Global Temperatures Are Close To 11,000-Year Peak

ananyo writes "Global average temperatures are now higher than they have been for about 75% of the past 11,300 years, a study published in Science suggests. Researchers have reconstructed global climate trends all the way back to when the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from the most recent ice age. They looked at 73 overlapping temperature records including sediment cores drilled from lake bottoms and sea floors around the world, and ice cores collected in Antarctica and Greenland. For some records, the researchers inferred past temperatures from the ratio of magnesium and calcium ions in the shells of microscopic creatures that had died and dropped to the ocean floor; for others, they measured the lengths of long-chain organic molecules called alkenones that were trapped in the sediments. From the first decade of the twentieth century to now, global average temperatures rose from near their coldest point since the ice age to nearly their warmest, they report (abstract)."

Comments

Oh No!

[0123456]

Temperatures were higher than today for 2,800 of the last 11,300 years! Clearly we're all about to die if we don't ban SUVs!

Re:Oh No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Temperatures were higher than today for 2,800 of the last 11,300 years!

Your racist so-called "math" is not welcome in this political discussion.

And cooler than 25%

[KermodeBear]

If the current years have been warmer than 75% of the past 11,000 years or so, then 25% of that time has been warmer.

Re:If only we could figure out..

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This will be modded down because it conflicts with the meme worldviews of many here (even this itself as a successful prediction carries no weight with these quasi-sentient meme carrying cogs) but do we want to reverse it?

You would risk inducing another ice age...and for what benefit? Slowing sea rise over a century or three?

By introducing great government controls (economy doesn't care why) you will slow down technological development. How stupid would ancestors of 100-300 years ago have been to put clamps on industrialization? Would we be better off with, maybe, year 1900-level tech today?

Absolutely, murderously not. Mass-murderously. Mass-murderously squared.

Yet the difference between now and 300 years from now will be far greater than now and 300 years ago. DO NOTHING HAT GETS IN THE WAY OF A POWERFUL ECONOMY.