Christopher Columbus started the Little Ice Age! That’s right — not only was that Genoese devil responsible for unleashing the scourge of Europeans upon the Americas, but now, according to a recent study released by researchers at University College London (UCL), he was also responsible for causing climate change.

You see, Columbus’s discovery of the New World brought disease from Europe that unleashed a genocide upon millions of Indigenous Peoples™ whose disappearance subsequently resulted in a massive overgrowth of vegetation across previously farmed land in Central, South, and North America. This surge in forestation tanked global CO₂ levels, which in turn cooled the planet and threw it into a mini ice age.

Evidently, it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution, with its massive increase in the burning of fossil fuels, that enough CO₂ was produced to reverse the cooling trend.

Now that pesky fact often cited by skeptics of the dogma of anthropogenic climate change — that the 17th century’s Little Ice Age was caused by natural forces rather than human activity — can finally be refuted. In fact, it can now be argued that mankind was actually entirely responsible for causing the Little Ice Age as well as this current global-warming phenomenon.

Not only that, but it can be concluded that Europeans (white people) are most responsible for causing climate change. UCL geography professor Mark Maslin argued, “The really weird thing is, the depopulation of the Americas may have inadvertently allowed the Europeans to dominate the world. It also allowed for the Industrial Revolution and for Europeans to continue the domination.” Check and mate! How’s that for killing two birds with one stone? Oh, wait — that analogy is no longer PC. It’s feeding two birds with one scone.

Never mind the fact that during the era known as the Little Ice Age, the sun was in the Maunder Minimum, a period of 28 years in which fewer than 50 sunspots were observed. Contrast that with the modern era, when there have been between 40,000 and 50,000 sunspots. To be clear, correlation does not prove causation, but it does raise the question. And it’s a far more scientifically plausible theory than blaming Columbus and his crew of Europeans for climate change.

(Edited)