James Visentine
Here is an analysis and some wonderful background information on the much feared “fatal” tipping point of +2°C. As a matter of fact, The Eemian epoch was at its warmest about 120,000 years ago. It was some +3°C warmer than the Holocene “Climate Optimum”, only about ~8000 years ago.
“Our current beneficial, warm Holocene interglacial has been the enabler of mankind’s civilization for the last 10,000 years. The congenial climate of the Holocene spans from mankind’s earliest farming to the scientific and technological advances of the last 100 years.
When considering the scale of temperature changes that alarmists anticipate because of Man-made Global Warming and their view of the disastrous effects of additional Man-made Carbon Dioxide emissions, it is particularly useful to look at climate change from a longer term, century by century or a millennial perspective.
The profile of our current Holocene epoch with temperature averages century by century set against the maximum of the past Eemian epoch and the predictions of Catastrophic Global Warming alarmists this century.
The much vaunted and much feared “fatal” tipping point of +2°C would only bring Global temperatures to the level of the very congenial climate of “the Roman warm period”.
If it were possible to reach the “potentially horrendous” level of +6°C postulated by Warmists, by the inclusion of major positive feedbacks from additional water vapor in the atmosphere, that extreme level would still only bring temperatures to about the level of the previous Eemian maximum.
The Context
The Vostok and EPICA Antarctic ice core records show that there have been 5 interglacial periods in the last 450,000 years, they have varied both in temperature intensity and duration. On occasions some earlier interglacial periods were significantly shorter than the 10,000 year norm. These climate changes can be seen in the overlaid Vostock and EPICA Ice Core records from the Antarctic.
The periods of glaciation and Interglacials show a fairly regular pattern. The Antarctic based EPICA and Vostok Ice Cores above mostly show good accord for the last 200,000 years. But earlier there seems to be a similar pattern but with some significant time displacement in the period between 200,000 and 450,000 years ago. Those two Antarctic records are not so well coordinated during the recent Holocene period.
Warm Interglacials seem to last roughly 10,000 years and the intervening periods of full encroaching glaciation persist for some 100,000 years or more in between.
Prior to the Holocene epoch a period of deep encroaching glaciation had persisted for the previous 100,000+ years. Such glaciation meant that a mile high ice sheet covering New York and much of the currently inhabited Northern hemisphere. That glaciation was preceded by the Eemian interglacial period. The Eemian epoch was at its warmest about 120,000 years ago. It was some +3°C warmer than the Holocene “Climate Optimum”, only about ~8000 years ago.
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