this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
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Just show them that one xkcd about how abrupt the current warming is and how nicely it lines up with industrialization. The comparison between the natural slow shifts in global climate vs. what's been happening the last century or so is the clearest counter to "but the climate has always been changing".
The other times that things have changed in comparable timescales, it's been caused by supervolcanoes or other such calamities.
Edit: Oh yeah one caveat: The xkcd is ten years old and we're now actually already around +1.5ยฐC.
I showed that to my father. Completely ignored it.
I guess it didn't align with his beliefs.
I was about to find that same xkcd. ๐
It really is a good way to portray that.
It also shows quite well that shit is hitting the fan, almost horizontally, in a time period where we have proper temperature measurements from all around the world. Even if humans were not at fault, we need to do something about it.
Yeah, as if "Mass extinctions are a natural occurence!" were an excuse to carry on business as usual :D
You're not going to convince anyone with a shitty drawing of the "Earth Temperature Timeline" and then start at 20000BC.
Why not? In my opinion it's doing an excellent job at showing the speed difference between the slow preindustrial climate changes and the sharp acceleration of the human made postindustrial climate change
It looks like a cherry picked tiny fragment of earth's time to make a simplistic point.
"Look how never anything happened for all this time you're scrolling down and then wow!"
20000BC in itself is only a small portion of a percent of earth's time.
Yes the speed is remarkable but it has still been much warmer or colder over a longer period.
Leaving this out is not the best way to make a point IMO.
Certainly when there have been cases where people have exaggerated or plainly lied on these matters.
It's doesn't help with credibility
This is precisely the point that comic is making tho. Yes, our planet has been a lot warmer than it is now, but as far as we know the changes we're currently making to the climate are by far the most rapid in human history and this is bound to cause some civilization-scale issues. Even ignoring all the usual problems that will happen again due to a warmer climate (sea level rise, desertification etc), there are some novel ones. There will be no time for ecosystems and societies to adapt to different agricultural conditions, leading to widespread ecosystem and crop failures, cascading down to every aspect of human life.
You're a jerk
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