03 Jul 2010, Posted by Amelia Guimarin in 6th Blog, 0 Comments

More evidence prehistoric humans pushed climate change

A new study lead by post-doctoral researcher Christopher Doughty out of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California suggests that Ice Age humans actually played a role in the global warming that occurred during their time. The findings were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and you can learn more about it at Daily Tech.

Basically, the hypothesis claims that overhunting of mammoths by humans caused an overgrowth of dark, dense trees as the mammoths, who were now found less and less on the increasingly diminishing open plains, usually kept the tree growth to a minimum. The effect of too many trees meant that more solar radiation was absorbed and in turn, temperatures rose.

This cause and effect cycle happened over just 850 years. That’s nothing on a geological time scale, and it points to how we as modern humans, with far greater capacity for damage, have the ability to affect our environment over an even shorter time period.