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If we're only going to look at the temperature, and ignore why temperature is important to the billions of humans who depend on large-scale agriculture, why sto
by klyrs 3y ago
If we're only going to look at the temperature, and ignore why temperature is important to the billions of humans who depend on large-scale agriculture, why stop at 125kya? Looking back even further, the earth's atmosphere was once 230°C https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean
Non-cherry-picked corollary: It's hotter now than it's ever been since the first Agricultural Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
The time between the 130kya maximum and the invention of agriculture was a literal ice age: an outcome that has historically resulted after maxima. Neither extreme is thought to support large human populations.
But, regardless: making of a note of "the last time we saw this statistic is X years ago" is not at all cherry-picking. Because if we blow past that 130kya spike, the last time will have been millions of years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File%3AAll_palaeotemps.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#...
- Detrytus 3y agoWell, the plot that you linked is awful, since it changes scale few times along the X axis, but is seems to me that mankind evolved in the one of the coolest periods ever, and the warming that we are observing now might just as well be Earth reverting to its normal state, and not caused by our CO2 emissions at all...
- klyrs 3y agoThat's a logarithmic scale, it's not "awful". The human contribution to the CO2 emissions has been extremely well-measured for a very long time, and the greenhouse effect has been understood by almost 150 years. The rate of increase is anthropogenic. There is no natural system on Earth, including plate tectonics, that remains untouched by human industry. Regardless, "natural" does not mean "good." A solar system in its natural state is devoid of life.