What is the temperature of the Earth *supposed* to be?
IOW, what is the *ideal* temperature for the planet, and while you're at it, show your work explaining how that particular number was derived.
It seems to me that the AGW folks chose temps circa 1850 or so as the gold standard, at least partly (but to me probably mostly) because that's about when decent measurements and record keeping began. Of course this ignores all temperature variations that preceded that.
They're kind like the Amish, who seem to have decided that technology circa 1850 or so is exactly the level of tech that is allowed. Why not technology circa 0AD--if Jesus didn't need the tech, why should the Amish?
If the AGW folks picked temps from about 15000 years ago, we'd *really* be in the dumper right? I mean, we'd have destroyed all that ice-pack covering swaths of North America, sea level would have risen 100ft, and the temp went up what? Like 8 degrees C? Talk about warming!
None of my comments should be construed to mean I think that humans are not contributing to climate change or that I'm fine with pollution. But this is nothing new, either.
Wikipedia: "The Great Oxygenation Event (GOE), also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, Oxygen Revolution, or Great Oxidation, was the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O2) in Earth's atmosphere.[1] Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggest that this major environmental change happened around 2.3 billion years ago (2.3 Ga). Cyanobacteria, which appeared about 200 million years before the GOE,[4] began producing oxygen by photosynthesis. Before the GOE, any free oxygen they produced was chemically captured by dissolved iron or organic matter. The GOE was the point when these oxygen sinks became saturated and could not capture all of the oxygen that was produced by cyanobacterial photosynthesis. After the GOE, the excess free oxygen started to accumulate in the atmosphere.
Free oxygen is toxic to obligate anaerobic organisms, and the rising concentrations may have wiped out most of the Earth's anaerobic inhabitants at the time. Cyanobacteria were therefore responsible for one of the most significant extinction events in Earth's history."