Editors note: With the end of 2023 fast approaching, and with some media outlets already pushing the false idea that 2023 was the “hottest In 125,000 years,” we can be assured that when the final temperature numbers come out in January, the media will uncritically push this story as if it were fact, rather than speculation by a group of climate scientists. Alarmists have been building up to this false year’s-end claim, asserting at various times throughout the year that a particular July day or that the summer, were the hottest on in history, or at least in the last 125,000 years. Claims that Climate Realism thoroughly debunked.
Guest Essay by Paul Homewood via WattsUpWithThat
Just about all of the media have been peddling the “Hottest for 125,000 years” claim, which suggests a very concerted effort by the climate establishment in the run up to COP28.
The claim is self evident and baseless nonsense for a number of good reasons:
- There is no such thing as “a global average temperature.”
- Even now we have very sparse coverage of temperature measurements. Prior to satellites, we had virtually no data outside of the US, Europe and a few other built up areas.
- The temperature record we do have is thoroughly corrupted by UHI, and only dates back to the late 19th Century.
- Natural variations, including ENSO, volcanic activity etc, can easily cause temperature swings of a degree Celsius from year to year, and decade to decade. But historical proxies don’t have the fine resolution to pick these up, they merely give an idea of average temperatures over decades and even centuries. Consequently you cannot compare one year now with the general climate of, say, 2000 years ago.
But forget about all of these theoretical objections, because the climatic evidence we do have is overwhelming, and it tells us that the climate has been much warmer than now for most of the last 10000 years, since the end of the ice age.
Here are ten powerful, incontrovertible pieces of evidence:
1) Greenland
I agree totally we have had a global temperature increase in the 20thC – but an increase from what? ..Probably an increase from the lowest point in the last 10,000 years.
We started to observe meteorology at the coldest point in the last 10,000 years. – Professor Steffensen
As Professor Steffensen explains in the above video, temperatures in Greenland have been much higher than now for most of the last 8000 years.
2) Arctic
Briner et al 2016
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379116300427
Many other studies confirm that the temperature trends found in Greenland ice cores also exist elsewhere around the Arctic. For instance, Briner et al, above. analysed a wide selection of proxies in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, and identified a long running decline in temperatures over the last 3000 years.
They also found that the Greenland ice sheet has grown since since that time.
3) Russia
Summer temperatures were between 2.5 and 7.0C warmer 7000 years ago in northern Russia:
Other studies indicate that temperatures in central Russia were 2C higher in the late-Atlantic period, about 5000 years ago.
4) The Baltic Region
Temperatures were between 1.0 and 3.5C higher 4500 years ago.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-16006-1_2/figures/6
5) Iceland
During the mid-Holocene, some of the present day ice caps in Iceland had completely melted:
.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1571086609013049
Meanwhile, remains of a 3000-year old forest underneath melting Icelandic glaciers confirm the climate used to be much warmer then:
Ancient tree stumps found under Breiðamerkurjökull glacier in Southeast Iceland are confirmed to be roughly 3,000 years old. RÚV reports.
A specialist believes the remarkably well-preserved stumps were part of a massive forest that disappeared after a long period of a warm climate.
https://www.icelandreview.com/news/3000-year-old-trees-excavated-under-glacier/
6) Tree Line Studies
Tree line studies offer strong evidence that temperatures in the White Mountains of California and the Alps were 2 degrees higher than now from 5000 BC to 2200 BC.
HH Lamb: Climate History & The Modern World
Lamb also writes about other tree line studies encompassing the Alps, Carpathians, Rockies, Japan, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa and the Andes. These also show similar results, with a climate that was 2C warmer around 5000 BC.
7) North America
There is ample evidence that Alaskan glaciers were smaller than now in the Middle Ages, easily proven by the remains of forests carbon dated back to then, which are being uncovered as the ice melts.
For instance, the Mendenhall:
There is also evidence that Alaskan glaciers were smaller still prior to 2000 BC, and that most of the glaciers south of 57N were only formed after that time.
HH Lamb wrote:
The rise of world sea level over the last 10 000 years, seen already in fig. 13.27, gives an overall view of the course of deglaciation. It is, however, a trend which must have been lagged on the trend of world temperature in such a way that the highest sea level — which probably occurred around 4000 years ago — should coincide with the end of the period of highest temperature, which reduced the glaciers and ice sheets to their postglacial minimum. It was after 2000–1500 B.c. that most of the present glaciers in the Rocky Mountains south of 57°n were formed ( Matthes 1939) and that major readvance of those in the Alaskan Rockies first took place.
HH Lamb: Climate: Present, Past and Future
8) European Alps
In the same book, Lamb wrote:
And at their subsequent advanced positions — probably around 500 B.C. as well as between A.D. 1650 and 1850 — the glaciers in the Alps regained an extent estimated in the Glockner region at about five times their Bronze Age minimum, when all the smaller ones had disappeared.
This conclusion is backed up by the recent discovery of 4000 year old trees at the edge of a Swiss glacier by the distinguished geologist Dr Christian Schlüchter.
Other research, including the discovery of a Swiss pass, which has been covered by snow for 2000 years, and the exposure of more ancient trees under the Tschierva Glacier in Engadin, in Switzerland, where research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, glaciers were smaller than today, and 7,000 years ago they probably weren’t around at all.
9) South America
Ancient plant beds, radiocarbon dated to 5000 years ago, are being uncovered as the Quelccaya glacier recedes in the Peruvian Andes, according to glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, who also
analysed ice cores from another glacier, the Huascarán in the north-central Andes of Peru, and found:
“ the climate was warmest from 8400 to 5200 years before present, and that it cooled gradually, culminating with the Little Ice Age (200 to 500 years before present).”
Other research from the Missouri Botanical Garden, which studies tree lines in the Andes, came to similar conclusions:
During the period from 7500 yr BP to ca. 3000 yr BP temperatures rose about 2°C more, causing another upward shift in the forest line of about 300-400 m higher than today, and thereby reducing the area occupied by páramo. Finally, at about 2900 yr BP, there was a noticeable lowering of the temperature that marked the last downward movement of the forest and páramo belts to their present-day positions.
And as in Alaska, retreating glaciers in Patagonia have been uncovering the remains of forests, which are carbon dated to the late Middle Ages.
10) New Zealand
https://niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/clivar/pastclimate
Reconstruction of New Zealand’s past climate by NIWA, using a wide variety of proxies,
indicate a warmer climate than now until about 3000 years ago.
NIWA comment:
The warmest conditions of the present cycle occurred between 10,000 and 6,000 B.P with temperatures about 1°C above modern values. This warmer climate was mild, with light winds and lush forests. Speleothems indicate a lowering of temperature after 7,000 B.P, with a resurgence of small glacial events in the Southern Alps at 5,000 B.P.
Similarities between the New Zealand climate changes during the last millennium using tree rings (Cook et al., 2002) has been compared to the Northern Hemisphere Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age (Lamb, 1965).
More direct evidence comes from the Franz Joseph glacier. Historian Brian Fagan described the changes of this glacier in his book “The Little Ice Age”:
In New Zealand the Franz Joseph glacier was “a mere pocket of ice on a frozen snowfield nine centuries ago”…. Then Little Ice Age cooling began and the glacier thrust downslope into the valley below smashing into the great rain forests that flourished there, felling giant trees like matchsticks. By the early 18th Century, Franz Joseph’s face was within 3 km of the Pacific Ocean .
The high tide of glacial advance at Franz Joseph came between the late 17th Century and early 19th Century, just as it did in the European Alps.
This does not directly relate to the early and mid Holocene, but is strong evidence of the LIA and the MWP, which NIWA say was not as warm 3000 years before.
The World Was Hotter
Let’s be absolutely clear.
These events were not “regional” or “transitory”, as Holocene Optimum deniers would like you to believe.
Large scale retreats and advances of glaciers don’t happen as a result of a few years of weather. Neither do advances of tree lines hundreds of feet up mountainsides. The evidence from these events and the likes of ice cores is irrefutable and clearcut.
It is well established from these studies that the Holocene Optimum lasted for thousands of years, during which time there would have been the same sort of climatic cycles we see today, whether short term events such as El Nino, or centuries long ones like the LIA, all bringing warmer and colder intervals. But throughout, the overall climate was still warmer than the current one.
And it is equally apparent that this warmer climate was worldwide. Even where there are no proxies, there is still evidence in places like the Sahara, where the lush climate there a few thousands of years ago is indicative of an expansion of the Tropics resulting from a warmer world.
Anybody who claims that this year is the hottest for 125,000 years is fraudulent.
Yeah, another example of climate hoaxers denying data that is actually useful in debunking yet an absolutely ridiculous claim that we’re hotter than 125,000 years ago! Predictable that these charlatans would state this as eons into the past or delve into future calamities but never deal with present conditions other than to use it as propaganda! When they actually do a comprehensive investigation of there conclusions rather than just spouting outrageous nonsense we might take them seriously! Don’t hold your breath!