The Scythe is mightier than the Hockey Stick when it comes to getting the attention of those disposed to deny that climate is warming. Greenland's reapers , The Economist reports , have little to be grim about . They have brought in the first barley harvest in 600 years. The icy isle was colonized in the comparatively balmy centuries around the turn of the Millennium, when vacationing Vikings introduced if not Martha's Vineyard, at least Newfoundland to keg parties and the other summer activities that paved the way for Senator Kennedy's amphibious assault on Chappaquiddick.
In any event, Greenland's salad days rolled downhill into the Little Ice Age,and by 1400, its European immigrants had all perished of starvation, unable to eke a living as the growing season contracted and the ice fields grew. Now there's crispy Chinese cabbage , barley, and to teach warming enthusiasts a lesson in scientific humility, a truly alarming surplus of iceberg lettuce.
So let's see, a thousand years ago the Earth was warm. About six hundred years the Earth was cooler. And now it's as warm again as it was a thousand years ago.
One could only postulate that the Earth is capable of cooling off and warming up without our help.