TPO 27

In this set of materials, both the reading and the lecture discuss possible reasons which caused occur the little ice age from about the year 1350 until 1900CE. Although the passage provides three theories for happening a little ice age, the speaker refutes all of the arguments through several reasons, which will be described in this report.

To start off with, the passage points out that before the little ice age the weather became warm, and glaciers melted so that a large amount of cold freshwater enter the Gulf Stream, and the weather became cold. The lecture, in contrast, rejects this by claiming that cold freshwater from the Gulf Stream only entered into the Europe and North America. However, the little ice age occurred in the southern hemisphere like New Zealand. He adds that in the southern hemisphere, cold freshwater from the Gulf Stream could not enter into it. So, this reason is impractical.

Going through the next approach, the reading passage states that volcanic eruptions sent a lot of dust into the atmosphere which blocks and prevents sunlight to reach the Earth surface, so the weather became cold. Nevertheless, the professor believes that it is true that volcanic eruptions made a lot of dust, but the amount of dust was not enough for blocking sunlight. He mentions that if a volcano eruption makes and sends a large amount of dust, people would report other visual effects like brown both snow and rain. However, all reporters show everything was routine without any change.

To take into the end, although the passage says that the human population were decreased because of some disease and warfare; hence, forest trees started to grow, They both absorb carbon dioxide from the air and made the weather cold. The speaker disagrees by mentioning human population came back to the previous level soon. So, they started to cut down trees for making lands until they could cultivate plants as food. Thus there was not enough time for the forests to have any effect on the climate and cause the little ice age.