Warming Trend Benefits Greenland

Don't tell Al Gore, but the warming climate is benefitting Greenland. As reported in the New York Times, " A Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth Hoeg, the region’s chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why southern Greenland cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and viable forests."

In short, Greenland is beginning to look more like it did when discovered and named by Viking explorer Eric the Red, back in the 10th Century. As the New York Times article admits, back then, even without the burning of fossil fuels, "It was relatively green then, with forests and fertile soil, and the Vikings grew crops and raised sheep for hundreds of years. But temperatures dropped precipitously in the so-called Little Ice Age, which began in the 16th century, the Norse settlers died out and agriculture was no longer possible."

One might add that the polar bears and the walruses managed to live through the warmer climate of the 10th through 16th centuries.

Meanwhile, in the once-again warming Greenland, "Cod, which prefer warmer waters, have started appearing off the coast again. Ewes are having fatter lambs, and more of them every season. The growing season, such as it is, now lasts roughly from mid-May through mid-September, about three weeks longer than a decade ago. 'Now spring is coming earlier, and you can have earlier lambings and longer grazing periods,' said Eenoraq Frederiksen, 68, a sheep farmer whose farm, near Qassiarsuk, is accessible by a harrowing drive across a rudimentary road plowed in the hillside. 'Young people now have a lot of possibilities for the future.'"

Global warming bringing about a future with "lots of possibilities" for young people? Who knew? [HT: Instapundit]