Title: Breaking News: The Climate Actually Changes!
Headings: Breaking News: The Climate Actually Changes!
Breaking News: The Climate Actually Changes!
Content: As recently as 1,000 years ago (during the "Medieval Warm Period"), Icelandic Vikings were raising cattle, sheep and goats in grasslands on Greenland's southwestern coast. Then, around 1200, temperatures began to drop, and Norse settlements were abandoned by about 1350. Atlantic pack ice began to grow around 1250, and shortened growing seasons and unreliable weather patterns, including torrential rains in Northern Europe led to the "Great Famine" of 1315-1317. Temperatures dropped dramatically in the middle of the 16th century, and although there were notable year year-to-year fluctuations, the coldest regime since the last Ice Age (a period termed the "Little Ice Age") dominated the next hundred and fifty years or more. Food shortages killed millions in Europe between 1690 and 1700, followed by more famines in 1725 and 1816. The end of this time witnessed brutal winter temperatures suffered by Washington's troops at Valley Forge in 1777, and Napoleon's bitterly cold retreat from Russia in 1812. Although temperatures have been generally mild over the past 500 years, we should remember that significant fluctuations are normal. The past century has witnessed two distinct periods of warming. The first occurred between 1900 and 1945, and the second, following a slight cool-down began quite abruptly in 1975. That second period rose at quite a constant rate until 1998, and then stopped and began falling again after reaching a high of 1.16 degrees above the average global mean.