THE GLOBAL WARMING "CRISIS"
HISTORY
One of my former professors at Wisconsin, Reid Bryson, recently offered his opinion on "man-made global warming." Prof.
For another reminder of the historical record, remember the graph of temperatures from the Antarctic ice cores. On the
As you can see, there have been many warmings and coolings of greater size (2 deg C) than we moderns have seen. The warmest part of the Holocene happened at the beginning, 9,000 years before the Present. That's the Climatic Optimum, which
coincides with the beginning of civilization.
At that time, what is now the Sahara Desert was a grassland with freshwater lakes, where the ancient Egyptians hunted. After that came a period of cooling and drying, which caused the fall of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, and other civilizations. Later came a warming, associated with the Romans, who were unable to grow wine grapes and olives in the vicinity of Rome 300 BCE, but established those crops by 200 CE. The Roman Warming was followed by the Dark Ages Cooling, when the Rhine River - boundary of the Empire - froze (417 CE). Barbarian tribes walked across the River, into Roman Gallia.
The Dark Ages cooling was followed by the Medieval Warm Period (MWP, 900 CE - 1300 CE), when Norsmen sailed the North Atlantic, less icy than today. In 840 CE, the Norsemen conquered Northern France (Normandy); beginning in 1016, they conquered Southern Italy and Sicily. In 1066, the Normans conquered England. Here's what the recent millenium looked like:
Prof Bryson refers to Eric the Red and his son, Leif the Lucky, who were able to settle Greenland around 1000 years ago. Leif Ericson continued westward and discovered North America, recording their settlement of Vinland. Others of the Vikings landed there as well. They called it Vinland because of the wild grapevines growing there. One of Leif's party was a German slave, who had grown grapes (and made wine) in Europe; he knew grapes when he saw them. It's too cold for those grapes to grow there now.
The site of Viking Vinland has been found (from the excellent descriptions Leif gave)
and excavated. Unquestionably, the Earth was warmer then; by 1400, it had cooled into The Little Ice Age, and Norse Greenland was abandoned - mostly because of the increasing ice in the North Atlantic and around Greenland. Norse farms and a Norse cathedral are now emerging from the ice of the Little Ice Age, as the Earth warms again - we hope.
I'm not an archaeologist; I'm merely pointing out that there was a Medieval Warm Period, when the population of Scandinavia exploded, and civilization all across Europe benefitted. Chaucer brags about English wine during these years; then the Little Ice Age (1300 - 1850) chilled civilizations around the world. (The painting at the top of the page, "Hunters in the Snow" by Brueghel the Elder, was painted in 1565, deep in the Little Ice Age.) Since 1850, a gradual warming has been taking place, about 1 F per
This is well-documented History, which Al Gore and his ilk try to ignore. The major effort at lying about the Medieval Warm Period was a paper published by Michael Mann (Penn State) and others, which included a chart called "the Hockey Stick." This is the most thoroughly discredited science paper in history; it was repeated throughout the Third Assessment Review (2001) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It doesn't appear in the Fourth Review (2007).
Incidentally, the Little Ice Age correlates very well with a diminution of solar activity, manifested in few or no sunspots. We're entering into a period of diminished solar activity again. More on
the science page.
Man, you wimpy Americans are nothing like us Norsemen. I'm kind of ashamed of you - since, in a sense,
I 
Bryson is acknowledged as THE founder of modern climatology, the study of climate and climate change. A considered statement from an authority like Prof Bryson is impossible to refute. Bryson knew the facts and the theory as well as anyone in the world.
“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past”.... Sadly, Prof Bryson passed away in June, 2008.
World's leading climatologist gives his opinion.
You can read Professor Bryson's opinion for yourself. He believes moderate global warming is taking place - as it has in the past. He doesn't believe humans are causing it. Neither does a foremost scientist at MIT, Prof. Richard Lindzen. Incidentally, the former Colorado State Climatologist, Prof. Roger Pielke, believes global warming is man-made; he DOESN'T believe it's due to CO2. Hundreds of scientists disbelieve the "man-made global warming crisis" and are
on record saying so. So much for the media claim that "all scientists agree global warming is a man-made crisis." People who tell you there's a "consensus" - as if science is settled by consensus - are not scientists.
far right end of that graph is a record of temperature changes since the previous Glacial Age. This is our geological epoch, the Holocene. All of human civilization is contained in this approximately 12,000 years. I've stretched it horizontally so you can see major warming and cooling episodes better.
century. The British are beginning to grow wine grapes again - as the Romans did, and as in the time of Chaucer. Crisis?
was the First American. We Norse found this continent a thousand years ago. Now you're letting Socialist politicians - like the ones I left behind in Europe - take it away from you. Lucky Leif
Home
Rev. Feb 09