Must have been all the darned flies driving lots of tiny fossil fueled vehicles
Bugs in Greenland Mud Yield Clues to Future Warming
Flying bugs trapped deep in the frozen mud covering Greenland have pointed researchers to new clues about the country’s climate, suggesting the now-icebound island was once warmer than previously believed.
In the centuries that followed the last ice age and in the millenia between the last two, Greenland could have seen summer highs between 10 and 15 degrees warmer than today, according to a new study led by researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Core samples taken from the mud of a lake bed in northwestern Greenland, just beyond the edge of the ice sheet and largely undisturbed by its historical ebb and flow, revealed large numbers of preserved insects known as phantom midges and a fly species known as chironomids. Those species today usually live well south of Greenland, but the numbers found in the sediment cores taken by the Northwestern team were comparable to populations seen in the Canadian Atlantic provinces.
So, wait, what could have possibly caused it to be so warm during these two different time periods, one of which was during our current Holocene? And why can’t it possibly be the same causation (for the most part) during the current warm period we’re now in?
Figuring out what Greenland’s climate was like in the past can help scientists figure out what may happen to it in the future as planet-warming carbon dioxide and other gases build up in Earth’s atmosphere. That data collected by studies like the Northwestern study can be fed into computer models to help fine-tune those estimates.
“These findings may portend large future warming in this high-latitude region,†the authors conclude.
They just can’t help themselves in going Cult of Climastrology.
