Another data point in the Global Warming saga

[PlixTixiplik]

A volcano has the power of 10 thousand Hirsohima nuclear bombs. The amount of polution pumped into the atmosphere of one, makes all our efforts look insects in comparison.

That makes for pretty copy. That doesn't conform with what I've seen. For instance:

Dr. Marie Edmonds, a PhD in Earth Sciences, says that

Volcanoes emit around 100,000,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. Compare that to man-made emissions of CO2 which comes to about 10,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. So volcanoes emit around 1/100th of CO2 that we do and are therefore insignificant in terms of global warming. Sulphur dioxide on the other hand, volcanoes emit around a tenth of the anthropogenic emissions of SO2. That forms regional smog.

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/questions/question/2008/

That's because it was not warmer during the middle ages.

This conflicts with what I've researched as an historian. Things got really cold and rainy and crappy starting around 1314/1315. While I've no doubt that we have warmed back up to where we were in the happy times of the High Middle Ages, I don't think we can glibly dismiss the Little Ice Age. It is well documented, historically.

The Little Ice age definitely exists, it seems largely from a drawdown in atmospheric CO2 due to plummeting population in the New World. In particular, the decimation of Amazonian tribes in the early 1500s pretty much stopped their burning of the forests, and the regrowth of the forest sequestered more CO2. But the point is, it wasn't warmer than today in the so-called "Medieval Warm Period." It was warmer than the Little Ice Age, but temperatures in the MWP were probably similar to early 20th century averages.

 

[Neopeius]

The Little Ice age definitely exists, it seems largely from a drawdown in atmospheric CO2 due to plummeting population in the New World. In particular, the decimation of Amazonian tribes in the early 1500s pretty much stopped their burning of the forests, and the regrowth of the forest sequestered more CO2. But the point is, it wasn't warmer than today in the so-called "Medieval Warm Period." It was warmer than the Little Ice Age, but temperatures in the MWP were probably similar to early 20th century averages.

I'll buy that, but I don't see how plummeting Amazonian populations in the 16th century affected the European climate in the 14th.

 

[PlixTixiplik]

The Little Ice age definitely exists, it seems largely from a drawdown in atmospheric CO2 due to plummeting population in the New World. In particular, the decimation of Amazonian tribes in the early 1500s pretty much stopped their burning of the forests, and the regrowth of the forest sequestered more CO2. But the point is, it wasn't warmer than today in the so-called "Medieval Warm Period." It was warmer than the Little Ice Age, but temperatures in the MWP were probably similar to early 20th century averages.

I'll buy that, but I don't see how plummeting Amazonian populations in the 16th century affected the European climate in the 14th.

It didn't - the Little Ice Age is broadly from the 16th to mid-19th centuries.

-MEC