From the department of “correlation is not causation” department comes this weapons-grade-stupid study. Next they’ll be telling us the Catholic church started the Medieval Warm Period with the crusades. Get a load of this statement:
The indirect effects of this demographic impact rippled through the surrounding forests and, perhaps, into our atmosphere.
…
“One argument suggests that indigenous population collapse in the Americas resulted in a reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of forest regrowth in the early colonial period. Until now the evidence has been fairly ambiguous. Our results indicate that high-resolution chronologies of human populations, forests and fires are needed to evaluate these claims.”
All this from a few thousands of native people. OMFG. The stupid, it burns like magnesium!
Spanish missions triggered Native American population collapse, indirect impact on climate
New evidence shows severe and rapid collapse of Pueblo populations occurred in the 17th century and triggered a cascade of ecological effects that ultimately had consequences for global climates
SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY
New interdisciplinary research in the Southwest United States has resolved long-standing debates on the timing and magnitude of American Indian population collapse in the region.
The severe and rapid collapse of Native American populations in what is now the modern state of New Mexico didn’t happen upon first contact with Spanish in the 1500s, as some scholars thought. Nor was it as gradual as others had contended.
Rather than being triggered by first contact in the 1500s, rapid population loss likely began after Catholic Franciscan missions were built in the midst of native pueblos, resulting in sustained daily interaction with Europeans.
The indirect effects of this demographic impact rippled through the surrounding forests and, perhaps, into our atmosphere.
Those are the conclusions of a new study by a team of scientists looking for the first time at high resolution reconstructions of human population size, tree growth and fire history from the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico.
“Scholars increasingly recognize the magnitude of human impacts on planet Earth, some are even ready to define a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene,” said anthropologist and fire expert Christopher Roos, an associate professor at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and a co-author on the research.
“But it is an open question as to when that epoch began,” said Roos. “One argument suggests that indigenous population collapse in the Americas resulted in a reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of forest regrowth in the early colonial period. Until now the evidence has been fairly ambiguous. Our results indicate that high-resolution chronologies of human populations, forests and fires are needed to evaluate these claims.”
A contentious issue in American Indian history, scientists and historians for decades have debated how many Native Americans died and when it occurred. With awareness of global warming and interdisciplinary interest in the possible antiquity of the Anthropocene, resolution of that debate may now be relevant for contemporary human-caused environmental problems, Roos said.
Findings of the new study were published Jan. 25, 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Native American Depopulation, Reforestation, and Fire Regimes in the Southwest U.S., 1492-1900 C.E.”
The researchers offer the first absolute population estimate of the archaeology of the Jemez Province — an area west Santa Fe and Los Alamos National Lab in northern New Mexico. Using airborne remote sensing LiDAR technology to establish the size and shape of rubble mounds from collapsed architecture of ancestral villages, the researchers were able to quantify population sizes in the 16th century that were independent of historical documents.
To identify the timing of of the population collapse and its impact on forest fires, the scientists also collected tree-ring data sets from locations adjacent to the Ancestral Jemez villages and throughout the forested mountain range. This sampling framework allowed them to refine the timing of depopulation and the timing of fire regime changes across the Jemez Province.
Their findings indicate that large-scale depopulation only occurred after missions were established in their midst by Franciscan priests in the 1620s. Daily sustained interaction resulted in epidemic diseases, violence and famine, the researchers said. From a population of roughly 6,500 in the 1620s fewer than 900 remained in the 1690s – a loss of more than 85 percent of the population in a few generations.
“The loss of life is staggering,” said anthropologist Matthew Liebmann, an associate professor at Harvard University and lead author on the PNAS article.
“Imagine that in a room with 10 people, only one person was left at the end of the day,” Liebmann said. “This had devastating effects on the social and economic lives of the survivors. Our research suggests that the effects were felt in the ecology of the forests too.”
Other scientists on the team include Josh Farella and Thomas Swetnam, University of Arizona; and Adam Stack and Sarah Martini, Harvard University.
The researchers studied a 100,000-acre area that includes the ancestral pueblo villages of the Jemez (HEY-mehz) people. Located in the Jemez Mountains of north central New Mexico, it’s a region in the Santa Fe National Forest of deep canyons, towering flat-topped mesas, as well as rivers, streams and creeks.
Today about 2,000 Jemez tribal members live at the Pueblo of Jemez.
The authors note in their article that, “Archaeological evidence from the Jemez Province supports the notion that the European colonization of the Americas unleashed forces that ultimately destroyed a staggering number of human lives,” however, they note, it fails to support the notion that sweeping pandemics uniformly depopulated North America.”
“To better understand the role of the indigenous population collapse on ecological and climate changes, we need this kind of high-resolution paired archaeological and paleoecological data,” said Roos. “Until then, a human-caused start to Little Ice Age cooling will remain uncertain. Our results suggest this scenario is plausible, but the nature of European and American Indian relationships, population collapse, and ecological consequences are probably much more complicated and variable than many people had previously understood them to be.”
###
So, let me get this straight – tree rings, forest fires and drought correlate with local human populations in the area of Jemez Mountains. I don’t think we need an outside variable (Franciscans) to draw some conclusions. about what ties these together.
Imagine that in a room with 10 people, only one person was left at the end of seventy years.
Imagine a room with 10 climate scientists and only one is left at the end of the day.
Well we can hope can’t we?
Bernie January 26, 2016 at 2:10 pm
Imagine that in a room with 10 people, only one person was left at the end of seventy years.
Oh Goodie ,,,, A… ghost story. Like Dudley town Connecticut .
michael
That’s an old Agatha Christie novel, innit?
Money. Pure and simple they are chasing money.
Yes and you too can get your degree at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box and make a fortune peddling stupid ideas for grant money. They say corporate or oil money is poisoning but care nothing for the stupidity inducing effects of government grant money.
Or burns like White Phosphorous!!!!
You really have to wonder if the more ridiculous claims aren’t intentionally made to discredit climate “science”. But then again, if there’s a $10K grant available for including the magic words…
Please don’t inform these bozos who did the study about the impact of the Black Death. European population was wiped out by half from 1347 to 1350 from the Plague. That would mean that CO2 release from wood burning would have been reduced in half, not to mention the timing to coincide precisely when the LIA started. This scenario was proposed to me as the reason for the LIA a few years ago by a climate alarmist. Needless to say, I rarely argue with idiots, so I left it alone to save my breath.
… and by saving your breath, you again reduced CO2 and initiated the Pause.
This is a typical example of the mechanism by which the CAGW movement grew from a few fringe crackpots to the “consensus” of stupidity it is today.
1. Suggest there is “evidence” for a far fetched, but alarming theory.
2. Imply more funding/further study is needed to be certain.
3. Write more papers, adding to the illusion of a “consensus”.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat…..
As long as our governments continues spending tax dollars on this drivel, the insanity will continue to grow.
That’s appropriate. Stupidity often carries the death penalty.
Unfortunately, innocent bystanders may be the first to suffer.
“Nature abhors a moron.”
—H.L. Mencken
The Little Ice Age was merely a minimum in a natural climate cycle of about 1,000 years, that same cycle due to reach a maximum this century. Superimposed is a natural 60 year cycle and it has been on the decline since about 1998-2000 whilst the 1,000 year cycle is still rising. There will indeed be long-term cooling of about 2 degrees spread over about 500 years, probably starting after the next 30 years of warming from about 2030 to 2060.
Carbon dioxide has no warming effect what-so-ever, and we now know this from valid physics ….
The Stefan-Boltzmann law tells us that, for a perfect blackbody which has been receiving a steady uniform flux of radiation for a very long time the temperature achieved by that flux is proportional to the fourth root of the flux. But if the flux is variable (as with night and day for planets like Earth and Venus) we can show mathematically that the mean temperature achieved is always less than the temperature that would have been achieved by a steady flux having the same mean value as the variable flux. Hence the mean temperature of the whole Earth-plus-atmosphere system is not 255K but a lower temperature perhaps more like 240K. Likewise, even if there were a mean flux of 390W/m^2 reaching Earth’s surface, because it is variable, it would not achieve a mean temperature of 288K (15°C) but rather a mean temperature close to freezing point. However, even the net 390W/m^2 shown in those energy budget diagrams is not what can be used in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations: the solar radiation is only 168W/m^2 for which the blackbody temperature is 233K (-40°C) and we cannot combine that with back radiation (as they do in the energy diagrams) to “explain” a higher temperature close to freezing point. So it’s all wrong, and we need to go back to Square One.
To understand what really happens, we need to realize that a brilliant 19th century physicist was in fact right when he postulated that force fields acting on molecules in flight between collisions creates a temperature gradient. This century the existence of that temperature gradient has been demonstrated in hundreds of experiments with sealed cylinders, as well as in experiments with centrifugal force. In fact, it is a direct corollary of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which tells us that natural (isolated) systems will always move towards the state of maximum entropy within the constraints of the system. It can be shown in just two lines of computation, that the temperature gradient in the absence of any IR-active (greenhouse) gases would be the so-called “dry adiabatic lapse rate” which is the negative quotient of g and the weighted mean specific heat of the matter involved, be it solid, liquid or gas. All attempts to refute this with thought experiments are mistaken because they do not consider the effect of changes in molecular potential energy which result in entropy changes.
Once you understand that the temperature gradient is the state of maximum entropy (which in physics is called “thermodynamic equilibrium”) then it follows that new thermal energy absorbed in the atmosphere each morning will spread out in all directions, just like new rain water falling only in the middle of a lake. Some of this new thermal energy actually moves up the temperature plot, meaning downwards towards the surface or core of a planet. The process involved is called natural (not forced) convective heat transfer and, in physics, this includes thermal diffusion. In solid regions it is called conduction and, in all cases, it involves the transfer of kinetic energy between molecules as they collide. The process continues even in the crust, mantle and core, and all temperatures above and below any solid surface in a planet are anchored by radiating layers in the stratosphere and upper troposphere where radiative balance is maintained with the insolation.
And that is how and why a planet’s surface is hotter than the radiating temperature of the planet, and the necessary heat transfers are not by back radiation at all, but by this process that is entirely non-radiative.
The Little Ice Age was merely a minimum in a natural climate cycle of about 1,000 years, that same cycle due to reach a maximum this century. Superimposed is a natural 60 year cycle and it has been on the decline since about 1998-2000 whilst the 1,000 year cycle is still rising. There will indeed be long-term cooling of about 2 degrees spread over about 500 years, probably starting after the next 30 years of warming from about 2030 to 2060. Carbon dioxide has no warming effect what-so-ever, and we now know this from valid physics.
The Stefan-Boltzmann law tells us that, for a perfect blackbody which has been receiving a steady uniform flux of radiation for a very long time the temperature achieved by that flux is proportional to the fourth root of the flux. But if the flux is variable (as with night and day for planets like Earth and Venus) we can show mathematically that the mean temperature achieved is always less than the temperature that would have been achieved by a steady flux having the same mean value as the variable flux. Hence the mean temperature of the whole Earth-plus-atmosphere system is not 255K but a lower temperature perhaps more like 240K. Likewise, even if there were a mean flux of 390W/m^2 reaching Earth’s surface, because it is variable, it would not achieve a mean temperature of 288K (15°C) but rather a mean temperature close to freezing point. However, even the net 390W/m^2 shown in those energy budget diagrams is not what can be used in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations: the solar radiation is only 168W/m^2 for which the blackbody temperature is 233K (-40°C) and we cannot combine that with back radiation (as they do in the energy diagrams) to “explain” a higher temperature close to freezing point. So it’s all wrong, and we need to go back to Square One.
Doug Cotton alert.
…“One argument suggests that indigenous population collapse in the Americas resulted in a reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of forest regrowth in the early colonial period…
That’s nothing! Another argument suggests that the indigenous population had invented a wonderful climate controlling machine powered by grants to the climate priests, but the nasty white missionaries killed all the priests and ever since then we’ve been having weird weather….
When you don’t have to provide any evidence beyond correlation, the world is your oyster…
Bubblegum is a gateway drug.
Oh, my gosh! I was having a pretty difficult day and decided to pop in and check out the recent craziness in Climate. WOW! Life is good, Thank-you… uncontrolled laughter every time I try to think about those Franciscans.
re: eyesonu. January 26, 2016 at 1:01 pm
Yes, whenever this kind of crap comes out the first thing one should do is look for the appeal for more funding. And there it is: “Until now the evidence has been fairly ambiguous. Our results indicate that high-resolution chronologies of human populations, forests and fires are needed to evaluate these claims.”
And beavers. Don’t forget the beavers.
Are you sure this wasn’t printed in the Onion?
Lol. I need to start studying climate. Daddy needs some grant money. Un-freaking -believable.
I thought the MWP and LIA were regional and fiction!
Have they checked all the Steve Reeves sword-and-sandal movies and the Douglas Fairbanks swashbucklers for final verification of their historical data?
If you look closely, the scenario is not too far fetched. If you consider all of the Native Americans that died as a result of European colonization (not just those in New Mexico) the number is closer to 50 million. The regrowth of trees in areas that had been used for farming across that entire region (as populations crashed, forests regrew) sucked enough carbon dioxide out of the sky to cause a drop of at least seven parts per million. That could have tipped the earth into the Little Ice Age which according to many sources likely started around 1650.
Poor Luke, you get more delusional every day !!
There is pretty solid evidence for the decimation of native populations following European contact and the forest regrowth over large areas of the neotropics which could have reduced CO2 levels. As Charlie notes, I am a bit skeptical that a 7ppm decrease in CO2 could have touched off the Little Ice Age.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40863600?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
“1491,” Charles Mann’s book, suggests that about 90% of indigenous peoples in the Americas died out after the Spanish conquered the Aztecs and the Incas, and later after the English came to North America, taking more than a century do to so in each case.
On the high central plateau of Mexico, where Mexico City is located now, Mann reports, based upon Spanish censuses of the time, that 97% of indigenous peoples died in the century after conquest, from 8 separate disease epidemics. The population dropped from 25.2 million to 700,000 people — see page 130 of the hardback edition.
To the extent that indigenous populations burned down forests, it is reasonable to think that there would have been forest regrowth after population collapses.
But CO2 levels barely fell during this period, by a maximum of 10 ppm, probably less. See:
http://planetforlife.com/images/co2history.gif
If you can almost immediately cause a Little Ice Age with this tiny reduction in CO2, then we should have warmed far, far more than we currently have, with CO2 having gone from 280 to 400 ppm in 200 years or so.
So I do buy the drastic drop in population, but I don’t but the notion that it caused the Little Ice Age.
(This is a copy and paste from far above.)
Luke January 26, 2016 at 3:46 pm
There is pretty solid evidence for the decimation of native populations following European contact and the forest regrowth over large areas of the neotropics which could have reduced CO2 levels
No. their is not. Morbidity and mortality is based on conjecture extrapolated from survival rates of post Colombian populations.
New England is full of Small Pox cemeteries. Death rate best guess is 10% for Europeans.
Look at today’s rate for ethnic M&M . It will vary on level of treatment and care.
The Pilgrims suffered 50% loss rate in their FIRST YEAR. Life was not easy.
Also 50 million seems to high. Not with the current food supplies and farming.
Collars where choke type and no stirrup or horses.
michael
7 parts per million = little ice age. Is that really credible, do you think?
“The regrowth of trees in areas that had been used for farming across that entire region (as populations crashed, forests regrew) sucked enough carbon dioxide out of the sky to cause a drop of at least seven parts per million. ”
This statement is so emblematic of the anthropocentric thinking that dominates climate related foolishness. Before the forests grew back, the grasses the natives preferred, sucked CO2 out of the air as well. Giga tonnes of it! In fact, grasses can sequester just as much CO2 as mid latitude forest as experiments have shown.
Luke’s answer shows this inability to view nature as a dynamic process. He imagines a static situation that changes after the forest regrows. It never occurs to him that given the same soil, and latitude, that nature uses every resource available including CO2.
For his supposition to be true, somehow the land would have to be inert and unable to produce plants that would maximize the available nutrients, then suddenly become productive producing forest to then nourish themselves with CO2. As this is not the case, the theory is foolish. These people need to spend more time outside seeing how nature actually works.
Uh, you forgot that trees sequester carbon in their woody tissue, grasses do not. Show me the research that demonstrates that grasses can sequesterling as much carbon as a regenerating forest in the tropics (where soils are thin and nutrient poor).
But New Mexico is not in the tropics.
For Luke below suggesting “I forgot” that trees sequester carbon in their woody tissue, a short biology lesson. 60% of carbon sequestration occurs in the soils- the tissue itself accounts for less than 30%!! Worse, when the tree dies, 50% of the carbon in its woody tissue is lost within 3 years. A Mediterranean ecosystem dominated by trees will sequester ~180 +/-30 tonnes of C per Hectare while the same ecosystem dominated by scrubs and grass is 105 +/- 30 tonnes of C per Hectare (source: Estimates of preanthropogenic carbon storage in global ecosystem types. GIYF)
As I said the literature and research shows little difference between plant types for the same ecosystem but anyone who’s spent some time in the natural world understands this intuitively. Nature is always maxing out the available resources and CO2 is one of the most precious. Alarmists all need to spend more time outside to get a better understanding of the natural world.
Dave, I do grow a garden every year and I also know that annual plants do not sequester carbon to any significant degree. Also, soils are extremely thin in tropical regions so no sequestration there either. Youidea isn’t even supported by the data you provided. Sorry but you idea does not make sense and it is contradicted by the data.
Dave, here is the conclusion of a study comparing C sequestration in tropical systems.
The findings of these five years of research (2002–07) on target tropical ecosystems suggest, first, that in terms of C accumulated in the total system (soil + plant biomass), the native forest presents the highest levels of all land uses in all ecosystems, followed by improved pasture, a silvopastoral system, natural regeneration of degraded pastures and, finally, degraded pasture or degraded soils.
But the atmosphere is highly insenstive to CO2 fluctuations.
It may have something to do with that gigantic nuclear fireball out there that we all spin around.
..Maybe that’s why Luke is always so dizzy, he’s spinning the wrong way !!
HAHA! Good one Luke.
Luke says:
If you consider all of the Native Americans that died as a result of European colonization (not just those in New Mexico) the number is closer to 50 million.
On the other hand, you hate all those little brown and black people who subsist on less than $2 a day. If harmless CO2 was reduced below 350 ppm, their food costs would shoot through the roof. Malnutrition and starvation would be widespread. There isn’t any doubt about that, and the arguments that CO2 must be reduced are made either by science illiterates, or by people who hate those folks across the ocean.
Which are you, Luke? That’s a serious question. You’re either a hater, or you can’t understand the basic fact that CO2 is both harmless, and very beneficial to the biosphere. More CO2 means lower food costs, it’s that simple.
So enough with your fake pontificating over Native Americans killed by colonization. Those were different times and differnt attitudes. We know better now. And a lot of us can see that your hypocrisy is intended to cover up the fact that you want people ‘culled’. Crimes against humanity is the operative phrase. That’s what you advocate.
I am neither a hater nor clueless. Where did you come up with the crazy idea that food costs would “shoot through the roof” if CO2 fell below 350ppm? CO2 was below 350 ppm for all of human history until the mid 1990s. Food costs have not plummeted since CO2 crossed that threshold.
It sounds like you are projecting again.
Luke January 26, 2016 at 7:04 pm
It sounds like you are projecting again.
Unfortunately for many of us you are correct,, projecting over our belts. For the first time in history the issue is not having enough food to feed everyone, but getting it to them.
Yes costs have not dropped. Farmers are after all subsidized. I have no problem with this. Farmers feed the Planet.
A question, do you garden? Grow some of your own food? I do.
I like to keep a old grill in the garden A little wood a little charcoal, My plants like it.
michael
Luke,
The cost of living index has risen inexorably, but food costs have been held down due to the rise in harmless, beneficial CO2. Since you don’t seem to understand how it works, here is some free education:
When you put a seed in a pot of soil and it sprouts and grows, the plant growth doesn’t come from the dirt. If it did, the dirt would be depleted.
The plant’s growth comes from water and CO2. All of the starches, sugars, and cellulose that build the plant come from that tiny trace gas in the air, which has risen from about 3 parts in 10,000, to 4 parts in 10,000.
That’s why the planet is currently GREENING. The rise in harmless, beneficial CO2 is causing rising agricultural productivity. That, in turn, holds down the cost of food.
For the one-third of humanity that subsists on less than $2 a day, that means the difference between malnutrition and starvation, and survival.
Now that you’ve been taught you have no excuse for not understanding how crucial the rise in harmless, beneficial CO2 has been for the world’s poorest. More CO2 is literally making a life or death difference to a large part of the world’s population.
Reducing CO2 to below 350 ppm, as some misguided and deranged haters propose, would kill off millions in a very gruesome way. You don’t want to be one of those despicable haters, do you, Luke? They are either misguided, or they hate humanity and want it “culled”. Some of them have stated that publicly.
It’s really that simple, Luke. Maybe you were clueless before, but now there’s no excuse because now you know the facts. CO2 is completely harmless (no global harm has ever been found due to the rise in CO2). And as we see, more CO2 is tremendously beneficial to the biosphere. More is better, at both current and projected concentrations.
By reading this award-winning science site, many readers have had the scales fall from their eyes. It is my sincere hope that you, too, will see the light. You have been lied to and used. Smart folks change direction when that’s pointed out to them.
bd,
You are overstating the CO2 fertilizer effect. CO2 is only one of many essential nutrients that a plant needs to grow. Limitation of water and other nutrients often prevent plants from increasing their growth in response to increased CO2. Climate change will lead to more droughts in arid areas where you find the greatest food scarcity. So by ignoring the multifaceted effects of climate change and encouraging increased CO2, you, not I, are condemning those who are already struggling to even greater hardships.
Chris
ALL plant growth is increasing (has already increased!) by values between 12% and 27% – WITH increased drought resistance, increase yield, increased mass and increased growth area (due to the 1/2 degree increase in global average temperature since the lows in 1970’s.) There are now, there will be NO problems caused by ANY increase in global average CO2 by another 300 ppm. Which, if it occurs at all, will take another 100 some-odd years of increased prosperity.
or we could try to lower CO2 back to 300 ppm. And kill some 2-3 billion innocents.
But just as pre-Columbian forests might have been growing back as the Indians died off, aggressive colonists from Europe were busy cutting them down to grow crops. Only now are they growing back again. Indeed, it is said that there are more forests in New England than there have been since the 18th century.
Not that any of this has any verifiable connection with ‘global’ temperature.
/Mr Lynn
There was very little cutting by Europeans in the new world until the 1700s.
I thought it was Iraq where we killed
50 million.
If a drop of 7 ppm would be enough to cause the little ice age, than the modern rise of over 120 ppm should have warmed the planet by 20 to 30 degrees by now.
Your willingness to praise nonsense is legendary.
WWJD?
“The Cause” looking for effects.
So now we really ‘know’ the cause of this:
The Thames Frost Fairs 1600 to 1814
During the Great Winter of 1683 / 84, where even the seas of southern Britain were frozen solid for up to two miles from shore, the most famous frost fair was held: The Blanket Fair. The famous diariest John Evelyn described it in extensive detail, writing:
‘Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other staires to and fro, as in the streetes, sliding with skeetes, a bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, cookes, tipling and other lewd places, so that it seemed a bacchanalian triumph or carnival on the water, whilst it was a severe judgement on the land, the trees not onely splitting as if lightning-struck, but men and cattle perishing in divers[e] places, and the very seas so lock’d up with ice, that no vessels could stir out or come in.’
Old’un,
Here’s a copy from a printing press set up right on the ice:
http://americandigest.org/printedonice.jpg
And from another Frost Faire on the ice:
http://americandigest.org/frozenthames1739.jpg
off set litho ?
Wait, aren’t these researchers, who are discussed in the WUWT lead post, going in the face of the clique of Climategate scientists who needed to and did get rid of the MWP and LIA in the Paleo-temperature records in order to sell CAGW?
The lead post discussed researchers are supporting the selling of man-made impact on the middle of LIA due to European influence on Native Americans in the middle of the LIA, thus the researchers are confirming the existence of the LIA explicitly. With their hypothesis proposed being so incredibly implausible while admitting the LIA existed then that is a significant setback to the advocates trying to sell CAGW by claiming the LIA never existed.
Next we will may see research on the Caucasian frontiersmen and settlers of the North American plains who slaughtered immense herds of buffalo in the 18th century and how they caused the end of the LIA because of it. Shall we start a betting pool that will be funded this year by the US gov’t as a topic of study? A study if done would be explicit admission of a LIA.
John
The LIA only exists if it can be caused by human-induced CO2 changes. Otherwise, never mind!
john on January 26, 2016 at 5:39 pm
– – – – – – –
john,
Yeah, and one can expand that. I think pre-science faith maintains that during the last ~10,000 year part of man’s presence on Earth, what dominates EAS**/climate must be significantly caused by CO2 from mankind burning stuff.
It is a necessary premise of proponents of the Anthropocene.
** EAS – Earth Atmosphere System
John
Were it not for regular burns from any cause we’d be talking about prairie forests. If you’re a tree hugger you might like to end prairie fires. If you’re infatuated with seeing the Rockies from eastern Nebraska you might not be a tree hugger. Every acre of prairie requires wildfire to remain a prairie.
That’s why the Yosemite Valley floor is turning into a forest. Indians regularly burnt it; they needed meadows to keep a good deer population.
But think of the methane reduction!
Certainly the reduction in that greenhouse gas is what ended the LIA.
(Oh. Wait a minute….)
Gunga Din on January 26, 2016 at 3:45 pm
– – – – – –
Gung DIn,
Nice.
John