How Mongolian hordes reduced the Earth’s carbon footprint

In the 1200s , Genghis Khan and the Mongol army built an conglomerate that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to central Europe , prevail over a one-fifth of all land on Earth and over 100 million people . And all that conquering reshaped the Earth , reducing carbon dioxide levels enough to set off a year ’s worth of gasolene usage today .

Stanford researcher count four of the most traumatic periods in the last 1200 years – the Mongol invasions of 1200 to 1380 , the Black Death that killed 25 million Europeans between 1347 and 1400 , the European conquest of the Americas between 1519 and 1700 that shoot down as much as 90 % of the aboriginal universe , and the fall of China ’s Ming dynasty from 1600 to 16450 . All these cataclysmic events involved tremendous loss of life and agricultural desolation , the latter of which can be traced in the historical record through analysis of soil samples .

Still , for all their human carnage and crop wipeout , none of these event really affected the Earth itself in a fundamental way . The only exception was the Mongol intrusion , which degenerate global carbon dioxide spirit level by about 0.1 part per million . This made forest absorb back about 700 million tons of carbon dioxide , some equivalent to the amount release in a year ’s worth of gasoline demand .

Bark Watch

Those might seem like major issue , but the last two hundred years of industrialisation has make an all new scale . As lead researcher Julia Pongratz explains :

“ Since the pre - industrial era , we have increased atmospheric CO2 [ or atomic number 6 dioxide ] concentration by about 100 function per million , so this is really a different property .

So then , that just leaves the Mongol invasion as the only pre - industrial event that had even a slender wallop on carbon dioxide stratum like to what is going on right on now . But hey , look on the shining side – we ’ve now got a way of life to solve the carbon crisis . We ’re just going to take a net ton of Mongol horde …

Last Of Us 7 Recap 2