FKN Newz

PSU Global Warming Panel, April 10, 2012. Someone asks about the Jurassic period, when (according to the question) atmospheric CO2 was 3000-4000 parts per million, in contrast with today's 320 parts per million. The panelists have no data about the Jurassic so they refer to a graph of something from the Eocene, many millions of years later. The next question refers to the fact that we are in an inter-glacial period (a period of 10,000 years or more between ice ages which can last roughly 100,000 years). Panelists answer that they only have meaningful "high resolution data" for very recent climate trends, and then change the subject to the "little ice age" of a few hundred years ago. The "little ice age" is the name given to a cold period in the 14th to 19th centuries; but it was not a true ice age or glacial period when the planet is largely covered in giant ice sheets for 100,000 years or more. See NOAA's information on glacial-interglacial cycles: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data2.html