Posted on 08/19/2009 3:13:18 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
(CNN) -- Ancient man may have started global warming through massive deforestation and burning that could have permanently altered the Earth's climate, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Primitive slash-and-burn agriculture permanently changed Earth's climate, according to a new study.
The study, published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews and reported on the University of Virginia's Web site, says over thousands of years, farmers burned down so many forests on such a large scale that huge amounts of carbon dioxide were pumped into the atmosphere. That possibly caused the Earth to warm up and forever changed the climate.
Lead study author William Ruddiman is a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a climate scientist.
"It seems like a common-sense idea that there weren't enough people around 5, 6, 7,000 years ago to have any significant impact on climate. But if you allow for the fact that those people, person by person, had something like 10 times as much of an effect or cleared 10 times as much land as people do today on average, that bumps up the effect of those earlier farmers considerably, and it does make them a factor in contributing to the rise of greenhouse gasses," Ruddiman said.
Ruddiman said that starting thousands of years ago, people would burn down a forest, poke a hole in the soil between the stumps, drop seeds in the holes and grow a crop on that land until the nutrients were tapped out of the soil. Then they would move on.
"And they'd burn down another patch of forest and another and another. They might do that five times in a 20-year period," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
It’s pretty well known that most primitive peoples set fire to the forests on a regular basis, and it wasn’t primarily for agricultural purposes.
The book 1491 shows how Indians in the Americas had been routinely burning the land for over ten thousand years, to the extent that a different ecology had developed. When this routine burning was withdrawn as a result of the 95% die-off in Indian populations during the 16th century caused by the merging of the American and Afro-Eurasian disease ecologies, massive changes occurred to the environment of the Americas.
The “natural wilderness” seen in most areas by the first white explorers had little in common with what had existed for many thousands of years before this die-off.
Actually, trees (and other plants) take in CO2 and give off oxygen.
Trees take in CO2 when alive and release CO@ when they are rotting dead.
don't you know the Amerindians lived in a pristine paradise unspoiled. SARC
The American Indian owes everyone living here today restitution for their burning of the land to cause buffalo stampedes for hunting.
They destroyed millions of acres, caused global warming and owe us a ride - now it’s their turn.
Well, duh. I know that. I should think BEFORE I type.
Actually, they do both.
They ‘exhale’ O^2 during daylight; CO^2 at night. Generally, the younger they are, the greater the disparity between the two processes, though it “always” favors net O^2 production, while alive.
Living trees also contribute huge amounts of methane to the atmosphere; estimates range anywhere from 10% to 30% of annual atmospheric methane emissions.
Thank you. I was wondering if anyone was going to post the general facts on plant CO2 and O2 production.
You are correct. I was referring to net effects.
Satire, right?
The book I mentioned was specifically written to refute that theory. In the author’s opinion, with which I agree, it degrades American Indians from humans to a species of wildlife that doesn’t impact the “natural environment” because they are part of it, unlike the rest of us who are somehow “non-natural.”
Dam* those city dwelling, cuneiform writing, farming Sumerians. /s
The author of that article needs a refresher course in math. I have heard there were 5-6 million people living 5,000 years ago. For them to have as much effect on the environment as today’s population, they would have to practice 1,000 times as much deforestation, not 10 times.
Bullshite begets more bullshite.
. . . which there wouldn't have been any of in the first place without "greenhouse gases" (they call it "the greenhouse effect for a reason, ya know!) . . .
They still use slash and burn farming in Mexico and sometimes there is enough smoke in the atmosphere that it is visible in Texas when the wind is right and carries it north.
The earth began warming after the last glacial cycle and, later, from the Younger Dryas, thousand of years before the advent of agriculture. Unfriggingbelieveable.
2 or 3 daya ago I read an aritlce, I think it was a Drudge Headline, where it was announced the Richard Lindzer of MIT was about to publish a study which debunks the CO2 myth once and for all. Been searching but can't find it.
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