Warmists New Claim: Little Ice Age Caused By American Settlers

Can you imagine what it would be like if scientists were discussing the deaths of millions, not in terms of moral outrage, but rather the effect on reducing Co2 emissions?

If you follow the news on global warming, you’ll have noticed an increasing trend towards studies that try and show a link between historical events and climactic changes, inevitably blaming them (somehow) on mankind in general.

Yet another one of these studies has just been released from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Laussane of Switzerland, which suggests that the little ice age can be blamed on the early American settlers:

a significant decrease in emissions began in the 16th century – the one which would herald the minor ice age. Jed Kaplan has an audacious hypothesis to explain the dip in the data curve: “Thanks to the reports of the early explorers, we know that the forests were less abundant on the American continent. Then the settlers gradually eliminated the indigenous population.” Threatened with extinction, these populations effectively deserted the forested areas, which – by taking up the carbon in the atmosphere – in turn set off the legendary frosts of the 19th century. “Of course, it’s only a hypothesis”, he concludes, “but given the data we have gathered, it’s entirely plausible”.

Physorg.com. New Model of Man’s Role in Climate Change.

So let me get this straight: Dr Jed Kaplan is arguing that the early American settlers turned up, started driving the natives off the land. Once the natives had been eliminated, the forests started to regrow, thus cooling the world and causing the Little Ice Age. Is that it?

This is not a new argument. As I’ve already pointed out on this website, the historian Edward Gibbon was making essentially the same argument hundreds of years ago.

What’s disturbing about this trend, though, is that it appears to be neo-Malthusianism by the back door. These studies are reported by the warmists in such a way that massive depopulation by death is a good thing, and civilization a bad thing, at least in terms of Co2 emissions:

The results of this research tell a very different story from that which has been circulating up until now. They show, for example, a first major boom in carbon emissions already 2000 years before our era, corresponding to the expansion of civilizations in China and around the Mediterranean.

Certain historical events, almost invisible in the preceding models, show up strongly in the data produced by the scientists. A good example is the re-growth of the forests as a consequence of the fall of the Roman Empire. The Black Death, a plague which resulted in the death of more than a third of the European population, also led to a fall in carbon emissions.

Physorg.com. New Model of Man’s Role in Climate Change.

See what I mean? The birth of civilization around the Mediterranean and in China is seen as leading to a “major boom in carbon emissions” whereas the fall of the Roman Empire is seen as a “good example” of how forests lead to carbon uptake. The black death, which wiped out around a third of the population of Europe is seen as having “led to a fall in carbon emissions”.

I’m not trying to imply that Dr Kaplan wants a massive die-off of humans to help combat global warming, far from it. What I am bemoaning, though, is the way that the deaths of millions and millions of human beings are discussed coldly and clinically solely in terms of their effect on carbon emissions. There is no mention of plague, collapse or genocide being a ‘tragedy’ or an ‘outrage’.

Can you imagine if, instead of ancient or medieval history, these studies were discussing the Nazi genocide in terms of Co2 emissions? Would it be acceptable? Of course not. Because you can’t reduce people to carbon emissions and discuss, with clinical detachment, the death of millions as leading to “a fall in carbon emissions”.

Can you?