Was Greenland ever Green?

Yep it appears it was around the time of William The Conqueror. The reason why is neatly captured in this posting on the Sceptical Scientist...the home of global warming proponents. The usual MO on this site is to destroy any contrary point of view, tellingly this post was not challenged:

1. thingadonta at 20:13 PM on 11 July, 2009Greenland was relatively warm between about 800-1300 AD due to the well-defined 1500 year solar cycle, as detailed by Singer and Avery in:
   
   "Unstoppable global warming every 1500 years". 
   
   We are currently in another upswing in the solar cycle, which started about 1750, and which will probably rise about another 0.5-1 degree C over the next few hundred years. Current T to the 21st century is entirely in line with this solar cyletrend. C02 is irrelevant to this cycle,it has been traced 600 times over the last 1 million years in ice cores, and is a result of an overlap between the 87 and 210 year solar cycles. 
   
   It is well documented, world wide, and climatologists have conveniently forgotten about it (see reference given above). 
   
   Greenland was settled by vikings during the last solar warming period, which is also why they travelled so far in general during this time period-the northern world was warm

Well BB if you look at the other thread on er Climate Change, you will see a reference to the effect of solar irradiance. Two US Army scientists provided a theoretical and empirical analysis suggesting half of warming was related to solar irradiance. The sun was hotter in  2000 than it was in 1900. And crucially they found there was a lag between solar heat and measured temps....this explained continued rising temps while increased solar irradiance tapered off at the end of the century.

The effect of "heat islands" is understood and supposedly compensated for in the data gathering regime. But of course it's a lot of what we experience. Which raises another point. The actual measurement points and the compensation factors are constantly changing.....but when your motivation is to find "warming" it's another source of possible data contamination.

One can't accuse the scientists of simplicity. These models have become monsters....and data gathering particularly in the ocean is very complex. But unfortunately the only way to prove the theory works is for the models to replicate reality....and they don't.....they consistently overstate the case. So now some Warmers say there is a hiatus in rising temps, for various reasons they postulate....others claim there is no hiatus at all if you just do one more manipulation.

If you want to see just  how intolerant of dissent these climate scientists are,  go to Sceptical Scientist....they make the Spanish Inquisition look like a high school debating society.

Yes Moz, the Vikings did not only farmed on Greenland, but they also planted vineyards in Scotland and today there are ample evidence of this fact.

Bob, I also believe the heat island effect plays a major role in the current warming. Large cities like London and NY rarely gets snow in winter in their CBD while even the immediate rural areas  around these cities are covered with snow.

There is another claim the warmists make and that is the higher CO2 has a negative effect on biodiversity. Well, the biodiversity in rain forests like the Amazon river is exceptionally high and all this despite CO2 levels of up to 2000ppm below the canopy of the forest. 

American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians

American Institute of Biological Sciences.

American Society for Microbiology

Australian Coral Reef Society

Institute of Biology (UK)

Society of American Foresters

The Wildlife Society (international)

American Academy of Pediatrics

American College of Preventive Medicine

American Medical Association

American Public Health Association

Australian Medical Association

World Federation of Public Health Associations

World Health Organization

American Astronomical Society

American Statistical Association

The Institution of Engineers Australia

International Association for Great Lakes Research

Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand

 @Baque.....actually the new report on Rain Forests comes from your previously unimpeachable source....NASA. Take the time to follow the link.

@ The AAS..... in the past there was also complete scientific consensus around global cooling, lobotomy and the safet y of smoking cigarettes. And I very much doubt IQs have gone up since then. 

You throw words like lie around very readily....typical of you environmental Nazis. You haven't even considered why the rain forests might be a problem....the huge fires and the loss of extent...enjoy you crow:

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Deforestation and burning releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and were thought to cause tropical forests to release more carbon dioxide than they absorbed. But the new study suggests this is not the case

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2891432/Carbon-dioxide-emissions-help-tropical-rainforests-grow-faster-Study-shows-trees-absorb-greenhouse-gas-expected.html#ixzz3OoSAmY5c
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I suggest you try to understand what is being said before you leap on your high horse. It doesn't matter in this context that deforestation is the issue.....the simple fact is scientists believed the net effect of the whole rain forest sector.....was to add carbon. Exactly as I and the Mail reported.

What is new....and you should open your mind to receiving....is that scientists now believe the carbon dioxide stimulated growth is so extensive that it overwhelms the effects of deforestation and fires *****New data warning****

As an aside I was in the paper industry for a while and we had extensive forests. Our program was always to replant as we harvested, so the tree mass never diminished.  The destruction of the rain forests is a worthwhile environmental issue to support.

Tropical forests are growing faster than scientists thought due to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A Nasa-led study has found that tropical forests are absorbing 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year as they photosynthesise and grow.

And this is far more than is absorbed by the vast areas of boreal forest that encircle the Arctic.

However, Dr Schimel and his colleagues warn that deforestation in tropical rainforests could exacerbate climate change by leaving more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In total, they estimate that forests and other vegetation absorb around 2.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, about 30 per cent of that emitted by humans.

As emissions add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, forests worldwide are using it to grow faster.

However, the rate at which they absorb this has been hard to estimate with many studies producing contradictory results.

As many rainforests consist of mature trees that are often hundreds of years old, they were not thought to absorb much carbon dioxide.

Young fast growing trees tend to absorb more carbon dioxide as they use the carbon as they grow.

Global air flows and data on deforestation also suggested tropical forests were releasing more carbon dioxide than they absorb.

But this new study suggests the tropical forests are using far more of the carbon, and so growing far faster than previously believed.

Dr Schimel and his colleagues, whose work is published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, used computer models, satellite images, data from forest plots and photosynthetic experiments to build up a picture of how forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

He said: 'What we've had up till this paper was a theory of carbon dioxide fertilisation based on phenomena at the microscopic scale and observations at the global scale that appeared to contradict those phenomena.

'Here, at least, is a hypothesis that provides a consistent explanation that includes both how we know photosynthesis works and what's happening at the planetary scale.

'All else being equal, the effect is stronger at higher temperatures, meaning it will be higher in the tropics than in the boreal forests.'

However, he added that changes in water supply to forests due to changing climate and deforestation could alter the amount of carbon dioxide tropical forests are absorbing.

He said: 'The future tropical balance of deforestation and climate sources and regrowth and carbon dioxide sinks will only remain a robust feature of the global carbon cycle if the vast tropical forests are protected from destruction.'

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• Nasa study shows tropical forests absorb 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 a year
• Rainforests absorb more than half of CO2 taken up by vegetation globally
• Scientists previously believed tropical forests emitted carbon dioxide 
• Researchers claim their findings emphasise the need to protect rainforests from deforestation to help counteract human greenhouse gas emissions

By Richard Gray for MailOnline

Published: 11:46 EST, 30 December 2014 | Updated: 11:47 EST, 30 December 2014

From Climate Central:

Professor Fu of the University of Texas, and her colleagues say the water stored in the forest soil at the end of each wet season is all that the trees have to last them through the dry months. The longer that lasts – regardless of how wet the wet season was – the more stressed the trees become and the more susceptible they are to forest fires.

 Findings from a recent study show that since 1979, the dry season in southern Amazonia has stretched about a week longer per decade.

They say the most likely explanation for the lengthening dry season in recent decades is human-caused greenhouse warming, which inhibits rainfall in two ways: It makes it harder for warm, dry air near the surface to rise and freely mix with cool, moist air above; and it blocks incursions by cold weather fronts from outside the tropics which could trigger rainfall.

The team says the IPCC’s climate models represent these processes poorly, which might explain why they project only a slightly longer Amazonian dry season.

The Amazon rainforest normally acts as a carbon sink, removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and storing it. But during a severe drought in 2005 it went into reverse, releasing 1 petagram of carbon (1 billion tons – about one-tenth of annual human emissions) to the atmosphere.

Fu and her colleagues estimate that if dry seasons continue to lengthen at just half the rate seen in recent decades, the 2005 Amazon drought could become the norm rather than the exception by the end of this century . 

Seems the global warming models missed the fact that a "greenhouse effect" means more plants sucking in more CO2. There are hundreds of these interrelationships in the climate models. Hundreds of opportunities to inject bias. This is just one good example. No wonder these computer monstrosities are so inaccurate.

It's a coalition of the willing HasBeen. People with entirely different agendas that coalesce around global warming or to use it's less ambitious name, climate change. You have the traditional conservationists. NASA which now has almost no purpose except studying the atmosphere. The Band of weather men catapulted into prominence by the issue. The liberal left which has always hated capitalism and the ruling parties in several major countries. Also on the fringes some smart folks who can make lots of money from turbines and battery powered cars. A witches brew.

For many years this group was batting on an easy wicket. They had a theory and the proof was going to come in the future.....well now we are getting to the future and the proof is pretty tenuous. There is probably a man made warming effect, but it's not nearly as radical as they postulated.....and pesky feedback links like the growth in the Amazon....and counter intuitive results like the growth in Antarctic ice keep tripping them up.

The fact is these weather men went too far. They implied they understood a very complex problem completely and quantified all this. And they were/are completely intolerant of any objections.

So now they are in the rather nasty spot of having massive models which over estimate warming.......having committed the world to conservation treaties that cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while shifting the temperature curve by only five years. The temp we would have had in 2100 we will now get in 2105 after spend ing all this money.

Who would want to be a weather man.

This must change over the coming months. Otherwise, what promises to be the largest global warming agreement in history will be signed at the UN climate conference in December with little or no input from many of the brightest minds in the field.""

@Mozart,

but, don't you know that headlines are never quoted?

the autor of an article signs only the article itself and he's responsable only of what he signs, the article.

Heads are written by directors or bosses or whatever and, like in the artcle that you posted, very often are not extracted from the article and have nothing to do with it.

The statement

"Scientists previously believed tropical forests emitted carbon dioxide"

has been added completely by someone else (not the autor) and it's simply not true (if you don't like the w ord lie)

And you didn't answer where your other statement was in the article:

"What is new....and you should open your mind to receiving....is that scientists now believe the carbon dioxide stimulated growth is so extensive that it overwhelms the effects of deforestation and fire"

untill you show it I will mantain that you should read and understand the articles before you copypaste them.

when you denniers are left alone you slip up huge way, eh? i don't have time to answer all the ravings........... may be next week

if dry seasons continue to lengthen at just half the rate seen in recent decades, the 2005 Amazon drought could become the norm rather than the exception by the end of this century. "

As it very clearly says the 2005 drought was an exception to the rule that the rainforests absorb CO2.

If after reading it what you deduce is that it proves that "Scientists previously believed tropical forests emitted carbon dioxide", or that "the Amazon would cease being a carbon sink was rife" (it's just 1 study made by 1 guy and it says that "could become  ... by the end of the century")...

you should dedicate more time to read and understand what you copypaste.

And all that you are saying is a huge raving. Another example:

"Seems the global warming models missed the fact that a "greenhouse effect" means more plants sucking in more CO2."

The greenhouse effect doesn't mean more plants. It only means that "forests worldwide are using it to grow faster".... "This effect is called carbon fertilization". Each tree grows faster but nothing more.

The amount of plants depends on a lot of factors but mainly the human caused deforestation. The 80% of the indonesian rainforest have vanished, 0.7% of the Congo's basin rainforest disappear every year and 6.450 Km2 of the south american rainforest (an area of the size of Delaware) share the same fate every year.

If we continue like untill the moment there will be no rainforest (even with the carbon fertilization) to absorb the CO2.

"Inhofe however strongly rejected any suggestion that human activity was responsible for climate change." It appears you overstated  your case JW. In any case this is just haggling to put Obama under pressure on the Keystone pipeline.

Climate changes all the time JW.....everybody agrees it's one degree C since the start of the 20th century. But papers have been written by scientists in a top climate journal showing half of the change was due to sun activity. This was a peer reviewed paper. The remaining 0.5 degrees has many potential causes, only one of which is human activity.

Stick with moz, if ever any clear case is made I will acknowledge the fact, but I'm not holding my CO2 laden breath

Wardad how often do you fly the Pacific? And here is part of your answer on solar panels. It seems to me you would be better off with a big windmill in your back yard.