Yes, our forebears started global warming by hunting the woolly mammoth. Right. Must be the mammoth albedo effect, much like the sheep albedo effect. Oh, wait, no it’s birch trees albedo calculated via pollen proxy. The mammoths stopped eating birch trees, that’s wot did it. And those hunters used cooking fires too. Gosh. I wish I had more time to refute this, travel beckons, but I’m sure readers can lend a hand in comments.
UPDATE: Carl Bussjaeger points out in comments that;
Just last month, USA Today told us that Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque discovered that…
Mammoth extinction triggered climate COOLING
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/mammoth-extinction-triggered-climate-cooling/1
Man-made global warming started with ancient hunters
AGU Release No. 10–15 Link here
30 June 2010
For Immediate Release
WASHINGTON—Even before the dawn of agriculture, people may have caused the planet to warm up, a new study suggests.
Mammoths used to roam modern-day Russia and North America, but are now extinct—and there’s evidence that around 15,000 years ago, early hunters had a hand in wiping them out. A new study, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), argues that this die-off had the side effect of heating up the planet.
“A lot of people still think that people are unable to affect the climate even now, even when there are more than 6 billion people,” says the lead author of the study, Chris Doughty of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. The new results, however, “show that even when we had populations orders of magnitude smaller than we do now, we still had a big impact.”
In the new study, Doughty, Adam Wolf, and Chris Field—all at Carnegie Institution for Science—propose a scenario to explain how hunters could have triggered global warming.
First, mammoth populations began to drop—both because of natural climate change as the planet emerged from the last ice age, and because of human hunting. Normally, mammoths would have grazed down any birch that grew, so the area stayed a grassland. But if the mammoths vanished, the birch could spread. In the cold of the far north, these trees would be dwarfs, only about 2 meters (6 feet) tall. Nonetheless, they would dominate the grasses.
The trees would change the color of the landscape, making it much darker so it would absorb more of the Sun’s heat, in turn heating up the air. This process would have added to natural climate change, making it harder for mammoths to cope, and helping the birch spread further.
To test how big of an effect this would have on climate, Field’s team looked at ancient records of pollen, preserved in lake sediments from Alaska, Siberia, and the Yukon Territory, built up over thousands of years. They looked at pollen from birch trees (the genus Betula), since this is “a pioneer species that can rapidly colonize open ground following disturbance,” the study says. The researchers found that around 15,000 years ago—the same time that mammoth populations dropped, and that hunters arrived in the area—the amount of birch pollen started to rise quickly.
To estimate how much additional area the birch might have covered, they started with the way modern-day elephants affect their environment by eating plants and uprooting trees. If mammoths had effects on vegetation similar to those of modern elephants , then the fall of mammoths would have allowed birch trees to spread over several centuries, expanding from very few trees to covering about one-quarter of Siberia and Beringia—the land bridge between Asia and Alaska. In those places where there was dense vegetation to start with and where mammoths had lived, the main reason for the spread of birch trees was the demise of mammoths, the model suggests.
Another study, published last year, shows that “the mammoths went extinct, and that was followed by a drastic change in the vegetation,” rather than the other way around, Doughty says. “With the extinction of this keystone species, it would have some impact on the ecology and vegetation—and vegetation has a large impact on climate.”
Doughty and colleagues then used a climate simulation to estimate that this spread of birch trees would have warmed the whole planet more than 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) over the course of several centuries. (In comparison, the planet has warmed about six times more during the past 150 years, largely because of people’s greenhouse gas emissions.)
Only some portion—about one-quarter—of the spread of the birch trees would have been due to the mammoth extinctions, the researchers estimate. Natural climate change would have been responsible for the rest of the expansion of birch trees. Nonetheless, this suggests that when hunters helped finish off the mammoth, they could have caused some global warming.
In Siberia, Doughty says, “about 0.2 degrees C (0.36 degrees F) of regional warming is the part that is likely due to humans.”
Earlier research indicated that prehistoric farmers changed the climate by slashing and burning forests starting about 8,000 years ago, and when they introduced rice paddy farming about 5,000 years ago. This would suggest that the start of the so-called “Anthropocene”—a term used by some scientists to refer to the geological age when mankind began shaping the entire planet—should be dated to several thousand years ago.
However, Field and colleagues argue, the evidence of an even earlier man-made global climate impact suggests the Anthropocene could have started much earlier. Their results, they write, “suggest the human influence on climate began even earlier than previously believed, and that the onset of the Anthropocene should be extended back many thousands of years.”
This work was funded by the Carnegie Institution for Science and NASA.
Notes for Journalists
As of the date of this press release, the paper by Doughty et al. is still “in press” (i.e. not yet published). Journalists and public information officers (PIOs) of educational and scientific institutions who have registered with AGU can download a PDF copy of this paper in press.
Or, you may order a copy of the paper by emailing your request to Maria-José Viñas at mjvinas@agu.org. Please provide your name, the name of your publication, and your phone number.
Neither the paper nor this press release are under embargo.
Title:
“Biophysical feedbacks between the Pleistocene megafauna extinction and climate: The first human‐induced global warming?”
Authors:
Christopher E. Doughty, Adam Wolf, and Christopher B. Field, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, California, USA
======================
Readers, I urge you to write to newspapers and magazines that carry this story.
Modern man did not extensively hunt the mammoth. That prize goes to Neanderthal man. To understand why you need understand the life style of the two species.
The Neanderthal by necessity was somewhat sedentary. They found places that would give them shelter from the bitterly cold winters, such as caves or rock overhangs and would stay there for many generations.
This gave them a profound understanding of the lay of the land and the migratory patterns of the wild life. They knew when the herds were at their most vulnerable. Narrow passes, river crossings and cliff faces where likely rich pickings. They probably used traps but as far as I know none have been found.
They used fire both to keep warm and to hunt. Their spears were heavy poles with a broad pointed stone tip but no barb. This allowed for multiple stabs without the weapon getting stuck or of course the head being pulled off. Ambush and brute force allowed them to tackle even the largest of the plains animals but even so they sustained hideous injuries that would probably be fatal to the nomadic modern man. As a family they were able to nurse the injured back to health even if it took months. A luxury the nomads could not afford.
It’s thought that with the erratic climate shifts and the change in both flora and fauna, their way of life offered them no advantage over the nomads and so they died out. There is no evidence that modern man was responsible for their demise although they must have at times clashed. This was before farming took off outside the African continent so there was no conflict of interest. Modern man still adopts the nomadic life where farming is not viable.
Modern was man was very much the plains hunter, following the herds and like any nomadic hunting animal was an opportunist picking off the weak or young. Our hunting style was probably much like the African wild dog with one very big difference in that we had weapons. Like the Neanderthal we probably migrated from Africa and so it would seem the spear was utilized before we became a distinct species.
Like many nomadic hunters our preference for the weak didn’t make us immune from the danger of injury so anything that could distance us from the prey was a distinct advantage.
The nomads spear has a long narrow shaft with slim head and is usually barbed. Ideal for throwing and leaving a festering irritant in the wound.
Like the dogs we could inflict a wound and then retreat. The wounded animal could be tracked and harried making it even weaker until we could move in for the kill.
The rules are no different for the hunter or hunted. Any wound is potentially fatal. Whereas the dog must go in using only it’s teeth we could stay our distance and finish it off with our spears.
Animals are not stupid. When an animal is dying every predator for miles knows about it and they all want a part of the action.
The problem for the other predators is that man is a pack animal and everyone of them is armed with a spear. Not only do the other predators risk injury but they could end up becoming the meal.
So where am I going with all this?
The mammoth was a long way from our preferred prey. It’s big, it’s dangerous and if it behaved anything like the modern elephant it’s mates would stomp you into the ground. Worse still you have killed an animal that takes time to butcher and you are probably attracting a lot of hungry predators to the banquet.
Remember the Neanderthal could choose the place and choose the time, as a nomad you have no such luxury.
Next time a post-normal scientist suggests to you that modern man may have be responsible for the mammoths extinction, ask him/her when was the last recorded instance of an African tribesman attacking an elephant with a spear.
So, the mammoth extinction simultaneously caused global warming *and* global cooling and the evidence that it caused global *warming* is the (geologically) sudden proliferation of birch trees which need *cold* conditions in order to thrive, which is therefore evidence of the simultaneity of global *cooling*.
Owe-kaaaaaaayyyy, got it.
MartinGAtkins: July 1, 2010 at 3:21 am
Next time a post-normal scientist suggests to you that modern man may have be responsible for the mammoths extinction, ask him/her when was the last recorded instance of an African tribesman attacking an elephant with a spear.
Good — heh — point.
However, the usual method of killing an elephant without using a firearm involves stalking one of the outliers of the herd while they’re asleep, using an axe to lop off the tip of the trunk, then running like hell while the elephant bleeds out. The remaining herd members usually won’t chase the perpetrator, but stay to protect their wounded buddy, and, after he dies, they’ll mourn for a bit and then move on.
Trivial misunderstandings arising from such press releases are no cause for alarm. (Alarm is for alarmists.)
Quaternary paleoecology (and ecology more generally) is seriously limited by formidable sampling challenges. Sometimes bizarre theories are advanced and then lively counter-arguments ensue. It is the process of proposal & reaction that stimulates sharper thinking. The appearance of theories in the literature does not indicate mainstream acceptance of the theories. In a field so seriously restricted by sampling constraints, creative thinking & reactions constitute a healthy process that drives the demise of log-jams.
My concern would be that current sociopolitical factors threaten to interfere with the valuable normal process. If people take the time to understand how the field operates, it will appear a whole lot less threatening. These folks don’t buy theories straight. There’s plenty of discussion & debate. Sensible folks in the field aren’t under the illusion that they aren’t dealing with extensive multifaceted uncertainty.
One option is to chill and watch the debate comfortably.
What the climate debate (in general) needs at this stage is more civility. Goofy rabid hyperpartisanism has become the tiresome big yawn du jour. (One can go on screaming like an irritated irrational protester, or opt to chill calm, composed, & collected.)
OK, following all the great satire above – a new term – these guys are suffering from a newfound illness soon to be known as the IPCC Syndrome:
Irreversible Psychoclimatic Chronic Counterphobia
…… there is no known cure :).
I knew it!!! Its all Fred Flintstone’s fault.
“To estimate how much additional area the birch might have covered, they started with the way modern-day elephants affect their environment by eating plants and uprooting trees”
By the thinking on this article, if we killed off all our elephants.. wouldn’t the area’s they live in would become lush with trees? huh?? Maybe, just maybe environmental conditions might have a teeny tiny little bit of influence in the whole deal? (sarcasm)
It would be advisable, instead, to promote the inmediate extinction of those institutions which sponsor this kind of stupid research. That would increase the spiritual albedo of the human societies involved and it would clean up the atmosphere of noxious political contaminants which impede a clear vision of reality.
“The trees would change the color of the landscape, making it much darker so it would absorb more of the Sun’s heat, in turn heating up the air. This process would have added to natural climate change, making it harder for mammoths to cope, and helping the birch spread further.”
NO NO NO NO NO NO and…NO!!! Obviously, these “scientists” have never examined a tree by actually, oh…*touching* the leaves during a nice hot summer day. If they had done that simple exercise, they would have discovered, to their suprise, even though a tree leaf is a dark green, it is still cool to the touch & not hot due to a properly hydrated tree performing the process of evapotranspiration – the tree releasing moisture into the air, the moisture is evaporated, cooling the tree, thus, cooling the air.
Trees (actually, all vegitation, except desert plants, of course) are air conditioners not heaters and since they stuck that flawed piece of science into their “model”, needless to say, their model result is wrong as well.
This is just another example of the many problems with this research paper :-/
Regards,
Jeff
Just trying to find a name for the illness suffered by these “researchers” I find meaningful the greek word: PHRENO-KRIPTO-ORCHIDHEA.
I read this in stunned amazement, quite hoping that it is the plot for some prehistoric thriller and yet, I know it is made for the consumption of those that believe man is the enemy of the universe.
They liked barbecues as we do, that´s all.
Alan McIntire says:
June 30, 2010 at 4:43 pm
In reply to Max Hugoson- I’m sure you’re correct about only a few hundred thousand indians in what is now the US and Canada, but I think Central America had a large population at one time. I recall from “A Forest of Kings”, that someone did an analysis of pollen around Tikal, and found that the Mayas must have completely deforested the region in expanding their fields to support a growing population. The soil couldn’t continue to support such overuse, and there was a large population collapse.
With all due respect, Alan, that doesn’t quite add up. Since the size of the Mayas was grown over multiple generations (in other words, many years), the soil *worked* for those many years then it decided to…quit? Hmmmm…I would be more open to the idea that they were going along just fine until an extended severe drought hit the area & the population could not adapt to another source of nutrition & they died off &/or relocated.
Just my thoughts,
Jeff
Stunning cause/effect reversal, I think. Next: impact craters are the source of meteors.
Are paleolithic humans not part of nature? Fifteen thousand years ago, were not people are natural as the mammoths they hunted?
Again, nature vs nature.
wolves on Isle Royal in MN
A small correction, Isle Royal is in MI (Michigan) not MN (Minnesota).
Here I thought the loss of ice sheets decreased the albedo but it was birch leaves increasing absorbtion. Silly me.
this article makes perfect sense to me — I am not kidding. Our world is so interconnected, it seems plausible to me that one action (killing mammoths) could lead to a completely unforeseen result (climate change). As an example: Not too long ago environmentalists re-established the gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park which had the effect of increasing the population of trout in nearby streams. Yes you heard right — more wolves meant more trout. You see more wolves meant less caribou and dear eating fewer saplings which meant more trees for the beavers to make more dams which meant more spawning of trout. So which story — mammoths or wolves — is more outlandish?
Revenge of the Mammoths: Now that the permafrost is thawing, tens of thousands of years worth of mammoth farts are now emerging to warm the planet even more. Damn you, prehistoric ancestors!
I wonder why the advocates, sorry, “scientists” chose to look at mammoths instead of the snuffing out of 60 to 80 million bison from 1830 to 1880? Could it be that their conclusion couldn’t be proven? Or maybe that’s the subject of their next paper—Genocidal White Imperialists Spiked Global Temperatures, or something like that.
Let me see, NASA is shutting down the manned space program, yet has plenty of money to fund these silly studies. We have now advanced to the place where witchcraft is preferred over science by the very institutions whose purpose is to advance science. Scary.
@ur momisugly Alan McIntire Junne 30, 2010 at 4:43 pm:
Alan – You have the wrong era completely. Even Pre-classical Maya only goes back to about 1,000 BC. That is according to the current “knowledge” on the subject. I personally suspect it goes back much further. But the beginning of the Holocene was about 12,000 years ago. THAT was the time of the mammoth extinction (as close as we can tell at this time).
@ur momisugly ShrNfr says June 30, 2010 at 4:55 pm:
Basically, yes, this is correct. My information is that the pygmy mammoths were on an island NORTH of the eastern end of Siberia, in the Arctic Ocean. But the time is correct.
@ur momisugly Michael Manna June 30, 2010 at 7:25 pm:
OK, I’ll bite. Are you confusing the Carlina Bays with “Charleston Divots”? “Charleston Divots” turns up nothing on Google .
Please inform us.
Bill Tuttle says:
However, the usual method of killing an elephant without using a firearm involves stalking one of the outliers of the herd while they’re asleep, using an axe to lop off the tip of the trunk,
Are you sure about that?? Elephants sleep standing up. I’m not sure I’d be too keen to try that with a flint axe.
The more I think about it the more I am convinced that the underlying principle of ‘research’ of this type is to paint a picture of human existence as anthropogenic in nature, a dangerous and destructive enemy of the percieved(by some)pure Gaia balance and harmony that humanity upsets by its very existence.
We become the enemy of the planet, we become the infection that harms the planet and we become the problem, the narrative is clear here. We humans are a burden on the planet which would be far better off without us polluting it.
If you think about it the idea is very old and starts with the garden of Eden where God bestows a paradise and human nature gives in to desire and ruins the paradise given.
I am sure we are seeing the deliberate deconstruction of the historical record and the building of a new one that fits the anthropogenic narrative.
This might be the stupidist thing I’ve read in months. Jeez, is there any GW subject matter that has been deemed too inane to finance/publish? Ultimately Global Warming is the Earth’s fault for becoming such a hospitable place for us parasitic humans to thrive, so bite me Gaia.
Global Warming gave me a wedgie this morning.
If you are in the predicament of having to print currency without increasing your production, why don´t you shut down all those MAMMOTH institutions, like NASA which only mean money spending just for nothing, or worse, making you all feel shame of your own country?