But in your link to the article, you explicitly say "Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford, argues that the European advent in the New World, which killed 90% of the 80 million native Americans, caused the Little Ice Age."
Your own title for this entry is much less misleading: did Columbus Cause Climate Change? Entirely possible. Did Columbus Cause the Little Ice Age? Almost certainly not.
In addition, it seems quite clear from reading up on the Little Ice Age that there's a serious consensus that it began centuries before Columbus sailed to America.
But Juan, lots of climatologists and geochemists explicitly support the idea that volcanic reactions could have contributed to or caused the Little Ice Age. Nevle's position as a geochemist doesn't automatically mean her dismissal of previous findings or hypotheses is any more valid than their endorsement of them. Indeed, it's not as though Nevle's ideas are terribly new, either: population decline and reduced wood burning have been argued for to some degree for quite a while. I just don't think it's necessarily wise to hop on the latest piece of scholarship when it conveniently dismisses the work of past scientists.
Actually the Pilgrims reported "deserted" settlements because they were anticipating densely-populated, politically-sophisticated states like the Spanish had found in Mexico and Peru, not because there had been significant depopulation.
The "90% population loss" description is indeed very hotly disputed, as is the cause of the decline. Some have argued rather convincingly that these estimates place too much emphasis on disease, reducing the importance of European violence over the course of many decades, in dwindling populations. Others argue that the figure is based on exaggerated and unreliable claims by contemporary European colonists.
The point is not to minimize the catastrophic impact of European expansion into the New World: quite the contrary, it reinforces the degree to which Europeans deliberately, intentionally, and violently expanded in the face of still-significant populations of Native Americans as they moved inland.
I recommend reading Suzanne Alchon's book "A Pest in the Land" for a good critique of modern scholarship on the issue.
Frankly I think the explanation is a little farfetched, and seems to be relying on the very hotly-contested "90% population decline" figure. Many historians and anthropologists put the figure significantly lower. In addition, the demographic collapse was not instantaneous or simultaneous throughout the Americas. It wasn't just European landing on the coasts of the Caribbean that led to the spread of disease: it was active European penetration into the wilderness of the continent that continuously pushed disease further inland, a process taking decades and centuries.
The explanation I had always heard for the Little Ice Age was that of a large volcanic eruption taking place in the Pacific, which reduced the light passing through the atmosphere and lowering temperatures. Seems quite a bit more probable to me.
But in your link to the article, you explicitly say "Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford, argues that the European advent in the New World, which killed 90% of the 80 million native Americans, caused the Little Ice Age."
Your own title for this entry is much less misleading: did Columbus Cause Climate Change? Entirely possible. Did Columbus Cause the Little Ice Age? Almost certainly not.
In addition, it seems quite clear from reading up on the Little Ice Age that there's a serious consensus that it began centuries before Columbus sailed to America.
But Juan, lots of climatologists and geochemists explicitly support the idea that volcanic reactions could have contributed to or caused the Little Ice Age. Nevle's position as a geochemist doesn't automatically mean her dismissal of previous findings or hypotheses is any more valid than their endorsement of them. Indeed, it's not as though Nevle's ideas are terribly new, either: population decline and reduced wood burning have been argued for to some degree for quite a while. I just don't think it's necessarily wise to hop on the latest piece of scholarship when it conveniently dismisses the work of past scientists.
Actually the Pilgrims reported "deserted" settlements because they were anticipating densely-populated, politically-sophisticated states like the Spanish had found in Mexico and Peru, not because there had been significant depopulation.
The "90% population loss" description is indeed very hotly disputed, as is the cause of the decline. Some have argued rather convincingly that these estimates place too much emphasis on disease, reducing the importance of European violence over the course of many decades, in dwindling populations. Others argue that the figure is based on exaggerated and unreliable claims by contemporary European colonists.
The point is not to minimize the catastrophic impact of European expansion into the New World: quite the contrary, it reinforces the degree to which Europeans deliberately, intentionally, and violently expanded in the face of still-significant populations of Native Americans as they moved inland.
I recommend reading Suzanne Alchon's book "A Pest in the Land" for a good critique of modern scholarship on the issue.
Frankly I think the explanation is a little farfetched, and seems to be relying on the very hotly-contested "90% population decline" figure. Many historians and anthropologists put the figure significantly lower. In addition, the demographic collapse was not instantaneous or simultaneous throughout the Americas. It wasn't just European landing on the coasts of the Caribbean that led to the spread of disease: it was active European penetration into the wilderness of the continent that continuously pushed disease further inland, a process taking decades and centuries.
The explanation I had always heard for the Little Ice Age was that of a large volcanic eruption taking place in the Pacific, which reduced the light passing through the atmosphere and lowering temperatures. Seems quite a bit more probable to me.