Important evidence has emerged showing summer temperatures in the high Alps were up to 7°C higher between 4,000 BC and around AD 700. Archaeologists in the Austrian Alps have uncovered remarkable remains that suggest European bison were able to feed at much higher altitudes than today, a process, they note, that could only happen if the average summer temperature was at least 3-6°C higher. Even more remarkable is the discovery of pollens on animal remains that indicate a climate approximately 4-7°C warmer.
The promotion of the net-Zero political agenda often ignores findings showing higher temperatures in the recent Holocene past as the Earth rapidly sprang out of an ice age 12,000 years ago. Typical comments come from a London-based educational charity Climate Science that runs school climate clubs, and is ‘partnered’ with a number of wealthy green activist foundations. It noted recently that changes in temperature “were very gradual” with average global temperatures not changing by more than ~0.5°C over the past 10,000 years. In literature distributed to school children, it claims that the rise of 1.1°C since 1880 would have taken “thousands to millions of years” absent man-made carbon emissions. Such explanations of course sidestep awkward questions about the claimed dominant role of carbon dioxide in warming the climate of the planet. Carbon dioxide levels were lower at the start of the Holocene than they are today.
The Austrian findings confirm other evidence that suggests significant global warming was a feature of the recent past across the planet. Two studies reported in the Daily Sceptic point to similar higher temperatures. The first is said to show that it was warm enough 8,000 to 5,000 years ago for the plant Ceratopteris to have grown at 40°N in northern China. These days the plant’s limit is 34°N, suggesting that winter temperatures in the past were 7.7°C higher than today. Another warmth threshold species study argued that the Arctic Svalbard needed to have been 6°C warmer than today during the early Holocene. That’s because 9,000 years ago, molluscs survived 1,000km north of where they are currently found.
The bison remains discovered recently in the eastern Austrian Alps were found at elevations between 1,440 and 1,923 metres. European bison lived in deciduous or mixed deciduous-coniferous forests. In particular, deciduous plants are required in their diets. In the Alps today, bison would prefer mixed oak or mixed beech-fir forests. The bison remains found were all in the subalpine to alpine zone. From this, state the archaeologists, it can be concluded that the beech limit, but also the forest line, during the period 4,000 BC to AD 700 was much higher “and the average summer temperature had to be at least 3-6°C higher”.
Even more remarkable, continue the authors, was the discovery of pollens belonging to alder, oak and linden trees. They noted that the oak boundary today lies between 400 and 800 metres in the northern Alpine Alps. Oaks at an altitude of 1,450 metres around 2,000 years ago indicate a climate between 4-7°C warmer than today. The authors also refer to recent paleo research of stone pines that is said to support this climatological interpretation.
In fact, this evidence-based interpretation would suggest that the Roman Warming Period of the time was even hotter than is generally thought. This should not be a surprise since the planet has seen countless significant temperature rises and falls in the past. Many of these are being downplayed by climate activists as they seek to promote a command-and-control net-Zero agenda. This rests on the increasingly improbable assumption that current temperature movements are mostly, if not all, the result of human activities.
Far from being unprecedented, there is growing evidence that similar changes in temperature are ubiquitous across paleoclimatic history stretching back 300 million years to the Jurassic era. And in the recent past, two American geologists recently found that over half the Arctic’s glaciers and ice caps that exist today did not exist or were smaller 10,000 to 3,000 years ago. At the time, atmospheric CO2 ranged between 260 to 270 ppm, compared to the current 410 ppm. At the peak of this interglacial Arctic warming, temperatures were noted to be several degrees warmer than today. Change in the size of glaciers and ice caps over the last few centuries “is but a partial return to a former period of much greater warmth”, the geologists stated.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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These Austrians just aren’t the right kind of scientist!
We need “scientists” with climate models that show frogs farting a semi tone higher by 2100 because of human activities…..”We must act to keep frogs farting in F major”
Fact checkers have assessed this article, and declared it Heresy.
Natural climate change is real and happens all the time. If humans affect climate at all it generally for the better. CO2 is fertiliser.
Records of temperature taken through proxy measurements, that is things in nature affected by past temperatures that leave a trace like gas ratios in ice cores, boreholes, lake sediments and so on, offer a convenient grey area to exploit in terms of temporal resolution. Any spikes or faster changes in temperature of less than hundreds, or sometimes thousands of years are often naturally smoothed out. Through the usual process of cherry picking and combining this data, past climate can be presented as being far more ‘stable’ around a lower range of temperatures than it actually was. Likely similar for CO2 and isotope ratio measurements.
Researchers can then take these measurements, and with the smoothing already done, claim truthfully ‘the data says this’, ignoring that the data isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of history, especially when further averaged and statistically combined. The proxy data viewed individually with a degree of common sense can give useful clues as to what might have happened in the past. Commonly though, academics feed it into other studies as metadata, laundering massive degrees of unknown uncertainty into obscurity to generate absurdly overreaching ‘reconstructions’ of past climates spanning thousands of years. Combined in the right way, they can make these reconstructions tell any story they like, and most importantly, researchers can believe those stories themselves.
Of course, physical evidence of the sort mentioned in the article is just handwaved away as regional anomalies, or not acknowledged in the first place. Gatekeeping at more established journals would ensure the Austrian Alps study would never see the light of day.
The two planks of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis are that recent warming is unprecedented in degree and speed, and that its consequences will be disastrous. There was enough evidence to refute the former claim long before this monomania even became a thing.
Not only is net zero complete nonsense, it is extremely dangerous complete nonsense.
Germany based its economy on cheap Russian gas. How did that work out for them?
‘China holds a preeminent position in copper smelting (47%), refining (42%), and usage (54%), in addition to its sizeable position in production, making it the epicenter of world copper.’
‘Continued trade tensions and other forms of competition between the United States and China could affect the copper market going forward. Supply chain resilience has emerged as a strategic imperative’
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-insights/the-economic-transformation-what-would-change-in-the-net-zero-transition
Copper is the only material suitable for transmitting electricity at user friendly voltages.
So, guess what, net zero isn’t going to happen.
But, surprise, surprise, our current politicians, leaders, just haven’t thought that through yet.
Our continuing changing climate and variable weather has seemingly escaped the notice of politicians deluded enough to believe it is fixed and only CO2 can change it.
I prefer to eat food and breathe oxygen, both products of the use of CO2 by plants.
Whoever allowed this article should be sent to the climate change gulag. There will be a very large carpet at BBC studios where all of this type of information will get swept under. Squirming alarmist settled science people cannot bear it. ———They will be like that robot in “Lost in Space” who cannot process the information and grinds to a halt with sparks flying out of it ——-“Renewables are now cheaper than coal” “Renewables are now cheaper than coal” “Renewables are now cheaper tha……………FZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz