Global Climate Change: Perspectives from the Past

People are constantly asking how today's climate compares with detailed climate records from tens of thousands of years ago to tens of millions of years ago. To the best of our knowledge, we have to search back 55 million years to find a time interval where the rate temperature changes were anywhere near the rate of change that is occurring now. This time interval is called the Paleocene- Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). In this lecture, Dr Opdyke compared data from the Eocene to data collected from around Australia in the Late Quaternary (the past half million years). He the finished with some facts and figures concerning the modern climate and some of the misinformation that has been liberally spread in the public arena.