Please do not repeat the balderdash we are hearing from climate deniers out there. Of course the global temperature was much higher 50 million years ago, and of course the measuring instruments of the past were nowhere near as precise as those of the present. But guess what: it is not the actual temperature that matters, but rather the rate of change. And the evidence from atmosphere captured in ice cores from the poles, carefully measured by MODERN instruments, shows that the global CO2 level in my lifetime has spiked to twice the level it reached at the high points of fluctuation for the 800 thousand years before I was born! This data correlates precisely with the explosive expansion worldwide of fossil fuel burning to power industrialization. So please--no more denial!