“Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline.”A study published by the website http://carsandpeople.sdsu.edu/ from San Diego State University goes so far to calculate one car is of 18 human equivalents. Accordingly, if Genghis Khan killed 40 million people, this is tantamount to 2,222,222 Genghis Khan Equivalents! Put simply, Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline!
The study claimed that the Mongol invasion scrubbed off nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, cooling the planet as it roughly equals the amount of carbon global society now produces annually from gasoline. Climate Depot blog further reported that the study concluded:
“Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swath of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests.
In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan's unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere...the longevity of the Mongol invasion made it stand out as having the biggest impact on the world's climate."
No comments:
Post a Comment