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
According to written history, the beginning of the LIA (Little Ice Age) happened long before the advent of the “Maunder Minimum”.
History tells me that communications (Oceanic exchange) between Iceland and Greenland began to become increasingly difficult during the 1390ties – until by the year 1415 the growth of pack ice in Greenland’s costal waters rendered any further contact between the two countries (Ice-land and Green-land) impossible. –
My guess is therefore that there probably was an appearance of maybe 3 or more weak solar cycles (SC) a bit like SC 23 and SC 24 before the Maunder Minimum reared its ugly head.
Chris Col & Co = 1492
But – maybe Leif. S can look it up and compare solar history with Icelandic history and thus either confirm, or chuck my “guess” about the SCs prior to the Maunder Minimum into the bin (trash can).
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. These phenomena better explain regional climate patterns during the Little Ice Age, says Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Pennsylvania State University in State College.
Never thought I would see the day when so many people here agree with Mann.
Ecotretas says:
October 14, 2011 at 10:01 am
“Might he be suggesting a plus billion human slaughter, so that some Global Cooling comes our way?”
I fear that you’re right. Another fake reason for population control to make people believe it’s necessary… Scary. This AGW-religion is getting more and more macabre. Sacrificing people to appease Gaia…
Poor Columbus, he must be turning over in his grave, No wait…some of his remains are in Spain and some are in the Dominican Republic. Only it isn’t Columbus…its Colom or Collom, I can’t remember which Let me use Colom. Colom was given the title of Admiral of the Oceans, After his first voyage, he came a second time, bringing a group rumored to be about 1000 souls to live and prosper on the North coast of what we now call Hispaniola. Only problem is, the third time he came around, they were all dead. Either killed off by disease, weather or indiginous peoples, these settlers were all gone. Few
signs remains of their venture. Colom remained and became governor of the new world. Then politics did him in and he was sent back in shackles.
A huge mausoleum dedicated to his memory was built in Santo Domingo,only problem is locals think it brings bad luck to those that linger near it. It was blessed by the pope. The UN had a hand in building it. It is shaped like a giant sarcophagus. Creepy. In the center of it hangs a container which contains the remains.
Nevle has obviously never heard of lightning.
I found a paper that Nevle co-authored on the subject. You can download it here:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00045608.2010.502432#preview
The paper actually says: The LIA was not caused by the Columbian encounter
per se, but the evidence suggests that it was probably
amplified measurably by the ecological effects of the
demographic collapse.
I note that in the Science News article he is not quoted as saying that Columbus was responsible for the LIA. Has anyone any evidence of him actually saying that?
Is there some sort of toxic chemical that is sprayed on ivy to retard its growth, or to kill harmful rodents, insects or fungal pests that live therein? I’m at a loss to conceive any other explanation for the rampant and impenetrable stupidity running amok in the ivy-covered halls of academia. I hope that it’s only climate science faculty and students who have been damaged by this powerful insecticide or whatever it is. Tell me there are still university departments that are capable of finding truth.
Isn’t it interesting that in every story about the past told by a Warmista there is a Golden Age of perfect climate in which mankind lived harmoniously with nature until some Europeans arrived and ended the Golden Age?
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.
———-
A fair point if it turns out it was not considered.
However what I find interesting is the phase difference between cooling and CO2 concentrations. There does not seem to be one. There is no sign of the 800 year difference that is often quoted.
Yea all those SUV’S Columbus imported from Japan LMAO some people are just insane
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
I hate how Climate Scientists try to mislead people.
This is a fairly deliberate, cherry-picking example and the authors should not be given a pass for not knowing how the math works – they do. It is deliberate.
Here is CO2 (from the same dataset used in this study) versus Temperature over the last 12,000 years (from Hadcrut3 and the Epica Dome C ice cores – global estimate).
The CO2 numbers and the Temperature numbers are on the same scale and are, thus, fully comparable. Is it correlated. Only if you are blind or cherry-pick.
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/7605/tempversusco210bc.png
There’s a very good book on the subject by professor David Henige called Numbers from Nowhere. He makes a devastating academic argument that we have no real idea how many precontact Indians were in the Americas (estimates have varied by about two orders of magnitude, with the early, low estimates probably being the most accurate) or how many were killed off by diseases and other causes, and that professors who advance such claims are far beyond merely sloppy in their research. They ignore all contradictory evidence, take quotes out of context, have no grasp of the inumeracy of earlier Westerners (whose accounts often including bizarrely unlikely events like a dozen soldiers killing tens of millions of people in hand to hand combat in a single afternoon, or one small army that killed over a billion Africans in a single battle).
Most of the arguments offered for a population collapse are either circular:
1) We guess the pre-contact population was X. The population was only Y by the first reliable census, so the mortality rate was 1 – y/x.
2) Given the accepted mortality rate (cites references that trace back to point 1) and given the first reliable census figures, we calculate the pre-contact population was X.
Others are based on the same methods used to count Orc’s in Middle Earth, by guessing the population of a typical village, then guessing how many villages there were, all without actual confirmation of any step in the process.
And often the rest is extrapolation from the devastating epidemics that hit central Mexico numerous times in the 1500’s, and probably kept recurring through the 1800’s. A Mexican epidemiologist has definitely ruled out small pox and other European diseases as the cause, and what’s even more interesting (in the context of this thread) is that he traced the plagues’ link to climate through tree-ring analysis. Discover Magazine link. All the outbreaks occured when rainfalls returned after prolonged droughts (and the 1500’s were Mexico’s worst droughts in 500 years). His chief suspect is an indigenous hemoragic fever spread by rodents, already known to the Aztecs. Needless to say, if it was such a localized hemoragic fever then it wasn’t wiping out Indian populations everywhere else.
Wikipedia’s article on the Little Ice Age is a political masterpiece. The author casts certain speculations about, mixed with vaguely related facts, while making them look like ordered information. In spite of many disclaimers and admissions of uncertainty, by means of a factoid-flickering technique akin to subliminal advertising, the reader who looks at the Wikipedia article on the Little Ice Age will be successfully exposed to certain notions.
Could population growth and agriculture during the putative Medieval Warming have caused catastrophes which, in turn, triggered Global Cooling in the 1300s? Of course, Wiki doesn’t come even close to declaring it. It just mentions some guy who thinks Black Death and subsequent reforestation may have caused cooling.
Once you’ve nibbled at that bait, you might just be open to a human role in the alteration of medieval ocean currents. So the article dwells a little on ocean circulation, and speaks of “some concern” that the alteration will happen again as a result of the present warming – without conceding that it happened before!
It’s all couched in terms like “may be”, “some concern that”, “still very poor understanding”. The technique is to dwell on certain things in a grave but non-committal way, while omitting or shortening discussion of ascertainable facts. The nonsense about reforestation causing cooling is all but debunked at the end of the paragraph that gives it such serious prominence. In Rugby League terms, that’s a bit like an inconsequential apology after a very consequential head-high tackle.
The article gives space to solar influences, but does a good job of trivialising them by immediately talking of “heightened volcanic activity” and listing a few volcanoes that blew during the five or more centuries of cooling. The article mentions that a volcano has only a two year effect – but will you notice that bit? We know the rule by now: don’t mention the sun any more than you have to.
And because a picture is worth a thousand fibs when it’s a graph, you even get a bendy hockeystick, where the Medieval Warming gets a bit more prominence than it gets on Mann’s hockeystick. The most important thing is a dramatic streak thrusting upwards toward 2000, in case you thought that some fiddly little warming before 1300 was comparable to the present climate catastrophe.
Dave Wendt says:
October 14, 2011 at 11:36 am
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>>>
In related news, the governments of the entire European Economic Union have filed a joint law suit at the United Nations World Court seaking damages against Spain for funding Columbus’ exploratory voyages. Based on Nevle’s research, the legal firm of Wee Screwum and Howe alleges that the resulting Little Ice Age that Columbus triggered caused millions of deaths in Europe that Spain is dirfectly responsible for. In a tersely worded response, the government of Spain announced that they would defend themselves agressively and will be relying on star witnesses from the United Nations IPCC to demonstrate that the Little Ice Age never existed.
Legal experts are in agreement that Wee Screwum and Howe’s strategy to go straight to the World Court may have been a strategic error. “They should have filed in Brussels” said notorious litigator Taiken YurKash. “By filing in the World Court, they’ve opened the door to the introduction of IPCC witnesses to the case. “There is no way that the UN World Court is going to rule against one of its own bodies, in this case the IPCC.”
But not all legal experts agree. “This opens the door for the First Nations people of the Americas to join the suit,” explains senior litigator R. U. Still, of the well known firm Beeting Yur Whyf and Why. “The World Court is very sympathetic to the rights of native peoples to build their traditional gambling casinos and avoid taxes on the money they earn. They will be equally eager to right a wrong and award damages to the First Nations for both smallpox and the Little Ice Age which clearly decimated their population. Spain was very reckless by funding Columbus, and worse, they remain proud of it to this day. Now they’re going to have to pay for their folly.”
World markets plummeted as investors pulled their money out of Spain, pushing that country to the edge of financial collapse. Emergency meetings are being held in Brussels to attempt a negotiated settlement. President Obama is expected to join the meeting, and rumours are that he will table several trillion in incentives to pursuade the various players to stand down. When asked where the money would come from, President Obama replied, “we can’t allow our futures to be mortgaged by all this paleoblameatology. We all need to get along for the benefit of future generations. For that reason, I’m borrowing a few trillion from China. That’s a lot of money I know, and future generations will have to pay it back, but its better than mortgaging our future”.
80 Million people living in the “Americas”? Pure balderdash.
Believe it or not, tech wonks like me were still required to take some Liberal Arts electives, even back in the “stone age” (i.e., the 1970’s). So one of mine was “Human Anthropology and Agrarian History”.
Marvelous course! Remember the first day when the professor surveyed the class to find out “How many Native Americans” were living in the continental United states when Jamestown was founded?”
Answers varied from 10,000,000 to 50,000,000.
The professor said, “I say there were less than 1 million, TOTAL including much of South America and Canada. This is based on their agricultural styles, and what the land afforded them for subsistence. The goal of this course will be to MAKE THAT CLEAR..”
That he did. By the end of the course I think the debate was reduced to 500,000, 1 Million, or one and 1/2 million. But he made his point. (Dare I say this was in an era when professors DID NOT HAVE TO TOW SOMEONES AGENDA LINE TO KEEP THEIR JOBS?
He made the point by teaching the differences between 10th Century Agriculture, 15th Cenury,
17th, 18, and 19th Century agriculture and 20th century. And then juxtaposing the “life style” of various groups versus their involvement in stationary agriculture versus nomadic life styles.
Stunning the conclusion! Strict limits on what population levels were sustainable.
Since that course I have come to the conclusion that if indeed there were such numbers (50 Million, etc.) of pre-white man tribes in the “New World”, one would have to ask: WHERE ARE THEIR BONES?
The answer is, well located, well documented, and in small enough quantities to affirm what the good Dr. taught in his 100 level Anthro course.
You have to be bloody joking!
Are all previous papers on the subject superseded by Richard Nevle’s ? How about this,
http://www.carbonplanet.com/downloads/Climate_effects_of_afforestation.pdf
“Simulations showed that tropical forests cool
the planet because of high carbon storage,
high tropical cloudiness and increased
cloudiness associated increased
evapotranspiration, tropical forests. For midlatitude
forests, albedo-induced warming
largely offsets carbon-induced cooling, with
warming near the forest and cooling far from
the forests. High latitude forests have a strong
warming influence, largely due to the
presence of dark forest canopies in regions
that would otherwise be snow covered. The
study concluded that on a global mean basis,
albedo-based warming influences of forests
approximately cancel their carbon-based
cooling influences. The findings of this
modelling exercise in tropical and high latitude
regions are supported by earlier research2.”
@max Hugoson,
Thanks for that. My reaction when I first read the 40-80 million was “Huh??” but I lacked anything other than gut instinct to say it was wrong, and didn’t follow through to check any sources.
@DD More
October 14, 2011 at 12:38 pm
queries why no mention of Black Death.
Because that was the theory earlier in the week
If it hadn’t been for Eve eating the apple the climate would have been perfect since then!
Ice core gas sampling is a notoriously poor method for estimating CO2 in the atmosphere due to contamination from the exhaled breath of the research scientist to local atmospheric contamination.
@- Max Hugoson says: October 14, 2011 at 9:56 pm
“80 Million people living in the “Americas”? Pure balderdash.
…The professor said, “I say there were less than 1 million, TOTAL including much of South America and Canada. This is based on their agricultural styles, and what the land afforded them for subsistence.
…He made the point by teaching the differences between 10th Century Agriculture, 15th Cenury, 17th, 18, and 19th Century agriculture and 20th century. And then juxtaposing the “life style” of various groups versus their involvement in stationary agriculture versus nomadic life styles.”
Your professor was right, the way to estimate population is to see how many calories they can extract from the land.
But he may not have been fully informed about the difference in 10th, 15th and 20th Century agriculture in the Amazonian region, or the ‘lifestyle’ evidence for past stationary agriculture rather than nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Try doing a search on Tera Petra, there is abundant and growing(!) evidence for agroforestry and agriculture with raised field systems which is capable of sustaining much larger populations that the nomadic tribes in independent villages.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0646e/T0646E0j.htm
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/baures/Mann2.html
“Today it is becoming increasingly clear that the Amerindians’ adaptation to the ecosystems of the Amazon and Orinoco regions was much more complex than can be deduced from an analysis of their farming techniques. According to Denevan, at the time of their contact with Europeans there were at least five to six million people living in the Amazon region. There were perhaps two million more in other parts of ecological Amazonia. “
Scottish Skeptic: you write–
“1. The English Civil war which had quietened down, flared up and the end of monarchy as a political concept in Europe owes itself to the outcome.”
Please refresh my memory. Who was the King of the Swiss Federation at that time?
Oh come on people… Where is the sense of humour? I’ll bet this was not posted here to be seriously commented on and debunked. It is obviously the front runner for the most ridiculous story of the year on so many levels. A masterpiece. I nearly fell off my chair…..