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
If the cause of the drop in CO2 was the forests growing back, wouldn’t the burning of the forests caused an equal rise in CO2 in the first place? I see a small rise in CO2, but it is small compared to the following drop.
Columbus after finding new worlds apparantly invented a time machine and travelled 200+ years back. After travelling back in time he also managed to create another invention that can suck up the atmospheres CO2. What an amazing person he was and just think what he could have done today with computer models.
For all the claims of looming catastrophe from AGW, it has indeed caused one very dramatic loss to human culture. I speak, of course, of the complete death of satire, which has long been a vital component of the human experience. But now, not even the most talented of comedians, can create anything sufficiently ridiculous to be easily distinguishable from the kind of manure the alarmists spread in complete seriousness
@-mathman2 says: October 14, 2011 at 9:15 am
“What a crock!
I guess he never heard of the Maunder minimum.”
The difference between the solar activity at its peak in the 1950s and during the maunder minimum is around HALF the size of energy change of a 10ppm drop in CO2 from 280ppm.
If the LIA was due to the Maunder minimum changes in solar output climate sensitivity would have to be at least double the present estimate.
@- Jeremy says: October 14, 2011 at 9:44 am
“…Obviously, it is only a matter of time before the entire history of life, the universe and everything can all be explained by variations in this molecule.”
Well Carbon is the basis for organic chemistry and therefore all Life…
CO2 has an atomic weight of more than 42 though….
@- mkelly says: October 14, 2011 at 9:46 am
“When we went into an glacial age 2 million years ago with no people to burn down tree how the heck did we get out?”
Milankovitch cycles.
Or was the question rhetorical…?
Oh, I just thought he messed up climate math, a flat Earth is easier to calculate. 🙂
izen says:
October 14, 2011 at 11:17 am
“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.”
First, you apparently didn’t get the memo that trees sequester much more carbon than was believed. See the post just below the present one! ■Plant trees, not carbon laws
Now for the logic lesson. The most ridiculous theory imaginable can accidentally jibe with an excellent one like that of Roger Sr. on land use changes. We don’t fault that land use changes can affect climate significantly – it’s the land use changes caused by Columbus and the 6 ppm CO2 reduction that resulted that is patently stupid. You know, your heroes can be wrong now and again – you aren’t obliged to buy everything.
Eyal Porat says:
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.
I think the warmists have realized a warmer climate will actually support more humanity. That’s precisely their problem!
Well at least one thing is accelerating in climate science: The Madness!
The majority of the natives of the Americas were hunter/gatherers. They did not farm. They did not have the tools to clear large tracts of land. The population density was miniscule. The Lia started before Columbus. The Europeans did not all arrive on the same day. A ship of Columbus’s time carried about 60 people max. He did not arrive in the Queen Mary. Columbus did not go to North America. Any more needed……….
Half of the so called pristine Amazon rainforest grew in the last thousand years when an ancient Amazonian civilisation abandoned the lands. They are now discovering the civilisation as sections fo the rainforest is being cleared. It covers an area 3 to 4 times the area of Spain.
It’s pretty simple. The CO2-AGW line needs CO2 levels to be flat until we started burning coal etc. There’s a dip before that time though. Ergo, it must have been caused by humans. As all CO2 levels are directly related to humans.
From there you just need a villain. Come on down, Columbus!
From http://worldhistorysite.com/population.html
William McGaughey, proprietor of this website, is program chair of the 2011 annual conference of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations
Total World Population in Selected Years:
Year Population
(in millions)
1500 AD 425
Percentages of World Population by Area and Date:
date China India Other Europe Africa other
Asia
1500 23 25 18 19 11 4
Other is N&S America so 425MM * 0.04 = 17 MM
And if 90% died, who killed of Custer in 1876?
Also wondering why there is no drop / rise due to the Black Death (1340 – 1771): which killed 75 million people worldwide?
The introduction of the European earthworm did more to change the North American biosphere than any event since the ice age.
The change in the bio-productivity of the forests and great plains will be greater 25%.
I stopped subscribing to Science News after they published a scare story by an amateurish ‘science reporter’ on the imminent disappearance of the Maldives under the rising seas.
/Mr Lynn
I misread the title as “paleo-blame-it-all-on-me” – and I thought the post was going to be about Michael Mann complaining again.
stevo says:
“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.”
izen says:
“I am surprised to see the level of skepticism being raised against this idea.”
Guys, ……really?
1) Even at the ridiculously high IPCC sensitivity of 3C for 2XCO2 it is not plausible for 10 ppm CO2 drop to have significantly affected temperatures; you’re talking about something on the order of a tenth of a degree Celsius at most.
2) It’s not necessarily the idea that land use changes or depopulation could affect the climate so much as the magnitude of the change that is being suggested that I (we?) am skeptical of being anywhere near reality. (Similar to CAGW hypothesis itself.)
3) The shear foolishness involved with this obsession with CO2 and climate as if the literally hundreds of other variables are dominated by CO2.
4) The waste of resources involved in this “study” that doesn’t really gain us any knowledge at all, but is merely a “published” notch on someone’s belt.
@Disko Troop
That might be true of NA but South America’s Aztec and Mayan civilizations were surely not hunter gatherers.. I’ve read of significant farming cultures into NA too in Jared Diamond’s book.
We’ve managed to be skeptical of everything in the original article it seems.
izen says:
“CO2 has an atomic weight of more than 42 though….”
But Climate Science has come up with a new molecule for the answer to life, the universe, and everything: It’s the CON.
Didn’t the cooling actually begin in the mid 14th century? One-hundred anf fity years too early for Columbus, but…nice try.
The Age of Exploration was a result of the LIA, not its cause!
Indeed.
Columbus was a menace. His first transatlantic voyage (3 August 1492 – 4 March 1493) took effect immediately.
“Winter of 1493 / 1494 A.D. In the year 1493, the port of Genoa, Italy was frozen. – on December 25 and 26.
The winter of 1493-94 was remarkable for the severity of the cold, which was very severe in the south [Southern Europe]. The lagoon and all the canals of Venice, Italy were frozen; so that pedestrians, wagons and horses could travel over the ice.
The Rhône River froze in 1493 in southern France.”
in: A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events
by James A. Marusek
Now if I were R Gates I might say that since a 4% drop in CO2 can cause a LIA then surely a 40% increase in CO2 will cause a BHA (Big Hot Age).
Quick, tell all the people in Brazil to let the rain forest start growing back! It will take all the CO2 out of the air and cool us back off! We don’t need that corn being grown for ethanol (or food for people)! /sarc
Well, that settles it. I’m gonna burn down that dang Amazon rain forest, just in case! Precautionary Principle, ya know.
You’re welcome!
I happen to think that a little research will show that at about the beginning of the LIA, European governments increased taxes.
That’s what causes global cooling you know, taxes. Just ask the highly intelligent and visionary Australian Government led by Julia Gillard.