Climate History 101

In “Mourning for the Earth” (August 2013), Katharine Preston states that “we are the first generation of people who now know that our children’s grandchildren will indeed not walk the same Earth.” Surely this takes a limited view of human history. Our forebears faced far more dramatic changes in climate than even the most extreme of current predictions. A few generations later, our ancestors faced further disruptions as the ice caps melted and the oceans rose far greater than any predictions for the next few hundred years. We perhaps need to exercise caution in considering ourselves as unique.                                

Stephen Carr
Zomba, Malawi