Skaters enjoy a frozen canal in Rotterdam during the so-called Little Ice Age in Germany. A new analysis shows the temperature swings of the past 2,000 years were all regional in nature, unlike modern climate change. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Painting by Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove, Circa 1825)

Today’s climate change is unlike any seen in the last 2,000 years, scientists report Wednesday in the journal Nature. New research shows that the civilization-altering warm and cold periods of rec