Are we coming out of the Little Ice Age?

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There are many on-line sources of alarmist climate change education materials but none for the realistic skeptical view. A recent poll says that many teachers want to teach about the real climate debate, not just the alarmist side. But skeptical teaching materials are scarce, so we propose to build a climate change debate education website, with your help.

It is generally agreed that global warming is at least partly natural, not due to humans. The scientific question is how much is natural and this is a matter of great debate. One of the natural causes is "emerging from the Little Ice Age" which happened a few hundred years ago. There is strong evidence for the existence of both a Medieval Warming Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA), but there is still room for debate.

On the data side, the problem is that there were no thermometers during most of the time in question, which goes back 1000 years or more. For much of the world there are not even written records, especially in the early centuries.  Even after the thermometer was invented, there were not enough measurements for us to estimate global temperatures until around 1850. Estimates of global temperatures before then are based on indirect evidence, or what are called proxies for temperatures.

So some scientists argue that the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) and The Little Ice Age (LIA) simply did not exist on a global scale. They contend that the evidence for warm and cool periods is merely regional, not global, confined to Europe for example. Other scientists disagree, arguing that the MWP and LIA were truly global.

This is the issue of how much climate changes naturally, or what is called natural variability. If the MWP and LIA are real then climate has varied naturally in relatively recent times. If so then the warming we have seen might be natural. If the MWP and LIA did not exist then it is less likely that the recent warming is natural.

Even if the MWP was global, there is also the issue of how warm it was. That is, is today's warming unique or not? Some scientists argue that the MWP was even warmer than today. Others think it was not nearly as warm as today. Thus, much of the debate over the MWP and LIA is about the interpretation of inconclusive data, especially proxy data. Getting better data is a major research area.

On the physics side, and assuming the MWP and LIA are real, there is the question what difference it makes? That is, is whatever caused the MWP and LIA also causing the recent global warming? Here too scientists are divided. Some argue that our global warming is part of the natural MWP-LIA cycle. Others argue that it is not, that our warming is primarily due to human activity. The problem is that we are not sure what caused the MWP and LIA. This too is a matter of debate, and research.