The Inconvenient Skeptic: The Comprehensive Guide to the Earth's Climate

by John Kehr

In the 175 year period from 118,225-118,050 years ago the average temperature of the Earth rose 2.3 °C (from -0.9 to 1.4 °C). That is 3x the total warming that has been measured in the past 160 years. A large amount of warming that happened while the Earth was in a long-term cooling trend. Which trend had more meaning? Over the course of a hundred years, the short-term trend did. The rate of warming was much greater than the small long-term cooling trend. But the short-term trend lasted for only a couple hundred years. The long-term trend lasted for 11,000 years. The natural warming that was evident 118,050 years ago certainly would have given the appearance that winter was not going to come. The Earth had been warming for almost 200 years after a period of being warm for the last 14,000 years and there was no reason to suspect that the warm period of the Earth was going to end, unless one looked at the trend in insolation. All other indicators 118,050 years ago pointed to continued warmth. CO2 and methane levels were high. The Earth was warm and the short-term trend was to get even warmer. The truth is that the temperature anomaly of 1.38 °C that happened 118,050 years ago would not be reached again until only 10,577 years ago. That was the Earth's last warm period for more than 107,000 years. Winter was coming and it would last for longer than our species has existed. Of all the possible potential climate futures, the one I fear the least is a warmer interglacial. Lookin...