Originally published September 23 2005
New findings suggest that humans could have altered the climate
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
While the industrial revolution continues to have the biggest continuous impact on the environment, scientists are now finding that huge fires for clearing land contributed to climate changes in the Ice Age.
Levels of methane rose steadily in the atmosphere in the first millennium, according to an analysis of gases trapped in ice beneath Antarctica.
Much of the greenhouse gas came from huge fires lit by humans as they cleared land for settlements and farming, researchers report in Science.
Greenhouse gas emissions have risen to record levels over recent centuries but little is known about the atmosphere in pre-industrial times.
Dr Ferretti: Image: Science Dr Ferretti with the ice core evidence.
Now, using a new technique, scientists have been able to analyse traces of methane trapped in air bubbles within cores of 2,000-year-old Antarctic ice.
It appears that much of the gas came from the burning of biomass - the likes of wood and grass - rather than other known sources of methane, such as the burning of fossil fuels, or natural emissions of methane from swamps and wetlands.
"Fire has been known to mankind for hundreds of thousands of years - even though the human population was very small, they set off large fires on a regular basis," lead researcher Dominic Ferretti, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Limited in Wellington, New Zealand, told the BBC News website.
The research adds to a body of evidence that human settlers torched vast areas of jungle and grassland to clear land for farming and settlements.
Early man, BBC Early settlers cleared large swathes of grass and shrubland Large-scale fires were also lit in the Amazon jungle, to produce charcoal for improving the fertility of the soil.
The researchers say this may have been due to a natural trend toward cooler and wetter conditions, as well as the decline in the indigenous population in the Americas because of the introduction of diseases by European explorers.
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