text: A larger point is that the current warming is not unusual. Even greater warming has occurred many times in the last 11,000 years. It has been as much as two degrees warmer than now three times in the last 10,000 years. More important, warming episodes are followed by cooling episodes that can be disastrous for mankind. The long-term trend for the last 3000 years of the Holocene has been cooling. We are slowly sliding into the next long cold at about half a degree C per millennium.