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.
Yes, Maunder Minimum was the key cause, and the european ego shows in the story. They just can't gut it, the COLONists they dumped into america 400 to 300 years ago are now the PREMIER country of the world while they have stagnated into a backwater. Now they are paying the price by being over run by muslims, where before it was rats carrying the plague...
Now they are paying the price by being over run by muslims, where before it was rats carrying the plague...
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So then, according to this theory, all we have to do to prevent global warming is to plant lots and lots of trees? That's an easy solution.
This is simply wrong. Everyone knows that George Bush was responsible for depleting our natural carbon dioxide resources, 800 years ago.
Earlier, in the Carboniferous.
Every leftist's dream: Global warming as a justification for genocide.
Uh ... you left out the ex-slaves being sent back to Africa - they are no more native than all us honkies. Maybe we should have all the whites swimming back to Europe with a black under each arm? Since I can't swim worth a damn, this means the shark population is going to get a boost - until they start dying of indigestion ... dang ... complications, complications ....
The Little Ice Age was featured on The History Channel last week and the theory THC presented was the exact opposite. The documentary said that the Little Ice Age caused the Black Plague because the temperature decrease in Europe forced people and disease-carrying rats indoors to escape the cold. According to THC, the Little Ice Age didn't end until the mid-19th century. It was still going on in the 1700s and accounted for the problems Washington had crossing the Delaware River. Normally there are not ice flows in the river, but there were then. Very interesting documentary, which, as I understood it, posited that there are always cyclical fluctuations in temperature :. all the global warming hype is just that.
"So then, according to this theory, all we have to do to prevent global warming is to plant lots and lots of trees?"
Don't forget cutting the human population by one third.
"Every leftist's dream: Global warming as a justification for genocide."
That was my immediate impression, too.
LOL!
Check post # 8
So the reforestation of the eastern US, and the planting of trees on the prairie is going to cool things off.
Mrs VS
It has been documented.
[pp 208-216] "On June 23, 1988, climatologist James Hansen testified before a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a day when the temperature in Washington D.C. reached a sweltering 38C... Hansen had impressive data from 2,000 weather stations... which documented not only a century-long warming trend but a sharp resumption of warming after the early 1970s... Hansen flatly proclaimed that the earth was warming on a permanent basis because of humanity's promiscuous use of fossil fuels [sic]... Recently, James Hansen and a group of his colleagues have argued that the rapid warming of recent decades has in fact been driven by non-CO2 gases such as chlorofluorocarbons. Fossil fuel [sic] burning CO2 and aerosols have both positive and negative climatic forcing effects, which tend to cancel each other out. Hansen and his team point out that the growth rate of non-CO2 gases has declined over the past decade and could be reduced even further. This, combined with a slowing of black carbon and CO2 emissions, could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming. Much more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis."
The Little Ice Age:
How Climate Made History 1300-1850
by Brian M. Fagan
Paperback
I enjoyed it too.
Most of the great unwashed are hooked on the thermostat and the electric plug.
Most don't know where electricity comes from and few care.
Most don't know where electricity comes from and few care.
I heat my home with wood, but the only way I could get electricity without a plug, would be with a kite in a thunderstorm.
;-)
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