So surely the Vikings must have done something that caused a warming cycle.... (or not.)
Hagar had an SUV.
OBTW: "Viking" is not a race or tribe it is a behavior.
Posted on 02/12/2006 8:49:59 PM PST by presidio9
The warming of the world during the last century is greater – and more widespread – than any other shift in the global climate in the last 1,200 years, researchers reported Thursday.
The analysis of data from tree rings, fossil shells, ice cores and actual temperature measurements from 14 locations on three continents shows that the current warming trend is the most extensive change — warm or cold — since the time of the Vikings.
In their report in the current issue of the journal Science, climatologists Timothy Osborn and Keith Briffa of the University of East Anglia, home to the leading British climate research center, stop short of blaming the 20th-century warming on industrial emissions or other human factors.
But Osborn and Briffa say the geographic extent of the current warming, whatever the reason, is more widespread and more pronounced than the one that turned Greenland green 1,000 years ago.
Their analyses for tree ring and other climate "proxies" from Europe, Asia and North America do show two other pronounced climate shifts during the same period: the Medieval Warm Period from 890 to 1170 and the Little Ice Age, which gripped the Northern Hemisphere from 1580 to 1850.
The Medieval warming, which encouraged the Vikings to settle previously inhospitable regions of Greenland and Iceland, is sometimes cited by critics of modern global warming theories as evidence that the Earth can experience widespread warming independent of human activity.
"It's good that they acknowledge that the last thousand years contained two warm periods with a cold one in between," says S. Fred Singer, president of the Virginia-based Science Policy Project, which frequently disputes claims of global warming.
"But it still doesn't prove that the 20th century was unique," Singer said.
The Bush administration has acknowledged the widespread warming of recent decades, but has sought further research on the causes.
The administration also has declined to join 140 other nations in signing the Kyoto climate accord, which calls on industrial nations to reduce their industrial emissions.
While the study's emperature measurements only go back to the 1800s, researchers were able to reconstruct the Northern Hemisphere's climate back as far as the ninth century.
Researchers correlated temperature records with 14 long-term climate proxies, ranging from fossil shells in the Chesapeake Bay to tree rings in Mongolia.
"Both individually and taken as a whole, these reconstructions support the conclusion that it is likely that the late 20th century was the warmest period in the past millennium or longer," Osborn says.
Averaged across the globe, the increase in temperatures is numerically small — about one degree above normal and about two degrees warmer than during the late 1800s.
The increase, however, has been especially sharp in recent years, with all 10 of the warmest years on record occurring since the mid-1990s.
The warming has been linked to accelerated melting of mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets throughout the world, warmer sea surface temperatures, the earlier arrival of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and other changes.
Many scientists predict the warming will increase if man-made releases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are not curbed.
Anna 1, anna 2...."
So what are they growing in Greenland these days?
I am sure that Bush's ancestors had something to do with the earlier Viking global warming also. It just has to be, I feel it is so and no one has proven me wrong, so I am running with that story!! Credited to Mapes of Rathergate fame.
It's all those dang viking saunas. They brought this global warming.
Out of curiosity I wonder what they used for a thermometer?
We have had a winter without storms, a spring without mildness, a summer without heat. When can we hope for mild weather, now that the months that once ripened the crops have become deadly sick under the northern blasts? ... Out of all the elements, we find these two against to us: perpetual frost and unnatural drought.
Cassiodorus
AD 535
JUNKSCIENCE ALERT
Ask the muzzies about that one, right?
Actually I live on the east coast and it has been a very warm winter. I have oil heat and my bills have been less than last winter. You should also note that about 40-48% of the people in the so-called "Blue States" voted for Bush. I also wonder how drilling for oil would have stopped the blizzard, and I didn't realize that I was holding up oil exploration.
The University of East Anglia is home to the METS computer model which achieved lasting noteriety when it predicted that the summer rainfall in Ireland and the Central Sahara were the same.
As for any claim that the present is as warm as the period when the Vikings were in Greenland, consider that the Chinese fleet of the 1420's sailed around Greenland during the summer. Somehow, I suspect that isn't going to be possible this summer.
And next summer doesn't look good either.
"What did the Vikings do to make it warmer back then?"
Beans; they ate lots of Beans. Why do you think they never built a roof for there boats???
Actually, it was longhouse gases for them.
So surely the Vikings must have done something that caused a warming cycle.... (or not.)
Hagar had an SUV.
OBTW: "Viking" is not a race or tribe it is a behavior.
"consider that the Chinese fleet of the 1420's sailed around Greenland during"
Could you please souce this. I have never heard that and am interested in reading about it. I do know that Greenland is said to have been much warmer in the time of Leif Erickson.
I hear you loud and clear. Sitting here in Michigan and it's 17F outside. Do you think if we throw a few nukes around this would change the climate? My wife's tired of this cold crap. She doesn't take more than a few steps from the back door to releive herself outside. I should clarify that's my Lab I was speaking about in that last sentence.
Let's all go live in unheated, unairconditoned mud huts, wear grass skirts, scavenge for "organic" raw food, walk everywhere and save "the environment" for "the children".
All the people referred to as Vikings are Scandanavian/ Germanic people though.
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