Global warming caused an ice age? I think you mean cooling, lol....
The Little Ice Age implies global COOLING, not global warming. Think, for heaven's sake.
And why are you even bringing up racism?? Do you know how much effect European diseases alone had on the population decline?? Lack of immunity from disease implies racism?? Really?? Are you really making such an asinine claim?? And germ theory of disease was well known in the 17th century? Lol, you are a riot. When the Puritans landed in Boston, they found nobody living at all in the immediate villages, due to the dying in the 1616-1620 time frame, due to European diseases, which affected all the tribes in southeastern New England. Again, you feel that unknowingly spreading disease is racism??
Good grief, you guys are slow at times. You really examined that study closely I see.
I will be less inclined, in the future, to take anything you say seriously, when you make such glaring mistakes, and don't know the difference between cooling and warming.
I was unable to access the MSN article, so don't know if the mistake originated there. But, you both should still know better. A little thought goes a long way. You've given me far less reason to take you seriously on such climate related subjects in the future.
Perhaps based on your rejection of global warming in our present era. Your bias is being broadcast in neon lights.
I found this BBC article to be a good summary of the study's findings. Changes in land use has long been cited as one reason for the onset of what is known as the Little Ice Age. If we fail to look at the actual study, but instead reflexively plug it into our own political warfare involving "climate change", then we are not being very objective at all. Generally speaking, knee jerk reactions are the most biased. This study simply focused on one component of the causes behind the onset and duration of the Little Ice Age, namely the drop in atmospheric CO2. The study included examination of and estimation of agricultural use of land throughout the Americas, not just North America. (But, even here, in North America, there was agriculture on a larger scale then we might assume or imagine. When Verrazano spent 2 weeks anchored in Narragansett Bay, in 1524(he was an Italian explorer sailing for France), he reported the land was cleared from their western shore of Narragansett Bay all the way to at least the present border of Connecticut. Large scale clear cutting by use of fire was practiced by natives in my own region, in other words)
(Unfortunately, this link posts as an audio available at the link, and not the text, so I've posted some of the text directly beneath the link.)
"The team reviewed all the population data it could find on how many people were living in the Americas prior to first contact with Europeans in 1492.
It then assessed how the numbers changed in following decades as the continents were ravaged by introduced disease (smallpox, measles, etc), warfare, slavery and societal collapse.
It's the UCL group's estimate that 60 million people were living across the Americas at the end of the 15th Century (about 10% of the world's total population), and that this was reduced to just five or six million within a hundred years.
The scientists calculated how much land previously cultivated by indigenous civilisations would have fallen into disuse, and what the impact would be if this ground was then repossessed by forest and savannah.
The area is in the order of 56 million hectares, close in size to a country like modern France.
This scale of regrowth is figured to have drawn down sufficient CO₂ that the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere eventually fell by 7-10ppm (that is 7-10 molecules of CO₂ in every one million molecules in the air).
"To put that in the modern context - we basically burn (fossil fuels) and produce about 3ppm per year. So, we're talking a large amount of carbon that's being sucked out of the atmosphere," explained co-author Prof Mark Maslin.
"There is a marked cooling around that time (1500s/1600s) which is called the Little Ice Age, and what's interesting is that we can see natural processes giving a little bit of cooling, but actually to get the full cooling - double the natural processes - you have to have this genocide-generated drop in CO₂."
The drop in CO₂ at the time of the Great Dying is evident in the ice core records from Antarctica.
Air bubbles trapped in these frozen samples show a fall in their concentration of carbon dioxide.
The atomic composition of the gas also suggests strongly that the decline is being driven by land processes somewhere on Earth.
In addition, the UCL team says the story fits with the records of charcoal and pollen deposits in the Americas.
These show the sort of perturbation expected from a decline in the use of fire to manage land, and a big grow-back of natural vegetation.
Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at Reading University, was not involved in the study. He commented: "Scientists understand that the so-called Little Ice Age was caused by several factors - a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a series of large volcanic eruptions, changes in land use and a temporary decline in solar activity.
"This new study demonstrates that the drop in CO₂ is itself partly due the settlement of the Americas and resulting collapse of the indigenous population, allowing regrowth of natural vegetation. It demonstrates that human activities affected the climate
well before the industrial revolution began."
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One cause among several, in other words, large volcanic eruptions and a decline in solar activity are also known to have played into the onset of the Little Ice Age. The study concentrated on land use changes leading to a drop in CO2. At least report the conclusions accurately, and not through knee jerk political lenses.
And cooling is not the same as warming! The Little Ice Age involved cooling, for heaven's sake. You guys are not doing yourselves any favors mistaking cooling for warming!
It's also recommended that the actual study be examined, and judged on its scientific merits. And this will happen, because it was published in a peer review format. If mistakes in the scientific methodology are evident, they will be highlighted in any rebuttals that may be published in response to the study. And, rather then indulge in our own well established political warfare over what we think the study is saying, we can actually simply read the study and be our own judge, to the best of our ability and our knowledge of the science involved. So, it's open access, and here is the actual study:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261
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
Americasafter 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.
