This isn't just climate change though, that period was significantly colder than previous periods (google 'little ice age'). Not disputing man made climate change at all, but the earth naturally goes through warming and cooling phases and we shouldn't expect New York to be as cold as 1800 today even without climate change.
Of course this kind of natural change is what gives ammunition to climate deniers!
It’s important to remember that it’s really tough to separate this stuff out and properly attribute changes.
There could be natural causes for the little ice age starting/ending but there’s also evidence pointing that decreased human activity resulted in cooling and increased activity resulted in heating. Aside from CO2 emissions, there’s deforestation, controlled burns, and other terraforming projects on a massive scale around that time period that could easily have contributed in a major way.
Agreed. It might have been any of those things, or something else entirely.
For example, in 1883, Krakatoa erupted, one of the most powerful volcano events in recorded history.
The eruption of Krakatoa had a significant impact on global climate, with summer temperatures in 1883 falling by as much as 1.2°C (2.2°F) below normal in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. It changed the skies to various colors like blue, gold, green, and purple, "... more like inflamed flesh than the lucid reds of ordinary sunsets... the glow is intense; that is what strikes everyone; it has prolonged the daylight, and optically changed the season; it bathes the whole sky, it is mistaken for the reflection of a great fire."
And that was just a single volcanic eruption, in the southeastern hemisphere, massively affecting temperatures on the opposite side of the planet. There have been other natural events, like a massive simultaneous triple-eruption, possibly in 536, that plunged the planet into a short ice age.
Other interesting natural phenomena are things like solar storms that can cause a global increase in both wildfires and electrical storms (or the cooling effect during less active cycles) as well as the significant dust clouds that occur when a large meteor strikes the earth.
An interesting one that didn't seem to cause any climate changes was the Tunguska event. In 1908 in Siberia, it was thought to have been a meteor, except for the total lack of an impact crater, and is now believed by leading scientists to have been a meteor air burst. (Of course scientific consensus always is, until it isn't.) This didn't seem to cause a significant dust cloud or changes in weather patterns, but there are many other documented cases of meteors and volcanoes massively changing the weather. It'd be very interesting to map the climate curves (such as they may be known) against various known natural phenomena over the centuries.
This is a fascinating hypothesis, but the timelines don't really add up. Global temperatures started decreasing around 1100 AD, and by 1300 AD the decline was very much apparent [1]. The Little Ice Age temperature low does correspond with the period from roughly 1420-1820, but by 1492 average temperatures were already close to their lows and a full ~0.3C lower than the High Middle Ages. If it were caused by the colonization of the Americas, you'd expect the temperature decline to not start until first contact with the Native Americans.
I think it's more likely that the Little Ice Age was caused by a drop of solar output, and that all of the turmoil in Europe (Black Death, Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, Wars of Religion) that led to the eventual colonization of the Americas was a consequence of resource scarcity in Europe.
I think we often forget that most of the indigenous people who died from disease never came in contact with Europeans directly and disease burned through the population moving from tribe to tribe. I’d love to learn more about the pre-Columbian population of North America and what that time looked like.
vlovich123|1 year ago
There could be natural causes for the little ice age starting/ending but there’s also evidence pointing that decreased human activity resulted in cooling and increased activity resulted in heating. Aside from CO2 emissions, there’s deforestation, controlled burns, and other terraforming projects on a massive scale around that time period that could easily have contributed in a major way.
gunapologist99|1 year ago
For example, in 1883, Krakatoa erupted, one of the most powerful volcano events in recorded history.
The eruption of Krakatoa had a significant impact on global climate, with summer temperatures in 1883 falling by as much as 1.2°C (2.2°F) below normal in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. It changed the skies to various colors like blue, gold, green, and purple, "... more like inflamed flesh than the lucid reds of ordinary sunsets... the glow is intense; that is what strikes everyone; it has prolonged the daylight, and optically changed the season; it bathes the whole sky, it is mistaken for the reflection of a great fire."
And that was just a single volcanic eruption, in the southeastern hemisphere, massively affecting temperatures on the opposite side of the planet. There have been other natural events, like a massive simultaneous triple-eruption, possibly in 536, that plunged the planet into a short ice age.
Other interesting natural phenomena are things like solar storms that can cause a global increase in both wildfires and electrical storms (or the cooling effect during less active cycles) as well as the significant dust clouds that occur when a large meteor strikes the earth.
An interesting one that didn't seem to cause any climate changes was the Tunguska event. In 1908 in Siberia, it was thought to have been a meteor, except for the total lack of an impact crater, and is now believed by leading scientists to have been a meteor air burst. (Of course scientific consensus always is, until it isn't.) This didn't seem to cause a significant dust cloud or changes in weather patterns, but there are many other documented cases of meteors and volcanoes massively changing the weather. It'd be very interesting to map the climate curves (such as they may be known) against various known natural phenomena over the centuries.
timschmidt|1 year ago
nostrademons|1 year ago
I think it's more likely that the Little Ice Age was caused by a drop of solar output, and that all of the turmoil in Europe (Black Death, Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, Wars of Religion) that led to the eventual colonization of the Americas was a consequence of resource scarcity in Europe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#/media/File:200...
bequanna|1 year ago
I think we often forget that most of the indigenous people who died from disease never came in contact with Europeans directly and disease burned through the population moving from tribe to tribe. I’d love to learn more about the pre-Columbian population of North America and what that time looked like.