How does the current warming compare to immediately after the last ice age?

Question

As I recall, the current warming trend is about 0.03°C per year.

As you can see from this plot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

Immediately coming out of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, the planet warmed on the order of 8°C over a period of about 5,000 years, which is an average of about 0.0016°C per year.

If these numbers are correct, we're now warming at a rate of about 20 times faster than when we were coming out of the last ice age.

Are these numbers correct? If so, considering that we're not coming out of an ice age right now and yet we're warming 20 times faster than if we were, how can you

a) Claim this is a natural effect?
b) Deny that this is a problem?

Geez it gets old with people complaining about Wikipedia. It's just a convenient location to find graphs of scientific data. Here:

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/

Jello - you complain about selective data, and yet you never provide any data!

"Nice try, but it is well known that temp changes have been much faster, much more dramatic, more severe in the past."

Oh it's "well known" huh? Prove it! Oh, you can't? What a shock. Pretty pathetic that you're a "top contributor". A top contributor of your uninformed opinions, I suppose.

Answer 1

There was a period soon after the end of the last ice age when the average global temperature was increasing by about 1°C per year. However, it didn't last very long (your numbers are correct for the 5,000 year period), and we're not coming out of an ice age right now, so we shouldn't be warming that fast!

Answer 2

At the warmest point after the end of the last Ice Age, some 8000 years ago, temperatures were only 0.15 degrees lower than today. That works out to 0.0000187 degrees per year.

Or 85 times faster than the current warming.

And that's looking at YOUR specious proxy record.

If temperatures were warmer during the MWP as more and more data shows, then the current anomaly will pretty much disappear.
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/mwp/mwpp.jsp

It is no less ridiculous to compare a decadal record to a millenial record as it is to use a local daily or seasonal temperature anomaly to any long term climate record.

Answer 3

"Large and rapid shifts in climate have been detected in areas of the North Atlantic, Greenland, and in Antarctica from deep-sea sediment cores, ice cores, lake sediments, and pollen series that cover this period of time. Most of these records provide climatic descriptions of the last glacial cycle, with some continuing on through the Emian interglacial over 120,000 years ago.

In Greenland, rapid warming - approximately 7°C in a few decades - was observed around 11,500 years ago (Dansgaard et al., 1989; Johnsen et al., 1992; Grootes et al., 1993). Alley et al. (1993) also report evidence of even more rapid shifts in precipitation patterns, and other authors have noted swift changes in atmospheric circulation (Taylor et al., 1993; Mayewski et al., 1993). Sea surface temperature changes of around 5°C, associated with sudden changes in oceanic circulation, also occurred in a few decades in the Norwegian Sea (Lehman and Keigwin, 1992). Similar warming following the latest deglaciation occurred in regions of the Southern Hemisphere, though the warming there was less abrupt (Suggate, 1990; Denton and Hendy, 1994; Salinger, 1994; Jouzel et al., 1995)."

Answer 4

If you don't know, when warming is totally on the rise, the polar caps are going to melt, flushing cold water at high speeds into the mid-north and mid-south in the form of streams. This will cause a cooling effect bringing in snow to parts of the globe which never had it before. So global warming also causes global cooling later. (Skipped the part where many places will drown due to constant high tides). So eventually, we will be heading back into the ice age.

Answer 5

Nice try, but it is well known that temp changes have been much faster, much more dramatic, more severe in the past.

Again, through selective sampling, global warming looks like man is the cause.

Added details - Sorry, I just assumed that people that claimed to be knowledgeable in climate change would know about the end of the Younger Dryas, where the temps increased 18 deg in just 10 years. Compare that to today's scare of just 1 deg in 100 years.

And since these temps changed dramatically, without man, without SUV's, without co2, the data MUST be omitted, as they don't fit in well with the story being told by today's consensus.

Answer 6

As I understand it we have warmed STEADILY since the end of the last ice age (with minor perturbations related to volcanoes, etc). If we remained on our historic pattern, the planet would have begun to cool in the late 1960's and we'd be way below what temperatures have been since humans evolved. Instead, temperatures have risen at an accelerating rate. People in the business of tracking this kind of data find the temperature increases correlate to fluctuations in the generation of the "greenhouse gases"

Answer 7

What about the fact that the magnetic poles are shifting? Isn't the warming and shifting of climates a direct result from this?

No, I am not trying to be snide...but it is an observation which I have made.

Answer 8

Your numbers are wrong and you are trying to fool the gullible with rhetorical bullying just like your master AlGore. When AlGore reduces his own "carbon footprint" to that of the average man I'll consider the possibility that he really believes the global warming garbage he preaches. Until then I'll laugh at the gullible people who believe in AlGore's hysteria.

Answer 9

I appreciate your research, but Wikipedia can be edited essentially by anyone. Can you find some other source that supports this?

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but I don't trust Wikipedia.

Answer 10

Dirty hippies. I blame it on the hippies...of course I blame everything on the dirty hippies, but that is beside the point. When my neighbors play their radio too loud, I blem the hippies. When I don't like the way a sanwich tastes...yep!! Hippies!!! When I stub my toe on the coffee table when I'm dancing to Britney Spears....You guess it!! Damn dirty hippies!!!

With regards to your question... at this point...man-kind has screwed himself. I can't wait until the oceans rise, because I'm going to sit back, crack open a beer, and say, "I told you so..."