Twitter and New York Times are attacking Senator Ron Johnson for saying that Greenland used to be green.
If New York Times writers bothered to read their own paper, they would have known the Senator Johnson was correct. When the Vikings lived in Greenland, trees grew in what is now permafrost.
TimesMachine: January 22, 1934 – NYTimes.com
In 1939, the glaciers of Greenland and Norway were nearing “catastrophic collapse.”
17 Dec 1939, Page 15 – Harrisburg Sunday Courier at Newspapers.com
The Arctic was much warmer in the past.
Less Ice In Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 Years Ago — ScienceDaily
Holocene Treeline History and Climate Change Across Northern Eurasia – ScienceDirect
A paper came out this week talking about a relatively recent episode of green plants under what is now the Greenland Ice Sheet.
And here is an article from 1897.
“Thursday, 25 November, 1897
The Geology of GreenlandWashington (I), C.) it)a. Excerpt Two Smithsonian scientists, Professors Charles Schuchert and David White, have just returned from thc wilds of West Greenland, bringing back valuable collections.
Greenland was once upon a time a tropical country. That is proved absolutely by the remains of an extensive tropical flora which arc found there. Where now a sheet of solid ice over a mile thick covers mountain and valley, and mighty frozen rivers called glaciers make their way to the sea and hatch icebergs, there was in earlier days a verdure-clad wilderness of luxuriant vegetation. Together with the palms and tree-ferns, there were trees related to the giant sequoias of our own west coast”
From the video, temperatures in Greenland were more than 2C warmer 4,000 years ago, and current Greenland temperatures are close to the coldest in the last 8,000 years.
