A Few Things Ill Considered

Vineland Was Full Of Grapes

Posted by coby on March 25, 2006
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This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.

Objection:

Newfoundland was so warm in the Medieval Warm Period that when the Vikings landed they called it Vineland and brought boatloads of grapes back to Europe.

Answer:

One can not infer a global climate from an anecdote about a single region, or even a few regions, you need detailed analysis of proxy climate indicators from around the world. These proxy reconstructions have shown that the Medieval Warm Period (around the time the Vikings were said to have discovered North America) was in fact not as warm or pronounced as today’s warmth. From NOAA’s paleoclimate website we can read these quotes:

What records that do exist show that there was no multi-century periods when global or hemispheric temperatures were the same or warmer than in the 20th century….

…In summary, it appears that the 20th century, and in particular the late 20th century, is likely the warmest the Earth has seen in at least 1200 years.

As for the specific anecdote that Vineland was a warm land where grapes grew wild, like in the Greenland story, Vineland’s name was most likely a kind of marketing ploy. Doing a bit of googling I came across this article by Robert McGhee for Canadian Geographic, from 1988 that had this interesting thing to say:

There has been much argument over the location of Vinland, with scholars and local enthusiasts placing it anywhere between Labrador and Florida, and even in the Great Lakes or the Mississippi Valley. The geographical descriptions in the Norse sagas are too vague to allow certain placement on a modern map, but there is growing consensus that they best fit Newfoundland and Labrador (formerly Newfoundland). The main problem with a Newfoundland and Labrador (formerly Newfoundland) site is the absence of wild grapes. Still, there is a strong suspicion that what Leif found were only berries, and that he followed the practice of his father in "giving a land a good name so that men would want to go there".

(I got to that article from this page with a lot of good resources on the Viking expansion)

So, grapes growing in Newfoundland: paleoclimate’s Smoking Gun, or medieval marketing ploy? You decide.

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.

“Vineland Was Full Of Grapes” was first published here, where you can still find the original comment thread. This updated version is also posted on the Grist website, where additional comments can be found, though the author, Coby Beck, does not monitor or respond there.

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Comments

  1. #1 Gunnar
    March 29, 2009

    Actually, the old norse “Vin” can be interpreted in two ways. The modern use of the word means “wine”, but as seen in old Norwegian place names it also can mean “plain” (e.g. Granvin, Bjørgvin). A likely explanation is that the vikings named the continent “Vinland” because the landscape at their landing site was open and flat.

  2. #2 Bart Laws
    July 31, 2009

    The vines, and the berries, were probably poison ivy. The Vikings wouldn’t have known any better.

  3. #3 Pierre
    August 10, 2009

    Two things about this fact.

    1) Wine was made from ANYTHING that sprouted back around the 1000s, not necessarily grapes.

    2) If the climate was warmer then, warm enough to grow grapes in the arctic, then water levels would have been higher. Not only by the fact that the arctic regions were coming out of depression after the Ice Age (these areas still rise measurably), but also from the iceless glaciers.
    And yes, one can see these waterlines having carved timelines in rock in for instance Sweden.

    Now, if we went back to those waterlines, that would NOT be a good thing (even minus the ice age land depression), whether it is a cyclical thing or man made, not a good thing.

  4. #4 hans
    December 4, 2009

    Then tell my why the street names of the oldest parts of London are all vine related? Because the romans used to grew up their vine grapes in Londinium 2000 years ago at their side?

  5. #5 Hans
    December 4, 2009

    There are several diaries from southern germany monks traveling from Freybourg to Rome over the Alps. These diaries are up to 1200 years old an describe in detail the travels. Some of the oldest diaries does not even show the word “snow” or “ice” in the diaries. Why? Because there was no snow in the Alps at that timespan!?

  6. #6 cooperman
    December 4, 2009

    In the English channel there are fossils of creatures from the savannah Rhinos elephant and Hippos etc……..

    So not only was that part of the world much warmer but also lower ergo…………the earth cooled and the sea rose?

  7. #7 George Kapotto
    December 22, 2009

    Hans writes: These diaries are up to 1200 years old an describe in detail the travels. Some of the oldest diaries does not even show the word “snow” or “ice” in the diaries. Why? Because there was no snow in the Alps at that timespan!?

    Have you ever heard of ‘Otzi’ the iceman? Most people have. He has been confidently dated to 3300BC and was frozen in the Alps from then to 1991AD. Very strong and hard to dispute evidence that there was snow and ice at least in some regions of the Alps.

    What else do the diaries not mention? Intuitively this list is likely longer than what is mentioned. Absence of reference is not the same as physical absence of the item. Clearly, critical thinking is necessary in interpreting data. Otherwise you end up with faith based conclusions.

  8. #8 mandas
    December 22, 2009

    Hans (and others)
    Grapes may have grown in Greenland or the northen Atlantic region in the eleventh century. Possible, but unlikely. But so what?
    Meanwhile, in New Zealand (you may have heard of it – its in the southern hemisphere), the region was experiencing unusually cold temperatures and increased glaciation.

    http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/CookPalmer.pdf

    I’m going to suggest therefore, that the concept of a global ‘warm period’ in medieval times can be discounted.

  9. #9 George Kapotto
    December 24, 2009

    I second mandas’ remark.

    AGW deniers are able to imagine holes in climate data where there are none. Yet the uncorrelated words of a 12th century monk and the marketing exploits of some viking explorers are to be viewed as a precisely documented proof of temperatures 1000 years ago.

    How about a better idea? Why not go to the geologic record, ice core samples, carbon isotope ratios and other unbiased sources of information. Oh wait, I think I know why. Could it be because those records don’t substantiate the anti-AGW position?

  10. #10 Oliver
    January 18, 2010

    red pepper,

    which evidence?

    hans,

    why don’t you go to the alps right now. Of course by walking, not using a car. Just like your monks, you don’t have modern gloves, maybe some pieces of fur or cloth to wrap your hands in.

    You will further find, that writing gets difficult, either are your fingers frozen, or the cloth/fur is in the way.

    Then you go down to Italy. It is getting warmer, somewhere south of Bolzano you can start writing. You now what? Nobody wants to read your snow stories, except some skiing fanatics, which haven’t existed at that time anyway.

    Snow is too ubiquitous to be interesting. Like rain, or faeces.

    Better describe wine, nice churches, whatever you like, but not snow.

    So you may write down many other things.

    Hans, what if you replace your far-fetched arguments with true evidence?

    BTW: Freybourg is Switzerland, not Germany.

  11. #11 Timothy Casey
    April 20, 2010

    Your thesis that we are talking about global trends rather than regional trends fails to address the fact that if it was indeed warmer today than in Medieval times, there is no reason we would not have seen at least some of the same regional climate patterns repeating themselves. After all, the movement of continents and the rise and fall of mountains is insignificant over such insignificantly short periods of time.

    If grapes were grown in Newfoundland (and other parts of northern Europe) during the Medieval, how is it that it is not warm enough today to grow the same varieties in at least some of the same locations?

    Is it not a simpler explanation if we conclude that it is cooler today than in the Medieval because Medieval regional temperature anomalies have, to date, not been repeated?

    –
    Timothy Casey
    Consulting Geologist
    http://geologist-1011.net

  12. #12 Chris S.
    April 21, 2010

    “If grapes were grown in Newfoundland (and other parts of northern Europe) during the Medieval, how is it that it is not warm enough today to grow the same varieties in at least some of the same locations?”

    It is. My neighbour as a child in South West England had a grapevine in the 1980s that did very well. I think this quote may be illuminating too:

    “By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good
    grapes can be raised in Scotland”
    Adam Smith (1776) The Wealth of Nations.

    Commercial vineyards may still struggle nowadays (though, increasingly less so), but then we are talking about a completely different scale of agriculture nowadays as compared to the middle ages. Growing grapes on a small, labour-intensive scale in the middle ages was commercially viable for many reasons (smaller populations, lack of transport links, lack of mechanisation) that differ from today.

    –

    Chris S.
    Agricultural Entomologist

  13. #13 Marco
    April 21, 2010

    @Chris S and Timothy Casey:
    http://climateresearchnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/wineofbritainmap.jpg

    Just so you know, vineyards can already be found above the 2050-line:
    http://www.englishwineproducers.com/vineyardregional.htm
    (just select the northern part of the UK and you’ll find one in Lancashire)

  14. #14 Chris S.
    April 23, 2010

    I’ve just noticed I failed to add the remainder of the Adam Smith quote above, so here it is in full:

    “By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good
    grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too
    can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for
    which at least equally good can be brought from foreign
    countries. …As long as the one country has those
    advantages, and the other wants them, it will always be
    more advantageous for the latter, rather to buy of the
    former than to make.”
    Adam Smith (1776)

    Thus, for the small-scale economies of the MWP it may well have been econoically feasible to grow grapes in northern areas where in today’s world it is not due to economy of scale (more advantageous for the latter, rather to buy of the former than to make).

  15. #15 Frotiy
    July 8, 2010

    The evidence is that Vikings planted vines, right? From what I have read, there’s no evidence the vines actually produced. The project/settlement were a bust. Regardless of localized climatic variation, the latitude was too extreme for that longitude. Heck, you can plant vines anywhere; it means nothing.

  16. #16 mandas
    March 7, 2011

    Couldn’t work out the best place to put this – but this was as close as I could work out!

    An disturbing study just published:

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02312.x/abstract

    The implications for this are massive and extremely concerning. Ecosystem changes like this will lead to massive cascading effects throughout the trophic levels, and could lead to the collapse of the food chain.

    It is effects such as this which are the things we really need to worry about regarding climate change – not whether or not our insurance premiums increase or whether coastal properties will become worthless.

    When idiots make moronic statements about how a warmer world will be better etc, it just proves how little they understand. A warmer world will NOT be better. Our whole ecosystem – and our whole society and way of life – is adapted for the climate exactly as it is right now. You change that – and the consequences will be far reaching, costly and devastating to everything we know and rely on for our survival.

  17. #17 adelady
    March 7, 2011

    mandas, yes I saw this.

    Not quite the same plummeting feeling in the pit of the stomach as last year’s bombshell about the loss of 40% of global phytoplankton, but unpretty. Very discouraging.

  18. #18 Bruce
    canada
    December 29, 2012

    Without doubt this site has some of the most inane logic I have ever seen. The initial response and the comments of most ( not all ) are more indicative of a church picnic than of scientific reasoning. Don’t like contrary evidence? – bring on the inquisition! Better yet, lets calls them “deniers” so that we can single them out and ostracise them! (See Edward Bernays if you doubt the method.) There’s no doubt that climate changes over time, but our role in it is grossly exaggerated. I lay it at the feet of a schooling system that fails to fail, and that teaches self importance as an end in itself.

    There’s not a single pro response here, particularly the initial one, that I couldn’t blow holes in in five minutes. None of us are that important folks, we’re simply another set of evolving bacteria that has already outgrown it’s usefulness through overbreeding and neurosis. Calm down and enjoy life while you still have it.

  19. #19 mandas
    December 29, 2012

    Ahhh, another denier.

    Or…. are you going to show us some of this ‘contrary evidence’ that you will “blow holes in in five minutes”? So go on then. Blow away!

  20. #20 coby
    December 29, 2012

    I have a feeling “blow”, as in hot air, is just about all Bruce will do…

  21. #21 kai
    December 29, 2012

    bruce, you are right, and all climate realism denalists have no clue why they are so arrogant about their not existing knowledge and lacking intelligence

  22. #22 Wow
    December 29, 2012

    problem with you kai is that you’re a tiny boy hiding behind anonymity.

    Or, in other words, a whiny little arselick.

  23. #23 kai
    January 1, 2013

    wow has a severe character damage problem to accept how mean and shallow his brain works

  24. #24 Wow
    January 1, 2013

    kai you’re a tosspot.

  25. #25 Eli Rabett
    http://rabett.blogspot.com
    January 1, 2013

    Given the lack of vines in Iceland, where the hell did the Vikings get their grapes from?

  26. #26 kai
    January 1, 2013

    wow, if i would suffer from the same mental deficiencies as you, i would immediately and constantly pray to god for help

  27. #27 Wow
    January 2, 2013

    If you suffered from the same mental deficiencies as me, you’d be 1000x smarter and a normal human being.

    However, being smart to an idiot like you seems like some mutant power, doesn’t it.

  28. #28 Richard Simons
    January 2, 2013

    Bruce said:

    There’s not a single pro response here, particularly the initial one, that I couldn’t blow holes in in five minutes.

    Select one and show us how you do it.

    we’re simply another set of evolving bacteria

    You realize that bacteria destroyed their own environment by producing toxic oxygen, do you?