How Green Was Their Greenland

Copyright 1997 Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
The Wall Street Journal (November 26, 1997)


I wish to offer, an addendum to Fred Singer's Nov. 10 editorial-page essay "The Sky Isn't Falling, and the Ocean Isn't Rising."

Arguments supporting global warming seem to be narrowly based upon a limited time frame omitting known climatic cyclical changes observed during historic times. A case in point is Greenland. When Eric the Red brought settlers to Greenland in 986, the climate in the southwest supported the Viking way of life based upon cattle. hay, grain and herring. That climate remained supportive for 300 years until after the end of the Republic in 1261. But substantial climate changes occurred later, with each year growing colder and colder; when the last ship left in 1410, Nordic settlement was extinct.

Did carbon dioxide pollution allow those 300 years of Nordic settlement in Greenland, and was the ocean higher then? I doubt it.

T. H, Martland, Waterbury, Conn.


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