Some days you just have to shake your head and say to yourself that there’s irrational fixation on CO2 that has deep roots in the psyche when we see things like this. The 10:10 video was proof enough, but now we have “paleoblameatology” entering the picture to explain the Little Ice Age.
Meet Christopher Columbus, who had his day this week, but who has gone in the same week from being lauded explorer to destroyer of Europe’s climate by being a catalyst. From Stanford via Science News, of all places.
It boggles the mind.
Here’s the “logic”:
By the end of the 15th century, between 40 million and 80 million people are thought to have been living in the Americas. Many of them burned trees to make room for crops, leaving behind charcoal deposits that have been found in the soils of Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.
About 500 years ago, this charcoal accumulation plummeted as the people themselves disappeared. Smallpox, diphtheria and other diseases from Europe ultimately wiped out as much as 90 percent of the indigenous population.
Trees returned, reforesting an area at least the size of California, Nevle estimated. This new growth could have soaked up between 2 billion and 17 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air.
Ice cores from Antarctica contain air bubbles that show a drop in carbon dioxide around this time. These bubbles suggest that levels of the greenhouse gas decreased by 6 to 10 parts per million between 1525 and the early 1600s.
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6 to 10 parts per million drop in CO2 triggered the LIA? Seriously? Wow that’s some powerful climate sensitivity. Even the IPCC doesn’t think CO2 is that powerful. Let’s see, since then we added how much? The drop in question is shown below in yellow highlight:
The graph above has this citation in Wikipedia: Law Dome ice cores show lower levels of CO2 mixing ratios during 1550-1800 AD, leading investigators Etheridge and Steele to conjecture “probably as a result of colder global climate”.[46] I suppose Nevle never considered that the oceans might absorb that CO2, perhaps in response to cooling induced by lower solar activity and increased aerosols due to volcanoes.
As for the 6-10 PPM drop induced by Columbus setting off the LIA, maybe such extreme climate sensitivity works in only one direction? /sarc
Mike Smith over at Meteorological Musings sums up this absurdity pretty well:
Mr. Nevle inadvertently makes the case to continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere. The effects of a Little Ice Age today would be catastrophic given the much larger population of the world. With the shorter growing seasons many millions would starve. The effects of another ice age, little or otherwise, would make global warming seem like a picnic.
h/t to Dr. Ryan Maue
I may be wrong here but didn’t the LIA start a couple hundred years before Columbus’ birth?
I am losing my faith in science, scientists, universities..
I think all university education should be self funded.. No loans, no help.. Nowt.
Might he be suggesting a plus billion human slaughter, so that some Global Cooling comes our way?
Ecotretas
Why don’t you read the report a bit more carefully? You claim:
“I suppose Nevle never considered that the oceans might absorb that CO2, perhaps in response to cooling induced by lower solar activity and increased aerosols due to volcanoes.”
The report says:
“Natural processes may have also played a role in cooling off Europe: a decrease in solar activity, an increase in volcanic activity or colder oceans capable of absorbing more carbon dioxide”
And why don’t you do a little bit of maths? You can calculate the forcing easily using the well known formulae from Myhre et al (1998). A 10ppm drop from approximately 280ppm would give you a forcing of about -0.2W/m². This is not huge but is certainly not negligible.
I don’t really understand what your problem is with this basically plausible mechanism for depopulation to influence the climate.
From 11 years ago:
“New Study Shows Reforestation of Agricultural Land Played an Important Role in Reducing Greenhouse Gases over Last Century”, By Sharon Keeler UNH News Bureau November 9, 2000.
Today’s news: ‘We have a massive reforestation event that’s sequestering carbon… coincident with the European arrival”.
Both studies claim that CO2 was sucked from the atmosphere by rapidly growing forests. In one case this caused a Little Ice Age.
From climatology, we know that there was unprecedented warming in the late 20th century. According to the UNH study, that was when we also were growing a huge CO2 sink in the reforestation process in the late 20th century.
Am I missing something, here? Did reforestation cause the Little Ice Age, and the unprecedented warming in the late 20th century?
There is absolutely no physical evidence for this. At most the native population of the new world was around 20 million souls in 1492. In Alabama people have harvested old growth logs from the bottom of rivers that were much older than the date of the date of Columbus
What has happened to Stanford to fall so far?
Sorry, Anthony, I couldn’t even get beyond the first sentance/pargraph.
I larfed so ard it urt.
Seriously, are they serious? What was it Shakespeare said about strutting your stuff on stage telling a tale like an geochemical idiot?
Addendum
Also, the reforesting, if it happened, would have been more than offset by the dramatic increase in population brought about by the industrial revolution.
These people have hated Columbus for decades. There just trying to keep it fresh.
Evidently, Christopher Columbus was truly a great man. He pioneered he concept of using genocide to enrich himself and save the world from ‘global warming’, more than 500 years before Hansen and Gore rediscovered the same plan.
Scottish Sceptic says:
October 14, 2011 at 9:10 am
I’m still waiting for an alarmist to tell me what they would say to the friends and family of someone who dies this winter because they cannot afford to heat their home.
You missed the point –
The precautionary principle is like this:
Since Man is causing Global Warming the best way to prevent it is by reducing humanity size.
What a better way than to let nature do it for you, may it by warming or cooling.
For Dave Springer: I’m sure that the Lefties will conveniently find (or divine) a geneological link from Columbus to W.
all over california it was ‘diss columbus day’ on all public radio stations.
although columbus never actually hit the north american continent (america was not named columbia for a reason) the casino indians were bewailing the smallpox blankets he distributed to them out here in california.
and nobody but nobody was about to set them straight. guilt is gilt, here – never look a guilt.horse in the mouth, you know.
california has an activist on every corner – living off the fat of the land, you know.
there probably aren’t a lot of 3 letter acronyms left for new ngos or non.profits….lol
well, there is ‘lol’…
i guess it doesn’t hurt enough yet because the population of the publicly funded is not diminishing a bit as far as i can tell.
This guy is a geochemist? Can someone tell me what cereal box he got his degree from?
Does he not think that the plants that replaced the trees sequestered carbon? Pathetic, shameful and embarassing. These people have never spent a day outside in their lives or they may have learned the basic workings of nature that might prevent saying such assinine things.
You guys don’t understand …we could now easily compute how many millions have to die to restore carbon balance to the value in 1800, then pass the number to Franny Armstrong so she can put no pressure on them.
And here we are afraid of CO2 doubling…? If 6-10 ppm can do that much, we’re fried already, just haven’t noticed yet…
Well, that is a relief. If it starts to get too hot, all we need to do is burn all the trees and let them grow back to cool things off. Phew.
well little ice age doesn’t exist, colombus created little lice age, colombus didn’t exit.
And he works at Stanford? I am surprised of his ignorance of history and when the LIA started and stopped. At best they can claim it exacerbated the LIA. Since the effects of the European colonization of the Americas could not be fully felt when it started. indeed, most of the continents were unspoiled and untraveled by the Europeans until the LIA was almost over!
Shhhhhhh… don’t y’all know that Chris is “OUT”. He caused all these problems and is to be hated, loathed, despised, excoriated, and damned henseforth and forevermore. Lord love a duck! Get with the program guys! Big Al discovered America! Don’t ya know nuttin? (GoreSarkOn’nOffOver’nOutComeonBack)
PS: When the UN General Assembly, Security Council, and Noble Peas Prize Committee vote to rename the Western Hemisphere after Fat Albert y’all need to get down to yer tennie shoes, shorts, and tie-dyed dirty t-shirts and howl like a bunch of card carrying Commies on May Day; if ya don’t he might feel hurt.
In my opinion, the party ended in Europe in 1280, coincident with the onset of the Wolf sunspot minimum (although Atlantic pack ice and Greenland glaciers began advancing around 1250 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Dating )
The weather didn’t get really godawful for a few decades, but I consider 1280 to be the end of the Medieval Warm Period.
By 1315, the weather in Europe really did go to hell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315-1317
without much help from Chris Columbus, european colonizers, or too darn many trees sucking up too darn much CO2.
stevo
October 14, 2011 at 10:04 am
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because its little more then propaganda and not science …
A guy ran a red light and I t-boned him going 50MPH. The damage I did could have been due to the 5MPH tail wind. The fact that I was full throttle might have also played a role…
yay right …
I am surprised to see the level of skepticism being raised against this idea.
R Pielke Srn have long advocated a MUCH greater role for land use changes in altering climate.
I think the claim is that cutting down trees when agriculture is practiced alters transevaporation rates and albedo as well as altering the altering the carbon sequestration/release rates.
Mature forest have a small neutral role in carbon release and sequestration.
felling/burning forest releases large amounts of CO2, a positive addition to the atmospheric ratio in the carbon cycle..
Growing annual crops forms a neutral annual shuffle of carbon in the cycle larger than a mature forest.
The regrowth of a forest sequesters more carbon than it releases so is a negative, removal of CO2 from the atmospheric portion in the carbon cycle.
However there are many other elements to The R Pielke arguments for the significance of land use which would seem to connect with this hypothesis.
http://icecap.us/docs/change/Land%20Use%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf
kBob says: October 14, 2011 at 9:53 am
I may be wrong here but didn’t the LIA start a couple hundred years before Columbus’ birth?
That will be adjusted in the next paper … due out in … 18 days?