It is a new year, but no reason to think the climate hysterics will have calmed down and fortunately, the rationalists are still able to do and get reasearch published that gives a reality-based view of climate issues. This study examines Greenland, where all the ice is supposedly melting, to see if there is anything really unprecedented about whatever small level of ice mass loss may be occurring. And of course there isn’t anything unusual or unnatural about recent decades. In fact, some 8000 years ago a part of Greenland now covered with very thick ice, very, very thick ice, had no ice on it. Hmmm, makes you think. And what it makes me think is that we are past the warmest part of the current interglacial and inevitably heading toward the next ice age. We should be thinking about how to cope with that. And of course, the authors to get this published had to tie it to the climate hysteria by claiming that all they were doing was showing how much the ice would melt if we keep putting CO2 in the atmosphere. But that is not what there actual data shows; it shows much less ice in the past than now, so how about we stick to the facts and leave the speculation alone. (NG Article)
A study came out 10-12 years ago that showed glacier extent for at least one glacier in Greenland was at its maximum extent during the MWP at a location approx 300km from the viking settlement during the MWP which was experiencing a 300 year warming trend. Local weather patterns may be remarkably different over that distance for a couple of months, but not for 300-500 years. So obviously, their is considerable conflict in whether it was warmer or colder. I would tend to go with the written record and artifact record from the flora and fauna as likely being the most accurate proxy measurement of temperature.
Its highly unlikely that period of over 300 years was having one its longest warming trends while only 300km away, that location was having one of its longest and deepest cold trends. Simply put – its unlikely both are true. I mention this since one of the major issues in the paleo world of science is how poorly conflicting data is reconciled.