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by SeanDav 3632 days ago
You misunderstand me - I am not talking about man made climate change. I am saying that having data that shows current temperatures are highest ever in 1000 years is not surprising, given that temperatures have been rising for last several thousand years.

If one had a time machine and went back 1000 years, took temperatures and compared them to those from previous thousand years, one would not be surprised to see that on average they were higher.

1 comments

No one is misunderstanding you, you are just wrong.

Even if you were right and we were in a "warming" phase, the velocity of the change should be on a geological scale; that is, very very very tiny. We are seeing rates of warming orders of magnitudes higher, which cannot possibly be anything but man made.

At no point have I mentioned scale of change or rate of change. That is irrelevant to the point I am making: that during a warming phase, average temperatures will be the highest they have ever been at the end of the time period under consideration. So a result confirming that is hardly news.

4000 years ago there were still mammoths and far greater glaciation than now, so clearly climate has been warming over the last few thousand years.

Sure. But if someone is saying "the house is on fire" and you reply, "Ah, Yes, clearly we should expect it to be getting warmer, after all it's springtime now", it's not much of addition to the conversation.