On Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:37:22 -0700, wrote:

(Refer for example, to Jared Diamonds very readable book "Collapse",
about the way civilizations fall.)

It's certainly very readable, but I happened to read it after visiting
Greenland and reading everything I could lay my hands on about the
Norse settlements in the southwest of the island. (They existed from
about 900 to about 1300, during the Medaeval Warm Period, however
spelled.) My conclusion was that Mr Diamond didn't have a clue what he
was talking about. He was just trying to stuff the Norse into a
formula he'd already created.

The Norse ran sheep and cattle in Greenland, and they survived as long
as they had contact with Europe. But about 1300 the North Sea iced up,
the Inuit moved south, and the climate of Greenland got too cold to
support a European lifestyle. There was probably also some erosion
caused by the Norse. Anyhow, they died out. But here's the kicker:

The Danish/Greenland government in the 1950s successfully
re-introduced sheep to the southwest, and within the past ten years
they've been able to re-introduce cattle. So if there is indeed global
warming, what it has created so far--at least in the semi-Arctic
north--is a climate very like that of Europe in the year 1000.
(Apparently the records aren't good enough to say "the world".)



Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
forthcoming from HarperCollins www.flyingtigersbook.com