Combines multiple methods estimating pre-Columbian population numbers.
Estimates European arrival in 1492 lead to 56 million deaths by 1600.
Large population reduction led to reforestation of 55.8 Mha and 7.4 Pg C uptake.
1610 atmospheric CO2 drop partly caused by indigenous depopulation of the Americas.
Humans contributed to Earth System changes before the Industrial Revolution.
Abstract
Human impacts prior to the Industrial Revolution are not well constrained. We investigate whether the decline in global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 7–10 ppm in the late 1500s and early 1600s which globally lowered surface air temperatures by 0.15∘C, were generated by natural forcing or were a result of the large-scale depopulation of the Americas after European arrival, subsequent land use change and secondary succession.
We quantitatively review the evidence for (i) the pre-Columbian population size, (ii) their per capita land use, (iii) the post-1492 population loss, (iv) the resulting carbon uptake of the abandoned anthropogenic landscapes, and then compare these to potential natural drivers of global carbon declines of 7–10 ppm. From 119 published regional population estimates we calculate a pre-1492 CE population of 60.5 million (interquartile range, IQR 44.8–78.2 million), utilizing 1.04 ha land per capita (IQR 0.98–1.11).
European epidemics removed 90% (IQR 87–92%) of the indigenous population over the next century. This resulted in secondary succession of 55.8 Mha (IQR 39.0–78.4 Mha) of abandoned land, sequestering 7.4 Pg C (IQR 4.9–10.8 Pg C), equivalent to a decline in atmospheric CO2 of 3.5 ppm (IQR 2.3–5.1 ppm CO2). Accounting for carbon cycle feedbacks plus LUC outside the Americas gives a total 5 ppm CO2 additional uptake into the land surface in the 1500s compared to the 1400s, 47–67% of the atmospheric CO2 decline.
Furthermore, we show that the global carbon budget of the 1500s cannot be balanced until large-scale vegetation regeneration in the Americas is included. The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas resulted in a human-driven global impact on the Earth System in the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Fig. 1. Global atmospheric CO2 time series. (A) The CO2 concentrations recorded in two Antarctic ice cores: Law Dome (grey, MacFarling Meure et al., 2006) and West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide (blue, Ahn et al., 2012). (B) Carbon isotopic ratios recorded in CO2 from the WAIS Divide ice core (black, Bauska et al., 2015) showing an increased terrestrial carbon uptake over the 16th century (B). Yellow box is the span of the major indigenous depopulation event (1520–1700 CE). Loess smoothed lines for visual aid. Error bars are the 1-σ standard deviation. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
8. Conclusion
We estimate that 55 million indigenous people died following the European conquest of the Americas beginning in 1492. This led to the abandonment and secondary succession of 56 million hectares of land. We calculate that this led to an additional 7.4 Pg C being removed from the atmosphere and stored on the land surface in the 1500s. This was a change from the 1400s of 9.9 Pg C (5 ppm CO2).
Including feedback processes this contributed between 47% and 67% of the 15–22 Pg C (7–10 ppm CO2) decline in atmospheric CO2 between 1520 CE and 1610 CE seen in Antarctic ice core records. These changes show that the Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas is necessary for a parsimonious explanation of the anomalous decrease in atmospheric CO2 at that time and the resulting decline in global surface air temperatures.
These changes show that human actions had global impacts on the Earth system in the centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution. Our results also show that this aspect of the Columbian Exchange – the globalisation of diseases – had global impacts on the Earth system, key evidence in the calls for the drop in atmospheric CO2 at 1610 CE to mark the onset of the Anthropocene epoch (Lewis and Maslin, 2015, 2018).
We conclude that the Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas led to the abandonment of enough cleared land in the Americas that the resulting terrestrial carbon uptake had a detectable impact on both atmospheric CO2 and global surface air temperatures in the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Syphilis was endemic in South America and the arriving Europeans contracted their version of it. It was a febrile, fatal disease in Europe. Brothels were erected to help pay for the building of St Peter’s Basilica. When the returning explorers reported to the Vatican they spent time visiting them. Masons from all over Europe spent two years each assisting in the construction, carried it home with them and it spread rapidly in the population.
As the former head of the HIV/AIDS initiative in the Scandinavian countries explained it to me over coffee in Zurich, the first location from where the South American syphilis was spread was Gandolfo Castle, as was the first international AIDS conference. He felt that was an interesting coincidence.
Speaking of wild claims – the use of indulgences to pay for St Peters was a big scandal then and motivated Martin Luther’s criticism and then the reformation. This prostitution claim starts after a a very recent scandal of leaks of Vatican properties used for brothels designed to damage the previous Pope. Pretty obvious that you need to take it with a pinch if salt.
ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N
February 2, 2019 8:18 pm
Surely that paper’s only contribution is to make money for the author.
The thrust of this seems to be humans caused the LIA and thus the last 300y of warming is also AGW and NOT natural variability. The next step will be “prove” that Roman Warm Period was caused by Romans cutting down trees to crucify people, thus neatly proving what we “knew” already: that any change to climate is and always has been caused by human activity.
This paper is written by a group of pseudo academic climate change deniers.
Attracting grant money with the usual AGW encantations is well known but political activism and supporting “the cause” is a major play too.
Intro:
Hence, the carbon uptake that is thought to have occurred following the arrival of epidemics in the Americas may have reduced atmospheric CO2 levels and led to a decline in radiative forcing that may then have contributed to the coldest part of the Little Ice Age
maybe , could be , kinda ….
which then morphs into a scientific certitude:
Conclusion:
These changes show that human actions had global impacts on the Earth system in the centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Oh, and don’t forget to add an explicit claim as non geologists to push redefining the geological record.
to mark the onset of the Anthropocene epoch (Lewis and Maslin, 2015, 2018).
I was thinking parody, or a fake by that group that floats fake papers to show how corrupt the peer review process is.
Andrew Kerber
February 2, 2019 8:27 pm
Classic proof that common sense doesn’t go with education. The US population in 1895 was 65 million. Well into the industrial revolution. Wheels, engines, metal. There is no way there were 56 million people available to die in a a Stone Age culture, without the wheel, advanced agriculture, metal, or even draft animals. Realistically the population of all of North America in the 15 to 16 century was around 20 million.
They are including both north and south America. The Inca empire was estimated at 8 – 14 million at its height plus all those living in the Amazon. The total number is the top of the estimates but not ridiculously out of line.
87 million people died in the years 1914-1919, 37 million during WWI, and 50 million from the Spanish flu. The rate of loss was fantastic compared to post-Columbian Native American dying (even if the original numbers were as high as quoted). Why did we not experience a Little Ice Age?
Indeed. In fact just after all that death of the 1914-1919 was a period of warming (1920s-1940s) just the opposite of what you’d expect based on the theory on post-Columbian Native American dying leading to cooler temps.
“The Black Death, also known as the Great Plague, the Black Plague, or simply the Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351…The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe’s total population. In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.”
Using the theories and methodologies of these researchers, it would seem that the plague happening first, by over 100 years and causing far more sudden deaths, would have been a significantly greater disruptive force. These researchers should take a look back and see if they can find another coincidence to tie to atmospheric CO2.
Michael Combs February 2, 2019 at 8:28 pm
good pick.
Sets one to thinking, can we say “The destruction of the Kievan State” was another good example? Now that was a die off.
There is to much guess world and not enough research.
For example what areas became so depopulated that farming stopped. Mexico was a very profitable part of the Spanish Kingdom. Seems there was no shortage of people to fill Spanish coffers.
Ludicrous
58 million dead in 60 years
70 million buffalo dead in 15 years in the western plains and no ice age
Stupid. It’s easy to come up with this junk if you know the agenda before starting.
Check out thi link.
MASS DEATHS OF NATIVE AMERICANS CAUSED THE LITTLE ICE AGE? FACT CHECK!
Posted by Richard Thornton | Feb 2, 2019 | Humor, Mysteries, Native American Community, Nature
Well the thing is, the LIA started far earlier than they state in their paper, and the Black Death preceded the European exploration of the Americas. The LIA seems to have started before the Black Death years however, so while perhaps vast amounts of human death could have slightly affected temperatures, the cooling effect was already happening.
“likely led to a reduction” and “may have been large enough” and “uptake that is thought to have occurred” and “may have reduced atmospheric” and “that may then have contributed”
I fully agree with you Jeff. I am in no way defending this study, but I will defend the use of uncertain words such as “appear”, “seems”, “probable”, etc. in research. I read lots of times on this forum that people want certainty in the results. I would say that most areas of scientific research cannot provide certainty and no competent researcher will suggest they can. In atmospheric research what we try to do is find correlations which could suggest a cause and effect. Then maybe someone else can do further investigation and add more, or even disprove what we may have thought. In my research on tornadoes there is never a certainty. We try to find physical processes that appear be related to the formation of tornadoes. Its not perfect, but we do the best we can with the data and physics we have. And I think it is better than not providing any information unless we are certain of the causes.
100% agreement, with the proviso that it is understood that evidence to the contrary may also emerge, and that such evidence receives the same amount of publicity and consideration. That is the scientific principle, not the burying of facts that do not support our pet theory….
You will find the certainty in the Conclusion section, where they seems to have forgotten that the whole thing was a speculative: may be , could be , kinda likely speculation 😉
Jeff, Max, and Tony – All your points are good ones, and I agree with them; however, I was highlighting the nature of the authors’ particulars compared to the certainty of his conclusions.
Also, just running some numbers off the top of my head, the authors’ remarks concerning the 7 – 9 ppm decline of CO2 effect per the global temperature drop amounts to quite the climate sensitivity to CO2.
jeff
February 2, 2019 8:31 pm
“Estimates European arrival in 1492 lead to 56 million deaths by 1600.”
Its funny most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated that the pre-Columbian population to be 10 million; now some estimates are 100 million or more.
It seems to me to now be politically correct to exaggerate the number and how peaceful they were,
before europeans came and destroyed everything.
All of those peaceful tribes had war chiefs, because they were so peaceful…
Apparently these researchers fantasize epidemic casualties, without investigating said epidemics.
A) Fantasize huge populations.
B) Fantasize massive epidemics.
C) Conclude disease casualties by models or fantasy spreadsheets.
D) Blame CO₂
E) QED for gullible CAGW alarmists.
1) Ignores the massive forest cutting of invading colonists.
2) Ignores that regrowth forests simply replaced agriculture and city landscaping.
3) Ignores that introduced disease epidemics affected Native Americans differently depending on contact with Europeans; e.g. conquered Incas versus isolated attempts at fort construction along North America’s East Coast.
4) Totally, as jeff notes, ignores population estimates by the Spanish, French, English and Dutch who physically encountered Native Americans.
Just more finagled fudged estimates by models/spreadsheets, producing numbers pre-selected by the researchers. i.e. Confirmation Bias.
Scholars at the end of the 19th century weren’t aware how extensive the terracing was in the Andes. Mistakenly thought the Amazon basin was virtually uninhabitable. Thought Mesoamerica was always thick jungle. Were unaware of the large cities across North America.
Nah…The LIA started more like 1350 AD. What these people think, everyone stupid? I sure hope this isn’t indicative of the average college graduate. Even worse, if this is the average intellect of the newly graduated climate scientist, then we gonna need re-education camps. Mainstream science should be jumping all over this pointing out how bizarre this premise is. Of course, if everything predicated upon the sensitivity of CO2 to this level, then the ocean’s indeed will soon be boiling.
First off, prove that CO2 actually dropped 10-11 ppmv from contributing reductions in New World agriculture and by the demise of the peak of New World civilizations during that time period 1492-1750.
Second, prove that CO2 is the central culprit in causing such climate sensitivity. I doubt you or anyone can, and this ‘paper’ is based upon the principle that CO2 is the magic molecule responsible for everything that happens or happened with the long term climate trends. This of course is the wanted central rationale to make CO2 the demon molecule and now labeled as pollution by ignorant power brokers and politicians hoping to utilize it as source of near unlimited taxation and power/control over the citizenry. If this isn’t reigned in soon, it is sort of the end of the world as we have known it the last 150 years. But not from global warming or climate change, but loss of fundemantal control of our national state(s) to an unelected authority via a gross misuse/abuse of the scientific method. In other words, an outright scam of hideous proportions that benefits the agent provocateurs of this caustic swindle. This will end badly for humanity if allowed to fester but the climate in the near to mid term will continue to be as beneficial and near perfect as it has ever been the last 2.6 million years.
“First off, prove that CO2 actually dropped 10-11 ppmv”
Yeah, really!
Or prove that reduction in CO2 reduces the Earth’s temperature by 0.15C as they claim in the quote below:
“Human impacts prior to the Industrial Revolution are not well constrained. We investigate whether the decline in global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 7–10 ppm in the late 1500s and early 1600s which globally lowered surface air temperatures by 0.15∘C,”
Don’t you love how precise they are. They have it nailed down, don’t they.
Looks like Percy hasn’t read many climate papers. They all talk about may be, might have and so on.
Yet the activists take all of these papers as absolute proof that the worst case scenarios have been proven.
Okay, since I have not had the pleasure to sit down and read the full paper, if decrease of 10ppm CO2 ‘may’ have ‘contributed’ to it, what caused the rest?
The paper seems to be working with the base assumption that the LIA was real and occurred. Does it offer any suggestion as to what caused it? By claiming that a 10ppm reduction ‘may’ have contributed the extension of this logic is that global CO2 levels DIDN’T have anything to do with the rest of it. Either there was a massive decrease of CO2 at the start of LIA or the only conclusion to be made is that CO2 does not drive global temps… OR there was an even bigger decrease in CO2 prior to European/American social interaction that no one seems willing to explain.
Also, while we are on the topic, if it is accepted that LIA is part of the historical record AND that ‘Pre Industrial Temperatures’ are the baseline for the perfect planet, then how did we climb out of LIA to Pre Industrial? What drove this global change?
Having been in academia I can assure you it is less that people are stupid and more that it is incredibly easy to get a paper published if it is politically popular and impossible to get it published if the political climate goes against it.
if this is the average intellect of the newly graduated climate scientist, then we gonna need re-education camps.
Mainstream science should be jumping all over this pointing out how bizarre this premise is. ”
“YES”, …. and ”YES”, ….. and ”CORRECT”.
And I also think that Mainstream science should be jumping all over the “textbook publishers”, law suits included, for both the public school textbooks and college textbooks, because said textbooks are what the teachers/instructors are teaching from and what the students are mandated to be learning from.
The root problem is, “textbook publishers” literally hate old textbooks because they want to sell “new revised editions” each succeeding year or two, NOT reprints of old textbooks, but new and/or newly revised information. And to do that the publishers must include the everchanging Politically Correct social science and the Politically Correct junk science ….. while excluding the “fact based” social and natural sciences. And the lefty liberal Socialists Educators give their 100% approval of the revised contents
Alan Tomalty
February 2, 2019 8:36 pm
“This led to the abandonment and secondary succession of 56 million hectares of land.” There were not that many Indians and they were not big farmers. Even so that is only 138,379,012 acres. The contiguous land area of the US is 7,653,004 km^2 or 1.89 billion acres . So that represents .00732 or 7/10 ths of 1 % of the land.
The climate scientists are trying to say that 7/10ths of 1% of the land would absorb so much CO2 that it affected climate. If it was suddenly not farmed the soil would give off CO2 to the atmosphere . If grass started to grow on it, this land area is so inconsequential that it is laughable.
i haven.t bothered to address the rest of the study because I am in a fit of rage after I stopped laughing about this garbage study wasting taxpayer money.
I made 2 mistakes. It was 7 % not 7/10ths of 1%. and I misrepresented the geography. They weren’t talking about the US. Only Mexico, Bolivia, Central America and the Andes. The Spanish conquered these lands. Even so, the idea that changing 56 million hectares from farmland to grassland would have any effect on the climate is hilarious. The land are of the world is 149 million km^2. 56 million hectares = 560000 km^2 or 0.003758 of the world land area. So 3/10ths of 1 % of the world land area turned from crops to grass. So what? I am sure that happens every decade where new grassland is formed from deserts and the like. Even so if the land was abandoned for the 1st couple of years it would have given off CO2 NOT absorbed it.
Human land use has gone from 4% to 40% worldwide over the past 150 years. If the authors are correct it is midern land use, not fossil fuels, that is driving global warming.
If a small change in global population from 1500 to 1600 could cool the planet then surely a large change from 1850 to 2019 could swarm the planet.
If so, then we cannot solve global warming unless we reduce land use. Which would require reducing Hunan population.
Following on this trend, human land use increase usually means deforestation. Does it follow from this that deforestation is the cause? I am of the opinion that deforestation affects rainfall (see the article elsewhere about the Amazon creating it’s own rainfall as an extreme example), but I would not claim it is a major driver of climate change without lots of evidence. Interesting though to note the catastrophic implosion of the bronze and ice age civilisations, where deforestation was likely extreme due to the fuel requirements of smelting ore……
Thank you for a simple arithmetical sanity check. Why couldn’t the authors of this travesty of a scientific paper have done the same? Where were the peer reviewers?
While the exposure to the Afro-Eurasian disease environment may have caused a mass die-off among Native Americans after 1492, the LIA had started in the 1300’s, so something happening several hundred years later could have no effect.
If one reads Charles Mann’s “1491”, estimates of the plagues effect killed off large numbers of farmers in the Mississippi Valley, as well as Mexico and Amazonia.
On that point, isn’t it far more likely that the dip in CO2 was the result of LIA cooling, rather than the cause of cooling?
Scott
February 2, 2019 8:54 pm
This idea is hardly new. William Ruddiman detailed this in his book Plows Plagues an Petroleum.
Red94ViperRT10
February 2, 2019 8:55 pm
Once again the reach false conclusions because they start with erroneous assumptions!!! I may have to read their linked reports but I greatly question the Great Dying is related to the Europeans arrival. I don’t think they have sufficient temporal resolution to even say whether the population decline (if there was one? I’d like to examine their proxies) began before or after the arrival of the Europeans. I am certain they are wrong to declare a decline in CO₂ caused a decline in temperature, it’s more likely the other way around. And did they consider a decline in temperature could easily have caused increased mortality, even to the point of a decline in population? Researchers are now indicating the various plagues caused population declines in Europe so I believe the introduction of all those diseases at once likely had an affect on New World populations. But that was on top of, added to, something else (probably climate related) that was already going on.
Second error:
Furthermore, we show that the global carbon budget of the 1500s cannot be balanced until large-scale vegetation regeneration in the Americas is included.
There is absolutely NO WAY to prove a negative like this. No matter how many things they considered to come up with “…the only thing it could have been…” it would likely take me only 30 seconds of thought to come up with something they never considered that could also balance the global carbon budget.
So if they admit that ECS is really 1.5 instead of 4.5 they will have to triple the death toll? My crystal ball showed me this headline:
Genocide Worse Than We Thought
Latest estimates of ECS prove that 170 million peace-loving, highly-civilized farmers were killed by barbarian European invaders.
From EurekAlert!
Clyde Spencer
February 2, 2019 8:58 pm
The authors apparently didn’t consider that a principle of physical chemistry is that CO2 is more soluble in cold water than in warm water. If the world cooled off, then some of the CO2 in the atmosphere would have gone into solution. They also apparently aren’t familiar with Occam’s Razor.
surely this fulfils Occam Razor, after all we know that Columbus invaded America and that the
overwhelming majority of the population died as a result. This one simple fact explains 50% of
the temperature decline during the later stages of the little ice age. They also consider the changes in
fluxes in oceans as well during that period (see Fig 6).
Looks like Percy is as big a hypocrite as he accuses others of being.
Just a few minutes ago he was chastising someone for not noticing that the paper was full of may be’s and might haves.
And now he’s going full alarmist on us and proclaiming that the papers premise is fully proven.
This paper explains nothing. It’s a huge accumulations of assumptions and unproven assertions.
Their claims regarding Indian population. Unproven and widely disputed.
Their claims that the Indian population was heavily into agriculture. Not supported by the facts.
Their claims that land abandoned by the Indians would become forested. Depends on where that land is.
They also ignore changes in forestation in the rest of the world, as well as even bigger changes in forestation that occurred both before and after, yet had no impact on climate.
Like the rest of the trolls, Percy will use any argument that advances his peculiar religion.
May I suggest you are wearing your White Guilt a little too tightly today, Percy. Columbus didn’t even reach continental America until his fourth voyage and if turning up, having a look around and then sailing home again is an invasion then those D-Day planers were certainly doing things wrong.
I also suggest that you do not fully understand what Occam’s Razor actually is.
Let me put it this way, here are two possible solutions to why the ‘coldest parts of the LIA occurred’ :
A – The sun decreased in output
B – Columbus invaded America (without being smart enough to claim naming rights, tisk tisk) allowing hordes of other Europeans to cross the Atlantic, cause the deaths of a significant percentage of the existing population which in extension lead to farmland (which apparently doesn’t absorb CO2) being replaced by regrowth (which apparently absorbs CO2 in a much greater manner) which reduced CO2 levels by 10ppm globally which helped to make the coldest part of the LIA (not all the LIA mind, just the coldest part) colder.
Now, using Occam, A or B is simpler?
Also, applying Occam, correctly or not, does not prove your theory. It is simply a tool to assist people in cutting through the bumf and suggesting where their time and effort could best be applied for further research.
This paper is a Leftist dream-come-true by linking Climate change to agricultural change and then linking them both to a severe racist slaughter of indigenous peoples by evil White Colonists. If it was not so funny to read, one could become quite annoyed by it, but it is just a comic paper, so why bother.
Wait till the Marxists get hold of this in Australia. They push the line of white invasion and slaughter and if they can link that to climate change we can close our few remaining coal power stations and follow Spain down the road to disaster.
The tragic part of Australian ‘Invasion Day’ Marxists is that if they ever managed to prove Australia was ‘invaded’ it would cancel out the Native Title laws basically overnight.
Native Title in Australia works on the agreement that Australia was COLONISED. If Australia was invaded then all the land would belong to the invader under the right of conquest laws. Right of Conquest was recognised by the UN back in the day in an attempt to formally define exactly where countries began and ended. Your ethics may vary on if it is a good or bad thing, but it is part of the UN.
Well, we’ve had normal science, post-normal science … why not surreal “science”? This must be worth a few marks just for the bizarre artistic inventiveness behind it. 😐
Steve C, I’d say it’s not so much surreal “science” as it is non-science aka nonsense.
Bill In Oz
February 2, 2019 9:21 pm
We are all meant to feel ‘guilty’ !
That’s the real purpose, raison d’etre, of this piece of greenist fluff.
But unfortunately the authors made the basic mistake of confusing causes and effects.
The LIA started around 1350 CE. That’s well before the Spanish arrived in the ‘Indies’ in 1492. Also there was a huge population drop due to plague and other diseases after 1340 in Europe. This lead to the abandonment of fields and to re-afforstation in Europe.
BTW, the big dying started in Mexico in 1530’s after a new viral disease was introduced, probably small pox. But Mexico is not big on forests apart from the tropical areas which were not highly populated.
And BTW, the Mayans civilisation collapsed around 950 CE because of drought. Their city based civilisation disappeared and the land reverted to jungle..
But I don’t see these authors discussing if this caused global cooling as well..
950 AD, wasn’t that right in the middle of the Medieval warm period?
Bart Tali
February 2, 2019 9:28 pm
The Little Ice age started before Columbus. The climate had changed so much in the 15th century that the Vikings had to abandon their Greenland settlements. This was before Columbus arrived elsewhere in the Americas.
Many of them were buried, research has been taking place on the skeletons to learn the cause of death.
E.g. Nature Ecology & Evolution, volume 2, pages 520–528 (2018)
They were able to show the presence of pathogens after the arrival of the europeans but not before.
The huge die-off of the native populations is well documented, in one battle between the conquistadors and the Aztecs the Aztec army was too sick to fight. Some diseases in N America travelled along the trade routes in the continent before the europeans so that often early explorers came across deserted settlements when they moved inland. The native populations became aware that the diseases came with the europeans which is one reason why they tried to destroy the early coastal settlements.
So now we have “science” which “proves” that the “Anthropocene Epoch” actually began in 1492! Who’ed of thunk it? I mean I haven’t had anyone explain to me what caused the weather to be so variable in the early and mid 1930’s despite having many more measurements of the vital statistics of the weather during that time compared to 14 to 1600’s and yet these geniuses have figured out we humans were a significant factor in causing the LIA? I guess we should now see headlines which declare “Scientists Say the Only Way to Save the Earth From Climate Change and Prevent CAGW Will Be An Extensive Genocide Campaign. ” Oh wait! Haven’t I heard that before?
Mr Carbon-Dioxide sez:
Raze civilizations… I’m there.
Devour the Medieval Warm Period.. yep! Been there, done that.
Maunder Minimum… sun control, no problemo.
A Little Ice Age… yep, cold – my specia-li-ty.
Modern Warm Period – whoa look out -you’re all gonna fry.
Why you ask?
Because some Rentseeking Huckster needs a grant.
High Treason
February 2, 2019 11:06 pm
56 million deaths. I am calling this one. The entire human population of that era would have been around 100 million. Agriculture still draws in CO2, as does grass, so the effect on CO2 would be microscopic if even measurable. The effects on global climate due to CO2 bandwidth absorption from the increased forests would be infinitesimal.
The green lunatics would love to end agriculture, dams, grazing animals for food, use of fossil fuel (for medicines, metals, energy, insulation, wires etc) to go back to the stone age-pre Aztec and Inca technology. What the brainless greenie types are too daft to recognise is that the planet can only support around 7 million humans under these conditions, not 7 billion. Just one in a thousand (pretty tough ones at that- not little green weenie refuse-to-work crybabys that go into rages at the slightest provocation) could survive. The weenie greenies who have no survival skills at all would not have a hope in hell of survival. Those on the brink of starvation eking out an existence would not tolerate these self-centred little parasites-they would eat them.
Continuing belief in this sort of rubbish “science” could lead to the mass destruction if not actual extinction of the human species.
World population in 1500 is estimated at 420-500m. But yeah, they are positing a greater than 10% decline in global population due to pandemic in the Americas. The percentage doesn’t make it implausible, but to claim nearly 6 times as many deaths as earlier estimates of total population is pretty bizarre.
Also you certainly can’t consider Incan civilization to have been stone age. The conquistadors were quite interested in their metallurgical skills.
They could smelt bronze, so technically one could argue they were bronze age. They never got out the very early stages of a bronze age though, even though they had the technology for quite a while. No swords, for example. Perhaps copper was rare there.
Mark W
You asked, “Using the tools available at the time, could the Inca have accessed those mines?” The simple answer is that they were able to extract gold, silver, and platinum from stream gravels, so if native copper was present (which it almost certainly was) then they could have treated it similarly. Whether or not they had the metallurgical skills to reduce copper carbonate or sulfide, I don’t know. But, they only needed small quantities, not a world-class mine.
There are mine tunnels in the Swiss Alps that were driven for miles 2,000 years ago. They were, apparently, driven entirely by building fires at the tunnel face, then throwing water on the rocks. The shattered rocks were then broken apart using deer antler picks. Mining didn’t require very high technology.
I grieve for the Beeb. If only it would ditch the Social Justice nonsense…
Marcos
February 2, 2019 11:27 pm
Most of the largest populations in NA had already been greatly reduced hundreds of years before European colonization.
And what about the fact that Genghis Khan’s invasions killed 5% of the world population around the same times?
WR2
February 2, 2019 11:30 pm
The greatest genration must be turning in their graves. We (or Caucasian socialists actually) are destroying all they worked for and died for. History will judge this period very harshly.
Europeans came to the Americas in 1492. 350 years later Europeans discovered germ theory.
Those bastards.
The Indian population gave the Europeans a few diseases the Europeans didn’t have before arriving in the New World. It was a two-way street.
Not many.
Especially since syphilis was proven to be one of the STDs common to romans, many centuries before Columbus.
Leaving what? Yellow Fever?
The score is more even on bad habits. The Indians gave Europe tobacco, Europe gave them alcohol.
That’s a great point.
Syphilis was endemic in South America and the arriving Europeans contracted their version of it. It was a febrile, fatal disease in Europe. Brothels were erected to help pay for the building of St Peter’s Basilica. When the returning explorers reported to the Vatican they spent time visiting them. Masons from all over Europe spent two years each assisting in the construction, carried it home with them and it spread rapidly in the population.
As the former head of the HIV/AIDS initiative in the Scandinavian countries explained it to me over coffee in Zurich, the first location from where the South American syphilis was spread was Gandolfo Castle, as was the first international AIDS conference. He felt that was an interesting coincidence.
Speaking of wild claims – the use of indulgences to pay for St Peters was a big scandal then and motivated Martin Luther’s criticism and then the reformation. This prostitution claim starts after a a very recent scandal of leaks of Vatican properties used for brothels designed to damage the previous Pope. Pretty obvious that you need to take it with a pinch if salt.
Surely that paper’s only contribution is to make money for the author.
The thrust of this seems to be humans caused the LIA and thus the last 300y of warming is also AGW and NOT natural variability. The next step will be “prove” that Roman Warm Period was caused by Romans cutting down trees to crucify people, thus neatly proving what we “knew” already: that any change to climate is and always has been caused by human activity.
This paper is written by a group of pseudo academic climate change deniers.
Bunch of academics swinging their handbags on this over at The Conversation, –
https://theconversation.com/european-colonisation-of-the-americas-killed-10-of-world-population-and-caused-global-cooling-110549
200+ comments & still pulling each others hair !
Attracting grant money with the usual AGW encantations is well known but political activism and supporting “the cause” is a major play too.
Intro:
Sometimes they “forget” to include the may haves, maybes, the error bars and other crutches in their conclusions.
MODS: sorry for messy quotes, seems I missed the slash on the first closing blockquote.
I was thinking parody, or a fake by that group that floats fake papers to show how corrupt the peer review process is.
Classic proof that common sense doesn’t go with education. The US population in 1895 was 65 million. Well into the industrial revolution. Wheels, engines, metal. There is no way there were 56 million people available to die in a a Stone Age culture, without the wheel, advanced agriculture, metal, or even draft animals. Realistically the population of all of North America in the 15 to 16 century was around 20 million.
Or the claim that they cultivated ~1ha per person, or 5-10ha per adult, 10-20ha per male. And had enough time to hunt.
Meh … Not sure, but I believe their women did much of the farming.
They are including both north and south America. The Inca empire was estimated at 8 – 14 million at its height plus all those living in the Amazon. The total number is the top of the estimates but not ridiculously out of line.
dont expect skeptics here to actually do the work of checking numbers, like you did.
they simply reject what they dont like
You are a sad man son, and nearly as cracked in the head as those ”academic” wingnuts and their mathemagics.
Steve, even by your low standards, that was pathetic.
Perhaps if you could find a new hobby.
Only reject 97% of them, Steven.
And mosh drives by showing, once again, why he’s become the forum joke.
Then why didn’t they include the range and error implicit in the calculations?
87 million people died in the years 1914-1919, 37 million during WWI, and 50 million from the Spanish flu. The rate of loss was fantastic compared to post-Columbian Native American dying (even if the original numbers were as high as quoted). Why did we not experience a Little Ice Age?
Indeed. In fact just after all that death of the 1914-1919 was a period of warming (1920s-1940s) just the opposite of what you’d expect based on the theory on post-Columbian Native American dying leading to cooler temps.
“The Black Death, also known as the Great Plague, the Black Plague, or simply the Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351…The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe’s total population. In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.”
Using the theories and methodologies of these researchers, it would seem that the plague happening first, by over 100 years and causing far more sudden deaths, would have been a significantly greater disruptive force. These researchers should take a look back and see if they can find another coincidence to tie to atmospheric CO2.
You are obviously a warmist intent on using logic and common sense. Off to the reeducation camps for you.
Michael Combs February 2, 2019 at 8:28 pm
good pick.
Sets one to thinking, can we say “The destruction of the Kievan State” was another good example? Now that was a die off.
There is to much guess world and not enough research.
For example what areas became so depopulated that farming stopped. Mexico was a very profitable part of the Spanish Kingdom. Seems there was no shortage of people to fill Spanish coffers.
michael
Coffers and coffins both.
Ludicrous
58 million dead in 60 years
70 million buffalo dead in 15 years in the western plains and no ice age
Stupid. It’s easy to come up with this junk if you know the agenda before starting.
Check out thi link.
MASS DEATHS OF NATIVE AMERICANS CAUSED THE LITTLE ICE AGE? FACT CHECK!
Posted by Richard Thornton | Feb 2, 2019 | Humor, Mysteries, Native American Community, Nature
https://peopleofonefire.com/mass-deaths-of-native-americans-caused-the-little-ice-age-fact-check.html
Well the thing is, the LIA started far earlier than they state in their paper, and the Black Death preceded the European exploration of the Americas. The LIA seems to have started before the Black Death years however, so while perhaps vast amounts of human death could have slightly affected temperatures, the cooling effect was already happening.
“likely led to a reduction” and “may have been large enough” and “uptake that is thought to have occurred” and “may have reduced atmospheric” and “that may then have contributed”
Gotta love certainty.
I’d have been even less likely to believe it if they claimed certainty. There’s nothing wrong with saying “likely” and the like.
I fully agree with you Jeff. I am in no way defending this study, but I will defend the use of uncertain words such as “appear”, “seems”, “probable”, etc. in research. I read lots of times on this forum that people want certainty in the results. I would say that most areas of scientific research cannot provide certainty and no competent researcher will suggest they can. In atmospheric research what we try to do is find correlations which could suggest a cause and effect. Then maybe someone else can do further investigation and add more, or even disprove what we may have thought. In my research on tornadoes there is never a certainty. We try to find physical processes that appear be related to the formation of tornadoes. Its not perfect, but we do the best we can with the data and physics we have. And I think it is better than not providing any information unless we are certain of the causes.
100% agreement, with the proviso that it is understood that evidence to the contrary may also emerge, and that such evidence receives the same amount of publicity and consideration. That is the scientific principle, not the burying of facts that do not support our pet theory….
“Gotta love certainty.”
You will find the certainty in the Conclusion section, where they seems to have forgotten that the whole thing was a speculative: may be , could be , kinda likely speculation 😉
Big difference between providing error bars and just using weasel words.
Jeff, Max, and Tony – All your points are good ones, and I agree with them; however, I was highlighting the nature of the authors’ particulars compared to the certainty of his conclusions.
Also, just running some numbers off the top of my head, the authors’ remarks concerning the 7 – 9 ppm decline of CO2 effect per the global temperature drop amounts to quite the climate sensitivity to CO2.
“Estimates European arrival in 1492 lead to 56 million deaths by 1600.”
Its funny most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated that the pre-Columbian population to be 10 million; now some estimates are 100 million or more.
It seems to me to now be politically correct to exaggerate the number and how peaceful they were,
before europeans came and destroyed everything.
Agreed!
All of those peaceful tribes had war chiefs, because they were so peaceful…
Apparently these researchers fantasize epidemic casualties, without investigating said epidemics.
A) Fantasize huge populations.
B) Fantasize massive epidemics.
C) Conclude disease casualties by models or fantasy spreadsheets.
D) Blame CO₂
E) QED for gullible CAGW alarmists.
1) Ignores the massive forest cutting of invading colonists.
2) Ignores that regrowth forests simply replaced agriculture and city landscaping.
3) Ignores that introduced disease epidemics affected Native Americans differently depending on contact with Europeans; e.g. conquered Incas versus isolated attempts at fort construction along North America’s East Coast.
4) Totally, as jeff notes, ignores population estimates by the Spanish, French, English and Dutch who physically encountered Native Americans.
Just more finagled fudged estimates by models/spreadsheets, producing numbers pre-selected by the researchers. i.e. Confirmation Bias.
Scholars at the end of the 19th century weren’t aware how extensive the terracing was in the Andes. Mistakenly thought the Amazon basin was virtually uninhabitable. Thought Mesoamerica was always thick jungle. Were unaware of the large cities across North America.
Indeed… what is now Brazilian rain forest was also heavily settled pre 1492
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/amazon-jungle-ancient-population-satellite-computer-model/
That was a very interesting article. Thanks.
Nah…The LIA started more like 1350 AD. What these people think, everyone stupid? I sure hope this isn’t indicative of the average college graduate. Even worse, if this is the average intellect of the newly graduated climate scientist, then we gonna need re-education camps. Mainstream science should be jumping all over this pointing out how bizarre this premise is. Of course, if everything predicated upon the sensitivity of CO2 to this level, then the ocean’s indeed will soon be boiling.
Again read the paper and the quotes. It does not state that it caused the little ice age but rather
may have contributed to “the coldest part” of it.
First off, prove that CO2 actually dropped 10-11 ppmv from contributing reductions in New World agriculture and by the demise of the peak of New World civilizations during that time period 1492-1750.
Second, prove that CO2 is the central culprit in causing such climate sensitivity. I doubt you or anyone can, and this ‘paper’ is based upon the principle that CO2 is the magic molecule responsible for everything that happens or happened with the long term climate trends. This of course is the wanted central rationale to make CO2 the demon molecule and now labeled as pollution by ignorant power brokers and politicians hoping to utilize it as source of near unlimited taxation and power/control over the citizenry. If this isn’t reigned in soon, it is sort of the end of the world as we have known it the last 150 years. But not from global warming or climate change, but loss of fundemantal control of our national state(s) to an unelected authority via a gross misuse/abuse of the scientific method. In other words, an outright scam of hideous proportions that benefits the agent provocateurs of this caustic swindle. This will end badly for humanity if allowed to fester but the climate in the near to mid term will continue to be as beneficial and near perfect as it has ever been the last 2.6 million years.
“First off, prove that CO2 actually dropped 10-11 ppmv”
Yeah, really!
Or prove that reduction in CO2 reduces the Earth’s temperature by 0.15C as they claim in the quote below:
“Human impacts prior to the Industrial Revolution are not well constrained. We investigate whether the decline in global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 7–10 ppm in the late 1500s and early 1600s which globally lowered surface air temperatures by 0.15∘C,”
Don’t you love how precise they are. They have it nailed down, don’t they.
Space aliens may also have “contributed to the coldest part”.
Looks like Percy hasn’t read many climate papers. They all talk about may be, might have and so on.
Yet the activists take all of these papers as absolute proof that the worst case scenarios have been proven.
Okay, since I have not had the pleasure to sit down and read the full paper, if decrease of 10ppm CO2 ‘may’ have ‘contributed’ to it, what caused the rest?
The paper seems to be working with the base assumption that the LIA was real and occurred. Does it offer any suggestion as to what caused it? By claiming that a 10ppm reduction ‘may’ have contributed the extension of this logic is that global CO2 levels DIDN’T have anything to do with the rest of it. Either there was a massive decrease of CO2 at the start of LIA or the only conclusion to be made is that CO2 does not drive global temps… OR there was an even bigger decrease in CO2 prior to European/American social interaction that no one seems willing to explain.
Also, while we are on the topic, if it is accepted that LIA is part of the historical record AND that ‘Pre Industrial Temperatures’ are the baseline for the perfect planet, then how did we climb out of LIA to Pre Industrial? What drove this global change?
This paper seems… interesting…
Having been in academia I can assure you it is less that people are stupid and more that it is incredibly easy to get a paper published if it is politically popular and impossible to get it published if the political climate goes against it.
Earthling2 – February 2, 2019 at 8:34 pm
“YES”, …. and ”YES”, ….. and ”CORRECT”.
And I also think that Mainstream science should be jumping all over the “textbook publishers”, law suits included, for both the public school textbooks and college textbooks, because said textbooks are what the teachers/instructors are teaching from and what the students are mandated to be learning from.
The root problem is, “textbook publishers” literally hate old textbooks because they want to sell “new revised editions” each succeeding year or two, NOT reprints of old textbooks, but new and/or newly revised information. And to do that the publishers must include the everchanging Politically Correct social science and the Politically Correct junk science ….. while excluding the “fact based” social and natural sciences. And the lefty liberal Socialists Educators give their 100% approval of the revised contents
“This led to the abandonment and secondary succession of 56 million hectares of land.” There were not that many Indians and they were not big farmers. Even so that is only 138,379,012 acres. The contiguous land area of the US is 7,653,004 km^2 or 1.89 billion acres . So that represents .00732 or 7/10 ths of 1 % of the land.
The climate scientists are trying to say that 7/10ths of 1% of the land would absorb so much CO2 that it affected climate. If it was suddenly not farmed the soil would give off CO2 to the atmosphere . If grass started to grow on it, this land area is so inconsequential that it is laughable.
i haven.t bothered to address the rest of the study because I am in a fit of rage after I stopped laughing about this garbage study wasting taxpayer money.
I made 2 mistakes. It was 7 % not 7/10ths of 1%. and I misrepresented the geography. They weren’t talking about the US. Only Mexico, Bolivia, Central America and the Andes. The Spanish conquered these lands. Even so, the idea that changing 56 million hectares from farmland to grassland would have any effect on the climate is hilarious. The land are of the world is 149 million km^2. 56 million hectares = 560000 km^2 or 0.003758 of the world land area. So 3/10ths of 1 % of the world land area turned from crops to grass. So what? I am sure that happens every decade where new grassland is formed from deserts and the like. Even so if the land was abandoned for the 1st couple of years it would have given off CO2 NOT absorbed it.
Human land use has gone from 4% to 40% worldwide over the past 150 years. If the authors are correct it is midern land use, not fossil fuels, that is driving global warming.
If a small change in global population from 1500 to 1600 could cool the planet then surely a large change from 1850 to 2019 could swarm the planet.
If so, then we cannot solve global warming unless we reduce land use. Which would require reducing Hunan population.
Following on this trend, human land use increase usually means deforestation. Does it follow from this that deforestation is the cause? I am of the opinion that deforestation affects rainfall (see the article elsewhere about the Amazon creating it’s own rainfall as an extreme example), but I would not claim it is a major driver of climate change without lots of evidence. Interesting though to note the catastrophic implosion of the bronze and ice age civilisations, where deforestation was likely extreme due to the fuel requirements of smelting ore……
Perhaps you discovered the real point of the study ferd, but why pick on just one rural province in China (HuNan)? Only about 67m people there.
🙂
Thank you for a simple arithmetical sanity check. Why couldn’t the authors of this travesty of a scientific paper have done the same? Where were the peer reviewers?
While the exposure to the Afro-Eurasian disease environment may have caused a mass die-off among Native Americans after 1492, the LIA had started in the 1300’s, so something happening several hundred years later could have no effect.
If one reads Charles Mann’s “1491”, estimates of the plagues effect killed off large numbers of farmers in the Mississippi Valley, as well as Mexico and Amazonia.
Remember, in Climate “Science” effect can precede cause.
Yes, that’s well established climastrology.
On that point, isn’t it far more likely that the dip in CO2 was the result of LIA cooling, rather than the cause of cooling?
This idea is hardly new. William Ruddiman detailed this in his book Plows Plagues an Petroleum.
Once again the reach false conclusions because they start with erroneous assumptions!!! I may have to read their linked reports but I greatly question the Great Dying is related to the Europeans arrival. I don’t think they have sufficient temporal resolution to even say whether the population decline (if there was one? I’d like to examine their proxies) began before or after the arrival of the Europeans. I am certain they are wrong to declare a decline in CO₂ caused a decline in temperature, it’s more likely the other way around. And did they consider a decline in temperature could easily have caused increased mortality, even to the point of a decline in population? Researchers are now indicating the various plagues caused population declines in Europe so I believe the introduction of all those diseases at once likely had an affect on New World populations. But that was on top of, added to, something else (probably climate related) that was already going on.
Second error:
There is absolutely NO WAY to prove a negative like this. No matter how many things they considered to come up with “…the only thing it could have been…” it would likely take me only 30 seconds of thought to come up with something they never considered that could also balance the global carbon budget.
So if they admit that ECS is really 1.5 instead of 4.5 they will have to triple the death toll? My crystal ball showed me this headline:
Genocide Worse Than We Thought
Latest estimates of ECS prove that 170 million peace-loving, highly-civilized farmers were killed by barbarian European invaders.
From EurekAlert!
The authors apparently didn’t consider that a principle of physical chemistry is that CO2 is more soluble in cold water than in warm water. If the world cooled off, then some of the CO2 in the atmosphere would have gone into solution. They also apparently aren’t familiar with Occam’s Razor.
surely this fulfils Occam Razor, after all we know that Columbus invaded America and that the
overwhelming majority of the population died as a result. This one simple fact explains 50% of
the temperature decline during the later stages of the little ice age. They also consider the changes in
fluxes in oceans as well during that period (see Fig 6).
Read Alan Tomalty’s post above, in which he calculates the proportion of land which became grassland, and get back to us.
Heck, it would be nice if Percy would read his own post above and explain why he’s directly contradicting himself.
Looks like Percy is as big a hypocrite as he accuses others of being.
Just a few minutes ago he was chastising someone for not noticing that the paper was full of may be’s and might haves.
And now he’s going full alarmist on us and proclaiming that the papers premise is fully proven.
This paper explains nothing. It’s a huge accumulations of assumptions and unproven assertions.
Their claims regarding Indian population. Unproven and widely disputed.
Their claims that the Indian population was heavily into agriculture. Not supported by the facts.
Their claims that land abandoned by the Indians would become forested. Depends on where that land is.
They also ignore changes in forestation in the rest of the world, as well as even bigger changes in forestation that occurred both before and after, yet had no impact on climate.
Like the rest of the trolls, Percy will use any argument that advances his peculiar religion.
“…Columbus invaded America… ”
May I suggest you are wearing your White Guilt a little too tightly today, Percy. Columbus didn’t even reach continental America until his fourth voyage and if turning up, having a look around and then sailing home again is an invasion then those D-Day planers were certainly doing things wrong.
I also suggest that you do not fully understand what Occam’s Razor actually is.
Let me put it this way, here are two possible solutions to why the ‘coldest parts of the LIA occurred’ :
A – The sun decreased in output
B – Columbus invaded America (without being smart enough to claim naming rights, tisk tisk) allowing hordes of other Europeans to cross the Atlantic, cause the deaths of a significant percentage of the existing population which in extension lead to farmland (which apparently doesn’t absorb CO2) being replaced by regrowth (which apparently absorbs CO2 in a much greater manner) which reduced CO2 levels by 10ppm globally which helped to make the coldest part of the LIA (not all the LIA mind, just the coldest part) colder.
Now, using Occam, A or B is simpler?
Also, applying Occam, correctly or not, does not prove your theory. It is simply a tool to assist people in cutting through the bumf and suggesting where their time and effort could best be applied for further research.
surely this fulfils Occam Razor
“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means” – Inigo Montoya
Occam’s Razor is the principle stating that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
This paper is riddled with assumptions. It’s about as far away from an Occam’s Razor candidate as one can get.
This paper is a Leftist dream-come-true by linking Climate change to agricultural change and then linking them both to a severe racist slaughter of indigenous peoples by evil White Colonists. If it was not so funny to read, one could become quite annoyed by it, but it is just a comic paper, so why bother.
Wait till the Marxists get hold of this in Australia. They push the line of white invasion and slaughter and if they can link that to climate change we can close our few remaining coal power stations and follow Spain down the road to disaster.
The tragic part of Australian ‘Invasion Day’ Marxists is that if they ever managed to prove Australia was ‘invaded’ it would cancel out the Native Title laws basically overnight.
Native Title in Australia works on the agreement that Australia was COLONISED. If Australia was invaded then all the land would belong to the invader under the right of conquest laws. Right of Conquest was recognised by the UN back in the day in an attempt to formally define exactly where countries began and ended. Your ethics may vary on if it is a good or bad thing, but it is part of the UN.
It’s being reported as unquestionable truth by all the usual left wing suspects, but this is no surprise.
The Great Dying
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event
Well, we’ve had normal science, post-normal science … why not surreal “science”? This must be worth a few marks just for the bizarre artistic inventiveness behind it. 😐
Late football score: –
Real Madrid – 3: Surreal Madrid – Fish.
Auto, with apologies!
Steve C, I’d say it’s not so much surreal “science” as it is non-science aka nonsense.
We are all meant to feel ‘guilty’ !
That’s the real purpose, raison d’etre, of this piece of greenist fluff.
But unfortunately the authors made the basic mistake of confusing causes and effects.
The LIA started around 1350 CE. That’s well before the Spanish arrived in the ‘Indies’ in 1492. Also there was a huge population drop due to plague and other diseases after 1340 in Europe. This lead to the abandonment of fields and to re-afforstation in Europe.
BTW, the big dying started in Mexico in 1530’s after a new viral disease was introduced, probably small pox. But Mexico is not big on forests apart from the tropical areas which were not highly populated.
And BTW, the Mayans civilisation collapsed around 950 CE because of drought. Their city based civilisation disappeared and the land reverted to jungle..
But I don’t see these authors discussing if this caused global cooling as well..
All in all : dopey stuff !
Excellent!
950 AD, wasn’t that right in the middle of the Medieval warm period?
The Little Ice age started before Columbus. The climate had changed so much in the 15th century that the Vikings had to abandon their Greenland settlements. This was before Columbus arrived elsewhere in the Americas.
Where are the bodies?
They are like the excess deaths that models show occurring due to partial government shutdowns. Percy can explain it to you.
Many of them were buried, research has been taking place on the skeletons to learn the cause of death.
E.g. Nature Ecology & Evolution, volume 2, pages 520–528 (2018)
They were able to show the presence of pathogens after the arrival of the europeans but not before.
The huge die-off of the native populations is well documented, in one battle between the conquistadors and the Aztecs the Aztec army was too sick to fight. Some diseases in N America travelled along the trade routes in the continent before the europeans so that often early explorers came across deserted settlements when they moved inland. The native populations became aware that the diseases came with the europeans which is one reason why they tried to destroy the early coastal settlements.
where are the bodies?
OMG no body.. must be easter.
the logic of no body found is kinda religious
Steve, you really shouldn’t post while drunk.
You make even less sense than usual.
This is the face of CAGW … desperation. They know they’re losing.
Just look at how irrational Mosher’s posts have become.
So now we have “science” which “proves” that the “Anthropocene Epoch” actually began in 1492! Who’ed of thunk it? I mean I haven’t had anyone explain to me what caused the weather to be so variable in the early and mid 1930’s despite having many more measurements of the vital statistics of the weather during that time compared to 14 to 1600’s and yet these geniuses have figured out we humans were a significant factor in causing the LIA? I guess we should now see headlines which declare “Scientists Say the Only Way to Save the Earth From Climate Change and Prevent CAGW Will Be An Extensive Genocide Campaign. ” Oh wait! Haven’t I heard that before?
There is nothing TheMagicMolecule™️ cannot do.
Mr Carbon-Dioxide sez:
Raze civilizations… I’m there.
Devour the Medieval Warm Period.. yep! Been there, done that.
Maunder Minimum… sun control, no problemo.
A Little Ice Age… yep, cold – my specia-li-ty.
Modern Warm Period – whoa look out -you’re all gonna fry.
Why you ask?
Because some Rentseeking Huckster needs a grant.
56 million deaths. I am calling this one. The entire human population of that era would have been around 100 million. Agriculture still draws in CO2, as does grass, so the effect on CO2 would be microscopic if even measurable. The effects on global climate due to CO2 bandwidth absorption from the increased forests would be infinitesimal.
The green lunatics would love to end agriculture, dams, grazing animals for food, use of fossil fuel (for medicines, metals, energy, insulation, wires etc) to go back to the stone age-pre Aztec and Inca technology. What the brainless greenie types are too daft to recognise is that the planet can only support around 7 million humans under these conditions, not 7 billion. Just one in a thousand (pretty tough ones at that- not little green weenie refuse-to-work crybabys that go into rages at the slightest provocation) could survive. The weenie greenies who have no survival skills at all would not have a hope in hell of survival. Those on the brink of starvation eking out an existence would not tolerate these self-centred little parasites-they would eat them.
Continuing belief in this sort of rubbish “science” could lead to the mass destruction if not actual extinction of the human species.
World population in 1500 is estimated at 420-500m. But yeah, they are positing a greater than 10% decline in global population due to pandemic in the Americas. The percentage doesn’t make it implausible, but to claim nearly 6 times as many deaths as earlier estimates of total population is pretty bizarre.
Also you certainly can’t consider Incan civilization to have been stone age. The conquistadors were quite interested in their metallurgical skills.
They could smelt bronze, so technically one could argue they were bronze age. They never got out the very early stages of a bronze age though, even though they had the technology for quite a while. No swords, for example. Perhaps copper was rare there.
Bart
Some of the biggest copper mines in the world are located in the Andes.
Using the tools available at the time, could the Inca have accessed those mines?
Mark W
You asked, “Using the tools available at the time, could the Inca have accessed those mines?” The simple answer is that they were able to extract gold, silver, and platinum from stream gravels, so if native copper was present (which it almost certainly was) then they could have treated it similarly. Whether or not they had the metallurgical skills to reduce copper carbonate or sulfide, I don’t know. But, they only needed small quantities, not a world-class mine.
There are mine tunnels in the Swiss Alps that were driven for miles 2,000 years ago. They were, apparently, driven entirely by building fires at the tunnel face, then throwing water on the rocks. The shattered rocks were then broken apart using deer antler picks. Mining didn’t require very high technology.
I was lying in bed last night and heard this paper reported by the BBC.
I groaned, said you gotta be f***n kidding, and went to sleep.
There’s a moral in that.
If you want a decent night’s sleep don’t listen to the B B(s)C..
I make an exception for the music “sailing by”.
The shipping forecast is enough to make anyone “knit up the raveled sleave of care:”
Ear it is…
I grieve for the Beeb. If only it would ditch the Social Justice nonsense…
Most of the largest populations in NA had already been greatly reduced hundreds of years before European colonization.
And what about the fact that Genghis Khan’s invasions killed 5% of the world population around the same times?
The greatest genration must be turning in their graves. We (or Caucasian socialists actually) are destroying all they worked for and died for. History will judge this period very harshly.