HOME Temperature Trends over the Ages
Navigation crumbs: Home->Ref Facts->this page

Here are some temperature trends over the ages from: http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html. It is a link from the more general page http://muller.lbl.gov/#research. Dr. Muller is a prof at Berkeley. Credible, I should say.

Humans are touted to be the primary cause of temperature rise by CO2 emissions thanks to industrialization as per

because CO2 emission correlate well with the temperature rise in this period. But this is a superficial conclusion. To make such a claim, one would need to show that other effects have been counted for and that this correlation is truely a cause and effect relationship. As a colleague once said: "One's view can get badly distorted if there is nothing to provide scale and perspective.” Let's step back to a larger time scale:

You can see that our local warming trend seems to fit a pattern that is not driven by CO2 level. And we are still cooler than some of the past 'good times' for civilization. Let's step back even further to the beginning of civilization:

and further still to 100,000 years:

and further still to see the 100,000 year cycles:

and finally back to early earth (note: time scale is reversed)

So tell me again about man-made global warming...

To learn more about this check out this interesting new book.