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Originally Posted by tabs
And when did they start keeping these records? Would you say about 150 years ago or so? U must admit that is sufficient time to figure out what a 5 Billion year old planet is doing with regards to climate..
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You know, the Norse colonized Iceland and the South West coast of Greenland 1000 years ago. That period is generally referred to as the global optimum. Within 300 years, ice patterns had shifted and the Greenland colony could no longer raise enough food to feed itself. Some of those families had lived there for a longer period than there has been a United States of America. That didn't stop the climate change, however.
Researchers are currently looking at the logs of whaling ships from the late 1700s to determine what were the temperatures and winds were in the oceans.
A story which interested me from a few years ago concerned anthropologists researching the oral histories of west coast First Nations. One story had been categorized as a 'Creation myth', as it told of islands rising out of the sea, then the sea rising over them again. Further study has indicated these stories may be oral documentation of sea-level changes from an ice age 10,000 years ago.
Climate change is very real, but we get so caught up in "whatever I am familiar with is the way things are", that we lose sight of the basic reality that for the most part, the Earth is going to change, whether we like it or not.
Les