Posted on 07/19/2006 11:13:06 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Average temperatures in Greenland have risen by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 30 years -- more than double the global average, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute. By the end of the century, the institute projects, temperatures could rise another 14 degrees.
The milder weather is promoting new life on the fringes of this barren, arctic land. Swans have been spotted recently for the first time, ducks aren't flying south for the winter anymore and poplar trees have suddenly begun flowering.
Greenland represents one of the largely unrecognized paradoxes of global warming. In former Vice President Al Gore's recent film "An Inconvenient Truth," the melting of Greenland's ice cap, along with a similar cap in the Antarctic, is portrayed as one of the greatest threats of global warming. If the layers of ice and snow holding billions of tons of water were to melt, scientists warn that global sea levels would rise by 40 feet, submerging lower Manhattan, the Netherlands and much of California.
But to many of the people who live here in Greenland, the warming trend is a boon, not a threat.
It is no small feat to get things living and growing in Greenland, an arctic and sub-arctic country at the northern tip of North America whose frigid landscape is often confused with Iceland, a smaller, greener European island nation to the southeast.
More than 80% of Greenland is covered in ice. Temperatures in the south regularly drop to 22 degrees below zero during the long, dark winters when the sun shines for as little as five hours a day. Intermittent frosts during the four-month growing season make it difficult for anything to thrive.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
long, dark winters when the sun shines for as little as five hours a day.
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If this line is any indication I would not trust anything in this article. I was stationed for a year at Keflavik Iceland which is South of Greenland and during late December and early January there was no sun shine, only a short period of twilight at mid day. I don't think there is anything like five hours of sunlight in Greenland on the shortest days. I doubt that we have as much as nine hours in South Carolina during the shortest days.
"Sounds like the temperature it is trying to get back to when the Vikings were there in 900 to 1200 plus or minus"
I misinterpreted that, and first thought, "My gosh those Vikings really were tough -- I couldn't have taken it that cold!"
It would if all the ice was submerged, but part of the ice cube floats above the surface. The only part of the ice that is displacing water is the part that is submerged, and the amount of water that is displaced has a mass equal to the total amount of the ice.
The boat/bowling ball example is trickier, but I'm thinking the water level goes down once you sink the ball. Here's why: before you drop the ball, the boat will displace a volume of water that has a mass equal to boat+you+ball. The ball is much denser than water, so it's weight displaces a volume of water greater than the volume of the ball. However, once you sink the ball, it sits on the bottom and only displaces a volume equal to the size of the ball, which is less than the volume displaced when the ball was adding itself to you+boat, so the pool level drops a bit...
I wouldn't list that the Vikings "thrived". They only had two major settlements, consisting of 1,000 and 4,000 people. That's a tiny village.
They didn't grow much grain or vegetables, either. Early on, they quickly reverted to growing dairy products, because the cold and sea spray didn't allow for good gardening. Most Vikings grew hay to feed to the goats and sheep through the winter, and ate the dairy products they produced. Any animals whom they couldn't feed over the winter, they killed and ate.
That was the good times. When the weather turned "cold" (chuckle chuckle), they ate more seals as their farms failed. Then, they either died or moved away.
What most people hear about the Viking colonization of Greenland is dramatized accounts of what happened, used to lure tourists. What I wrote is established archeology.
Sorry, but I was a history major who studied the Norse a lot. Figured I'd spend a lot of time on this thread when I saw it. :-)
When you hear "The Immigrant Song" being played in Greenland.
We are your overlords.
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