Amidst all the hype that we’ve heard about “global warming” and “climate change,” a new scientific study has been released which completely alters our understanding of these phenomena and throws into question all we’ve been told on this subject. The scientific study is from Harvard University, about as “establishment” as a college can get, so this study is clearly not from a right-wing or climate-change denier source.
The first link is an article about this study printed in the Washington Post, again about as “establishment” as a newspaper can get. I saw the article reprinted in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, long a Leftist newspaper in the Midwest. It has long been known that Vikings founded colonies in Greenland during the Viking era, and the article defines the time of Viking settlements in Greenland as being from “about 985 to 1450 [AD].” Around 1450 AD, these settlements were abandoned, and theories for their abandonment included some form of plague or sickness, drought, pirate raids and temperature changes. The new study released from Harvard cites evidence indicating a new explanation is the real reason. That new explanation is that rising sea levels made the Viking towns and growing areas uninhabitable. Indeed, the first link states the rising sea levels were actually quite extreme. It states: “The waters around some settlements may have risen by more than 10 feet over four centuries,” and later it cites “new findings show some settlements experienced up to 10.8 feet of sea level rise during the Viking residence (emphasis added).” The study utilized “advanced sea level models and high-resolution topography” in reaching this conclusion. The article concludes that “the Viking abandonment occurred during the climatic shift from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age.”
Did you notice that the scientific evidence pointed to a conclusion that the ocean levels rose “up to 10.8” feet during the Viking Age in Greenland? It does not comment on how major the global warming was during this “Medieval Warm Period,” but it had to be a significant global warming for ocean levels to rise almost 11 feet over 4-5 centuries! If the ocean rose that much in Greenland, it had to rise a great deal all over the world. Ocean water is liquid so gravity will “even out” its height to a global stable level. For example, if you have a uniform level of water in a bathtub and start adding more water, the water does not rise in just a portion of the bathtub water. The water in the bathtub rises by an equal amount over its entire surface area. The same dynamic is in effect in the world’s oceans: if a lot more water enters the oceans, they will all rise to seek a level of equilibrium everywhere. The second link and third link offer additional perspectives on this study, but indicate the sea level rise may have been only regional. However, oceanic/sea levels would naturally sink lower when ice sheets and glaciers advance as there is less water in the ocean. During a warm period, as occurred during the Viking era, ocean levels will naturally rise due to melt-water coming into the oceans from the glaciers and ice-caps which are retreating.
It would take an immense amount of new water entering the ocean to raise the sea-level almost 11 feet in Greenland. Where did this extra water come from? It could only come from a great melting of the polar ice-caps and glaciers due to the rising temperatures of the “Medieval Warm Period.” So, if the Harvard study is accurate, there was a period of global warming circa 1000 AD, and lasting for several centuries. When the Little Ice Age replaced the period of extended global warming, the polar ice-caps and glaciers greatly expanded due to dropping temperatures. This would lower oceanic water levels. Let’s ask some serious questions about where that extra warmth came from all over the earth during the Viking/Medieval Warming Period, but first let’s consider some of the proposed reasons for “global warming” in our time. Let us compare the two periods of global warming. Have sea-coast cities like Miami, London, New York, etc. experienced 11 foot rises in their ocean levels? Of course not. If the sea was rising today as much as it did in the Medieval period in Greenland, vast numbers of seaport cities would have to be abandoned. Any “global warming” in our current time is minor compared to the Medieval Warm Period.
Consider these questions: (A) Were there hundreds of millions of gas-powered cars, trucks and vehicles of all kinds driving on roads in the Medieval period? Were there thousands of airplanes polluting the atmosphere with exhaust fumes from their jet or prop engines? Were there many thousands of coal-fired plants producing electricity for everyone in the Medieval period of time? The answer to all these questions is an obvious “No.” Yet we have been told for many years by “experts” that fossil-fuel plants, internal-combustion engines, etc. have caused a planetary-threatening time of “global warming” in our current society. Have these fossil fuel usages raised modern ocean levels by even a few inches? I have not heard the statistics on this, but a post I wrote in 2019 (and re-posted just last month) documented that in many cases, oceans have been encroaching on seacoast cities not because oceans were rising, but rather because the cities were sinking mostly due to ground subsidence due to excessive pumping out of ground water under those cities (fourth link).
If the Medieval Warm Period caused a rise in ocean levels anywhere near 11 feet, it was not due to any fossil-fuel usage. There was something in the natural world which caused such a massive rise in sea levels. There had to be a major increase in heat on the earth, and it surely didn’t come from Medieval mankind using fossil fuels as in the modern world. It had to be from an up swelling of heat from the earth’s magma layers, an increase in the amount of heat generated by the sun or both. My guess is an increase in heat produced by the sun would be the cause. Since the rise in heat occurred slowly over centuries, no one at that time had any ability to scientifically document the changes in the sun’s emitted heat at that time. Our modern world has had advanced scientific instruments for measuring solar heat and solar changes for only a few generations. Mankind’s lifespans are so short that we are not able to measure or grasp the oscillations in the sun’s heat over the centuries and millennia, but we can determine that such long-cycle solar changes do occur and that solar changes affect sea levels. The Medieval Warm period was almost surely caused by an increase in heat from the sun–which has cycles of greater and less heat over the millennia that we barely understand.
Does Bible prophecy have anything to say about a global warming period in the latter days of our era? It does. Revelation 16:8-9 prophesy that in the latter days, something will happen to the sun which will make it much hotter on earth. The prophesied increase in earth’s temperatures will not be a product of fossil-fuel usage, but rather something that happens to the sun–which the passage states will be Divinely-caused. The warming of the earth prophesied in Revelation 16:8-9 sounds extreme. It may melt all the ice-caps and glaciers. Think what that will do to ocean levels and the viability of seacoast cities.
To whatever extent we have global warming on the earth now, don’t give so much blame to the automobiles driving by you. Look up and consider the star in our sky which gives our planet its heat. That star is going to enter a much warmer phase according to prophecy. I stress that the heat prophesied in Revelation 16:8-9 will not be caused by fossil fuel usage.
- https://www.washingtonpost.
com/climate-environment/2023/ 04/28/vikings-greenland-sea- level-rise-climate/ - https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/
10.1073/pnas.2209615120 - https://www.history.com/news/
why-did-the-viking-disappear- from-greenland - https://stevenmcollins.com/?s=
Are+cities+sinking%3F
