Unprecedented (Except For All The Other Times)

The other day I was watching the weather forecast for the Minneapolis area when the weatherman started going on about the, as he called it, "unprecedented" warmth we have been experiencing. To back up his case he told us that the month of December "was the sixth warmest in history." Now, I know I wasn't an english major, but I'm pretty sure saying the month was sixth warmest is the same as saying it wasn't UNprecedented.

UGH!

Speaking of the power on non-unprecedented things I saw the article the other day that has some interesting implications: Ancient global warming was jarring, not subtle, study finds

Foreshadowing potential climate chaos to come, early global warming caused unexpectedly severe and erratic temperature swings as rising levels of greenhouse gases helped transform Earth, a team led by researchers at UC Davis said Thursday.

The global transition from ice age to greenhouse 300 million years ago was marked by repeated dips and rises in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and wild swings in temperature, with drastic effects on forests and vegetation, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

"It was a real yo-yo," said UC Davis geochemist Isabel Montanez, who led researchers from five universities and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. "Should we expect similar but faster climate behavior in the future? One has to question whether that is where we are headed."

Now, as I have understood the debate, the argument that the present warming experienced in climate change was due almost exclusively to human agency was based upon the contention that it was warming so much more quickly than it had ever before that it just HAD to be human in origin. Quick warming, we were told repeatedly, was UNPRECEDENTED, and therefore couldn't have resulted from natural causes.

I always thought this was a slightly silly argument, because I never saw any proof that the earth's climate was immune to sudden variations in its past. Maybe, this study shows why they couldn't have proven such a thing.

Of course the author of the article doesn't see it that way:

The provocative insight into planetary climate change counters the traditional view that global warming could be gradual and its regional effects easily anticipated.

Ah...so this study is an argument against the political middle of the road folks that want to manage the effects of climate change? Yeah right.

Actually, the article is so poorly written (it seemingly contradicts itself every couple of paragraphs), that it comes across as a tool of some sort of misinformation campaign. I'm sure it isn't that. I'm positive it is merely incompetence.

It does confirm that we are still too ignorant to make sweeping changes that will be worth a damn.

But who I am to stand against those that wish to destroy humanity to save it.