Routes various Vikings traveled. (Source: McGovern and Perdikaris, 2000)
Part 2: Climate Change and the End of the Vikings in Greenland
From the PBS series 'The Lost Vikings of Greenland'
In 985, Eric the Red set up the first Viking colony in Greenland. His descendants lived and farmed there for nearly five hundred years. But when the climate took a sharp turn for the worse, the Viking settlers were completely unprepared. Why didn't they learn from the arctic adaptations of their Inuit neighbors? The surprising answer lies in the religious teachings of their homeland.
The settlers in Greenland were the furthest extension of a Viking empire ruled from Scandinavia. They survived in Greenland for nearly four hundred years, remaining closely linked, culturally and religiously, to their relatives in Europe. They seemed to have very little contact with their most immediate neighbors, the Inuit.
We know from ice core sampling and dendrochronology that Greenland's climate grew colder during the middle of the fifteenth century. This is when a time known as "the Little Ice Age" began.
Graves at Herjolfsnes Church, dating from the middle of the fourteenth century, were found to contain clothing worn by one of the last generations of Vikings in Greenland. Men and women both dressed in long gowns with narrow sleeves, overcoats and stockings, and hooded capes. These were purely European styles and had not been adapted to fit the cold climate.
The clothing of the Inuit was much better suited to the harsh weather. Eight Inuit bodies, fully clothed and perfectly preserved by permafrost, were found in Greenland in 1972. They date from around 1475 and were dressed in heavy seal skin trousers, anoraks, and Kamiks; their high double-skin boots were stuffed with insulating grasses. Clearly, the Inuit had mastered the art of living in the Arctic. They also knew how to hunt ring-seals during the winter, a crucial skill when other food sources were scarce. Their Viking neighbors never learned to hunt this way and so were at a loss when their crops failed and their cattle died.
In the end, the Vikings failed to adapt to the harsh conditions of the Little Ice Age and their settlements mysteriously vanished. The Inuit, however, were well prepared for the frozen landscape, and their descendants still inhabit Greenland today.
Ref. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/html/e2-settlers3.html
Posted September 6, 2009 by Lewis Loflin
- See the following:
- Whale Fossils Unlock the History of the North
- Part 1: Climate Change and the Fall of the Late Roman Empire
- Part 2:Climate Change and the End of the Vikings in Greenland
- Part 3: Climate Change and the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island
- The Cooling World Hysteria of 1976
Note: in 2008 that claim of one degree since 1960 has been retracted by government experts. It also turned out that six of the ten warmest periods in the 20th Century was in the 1930s. Now they claim we are entering a seven year cooling trend because of global warming. They also claimed after Katrina we were going to get slammed with record killer hurricanes because of global warming. Instead, we have had record low numbers of hurricanes since then. (They also blamed that on global warming.) That cooling trend was not in the computer models either. The simple fact is that the Northwest passage has been open several times in the past, including within recorded history. So unless the ancient Egyptians and Celts were driving SUVs 3000 years ago, we have to assume a natural event.
In fact according to the NASA Earth Observatory, "Without the Sun, the Earth would be no more than a frozen rock stranded in space. The Sun warms the Earth and makes life possible. Its energy generates clouds, cleanses our water, produces plants, keeps animals and humans warm, and drives ocean currents and thunderstorms. Despite the Sun's importance, scientists have only begun to study it with high precision in recent decades. Prior to 1979, in fact, astronomers and Earth scientists did not even have accurate data on the total amount of energy from the Sun that reaches the Earth's outermost atmosphere..."
See http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SORCE/sorce.php
Without even knowing solar radiation prior to 1979 just how could they make any correlation to anything prior to that? The sun is what drives the earth's climate. Yet even today NASA still says, "Due to technological barriers and a limited amount of data, however, scientist's understanding of the Sun-Earth system continues to be incomplete."
Science Daily (Mar. 21, 2003) Notes, "Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly .05 percent per decade, according to a NASA funded study." They go into a big denial this has nothing to do with global warming that has occurred since 1850. If this has in effect remained steady, how many decades have gone by since 1850? From 1850 to 2000 is 15 times .05 = .75%.
To further quote the article, "This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," said Richard Willson, a researcher affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's Earth Institute, New York. He is the lead author of the study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. Historical records of solar activity indicate that solar radiation has been increasing since the late 19th century..."
See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/03/030321075236.htm and argue with NASA.
So let's add up some facts: Solar radiation measurements prior to 1979 had no real precision. Historical records show warming began in the 19th century and NASA measurements show increased solar radiation, which will certainly cause an increase in temperatures. That's what the science says according to NASA.
One further note is when solar radiation increases and warms the oceans out-gassing of carbon dioxide will occur.
- Crime and Drugs in Tri-Cities
- New Article List December 2008
- Article list, mostly religion (Being updated)
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