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Genghis Khan, History's Greenest Conqueror

Posted by samzenpus on from the taking-the-good-with-the-bad dept.

New research suggests that in addition to being one of history's cruelest conquerors, Genghis Khan may have been the greenest. It is estimated that the Mongol leader's invasions unintentionally scrubbed almost 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere. From the article: "Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests. In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan's unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere." I guess everyone has their good points.

45 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. What? Outrageous! by somersault · · Score: 3, Funny

    Someone should do something about these trees stealing all our carbon dioxides.

    --
    which is totally what she said
  2. Genghis was a greenie?! by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Funny

    Glen Beck glares up at the sky. "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!"

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  3. Kahn? by D+Ninja · · Score: 4, Funny

    Genghis Kahn? Huh...I tried to look him up, but couldn't find anything out about him. Lots of information about another guy called Genghis Khan, though. But...that's probably just a coincidence.

    1. Re:Kahn? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 3, Funny

      Genghis Kahn? Huh...I tried to look him up, but couldn't find anything out about him.

      He worked at Borland. He was Phillipe's brother.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  4. yep... by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm sure Al Gore will start up a pay-as-you-go Mongol Horde you can join if you really care about the environment any day now. Kill your neighbors, save a tree!

  5. Some would like to do it again by C_amiga_fan · · Score: 2

    The nutjobs of course.

    --
    FREE magazine : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/
  6. Environmentalism = genocide? by mschaffer · · Score: 4, Funny

    So, how long until environmentalists call for mass execution to reduce humanity's carbon footprint?

    1. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by Even+on+Slashdot+FOE · · Score: 4, Informative

      They already do. Just not on the shows non-environmentalists watch, for the most part.

    2. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Perhaps these stones were placed by environmentalists?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

    3. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 2

      There is a book titled "Green Power, Black Death."

      --
      Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
    4. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by camperdave · · Score: 2

      Life after people?

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    5. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by BlackSabbath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We don't need anyone to call for a mass execution. People forget that most systems self-regulate. Like the bacteria in the petri dish we will - at some point - get to the edge of the dish and find there's no more resources left. At which point there will be a massive die off. There may well be some of us left over to start again. Or not. Who knows?

      And to those of you that think we can terraform Mars or something and just ship out there - I call BS. We can't do the basics on THIS planet economically. What makes it likely that we'll be able to do so on another planet where everything is X (where X>1) times harder?

    6. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by Bemopolis · · Score: 2

      My approach is to suggest to anti-environmentalists a program to reduce population growth. It goes something like this...


      Go fuck yourself.

      --
      "I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
    7. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by lythander · · Score: 2

      They already do call for depopulation. While most of the world has decried the huge unjust deprivation of China's population to procreate ad infinitum, radical environmentalists have long hailed the policy as green, and in need of spreading.

      The planet is a tool, and a resource. As it is also our primary residence, it should be kept pristine for our habitation. But it has no purpose beyond our sustinance, and without human life is meaningless (at least insofar as "meaning" is something humans provide.) People, please get a life.

    8. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by fbartho · · Score: 2

      You're right that if we can't do it here economically, it seems less plausible that we'll succeed if we go elsewhere, but what it does do is let us move out of our first petri dish into the rest of the fridge. We'll go from dish to dish, until we find a penicillin, or we find we can't leave the fridge...

      --
      Gravity Sucks
    9. Re:Environmentalism = genocide? by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      Consider that the moment you remove "must make short term profit" from equation, many major projects become very viable.

      Terraforming Mars would be extremely difficult and costly, but the potential profit to humans as a race from lessons learned doing it, are simply astronomical. This is somewhat similar to industrial revolution - the cost of inventing and implementing many early inventions, as well as building necessary infrastructure was astronomical. The profit gained by both our race and individuals has far eclipsed the losses since then however. Same thing could be said about things like "terraforming other planets".

      Considering how, in current real world economy Chinese are playing the long term profit at cost of short term one, and now tens of years after starting the fight they are emerging clear victors, I'd say long term approach is very viable as far as history is concerned. I do concede that it will not work in current capitalist system that governs the West at the moment without a major reform on our leaders' way of thinking back to what it was during industrial revolution era.

  7. Smooth Move by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Way to go Mother Nature Network (MNN), you have tied Genghis Khan to environmentalism. Expect to see this quoted out of context on Fox.

    1. Re:Smooth Move by Solandri · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Way to go Mother Nature Network (MNN), you have tied Genghis Khan to environmentalism.

      On the contrary, I think it's a connection which is both telling and needs to be made more public. The modern environmental movement and most people who are concerned about the environment have the same goal - preservation and conservation of the natural world. But they have very different opinions on the means to achieve those goals. Most people would prefer that preservation and conservation be achieved with as little inconvenience to our modern way of life as possible. Most hardcore environmentalists OTOH view controlling human population and consumption as the most effective means of achieving that goal. (Which is precisely what Ghengis Khan did through different means.)

      The divergence is most telling with nuclear power. The only reason CO2 emissions are a tough problem is because of energy. CO2 is a byproduct of processes we use to extract energy. That puts the CO2 at a low energy state, and getting rid of it involves putting energy back into it. But putting energy back into CO2 defeats the purpose of burning the fuel which produced it in the first place. You'd be producing CO2 to extract energy which you then use to decompose CO2.

      Nuclear doesn't have that problem. With a relatively cheap and nearly unlimited power source like nuclear, CO2 ceases to become a problem. We can build plants which do nothing but scrub CO2 from the atmosphere, pumping energy in to convert it back into oxygen and residual carbon (soot, which is a heckuva lot easier to sequester than gaseous CO2). The same thing for dangerous toxins like dioxin. They're only a problem because they're at a low energy state so natural processes (which generally don't have access to high energy levels) have a very difficult time breaking them down. With cheap energy, you can afford to run incinerators which atomize those compounds back into their constituent elements. These problems either go away or are greatly diminished with cheap energy, yet cheap energy seems to be one of the things the environmental movement vehemently opposes.

      The same goes for population. Most of the developed world is close to zero population growth or even experiencing negative growth (families on average have only 2 or fewer kids). Nearly all of the world's exploding population growth is happening in undeveloped countries. Yet nearly every time you hear an environmentalist talk about overpopulation, they point to solutions involving changing what people in industrialized nations do, not changing developing nations where nearly all the population growth is happening.

      We should be concentrating R&D on cheap energy sources for the future, not on cleaner but considerably more expensive "green" energy sources. It's only because productivity per person has vastly increased over the pre-industrialized era that we have the luxury to be spending time and effort doing things like worrying about the environment. But that increased productivity came about directly because of cheap energy. Make energy more expensive and our productivity goes down, meaning we can't afford some of our modern conveniences and/or we can't spend as much time and effort worrying about the environment. And we should be concentrating on modernizing and industrializing (and making contraceptives available to) undeveloped nations to arrest their population growth, not trying to get people in developed nations to adopt "low footprint" lifestyles similar to those in undeveloped nations.

  8. Fertilizer by rjstanford · · Score: 2

    Don't forget that battlegrounds tend to grow really well a couple of years after the bloodletting and mass burials. All those nutrients, don't'cha know.

    --
    You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
  9. Genghis Khan == a polluter by JonySuede · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the CO2 in Genghis Khan time's was not a pollutant but the methane that the 40 millions rotting corpses generated was.

    --
    Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
  10. Proof by oldhack · · Score: 2

    It's a proof that the carbon craze has gone insane.

    --
    Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
  11. Any relation by otis+wildflower · · Score: 3, Funny

    to the late, great Madeline Kahn?

  12. This "humor" brought to you... by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...by the same people who brought you the "hilarious" No Pressure video advocating a more personal approach to elimination of the un-believing infidel swine who don't ascribe to your exact brand of environmentalism.

    Because it's just such a pleasant feeling to think of 40 million people hacked to death and then serving to fertilize our masters, the Trees.

    I, for one, welcome our new Tree Overlords!

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  13. Riiiiiight.... by Locke2005 · · Score: 2

    This sounds like an ad for (and makes about as much sense as) the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  14. Hitler was GREEN by iamhassi · · Score: 2

    FTFA: "When the Mongol hordes invaded Asia, the Middle East, and Europe they left behind a massive body count, depopulating many regions. With less people, large swathes of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. "

    Article on how Hitler was History's Second Greenest Conqueror for killing 11+ million people in 3... 2... 1...

    Oh? Not awards for Hitler today? But 11 to 17 million less people means less fields needed and more forests, right? Surely with entire towns wiped out they returned to nature and helped the environment, right?

    --
    my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    1. Re:Hitler was GREEN by demonbug · · Score: 3, Informative

      FTFA:
      "When the Mongol hordes invaded Asia, the Middle East, and Europe they left behind a massive body count, depopulating many regions. With less people, large swathes of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. "

      Article on how Hitler was History's Second Greenest Conqueror for killing 11+ million people in 3... 2... 1...

      Oh? Not awards for Hitler today? But 11 to 17 million less people means less fields needed and more forests, right? Surely with entire towns wiped out they returned to nature and helped the environment, right?

      No, because Hitler only picked out specific members of towns for execution, generally just slightly reducing the population of lots of places but not really impacting overall land use (also, he introduced us to the Autobahn, and just look at what that has resulted in). Genghis was much more of a progressive, killing everyone equally, resulting in large swathes of uninhabited land where resisting cities used to be. Stalin gets negative points because while he did kill lots of people, he also re-populated a whole bunch of the areas that Ghengis had gone to the trouble of de-populating in the first place.

    2. Re:Hitler was GREEN by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hitler doesn't get a cookie because he used highly polluting methods of disposing with all those pesky humans, disposing high amounts of harmful chemicals such as carbon monoxide and lead into the environment.

      In contrast, Genghis Khan responsibly used materials that are generally harmless, and either naturally compostable (e.g. wood), or easily recyclable (i.e. iron).

  15. So how about Hilter, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin? by darkmeridian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Each of those dictators caused tens of millions of deaths ... why aren't they less "green" than Genghis Kahn? Did the article take into account the method of death used? I guess the Nazis used a lot of gas running the trains to the concentration camps, but what about Pol Pot or Stalin, who just starved tens of millions of people to death?

    A better explanation is that this is a stupid article that makes no freaking sense.

    --
    A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
  16. Stupid article by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article is, of course, being stupid-- deliberately stupid, I expect, but still stupid.

    The anthropogenic greenhouse effect was not a problem in the 13th century, and the the total amount of carbon dioxide that had been emitted by the entire human race at that point was trivial. To the extend that his conquests removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it was addressing a problem that didn't exist.

    I will also point out that current carbon dioxide emission is about 30 billion tons per year. If the Mongols removed "700 million tons" of carbon from the atmosphere, then in the course of a century and a half of Mongol rule they accomplished the removal of an amount of carbon dioxide equal to about one week of modern emission.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Stupid article by d3ac0n · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think it raises an even more important point than you have touched on:

      The inherent genocidal madness of the modern "environmentalist" movement.

      Think about it; This article actually tries to put a POSITIVE SPIN on GENOCIDE. I see this all the time from "greenies", who basically view all of humanity as somehow "unnatural" and a pox upon Mother Earth. They view humans as utterly expendable and particularly those humans who happen to disagree with their eco-religion. See the "No Pressure" videos created by the eco-militant 10:10 group as a fairly recent example. It's a twisted and evil worldview and any sane reason-based person should reject it utterly.

      Or, at the very least, demand that they avoid hypocrisy and off themselves first as an example to the rest of us.

      --
      Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
    2. Re:Stupid article by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So, uh, you are taking one article that is apparently written somewhat tongue in cheek, plus one (1) video, which has been disowned by pretty much every environmental group on the planet, as evidence that "greenies" "view humans as utterly expendable."

      I think you could apply Niven's law to this. ("No cause is so noble that it won't attract its share of fuggheads"), not to mention Pournelle's corrolary ("...who will inevitably be the ones interviewed by the press.")

      --
      http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    3. Re:Stupid article by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The anthropogenic greenhouse effect was not a problem in the 13th century, and the the total amount of carbon dioxide that had been emitted by the entire human race at that point was trivial. To the extend that his conquests removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it was addressing a problem that didn't exist.

      I will also point out that current carbon dioxide emission is about 30 billion tons per year. If the Mongols removed "700 million tons" of carbon from the atmosphere, then in the course of a century and a half of Mongol rule they accomplished the removal of an amount of carbon dioxide equal to about one week of modern emission.

      You're forgetting consequential effects. If he culled 40 million people from the population during the 13th century, he didn't just remove those 40 million people. He also removed all their potential descendants. Given that the estimated population of the world at the time was about 400 million, a 40 million reduction works out to about 10%.

      Since percentages aren't distorted by exponential growth, that means he's responsible for a 10% reduction in the world's current population. There are nearly 700 million fewer people alive today because of him. If we go with your 30 billion tons of CO2 globally figure, he's responsible for a 3 billion tons of CO2 annual reduction here and now.

    4. Re:Stupid article by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      "I see this all the time from "greenies"

      You see it "all the time" because you are looking for a way to demonise your ideological enemy, expressing the opinion that the world is over populated has nothing to do with advocating genocide. The 10:10 ads was a monty python style joke, people such as yourself simply jumped on it as proof that jews^H^H^H, blacks^H^H^H, socialists^H^H^H, muslims^H^H^H^H greenies are a sub human blight on society.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    5. Re:Stupid article by WinstonWolfIT · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry that's a terribly unsubstantiated conclusion. The birth rate is tied directly to population density, economic and biological factors. Unkill those millions and you simply trigger an earlier birth rate decrease. The actual population would be somewhere between now and 10% more than now, closer to now than 10%.

    6. Re:Stupid article by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Especially if you consider the fact that conquerers like that mainly killed men and the elderly. The fertile women were usually raped, married off, and/or sold as slaves for above purposes. So the overall effect on the population would be limited, he was just replacing one set of sperm with another.

      --
      Monstar L
  17. Bob Genghis Khan by DudemanX · · Score: 4, Funny

    Was this before or after he totally ravaged Oshman's Sporting Goods?

  18. Green in the Orwellian doublespeak sense by ehj666 · · Score: 2

    What a load of crap. CO2 is plant food. More CO2 makes it greener, less would obviously make it less so. Funny how the supposed Greens get this so backwards. See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/ Of course seeing Greens take the side of a murderous tyrant would come as no surprise at all. :)

  19. Told ya so! by Kazymyr · · Score: 2

    Yet when I presented my "Bring Genghis Khan Back" idea at Kyoto, they threw me out of the building.

    Who's laughing now, huh?

    --
    I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
  20. Green Movement == Kill Yourself by RJBeery · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nothing illustrates the connection between being "anti-human" and being "green" more than this story. No matter what thoughtful precautions you can take to preserve Nature, the better alternative is that you never existed at all. In other words, kill yourself so that the world may remain a pleasant place for the animals. :)

    1. Re:Green Movement == Kill Yourself by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

      I don't think being green has to be the same thing as being anti-human. Just respecting that the planet's resources aren't infinite and there isn't some great cosmic garbage collector who will turn the trash you dump into gold. Reducing how much waste we produce is a "green" action, yet I don't think my use of a reusable Nalgene water bottle over thousands of disposable plastic bottles is in any way anti-human. I do agree that some people take it to the extreme and would slice humanity off the planet if they could, but not everyone who tries to be "green" is a "green fundamentalist."

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  21. Yeah, pretty much by HeckRuler · · Score: 2

    This is funny, but it focuses on a revelation I've had about this whole "green" thing going on. By and far, it's a marketing term. It's something to slap on a product to help it sell. Maybe it didn't start that way. Maybe it has true roots and it's merely been co-opted by the marketing weasels. That's their job after all.

    But the "greenest" thing to do is to not buy the god-damned thing. Or, by an extreme extrapolation, mass genocide. My wife tries to be a "green" consumer, yet we got a giant-ass TV to replace the free big-ass CRT that a friend gave us. And we've now got this water saving thing that can half-flush. But this thing cost $30. I'm certain that spending that $30 to save a few cents on water every month isn't economical. But I'm really not sure it's even environmentally sound.

    So anyway, my argument is that we need some sort of empirical measurement for how polluting a product is. If it costs money, it's polluting if you follow the money back far enough. With that we could step away from this bullshit "green" label, and focus on the efficiency of whatever it is we're getting. To get real meaningful work out of our gizmos and services, and the lowest cost, with the least pollution. But maybe I'm just daydreaming.

  22. as long as you are one of the 500,000,000 by mschaffer · · Score: 2

    Since the Georgia Guidestones call for keeping the population below 500,000,000 people, who gets to decide who lives or dies?

  23. In other news by Locke2005 · · Score: 2

    Recent research shows that the Bubonic Plague was the world's greenest disease!

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  24. Re:Suggestion? by JWSmythe · · Score: 2

        12 Monkeys had a superior method to the other two. Accidental release would rarely have the intended effect. Nearly simultaneous release at major airports in Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Kinshasa, Karachi, Bangkock, Beijing. With say a 3 day incubation period, those infected and contagious would continue to spread the virus to all other international and regional airports, and from there, it would be spread to virtually every community in the world.

    In the other movies, the Krippen Virus had an incubation period of minutes to hours (if I recall correctly). The Rage Virus had an incubation period of seconds. With such such short incubation periods, it's doubtful infection would continue over any significant distance. They make for good zombie apocalypse movies though. :)

    A virus that requires minimal exposure to cause infection, and a prolonged infection to symptom period would be ideal. It would also take forever to cause a profound impact. If the infected died 10 to 20 years after infection, it may be too long.

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  25. Glenn Beck is gonna need an extra blackboard by Torodung · · Score: 2

    This article seems an immodest proposal, to say the least.

    This is trivializing over a century of wanton bloodshed and terror to make a point. Poorly. It's a point that has been made by science in far more peaceful and compelling terms.

    I couldn't find it funny. I tried. This is, IMHO, simply tasteless. Perhaps this will endure, as Swift above, but I doubt it.

    Right now, all I can say is thanks for your small contribution to the death of rational, purposeful discourse. Good luck.