Woolly mammoth hunters helped change climate

[Dogmudgeon]

Worth considering: Even relatively small human actions can have global consequences.

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre66e17r-us-climate-mammoths/">Woolly mammoth hunters helped change climate

Ancient hunters who stalked the world's last woolly mammoths likely helped warm the Earth's far northern latitudes thousands of years before humans began burning fossil fuels, according to a study of prehistoric climate change.

The demise of the leaf-chomping woolly mammoths contributed to a proliferation of dwarf birch trees in and around the Arctic, darkening a largely barren, reflective landscape and accelerating a rise in temperatures across the polar north, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science concluded.

The northward march of vegetation affected the climate because of the "albedo effect," in which replacement of white snow and ice with darker land surfaces absorbs more sunlight and creates a self-repeating warming cycle, the study found.

...

The Earth already was warming at the time when mammoths were disappearing, but there is evidence that dramatic growth of vegetation in the far North followed the large animals' demise rather than preceded it, Field said.

...

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre66e17r-us-climate-mammoths/">Full article at Science News Daily.

--d!

[LiberalFighter]

1. We need to ban the growth of trees and other vegetation in Canada,

Scandinavian countries, and northern Russia and China.

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[Jackpine Radical]

2. Funny--I always figured that the reduction in methane

That resulted from the elimination of mammoth farts from the atmosphere after their extinction would have made up for the birch tree effect.

[guardian]

3. The Doomers

at Geophysical Research Letters and Science News Daily must have had an extra strong batch of Kool-Aid this week. This is ROFL ridiculous how some think EVERYTHING is related to AGW. It is amazing that another hot tub reefer theory gets printed and treated as 'science'.

A more plausible explanation the extinction of mammoths is found at http://www.physorg.com/news150097682.html.

Of I'm sure some Doomers here will somehow tie a comet hitting the earth to AGW too.

[NickB79]

4. Of course, it's ridiculous. So ridiculous you'll have no trouble offering an explanation

That easily refutes it.

We're waiting......

[guardian]

5. It is highly recommended

that you hold your breath while waiting.

[NickB79]

7. I think not

As your history of actually backing up what you say is nil to date.

Good thing this research is so ridiculous, though, right? :sarcasm:

[Angry Dragon]

6. Then we need to stop hunting woolly mammoths

and then the climate change should stop......see how easy that was

[TheMadMonk]

8. This is also the period where, like kids with a box of matches, mankind...

...was setting fire to everything in sight, stampeding those mammoth (among a lot of other animals) into gorges and suchlike holes in the ground. Its the period where we began turning forests into the plains we ultimately turned into crop and grazing lands.