Comprehensive professional report on Climate Change

Climate Change

This is reported on the December 15th issue of Chemical Engineering
and News, which is published by the American Chemical Society.

This is web accessible, figures and all

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8...atechange.html

Some of the figures contain a lot of information which can be
understood in a glance. Basically, yes, we are heating up.
The reason: green house gases. Will we do anything about it;
I will say no.

Earl




A side report on "Myths About Past Temperatures In Greenland And England"

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8...techange1.html
I will show below



Several myths create confusion about past global temperatures, says Michael
E. Mann , assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of
Virginia. Climate change skeptics use these misconceptions to try to show
that there were periods during the past millennium when global temperatures
were higher than they have been in recent times.

One myth is that Greenland was much warmer during the so-called medieval
warm period than it is today, and that the warmth enabled the Norse to
settle there. The truth is that a few hundred Norse settled in the fjord
region of southwest Greenland beginning in 986 because it was the warmest
part of the island, as it is today, Mann says.

The settlements collapsed totally by 1500, not primarily because of climate
change, but because of social factors, Mann argues. Shipping routes changed,
and the inhabitants had no way to get supplies or sell their products. The
regional cooling in Greenland that set in between 1000 and 1400 was of the
order of 1 °C or less--"not the kind of cooling that's going to cause
massive upheaval," he explains.

Another myth is that grapes could be grown in England during medieval times
but have not been cultivated there recently. "However, there are roughly 10
times as many vineyards in England today than at the height of the so-called
medieval warm period," Mann explains. England has never been a major
wine-producing region, not in medieval times and not today, he notes.
However, "it has been suitable for grape growing for most of the past 1,000
years," he says.