Alien54's Journal: The Earth was warming before global warming was cool.

Sometimes it is useful to be a devil's advocate in discussing matters of scietific import. Thus we get this column from Pete du Pont in the WSJ

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.

Which leads to the question, how much of the Global warming debate is Bad Science(tm), and on which side is it?

Don't trust the WSJ on Global Warming

[spun]

The medieval climate optimum [wikipedia.org] wasn't a global phenomenon, it only affected the North Atlantic. No global conclusions can be drawn from this local climate fluctuation.

The WSJ has a very business-centric position on global climate change. They tend to report what their audience wants to hear, that is, anything that supports the status quo or that calls into question those ideas that would tend to hurt the status quo.

Re:

[Helvick]

The Greenland climate was warmer at the time the two Norse colonies were founded than when they died out but it was never the lush pastoral climate described by the author of the WSJ article. For a more detailed analysis Jared Diamond's "Collapse" discusses the Greenland Norse colonies and their demise at length and he paints a very different picture of an extremely marginal environment and a society's struggle to survive. If nothing else though, picking the Greenland Norse colonies as an example in a debat

Consider the source

[RabidMonkey]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_S._du_Pont,_IV [wikipedia.org]

This looks to be a typical deniers opinion, which doesn't count scientific fact with fact, but with conjecture, opinion and out of context quotes.

He may very well be right, but his background and method of expressing his opinion on the matter lead me to believe that he's a typical right wing denier type.

Terrible.

[Kingrames]

They're saying that because one area of the world was warmer, that global warming was in existence back then? What a load of crap. This one time, at band camp, some guy caught fire. That means that every single person on the earth will catch fire soon. It's true because it's a ridiculous conclusion to a tiny amount of data that only seems to support my bias just a little.