A popular scare story running in the media is that the Greenland ice sheet is about to slip its moorings under ferocious and unprecedented Arctic heat and arrive in the reader’s front room any day now (I exaggerate, but not much). Meanwhile back in the scientific world, scientists are scrambling to understand what natural causes lie behind the sudden slow-down in Greenland’s summer warming and ice loss dating back to 2010. The recovery of Arctic summer sea ice has been spectacular of late, with the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reporting that this year’s September minimum was 1.28 million square kilometres higher than the 2012 low point of 3.39 million square kilometres.
Three Japanese climatologists have recently published a paper noting that “frequent occurrence of central Pacific El Niño events has played a key role in the [abrupt] slow-down of Greenland warming and possibly Arctic sea ice loss”. Of course such findings play havoc with the simplistic ‘settled’ science notion that carbon dioxide produced by humans burning fossil fuel is the main, if not only, driver of global temperature warming or cooling – a notion that leads many green activists to claim that the climate will stop changing if society signs on to a ‘Net Zero’ CO2 emissions agenda.
For instance, a bizarre ‘fact check’ on a recently published Daily Sceptic article by Facebook partner Climate Feedback claimed there had been no natural climate change for almost 200 years. It quoted Professor Timothy Osborn of the University of East Anglia, who said: “The warming from the late 1800s to the present is all due to human-caused climate change, because natural factors have changed little since then, and even would have caused a slight cooling over the last 70 years rather than the warming we have observed.”
The Japanese scientists argue that they have been able to show that El Niño natural weather oscillations have driven “atmospheric teleconnection” and shifted the tropical rainfall zone to the north. The higher warming up to 2012 was “accelerated” by heat from the Pacific and a phase in the North Atlantic sea current oscillation that favoured warmer conditions over Greenland and enhanced ice melt. Changes around Greenland can be attributed to “natural variability, rather than anthropogenic forcing”, note the scientists, “although most climate models were unable to reasonably simulate the unforced natural variability over Greenland”.
What the scientists are talking about of course are the huge heat exchanges that regularly change the climate of the Earth. As the Daily Sceptic recently reported, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT noted that the Earth had many climate regimes, and there have been “profound” changes in temperature between the tropics and the polar regions over millennia. Meteorologist William Kininmonth recently argued that the heat exchanges were little understood, but they are one of the great drivers of climate changes. It might be suggested that these gaps in climate knowledge have allowed a view to take hold, now enforced by rigid Net Zero political control, that CO2 is the only driver of climate change.
The Daily Sceptic recently reported on a series of media scare stories about the Greenland ice sheet that followed publication of a paper in Nature Climate Change. Cherry-picking the one-off record melt year of 2012, and assuming it will be a regular occurrence, delivered a “staggering” 78cm of sea level rise between now and 2100. According to the U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, the claims were “false and easily disproved”. In his view they were “just modelled hokum”.
Ice amounts around the Arctic have always been highly cyclical, with periods of substantial melt and freezing common across just a few decades. As we have seen, evidence is starting to build that a recent Arctic low point is in a period of recovery, with a significant trend towards higher surface sea ice becoming apparent from the recent data.
To preserve the fiction that humans are responsible for all recent changes in the climate, it is often argued that the current temperature is the highest for 12,000 years, since the last major ice age started to lift. This is political nonsense-on-stilts, not least because geologists have a phrase for the period when temperatures were much higher than today – the Holocene Thermal Maximum. The latest science paper to show significant higher temperatures comes from a group of geoscientists led by Dr. Katrine Elnegaard Hansen of Aarhus University. According to a précis published by the No Tricks Zone climate site, the Arctic and northern Greenland were 2-4°C warmer than now between 11,700 to 4,500 years ago. Carbon dioxide levels were in the mid 200 parts per million (ppm), compared to today’s 419 ppm, ice-free open waters prevailed, and Greenland warmed 10°C in just 60 years.
Numerous other scientists have discovered equally dramatic temperature changes in the recent past. The graph below was presented by a German broadcaster in 2013 and was compiled from a number of science sources. It shows the overall long-term trend, ending in the current small rebound from the so-called little ice age,
But cyclical changes have also occurred over very short periods. A number of scientists have pointed to an abrupt global multiple degree cooling and warming period that occurred about 8,200 years ago over 150 years. Dr. Takuro Kobashi examined the paleoclimatic records from this time and found a drop of 3°C within two decades, followed by a similar rise over 70 years. Dr. Seren Griffiths of Manchester Met University reported that the event was first identified in Greenland ice cores, but subsequently noted in multiple proxies across Europe. Another abrupt cooling period is said to have occurred about 4,000 years ago.
It is legitimate to conclude from all this under-reported science that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ask us to believe that CO2, and more specifically human-caused CO2, is the only or main climate control thermostat. The evidence suggests that the gas played no such starring role in the previous 11,000 years and more of the paleoclimatic record.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Post Script: This article has been subject to various fact-checks, including this one in Agence France-Presse, this one in Reuters and this one in USA Today. Chris Morrison has responded here and here.
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Yes Chris I look at polar ice extents and the Danish greenland ice mass survey regularly. Surely it is the great ocean cycles which are the drivers and the recent recovery in the Arctic accords with the 60 year (I think) Atlantic Meridional cycle that is now entering the cold phase once again.
Is there a human fingerprint – who knows? But there is little to support the “climate crisis” narrative unless you are motivated to believe in it for political reasons.
“Atlantic Meridional cycle that is now entering the cold phase once again.”
This suggests a cold period. Would that be correct?
Which would also suggest the Davos Deviants knew this and have acted accordingly.
My brother insists, as I understand it, that the Earth is now entering a cooling phase, and that when this happens, it first manifests itself at the (North?) polar regions, and that the lower pressure in one area resulting from this causes higher pressure in other areas (hence, perhaps, the “40 degrees Celsius” (half way up a runway, possibly during a solar flare) in Britain).
With anything coming from supporters of one world government or big multinational corporations – effectively supporters of far left, woke agendas and their own enrichment – I would, as a rule, seek a second opinion. I would just be guessing as to what extent they have come to believe their own lies, but the late, great Christopher Booker seemed to suggest that group think was a real and powerful phenomenon. Any real experts on here care to comment?
I now await a health bomb shell that scientists have known about orthomolecular (i.e. unprofitable) methods to prevent cancer and give strong immunity to viruses for decades…
Thanks Hugh.
I was talking to a young man last year who told me he had a close family relative who worked for AstraZeneca and held a senior position. Said relative informed the young chap that a cure for cancer has been found but Pharma won’t release it because there is no money in it.
Sounds like the big pharma I’ve been observing (although in fact it’s probably worse, they actively smeared laetrile). The amount of people big pharma must have killed…
Now if only Oliver Wright at the Times muppets could get permission to do another investigation on AZ and other big pharma crooks.
Oh, and for the record. King. Charles. Is. Not. Stupid. See my post on the COP27 comments if you’re interested in Carolingian related issues.
Being very wrong about some things – well that’s another matter, of course.
So talking to plants is a sign of intelligence?
Not to mention his belief in homeopathy.
Certainly, it suggests he is an independent thinker.
As I said in my post in the COP27 comments, Philip Day covers the subject in his books. It seems that plants are rather more remarkable than is commonly supposed, and certainly there is evidence that plants can be affected by certain sounds. Of course, this will be rather too much like cryptozoology for some, but as we’ve seen these past few years, non-mainstream views are not necessarily wrong.
Podcast of the Lotus Eaters did a very interesting compare and contrast on the King’s view a short while back. The clip starting at 4.25 particularly illuminating, but downhill from thereon in.
https://rumble.com/v1k23rt-will-charles-iii-be-too-political.html
Nope. Big Horse didn’t stop Big Auto, Big Coal didn’t stop Big Oil, Big Steamship didn’t stop Big Plane.
Thats not how capitalism works. History shows invention/innovation occurs simultaneously to different people in different locations, just someone in particular gets to the patent office first and gets all the publicity and credit.
There’s plenty of capital out there to back someone who discovers a cure for cancer. It’s how big companies inevitable cease to exist, they get fat and lazy and new market entrants steal their lunch, then their dinner.
Even Marx got that big right, if little else, new capital destroys old.
Sorry, that sounds just like the urban legends of cars that run on water, or lightbulbs that don’t fail.
Yup. Anecdotally low sea ice in the 30’s and 40’s. High sea ice in the 60’s and into the satellite era. Then low again in the noughties and 2010’s. Broad brush.
The refusal of global temperatures to comply with the warming narrative has led the Davos adherents to single out every weather event as proof of “climate change”.
Thanks.
A useful and reassuring report. Unfortunately, headlines like (say) “it’s not as bad as we feared” are probably not profitable to the usual suspects. No shortage of hubris in academia these days.
How about “climate scare over, let’s get fracking”? Though I doubt the people who appear to control the Times muppets would allow them to write that headline.
What is often not appreciated, especially by alarmists, is the way that sea ice extent is measured. It is worked out from the area where the ice has a concentration of 15% or more.
To put that quite clearly, if there is 85% of open water then it is included in “ice extent”.
For anyone familiar with weather, they will appreciate that if the wind is blowing towards an area of ice, then it will pack together and the extent of the ice will shrink, and conversely wind from off an area of ice will tend to disperse packed ice over a larger area, pretty much independent of the temperature.
The result is that ice extent is a pretty inaccurate reflection of arctic temperature and an even worse indicator of global temperature.
And sea ice is affected by sea currents, upwelling of water, particularly warm water from sea bed volcanic activity, waves, and wind as well as air temperature.
But climate ‘science’, is the ‘science’ of picking one demonised factor and cooking the data, inventing computer modelled ‘proof’, and using proxies to pin the blame on that single factor excluding the input from multiple others.
That pair of climate scientists perched on an iceberg may look terribly vulnerable, but let me assure you they are doing absolutely fine, and their numbers are increasing. Do not believe this sceptical propaganda.
More facts that will be water off the backs of the climate loons.
‘… this under-reported science that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ask us to believe that CO2, and more specifically human-caused CO2, is the only or main climate control thermostat.’
Leviathan has built so much momentum, evidence is no longer needed. I don’t think it would be stopped even if somebody were able to produce irrefutable evidence to the contrary as it would require all Western Governments, media and the useful idiots to admit they were wrong, and would take away the privilege, status and wealth opportunities for a substantial network of vested interests.
Greenland ice sheet is 2km thick. That’s a lot of mass, a lot of weight. It compresses the land under it, so much of its mass is below sea-level and therefore – ask Archimedes – has displaced an equal mass of water. If the ice melts, the compressed land will rise up so sea levels won’t be much affected.
Even so it would take thousands of years for ice melt to produce a measurable rise in sea levels – the oceans are a very big place. Plus the alleged temperature increase would increase evaporation which rises and because of high atmospheric currents moves over the Antarctic to be deposited and fixed on land as snow and ice. Which is why the Antarctic is gaining ice mass.
Hey Chris, it won’t surprise you, and everyone else, to know that Professor Timothy Osbourn is a ‘reviewer’ for Climate Feedback, so a vested interest in rubbishing other people’s work.
https://climatefeedback.org/reviewers/timothy-osborn/