Was Captain Cook The First Climate Wrecking White Man?

5 Responses to Was Captain Cook The First Climate Wrecking White Man?

1. miked1947 says:

   May 21, 2013 at 2:18 pm

   The Vikings came before him and drastically changed the “Climate” in Greenland and North America! 😉 Just ask the “Natives” of those regions. I would use the term “First People” but those who claim to be first people are the ones that killed of those that lived there before they came to the region.

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2. chris y says:

   May 21, 2013 at 3:32 pm

   What a great article! There is also this tidbit-

   “Vapours copiously raised from every river, lake, or pool, from the soil, or from vegetation, become the means, in the mighty hand of nature’s God, of reducing excess of temperature, and refreshing thereby animal and vegetable life.”

   The stark contrast between 1846 and 1988 makes it easy to spot the religious zealots- they look like Homer Simpson.

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3. Olaf Koenders says:

   May 21, 2013 at 9:33 pm

   They’re just liars. Even back then they were hunting for “compensation”.

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4. ntesdorf says:

   May 22, 2013 at 6:44 pm

   I love a sunburnt country,
   A land of sweeping plains,
   Of ragged mountain ranges,
   Of droughts and flooding rains.
   I love her far horizons,
   I love her jewel-sea,
   Her beauty and her terror –
   The wide brown land for me!

   Dorothea MacKellar : Poetess of Australia

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5. Louis Hissink says:

   March 23, 2018 at 12:47 am

   Not so strange – in the Murchison region of Western Australia there are some peculiar heavy mineral anomalies associated with the remnant soils. I’m a retired exploration geologist (ex-De Beers, inter alia) and in the Murchison region there is a lack of heavy mineral residuals over outcropping kimberlites. There are heavy minerals down slope but not directly over the source rocks. This remains a puzzle until I chanced on a consulting geomorphologist, Hugh Pringle, during 2006 who was at Wooleen Station with a PhD student. I mentioned the heavy mineral problem and Pringle explained that it was caused by a once-only erosional event caused by the introduction of cloven hoofed livestock into Western Australia some 150 years ago.

   It seems the sheep etc. were watered at the large water holes in the major rivers, and their presence disrupted the in-situ soils. The next rainy season caused a bulk erosion of the newly disrupted soil down river, and the rest of regolith and colluvium then moved down slope, ~ 500, metres or so leaving naked rock outcrops and many remnant pedestals of partially weathered bedrock in the uplands and drainage headwaters. The amount of erosion depends on topography and slope angles, and whether sheep were or were not introduced in some areas or not. A similar erosional event occurred also on the east coast when a once-off erosional event occurred from the introduction of livestock. (Eg silting up of Hawkesbury River north of Sydney. Large ships could sail up it at first but now no longer).

   I’ve always wondered why the Europeans thought Australia could carry so many sheep given the lack of grassed pasture in the present. It makes sense only when the erosion is factored into problem and most likely Australia was a well grassed land prior to European arrival and letting sheep onto the land a logical activity. Most of the salt pans also occurred after the introduction of sheep.

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