Abrupt changes in global temperatures are commonplace throughout the climate record. Movements as high as 5-10°C have been recorded over periods of just a few years, and these compare with the 1.1°C warming seen today that dates back to the early 19th century. Of course, these changes are well known, but they have been downplayed of late as Net Zero political activists proclaim that the climate is breaking down owing to human emissions.
Professor Mark Maslin is a regular broadcaster on the so-called climate emergency. In October 2021, he tweeted: “The climate disaster is here. Earth is already becoming unliveable.” In 2019, he responded to an Australian think tank report stating that climate change could bring about the end of civilisation as we know it, by stating: “Maybe, just may[be], it is time for our politicians to be worried and start to act to avoid the scenarios painted so vividly.” In 2018, Maslin was one of a number of influential eco-activists who signed a letter to the Guardian saying that they would no longer “lend their credibility” by debating climate change scepticism.
In 1999, his language was more measured. In a paper he co-wrote on “sudden climate transitions”, he said: “All the evidence indicates that most long-term climate change occurs in sudden jumps rather than incremental change… the tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most surprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years.” He went on to add that some, and possibly most, large climate changes involving movements of several degrees centigrade occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, “and perhaps even a few years”.
On the basis of what he said then, it could be argued that the recent rise over nearly 200 years of just over 1°C from a prior 500 year cooling period, is hardly evidence of a climate emergency. Let us examine the record further.

The recent Watt’s Up With That? essay winner, “Is there really a climate crisis?” reproduced the above graph above from the Utah Geological Survey showing the cycle of glacial and interglacial cycles. The temperature change on the left refers to Antarctica ice cores and not global averages. Dramatic averaged changes up to 20°F (11°C) can been seen across the last 450,000 years. As the essay noted, the current inter-glacial is about 8°F (4.4°C) degrees cooler than the maximum temperature of the one preceding it.

This graph was presented by the German broadcaster ARD in 2013 and uses scientific data. It clearly shows the periods of warming and cooling that have occurred in the recent past, following the lifting of the last glacial period 11,000 years ago. A significant warming occurred 8,000 years ago, with temperatures much higher than today. Temperatures then dropped 3°C, only to rise by a similar amount in the subsequent significant warm period. The Roman warming saw grapes being grown in England as far north as Lincolnshire, while the Medieval warming was followed by the little ice age, when the River Thames froze during winter. The current – some might say, welcome – warming might have a little way to go, but it seems to lack the rate of ascent seen in the first two examples.
It is likely that our old friend Professor Maslin might disagree. Back in 1999, he was working out of the Geography Department at Imperial College. Now promoted to Professor of Earth Systems Science, he suggests we may have kicked off the sixth mass extinction on Earth, “and the global climate is warming so fast we have delayed the next ice age”. In his view, the Anthropocene – activist-speak for the renamed Holocene era – began with European colonisation and mass slavery. The origins of racism and climate emergency “share common causes”, he thinks.
Let us return to the science. Over the last few decades, scientists have examined ice core records in the Arctic and Antarctica and found numerous examples of sharp, short-term temperature change. No substantive evidence has been found linking temperature change to varying levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The No Tricks Zone climate site has compiled a number of significant changes. Numerous citations are listed here. For instance, Dr Ruza Ivanovic of Leeds University records a time 14,500 years ago when temperatures in the Northern hemisphere rose by 4-5°C in just a few decades.
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 and found a drop around 3°C within two decades, followed by a similar rise over 70 years. During this period, it is noted CO2 levels remained the same. Historian 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.
Looking further back into the geological record, temperatures rose dozens of times by up to 10°C within decades between 80,000 and 20,000 years ago. These are known as DO events and are named after the paleoclimatologists Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger. During the last glacial, temperatures would rise by multiple degrees about every 1,500 years. Physics professor Zhi-Gang Shao of South China Normal University, states that DO events are part of the natural variability and are not externally triggered.
Dramatic temperature rises and falls are common in the climate record. Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott at the School of Oriental and African Studies is a noted climate sceptic. He argues that the idea of climate stability is an oxymoron:
Opponents of global warming are often snidely referred to as ‘climate change deniers’; precisely the opposite is true. Those who question the myth of global warming are passionate believers in climate change – it is the global warmers who deny that climate change is the norm.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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The fallacy that the planet and its climate exists for our sake, and that its current state is ‘optimal’ and deserving of our efforts to maintain it as such, demonstrates the height of human arrogance.
Do you mean the height of human ignorance
Both, I’d say.
.I find it odd that a bunch of committed environmentalists, who want to save trees, should aim at dropping CO2 to the ‘pre-industrial level’ of 280ppm.
Which will put a major strain on all plant life…
How major a strain?
Quote some facts on this.
Oh, about this much he said, holding his hands apart.
Never wondered why people pump co2 into their greenhouses/aquariums?
anyway, here you go:
There’s at least one tree on here suffering from a lack of CO2.
Don’t tell climate Genius Al Gore – it might be an ‘inconvenient truth’.
Apart from the ones that can no longer grow, due to drought etc.
And evidence please? Obviously you’ve got your deserts, semi-deserts, artic regions.
We all await an evidenced response.
Wrong as usual.
As CO2 levels rise trees require less water due to the stomata have to stay open for shorter periods so less water is lost.
I’m sure he’d be happy to, just following you posting your first fact ever on this site.
This site seems to be an inappropriate place for facts.
This site? I think you mean your brain.
With regard to climate science, it seems you wouldn’t recognise a fact if it bit you on your snout.
Plants consume CO2 when photosynthesising to generate energy to grow.
CO2 is plant food.
before life on earth the atmosphere was overwhelmingly composed of CO2, algae, plants and anything else that can photosynthesise changed the atmospheric composition over billions of years to the tiny amounts of co2 we have now.
you can google “early earth atmospheric composition” and find out for yourself.
I learnt about photosynthesis in infant school.
id consider knowledge of how plants make their energy to be elementary science, in the same league as adding water to something makes it wet.
not knowing that co2 is plant food is probably why the young are all get up about this.
”Fake invisible catastrophes and threats of doom” by Dr Patrick Moore.
There – have a read. That should inform you.
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It’s pretty obvious from the charts, that 250,000 years ago and every 100 thousand odd years before that, humans existed with a vast industrial polluting civilisation that caused their manmade climate warming and caused catastrophic events that wiped any traces of their existence off the face of the planet.
Any parent knows that ‘because I say its so’ is the mark of a lost argument.
Also if I might be so bold, can I mention that there is no money in telling the truth on this or many other subjects.
Off subject
Under the terms of the Online Safety Bill you are not allowed to tell anyone about the below article
‘Incredible’ teenager died from blood clot after receiving AstraZeneca Covid jab – North Wales Live (dailypost.co.uk)
I would like to know why her life doesn’t matter; why charges have not been brought.
I’m not even sure I believe there’s such a thing as ‘the climate’
There isn’t. It was a convenient term to describe regional weather variations to schoolchildren.
What alarmists mean when they refer to climate is temperature change, they are just too stupid to realise that.
They are ‘just too stupid’ – period. And they are not alone in this sad crowded little Island.
No CO2 connection – no need for net zero. Keep chipping away, Mr Morrison.
No point in chipping away… he’s only talking to a handful of deniers.
They are already on his side and there is no cogent argument put forward to deny the reality of climate change. Good enough for you lot, but not for sensible folks.
Which reality is that? the one represented by the first assessment by the IPCC, or the second, or the third …….. We are now on the sixth now and they still haven’t got it right. Good to know the science is settled.
Hello tree. CO2 is your food. More CO2, deserts shrink, record crops, fewer starve. Try https://notrickszone.com/2022/03/19/higher-co2-concentrations-mean-better-plant-water-use-enhanced-photosynthesis-expanding-sahel/
plenty more where that came from.
You’ve ended up on the wrong website again. Try http://www.bbc.co.uk – you’ll find all sorts of interesting news and lifestyle articles that will satisfy your need for establishment viewpoints. Wonderful recipes too, happy browsing!
Still waiting for one of you to make a cogent argument. Looks like it will be a long wait.
It’s http://www.bbc.co.uk; there’s a menu bar at the top where you can access all the main stories and the recipes are under Food. There’s Have Your Say too if you’re interested, you can share ideas with like-minded members of the public who I think will really enjoy your commentary.
Your hypothesis, it’s on you to provide evidence. That’s called science, by the way.
No one’s denying the reality of climate change we’re just questioning the claim that a) the anthropogenic signature has been detected b) that increased CO2 is the cause of global warming c) that a warming of the planet will end life as we know it. So Mr. Tree, what evidence have you got that you can share?
I don’t know a single person who denies the climate, or even that it’s changing.
Running round with your hair on fire screaming ‘we’re all doomed’ isn’t science.
Bring something meaningful to the conversation.
Is there anyone quite so blind and obtuse as this person “Tree” who will not acknowledge that there have been periods of much more intense warming and cooling long before man-made emissions? Carbon dioxide may play some small part today but current warming is nothing like we have had in the past. I have looked down from the hills above Harlech in North Wales and seen the remnants of terraces where vines grew freely during the Roman warm period. And, trudging through a rank and miserable bog above Machynlleth, I was amazed to be told by an archaeologist in our hiking party that we were standing in part of a pre-Roman kingdom, where digs had shown it was once a land flowing in milk and honey whose people created dazzling artefacts. “Tree”? He or she is barking up the wrong one. More to be pitied for blind ignorance than laughed at.for sheer folly.
Was anyone around to witness any of these very warm periods of time?
Were they trying to grow crops to feed billions of people.
Using excessive timeframe trends to argue against real trends now seems to be standard denier tactics. Doesn’t stop it being stupid.
You have confirmed to me that no one should take you seriously. You ask did anyone witness these warm periods of time. The vine terraces speak for themselves to anyone with half an ounce of common sense. It was t hot enough for people to grow grapes, for goodness sake. And of course I explained that archaeological digs have attested to the bogs above Machynlleth once having been rich agricultural land capable of supporting a vibrant culture. With people like your good self around it is no wonder we have had two years of dreadful collateral damage from the Covid lockdowns. The warming psychosis echoes the similar Covid fear, panic and blindness.
http://www.bbc.co.uk
I’m sure someone must have around in those days, though I’ve never met one. Should I then conclude that they didn’t exist?
Meanwhile, focussing obsessively on ridiculously short timeframe trends with no historical context seems to be standard alarmist tactics. Doesn’t stop it being stupid, though.
Take a look at the wholly unrealistic and clearly stupid temperature projection used by Al Gore.
Using miniscule timeframes is standard climate panicker tactics. Doesn’t stop it being stupid
You’ll find all sorts of sensible folks in the Have Your Say section on the BBC website. With your way with words, you’ll get tonnes of

Good luck!
Use of the word ‘denier’ betrays your ignorance of both science and reality.
Climate Change ….
Another attempt to deny the undeniable.
DS keeps doing coming up with this selective garbage and the readers just buy it.
They are duty bound to oppose anything that is an accepted truth.
So just publish a dodgy article and let their ignorance and preconceptions to the rest.
If you tilt the graph it can agree with your version of reality. It’s all the rage with the modelling community these days.
Your epistemological and psychoanalytical sense making is too advanced for us, tree
. What are we buying?
Try coming up with something yourself to convince us all the planet is warming catastrophically.
You see.. making things up isn’t for me.
You are pushing a large gas-bag of CO2 uphill!
Where are your objective facts and how do you differentiate them from your hysteria??
Look there are 30 such idiots with their downward thumbs.
The BBC has an excellent Climate Crisis section I think you’d really enjoy. Up to date reporting of the myriad impacts extreme weather is having around the world. Sobering stuff ..
Do you think you are funny?
You clearly think you’re clever, but I’ve seen no empirical evidence of that either.
Deny the undeniable.
Accepted truth.
I think the ignorance and preconconceptions are clearly yours.
Look up up logical fallacies, first formalised by Aristotle 2500 years ago.
Though I haven’t met him either, so he probably didn’t exist.
“don’t worry the next ice age in 50000 years should cool us down”
You know what they say, make hay while the sun shines.
Gates wants to block out the sun – the giver of life. – with dust
That fugures.
Gates: a truly evil being.
And this is why it’s vital that Nigel Farage and other leading figures opposing the carbon madness stop giving credence to the man-made CO2 threat.
AGW is the great deception employed by the Reset Gang to crush working and middle class oiks.
Agreed. Farage and Tice hit the easy target of Net Zero, but back away from disputing the “settled” science around CO2. Politics, eh.
Defeat NetZero and ‘climate change’ is defeated.
Get Johnson out of Number Ten and this increasingly rotten Tory Party is defeated!
Surprised that you would prefer Labour.
There is no such thing as ‘settled science’ or else the sun would still be going around the earth as a matter of “scientific fact”
F=MA
P=V^2/R
What’s wrong with these.
Got it in one!
I’m getting a strong feeling of deja vu with these climate articles. Even when preaching to the choir you might want to mix up the parables a bit.
Have you listened to the BBC or read the Guardian lately?
What politicians say: it’s vital that we massively reduce emissions.
What politicians do: spend 25 years rapidly increasing the population through mass immigration of people from countries where per capita emissions are much, often very, very much, lower. With Channel -crossers, people from Hong Kong, Ukrainians and “Ukrainians”, the current government seems determined to achieve new records.
British passport holders from Hong Kong, of which there are many, by definition, are British and entitled to come here.
BBC, 1 February 2021
“British National Overseas (BNO) citizenship is a type of British nationality created in 1985 that people in Hong Kong could apply for before the 1997 handover to China to retain a link with the UK.
The lifelong status, which cannot be passed down to family members, did not give holders any special rights.
It meant only they could visit the UK for six months without a visa.
But the new system, in place from 31 January 2021, allows these BNO citizens and their close family to apply for two periods of five years to live and work in the UK.
After the first five years, they are able to choose to apply for indefinite leave to remain, which means an individual can live and work without applying for a visa.
And after one year of this status, individuals are able to apply for British citizenship.”
That’s just your racism talking.
That’s just your drooling imbecility talking.
Bad News, everyone.
I remember watching this lawyer testify to Reiner Fuellmich’s Coronavirus Committee.
She has been arrested
One of the attorneys assisting Reiner Fuelmich in proving world leaders have committed crimes against humanity in the name of Covid-19, has been arrested in France on suspicion of terrorism and treason.
Virginie de Araujo Recchia, a French attorney living in France who is participating in the work of the Citizen Jury with Reiner Fuellmich, was arrested in her home at dawn on March 22nd in front of her children. The arrest comes three weeks before ahead of the French presidential elections.
Fuellmich’s team have allegedly been informed the charges involve counterterrorism and possibly treason
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/24/fuelmich-lawyer-arrested-treason-for-exposing-covid-fraud/
https://www.conspiracywatch.info/virginie-de-araujo-recchia
https://archive.ph/Ed8es
An interesting article, thank you. It’s such a shame our cloth-eared, brain-dead political leaders ignore facts and science and make policy on the advice of soothsayers.
A sigh of Relief At last British joins lists are being red pilled and finding the courage ( the balls ) to write the truth about this climate fraud , the likes of pierce Corbyn, Vernon Coleman & Tony Heller has been saying this for donkeys ( forgive the spelling ) .
Yet another dismissal of the climate change scam. However, one of the main benefits to the globalists and their minions, such as Boris, is to impoverish normal people whilst building their own wealth and exercising a truly Orwellian level of control over us. We are at war with them and we simply have to win, whatever it takes, for the benefit of our descendants. Of course “climate change” is only one of their weapons…
Those four glacials/interglacials. Turning points top and bottom roughly align. Some sort of natural governor at work. Overlay CO2, and it peaked at, what, 280ppm? Not much doom-loop runaway catastrophic global warming climate change. And now CO2 is over 400ppm, shouldn’t temperature be off the scale?
It’s logical that there is a natural relationship between the two, in as much as when it’s really frozen, the number of plants that extract CO2 is bound to be lower. Apart from the temperature and lack of available water, low carbon levels in the air would also inhibit the growth of plants. A bit like turning down the heat and slowing the clock, as it were.
Chris, excellent acerbic piece, with a great counter-riposte at the end.
There are plots of (estimated) temperature going back 500m years, also showing CO2, proving that rises and CO2 are never tethered, the latter mechanistically driving the former – as we are currently forced to believe.
I was very depressed to watch Steve Baker on a video saying that the chance to counter the narrative that “carbon” is responsible for rising temperature, and that a minute rise in one inevitably meant a rise in the other, was lost. That train has left the station he said.
Thank for your generous comment. It’s the same with Farage and Tice. They want a Net Zero referendum but seem to accept that we need to reduce CO2 emissions. You can’t have both, since Net Zero is a logical solution if you think the planet faces an existential threat from CO2. It’s just politicians playing their usual games.