
Researchers say mankind is to blame for The Little Ice Age, too - gibsonf1
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=315533893763712
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pg
It would be interesting to read an article that actually analyzed this
research. This one is basically a digg/reddit comment macroexpanded into the
form of a newspaper editorial.

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lionheart
Why is stuff like is on Hacker News?

I come here to get away from the pointless arguments about stuff like global
warming.

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msie
Because people like gibsonf1 won't stop posting them here.

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qqq
Well don't blame him so much, 8 people upvoted it so far.

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cpr
Doesn't this ring false to any reasonable reader?

When the "white man" came to North America, at least by all accounts I've
read, it was nearly entirely virgin forest (the old "a squirrel could travel
from the Mississippi to the Atlantic without touching ground" chestnut). So
where was this mass deforestation?

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gojomo
More recent scholarship suggests the Americas, before the arrival of european
plagues, were far more densely populated, and the environment more shaped by
native agriculture, than you might expect. A good summary of the ideas is
Charles C. Mann's article "1491":

<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200203/mann>

One estimate is that in the first 130 years of contact, 95% of a prior
American population of over 100 million died.

Those 130 years happen to be about the first half of the 'little ice age', and
the natives often used large-scale burns to clear and prepare land. So while
IBD mocks the idea that the depopulation of the Americas caused the little ice
age, it's at least plausible.

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yummyfajitas
That article appears to be a shorter version of his book. The book is well
worth the $10.85 you'll spend on it.

[http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-
Colum...](http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-
Columbus/dp/1400032059/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230771239&sr=8-1)

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qqq
And mankind is to blame for traffic. I hate getting stuck in traffic!

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Allocator2008
I thought I read someplace that sun spots had to do with the 1600's mini-ice
age? Tying the fall of for example the Mayan civilization with the triggering
of an ice age due to decrease in agricultural activity and associated re-
forestation seems like a stretch.

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eipiman
The claim that "mankind" was responsible for the Little Age ignores the fact
that one particular man, George Bush, was responsible. Now you know.

