Quote:
Originally Posted by Sephiroth
Doesn't it naturally happen every few thousand years? Perhaps accelerated by 200 years through industrialisation (though I doubt that).
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It has accelerated over the last 200 years. Warming previously took geological ages to increase, not decades. It gives life a chance to adapt because the environment didn't radically change within lifetimes.
The exception has been the extinction events, when there was
sudden climate change, such as the event that wiped out the dinosaurs. But none of the precursors to those events have occurred for us. There was been no geological event that has sparked this current rate of warming.
We have been slowly warming since the last ice age as well. Just as had happened previously. But we're talking a very long time to slowly warm up. It's increased massively in just decades.
I have posted graphs before on this, but maybe this XKCD comic showing the warming since the last ice age, and the development of humans, is better. Look how slowly it's warmed compared up until the last hundred years:
https://xkcd.com/1732/