Читать книгу Climate Change For Dummies - Elizabeth May - Страница 68

Over the course of many millions of years, the Earth’s temperature has varied widely. Scientists know that the most recent period of ice ages started about 2 million years ago, and since 800,000 years ago, the planet started into a cycle of an ice age every 100,000 years or so. Currently, the Earth is in an interglacial period — meaning the weather is warm and stable enough that humans can develop and expand societies. Human civilization started at the beginning of this interglacial period about 10,000 years ago. Given that past warm interglacial periods lasted about 10,000 years, on average, scientists would expect the world to be getting cooler, not warmer. In fact, it appears that this cooling was happening between the middle ages and the 19th century (the little ice age), but then came the Industrial Revolution.