Greenland and Ice Age Agriculture

The sharp climate swing thatwiped out the Vikings is a reminder also just how volatile climate is in iceage conditions.  It was impossible tosustain agriculture and that was agriculture well adapted to take advantage ofa brief growing season and included cattle husbandry.

This is a measure of just howimpossible it was to sustain agriculture away from coastal regions during theIce Age proper when decadal temperature swings played themselves out over afive degree range, unlike the two degree range of the Holocene.

It is very clear that throughoutthe huge landmasses of the northern hemisphere that a hugely variable Ice Age climatepersisted.  This meant that while a spellof good conditions were possible, the bad conditions would be catastrophic toany idea of agriculture.

Thus the full exploitation of theEarth’s landmass was not possible.  Whatremained was Africa and much of the greater South American land mass and Sahuland the Indonesian coastal plain as well as an expanded India.  The problem was that agriculture waseffectively limited to tropical coastal plains and the like which to this dayhave not been properly mastered.  We hadthe working equivalent of perhaps three Indian subcontinents to exploitproperly and a possible developed population base of up to three billion if myconjecture of such a previous development holds up.

Eliminating the Ice Age created awell ordered climate and the potential for a population of between thirty toone hundred billion people.  I haveposted on this in the past.

The Ice Age was ended 13900 yearsago and the present Holocene is now fully settled in pending furtherimprovements by us.

Greenland cold snap linked to Viking disappearance

Reuters – Mon, 30 May, 2011

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/greenland-cold-snap-linked-viking-disappearance-203657244.html

An iceberg floats in the sea ice near the town of Uummannaq in westernGreenland

OSLO (Reuters) - A cold snap in Greenlandin the 12th century may help explain why Viking settlers vanished from theisland, scientists said on Monday.

The report, reconstructing temperatures by examining lake sedimentcores in west Greenland dating back 5,600 years, also indicated that earlier,pre-historic settlers also had to contend with vicious swings in climate on icyGreenland.

"Climate played (a) big role in Vikings' disappearance fromGreenland," Brown University in the United States said in a statementof a finding that average temperatures plunged 4 degrees Celsius (7F) in 80years from about 1100.

Such a shift is roughly the equivalent of the current averagetemperatures in Edinburgh, Scotland, tumbling to match those in Reykjavik, Iceland.It would be a huge setback to crop and livestock production.

"There is a definite cooling trend in the region right before theNorse disappear," said William D'Andrea of Brown University, the leadauthor of the study in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers have scant written or archaeological records to figure outwhy Viking settlers abandoned colonies on the western side of the island in themid-1300s and the eastern side in the early 1400s.

Conflicts with indigenous Inuit, a search for better hunting grounds,economic stresses and natural swings in climate, perhaps caused by shifts inthe sun's output or volcanic eruptions, could all be factors.

LITTLE ICE AGE

Scientists have previously suspected that a cooling toward a"Little Ice Age" from the 1400s gradually shortened growing seasonsand added to sea ice that hampered sailing links with Iceland or theNordic nations.

The study, by scientists in the United States and Britain, added the previouslyunknown 12th century temperature plunge as a possible trigger for the colonies'demise. Vikings arrived in Greenland in the 980s, during a warm period like thepresent.

"You have an interval when the summers are long and balmy and youbuild up the size of your farm, and then suddenly year after year, you go intothis cooling trend, and the summers are getting shorter and colder and youcan't make as much hay," D'Andrea said.

The study also traced even earlier swings in the climate to the riseand fall of pre-historic peoples on Greenlandstarting with the Saqqaq culture, which thrived from about 4,500 years ago to2,800 years ago.

Scientists fear that the 21st century warming is caused by climatechange, stoked by a build-up of greenhouse gases from human activities. Anacceleration of warming could cause a meltdown of the Greenlandice sheet, raising world sea levels.