<p>The planet has been warming for thousands of years. Human activity has accelerated the warming, but by how much? At some point in the future, without human intervention, the climate will have naturally reached the point it's at today. </p>

<p><strong>As of 2020, by how many years has human activity advanced the climate change clock?</strong></p>

<p>Is there another good measure for Human vs Natural climate change?</p>

<p>This should be something that could be extrapolated from a good chart, but I haven't found a source.</p>

<p>I feel that this is not a duplicate because I'm asking a very specific question regarding the number of years. None of the similar questions or answers address this.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-17T08:45:39.287Z
If you remove anthropogenic climate forcing, the climate would have actually been *cooling* for the last couple of centuries. But by a tiny margin compared to what we've done. The last time CO2 was at current levels, was the middle pliocene (3.6Mya) when sea levels were 25m higher than they are today, and there were forests on Greenland... It is impossible to tell whether we would ever have returned to that state without human involvement.
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-18T09:55:25.233Z
I voted to leave closed because the question is still based on a false premise: the planet has *not* been warming for thousands of years.
Jean-Marie Prival
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-18T18:51:59.500Z
@Jean-MariePrival - Are you saying that there wasn't an ice age that ended about 10,000 years ago? Was the Northern half of the United States not covered in glaciers until that time? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period
Troy Turley
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-18T21:40:07.400Z
We passed the Holocene climatic optimum thousands of years ago, since then the Earth has been gradually cooling. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
Jean-Marie Prival
<climate-change><climate><temperature><ice-age>
Climate change: Human vs Natural
Troy Turley
# Climate change: Human vs Natural

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-01-17)

The planet has been warming for thousands of years. Human activity has accelerated the warming, but by how much? At some point in the future, without human intervention, the climate username_1 have naturally reached the point it's at today.

**As of 2020, by how many years has human activity advanced the climate change clock?**

Is there another good measure for Human vs Natural climate change?

This should be something that could be extrapolated from a good chart, but I haven't found a source.

I feel that this is not a duplicate because I'm asking a very specific question regarding the number of years. None of the similar questions or answers address this.

**Tags:** climate-change, climate, temperature, ice-age

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: If you remove anthropogenic climate forcing, the climate would have actually been *cooling* for the last couple of centuries. But by a tiny margin compared to what we've done. The last time CO2 was at current levels, was the middle pliocene (3.6Mya) when sea levels were 25m higher than they are today, and there were forests on Greenland... It is impossible to tell whether we would ever have returned to that state without human involvement.  
> **username_2**: I voted to leave closed because the question is still based on a false premise: the planet has *not* been warming for thousands of years.  
> **username_0**: @username_2 - Are you saying that there wasn't an ice age that ended about 10,000 years ago? Was the Northern half of the United States not covered in glaciers until that time? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period  
> **username_2**: We passed the Holocene climatic optimum thousands of years ago, since then the Earth has been gradually cooling. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png  

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## 0 answers

