• ZeroDrek@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m confused, the article says

    average global temperature reached 17.18 degrees Celsius, or 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit

    I must not be understanding something cause to me that’s not very hot.

    • PlatinumPangolin@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Here’s the best graphic I’ve seen for putting the numbers in context: https://xkcd.com/1732/

      It’s slightly out of date so we’re actually at roughly +2 degrees C.

      Basically, from year 0 CE to 1000 CE there was basically no change in average temperature. Then from 1000 CE to 1900 CE temperature actually went down about .5 degrees. Since then, we’ve gone up 2.5 degrees. So the past two thousand years temperature changed a total of .5 degrees down. We’ve increased about 5 times that in the past 100 years.