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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Global Warming was happenin' before it was cool! |
| 2007-02-22 |
| Sorry to post the whole thing, but there are some very important facts in here (and a good smackdown of the DDT scare in the 60s at the end). When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by 1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By 1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive. Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age. During the 20th century the earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001. |
| Posted by:BA |
| #5 Actually, the ice age started during the reign of Thor Clinton. You know him, the guy who's wife wore the tin hat with horns? |
| Posted by: john 2007-02-22 20:38 |
| #4 I blame Eric the Bush, and those SUV driving Vikings. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2007-02-22 18:08 |
| #3 and the Vikings did not survive. Yes they did, they moved back to Iceland, it's that weird human ability adapt. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2007-02-22 14:02 |
| #2 Rachel Carson is the reason my father isn't rich... and why I exist. While playing chemistry professor at Wisconsin U at Madison, Daddy had discovered and patented a compound that made DDT equally effective at something like a 1/10th dose. It was in production one year when Ms. Carson's book came out-- and of course production was discontinued. So he moved to Buffalo, NY to take up oncology research, and was introduced to his future wife/my future mother that weekend. He still gets riled by the illogical, nonscientific thought that the authorities bought into. He gets riled about the cyclamate ban (on the US side of the border, up in Canada they banned saccharine using the exact same logic) for the same reason, poor man. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-02-22 13:40 |
| #1 I related most of this info before from the journal articles. Let me say again that there are a large number of atmospheric scientists who are employed by the government...who are skeptical of "man-caused" global warming...who are prohibited by law/policy from speaking out. |
| Posted by: anymouse 2007-02-22 12:44 |