Columbus Blamed For Mini Ice Age 420
DesScorp writes "Science News reports on a story which blames a centuries long cooling of Europe on the discovery of the new world. Scientists contend that the native depopulation and deforestation had a chilling effect on world-wide climate. 'Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University.' The story notes that the pandemics in the Americas were possibly an example of human climate manipulation predating the Industrial Revolution, though isotope measurements used during research have much uncertainty, so 'that evidence isn't conclusive.'"
Re:Bla Bla Bla (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this is quite interesting.
If true, this means in less than a hundred years enough CO2 was pulled out of the atmosphere to affect the environment. If proven this adds to the evidence that the climate is pretty darn fragile. I haven't read the TFA because I am getting ready to work, but there is one rebuttle and pone possible way to "test" this hypothesis off the top of my head.
The Rebuttle: I thought previous studies claimed the Little Ice Age was more regional than global. I know it affected Europe and played a hand in colonies.
The possible test: Parts of the North East U.S., namely Pennsylvania, were heavily deforested. During the Great Depressing the government sponsored Civilian Conservation Corps. walked across Pennsylvania and replanted large tracks of forest. A half of state worth of new forest popping up should at least have a little blip on CO2 level measurement, right?
You do realize their are kooks on both sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Some are worse than others. Some love to paint with a broad brush using open ended phrases like your "Climate Change Skeptics".
Skeptic about which claims? There are hundreds of climate change issues and there equally hundreds of opposing opinions. Each side has their facts so where does a skeptic fall? I tend to agree with some and disagree with others yet under your banner I am lumped in with the kooks.
There is a whole industry out there which only tries to assign guilt, much of it to gain moral superiority but quite a bit is built on making a profit. Climate change discussions didn't get very far until some very large companies learned how to use politicians to make a lot of money off of it. Look at GE, poster child of abusing this process, we give them two billion dollars to further develop wind technologies which is already in their best interest to do so? They then pile on the deductions to have nearly an effective zero rate of taxes?
The real climate skeptics should be applauded because most of science is being used to hide an agenda whose only goal is to pad specific pockets. Its well funded and marketed and much of it has governments behind it because the politicians love money.
Re:Bla Bla Bla (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, environmental scientists are good at "accidentally" not figuring in criteria like that before crying out "the sky is falling".
Heat was pretty much exclusively fire ( or rubbing one bare bodkin again' another).
I like the old school thinking that the Earth has changed over time and continues to do so in spite of the money we throw at environmental research. Continents go sailing the waters,crashing into one another,pockets of elements are exposed,oil come burbling to the top,forests burn out of control over continents,volcanoes pop up spewing elements into the atmosphere,rotation reverses,poles move,comets hit, All this before man and most animals. So, now science finds life is not resilient, nor is the environment. I guess it got wore out before we got here....morons.
Just give them more money,guarantee their careers and the Earth will once again be safe from the evil environmental scientists and we can all get some peace.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
From TFA that 'sudden drop' in CO2 levels equates to 6 - 10 ppm. Given that the current atmospheric concentration is 392 ppm, and in 2009 CO2 levels increased by 2ppm, we're talking about tiny quantities well within the margin of error of the measuring methods used. At worst we're talking about an equivalent to 5 years of increase, based on the 2009 figure, and that was enough to trigger a mini 'ice age'? This is junk science.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be, but if the reforestation alone can account for that drop in atmospheric CO2 (that's a lot of forest!), then the change in the landscape itself would certainly have an influence on local climate, possibly enough to influence Western Europe.
Also, don't be so quick to dismiss research based on an article in a popular science magazine: most journalists are incompetent, and will try to get a sensationalist angle out of anything and nothing.
Re:What about the plague? (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone missed it, they don't do the "experiment" stage of real science.
Re:Summary is incorrect (Score:4, Insightful)
So the solution to global warming is to cut down all the trees of the world and let them grow back? :)
Re:bull pucky (Score:4, Insightful)
More to the point, the idea that somehow the Medieval Cooling Period was caused by the discovery of the New World is yet another example of the kind of "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" pseudo-science that passes itself off as climate science.
Most of it is now driven by either politics (IE: People with a socialist/communist/fascist agenda that want to use climate science as a convenient crisis under which they can obtain power. See: Harry "Never let a good crisis go to waste" Reid.) or by scientists attempting to obtain/increase their funding, much of which is obtained via the former group of power-mongers.
It's part of the "perfect circle" of deceit and corruption that is at the heart of the modern left and modern climate science. Most Americans have caught on to the game by now, which is why 70% (and rising) no longer believe a word from the climate scientists' mouths. People hear the words "Climate Change" or "Global Warming" (or whatever the term du jour is) and they just roll their eyes and stop listening.
The really sad part is that it has inculcated in large parts of the American populace a distrust of scientists in general, particularly if they are in any way connected with the climate science field.
Frankly, the climate science field has been nothing but a disaster for science as a whole. It needs a hard reset, with all current scientists retiring, and all existing data deleted. We need to start over on this and do it right. Now, whether that is actually possible, I don't know. Probably not. But I don't see any other way of making it trustworthy again.
Re:Summary is incorrect (Score:3, Insightful)
You're incorrect. The current model is roughly the same as the one from 10, 20, 30 years ago (and probably longer): we humans are not only capable but fully responsible for whatever disaster befalls us through way of the earth's climatic changes, and OMGTHESKYISFALLING.
The general theme is, "I don't know what causes it, but man - specifically, the white man - is responsible for all bad in the world". Global warming? Climate change? Global cooling? Regional desertification? IT's the evil West, the White Man, the Christian. Whatever's convenient at the time. (Interesting how the current climate change is only getting the negative press, without mentioning that the Sahara is re-vegetating and getting a fair amount of moisture.)
The irony is that more deforestation and occurred in the century prior to Columbus than in the century after. There were a lot of people in the Americas. They used trees. Contrary to popular belief, they did not reduce, reuse, recycle: indigenous would use up an areas resources (animals, wood, water) and move onto the next location. So, he may have been correct, sorta, despite blaming the white man.