Shocka: Greenland was green!

Those models they’ve been basing all the scary hype on – turns out they could be faulty. Who knew?!

In southern Greenland they found a wide range of plant and insect life, including pine, spruce and alder tries along with beetles, flies, spiders, butterflies and moths, from 450,000 to 800,000 years ago.

Scientists had thought the area was last ice-free about 120,000 years ago during the last interglacial but the study showed southern Greenland was still covered in ice at that time.

This suggests the southern Greenland ice sheet is more stable than thought and might not be as big a contributor to sea level rises caused by rising temperatures, Willerslev said.

This does not change the view that climate change is problematic but could force scientists to rethink their models looking at the impact of warming temperatures, he said.

“If we have found evidence that the ice didn’t melt away then people have to take that into account when modeling how ice caps might react in the future to climate change,” he said.