A November 24, 2012 Atlantic Magazine article, ’5 Charts About Climate Change That Should Have You Very, Very Worried’, has me very worried. It’s scary to think such natural climate change ignorance can pass even an uninformed editorial review.
One chart showed the top layer of Greenland’s ice melting and refreezing in a four-day period, as it’s done many times over thousands of years. I wonder how Atlantic missed one of my favorite charts showing Greenland warmer than present for over 90% of the past 10,000 years? Ancient Greenland farms are just now reappearing from under ice cover that flourished 1,000 years ago.
The next chart purported to show that America just had its worst drought in over 50 years, but omitted ten that were as bad or worse since 1910, including the protracted droughts of 1953-1956 and 1933-1936.
Then “Coral Reefs are doomed”, which omitted consideration of the Mesozoic Era when atmospheric CO2 was up to four times higher and coral reefs were more widespread and thriving. This is logical, since coral likes long, warm periods (our present warmth and high sea level only began 10,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age), and recent tests have shown Great Barrier Reef coral likes a CO2-enriched diet.
An Atlantic map of America supposedly showed wildfires are multiplying, yet American and Canadian historical records show this is false.
Finally, Atlantic thinks Civil Wars are Rising, but a chart of death toll from warfare going back over 2,000 years shows that war deaths as a percent of human population have fallen from highs of 10% or more hundreds of years ago, to just a small fraction of a percent, and the number of recent conflicts has fallen 40% since the early 1990’s.
Parading ignorance in an educational forum is stupid!
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