Agreed that this article has some pretty misleading information. Nonetheless, if you look at the higher scenario in the recent IPCC report (the one we seem to be heading towards) there is plenty to be very worried about without invoking "end of the world" scenarios.
I would be skeptical that the change in land use CAUSED the little ice age -- or even contributed greatly. The biggest problem with this hypothesis is that the observed changes in CO2 in the atmosphere are really small during this period. We have an observed record of the CO2 in the atmosphere from air bubbles in ice cores and they show a decline of about 8 ppm out of 280 ppm between 1500 and 1600. Compare this to the -100 ppm changes to the previous ice age, and the +120 ppm change we have already seen. While this 8ppm decline may be the result of depopulating the Americas, from the standpoint of changing the climate this is negligible. If I had to put a ballpark number on this I would say a 3% change in CO2 -> -0.1 Watts per square meter -> .075 Kelvin (about 0.1 degrees F) cooling. I have no idea how a Stanford geochemist gets around these basic facts.
Agreed that this article has some pretty misleading information. Nonetheless, if you look at the higher scenario in the recent IPCC report (the one we seem to be heading towards) there is plenty to be very worried about without invoking "end of the world" scenarios.
I would be skeptical that the change in land use CAUSED the little ice age -- or even contributed greatly. The biggest problem with this hypothesis is that the observed changes in CO2 in the atmosphere are really small during this period. We have an observed record of the CO2 in the atmosphere from air bubbles in ice cores and they show a decline of about 8 ppm out of 280 ppm between 1500 and 1600. Compare this to the -100 ppm changes to the previous ice age, and the +120 ppm change we have already seen. While this 8ppm decline may be the result of depopulating the Americas, from the standpoint of changing the climate this is negligible. If I had to put a ballpark number on this I would say a 3% change in CO2 -> -0.1 Watts per square meter -> .075 Kelvin (about 0.1 degrees F) cooling. I have no idea how a Stanford geochemist gets around these basic facts.