Following from last week, as I haven’t mention the causes of the little ice age. I will talk abit about that. Studies by Geoffrey Parker and Bridda, Schweingruber and Osborn have shown that It is predominately linked to the Huaynaputina eruption in Peru (1601) which drastically cool down the earth as Parker had illustrated in the below chart. Showing correlation between the eruption and temperature drop. Additionally, Bridda, Schweingruber and Osborn proved that the extend of the effects of the ash cloud was previously underestimated and shown by tree ring density and ice core records from Greenland and Antarctica (For more detail refer to there paper on page 452 bottle right).
This gave me an interesting and
idea of using ‘ash’ to mitigate the effect of climate change and hence the
social and economic instability brought forward for its effect. It turns out a radical thinker called David Keith has
brought about this idea already. The below is a link which talks in more detail
about his idea.
This would be quite interesting since, the little ice age was
brought forward in parts by the largest eruption in the last 600 years.
Therefore, if we could use ash clouds to cancel out the effects of future temperature
increase, this would buy humanity some more time for more concrete and long
term solution. Potentially delaying the future
rise of social disorder that would be accompanied by changes to our climate (to
which I will explore on later in this blog, such as the risk of war etc, because I don’t want
to give it away).
The next entry will return back to the idea of scapegoating
in the present.
Enjoy the video and until next time.
