At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120614130944.htm … the last interglacial episode, known as the Eemian after a river in the Netherlands, differed in unusual ways from the present interglacial, the Holocene. A paper in Geophysical Review Letters reports on some research in the Arctic, dating back to the Eemian, that shows the Greenland ice sheet had melted in a good portion – and it is assumed global sea levels rose as a result. Now, the thing is the scientists assumed sea level had risen on the basis the Greenland ice sheet had reduced – in other words they were projecting the AGW theory into the past. Nobody, it seems, has checked on sea levels on a global basis for the Eemian and research on these things remains biased to the North Atlantic pond – so we have different sea levels in one part of the world (but not necessarily up rather than down in other parts of the world). In the AGW model a warming world equals an ice free (in summer) Arctic Ocean, and yes, they have found it was warmer from ocean sediments – in the North Atlantic to the west of Ireland. However, it seems that sediments in the Nordic Sea to the east of Jan Mayen Island were somewhat cooler – if not actually cold. This is of course contrary to what should have been happening in a warming world – so what was going on? The authors are then forced to do some mental gymnastics – something different must have been playing a role – was the Gulf Stream in a different Atlantic trajectory, heading north towards Greenland rather than NW Europe, and what might this mean as far as modern warming is concerned. Are they going to exagerate still further the threat to sea levels from Greenland ice melt? Is doomsday one step closer – and is the green money machine clicking up greenbacks faster than ever?
The same story can be seen at http://phys.org/print258890264.html and at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/15/study-shows-the-arctic-was-much-co… and it is made clear the research was done in the expectation that the Arctic would have been warmer – as clearly Greenland was. It was therefore a surprise to find it was not. It is in the comments at the latter site that the idea of a shift in the Gulf Stream is aired – warming Greenland rather than Scandinavia.