Anthropogenic global cooling

Being of European descent means carrying a world of guilt on your shoulders. Slavery, the decimation of the indigenous people of the New World. And in more modern times, the industrial sweatshops of the late 1800's and now global warming.

If you thought electing Obama would wipe the slate clean have I got some bad news for you. Get ready to add one more thing to the list. In this report from mongabay.com we learn that white people caused the little ice age.

Recovery of forests following the collapse of human populations in the Americas after the arrival of Europeans may have driven the period of global cooling from 1500-1750 known as the Little Ice Age, report researchers speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

By some estimates, diseases introduced by Europeans may have killed more than 90 percent of population on the New World within a century of first contact. The rapid depopulation led to large-scale abandonment, and subsequent reforestation, of agricultural lands in the Americas. Analyzing charcoal found in soils and lake sediments at sites across the Americas, Richard Nevle and Dennis Bird found evidence to suggest that this forest regeneration sequestered enough carbon to trigger global cooling.

We never learn do we, first we make the planet too cold and now we're making it too hot. In any case these scientists in San Francisco may have inadvertently stumbled across the answer to our current dilemma. If we drastically reduce the human population of Earth it will cause the planet to cool. The answer is obvious we must halt all efforts at peacemaking and encourage more wars and famine.

On a more serious note, do these guys ever look at that big round thing in the sky? It's called the Sun and all the heat in our solar system comes from it.

Let's take a look at this graph of Solar Irradiance from NOAA. I'm not a scientist but it looks like the sun was taking a nap during the little ice age and during the hot 90's it was very active.

OK, I've solved the climate crisis, where is my grant money?