Mayan Civilization Destroyed by Man Made Global Warming?

David Stahle, a geoscientist at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville,  has just published a new study which used tree rings to add many hundreds of years to the region's climate record and has discovered that the Mayan civilization faced a severe drought for 25 years around the year 900 and accompanied the end of a flourishing era of Mayan city-states. This intense and prolonged drought was worse than anything ever seen in modern meteorological records, but the key question is, was this drought caused by human activity such as industrialization and the driving of SUV's?

"Clearly the drought in 1400 was not caused by the accumulation of heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere because it precedes the industrial revolution," Stahle said. "But something caused it that stimulated very unusual climate conditions elsewhere in the world. This may allow us to determine the dynamics of drought-forcing over Mexico."

Although it may clear to this researcher that the industrial revolution is not behind the draught that led to the fall of the Mayan civilization, I am sure there are many other scientists who remain convinced that human activity controls climate patterns and that the best way to have regular and positive climate patterns is then to control humans. To be honest, I'm surprised that this tree ring data wasn't manipulated like other tree ring data to demonstrate global warming and therefore create a 'consensus' in favor of environmentalfasism.

Other findings from the study are that

...one of the most severe periods of drought occurred between 897 and 922, the researchers reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, just as the Terminal Classic period (of the Mayans) came to an end. Another 19-year drought around 1150 coincided with the fall of the Toltec state, which was the dominant civilization of central Mexico at the time. The most severe drought of the last 1,000 years, which lasted from 1378 to 1404, actually occurred though during a period of rapid Aztec expansion (possibly due to the weakness of other states?). (Also) a drought from 1514 to 1539 led up to and continued through the arrival of Cortez and the Spanish conquest. It's possible, the researchers speculate, that the climate, along with epidemic disease, led to the rapid decline of Aztec Mexico as the Colonial period began.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the climate of the entire globe is an incredibly complicated issue that is beyond the understanding or computer modeling of humans today. That isn't to say that we should not be environmentally friendly- on the contrary, the best way to protect the environment is to continue to build stronger and stronger private property rights within society and vigorously oppose efforts by governments to violate private property rights and thereby increase the tragedy of the commons. But this is to say that the Mayan civilization was clearly not destroyed by man made global warming.