8 to 10 Degrees of Warming in Less Than Five Years. The Geological Record Has Done This Before

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The ice core record documents something that makes almost every other climate discussion look modest by comparison. At the termination of the Younger Dryas, approximately 11,700 years ago, global temperatures rose by somewhere between 8 and 10 degrees Celsius. The transition that produced that warming - one of the most dramatic climate shifts in the geological record - occurred in less than five years.

Randall Carlson argues this data point deserves far more attention than it receives. The current period of warming since the end of the Little Ice Age, roughly coinciding with the beginning of the industrial era, represents approximately one and a quarter degrees Celsius over more than a century. The Younger Dryas termination produced eight times that magnitude of change in a fraction of the time - driven entirely by natural mechanisms. Understanding what caused that transition, how fast it moved, and what it did to every living system on the planet is, Randall contends, the essential context for any serious conversation about climate and its capacity to change.