If This Amazing Cartoon Won’t Persuade Science Deniers, Nothing Will

Twenty-two millennia of rock-solid evidence.


This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

We’ve all heard it before: “Yeah, but the climate has ALWAYS changed.”

Oh, really? Well, this timeline of Earth’s average temperature shows just how much we’ve influenced the climate. This epic webcomic was created by Randall Munroe, the artist behind xkcd, one of our favorite places for simplifying complicated scientific concepts.

It’s pretty long, but bear with us.

You made it! Of course the climate has always changed, but we’re now seeing temperatures never experienced before. File away under: Things To Show Climate Denying Relatives on Thanksgiving.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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