Climate Change, Dark Ages, and Armchair Disaster Prediction

Allowing that it was an “outrageous metaphor,” Giegengack took a roll of toilet paper out of his bag. He told the amused audience at Rainey Auditorium that, when measured proportionally, each inch of the 1,000-sheet roll is roughly equivalent to one million years of the Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. Using those proportions, 1/100 of an inch of the entire roll represents all of recorded human history. And despite there being evidence of “both the lowest temperatures and the lowest concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere” happening within the last million years, he said, today’s scientists are mainly looking at the last 200 years when studying climate change. That’s a lot of unused toilet paper.

“Climatologists … are taking records of those 200 years,” Giegengack said, “subjecting it to very detailed analysis, and projecting it into computer models of what the climate will be like in the future based on this.”

He held up the tiny sliver of one sheet of toilet paper to represent this.

While McKibben Loudly Weeps - WendyMcElroy.com

While McKibben Loudly Weeps
(to the tune of the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"...)

I look at the world and I see it's improving
While McKibben loudly weeps
From poverty, millions are steadily moving
Still McKibben loudly weeps

Twitter / RyanMaue: You don't hear much about the ...

You don't hear much about the "Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976/77" or the weather of 1978. Life starts in 1979 for climate science.