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Comment by lurker458 | Hacker News Reader

One of the predictions was that we'd get stronger heat waves in West Europe. We broke several old records this year. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49100271

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But you've been in a warming trend for millennia in Western Europe -- the Danube and Rhine used to freeze over in the time of Tacitus.

Warming trend vastly accelerated in a relatively short time frame to the point of the long term trend not holding much salience

The Danube and Rhine river froze over in times my parents can remember. A strong contributing factor to why rivers today don’t freeze any more is that we’re using them to cool power plants and similar.

They froze frequently, and this was not something noted in the 18th century, before power plants. You had reindeer in the Black Forest in Caesar's time. Europe was quite a bit colder in historical times.

The current temperature is clearly significantly hotter, and the rate of change is greater,

There has not been a "warming trend for millennia." The temperature rose steadily for about 1000 years since the Roman times, up through the Medieval Warm Period, then cooled steadily until about 1800, and then have shot up recently.

Take a look at the graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

Average temperatures are not that much higher yet. The specific prediction is that there will be more heat waves.

We came out of a little ice age at around 1870. The causes are complex but include a huge amount of volcanic activity over 50 years potentially lower solar output during that time known as the Maunder Minimum. The effects of both on climate hung around but were effectively over by 1950 and we wouldn't expect any further warming since then.

The Maunder Minimum ended in 1715. Ice ages are not things that you "come out of" in a single year. Volcanic activity is not regular.

So your statement "over by 1950 and we wouldn't expect any further warming since then" has no basis.

You'll notice that I didn't we came out of it in a single year. I was saying that the factors that contributed to the Little Ice Age would have stopped having an influence by 1950.

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