A Global Warming Two-For-One Deal

[chris_gerrib]

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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.

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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.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating. The only problem I have with it is that huge farms went fallow bit. Where? The only intensive agriculture I know of in the New World were the champas around Tenōchtitlān, which were about equivalent to the rice paddies around Saigon. (Very roughly. The point being, if the rest of Southeast Asia were relatively uncultivated, what climate difference would these make?)

It's interesting to speculate what effect would result if 99.5 percent of humans dried up and blew away tomorrow. (Leaving out radiological effects if a nuclear power plant failed to shut down properly!) George Stewart's Earth Abides did so, but he wrote it in 1948, when the maybe-two billion population hadn't done any real damage to the planet yet. (You could still see the San Gabriel Mountains from downtown Los Angeles then - and stars at night. Imagine!)

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

The rest of America was cultivated. 100 million people can't live on hunting and gathering. If you read descriptions of say, Hernando de Soto, Indian villages lined the Mississippi River in 1540. By the mid-1600s when La Salle went upriver, they were gone.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

I will look into that at some point. It's idle curiosity, but I am curious… because I am convinced that Bronze-Age Europe had contact with the New World, however haphazardly. Most archeologists will spread their hands and say, Yes, it's possible, but where is your evidence?

The circumstantial evidence is huge - all the way down to Moctezuma saying to the Spaniards, “Oh, hey, you're back!” - but including the fact that the most socially and technologically advanced Indian tribes found in North America were - wait for it - living on the Eastern Seaboard.

The presence of settled agriculture in the Mississippi Valley is comme ci comme ca, but civilization obviously spread by boat, whether from the Great Lakes or the Mississippi Delta, and either way it's - again - damn suspicious.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

No, the first tribes in North America encountered by Europeans were on the Eastern seaboard. The second tribes encountered, around 1540, were in the Mississippi River region. Both sets of tribes were equally advanced.

After 1600, the tribes encountered by Europeans had been decimated by plagues, rendering them significantly less advanced.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

There were several large city based civilisations around the US. Although most of the stuff I've read has suggested changes in weather patterns screwed them. Although a slight change, may have made it worse which lead to a negative feedback look.

Control Systems engineering taught me that small alterations in any feedback system can lead to wild oscillation before it settles into a new state of equilibrium.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

http://archaeology.about.com/od/mississippiancivilization/qt/mississippian.htm

I can't be arsed Googling for some of the others because there's a LOT of LDS crap in there where they're hijacking the archaeology to make the Book of Mormon make sense. But if you start looking around the Mississippian one was one of the larger but there were quite a few apparently.