All hail the prehistoric farmers? Saved us from an ice age?

Doesn't vastly surprise me, it seems plausible. Not necessarily proven--one study can rarely "prove" anything--but something interesting. I've always known that one cause of increased CO2 is deforestation, so if ancient farmers induced significant deforestation, that would have somewhat increased atmospheric CO2.

One major difference, however, is the *rate*. That article is talking about 2 degrees over the past couple of millenia, not 2 degrees in a century or less (as many experts predict, if we don't curb our net CO2 emissions)

edit:

Jim Z, it seems obvious to me that, if modern humans can have a large effect by large-scale deforestation and burning fossil fuels, ancient humans could have a much smaller effect by smaller-scale deforestation and burning peat. Most of Europe used to be forested, to my knowledge, but a good portion of those forests were cut down for fields and farms, or simply for fuel, by, oh, late Roman times? And much the same probably holds true in other agriculturally intensive regions, like China.

"All hail the prehistoric farmers? Saved us from an ice age?" according to one scientists 8 year old theory, published in the Scientific American, hardly a peer reviewed journal, talk about clutching for straws, as usual.

Ha! Ha! The Guardian just one upped Al Gore!

Meh. Hype, I think. Wait for the peer review.

From the article:

'This is a very interesting idea,' he told The Observer. 'However, there are other good alternative explanations to explain the fluctuations that we see in temperature and greenhouse gas levels at this time. For example, other gases interact with methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and changes in levels of these could account for these increases in greenhouse gases.'

From March 2005? Are you kidding?

Catch up.

Trash again, deforestation does have an effect on the climate by reducing evaporation, but CO2 has very little effect on temperature as it is mainly saturated.

These people are as predicable as garbage trucks which come around every Tuesday morning in my neighborhood. At least the trucks remove garbage instead of spewing it.

Added: It is just part of the AGW propaganda campaign to attack science by trying to pretend that previous variation in climate was due to human activity. It fails to take into account the very low population of humans then relative to today amongst other things. As I said, this study was predictable. This example is simply stupider than most but it will certainly fool most of the gullible who often post here.

(Thanks Chem Flunky for proving me correct). I meant only the gullible alarmists if that wasn't obvious.

Tilling by hand or animals caused global warming ?

Daft . Did John Deere have petal tractors in those days?

Professor William Ruddiman of Virginia University has just given us another example of how funding seekers can make up any wild story as long as it seems to acknowledge the AGW scam and get money.

We paid for this nonsense.

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