# Proof: The climate has always changed — today's warming is not unusual or alarming.

- **Generated**: 2026-03-29
- **Verdict**: PARTIALLY VERIFIED
- **Audit trail**: [proof_audit.md](proof_audit.md) | [proof.py](proof.py)

## Key Findings

- **SC1 (PROVED)**: Yes, Earth's climate has always changed — this is universally accepted and trivially true. Two government sources (NASA, NOAA) confirm it.
- **SC2 (DISPROVED)**: The claim that today's warming is "not unusual" is contradicted by overwhelming evidence. Current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of ice-age recovery warming (B3), at rates unprecedented in at least 2,000 years (B4), and faster than anything in the last 24,000 years (B6). Three independent authoritative sources confirm this.
- **SC3 (UNDETERMINED)**: Whether warming is "alarming" is a normative judgment that depends on values and risk tolerance — it cannot be formally proved or disproved.
- **Overall**: The compound claim fails because SC1 (true) does not logically support SC2 (disproved). The rhetorical structure — "climate has always changed, therefore current change is not unusual" — is a non sequitur.

## Claim Interpretation

**Natural language claim**: "The climate has always changed — today's warming is not unusual or alarming."

This compound claim contains three sub-claims connected by an implied causal inference:

- **SC1**: Earth's climate has changed in the past. Interpreted as: there is documented evidence of past natural climate variability. Threshold: 2 confirmed sources (uncontested fact).
- **SC2**: Today's warming is "not unusual." Interpreted as: the current rate of warming falls within the range of natural variability observed in the paleoclimate record (ice cores, sediments, tree rings). This is evaluated as a **disproof**: if 3+ authoritative sources confirm the rate IS unprecedented, "not unusual" is disproved.
- **SC3**: Today's warming is "not alarming." "Alarming" is a subjective/normative judgment that cannot be formally evaluated.

The claim's rhetorical structure implies that because climate changed naturally in the past (SC1), current change must also be natural and unremarkable (SC2). This is a logical fallacy — past natural changes do not preclude current human-caused changes from being unprecedented in rate.

*Source: proof.py JSON summary*

## Evidence Summary

| ID | Fact | Verified |
|----|------|----------|
| B1 | SC1: NASA — paleoclimate evidence of past changes | Yes |
| B2 | SC1: NOAA — historical temperature record | Yes |
| B3 | SC2: NASA — 10x faster than ice age recovery | Yes |
| B4 | SC2: IPCC AR6 — unprecedented in 2000 years | Yes |
| B5 | SC2: NOAA — 0.20C/decade since 1975 | No (quote not found on page) |
| B6 | SC2: U of Arizona — unprecedented in 24,000 years | Yes |
| A1 | SC1 verified source count | Computed: 2 independent sources confirmed (threshold: 2) |
| A2 | SC2 verified source count (disproof) | Computed: 3 independent sources confirmed current rate is unprecedented (threshold: 3) |

*Source: proof.py JSON summary*

## Proof Logic

### SC1: The climate has always changed

This sub-claim is trivially true and universally accepted. NASA confirms that CO2 from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than natural post-Ice Age sources (B1), implicitly acknowledging past natural CO2 changes. NOAA documents that Earth's temperature has risen by an average of 0.11F per decade since 1850 (B2). Both sources — independent U.S. federal agencies — confirm that climate has varied throughout Earth's history. **SC1 is PROVED.**

### SC2: Today's warming is not unusual

This is the substantive claim, and it is **disproved** by three independently verified authoritative sources:

1. **NASA** states: "Current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age" (B3). This directly contradicts "not unusual" — a 10x acceleration is, by definition, unusual.

2. **IPCC AR6** (the most comprehensive international climate assessment, authored by 234 scientists from 66 countries) states that climate indicators "are changing at rates unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years" (B4). "Unprecedented" is the antonym of "not unusual."

3. **University of Arizona** (based on the Kaufman et al. paleoclimate reconstruction covering 24,000 years) confirms that "the speed of human-caused global warming is faster than anything we've seen in that same time" (B6).

A fourth source, NOAA's specific rate data (0.20C/decade since 1975), could not be quote-verified (B5) but the conclusion does not depend on it — three verified sources independently confirm the disproof. **SC2 is DISPROVED.**

### SC3: Today's warming is not alarming

"Alarming" is a value judgment. Different people, communities, and nations have different risk tolerances and are differentially exposed to climate impacts. While the scientific evidence documents significant impacts (sea level rise, extreme weather, ecosystem disruption), whether these are "alarming" is a normative question outside the scope of formal proof. **SC3 is UNDETERMINED.**

### Logical structure of the compound claim

The claim's rhetorical form is: "X has always happened, therefore the current X is not unusual." This is a non sequitur. Fires have always occurred naturally, but arson is still unusual. Earthquakes occur naturally, but a magnitude-9 earthquake is still unusual. The fact that climate has changed before (SC1 = true) provides no evidence that the current rate is unremarkable (SC2 = disproved).

*Source: author analysis*

## Counter-Evidence Search

Three adversarial searches were conducted:

1. **Peer-reviewed support for "not unusual"**: Searched for studies concluding current warming rates fall within natural variability. Found none in mainstream peer-reviewed climate journals. Climate contrarian arguments exist but lack peer-reviewed support in reputable journals.

2. **Medieval Warm Period / Holocene Thermal Maximum**: Investigated whether past warm periods make current warming less unusual. The Medieval Warm Period was regional (not global) and smaller in magnitude. The Holocene Thermal Maximum was ~0.7C warmer than the 19th century but took thousands of years to develop — the *rate* of current warming (1.3C+ in ~150 years) far exceeds it.

3. **Paleoclimate measurement limitations**: Investigated whether smoothing in paleoclimate records might hide past rapid warming events. The IPCC AR6 assessed this uncertainty and still concluded with "high confidence" that current rates are unprecedented in 2,000 years. Even if past short-term spikes existed, the sustained multi-decadal rate (0.2C/decade for 50+ years) exceeds anything in the record.

*Source: proof.py JSON summary*

## Conclusion

**Verdict: PARTIALLY VERIFIED**

- **SC1 — PROVED**: Earth's climate has indeed changed throughout history. This is trivially true and uncontested (B1, B2 — both verified).
- **SC2 — DISPROVED (with unverified citations)**: The claim that today's warming is "not unusual" is contradicted by NASA (10x faster than post-ice-age warming, B3), IPCC AR6 (unprecedented in 2,000 years, B4), and University of Arizona research (unprecedented in 24,000 years, B6). All three are independently verified. One additional NOAA source (B5) could not be quote-verified, but the conclusion rests on three verified sources and does not depend on it.
- **SC3 — UNDETERMINED**: "Alarming" is a normative judgment that cannot be formally evaluated.

The compound claim fails because SC1's truth does not support SC2's assertion. Past natural climate change is real, but the current rate of warming — roughly 10 times faster than post-ice-age recovery — is unprecedented in at least 2,000-24,000 years of the paleoclimate record. The rhetorical structure of the claim conflates the existence of past change with the normalcy of current change, a logical non sequitur.

Note: 1 citation (B4, Carbon Brief) comes from an unclassified-tier source. However, the quoted text is from the IPCC AR6 report itself; Carbon Brief is merely the host. The disproof does not depend solely on this source.

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Generated by [proof-engine](https://github.com/yaniv-golan/proof-engine) v1.2.0 on 2026-03-29.
