Columbus Blamed For Mini Ice Age

DesScorp writes "Science News reports on a story which blames a centuries long cooling of Europe on the discovery of the new world. Scientists contend that the native depopulation and deforestation had a chilling effect on world-wide climate. 'Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University.' The story notes that the pandemics in the Americas were possibly an example of human climate manipulation predating the Industrial Revolution, though isotope measurements used during research have much uncertainty, so 'that evidence isn't conclusive.'"

Comments

Re:what reforestation?

[coolmoose25]

I live amongst them, along with millions of other people. Here in New England, the history is this: Prior to European settlement, 75% of the land was covered in trees. The Europeans showed up, cut down the forests and made farms of the land. At this point, roughly 25% of New England was forested, the other 75% was largely farms. Later, the farmers moved to the mid west and west, abandoning the farms in New England, which were a bitch to farm because of the rocky soil. The farms were abandoned and trees grew up in their place. That's why you can hike through forests in New England and find old foundations and very long lines of stone walls in the middle of nowhere. Back in the day, those forests were "somewhere." Even with our "sprawl" in New England, roughly 75% of the land is forested. I can attest to this as I live in a forested burb. Deer, turkeys, foxes, etc. routinely walk through my yard. Don't believe me? Then just pull up http://maps.google.com/ and search on New England. Then look for deforested land... if you do the visual math, you'll see that it is mostly still forested here.