* The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate. Alexander Koch: Earth System Impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 [PDF: Copy PDF] » Genghis Khan Reforestation Effect: Julia Pongratz: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted.
European colonization of Americas killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate
Research finds killing of native people indirectly contributed to a colder period by causing deaths of around 56 million by 1600
Oliver Millman, 31 Jan 2019, The Guardian
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European colonization of the Americas resulted in the killing of so many native people that it transformed the environment and caused the Earth’s climate to cool down, new research has found.
Settlers killed off huge numbers of people in conflicts and also by spreading disease, which reduced the indigenous population by 90% in the century following Christopher Columbus’s initial journey to the Americas and Caribbean in 1492.
This “large-scale depopulation” resulted in vast tracts of agricultural land being left untended, researchers say, allowing the land to become overgrown with trees and other new vegetation.
The regrowth soaked up enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to actually cool the planet, with the average temperature dropping by 0.15C in the late 1500s and early 1600s, the study by scientists at University College London found.
“The great dying of the indigenous peoples of the Americas resulted in a human-driven global impact on the Earth system in the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution,” wrote the UCL team of Alexander Koch, Chris Brierley, Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis.
The drop in temperature during this period is known as the “Little Ice Age”, a time when the River Thames in London would regularly freeze over, snowstorms were common in Portugal and disrupted agriculture caused famines in several European countries.

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The UCL researchers found that the European colonization of the Americas indirectly contributed to this colder period by causing the deaths of about 56 million people by 1600. The study attributes the deaths to factors including introduced disease, such as smallpox and measles, as well as warfare and societal collapse.
Researchers then calculated how much land indigenous people required and then subsequently fell into disuse, finding that around 55m hectares, an area roughly equivalent to France, became vacant and was reclaimed by carbon dioxide-absorbing vegetation.
The study sketches out a past where humans were influencing the climate long before the industrial revolution, where the use of fossil fuels for the manufacturing of goods, generation of electricity and transportation has allowed tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere.
Widespread deforestation for agriculture and urban development has also spurred the release of greenhouse gases, causing the planet to warm by around 1C over the past century. Scientists have warned that the world has little over a decade to drastically reduce emissions or face increasingly severe storms, drought, heatwaves, coastal flooding and food insecurity.
The revegetation of the Americas after European arrival aided declines of global carbon content in the air, dropping by around seven to 10 parts of carbon dioxide for every million molecules of air in the atmosphere. This compares to the 3ppm of carbon dioxide that humanity is currently adding to the atmosphere every year through the burning of fossil fuels.
“There is a lot of talk around ‘negative emissions’ approaching and using tree-planting to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to mitigate climate change,” study co-author Chris Brierley told the BBC.
“And what we see from this study is the scale of what’s required, because the great dying resulted in an area the size of France being reforested and that gave us only a few parts per million.
“This is useful; it shows us what reforestation can do. But at the same, that kind of reduction is worth perhaps just two years of fossil fuel emissions at the present rate.”
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[…] One Child Law Depopulation or Global Cold War Warfare Depopulation?:
The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate. Alexander Koch: Earth System Impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 [SQ Copy]. Julia Pongratz: War, plague no match for deforestation in driving CO2 buildup. Carnegie Science: War, Plague No Match for Deforestation in Driving CO2 Buildup: Video. Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted. [SQ Copy]
Former Judge Jason Brent: A Global One Child Law Proposal: How to Determine Who Can and Who Cannot Reproduce:
The action I am initially proposing is value neutral and does not favor or harm any individual or group. The action I am proposing will be applied to every person or group without favoring anyone. The action is very simple—limit the right of any male to father only one live child and limit the right of every woman to one live birth. In simple terms a couple is limited to one and only one child—not one child for the male and one child for the female. Since survival of our species depends on the one child rule, under my proposal any attempt to evade the rule would result in death of the evader and of any second child. The rule to be fair must be absolute, without a single exception. If the female cannot or refuses to provide the name of the father she and the child shall be immediately executed. All of the ideas set forth in this paragraph may be considered horrible and inhumane. However, since they will be applied equally, no individual or group is harmed except to the extent that an individual cannot either father or give birth to a second child. The harm caused to the individual and the harm caused to all of humanity by enforcing the one child rule set forth above is miniscule compared to the harm which all of humanity would suffer if population were not reduced. – Jason Brent: A Global One Child Law Proposal: How to Determine Who Can and Who Cannot Reproduce;
» EoP Leg Sub: 18 Jan: EoP TRC Info: Pakistan Chief Justice Nisar’s populaton control task force. […]
[…] One Child Law Depopulation or Global Cold War Warfare Depopulation?:
The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate. Alexander Koch: Earth System Impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 [SQ Copy]. Julia Pongratz: War, plague no match for deforestation in driving CO2 buildup. Carnegie Science: War, Plague No Match for Deforestation in Driving CO2 Buildup: Video. Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted. [SQ Copy] […]
[…] One Child Law Depopulation or Global Cold War Warfare Depopulation?:
The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate. Alexander Koch: Earth System Impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 [SQ Copy]. Julia Pongratz: War, plague no match for deforestation in driving CO2 buildup. Carnegie Science: War, Plague No Match for Deforestation in Driving CO2 Buildup: Video. Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted. [SQ Copy] […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] was quick reforestation, such reforestation would enable global emissions decline [SQ-Guardian European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate; SQ-DM: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted], if the […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] Koch: Earth System Impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 [SQ Copy]. Julia Pongratz: War, plague no match for deforestation in driving CO2 buildup. Carnegie Science: […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] [The Guardian: European colonization of America’s killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate: SQ Copy; Daily Mail: Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted: SQ […]
[…] Koch: Earth System Impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 [SQ Copy]. Julia Pongratz: War, plague no match for deforestation in driving CO2 buildup. Carnegie Science: […]