You could search for the data with a simple net search.
For example, a page of Csiro tells:
“Evidence from air trapped in ice cores shows that the current rate of warming is occurring at a faster rate than has occurred in thousands of years. Recent warming has occurred about 10 times faster than warming at the end of an ice age.”
It is possible that there has been also other rapid climate change periods in the past, for example when there was massive volcanic eruptions. Such massive events are associated with previous mass extinctions at the end of Triassic, Cretaceous (crudely simultaneously with the Chicxulub meteor impact) and Permian periods. I don’t know how rapid the change was then but anyhow, not very positive examples…
The mechanism of how CO2 leads to climate warming has been known for more than a century (a simple explanation below).The predictions and observations have matched quite well. You may claim that there are also other factors involved but the research and data tells convincingly that GHG:s play a role.
If you deny the role of CO2 in the climate change, what alternative explanations do you suggest for the climate change?
Or do you deny that there is an ongoing climate change?
Once again, what was responsible for the warming between 1650 and 1850 when the CO2 levels were around historic lows? I don’t have a clear explanation for that change. But, whatever that mechanism was, why would it STOP and make way for CO2? And, once again, THE GREENHOUSE GAS is water.
Global warming (really climate change) does not mean that everywhere will get warmer. It only means that the global average will get warmer. Which it is:
Top 10 warmest years (data from NOAA) (1880–2024):
1 2024
2 2023
3 2016
4 2020
5 2019
6 2015
7 2017
8 2022
9 2021
10 2018
It would be extremely improbable that the last ten years would also be the hottest ten years if the Earth wasn’t getting warmer.
FWIW (WIM), the hottest day on record for Kent, England, was July 19 2022.
The so called ‘little ice age’ was a period of regional cooling that has been explained with a combination of factors affecting simultaneously that region. When the combined effects did not anymore affect the region, there was a gradual warming.
Wikipedia lists many potentially contributing factors:
cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation (AMOC that brings heat to Europe), variations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt, decreases in the human population (such as from the massacres by Genghis Khan, the Black Death and the epidemics emerging in the Americas upon European contact).
An explanation about the last one: one way how human populations affect climate is through their impact on the vegetation, especially forests. When populations decline, much carbon is tied to vegetation in abandoned or less intensively used areas and that carbon is largely taken from the atmosphere.
Fossil fuels are a reversal of a comparable phenomenon: carbon stored in the vegetation is released again into the atmosphere.
These effects have been taken into account in the climate change research. These factors have not disappeared, they just are not sufficient to explain what has been observed (except the carbon out-and-in part).
About water: water vapor in the atmosphere acts as a GHG but it is not the only stuff that is GHG.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
87
The warming you are talking about was limited to specific regions. It wasn’t global. The Little Ice Age, and the warming back to expected norms, is thought to involve ocean currents and arctic ice.
Normally, there is a transfer of warm water from the tropics to the Arctic. It’s a well-known process called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, which is like a planetary “conveyor belt.” Typically, warm water from the tropics flows north along the coast of Northern Europe, and when it reaches higher latitudes and meets colder Arctic waters, it loses heat and becomes denser, causing the water to sink to the bottom of the ocean. This deep-water formation then flows south along the coast of North America and continues to circulate around the world.
But in the late 1300s the AMOC strengthened significantly, which meant that far more warm water than usual was moving north, resulting in rapid Arctic ice loss. Over the course of a few decades spanning the late 1300s to early 1400s, vast amounts of ice were flushed out into the North Atlantic, which not only cooled the North Atlantic waters, but also diluted their saltiness, ultimately causing the AMOC to collapse. It is this collapse that then triggered a substantial cooling.
Water only spends a few weeks in the atmosphere before precipitating out. It can’t drive long term climate trends. CO2 can drive long term climate trends because it stays in the atmosphere for decades.
2 Likes
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
88
This was settled at the end of the 19th century. Svante Arrhenius did the first rough calculations demonstrating the expected temperature change from increased CO2. It’s in his 1896 paper:
Since 1989 Christy, along with Roy Spencer, has maintained an atmospheric temperature record derived from satellite microwave sounding unit measurements (see: satellite temperature record). This was once quite controversial: From the beginning of the satellite record in late 1978 into 1998 it showed a net global cooling trend, although ground measurements and instruments carried aloft by balloons showed warming in many areas. Part of the cooling trend seen by the satellites can be attributed to several years of cooler than normal temperatures and cooling caused by the eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano. Part of the discrepancy between the surface and atmospheric trends was resolved over a period of several years as Christy, Spencer and others identified several factors, including orbital drift and decay, that caused a net cooling bias in the data collected by the satellite instruments.[5][6]Since the data correction of August 1998 (and the major La Niña Pacific Ocean warming event of the same year), data collected by satellite instruments have shown an average global warming trend in the atmosphere. From November 1978 through March 2011, Earth’s atmosphere has warmed at an average rate of about 0.14 C per decade, according to the UAH satellite record.[citation needed]
“it is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into irrigated farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the air, and putting extra greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate has not changed in some way.”
“We just said that human effects have a warming influence, and that’s certainly true.”
In 2014, Christy and his UAH colleague Richard McNider wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal , arguing that climate models projected temperatures consistently higher than real-world satellite and balloon data. The authors also pointed to past instances where scientific consensus turned out to be incorrect. However, his statements have been debunked by experts on this field.[16][17]
Thank you Professor. I see the regional medieval warm period and the little ice age, the latter correlating very well with T’s global picture.
Your graph is as of 2007, so what happens to the degree of confidence we can have after the first zero in 2000?
By the way, I couldn’t agree more on climate hysteria. Loved Apocalypse Never. Annihilated my anti-nuclear hysteria instantly. Apart from the fact that nuclear annihilation as far more, orders of magnitude more, likely than global mortality increasing beyond hundreds of thousands extra a year the next quarter century. When we get to 4 degrees in the next half, that should warm up a bit. A million a year by century’s end. But don’t worry, it will vastly be poor brown people.
No grapes in the year 1000 in Greenland. That graph is poorly labeled as “change”. It is just temperature. Change would be a differential measure with the units in value/time.
