This niche within climate science is something I've been interested in for a while. It is only tangentially related to the current policy debate regarding climate change. But I think having some historical perspective on this is actually helpful. Among other things it suggests maybe we are focusing too much on prevention and too little on mitigation. I'm a bit of a climate change fatalist (perhaps informed by the historical record). It's going to happen. It's probably too late to avoid. There is a lot of uncertainty about how much warming we will get and how effective the proposed policy measures will be. Our species has a long history of adapting to climate change.

I hope everyone will enjoy today's reading assignments:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/86470...ion-out-africa

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6314818/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event