Climate science once again finds itself fighting with hockey sticks

wolfsavard

About a month ago, a team of scientists came out with a clearer picture of a story whose rough outlines we already knew. These researchers simply wanted to reconstruct the temperatures that the Earth experienced during the Holocene, the current warm period that started at the end of the last glacial period. Although the new perspective didn't include anything especially surprising, it set off howls of controversy on the Internet, which reached such intensity that the authors of the research felt they needed to publish an FAQ describing their work in more detail.

Why did all of this happen? Because the subject of the paper was the climate and amid their research, the authors found that we're experiencing an unusual warming. We'll take a look at the science behind the controversy, and explain why most of the controversy misses the point.

The paper, which we covered in some detail, focused on the planet's temperature during the Holocene. The glacial cycles are driven by changes in the planet's orbit and axis of rotation, and these effects can be calculated in some detail. These calculations suggest that the peak of the warming caused by orbital changes occurred over 5,000 years ago, and the planet has been slowly cooling since, with the next glacial era over 1,000 years still in our future.