Research team suggests European Little Ice Age came about due to reforestation in New World

http://www.physorg.com ^ | 14 Oct 2011 | Bob Yirka

[gleeaikin]

There are historic reports of millions of natives dying in the 1500s in Mexico and adjacent areas. I have no doubt that this spread up north and down south. Also, it is believed that one reason the Pilgrims were successful was because many Indians had died in previous decades of smallpox or other illness.

In the 1700s and early 1800s, this trend may have been reversed. There was the phenomonon called the Buffalo Common wherein the Indians kept large areas burned off to create a prairie where eastern buffalo could graze. Warfare was suspended while hunting in these areas. One such area was the Shenendoah Valley in Virginia. However the Indians had pretty much been displaced by the time of the Revolution. Then there was an area called the Barrens around the Green River and in a large area east of Mammoth Cave. That was still used around the beginning of the 1800s. The eastern buffalo is now extinct so far as I know.

[norwaypinesavage]

"You mean, ignorant 5 foot tall Indians couldn’t possibly have built anything so complex."

I was not commenting on the ignorance of the "Indians". I was commenting on the ignorance of someone who would state that since he didn't know something was built, the only logical explanation was that there must have been a large number of ignorant people building it. Another equally logical explanation (to me) is that maybe the people were smarter than people of today give them credit.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

So, along with astronomy and mathematics, they invented the dragline and D-9 dozer ?

[aruanan]

A team comprised of geological and environmental science researchers from Stanford University has been studying the impact that early European exploration had on the New World and have found evidence that they say suggests the European cold period from 1500 to 1750, commonly known as the Little Ice Age, was due to the rapid decline in native human populations shortly after early explorers arrived.

The Incan civilization was in steep decline by the time Pizarro arrived. There were troubles all through the Americas that antedated the arrival of the Europeans.

[ZULU]

??????????????????

I thought the “Little Ice Age” STARTED in the 1300’s.

[Red Badger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_ice_age

You’re thinking of the Medieval Warming Period?...

[ZULU]

That surprises me as I read that during the height of the “Viking Age” northern Europe was acutally warmer than now and that the Viking Settlements in Greenland were wiped out due to encriaching cold in the late 1300’s or early 1400’s.

I remember reading something about the climate in Northern Europe beginning to deteriorate in the 1300’s. There was also a special on TV about why wine was replaced as a beverage in northern Europe with whiskey and rye in the late Middle Ages due to deteriorating temperatures.

In the early 1300’s there was a actually a series of years in England and Scotland known as years without summers.

I wonder if Wikipedia is trying to slant things.

[Cacique]

This story is Bullshit. It reeks of it. There are not enough bulls in the world to produce and equivalent amount of bovine excrement as these writers.

[Ragnar54]

It used to be "common knowledge" that the Little Ice Age started in the 1200s or 1300s. The Wikipedia thought police have not "cleaned up" all relevant articles yet. Consider this from the "River Thames Frost Fairs" article:

"The period from the mid-14th century to the 19th century in Europe is called the Little Ice Age because of the severity of the climate, especially the winters. In England, when the ice was thick enough and lasted long enough, Londoners would take to the river for travel, trade and entertainment, the latter eventually taking the form of public festivals and fairs."

If you search through the thousands of edits of the "Little Ice Age" entry, you can find this from 2006:

"The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling lasting approximately from the 14th to the mid-19th centuries, although there is no generally agreed start or end date: some confine the period to 1550-1850. This cooler period occurs after a warmer era known as the Medieval climate optimum. There were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals [1]."

If you look closely at the "reconstructed temperature graph" for the current version of the entry, you will note a wide discrepancy in start and end dates for low temperatures. The black line is from Hadley-Cru (of ClimateGate fame), but there is some support for low temps before 1400.

[Paul Pierett]

Morons!

Read my work at nationalforestlawblog.com Front page to Sun Hot license plate and October 2009 Newsletter under my name.

Paul

[Flag_This]

"No census was ever taken, but no large settlements of any size like a city were evident in the North American continent at the time of Columbus up until the Pilgrims."

Survivors of de Soto's expedition along the Mississippi river in the early 1540's described towns with hundreds of buildings connected to other towns by systems of roads and trails. One hundred years later, the next Europeans to explore that area only found isolated villages.

[SunkenCiv]

thanks again, Red Badger.

Researchers discover trees in Amazon much older than assumed
(Not as helpful with global warming)
Today@UCI | December 8, 2005 | Staff
Posted on 12/13/2005 10:56:43 AM PST by DaveLoneRanger
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1539676/posts

[snip] Trees in the Amazon tropical forests are old. Really old, in fact, which comes as a surprise to a team of American and Brazilian researchers... Using radiocarbon dating methods, the team, which includes UC Irvine’s Susan Trumbore, found that up to half of all trees greater than 10 centimeters in diameter are more than 300 years old. Some of the trees, Trumbore said, are as much as 750 to 1,000 years old. [/snip]