Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:09:57 PM
I know that the AGW crowd argues that global warming is "unprecedented" and will cost millions of lives very soon, but I think the evidence
speaks against both arguments.
First,t here is plenty of evidence that the earth was warmer in recent history,
despite the absurd "hockey stick" graph. Let us just look at Greenland, where former Norse settlements are now either uninhabitable or under snow and ice. That argues that as recently as the 12th or 13th centuries, the earth was warmer. Likewise the evidence of abandoned mines and whole towns revealed by retreating Swiss glaciers says that earth was warmer as recently as the early middle ages.
Of course, until recently no one claimed otherwise, but then came the AGW scam. As part of their claim was that warming a degree or two would cause everyone to die, and that any significant global warming must be the result of man's activities rather than any natural process, they must deny the entire historical record of cyclical warming, including the warm periods of the middles ages as well as another in the classical period. So we must conclude that the medieval Norse somehow survived in climates where we could not today.
Those were some hardy vikings, living in houses built under ice.
Obviously, that is simply an absurd claim. The vikings did not pasture their sheep and cows in snow filled tundra, nor did the Swiss peasants build mines inside glaciers. The earth was a few degrees warmer in recent memory, and, despite the claims of the AGW crowd, not only did millions not die, but the periods of slight global warming were actually rather prosperous ones. All of which makes a bit of shambles of their claims.
UPDATE 05/15/2008
I found
an interesting article highlighting the sudden change in accepted history. It comes from a group with a definite agenda, but it gives a good summary of the almost overnight shift from general acceptance of the medieval warming and little ice age to the claims that all temperature change was packed into the 20th century.