What’s wrong with this picture?

In this issue:

  • What’s wrong with this picture?
  • Power Hour: The NYT admits climate models have failed, a misleading climate timeline, and more

What’s wrong with this picture?

The website XKCD published a viral image that claims to show the trajectory of climate over the past 22,000 years. The basic idea is that since we started using fossil fuels we’ve experienced highly abnormal amounts of global warming—and that continuing on this path is likely to have major negative consequences for human life. 

The entire cartoon is extremely long, but here’s a snapshot of the last 2000 years. 

What do you think? I give my answer below. 

image1

On this week’s Power Hour I discussed three huge problems with this cartoon.

  1. It looks only at the side effects of using fossil fuels, not the benefits.
  2. It misrepresents the past.
  3. It misrepresents the future.

You can listen to my analysis here.

Power Hour: The NYT admits climate models have failed, a misleading climate timeline, and more

On this week’s Power Hour, Don, Steffen, and I covered four topics:

Alex