Did Columbus Cause the Little Ice Age?

Nemke
11/6/11
Date of Article: 11/2/11
Author: Stephen Ornes
Source:http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2011/11/did-columbus-contribute-to-a-little-ice-age/

Did Columbus Cause the Little Ice Age?

Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492. He and his men scared the natives out of the land. The Little Ice Age, which lasted from the 16^th century until the 19^th century, temperatures dropped and large, slow-moving rivers of ice, called glaciers, formed in northern Europe.

They left patches of land ready to be used for farms. After some times trees grew up to the size of California. Humans breath in oxygen and let out carbon dioxide trees kind of do the same thing except that they take in carbon dioxide and let out oxygen. The trees took 17 billion tons of carbon dioxide which is a lot more than you think. Carbon dioxide traps the heat and helps the atmosphere stay warm. If you remove that much it will cause change in temperature. Scientists learned that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dropped during the Little Ice Age by studying ice that’s been frozen for hundreds of years in Antarctica. The bubbles inside hold the conditions of the atmosphere when the ice was formed. The bubbles in ice older or newer than the ones in the little ice age contained more carbon dioxide. Not all scientists agree to this because more volcanoes and colder oceans, as well as a quieter sun cycle, might have helped cool the atmosphere

My Opinion
I think that Christopher Columbus should have made peace with the natives because then they would have used the farm land and he would have gotten some of that food. Im happy i wasn't alive when the little ice age happened.