Mammoth-Belch Deficit Caused Prehistoric Cooling?

By killing Ice Age mammals, humans cut greenhouse gas emissions, study says.

When mammoths and other Ice Age "megafauna" disappeared from the Americas about 12,800 years ago, the animals took with them their planet-warming burps—spurring the mysterious cooling period known as the Younger Dryas, a new study says.

And because humans are thought to have killed the creatures off, the deaths hint that we've been changing the climate since long before the first Model T chugged out of Mr. Ford's factory.

According to ice core studies, the Younger Dryas event began about a thousand years after mass human migrations into the Americas 13,400 years ago, near the end of the last ice age.

The world had been starting to warm, but the Younger Dryas brought on a freeze that lasted roughly 1,300 years, with estimated temperature drops of 7.2 to 14.4°F (4 to 8°C) in eastern North America and northern Europe.

Also within a thousand years of the human migrations, more than 114 species of large plant-eaters—including woolly mammoths, giant camels, and ground sloths—had gone extinct. (See pictures of a stunningly preserved baby mammoth.)

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UK 'will push EU on CO2 targets'

The UK government will push the EU to move to a higher target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It will urge the EU to cut emissions by 30% from 1990 levels by 2020, rather than the current 20% target, partly through more support for renewables.

A higher proportion of tax revenues will come from environmental taxes.

In 2009, EU leaders endorsed two targets for greenhouse gas emissions - 20%, rising to 30% in the event of a global deal on climate change.

That failed to materialise at December's Copenhagen summit.

But the recession has lowered emissions across the continent, making the higher target more easily achievable.

Environment groups have been lobbying governments to move to 30% immediately, to re-stake the EU's claim for global leadership on climate change - a call that the coalition has now endorsed.

Only problem is the conservative-Lib Dem coalition also confirmed there would be a free vote on fox-hunting and that badger culling was back on the agenda for England