Posted on 02/27/2006 10:53:31 AM PST by blam
Europe's chill linked to disease
By Kate Ravilious
Bubonic plague may have wiped out over a third of Europe's population
Europe's "Little Ice Age" may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study.
Pollen and leaf data support the idea that millions of trees sprang up on abandoned farmland, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This would have had the effect of cooling the climate, a team from Utrecht University, Netherlands, says.
The Little Ice Age was a period of some 300 years when Europe experienced a dip in average temperatures.
Dr Thomas van Hoof and his colleagues studied pollen grains and leaf remains collected from lake-bed sediments in the southeast Netherlands.
Monitoring the ups and downs in abundance of cereal pollen (like buckwheat) and tree pollen (like birch and oak) enabled them to estimate changes in land-use between AD 1000 and 1500.
Pore clues
The team found an increase in cereal pollen from 1200 onwards (reflecting agricultural expansion), followed by a sudden dive around 1347, linked to the agricultural crisis caused by the arrival of the Black Death, most probably a bacterial disease spread by rat fleas.
This bubonic plague is said to have wiped out over a third of Europe's population.
Counting stomata (pores) on ancient oak leaves provided van Hoof's team with a measure of the fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide for the same period.
This is because leaves absorb carbon dioxide through their stomata, and their density varies as carbon dioxide goes up and down.
"Between AD 1200 to 1300, we see a decrease in stomata and a sharp rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to deforestation we think," says Dr van Hoof, whose findings are published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.
But after AD 1350, the team found the pattern reversed, suggesting that atmospheric carbon dioxide fell, perhaps due to reforestation following the plague.
The researchers think that this drop in carbon dioxide levels could help to explain a cooling in the climate over the following centuries.
Ocean damper
From around 1500, Europe appears to have been gripped by a chill lasting some 300 years.
There are many theories as to what caused these bitter years, but popular ideas include a decrease in solar activity, an increase in volcanic activity or a change in ocean circulation.
The new data adds weight to the theory that the Black Death could have played a pivotal role.
Not everyone is convinced, however. Dr Tim Lenton, an environmental scientist from the University of East Anglia, UK, said: "It is a nice study and the carbon dioxide changes could certainly be a contributory factor, but I think they are too modest to explain all the climate change seen."
And Professor Richard Houghton, a climate expert from Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, US, believes that the oceans would have compensated for the change.
"The atmosphere is in equilibrium with the ocean and this tends to dampen or offset small changes in terrestrial carbon uptake," he explained.
Nonetheless, the new findings are likely to cause a stir.
"It appears that the human impact on the environment started much earlier than the industrial revolution," said Dr van Hoof.
I'll pick box #1, A decrease in solar activity.
I always thought there was more O2 at the time of the dinosaurs.
Silliest notion I've ever heard!
Science is going down the tubes.
More evdence that these global warming people are idiots.
They left out a crucial piece.
The little Ice Age started to end in the 1630s, and corresponded with...the widespread adoption of Virginia tobacco in Western Europe!
That's right, my friends, it was all those people lighting up tobacco (cultivated by the rape of North America, the slaughter of the Indi... sorry, Native Americans ... perpetrated by the slave trade...that started us on the upward path towards global warming.
Therefore, the only way we can truly end the menace of global warming is by banning all smoking everywhere in the world, reforesting Eastern North America, and having all white people emigrate to Europe.
And that is how tobacco and slavery caused global warming, and why it's all America's fault.
"Ashes, ashes, all fall down!"
At this point in history, would this drop in temperature not be documented?
And that is how tobacco and slavery caused global warming, and why it's all America's fault...and Bush is an American, therefor...
It was transferred by mice, 1,000's of mice and it did not stop until the huge london fires that killed most of the mice.
In a time when pile of PC junk science grows larger by the minute, this hunk of junk stands out from the pack.
This study will be used to rationalize "reducing" world population by 1/3 in order to combat global warming.
These global warming goofballs are making up their "science" as they go along.
Evolutionists, are you taking note? This is the same "bandwagon" mindset that passes itself off for scientific thought in modern universities.
Real science proposes a hypothesis, and is willing to discard it if the evidence and predictions run to the contrary. Evolutionists instead continually revise their hypothesis into an ever more malleable, all-encompassing glob to accommodate observations without questioning their fundamental premise that life brought itself into existence.
I'll bet they eventually became 'old-growth' forests, too. The worst kind.
We all learned as children from Hansel and Gretel that forests are evil. This is the scientific proof.
Some of the writings and diaries left by the survivors are heartbreaking to read. It was a terrible death - huge growths appeared under a persons arms, their skin turned dark purple, they became delerious and usually died within a few days.
The people of that time tried everything they could think of - but since they knew nothing about how viruses travel, it was all to no avail. Many thought it was the end of the world. It was, for millions.
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