THE LITTLE ICE AGE

If the theories are correct this is a story of a tender and sensitive atmosphere. A butterfly flaps its wings on the Arctic tundra, a cariboo sneezes. A year later a new Ice Age begins.

I researched the causes of The Little Ice Age through several sources and they generally agree. The Little Ice Age began due to the Black Death plague in Europe. So many people died from 1350 A.D. through 1450 A.D. that there was heavy reforestation. Forests which had been cut to provide space for homes began to thrive once more. Fields once cleared to provide crops were covered with trees. So many new trees grew that CO2 was vacuumed out of the air in large amounts. Temperatures began to slide downward. At the same time there was a decrease in solar radiation due to the cycle of Sun spot activity. A few volcanoes became more active throwing dust into the air decreasing the amount of solar radiation reaching the ground. Cooling began on a global scale. For a complete explanation of one such theory click here for The Discovery Channel explanation.

However, just after the time all of this was happening Europeans rediscovered North and South America. At the time (1500 A.D.) there were sixty million Aztecs and Incas living either in Central America or just North or South of there. When the Europeans arrived they brought with them many new, and to the Aztecs exotic, diseases for which the native people had no defenses. 90% of the native people died from the early 1500s to around 1600.

Resultantly, around 190,000 square miles of farmland converted (not reverted) to verdant jungle. The jungle plants again vacuumed tremendous amounts of CO2 from the air. The combination of the above factors caused global cooling which reached such a point that it has become called ‘The Little Ice Age’.

No wonder the ‘Greens’ are concerned with the devastation of the rain forests of the Amazon. I don’t like that much either, even without the global warming ramifications. However, there are many other factors to consider. Did the Aztecs and the Incas cause Global Warming when they destroyed all of the verdant jungle for crops? .... No! .... Why not? .... There were no jungles when the Aztecs arrive in 1300-1400 A.D. All of Central America was simply savannah and grassland. The jungles came afterwards, after the Aztecs improved the soils, etc. Or, perhaps simply as a result of coincidental climate change when they arrived. Or, perhaps 54,000,000 bodies of disease ridden Aztecs added sufficient nutrients to the soil to allow the jungle to survive. Nasty thought.

At any rate by around 1850 A.D. the globe began to warm once more. As one author said a few bad winters will cause the old people to talk and complain. Two hundred bad winters in a row is a climate change. The Little Ice Age was a two hundred and fifty year worldwide climate change.

How does this affect our quest for an understanding of global Warming? Well, it does raise a few questions with me. For one the volcanoes threw up a lot of dust and no doubt lots of solar radiation was reflected back into outer space. However, what about all of the CO2 released in these eruptions? Why didn't it offset the cooling if it's such a 'Demon Gas'? That might be a good topic for research in another post. Also, if there were no jungles there before 1600 why wasn’t the Earth much hotter? We did have the Medieval Warm Period but it was preceded by another cold period without the jungles. Seems scientists might be putting too much weight on trees absorbing CO2. Or else... maybe they are putting too much weight on CO2 in the atmosphere. If so it means that Al Gore and crew are simply wrong. We’ll continue researching this and see where it leads us.

Mankind flourished throughout the Medieval Warm Period and really advanced coming through and out of the Little Ice Age. Perhaps the "greens’" idea of what Earth should be like is all wrong.