European Discovery of the Americas Killed So Many People It Made the Earth Colder
The researchers, from University College London, used estimates of population decline during the 16th century to estimate how much farmland was reclaimed by forests during that century. All that new vegetation required a lot of carbon dioxide, and so much CO2 was pulled out of the atmosphere to fuel these growing plants that it ended up cooling the earth.Starting in the late 1500s, the entire earth went through a minor cooling period called the Little Ice Age. The immediate cause of the ice age was a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide by around 8 parts per million.According to the recent study, the additional forests in the Americas caused around half of that CO2 loss, around 5 parts per million.
Source: www.popularmechanics.com