Thanks Brad from Tennessee.
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Posted on 11/22/2013 1:22:58 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Think Greenland’s ice sheet is small today?
It was smaller — as small as it has ever been in recent history — from 3-5,000 years ago, according to scientists who studied the ice sheet’s history using a new technique they developed for interpreting the Arctic fossil record.
“What’s really interesting about this is that on land, the atmosphere was warmest between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago, maybe as late as 4,000 years ago. The oceans, on the other hand, were warmest between 5-3,000 years ago,” said Jason Briner, PhD, University at Buffalo associate professor of geology, who led the study.
“What it tells us is that the ice sheets might really respond to ocean temperatures,” he said. “It’s a clue to what might happen in the future as the Earth continues to warm.”
The findings appeared online on Nov. 22 in the journal Geology. Briner’s team included Darrell Kaufman, an organic geochemist from Northern Arizona University; Ole Bennike, a clam taxonomist from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland; and Matthew Kosnik, a statistician from Australia’s Macquarie University.
The study is important not only for illuminating the history of Greenland’s ice sheet, but for providing geologists with an important new tool: A method of using Arctic fossils to deduce when glaciers were smaller than they are today.
Scientists have many techniques for figuring out when ice sheets were larger, but few for the opposite scenario. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at wattsupwiththat.com ...
FWIW:
The last documentary evidence from Greenland’s settlements dates to AD 1408—a letter home concerning a wedding at Hvalsey Church—but it is believed that people continue to live there until at least the mid-15th century. By 1540, when a ship arrived from Norway, all the settlers were gone, and the Norse colonization of Greenland had ended.
I read this researching a paper. I also read a Lib try to explain off the warm period saying that Greenland was NOT "green". That the Vikings named the island Greenland simply to entice other potential immigrants to go there.
I kid you not.
Air warms up then ocean warms up while ice shrinks then warm ocean causes snow over ice sheet which gets bigger and cools water and air. Repeat as needed.
That I think may be true, Greenland at its warmest was still not paradise but you could fish, grow wheat, farm and grow sheep. Then the ice took over.
The writer meant that Greenland was still a cold and desolate place and that the Vikings were being deceptive by naming it Greenland just to get more people to settle there.
I agree with you that Greenland truly was “Green”. At least around the edges :)
They also had a settlement around the same time at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
Bttt
A case can be made for teh Catholic CHurch being the proximate cause of teh demise of teh Greenland Viking Communities. Colder climate meant nothing to the native Inuits who had a marine mammal/seafood based society.
The priests made a big issue over the use of fur garments and “going native” in terms of foods.
Bad move, that! The gravces indicate that due to cold (exacerbated by wool instead of fur clothing), the women and children died disproportionately.
Interesting hypothesis, I think.
And you know that the WWII fighter aircraft recovered in the interior of the ice cap, 200 feet down, have been there for 200 million years.
“Otzi the Iceman, also called Similaun Man, Hauslabjoch Man or even Frozen Fritz, was discovered in 1991, eroding out of a glacier in the Italian Alps near the border between Italy and Austria. The human remains are of a Late Neolithic or Chalcolithic man who died between about 3350-3300 BC. Because he ended up in a crevasse, his body was perfectly preserved by the glacier in which he was found, rather than crushed by the glacier’s movements in the last 5,000 years. . .”
http://archaeology.about.com/od/iterms/qt/iceman.htm
The SUV fossils are probably buried with the dinsaurs wearing saddles fossils.
If I remember right, I was picking cherry tomatoes off the vines in my patio on Dec. 3rd. (mid Atlantic area) This has not been the case much since then. Had the first killing frost about the 22nd of Nov. this year.
To be fair.
Living just outside of Washington DC for ....ever.
The Potomac used to freeze over on a regular basis, sometime between Jan and March.
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s we would ice skate on the Occoquan above the dam.
Not the same as it was then.
As a fearless 16 Yo, walking out to “Test” the ice was a job that I volunteered for.
Never mind the stories of the guy that parked his car on the ice and the heat of the car caused it to fall into the river.
Walking out, on a seemingly frozen expanse, and testing the ice with a series of jumps, attempts to break the ice, while my buddies watched.
A crack ?
A measure of how thick the ice was.
The ice was always thinner near the edge.
Jump again and pound the ice with everything I had.
Let’s go !!!!
We played ice hockey with either chunks of ice or even rocks as pucks.
In retrospect, it was crazy.
I would never, never let my kid do what I did in my youth !!!
As much as I want to send my kid out to figure things out for themselves, the level of trust has changed.
“Be home for dinner” has changed into “what did you do and who were you with ?”
Yes, what were we thinking has some merit. I have a son 44 in Special Forces. When he was 16 my late husband from farm country in the middle west, where they used it to blow up stumps, gave him a bottle of black powder. Son had fun making little bombs. Never used them to hurt anything, unlike some kids I knew 65 years ago who used cherry bombs to blow up frogs and fish.
One night my son came into the kitchen wearing his ROTC BDUs and face make up. I asked him about it. He said he and his ROTC Rangers buddies were going to camp out in the nearby forest/park. I said, “but isn’t it illegal to be there at night?” “True,” he said, “but the point is not to get caught.” I sighed, and thought, boys have to do something a bit wild, at least he is not out selling drugs.” Almost 30 years, after Iraq, Afghanistan and Afghanistan tours, he is still in one piece. Hope that lasts.
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