85 comments on Freedom from Oil - a review
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
85 comments on Freedom from Oil - a review
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
- Oilwatch Monthly November 2009
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
- The Bullroarer - Friday 20th November 2009
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“Considering the many productive uses of petroleum, burning it for fuel is like burning a Picasso for heat.”
—Big Oil Executive
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.










GAIA Host Collective
In can speak to the Greenland fertility issue.
Throstur Eysteinsson is Ass't Directer of the Icelandic Forest Service, has been working with Greenland to set up their first tree plantings and has a PhD in forestry from the Univ. of Maine. He also quite erudite.
Wait a minute. I have no expertise at all on climate change in Greenland, but here we have a witness from the 14th century who went to Greenland and described what it was like. Then we have some guy in the 21st century who says the guy in the 14th century was wrong about what he says he saw? I think we should give the greater weight to the eyewitness testimony.
Throstur's points are valid. There is no apparent source for wheat in Greenland (since it was never grown in Iceland, the only known contact with Greenland), just barley. And a warmer climate in Greenland should have helped Iceland (which has a better climate today). Yet Icelanders never grew wheat.
No archaeological evidence of either apples or wheat.
As the name suggests, Greenland was subject to massive Real Estate hype, of which the bishop might have been part. Post-pagan Iceland murdered far fewer men (and lost fewer "a viking") so emigration of surplus population was probably a good thing.
The sea ice records of the Icelanders showed more ice in the 1300s & 1400s than today.
Alan
Alan:
You might try
*Ivar Bardson/Bardarson, Det Gamle Grnlands Beskrivelse, edited from handwritten MS by Finnur Jonsson, Copenhagen 1930. The original was written by a monk who, among other things, dined on the wild cattle that were roaming the place in the 1340's.
Cheers
HO
(the square comes because I don't know how to put an o with a slash through it into this format).
Short of checking for it in the National Library of Iceland, any idea how to get it ?
Or a detailed summary ?
I can kind of/sort of read Icelandic/Old Norse.
Alan
I only just tracked it down this far. But there is are a group of folk that write about this on a discussion board, which I came across trying to find a translation. Incidentally travel at the time was not narrowly restricted and so it is perfectly possible that they acquired seed grain as part of the trade that they engaged in - selling polar bear skins etc into Europe. The church was also heavily involved in the colony.
Archaeologists love to comb through waste dumps. No evidence of wheat or apples there.
Iceland has a milder climate, and much stronger trade links, than Greenland. They have never grown wheat there (including today). As an aside, Iceland has a variety of trees to chose from that will grow well or marginally.
So far (I will confirm) only Siberian larch has been planted in Greenland.
{
[edit] A number of tree species have been planted in Greenland (Scotch Pine 100+ years ago, today 2.5 to 3 m tall). Several species survive but only Siberian larch can be said to grow. And only along the interior Fjords of the south (where the Eastern Settlement was).
The Western Settlement was treeless (and charcoal less), but the Eastern Settlement had limited short willows & birches along the interior fjords, but a very limited resource that would have been pressured by sheep farming. And iron could well have been an essential export from the Newfoundland Settlement. Unfortunately, access to Newfoundland required trees to make ships from.
[I might mention that apple orchards and sheep farming are incompatible without extensive fences, the sheep will rapidly kill the trees w/o high and extensive fences (Icelanders traditionally free range their sheep, fences were impractical). Fruit trees have sugar in their bark are are "sheep candy" AFAIK. Another strike against Greenlandic apple trees.]
Throstur also pointed out that the concept of sustainable development came from forestry. A 1713 book on silvaculture Economics in German was the first mention, he said the name of the author but I forgot[/edit]
There is no other historic record of wheat or apples, both of which would have been trade goods with Iceland, which had neither.
Throstur's theory of collapse of Greenland and not Iceland is that Iceland had small trees large enough to make charcoal, Greenland did not. Charcoal is needed to make iron (note that Viking Settlement in Newfoundland (perhaps 150 people max) had an iron foundry). Iron is needed to harvest hay. Hay is needed to keep sheep & cattle over winter. Once Greenland's declining trade links deprived them of iron, starvation was just a matter of time.
Such a theory argues against apple trees.
Greenland Vikings were never a large colony. Even much larger, and closer Iceland would go over a year without a trade vessel at various times in their history. (Although such years were rare and were complained of in the chronicles of the time).
Alan
That is, of course, the same bishop that Throstur politely called a liar. And made claims not supported by excavations of old settlements or other historical accounts.
Alan