The MWP was a local event over a limited time period, but that’s not what’s happening today. There’s no evidence that the MWP was a world wide phenomena and in any case ‘warming’ can occur for many reasons, some ‘natural’, but evidently not ‘all’. Today the burning of an accelerated amount of fossil fuel has added enough CO2 to our paper thin atmosphere to effect the heat retaining aspect we would expect from any addition of a green house gas to our atmosphere. The data isn’t in doubt because it’s been confirmed by dozens of climate experts…not the least of which is the US National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration. Give this a think! The atmosphere that surrounds the earth is no thicker than the skin on an onion. A fair amount of man made CO2 becomes a part of that thin atmosphere while some is absorbed by plants and water. The amount added to the atmosphere can’t be discounted and neither can the extra methane and other greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere since 1800. The ‘hockey stick’, roundly dissed by deniers hasn’t been explained away anymore than thinning ice packs, melting glaciers and the northward movement of the shrub and treeline. Given that there are technological fixes for this problem that would benefit the overall economy of the United States and the world it doesn’t seem logical to stick with fossil fuels for the benefit of the coal and oil industries bottom line. Does anyone really care where we get the power needed to keep the wheels on the road and the lights on? I don’t and I’ll bet even the most ardent ‘denier’ doesn’t either.

Greenland was never green. They never had grape vines there. The vikings lived on the coasts and the rest of Greenland was covered in ice, much like today.

Sorry but it is a myth that Greenland was covered with lush fields of grain.

"The Greenland Vikings lived mostly on dairy produce and meat, primarily from cows. The vegetable diet of Greenlanders included berries, edible grasses, and seaweed, but these were inadequate even during the best harvests. "

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/vikings_during_mwp.html

Also the changes in Greenland now are noticeable.

"But now that the climate is warming, it is not just old trees that are growing. A Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth Hoeg, the region’s chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why southern Greenland cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and viable forests. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/world/europe/28greenland.html

Edit @ Meadow

Funny how you have different standards for what you call green. Yes there were some growing of crops during the Viking era. You call that green. But look at the original question, he says that the island is covered in a permafrost and implies it is somehow different from the viking era. They are growing crops today in Greenland, but you refuse to call it green. Why is that? Is it because your arguement would simply collapse?

I say Greenland is about the same today as it was during the Viking era. What is your evidence that it is different from today?

Greenland wasn’t green. There were areas on the southwest coast that were settled by the Vikings. They maintained a dairy colony. Their diet was 80% land-based for over 200 years. It was not an easy life by any means. But you’re right, what they achieved with simple hand-tools back then became impossible only a few centuries later – - it also became difficult to travel to Greenland in wooden ships as icebergs filled the North Atlantic in the late 1300s-1400s.

Similar evidence from around the world indicates warmer climes – and was until the 1990s universally interpreted to mean that it was warmer, at least in those location (but then, we’re talking about 90% of the inhabited world, without contrary evidence from many other places, and the whole really can’t be anything more or less than the sum of the parts).

In short, your larger point is correct, but don’t overstate it. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the AGW proponents.

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I guess the warmists will try and claim that it was either just a regional anomaly (which is belied by studies showing warmer periods on every continent) or that it wasn’t warmer at all.

However, claiming it wasn’t warmer is untenable as accounts of the time clearly show it was warm enough to sustain a dairy economy.

For example around 1341, the Norwegian church official Ivar Bardason, sailed to Greenland to investigate rumours that hostile innuit (or ‘skraelings’ as the Norse called them) were attacking outlying settlements. He sent his men out to the villages and found [quote]

""They found nobody, either Christians or heathens, only some wild cattle and sheep, and they slaughtered the wild cattle and sheep for food, as much as the ships would carry"

From this we can tell that not only was the climate there temperate enough for cattle and sheep to survive without human tending, but that they must of thrived, as there were so many that there was more than the ships (plural) would carry.

So clearly a much warmer time in Greenland – try letting cattle and sheep loose today and see how long they last!
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EDIT – @ Beren.

Your link to the NY Times story was revealing. Titled "Warming REVIVES Flora and Fauna in Greenland" the articles goes on to state quite clearly:

""Greenland, a self-governing province of Denmark, was settled by the pugilistic Viking Erik the Red in the 10th century, after his murderous ways got him ejected from Iceland. Legend has it that he called it Greenland as a way to entice others to join him, and, in fact, it was.

It was relatively green then, with forests and fertile soil, and the Vikings grew crops and raised sheep for hundreds of years. But temperatures dropped precipitously in the so-called Little Ice Age, which began in the 16th century, the Norse settlers died out and agriculture was no longer possible.""

– So actually disproving your previous assertion that it’s a "myth" that Greenland was ever green or that crops were growing there (nobody is suggesting that it was "covered" with fields).

Wow! Congratulations. You’ve disproved your own claim.

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EDIT @ Beren -

No, I don’t say it was green then – the newspaper article you cited yourself says that it was green.
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They have archeological evidence of crops growing in areas of Greenland then where today you could not grow anything.