TPO 27

In this set of materials, the reading and the lecture discuss possible reasons that cause the little ice age about 1350 until 1900CE. Although the reading passage provides three theories for starting a little ice age, the speaker refutes them through several reasons, which I will describe in this report.

First, the passage points out that before the little ice age, the weather was warm, and it would melt glaciers that sent a large amount of cold freshwater into the Gulf Stream. The lecturer, in contrast, rejects this by claiming that cold freshwater only caused in Europe and North American. But, the little ice age was accrued in the southern hemisphere like Newland and Africa. In these place, the cold freshwater cannot make a little ice age. So, it is not a practical reason.

Furthermore, the reading passage states that volcanic eruption may have caused the little ice age because it sent a lot of dust into the atmosphere that prevented the sunlight from reaching Earth's surface, and the weather became cold. However, the professor argues that the volcanic eruption was not big enough to put a lot of dust into the air because a lot of dust has visual effects such as colorful sunlight or brown rain or snow. Nevertheless, we did not have reports about these phonemes, and everything was usual on time. So, the dust was not enough in the air for cooling weather.

Finally, although the passage says that increasing trees grow due to decreases in the human population may have caused a reduction of carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect and made the earth cooler. The speaker disagrees by mentioning that the human population grew rapidly after a short time, and they had to cut trees to make lands that growing crops and vegetable for preparing food themselves. Thus there was not enough time for the forests to have any effect on the climate and cause the little ice age.