Posted on 01/24/2011 3:54:27 PM PST by Fractal Trader
Genghis Khan's Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th centuries was so vast that it may have been the first instance in history of a single culture causing man-made climate change, according to new research out of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, reports Mongabay.com. Earn Points What's this?
Comments (21) Email Facebook Twitter Stumble Digg Share Unlike modern day climate change, however, the Mongol invasion actually cooled the planet, effectively scrubbing around 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere.
So how exactly did Genghis Khan, one of history's cruelest conquerors, earn such a glowing environmental report card? The reality may be a bit difficult for today's environmentalists to stomach, but Khan did it the same way he built his empire — with a high body count.
Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests.
In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan's unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere.
"It's a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era," said Julia Pongratz, who headed the Carnegie Institution research project. "Actually, humans started to influence the environment thousands of years ago by changing the vegetation cover of the Earth's landscapes when we cleared forests for agriculture."
Pongratz's study, which was completed with the help of her Carnegie colleague Ken Caldeira, as well as with German colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, measured the carbon impact of a number of historical events besides just the Mongol invasion, including the Black Death in Europe, the fall of China's Ming Dynasty and the conquest of the Americas.
What all of these events share in common is the widespread return of forests after a period of massive depopulation, but the longevity of the Mongol invasion made it stand out as having the biggest impact on the world's climate.
"We found that during the short events such as the Black Death and the Ming Dynasty collapse, the forest re-growth wasn't enough to overcome the emissions from decaying material in the soil," explained Pongratz. "But during the longer-lasting ones like the Mongol invasion... there was enough time for the forests to re-grow and absorb significant amounts of carbon."
The 700 million tons of carbon absorbed as a result of the Mongol invasions roughly equals the amount of carbon global society now produces annually from gasoline.
Reagan, through peaceful means conquered 200,000,000 commies!
- first they kill about 300 million last century.
- Reagan defeats them peacefully
- now they want even more to die
And those trees eventually died, rotted and returned their carbon to the atmosphere.
I don’t know if Genghis Khan was “green” or not, but he was one heck of a globalist.
Re Green death:
Isn't this partially ofset by his large number of offspring? Are the scientists trying to blame the Little Ice Age and Black Death on the Mongols?
LOL! Good one. I almost forgot about his famous comment.
That article is proof that ‘toking’ and typing don’t mix.
He had Death Panels?
I’d give the credit to Subutai. Had Ögedei Khan not died when he died, Subutai would have turned on teh Holy roman Empire, and conquered everything up the English Channel.
|
· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe · |
|||||
Antiquity Journal & archive Archaeologica Archaeology Archaeology Channel BAR Bronze Age Forum Discover Dogpile Eurekalert LiveScience Mirabilis.ca Nat Geographic PhysOrg Science Daily Science News Texas AM Yahoo Excerpt, or Link only? |
|
||||
|
· Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword · |
|||||
As an aside; CO2 has no effect on climate whatsoever.
You wrote:
“I’d give the credit to Subutai. Had Ögedei Khan not died when he died, Subutai would have turned on teh Holy roman Empire, and conquered everything up the English Channel.”
Maybe. Fighting through German and French forests is harder than on the eastern plains. The Magyars found out about that. But I would credit God rather than Subutai. He decides when to take Mongol khans out of the picture.
He was a Family Planner, too. Biggest contributor to the gene pool ever.
Last summer my brother and I were working outdoors and the sun was moving in and out from behind clouds. Every time it did, there was a 30 degree change in temperature with two minutes. Show me a person who believes that anything in the world other than the sun affects climate, and I’ll show you somebody who never goes outdoors.
These3 retards will stop at nothing to continue the scam..
It also explains why NASA's James Hansen is such a fan of the chinese. Mao killed over 40 million.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
