The Curiosity About Global Temperatures Over the Last 2,000 Years

In the 1960s and 1970s, the major concern regarding the climate was in regard to global cooling. In the 1980s and 1990s, using a lot of the same data, the concern became global warming. In fact, listening to Al Gore and other alarmists, the ice caps were supposed to be gone by now. That obviously didn’t happen. It is curious when we actually look at the global temperatures over the past 2,000 years, though.

The above is a graph of the global temperatures over the past two millennia.

What is especially interesting about it is that the Roman warm period, from about 20 AD to 90 AD, and the Medieval warm period, just prior to 1000 AD, were both hotter than the Modern warm period around 1998. The graph stops where it does because this is published data and it hasn’t been brought up to date. However, the indications are that we are in a cooling trend, which is exactly what happened after the Roman warm period and the Medieval warm period.

It is cyclic data like this that has so many scientists thinking that what we’ve been experiencing is a normal fluctuation. It is certainly not beyond the area for such cycles that have been measured before. The biggest apparent anomaly was the little ice age, which was substantially colder than what has been recorded in the last 2000 years. It took a while to get back on track that would be in keeping of the cycle that is shown and as one would expect, the increase was then rapid. Again, that isn’t unusual.

If that isn’t curious enough, here is another published graph showing the global temperatures over the past 400,000 years.

Over the period of 400,000 years, most of that time the earth has been locked in ice ages. The high peaks are the interglacial periods, which we are in now. However, the temperatures during each of those interglacial periods were much warmer than today.

The really amazing thing is how rhythmic the interglacial periods and subsequent ice ages have been. Judging by this, we haven’t even come close to getting out of the normal cycles for the planet. Interesting, isn’t it?