It’s quite simple really.
The background global climate is in a 200 million year old (I had to choose a number and that is as good a mid-range reference as potentially many other numbers – some larger, some smaller – it is not simply plucked out of the air) period of almost continual climate cooling. And that long-term cooling has not yet bottomed out – but is getting close – and there is no guarantee that it will actually bottom out (though that is the most likely event).
At the same time, and lying within that scenario, the world is also achieving a brief period of new high temperature levels (on global averages) within another – though much smaller and narrower – cyclic period. This is nothing to worry about – in the long term – but the conjunction of crossing paths between higher and lower temperatures is guaranteed to bring about a period of disturbed weather for a time. And that is totally to be expected. But it is a passing, transitional phase. It may not be the last such phase in the current near-term anomalies.
What do I mean by that? Well, if I – or someone else – had said exactly the same things 200 years ago or even a thousand or more years ago, they would still have been recognisably true. The same holds for 200 years, or more than a thousand years, into the future. What does that tell us? It tells us that we have a very limited view of our own timeframe. We don’t live long enough for our personal views to be any different or to encompass – without a great deal of effort, and with a great deal of introduced bias (built around more advanced instruments and improved methods) – periods longer than our own lifetime.
So, we are hampered, that is our views are hampered by both scientific advancement and our own brief viewing capabilities. Of course without the advances of science we would not be able to see as far back into history as we now can. But we have allowed those advances to cloud our views and attach far too great importance to what we see as ‘the present’. We also double our errors by thinking we can see, or that our science allows us to see into the future. Even though we recognise this is mostly guesswork. Guesswork which will eventually be shown to be exactly that i.e. having no basis in fact.
Which is why I am not prepared to say how I think the future climate of our home planet is going to turn out. Any beliefs I hold on that subject are based solely on the historic record. In other words I can say that the future is unknown, and forecasting that future is of about the same value as forecasting weather.
So, is there anything of any real value we can say about future climate? Yes, there is.
For one thing, the historical record tells us the Earth has never (at least not in the past 500 million years or so) fallen below a cool point of 9-10°C GMST (Global Mean Surface Temperature). So the chances are high that it will not do so in the future. But that is not a guarantee, and only over the next million years or so will we have any assurance that is not going to happen (in other words not something you or I need worry about – or to which we need give any thought).
By the same token it can be said that the world has never (in the same historical period) risen to a temperature greater than around 30°C GMST, nor above 28°C GMST in the past 65 million years. Nor, in fact, has the GMST risen above a relatively pleasant 22°C in all the past 40 million years. And with the continuing global cooling over all that time, still ongoing, never is it likely to reach such temperatures again. I think that can almost be guaranteed for whatever future period mankind has left as an inhabitant of planet Earth.
I cite no references for these statements, since none are needed. Every statement is deducible from the content of previous posts, suitably referenced, over the past several months.
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