4 ms·

Earth Temperature Timeline for scale https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/

• hammock 6y ago
  The smoothing coefficient (or data resolution, however you want to look at it) on that chart is vastly different over different periods of time, leading to a misleading hockey stick type visualization.
  • pixl97 6y ago
    So what you're saying is, even though it may have went high in the past, you believe that we have the possibility of dropping cool again in a short (decadal) period of time?
    • hammock 6y ago
      What I'm saying is, the human heartbeat looks very spiky when you sample it 250 times per second. When you collect data in minute-long periods though, it looks like a flat line. We do not have daily, yearly or even decadal temperature data for the time period 15,000 BC the way we do for the modern day. There is a lot of historical variability that is not shown on the graph. That variability could easily reach today's levels or higher, for moments.