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Globe Warmer In Time of Vikings
SEWilco writes "A record of recent global temperatures has been assembled by piecing together the hundreds of studies with past temperature estimates [Discovery, Harvard]. The record shows there was a "Medieval Warm Period" warmer than the 20th Century. This was followed by the "Little Ice Age", which ended around 1900. We're having average climate now. Numerous sources indicated this, but apparently were not gathered into one document" This adds some more background reading to the previously linked Telegraph story.
Just not well known to anyone who hasnt studied the subject. We may hve jacked global warming up by 1 degree celcius in the last 100 years, but were due to rise 3 degrees anyway due to, well, historical patterns. Look up paleloclimatology(sp) and do your own research. Were just coming out of the ice age that killed off roman civilistaton.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Around the year 900, when the vikings first came to Iceland, the landscape was "filled with trees from the highlands to the see". This is stated in Icelandic scripts, which were probably written in the 13th century. Today there are hardly any trees left. The vanishing of the forests has been attributed to the introduction of the vikings' sheep into the fragile ecosystem but also to a change in the climate.
In Greenland, which is an island almost totally covered by an ancient glacier, we can find hints about how the climate was a thousand years ago by drilling deep into the ice and studying the tiny air bubbles that where trapped there a long time ago. It also shows that the climate was warmer a thousand years ago.
However, Iceland never had "large fields of grapes". These were the words the viking Leif the Luky used to describe the land he found sailing south-west of Greenland. In the year 1000 he discovered America and called it Wineland the Good.