Yes, the climate has “always changed.” But not like this
The intellectual arguments against manmade climate change are devolving at such a rapid pace they’d make Darwin blush, with a “survival of the unfit” guiding the evolutionary curve continually downward. One of the latest talking points from skeptics is that “climate change isn’t new.” In other words, don’t sweat pollution or tapping out our planet’s resources because what’s happening to the planet has always been happening, regardless of what we do.
Thankfully, we have the brilliant comic artists XKCD to put things in perspective. His new strip, “A Timeline of Earth’s Average Temperature” takes us on a whirlwind tour of the past 22,000 years when a gradual warming of the atmosphere set the stage for land-based life, humans in particular, to thrive.
But the easy to follow and entertaining timeline also shows that the gradual warming over those thousands of years is now jackknifed on a breakneck trajectory that threatens civilization as we know it. It’s well worth a read even for those doing their part to combat climate change. But it might be even better to share with someone you know who still proudly wears the label of “skeptic.”
(XKCD)
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