We know and have known the earth is warming. Since there is some natural variability, we don’t set a new record every year. But if there wasn’t, we would. And so it shouldn’t be a surprise to us when we do.
It's not concerning that we are setting a new record; we know that's bound to happen. It's the pace of increase that's pushing us towards uncharted territories. We didn't anticipate these rapid changes.
It is not uncharted. The Vikings were doing agriculture in Greenland, the Romans grew wine in England as far north as Lincolnshire, bison were roaming at altitudes that cannot be found at today.
There were periods in the past warmer than it is today. Climatologists once knew this, it was uncontroversial. But when they realized they could raise the importance of their field by predicting disaster, this history became problematic and was erased.
I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.
The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."
