"You had advancing glaciers, frost and snow in places it had never been seen before," Bird said. "When you have a couple of years of bad weather, people take notice. But when you have 200 bad winters in a row, that's something to write home about." "You expect that after a pandemic like that, you're going to see a recovery in land cover," said Jed Kaplan of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, who was not involved in the study. "We see a similar sort of reforestation following a real crash in population after the Black Death, from 1350 to 1450." CO2 levels didn't drop nearly as much after the Black Death, perhaps three parts per million, compared to five to eight ppm following the American pandemic. Nevle and Bird admit that volcanic activity and a decrease in the sun's intensity probably both played roles in triggering the Little Ice Age. Still, Bird said, human activity was undeniably important. "Humans have been altering climate for longer than we ever imagined," Bird said. "We can use this as an analogy to what we're dealing with today [with global warming]," he added. "We are going to have to have some drastic changes in our lifestyle, and they have to be long-lived if we're going to get out of this mess we're currently in." Related Links: |
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