![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Global Warming Two-For-One Deal
Aug. 1st, 2012 09:46 amBuy This!
Richard Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, "co-founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team two years ago in order to independently assess what he viewed as questionable evidence of global warming." To fund this research, he got a bunch of money from the Koch brothers, noted conservatives-around-town. Well, the report is in and Muller says he has become convinced that "the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct," and that humans are "almost entirely the cause" of that warming. This has not gone over well with the anti-global-warming crowd.
You Get This Free!
In a roundabout way via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaylake, I hear of an interesting theory that Colombus's arrival caused Little Ice Age. The article isn't as dramatic as the headline, but the theory goes something like this. First, at the start of the Little Ice Age, we see a drop in atmospheric CO2 levels, as measured in Antarctic ice cores. Not only that, but the isotopes of CO2 change, preferentially toward the heavier Carbon-13.
Second, we know that, due to deceases carried by Europeans, the population in the Americas crashed, from 100 million to maybe 10 million. Huge farms went fallow, and some American practices, such as controlled burns in forests, stopped happening. So the forests grew, sucking up Carbon-12 and leaving Carbon-13. CO2 levels fell, the greenhouse effect declined, and the Earth got colder. Now, it's possible, and even probable, that other factors "pushed" the climate as well, but falling CO2 levels would aggravate any such push.
Richard Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, "co-founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team two years ago in order to independently assess what he viewed as questionable evidence of global warming." To fund this research, he got a bunch of money from the Koch brothers, noted conservatives-around-town. Well, the report is in and Muller says he has become convinced that "the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct," and that humans are "almost entirely the cause" of that warming. This has not gone over well with the anti-global-warming crowd.
You Get This Free!
In a roundabout way via
jaylake, I hear of an interesting theory that Colombus's arrival caused Little Ice Age. The article isn't as dramatic as the headline, but the theory goes something like this. First, at the start of the Little Ice Age, we see a drop in atmospheric CO2 levels, as measured in Antarctic ice cores. Not only that, but the isotopes of CO2 change, preferentially toward the heavier Carbon-13.Second, we know that, due to deceases carried by Europeans, the population in the Americas crashed, from 100 million to maybe 10 million. Huge farms went fallow, and some American practices, such as controlled burns in forests, stopped happening. So the forests grew, sucking up Carbon-12 and leaving Carbon-13. CO2 levels fell, the greenhouse effect declined, and the Earth got colder. Now, it's possible, and even probable, that other factors "pushed" the climate as well, but falling CO2 levels would aggravate any such push.
