Warming Island

[Amelia]

On January 16th, 2007, the New York Times reported that a new island had been found in Greenland. 'Warming Island' was once thought to be an ice-covered peninsula, but it was exposed as an island when a glacier melted to reveal the strait. This image shows satellite pictures of the island in 1985 when the glacier had firmly tied it to the mainland, in 2002 when there was only a thin bridge of ice, and in 2005 when the bridge of ice has broken to reveal an open water strait. More islands like this may be discovered if the Greenland ice sheet continues to disappear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhpwabMaazE - Really Good!

http://www.warmingisland.org/greenland_article.pdf

[Dottie]

Well, Greenland was once green. Otherwise, why the name?

[bevin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland

Quote:

The Saga of Eric the Red (Eiriks saga rauða), which is about the Norse settlement in Greenland and the story of Eric the Red in particular. Both sources write: "He named the land Greenland, saying that people would be eager to go there if it had a good name."

...

At that time the inner regions of the long fjords where the settlements where located were very different from today. Excavations show that there were considerable birch woods with trees up to 4 to 6 meters in the area around the inner parts of the Tunuliarfik- and Aniaaq-fjords, the central area of the Eastern settlement, and the hills were grown with grass and willow brushes. This was due to the medieval climate optimum. The Norse soon changed the vegetation by cutting down the trees to use as building material and for heating and by extensive sheep and goat grazing during summer and winter. The climate in Greenland was much warmer during the first centuries of settlement but became increasingly colder in the 14th and 15th centuries with the approaching period of colder weather known as the Little Ice Age.

[CyberGuy]

There are legends that the aboriginees of Australia came from a land with Red cliffs to the south. They left that land with it got to cold. If you sail south from Australia you come to red cliff on the antartica continet. So at one time it was warm enough to live on Antartica. If it gets warmer we can move to Antartica in a 100 years or so.

[David Koot]

Hmmmm. If all of that is true--Greenland warmer, Antartica habitable, etc., then is it true, after all, the the whole thing about 'global warming' is much ado about nothing? That it would happen naturally anyway, as a result of the warming trend after the 'little ice age'?

[bevin]

The aborigines came from the north

It is unlikely Global Warming is much-ado-about-nothing, there has been a lot of science put into it over the last decade - and so random weird legends are not enough evidence to sway the arguments in a different direction.

/Bevin

[David Koot]

I admit to being woefully under-informed about the important issue of global warming. Just was curious about the possibility that warming trends are occurring anyway, after the 'little ice age' mentioned above. Was there such a trend, and are we experiencing a warming trend now as the aftermath of it?

[Dr. Shane]

Obviously there has been global warming before. If there hadn't been we would still be in the ice age. The issues are cause and effect.