Another Environmental Scare Story Explodes -- the Green Alps Theory

Some of the most convincing evidence for global warming trumpeted by environmental alarmists has to do with glaciers. Time and again we see stories in the MSM about the melting of this or that set of glaciers. Well, here's a little much needed perspective on the phenomenon.

Der Spiegel reports:

The Alpine glaciers are shrinking, that much we know. But new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today. And 7,000 years ago they probably weren't around at all. A group of climatologists have come up with a controversial new theory on how the Alps must have looked
over the ages.
....
The fact that the Alpine glaciers are melting right now appears to be part of regular cycle in which snow and ice have been coming and going for thousands of years. The glaciers, according to the new hypothesis, have shrunk down to almost nothing at least ten times since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. "At the time of the Roman Empire, for example, the glacier tongue was about 300 meters higher than today," says Joerin. Indeed, Hannibal probably never saw a single big chunk of ice when he was crossing the Alps with his army.

The most dramatic change in the landscape occurred some 7,000 years ago. At the time, the entire mountain range was practically glacier-free -- and probably not due to a lack of snow, but because the sun melted the ice. The timber line was higher then as well.

The scientists' conclusion puts the vanishing glaciers of the past 150 years into an entirely new context: "Over of the past 10,000 years, fifty percent of the time, the glaciers were smaller than today," Joerin states in an essay written together with his doctoral advisor Christian Schluechter. They call it the "Green Alps" theory.

....

"The history of the glacial cover apparently is more dynamic than had been assumed until now," says Schleuchter. According to this model, the glaciers were smallest about 7,000 years ago, largest during the "mini ice age" of 1650 to 1850. Since this last cold spell, the tongues of ice have been receding quickly -- for a paleo-climatologist 150 years are just a wink in time.

Read it here.

Now this is interesting! Any competent historian is aware of the wide variations in climate that have taken place just in the past 5,000 years. In fact, climate change has been raised as an explanation for all manner of historical events. The idea of a stable climatic past, before the rise of capitalism, has always been a chimera. Slowly, but surely, environmental scientists are beginning to catch on to that fact.

I wonder if this research will be featured on the front page of the NYT? Nah! Probably not. I wonder why.