>I think its amazing that only 5,000 years ago it was much warmer than it is now, as this area not only supported grazing herbivores but a human hunting populat

>I think its amazing that only 5,000 years ago it was much warmer than it is now, as this area not only supported grazing herbivores but a human hunting population which was eating them. It's not really that amazing if you consider the known external climate forcings like Milankovitch cycles. Also, you are extrapolating global climate from the local climate at a single location. Local change does not necessarily correlate with global changes. In this case the data we have indicates that the 'Mid-Holocene Warm Period' was only warmer in the Northern Hemisphere, and only during summer. >What that reinforces in me is that regardless of cause, climate change happens You are missing an important factor which is the rate of change. Faster changes have much greater potential to disrupt economies and ecosystems. To put that into some perspective: http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/shakun_marcott_hadcrut4_a1b_eng.png http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/shakun_marcott_had... >conversely even when human carbon footprint on the planet was nearly zero, the planet was warmer than it is today. And that suggests to me that human impact is irrelevant to the challenge of surviving in a changing climate. Come on now, I don't believe you are really this ignorant. The problem with climate change isn't conditions today, which are not that much different to the past and don't yet pose many significant challenges to human activity. The problem is that continued emissions is going to result in global temperature probably at least several degrees warmer within 100 years (which means much bigger changes than that in some places), and that kind of change over such a short period of time will pose a lot of serious problems to humans (and the biosphere in general).