The world has been in today's ice age for 2.59m yrs. Life survived this global ice holocaust for 355,000 of the past 415,000 years due to 6 very brief warm interglacials, 10K yrs each on average. An ice world is a far more terrible prospect than a warmer & greener planet earth.
@PeterDClack What was the fastest drop of temperature recorded at the end of a warm period. Could it drop in like 100 years?
@PeterDClack Why does that graph appear to end 9,000 years ago? Also doesn't this graph show that the holocene was cooling off until recently?
@PeterDClack What is rarely mentioned is that the last 10k years were the most stable Ts recorded in the past 1mln y. Not only that, the current warming period is the longest of any prior warming periods which is why we are able to have this conversation on twitter.
@PeterDClack The average temperature of this ice-free world was 5 to 9 degrees Celsius warmer than now, and sea levels were around 250 feet higher. quantamagazine.org/how-earths-cli…
@PeterDClack Now consider vs atmospheric CO2 concentration where that is headed: