Little Ice Age, continued

Continuing my post from last week about the effects of the Little Ice Age, here's an interesting theory: Europeans killing the Mayans and Incas helped cause the Little Ice Age. Apparently, all that untended South American farmland suddenly went back to jungle.

Suddenly as much as 500,000 square kilometers (193,051 square miles) of cleared farmland was no longer being tended, an area slightly larger than California. And as the rainforest crept back in, it vacuumed carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in the process.
In all, the authors estimate that reforestation of South and Central America could have removed up to 10 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

So could it be that the Europeans actually caused the Little Ice Age by wiping out the Indians?

This would put a different spin on things. I detailed before that a new ice age could be brought upon Europe due to the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere melting the polar ice cap. In this theory, the death of South American cultures resulted in a massive decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and could have caused the Little Ice Age the exact opposite way as I suggested the next one might occur.

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