Ok that headline is not exactly what was said, but it is the flavor of the absurdity. The quote itself from the Carnegie Institution, distributed via AAAS’s Eurekalert news service, is actually even more absurd.
Here’s the quote:
Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline.
Given what happened on Eurekalert yesterday, I wonder about the veracity of this claim.
When Genghis Khan was alive (1162–1227), in this Wiki article it says he killed 40 million:
It has been estimated that his campaigns killed as many as 40 million people based on census data of the times.
Seems like a negative carbon footprint to me.
Here’s the graph of world population from the U.N. A true hockey stick:
It seems pretty much of a stretch to me to equate Genghis Khan’s 40 million low carbon footprint peasant deaths to todays automobile numbers:
| year | cars produced
in the world |
| 2009 (projection) | 51,971,328 |
| 2008 | 52,940,559 |
| 2007 | 54,920,317 |
| 2006 | 49,886,549 |
| 2005 | 46,862,978 |
| 2004 | 44,554,268 |
| 2003 | 41,968,666 |
| 2002 | 41,358,394 |
| 2001 | 39,825,888 |
| 2000 | 41,215,653 |
| 1999 | 39,759,847 |
That website goes on to say:
It is estimated that over 600,000,000 passenger cars travel the streets and roads of the world today.
600 million cars globally today -vs- 40 million people killed by Genghis Khan.
There’ been a lot of lecturing to us about the evils of the automobile. This website http://carsandpeople.sdsu.edu/ from San Diego State University Dr. Victor M. Ponce goes so far to calculate car to human equivalency:
In summary, in terms of energy consumption, one (1) car is equivalent to approximately 18 persons.
So…if one car = 18 people, then Genghis Khan killing 40 million people….
40 million Genghis Khan people divided by Ponce’s 18 people/car figure = 2,222,222 Genghis Khan equivalency cars.
600,000,000 cars globally today / 2,222,222 Genghis Khan equivalency cars = a difference factor of 270 by cars gasoline demand alone.
That’s hardly close to the equivalency of saying Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline. And, we haven’t figured in trucks and motorcycles, and farm equipment, and a whole bunch of other gasoline consuming vehicles. Now maybe I’ve missed something in the reasoning behind the claim, but it sure seems way off to me. Beside the magnitude issue, there’s one of sign. It also doesn’t square with the fact that 40 million people removed by Genghis Kahn is a reduction in (negative) carbon footprint while 600 million automobiles are an increase (positive) carbon footprint.
Eh, but close enough for climate science publication news releases in Eurekalert. 😉
And here is the Eurekalert web source for this Carnegie Institution Press release, reprinted in full below. The author put her email address and tel# in that press release, so apparently she wants to be contacted. Who am I to quibble?
Addendum: Perhaps she is not looking at people so much, but only at forests. But how would you know accurately how much forest had been burned/impacted then to include in a model today? Historical records are mostly anecdotal. Even so I still think it’s a bit more sensational than need be.
Here’s the Black Death Blip:
===========================================================
Contact: Julia Pongratz
pongratz@carnegie.stanford.edu
650-919-4358
War, plague no match for deforestation in driving CO2 buildup
Stanford, CA— Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline. The Black Death, on the other hand, came and went too quickly for it to cause much of a blip in the global carbon budget. Dwarfing both of these events, however, has been the historical trend towards increasing deforestation, which over centuries has released vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as crop and pasture lands expanded to feed growing human populations. Even Genghis Kahn couldn’t stop it for long.
“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,” says Julia Pongratz of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, lead author of a new study on the impact of historical events on global climate published in the January 20, 2011, online issue of The Holocene. “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.”
Clearing forests releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when the trees and other vegetation are burned or when they decay. The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from deforestation is recognizable in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica before the fossil-fuel era.
But human history has had its ups and downs. During high-mortality events, such as wars and plagues, large areas of croplands and pastures have been abandoned and forests have re-grown, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Pongratz decided to see how much effect these events could have had on the overall trend of rising carbon dioxide levels. Working with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany and with global ecologist Ken Caldeira at Carnegie, she compiled a detailed reconstruction of global land cover over the time period from 800 AD to present and used a global climate-carbon cycle model to track the impact of land use changes on global climate. Pongratz was particularly interested in four major events in which large regions were depopulated: the Mongol invasions in Asia (1200-1380), the Black Death in Europe (1347-1400), the conquest of the Americas (1519-1700), and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty in China (1600-1650).
“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,” says Pongratz. “But during the longer-lasting ones like the Mongol invasion and the conquest of the Americas there was enough time for the forests to re-grow and absorb significant amounts of carbon.”
The global impact of forest re-growth in even the long-lasting events was diminished by the continued clearing of forests elsewhere in the world. But in the case of the Mongol invasions, which had the biggest impact of the four events studied, re-growth on depopulated lands stockpiled nearly 700 million tons of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere. This is equivalent to the world’s total annual demand for gasoline today.
Pongratz points out the relevance of the study to current climate issues. “Today about a quarter of the net primary production on the Earth’s land surface is used by humans in some way, mostly through agriculture,” she says. “So there is a large potential for our land-use choices to alter the global carbon cycle. In the past we have had a substantial impact on global climate and the carbon cycle, but it was all unintentional. Based on the knowledge we have gained from the past, we are now in a position to make land-use decisions that will diminish our impact on climate and the carbon cycle. We cannot ignore the knowledge we have gained.”
The Carnegie Institution for Science (carnegiescience.edu) is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science.
The Department of Global Ecology was established in 2002 to help build the scientific foundations for a sustainable future. The department is located on the campus of Stanford University but is an independent research organization funded by the Carnegie Institution. Its scientists conduct basic research on a wide range of large-scale environmental issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, biological invasions, and changes in biodiversity.
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40 Million people killed? Hell, that’s only a start. How about the indirect carbon savings on the children and subsequent generations that would have been born had those 40 Million not been killed. Imagine the forest that wasn’t chopped down because of the contribution this great warrior made to the environment.
It’s really getting quite silly isn’t it.
Seriously, Julia Pongratz’s article is poorly argued and is a waste of time which wouldn’t be an issue if this trifle was on her own time and was not supported financially by anyone else. The Carnegie Institution must have too much money.
This world is becoming very strange.
I guess that the point of this is that the ideal human population of the world is zero. That way no artificial CO2 would be released and the global temperature would be much colder, and as everyone knows plants including trees grow much better in cold climates with low Co2. ……….What ???? Oh they don’t????? are you sure????? really? oh never mind.
Anthony says: “Addendum: Perhaps she is not looking at people so much, but only at forests. But how would you know accurately how much forest had been burned/impacted then to include in a model today? ”
Perhaps? Did you actually read the article before condemning it?
It is ALL about forests! Sure it is an estimate for land cover, but the two factors (long-term forest regrowth vs annual fuels burned by automobiles) are certainly the same order of magnitude. (And yes, the author clearly recognized that the signs were indeed the opposite, which also seems to have confused Anthony.)
“Ok that headline is not exactly what was said … ” Apparently actually looking at what was said is not important.
Eh, but close enough for climate science
publication news releases in Eurekalertblog WUWT. 😉REPLY: I don’t disagree that the whole article is confusing, but where do those estimates for the model input come from? As we’ve seen many times, models and reality vary, especially with time. The 700 million figure is supposedly a result of deaths of people, and those deaths resulted in less land use and regrowth. But how did they arrive at those figures? Anecdotal SWAG? Estimates of how much land the average peasant used?
And it appears that the whole Genghis Kahn historical figures on plundering/death might be wrong, so where does that leave the study? From commenter “Pull My Finger” above:
So if the death figures are inflated, it would seem the human impact changes then would be way off. And what’s the point of the Kahn comparison in the first place? How does model with anecdotal input this help us today? IMHO the whole premise of the study is flawed. – Anthony
“Based on the knowledge we have gained from the past, we are now in a position to make land-use decisions that will diminish our impact on climate and the carbon cycle. We cannot ignore the knowledge we have gained.”
Lest you thought that all they were after was your gasoline, heating oil, and electricity, rest assured that the ever expanding arguments like this one will subject every aspect of your life to the meddling of the under-occupied and over-interested, conveniently justified by the need to prevent ‘climate change’.
We are now in a position to make land use decisions based on climate, even though we do not yet have a closed carbon budget, and cannot even begin to say to where it is that 50% of our estimated current carbon emissions dissappear? Uh-huh.
This sort of gross overstatement of our level of knowledge and our certainty of the particulars of that knowledge is the stuff of lifestyle politics masquerading in lab coats. It aint science.
Madman2001 says:
January 20, 2011 at 12:31 pm
This sort of goofy “research” (speculation) does the climate alarmist agenda no good at all. Makes them a laughingstock.
Imo, they’re appealing to their same kind, those still stuck as a group in a child like Fantasyland, but a lot less real than “Dora the Explorer”, where magical relations between overdone concoctions make sense once someone says so. Once one of the “annointed ones” told me the latest theory on schizophrenia was that those suffering from it are the way they are probably because they can only understand a long lost primal language, which “scientists” were searching for. So I asked her to please let me know when the schizophrenics stop hallucinating about God speaking to them, and even in words they understand, and so on. End of discussion.
So 600 million cars x 18 people/car = 10.8 billion people must be eliminated immediately “before it’s too late”, or else we’re all gonna die – compared to Ghengis Kahn’s paltry 40 million? No wonder we’re still here! But back in his day, a person’s worth of carbon credits probably bought a lot more than it does today. And Ghengis did in fact kill off enough cars prophylactically to at least delay their presence on the scene.
mkelly: Ok But how did you make that rough estimate? For a long time as I drive around I notice how many trees there are, I think there are far far more trees than most people realize. Most people, me included only see the trees that can easily be seen from the road or near houses, there a lot more trees than that. But even at that there tree are generally growing close together it is amazing how many there are. I have wondered how to estimate how many trees there are.
“Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline.”
“But in the case of the Mongol invasions, which had the biggest impact of the four events studied, re-growth on depopulated lands stockpiled nearly 700 million tons of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere. This is equivalent to the world’s total annual demand for gasoline today.”
================
Both of the above quotes from the article say: “annual demand for gasoline”
What does “annual demand for gasoline” mean.
It is “equivalent” how???
Just gasoline???
Ah, well.
I certainly wouldn’t know, but I’ve heard it’s “publish or perish”.
Looks like the “Rapid Response Team” needs to add another one to their “To Do” list.
Peter? Scott?
I see two different spellings of the “gentleman’s” name throughout the post: Kahn and Khan. Unless you’re suggesting that he belonged to one of the lost tribes, I would use the latter spelling: Khan.
REPLY: typos fixed thanks
I imagine scientist back in around 1050 would have plotted a graph using just those 30-40 years to show thet the world’s population was headed to zero within 200 years.
Looks like ole’ Genghis had nothin’ on Farmer Brown.
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/scientist-farming-causes-obesity-mental-illness-overpopulation-and-global-warming-says-eugenics-inevitable/
That “Rapid Response Team” better have some overtime policies.
Genghis Khan and his male relations were also very prolific re-populators, according to DNA evidence http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/8/214236/6651
and: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html
So, we can’t grow crops, ‘cos that put up CO2 (?); and I assume we can’t keep cows or sheep, ‘cos they belch and fart GHGs. But we can grow trees, ‘cos that’s the best for the world.
So what are we supposed to eat – wood and bark with a tender leaf garnish?
Where on earth do these people come from?
How truly it is written: Quem deus vult perdere dementat Prius. (“Whom the gods wish to destroy is nuts about the Prius.”)
Julia Pongratz is right, though. The earth’s forests were virgin and pristine until Genghis Khan invented the forest fire in 1180 AD. (That was subsequent to his invention of lightning, at about the same time.)
My God, she just gave a reasonable argument for waging war. Carbon credits.
Hi Anthony and All,
While others have mentioned a number of problems with the researcher’s arguements and position, one absolutely HUH-UGE one seems missing — IIRC, according to the ‘true believers,’ CO2 levels have been virtually constant and unchanged for, what’s the claim? a few million years until we came along pumping massive amounts into the atmo over the past 50 years or so, right?
So….. where’s the vostock or other proxie evidence of CO2 level increase/decrease that corresponds to the supposed impacts of Khan, Black Death, etc., referred to by this research?
A second but more minor issue – using the quoted timeframes: the Mongol invasions in Asia (1200-1380), and the Black Death in Europe (1347-1400), how does the researcher possibly figure that losing 1/4 to 1/3rd of the entire world population to the black death over 53 years somehow have less impact than losing fewer people over 180 years? Seems to me that the sudden loss of as many (or more likely far more) people would result in far less agriculture & more re-forestation of the 180 year time frame of the Khan losses.
Regardless, this paper is yet one more example of the gross and rampant speculation and flawed logic throughout far far too much of what passes for ‘science’ and ‘research’ these days. The implications for our state of knowledge and future is really rather frightening.
I think Genghis Khan would actually have chosen a Humvee, with various weapons and spikes attached so that looks like something from a Mad Max film.
We have always had an impact on our environment!
Just as Tigers and Elephants have an impact on their environments.
Only difference is we’re stupid enough to think it makes a real difference!
DaveE.
Hold it. Pull My Finger does not appear to know much about the Mongols if he is stating that the Mongol forces were mainly “foot soldiers”. The Mongol horde was almost exclusively mounted archers. The exception is that after Chingis Khan conquered Khwarizm, the Mongol engineering corps adopted artillery–trebuchets and ballistae. In battle Mongol artillery shooting containers filled with burning tar, naptha or quicklime supplemented the arrows of the cavalry.
As to the 40 million figure–consider that Chingis Khan’s first move against the West, the conquest of Muhammed Ali Shah’s empire, culminated in the conquest of Samarkand. Four-fifths of Samarkand’s 500,000 inhabitants were massacred. Samarkand had expected to hold out for more than a year; instead it fell in 5 days. 40 million is quite believable.
Primary source: James Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe.
I get a stupid kick out of publicly funded, expensive studies, that strain to find ancient relationships to man and climate that go back a thousand, or five thousand years. What a joke! Are all these people mad or are they just uneducated?
This planet’s current climate history extends back over 2 million years. I say current because we have been in an ice age since about that time. We can argue the reasons, but not the pattern. One hundred thousand years of great mountains of ice, then 15 – 20,000 years warmth with higher ocean levels. It is established, and recognized in science and it has nothing to do with man. There are a number of publications at the National Academy Of Science Press ( Climate Crash and Abrupt Climate Change as examples) that lay it out pretty clearly. A 1,000 or 5,000 year history of anything has no meaning, and makes no difference, it is lost in the noise. We successfully populated coastal settlements about 7,000 years ago when sea level stabilized. We haven’t lost new urbanic civilizations since then and we aren’t now.
Why do these people believe such absurd stuff? Aren’t educators educating? Or are they too on this gravy train and can’t afford to speak truthfully.
Who are more uneducated? The people who produce this crap, or the people who fund it. Certainly, the people who believe it are the victims, as are we all.
Again, what a joke. So $500,000 down the drain for dribble?
Dear Anthony,
You know I respect and admire you, but you’ve got the gist of this one wrong. The theory proposed here is that human impacts on the historical environment included continental-scale landscape burning. That is, anthropogenic fire drove a significant percentage of the terrestrial carbon cycle. When massive hemoclysms (human population crashes) occurred in history, the sudden dehumanization of landscapes eliminated, for a time, anthropogenic fire. During those hiatuses, plants continued to grow and carbon fixation continued apace, but CO2 emissions declined because people weren’t burning off the land so frequently or so broadly.
For a more complete study (not just a blurb in news wire) see
Robert A. Dull, Richard J. Nevle, William I. Woods, Dennis K. Bird, Shiri Avnery, and William M. Denevan. 2010. The Columbian Encounter and the Little Ice Age: Abrupt Land Use Change, Fire, and Greenhouse Forcing. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(4) 2010, pp. 1–17.
http://westinstenv.org/histwl/2010/11/22/the-columbian-encounter-and-the-little-ice-age-abrupt-land-use-change-fire-and-greenhouse-forcing/
There are three parts to this hypothesis. First, that historically human beings had a significant impact on the carbon cycle. Second, that a massive and rapid population crash occurred in the post-Columbian Americas. Third, that the subsequent alteration of the carbon cycle (to increased fixation, decreased emissions) affected global climate.
The first two parts are cutting edge new findings in anthropology, landscape geography, and historical ecology. The evidence is strong, as are the inferences. The third part is based on GCMs, and may be weak. In the case of this article, the authors are not climatologists at all, but are excellent (indeed leading) anthropologists and landscape geographers.
It is important not to conflate the parts. Just because part 3 is weak, it does not mean the other two parts are equally weak.
GK killed 40million people based on census data of the time? They did no census back then. This was started in the 19th cent UK, I think. So this grand figure was based on some guess by a frantic grant seeking student. About the same as all the other claims by the alarmists.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Madd-sZzWY8&w=640&h=390]
Who wrote the Carnegie Institution quote: M. Night Shyamalan? It’s got everything a film trailer needs. Implied violence, mild peril, a lesson from history transposed to our time, the mental image of the Mongol hordes sweeping all from their path, that irritating wailing music that has to be in all historical films these days and just enough information to get the reader interested without giving away the ending.
“Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline.” …
In the opposite direction.
If only Don LaFontaine were still here to give it an appropriate measure of gravitas.
Gengis had nothing on Curtis Lemay.
Now, THERE was a climate changer.
Not enough carbon credits on earth to
offset Curtis.