These people think you're stupid: They claim to have "real data" showing "exactly what happened" 40 million years ago

Study Finds CO2 the Culprit in Ancient Global Warming | Reuters

The study may help put to rest some of the doubts expressed about today’s climate models because it describes an actual warming event rather than one predicted by a model, according to Jeff Kiehl, head of the Climate Change Research Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO.

“This paper shows indeed that the planet is sensitive to CO2 and that it corresponds with a rise in sea surface temperatures,” Kiehl said. “This is something that is independent of a model—this is real data” that can be used to “test today’s models against to see if they agree.”

Richard Norris, a paleobiologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, said the research is “highly relevant.”

“One of the reasons you want to look in the ancient past like the authors have done is that you see complete events. Now that the population is expanding and energy use is shooting up….The question is, what is going to happen?” Norris said. “We can forecast it, but if you are a climate skeptic, you can say, ‘I don’t believe the models.’ Fortunately there is the geological record, and it shows exactly what happened” in the past when increased atmospheric CO2 may have had an impact on the Earth’s systems.

Kiehl said another intriguing find from the study is that 40 million years ago water temperatures reached as high as 25 degrees Celsius in areas where today the water is close to freezing. “That is a completely different world than what it is today,” he said. “That is very intriguing from an Earth system perspective."