SOURCE: The Atlantic
DATE: July 24, 2019
SNIP: Absolutely nothing resembling modern-day global warming has happened on Earth for at least the past 2,000 years, a new study published today in Nature confirms. Never once until the Industrial Revolution did temperatures surge in the same direction everywhere at the same time. They’re doing so now, the study finds.
Drawing on a huge database of climate-recording objects from all over the world—including tree rings, cave formations, and ancient pollen trapped in lake mud—the study concludes that 98 percent of Earth’s surface experienced its hottest period of the past 2,000 years within living memory. That uniform heat spike “is unprecedented over the Common Era,” it says.
This latest finding may not surprise most climate scientists, who suspect that the planet is as hot now as it’s ever been in at least the past 125,000 years. But it may shock some politicians, who have downplayed modern-day climate change by talking about those past shifts. “The climate has always been changing. There has never been a time when the climate has not changed,” said Senator Marco Rubio at a Republican presidential debate in 2016.
To which the study replies: Sure. It just hasn’t changed like this.