3 ms·

Agreed. The indigenous peoples were not burning fossil fuels either. This signal is pretty weak. The same could be claimed about the Black Death that ravaged Eu

• pdonis 7y ago
  > The indigenous peoples were not burning fossil fuels either. They were changing the use of the land, though. The hypothesis appears to be that the land that had been cultivated reverted back to forest, which meant more trees and hence more CO2 uptake. (Though even that could be questioned, since crops also take up CO2, and growing new crops every year might well take up more CO2 than a forest of trees that just grow once and then stay there.)
  • bryanlarsen 7y ago
    Crops get eaten and their straw rots, releasing the CO2 they've sequestered. That happens with trees too, but less completely and over a much larger time scale.