Columbus blamed for Little Ice Age

ScienceNews ^ | 10-22-11 | Devin Powell

[afraidfortherepublic]

Depopulation of Americas may have cooled climate

MINNEAPOLIS — By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who followed may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe’s climate for centuries.

The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. 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.

“We have a massive reforestation event that’s sequestering carbon … coincident with the European arrival,” says Nevle, who described the consequences of this change October 11 at the Geological Society of America annual meeting.

Tying together many different lines of evidence, Nevle estimated how much carbon all those new trees would have consumed. He says it was enough to account for most or all of the sudden drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide recorded in Antarctic ice during the 16th and 17th centuries. This depletion of a key greenhouse gas, in turn, may have kicked off Europe’s so-called Little Ice Age, centuries of cooler temperatures that followed the Middle Ages.

[PapaBear3625]

Solar activity at the time (the Maunder Minimum) probably had much more to do with the Little Ice Age.

[PapaBear3625]

Whoaaaa!!! Just wait a dog-gone minute! The European settlement of the New World CLEARED LAND! That is historical fact. This is the most ridiculous mumbo-jumbo of all time.

Farmers cleared land for planting, and they didn't do that much of it before the 1800's. There just wasn't that much population.

Indians were fire-bugs. They would set forest fires all over. The reason was that deer eat grasses and tree shoots. Their ecological niche is at the interface between woods and meadow. Large forests of large mature trees do not provide food for deer. The ideal hunting environment involved lots of meadows.

That said, the conclusion is silly. The Earth's main carbon sink is the ocean. Warm oceans hold less carbon than cold oceans. For that reason, CO2 levels FOLLOW temperature changes, rather than causing them.

[bigheadfred]

Horsesh!+. Every one knows that the introduction of horses back to the Americas, and all the horsesh!+ they produced is what changed the climate. Everything wrong in the world can be blamed on horsesh!+.

[Daffynition]

[andy58-in-nh]

How much did the planet cool when Mao killed 30 million Chinese after the Cultural Revolution? Or after Stalin caused 6-8 million to die in the Ukranian famine?

Sheesh...

[bigheadfred]

Steaming. Nice touch.

That The Rose Garden?

[Daffynition]

>>Large forests of large mature trees do not provide food for deer.<<

How does that account for the deer foraging on acorns? Are they all community organizers?

We all know...deer eat meat. Fact.

[Daffynition]

Organically speaking...

[Silentgypsy]

Why does photo #2 bring to mind the clubbing to death of one’s neighbor w/a snow shovel?

[dsc]

“How much did the planet cool when Mao killed 30 million Chinese after the Cultural Revolution? Or after Stalin caused 6-8 million to die in the Ukranian famine?”

Last time I read about that it was 40 million for Mao and 20 million Ukranians.

What, are they revising the numbers downward bit by bit?

[ApplegateRanch]

Unlike buffalo chips, horsesh!+ rots quickly, producing a lot of heat; that was th basis of gardening hot beds. You just might be onto something!

[andy58-in-nh]

It depends largely on who you cite as a source, and what time frame one uses. I was only making a point about the insanity of assuming that human beings can have any substantial control over CO2 amounts in the atmosphere, 97% of which is naturally-occurring (e.g. - evaporative water vapor) and which only constitutes 0.38% of the Earth’s atmosphere to begin with.

[BroJoeK]

from the article: "Nevle estimated how much carbon all those new trees would have consumed.
He says it was enough to account for most or all of the sudden drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide recorded in Antarctic ice during the 16th and 17th centuries.
This depletion of a key greenhouse gas, in turn, may have kicked off Europe’s so-called Little Ice Age, centuries of cooler temperatures that followed the Middle Ages."

The "little ice age":
"...any of several dates ranging over 400 years may indicate the beginning of the Little Ice Age:

• 1250 for when Atlantic pack ice began to grow
• 1300 for when warm summers stopped being dependable in Northern Europe
• 1315 for the rains and Great Famine of 1315-1317
• 1550 for theorized beginning of worldwide glacial expansion
• 1650 for the first climatic minimum."

[The Mayor]

OMG.... This can’t be real..................

[bigheadfred]

My dad has my cousin bring his horses up every summer to graze in his small pasture, a couple of times every summer. Dad then collects the manure and spreads it on his garden. I asked my dad one day WHY he needed corn 14 feet tall. He just told me to shut up and climb that ladder....

[bigheadfred]

Why does photo #2 bring to mind the clubbing to death of one’s neighbor w/a snow shovel?

It's in your trial transcript????

[bigheadfred]

Good post BroJoeK, but does anyone remember the blizzard of “71? My dad told me my toes would grow back....

[SunkenCiv]

The first storm that really registered with me was the blizzard (late 1970s) that shut down the enormous state university I was attending at the time.

[txhurl]

I always wondered what near-missing comets and asteroids over time have done to the atmosphere, having grazed it or ran through it. Those are direct, immediate impacts, I think of the slo-mo footage of that bullet going through the apple.

[SunkenCiv]

Darned right — hence, the Democratic Party.