Just What Is Normal?

I was checking a few things out on the Internet recently. I read something interesting that I have never heard mentioned in the main stream media. So, let's get started.

He did Greenland get its name? According to StraightDope.com, Erik the Red and his father Thorvald were exiled from "Viking Land" for murder. They both went to Iceland. After Erik's father died, Erik apparently continued in the family business of "life cessation activities." He was now sent to a much larger island nearby. After Erik's hiatus expired he decided that his new island home would be a dandy place for his Viking playmates to call home. So, good old Erik named the island Greenland in hopes of luring many Viking settlers from Iceland to his new settlement. Apparently Greenland really was green during this time period.

Again, why was it called Greenland? According to Jared M. Diamond, in the book Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, (2006) Harmondsworth [Eng.]: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-303655-6 Data from ice cores indicate that from AD 800 to 1300 the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a relatively mild climate, with temperatures similar to today. Trees and herbaceous plants grew there, and the climate initially allowed farming of livestock as in Norway. HMMMMM!!!!! After about 500 years the settlement began to vanish. The condition of human bones from this period indicates the Norse population was malnourished. Main reasons appeared to have been soil erosion due to destruction of the natural vegetation for farming, turf, and wood by the Norse, a decline in temperatures during the Little Ice Age, and armed conflicts with the Inuit.

So that tells me that if there really is Global Warming, then the world is really going back to the way it was and that perhaps The Little Ice Age was the anomaly. And that the earth's climate really is a vast system that is constantly changing and that perhaps "normal" is really "changing" and that man is terribly arrogant to assume that they can truly affect the climate long term for good or bad.

NOTE: The portion in Italics was surreptitiously borrowed from Wikipedia. Thank You Wikipedia for its use in today's blog.Now, for a small break from the total meltdown of the earth as we know it:

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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