ABSTRACT
The most prominent, then, of the anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) factors will have been deforestation, its most immediate effect being the release into the atmosphere of much carbon dioxide. But a century or two after mass felling ceased, there could well have been a global reduction of atmospheric CO2 because biomass depletion would have depressed the carbon cycle. More immediately, the albedo of the cleared farmland would have been almost twice as great as was that of the forest canopy. Maybe, too, atmospheric dust will have marginally increased in consequence. For all three reasons, deforestation in Europe or elsewhere may ultimately have had a cooling effect.
