sat Jan 05, 07:52:00 PM:
One point doesn't prove or disprove the idea of a 'idiosyncratically warm' spell. But, when the warm spell is also noted in the court records of Imperial Japan and China, and elsewhere around the globe by proxies such as stalagtite growth, the Medieval Warming is about as solid as anything in history.
By , at
Sun Jan 06, 12:04:00 AM:
This old post
HISTORY!! (Getting Back To What It Sort Of Used To Be) - A Guest Weblog by Reid A. Bryson, Ph.D. D.Sc. D.Engr.">
at Climate Science is interesting. Among other things it tells how the directions to get to Greenland from Iceland changed over the years.
Jim
By , at
Sun Jan 06, 09:49:00 PM:
Viking founded GREENLAND when it was green at one time just like the way ICELAND is now green
