Winter is coming
'Mini ice age' coming in next fifteen years, new model of the Sun's cycle shows
"We are now able to predict solar cycles with far greater accuracy than ever before thanks to a new model which shows irregularities in the sun’s 11-year heartbeat. The model shows that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent between 2030 and 2040 causing a "mini ice ( Read more... )
"We are now able to predict solar cycles with far greater accuracy than ever before thanks to a new model which shows irregularities in the sun’s 11-year heartbeat. The model shows that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent between 2030 and 2040 causing a "mini ice ( Read more... )
Why do I think this? It's amazing how many stories on Maunder Minimums and other solar phenomena are pushed through the corporate press, while other research barely receives a whisper. An example, for your purview. Albert Bates gives a summary:
What Ruddiman grasped is that the climate response to the hand of man is far more sensitive than had previously been imagined. Every plague and pestilence in history allowed forests to re-emerge-by bring populations low, fallowing farms, and decreasing burning of peat, coal, and wood. The longer and deeper the plague, the more time the climate had to recover.
Looking at the past 2000 years and factoring in volcanism, Ruddiman could see the fingerprint of plague on changes to atmospheric, carbon-the cool Roman Era (200 BCE to 600 CE), the Medieval Maximum (900-1200), and the conquest of the Americas (1500-1900).
After the annihilation of the peoples of the Americas, so great was the burst of vegetation over open field and elevated ramparts that the carbon drawn from the air to feed this greening upset atmospheric chemistry in an almost mirror image of how the felling of the forests-to build those cities and clad them in bright-colored lime-washes and murals-had altered it before.
(Albert Bates, The Biochar Solution, New Society Publishers, 2010, p. 65.)
That last bit about the cities refers to a fascinating translation of an early armed conquistador expedition down the Amazon from its headwaters that Bates himself made. The band had planned to put to shore and hunt for food or, if necessary, raid remote and poorly-defended settlements; but the number of people living along the shore-heavily armed and quite healthy people-made this so impossible that the band nearly starved.
Early estimates of the population of the Americas put the number of non-western inhabitants at 10 million; if Bates is right about that translation, with its concentration of filled cities all along the river, and the farming methods he discusses in his book that have produced amazing results-methods which therefore would have supported that many people-the Americas could have had a billion people. Therefore, the collapse from introduced diseases would have been quite a bit more severe, leading to the later Little Ice Age.
I'm not saying that the OP's solar prediction techniques aren't welcome in the panoply of scientific methods available to researchers; only that I am constantly amazed at the glaring spotlight cast toward theories that posit non-anthropomorphic factors behind climate change, especially from publications like The Independent, while any theory that supports AGW gets so much less attention from the same.
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My question is, even if it wasn't close to 1 billion, what part of the population of the Americas was exterminated or died of diseases between 1500 and 1650, and was it significant enough to trigger a massive reforestation by the end of that interval, along with giving the relevant effects on climate enough time to kick in?
As for The Independent, it is a corporate media, yes. Like most mainstream media. I'm not sure which of their articles you've come across over the years, to remain with the impression that they've largely been ignoring the argument about man-made global warming. Over the top of my head, I've come across these:
The Independent: Scientists ‘95 per cent certain’ that climate change is man-made
The Independent: Three-quarters of extremely hot days influenced by man-made global warming, scientists say
The Independent: Climate change at the poles IS man-made
The Independent: Humans must be to blame for climate change, say scientists
Still, I thank you for pointing me to the theory about the conquest of the Americas. This reminds me that I'll have to read some more on the issue.
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That's my understanding as well.
If I'm reading this correctly, the argument you're citing draws a correlation between the extermination of the Indigenous population of the Americas during the conquest of the Americas (starting in the 1500s), and the possibility that the Little Ice Age was man-made.
Well, "man-made" is a bit strong, but yes. Man didn't "make" the climate. Man merely was, and humanity's activities had knock-on consequences. The more people there were, the more direct knock-on consequences there were. The same is happening today. The only difference is that we are starting to understand some of these knock-on consequences.
So, yes, the direct knock-on consequences of human existence would reverse once enough of those humans were knocked off.
There would have been a delay between each die-off event and the measurable climate change, just as there is when carbon is added.
My question is, even if it wasn't close to 1 billion, what part of the population of the Americas was exterminated or died of diseases between 1500 and 1650, and was it significant enough to trigger a massive reforestation by the end of that interval, along with giving the relevant effects on climate enough time to kick in?
Since the initial estimate of people was never established, most I've read on this topic take the estimates of how many people were left after some of the diseases swept through, and extrapolate the previous occupancy based on the productivity of food production; without a baseline, percentages are problematic.
In either 1492 or 1493 (both are excellent), Charles Mann cites working scientists and puts the pre-disease population at around 10 million; Bates includes his biochar productivity gains and conquistador records and ups that by 2 orders of magnitude. Even a population reduction of only 9 million (Mann) would have been noticeable climate-wise; 900 million would have been hard not to notice, to say the least. In that scenario, there would have been almost no Amazon forests.
One data point Bates includes might be considered. After the die-off, the soil treated with biochar by those that died-those that took the secret with them-continued to garner nutrients in Amazon basin soil. After the Civil War, plantation owners were encouraged to emigrate to Brazil where slavery was still legal. These Confederados were sometimes able to harvest abundantly without fertilizer for 40 years.
I am not that familiar with The Independent. I do know that one of the more prolific English publications gets outright obfuscatory when it comes to denying the human element of climate, though the name escapes me. Still, I was disappointed by The Independent's treatment of this particular story, let alone by its all but unreadable web presence. Hence, my reaction. I would be curious if they have covered the topic of biochar in any of their journalism.
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My question is, were "enough" humans (sounds terrible) knocked off within such a short period of time, especially at the beginning of the conquest of the Americas, when factors like disease and violent extermination may've still not had enough time to kick in in full force? We're talking 17th century here, after all. Did such a huge number of Indigenous people suddenly disappear from the face of Earth even at early stages of conquest, to trigger a sudden massive reforestation, and lead to the purported effect on global climate?
What I'm reading above are a lot of assumptions and extrapolations, and some numbers being tossed around without much back-up and with a lot of arbitrariness about them. Adding and extracting orders of magnitude sounds like quite a big deal to me, and certainly doesn't sound too scientific.
And let's not ignore the fact that those indigenous populations had a vast variety of agricultural practices, from extensive biochar treatment to natural sustenance, etc. The premise here seems to assume that all of them adhered to the type of nature-exhausting agriculture that the Europeans were familiar with at the time, which sounds like an over-simplification.
without a baseline, percentages are problematic
Exactly. Problem is, we could toss in whichever number between a million and a billion that we like, but that wouldn't make our argument any less shaky.
Frankly, I'm not too familiar with The Independent, either. I just came across an article providing a somewhat different standpoint on an issue of global importance, and decided to share it with the audience. That's all. I don't know much about the media that happened to host the article. Which is why I try not to rush to conclusions about their ethical integrity or political preferences, based on a few online adverts that I may've spotted around their webpage. And neither would I base my entire impression of a particular media on a single experience with a specific story that I may've had in the past.
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The "new theory" concerns the question whether those changes are anthropogenic or natural. It's got little to do with our society having to adapt to them.
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I quoted this line referring to the 'coming ice age' theory... It looked like you were assuming that was the new reality.
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This is getting a bit tiresome, you know.
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I was not debating that.
I also explained what this theory claims about the nature of climate change: cooling rather than warming.
This is the part I took issue with.
I've said nothing about assuming that this is the reality.
That's not what it says in the OP, but I don't want to quote it yet again.
I've ALSO explained about the cause of that change, as per the theory - solar activity fluctuations.
Has no scientific consensus. I'm not sure why you're treating science like a gossip column.
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