Climate fit for humans
Hi,
I said this to another commenter -- you're right that the planet has its own cycles and that those cycles are natural for the planet.
What people are usually trying to stop when they talk about mitigating climate change is the transformation of the planet's climate into a climate not suitable for human life and civilization. If the climate does change so much that it is no longer fit for us, then the planet will go on just fine as it has for eons.
So, yes, Hansen is specifically choosing years that don't include all the warming cycles the planet has ever endured. But he's excluding them on purpose -- he focuses on the Holocene era, to find out how the climate that has historically sustained human life is changing.
Laura
