You realize we only have accurate temperature measures for like 100 years right? If we look over the geologic span of the earth, it has actually been much, much warmer in the distant past. So new records every year when you have only been measuring and recording for a a tiny fraction of earth’s history is like nothing. You can’t tell anything from that small snapshot.
You realize we only have accurate temperature measures for like 100 years right? If we look over the geologic span of the earth, it has actually been much, much warmer in the distant past. So new records every year when you have only been measuring and recording for a a tiny fraction of earth’s history is like nothing. You can’t tell anything from that small snapshot.
Now, we can use ice cores, and certain oxygen isotopes preserved in shells of marine organisms to calculate temperature from hundreds of millions of years ago, but these are both geographically constrained, so they are only getting a snapshot of earth temperature at specific locations— extrapolating that over the whole earth for a global temperature average requires a lot of guesswork. Recently scientists have been measuring oxygen isotopes from foraminifera, microorganisms that occur in across all altitudes and most water depths of the world’s oceans. But keep in mind that thermometers, ice cores, isotopes each measures slightly different things - atmosphere versus ocean, gases versus isotopes, temperatures hundreds of years ago versus temperatures millions of years ago, seasonal versus annual versus time-averaged temperatures - matching them up with one another and building one continuous record of temperature through Earth’s history is a difficult task. This problem becomes even harder as we move further back in time because our ability to assign an exact age to a measurement decreases.
So, we have a good ESTIMATE of what global temperature MAY have been in ages past, but our actual direct measurement of temperatures to form a good global average was really only possible within the last 140ish years. So any variation within the 140ish years of temperature data we have now must be (1) read into consideration of the whole timeline of global temperatures to compare with the caveat that (2) past global temperature data are estimates with error bars. Given that, we simply do not have the resolution form the past to directly compare the resolution we have currently on temperature. In other words, we don’t know if a hundred year uptick with new temp records each year is something unusual or within bounds of the global climate system, because past measurements don’t have the same resolution to look at each year for 140 years back in the Eocene, for example.
Therefore, saying we have “thousands of years of temperature records” is misleading.
No we have inferred temperature from geologic records. Not the same thing. The mercurial thermometer was only invented in 1714, it would take another hundred years or so until we had better measurements worldwide of temperature. Scientists didn't have enough data before 1880 to calculate average global temperatures. So only since about 1880 have we had anything like annual global temperature averages to record. That’s 144 years compared to Earth age of about 4.5 billion years. We have about 0.0000032% of average global temperature recordings that have ever occurred for our planet recorded. That’s minuscule.
You realize we only have accurate temperature measures for like 100 years right? If we look over the geologic span of the earth, it has actually been much, much warmer in the distant past. So new records every year when you have only been measuring and recording for a a tiny fraction of earth’s history is like nothing. You can’t tell anything from that small snapshot.
Are you nuts?
We have thousands of years of temperature records. Like a hundred millennia. Tree rings for example.
Go away. Go yell at your television.
Now, we can use ice cores, and certain oxygen isotopes preserved in shells of marine organisms to calculate temperature from hundreds of millions of years ago, but these are both geographically constrained, so they are only getting a snapshot of earth temperature at specific locations— extrapolating that over the whole earth for a global temperature average requires a lot of guesswork. Recently scientists have been measuring oxygen isotopes from foraminifera, microorganisms that occur in across all altitudes and most water depths of the world’s oceans. But keep in mind that thermometers, ice cores, isotopes each measures slightly different things - atmosphere versus ocean, gases versus isotopes, temperatures hundreds of years ago versus temperatures millions of years ago, seasonal versus annual versus time-averaged temperatures - matching them up with one another and building one continuous record of temperature through Earth’s history is a difficult task. This problem becomes even harder as we move further back in time because our ability to assign an exact age to a measurement decreases.
So, we have a good ESTIMATE of what global temperature MAY have been in ages past, but our actual direct measurement of temperatures to form a good global average was really only possible within the last 140ish years. So any variation within the 140ish years of temperature data we have now must be (1) read into consideration of the whole timeline of global temperatures to compare with the caveat that (2) past global temperature data are estimates with error bars. Given that, we simply do not have the resolution form the past to directly compare the resolution we have currently on temperature. In other words, we don’t know if a hundred year uptick with new temp records each year is something unusual or within bounds of the global climate system, because past measurements don’t have the same resolution to look at each year for 140 years back in the Eocene, for example.
Therefore, saying we have “thousands of years of temperature records” is misleading.
No we have inferred temperature from geologic records. Not the same thing. The mercurial thermometer was only invented in 1714, it would take another hundred years or so until we had better measurements worldwide of temperature. Scientists didn't have enough data before 1880 to calculate average global temperatures. So only since about 1880 have we had anything like annual global temperature averages to record. That’s 144 years compared to Earth age of about 4.5 billion years. We have about 0.0000032% of average global temperature recordings that have ever occurred for our planet recorded. That’s minuscule.