The “Little Ice Age” was a period of time with cooler temperatures after the Medieval Warm Period. The Little Ice Age was generally from 1350 to 1850 (temperature shifts occur at different times in different parts of the world).
The Little Ice Age was the coldest time in the Holocene epoch. The Holocene is essentially from 11,000 years ago to the present.
With the Little Ice Age ending about two hundred years ago wouldn’t you expect temperatures to rise? Why are we freaking out about temperature rising?
Water tends to hold more stable temperatures than air and thus seems like a more stable and accurate measurement. Rosenthal and colleagues studied the water temperature at a depth of 500 meters in the Makassar Strait (where the Pacific and Indian oceans meet). The University of Hamburg adds more data to cover from 2005 to 2020.
During the past 10,000 years the temperature has been much warmer than it is today. The Little Ice Age has been described as “the coldest and most miserable time in most of the known world” by Wolfgang Behringer. Why would we pick that as an ideal temperature and be concerned that we are warming up out of the Little Ice Age?
During the Medieval Warm Period temperatures were about one degree Celsius warmer than now. Perhaps we should welcome such temperatures again?
During the Holocene climatic optimum the temperature was about three degrees Celsius warmer than today. Why are our politicians trying to scare us with the potential for warmer temperatures?
As our modern society struggles with increased demand for energy and potentially exhausting our current primary source of energy (fossil fuels) would we really want to go back to temperatures which imposed great hardship on our ancestors?