Lost for 30 years in a freezer: The whole of Greenland melted away when CO2 was perfect — consensus broken

Arctic poppy

Photo taken by Ansgar Walk

By Jo Nova

The Experts thought Greenland’s ice has been there for the whole Pleistoscene era, or the last 2.6 million years. It was just another useless consensus, stultifying science — feeding the myth that the climate was perfect until Big Coal screwed it up.

Map of Greenland ice core sites. GISP, DYE 3, Camp Century.

Map adapted from Westoff et al 2022

Finally, 30 years after the famous GISP ice core was hauled out of the Greenland summit, someone has bothered to study the dirt at the bottom and found poppy seeds, willow twigs and insects there, where they were not supposed to be. They discovered a vibrant tundra ecosystem where there was supposed to be an ice-cap. The obvious conclusion is that cavemen didn’t cause it, and that there must be some huge other natural forces at work that we have no clue about. Our climate models didn’t predict this, because CO2 was low then and clearly, the models are hopelessly incomplete. We are babes in the wood on the third rock from the sun.

The captive science PR writers don’t tell us that CO2 might be irrelevant compared to the big mystery forces we don’t understand. Instead they tell us that this means that the Greenland icesheet is more fragile than we realized and could melt again (send us your money!)

No matter what we discover it’s always worse than we thought:

Fossils From The Heart of Greenland Reveal a Greater Threat of Rising Seas

Scientists have discovered plant and insect remains under a two-mile-deep (three km) ice core extracted from the center of the island, providing the clearest proof yet that nearly all of this vast territory was green within the past million years, when atmospheric carbon levels were much lower than today.

Their research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates even greater potential for global sea level rise due to human-caused climate than previously thought.

The stranglehold of government-funded-science meant it took 30 years to do half an hour of research:

The ice core, named GISP2, was drilled in 1993 and although its rock and ice had been studied extensively, nobody had thought to look for fossils in the ’till,’ or the mixed sediment at the bottom.

That’s because until recently the idea that Greenland was ice-free in the recent geologic past seemed too far-fetched.

“Literally, we saw the fossils within the first hour, maybe half hour, of working on it,” lead author Paul Bierman, a professor of environmental science at the University of Vermont, told AFP.

To their amazement, researchers found within this three-inch-layer soil willow wood, spores from spikemoss, fungi, the compound eye of an insect, and a poppy seed – together suggesting a vibrant tundra ecosystem.

The GISP2 site is about as high and central as you can get in Greenland. If the ice was gone there, it was probably gone everywhere.  But the same experts who want us to spend $1,000 billion dollars every year, thought that Greenland was an impenetrable ice-fortress.

In 2016 some scientists figured out the bedrock under the GISP core was only 1.1 million years old, which was considered “controversial” since the ice was supposed to have been solid for 2.6 million years. In 2019 Bierman et al were shocked to find that Camp Century (in the far north) had melted totally around 416,000 years ago.  (That frozen soil was first dug up in the 1960s, so it sat in a Danish freezer for fifty years.) Another ice core at DYE 3 contained the DNA of spruce trees. Obviously Greenland melts, we just don’t know why, when or how often. The researchers best guess is that the ice melted at the summit probably more than 250,000 years ago and probably less than 1.1 million. Maybe it was 416,000 years ago too.

If the whole ice cap melted, the world’s oceans presumably rose the 7 odd meters they are theoretically supposed to rise. There is no denying that  this would be seriously inconvenient today, especially for coastal real estate, but it’s also true to say corals reefs didn’t vanish,  there was no mass extinction or runaway Greenhouse apocalypse either. The Earth didn’t turn into Venus.

The important message here should be that natural climate change could smack us over the head, but we don’t understand the big forces at all. If Greenland’s ice-cap melts again, we need a few decades to prepare. So we need climate models that can actually predict things, not ones that suit politicians and strangle real research for decades.

If Greenland melted 416,000 years ago, why didn’t it melt during the other three warm spikes below? (Graph from the EPICA ice core in Antarctica).

Epica ice core Antarctica. NOAA

Epica ice core Antarctica. NOAA

Photos of the spores, wood and insect eyes that are not supposed to live at the summit of Greenland during an ice age period.

Greenland soil, plants.

GISP2 till and macrofossils found in it: (A) Photo of the angular-clast-rich till section of the GISP2 subglacial core, taken 1994, up core to left (Credit: T. Gow, supplied by D. Meese). (B) Overview of sediment, mostly quartz and fossils. (C) Wood fragment. (D) Vertical orientation typical of GISP2 wood. (E) Wood at higher magnification showing simple pits in lateral vessel wall (1) and distinct simple perforation plate (2), along with the helical thickening typical of GISP2 wood. (F) Bud scale of Salix (willow). (G) Sclerotium of the soil fungus C. geophilum* (H) Insect eye, possibly from a fly*. (I) S. rupestris megaspore. (J) Seed of Papaver sect. Scapiflora. The asterisk shows macrofossil types also found in Camp Century sediment by ref. 5. Wood fragment images are same specimen.

REFERENCE

Bierman, et al (2024) Plant, insect, and fungi fossils under the center of Greenland’s ice sheet are evidence of ice-free times, PNAS, August 5, 2024, 121 (33) e2407465121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2407465121

Christ et al (2021) A multimillion-year-old record of Greenland vegetation and glacial history preserved in sediment beneath 1.4 km of ice at Camp Century, PNAS, March 15, 2021, 118 (13) e2021442118, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.202144211

 

 

10 out of 10 based on 110 ratings

80 comments to Lost for 30 years in a freezer: The whole of Greenland melted away when CO2 was perfect — consensus broken

  • #
    Greg in NZ

    Well, well, well – the things you find at the bottom of a hole… life!

    Next thing you know, your ex-premiers will announce their Covert-1984 ‘actions’ were [cough!] wrong.

    What other surprises are we in for today…

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    • #
      Erasmus

      Or possibly that the entire Watergate affair was a Deep State hit on Nixon. See Tucker Carlson Show today.

      121

  • #
    Lawrie

    It doesn’t matter what is found to be fact the paid off shills in science are determined to keep the lie going simply because too many people will lose their jobs if it doesn’t. Truth no longer matters although it is becoming more obvious by the day that what is currently being peddled is not truth but something that is making the average person much worse off. There are riots in England because the politicians won’t listen to the concerns of the people. There are farmers revolts because the politicians are attempting to destroy them. Medical science is being challenged over their disgusting actions during covid and people are wary of vaccines. Universities are being held to account as non-English speakers gain degrees on the back of one or two Australian students doing the heavy lifting in group assignments. The world is turning and the silent majority is gaining traction.

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    • #

      Yes. and how about some “Truth Telling” about Climate Change for a change.

      The so called Spreadsheet Climate Models with all those rubbery assumptions (and them being completely useless) have never taken the power of our Sun or the orbit of the third rock around our Sun into account.

      Staggering as to the ignorance of these so called “Modelers” and of their complete incompetence.

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      • #
        Bruce

        It has ALWAYS been about having a “solution” in search of a “problem”

        EVERY “global crisis” seems to have “similar fixes”..

        Drastic population reductions, “redistribution” of wealth, massive restrictions on movement and especially on personal liberty,

        Funny, that.

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    • #
      Mike

      Oh so true Lawrie. Well said!

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  • #
    Dave in the States

    Well, that’s rather inconvenient-truth- for the alarmists.

    Correlation busted-again-and again.

    But they keep on-rollin-that run away gravy train.

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    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Reminds me of that fable about a bearded old weirdo in the desert who built a boat because he’d heard the sea level was about to rise…

      And the fable before that.

      And the fable before that one.

      This [profitable industry of fear] has been going on since Adam and Eve discovered their/they/them bellybuttons.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    This will bother the warmists who are what I call staticists who think the climate never changes.

    And Erik the Red was not lying when he called the place Greenland. It wasn’t just to attract settlers, it did have a favourable climate at the time. Erik settled there in 982CE and lived to 1003.

    Note that there appears to be a concerted effort by the Left/warmists to rewrite history and deny the existence of a warm period around the time of Erik the Red and subsequently but other studies demonstrate a warm period around 900 to 1400CE.

    They are trying to deny the existence of the Medieval Warm Period altogether so just alter the data to suit the narrative. This was demonstrated in Mann’s infamous Hockey Stick.

    https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2019/02/study-shows-that-vikings-enjoyed-a-warm-greenland/

    https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/47/3/267/568708/Medieval-warmth-confirmed-at-the-Norse-Eastern?redirectedFrom=fulltext

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    • #
      David Maddison

      https://est.ufba.br/sites/est.ufba.br/files/kim/medievalwarmperiod.pdf

      The Hockey Stick Trick

      Over a period of many decades, several thousand papers were published establishing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from about 900 A.D. to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age (LIA) from about 1300 A.D. to 1915 A.D. as global climate changes. Thus, it came as quite a surprise when Mann et al. (1998) (Fig. 28) concluded that neither the MWP nor the Little Ice Age actually happened on the basis of a tree-ring study and that became the official position of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC 3rd report (Climate Change 2001) then totally ignored the several thousand publications detailing the global climate changes during the MWP and the LIA and used the Mann et al. tree-ring study as the basis for the now famous assertion that “Our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this. Today’s climate pattern has existed throughout the entire history of human civilization.” (Gore, 2007). This claim was used as the main evidence that increasing atmospheric CO2 was causing global warming so, as revealed in the ‘Climategate’ scandal, advocates of the CO2 theory were very concerned about the strength of data that showed the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was warmer than the 20th century and that global warming had occurred naturally, long before atmospheric CO2 began to increase. The contrived elimination of the MWP and Little Ice Age by Mann et al. became known as “the hockey stick” of climate change where the handle of the hockey stick was supposed to represent constant climate until increasing CO2 levels caused global warming, the sharp bend in the lower hockey stick.

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      • #
        Greg in NZ

        Heresy! Unbeliever! Off with his –

        How 1,700 years of Catholicism morphed into Climatechange: be afraid, be very very afraid.

        Who would’ve thought a Hebrew scholar would just make stuff up (and hide all the good bits).

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      • #
        TdeF

        And he was supported by James Hansen from the NASA Rocket Propulsion laboratory, an expert on the atmosphere of Venus, not Earth.

        So close to 457C temperature average (Earth is 15C) and no liquid water, 900F, no oceans and a slow rotation (243 days) which is almost the same as a year (225 earth days) so at 4x the sun strength, one side is pointing to the sun and cooking without relief. But James Hansen remains certain Earth will suffer a similar fate. Very soon, 36 years ago.

        And the US funded UN agreed that politicians can control the world’s weather after all and the IPCC was formed, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. And CO2 driven extreme and rapid Climate Change has not been seriously questioned by the media or the politicians.

        Climate Change is now law in Australia and most Western Democracies. It is not for debate. We are now being robbed blind by devastating Climate Change legislation based on science fiction.

        And ice cores served their purpose. So now they can afford to tell the truth about Greenland, because the truth doesn’t matter any more. Western democracies have legislated our destruction anyway. Australians voted overwhelmingly against Carbon Taxes and we are drowning in them.

        And whether it’s the latest Chinese military pandemic or just good old Climate Change carbon credits cash, the Chinese controlled UN/WHO/IPPC/UNRWA run the place. Even openly starting war with Israel and charging Israel with war crimes for reacting to being slaughtered.

        The problem are the Chinese controlled political bodies worldwide. Including the Democrat party of America. And a whole swathe of politicians like Australia’s Paul Keating and Mitch McConnell in the US Senate who are utterly compromised. Plus most of opportunistic and shallow Hollywood types who really care about the China market for films. Actors lie for a living anyway and most are school dropouts. So they don’t care.

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        • #
          Ross

          Amazing isn’t TdeF? This is a science blog. Yet, a lot of the time the comments morph into a discussion about politics. Because the “science” left the debate of AGW/CC at least 3 decades ago and has turned into politics. The science has also left a lot of other subjects now as well. Too long a list to compile, I’m afraid.

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    • #
      Mike Jonas

      Al Gore unwittingly did the alarmist cause a lot of damage with his “Inconvenient Truth” charts. Michael Mann has produced charts for the Holocene, ignoring all genuine climate scientists, with a completely flat temperature before the blade of the hockey-stick. If Al Gore hadn’t publicised that chart, Michael Mann could have a hockey-stick handle 500,000 years long. Maybe millions. Michael Mann can ignore all genuine climate scientists, but he can’t ignore Al Gore.

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  • #
    Neville

    Big surprise not that Greenland was also warmer during the early Holocene and much warmer during the previous Eemian interglacial.
    The co2 Coalition Scientists have told us that it was 8 C warmer 130 K to 115 K years ago, so none of this data should be a surprise.
    But few Humans around then and certainly zero power stns or ICE vehicles or planes or …..

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  • #
    Observor

    The Lefty/Board The Ark/Green zealots don’t like that Greenland story at all. Too funny.

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  • #
    david

    So, if temperatures suddenly (in geological terms) increased by 5-8 deg C, how long would it take to melt most of Greenland’s ice?
    I would suggest at least 1-200,000 years?
    OMG that leaves me only about 50,000 years to vacate my beach shack!

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    • #
      RickWill

      Greenland melted 400ka. It took less than 2000 years to go from being ice covered to having no ice.

      It is not warmth that causes ice loss but the lack of snow, which requires moisture in the air and that requires warm ocean surfaces.

      Greenland summit is presently gaining altitude and the lower altitudes gaining permanent ice extent. The oceans surrounding it are warm so there is plenty of atmospheric moisture to form snow. Loss of ice occurs when melt exceeds snowfall. Calving at the edges also plays a role in loss of ice.

      400ka when the Greenland ice melted, the northern oceans would have been awash with massive icebergs ensuring the ocean surface remained cool. So snowfall would have been low to non-existent.

      Glaciation starts out with the northern oceans warming up like we see now. Increasing early season snowfall over land north of 40N ike we see now. THe permafrost advancing downward and southward like being observed on Greenland now. Once ice covered, the land temperature plummets and the ocean moisture advection to land increases so the whole process accelerates. The land temperature drops because a lot more of it is covered in permanent ice. Then the ocean level drops so there is increasing temperature difference between ocean and land due to ice on land going up while water level is going down. The process continues until the glaciers start calving enough to cool the ocean surface and the snowfall drops below the snow melt. The recovery from glaciation is rapid. See level will rise as fast as 70mm per year.

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      • #
        TdeF

        You are discussing a cycle, where cold reduces rain/snow fall and that produces warming and v.v. Cycles are forbidden by the bible of Climate Change. Everything is man made. Even if humans have no discernible effect on CO2, it can be argued that we are generating more CO2. So we control the weather. The only thing missing is any idea that there might be other things going on which are vastly more significant or that CO2 is in constant vapour pressure equilibrium with the 98% dissolved in the world’s oceans.

        The fundamental problem is the capture of science and the outlawing of skepticism. So we live in a world of blantantly wrong UN science fiction. And cycles and feedback are forbidden. Anything which happens is the fault of a non compliant government, excluding third world countries and Communist countries of course.

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      • #
        el+gordo

        On the other side of the world it was warm and wet.

        Cuddle Springs in south east Australia ‘around 400,000 years ago, was wetter, DeSantis says, and there was enough greenery for the various herbivores to become somewhat specialized in their diets.’ (Smithsonian)

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Thanks for that outline Rick. It says a lot.

        80

  • #
    Neville

    Here’s the abstract of the MacDonald et al study showing Nth Russia was much warmer than today and boreal forests actually grew to the Arctic coastline during the early Holocene.
    And temps then were 2 c to 7 c warmer than 2024.
    Here’s part of the abstract of the study.

    “Holocene Treeline History and Climate Change Across Northern Eurasia
    G. MacDonald, A. Velichko, +11 authors Valery N. Gattaulin”

    “Abstract Radiocarbon-dated macrofossils are used to document Holocene treeline history across northern Russia (including Siberia). Boreal forest development in this region commenced by 10,000 yr B.P. Over most of Russia, forest advanced to or near the current arctic coastline between 9000 and 7000 yr B.P. and retreated to its present position by between 4000 and 3000 yr B.P. Forest establishment and retreat was roughly synchronous across most of northern Russia. Treeline advance on the Kola Peninsula, however, appears to have occurred later than in other regions. During the period of maximum forest extension, the mean July temperatures along the northern coastline of Russia may have been 2.5° to 7.0°C warmer than modern”.

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  • #
    Forrest Gardener

    Fascinating in a macabre sort of way that the response to facts can be twisted so quickly.

    Fact: Greenland was ice free in recent geological time
    Twist: Imagine how vulnerable it must be to human factors
    With pike: That makes it even more important that plastic cutlery is phased out immediately

    It really is hard to get somebody to understand something when their pay cheque depends on them not understanding.

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    • #
      bobn

      Ive solved the plastic cutlery pollution problem. I put it in the dishwasher with the stainless cutlery and then reuse.

      110

  • #
    GlenM

    So, after several years and many squizzes by scientists and their students they decide to look at the bottom of the core sample. Not an Archimedean “Eureka” as such but a realisation that we should have found this organic layer sooner. Poor stuff AGAIN from our boffins , but you might think that the Penny will drop for some of them that Earth has dramatic natural variations that are not influenced by man and CO2 levels – particularly when they sit at a paltry 250 to 280 ppm. No chance of deductive reasoning with vacuous looks but screams for more money to have another look and drill another hole maybe.

    200

    • #

      And didn’t those Vikings somehow visit Greenland and grow crops. How did they do it with miles of ice above them? The mind bogles.

      150

    • #
      TdeF

      Of course they looked. It just doesn’t matter any more. The Science is now dominant. Facts are irrelevant now that Science Fiction is law without being proven. Climate Hell has been legislated. And we are all paying.

      220

  • #
    Ross

    I’m an alien from some far off galaxy and just happen to be flying past this 3rd rock from the sun. My civilization has mastered space travel by folding space back on itself. I’m just hovering here for a little while so my engines are refueled using cosmic rays. Think I’ll do some observations and report back home. What a weird little planet this is. The dominant life form appears to be 4 wheeled vehicles which contain lizard like life forms. Those lizards look very fragile and indeed quite primitive in comparison to us. And guess what guys? They still haven’t worked out what causes the climate on their planet to change!! Imbeciles! Apparently, they think it’s caused by some colorless, inert minor atmospheric gas based on carbon and in order to reduce it they appear to be destroying the rest of the planet. Think I’ll keep going, this lot are not worth the effort. Wow, look over there, Venus!!

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  • #
    Neville

    While we check the much warmer, earlier interglacials we should never forget that they want the OECD countries to have a much lower standard of living. Plus waste endless trillions of $ and only use toxic, unreliable W & S and destroy our environments for zero change to temp, weather or climate.
    Meanwhile China, India and the NON OECD countries can do as they please and build hundreds more coal fired power stns and also massively increase their armed forces.
    Their ABC and Bloomberg etc tell us it will cost us endless trillions of wasted $ to achieve nothing.

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  • #
    RickWill

    The Experts thought Greenland’s ice has been there for the whole Pleistoscene era, or the last 2.6 million years.

    This is not at all true. It is well known that Greenland melted 400kya. I produced this chart some years ago based on sea level reconstruction. The only way for the sea level to be 12m higher than present is if Greenland melts:
    https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image-57.png?ssl=1

    Dating of Greenland ice established that the oldest sheet ice was 400ka with some pools showing somewhat older .
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/how-old-is-mystery-ice-from-the-base-of-greenlands-ice-sheet/

    So what do these (real) numbers mean? They confirm that the Greenland Ice Sheet didn’t completely melt away during a pair of key warm interglacial periods about 130,000 and 430,000 years ago. At both times, sea level was probably at least six meters higher than it is today, either because the Arctic was several degrees Celsius warmer (130,000 years ago) or because the interglacial period was warm and especially long-lasting (430,000 years ago).

    The oldest ice core dated in Antarctica is 2.7Ma.

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    • #
      Chad

      …from that arsetechnica. Report….

      …… some muddy Dye-3 ice was dated to 210,000 years… in the future. …..

      “in the futire “…?? ..something may be a little off in their modeling !

      50

    • #

      Rick, I’m just repeating what the experts said. 🙂 Don’t tell me Prof Bierman is exaggerating, and the science journalists at ScienceAlert didn’t think to ask a hard question…

      I base my headline on the astonishing admission that this soil sat in a lab freezer for 30 years and no one thought to look at it for half an hour.

      Checkmate for impenetrable ice-fortress theory
      The new work builds on two important recent findings. In 2016, scientists tested bedrock from the same 1993 ice core, using radioactive dating to estimate it could be no more than 1.1 million-years-old.

      Their modeling also showed that if the ice was melted at the GISP2 site, then 90 percent of the rest of Greenland would have been ice-free.

      But the finding was controversial because of a longstanding theory that Greenland was an impenetrable ice fortress for the past several million years.

      Then in 2019, Bierman and an international team reexamined another ice core, this time extracted from the abandoned US military base, Camp Century, near the coast of Greenland in the 1960s.

      They were shocked to learn it contained not just sediment but leaves and moss. More advanced dating techniques available to them helped them constrain the disappearance of that section of ice to 416,000 years ago.

      The discovery of organic matter in the core from near the coast prompted Bierman to go back to the 1993 core to look for similar material – and finding it confirmed unequivocally what scientists had previously inferred through models and calculations.

      “The ice had to be gone, because otherwise there would be no plants, no insects, and no soil fungus,” said Bierman. “Now we know for sure that the ice was gone not just at Camp Century but at GISP2 right at the center of the ice sheet. Now we know the whole ice sheet is vulnerable to melting.”
      https://www.sciencealert.com/fossils-from-the-heart-of-greenland-reveal-a-greater-threat-of-rising-seas

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  • #
    Tony DIQUE

    30 years of AGW nonsense, trillions of dollars spent, all could have been avoided with a 1/2 hour of lab work. Jesus wept. You could not make this shit up.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    When you think about it, the Left’s use of the term “climate change” just acknowledges what the pro-science community already knew, that the climate does change and is documented to have done so numerous times through both geological time and even in the short period of recorded history.

    What is different this time is two things.

    1) A global temperature record which is mostly incomplete and very short since reliable ground-based temperature records of are only really available from North America, Europe and Aust/NZ for about 150 years and much less elsewhere. Tony Heller has documented this. It makes a “global mean temperature” a ridiculous concept. See Figure 1 at https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/29/7/jtech-d-11-00103_1.xml

    2) Weaponisation of minor temperature variations which are essentially meaningless, even if real. And we know weather agencies like Australia’s BOM fraudulently alter historical temperature measurements by the non-scientific and undocumented process of “homogenisation” to fit the Official Narrative. This is documented on this blog.

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  • #
    david

    Rickwill

    Thanks for your comments.

    Would Antarctic ice accumulation / thaw follow much the same pattern as Greenland? I could imagine Antarctic thawing cycles being much longer?

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  • #
    Gee Aye

    Lost for 30 years? How about 1 year

    https://theconversation.com/when-greenland-was-green-ancient-soil-from-beneath-a-mile-of-ice-offers-warnings-for-the-future-209018

    Is about a paper that was published a year ago.

    During the MIS 11 interglacial, Earth was warm and ice sheets were restricted to the high latitudes, a lot like today. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained between 265 and 280 parts per million for about 30,000 years. MIS 11 lasted longer than most interglacials because of the impact of the shape of Earth’s orbit around the sun on solar radiation reaching the Arctic. Over these 30 millennia, that level of carbon dioxide triggered enough warming to melt much of the Greenland’s ice.

    Solved!

    023

  • #
    MichaelB

    “It was just another useless consensus, stultifying science…” Bonus points for using the word stultifying. Perfect!

    stultifying
    /ˈstʌltɪfʌɪɪŋ/
    adjective

    1. tending to stifle enthusiasm, initiative, or freedom of action:
    “the stultifying conformity of provincial life”

    90

  • #
    Frederick Pegler

    Were exactly was Greenland 2.6 million years ago?

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Assuming a typical rate of continental drift of about 2cm per year, it would only be about 52km from its present location.

      I don’t know if that’s relevant to warmists however, because they believe in a static earth.

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      • #
        Greg in NZ

        And magnetic north – where would that have been way back when plants and insects thrived on The Green Land?

        90

    • #
      John Hultquist

      Some researchers think the closing of the Central American Seaway (the ocean gap across the (now) Isthmus of Panama fundamentally changed global ocean circulation. This may have led to the icing of Greenland.
      Maybe, but then what explains the coming and going of the ice?
      Questions without answers are more interesting than answers that cannot be questioned. (something like that, said by Richard Feynman)

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      • #
        el+gordo

        That closure happened around 3 million years bp, so it may not be relevant.

        In the East African Rift Valley researches were astonished to find that climate changes.

        ‘They found out that after hundreds of thousands of years of stability, dramatic shifts occurred beginning about 400,000 years ago—extreme swings occurred between wet and dry periods, lakes shrunk and new types of vegetation periodically replaced large grasslands.

        ‘Geological evidence at Olorgesailie also shows how some 400,000 years ago earthshaking tectonic activity began to reshape the region—segmenting the landscape, raising hills and cliffs, and draining huge lakes—shifts that made the area more sensitive to changes like more variable rainfall.’ (Smithsonian)

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      • #
        el+gordo

        Something astronomical happened 400,000 years bp.

        The Zhurong Mars rover, built and operated by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) was ‘examining dunes on the Utopian Planitia in Mars’s northern hemisphere, the largest recognised impact basin in the solar system with an estimated diameter of 3,300 km.

        ‘CNSA says the shift in prevailing winds took place about 400,000 years ago, coinciding with the end of the last glacial period on the Red Planet.’ (Cosmos)

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  • #
    David Maddison

    I’m still waiting for a member of the anti-science lobby to explain what was wrong with periods of warming such as the Minoan, Egyptian, Roman or Medieval Warm Periods when civilisation thrived, or indeed the present one where civilisational progress has halted or regressed in an attempt to stop real or imagined warming.

    And what was good about periods of cold such as the Little Ice Age?

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  • #

    Jo, you are so good at this sometimes it takes my breath away reading your stuff. Woohoo

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  • #
    Russell

    No mention of this “news” on Their ABC or SBS. Nor have they reported anything about “korea fire garage”.
    Such big stories just being totally ignored by “Australia’s most trusted …”. Who audits these BS claims?
    The ACMA should introduce a new category of “misinformation” targeting official news sources.
    We need to get back to “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.

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    • #
      Dave in the States

      You gotta come here, and a few other places, to get real news on these type of issues. Before the late Rush Limbaugh passed, his radio program replaced the TV news for many Americans.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      I no longer call “news” from Australia’s ABC, SBS or any other Lamestream media “the news” but “the lies”.

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  • #
    Neville

    Again here’s the Eemian SL quote from studies at Wikipedia.
    SLs were 6 to 9 metres higher and obviously much hotter then than today in 2024.
    Perhaps even Antarctica melted at much faster rates during the Eemian? See the end of the quote.

    “Sea level”

    “Last Interglacial erosion surface in a fossil coral reef on Great Inagua, The Bahamas. Foreground shows corals truncated by erosion; behind the geologist is a post-erosion coral pillar which grew on the surface after sea level rose again.[26]
    Sea level at peak was probably 6 to 9 metres (20 to 30 feet) higher than today,[27][28] with Greenland contributing 0.6 to 3.5 m (2.0 to 11.5 ft),[29] thermal expansion and mountain glaciers contributing up to 1 m (3.3 ft),[30] and an uncertain contribution from Antarctica.[31] A 2007 study found evidence that the Greenland ice core site Dye 3 was glaciated during the Last Interglacial,[32] which implies that Greenland could have contributed at most 2 m (6.6 ft) to sea level rise.[33][34] Recent research on marine sediment cores offshore of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet suggest that the sheet melted during the Last Interglacial, and that ocean waters rose as fast as 2.5 meters per century.[35]”

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    Neville

    Here’s the latest talk about Energy from the IPA and features Prof Steven Wilson and FED Coalition minister Ted O’Brien.
    This is a week ago and comes from Adelaide where SA has about 23% of the World’s known reserves of Uranium.
    No doubt about it Energy Security equals National Security.
    This is from the 1st of August 2024.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOosBmllccE

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      Neville

      Sorry Ted O’Brien isn’t a minister yet but is the FED shadow Coalition minister.
      Just my wishful thinking cutting through.

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    Geoff Sherrington

    Is this the origin of the slogan “When you are in a hole, stop digging”? Geoff S

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    exsteelworker

    Not to worry folks, Blackout Bowen’s on the case, and we now see that the wacky left-wing loony US what is a woman are going to vote for Chameleon Kamala on mass, only because she is what is a woman. Goodluck with that climate change alarmists, you’re going to see your way of destroyed before your eye by the Western left. CCP will take over without firing a shot. Bwahaha.

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    Ed Zuiderwijk

    Climate scientists, if there are such people, know bugger all, they haven’t a clue.

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    Philip

    I cant believe they have so little idea when Greenland melted. I presumed they knew all that.

    This is how easy it is to sell climate change.

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    Honk R Smith

    We have crossed into a new post fact reality.
    Contrary to expectations, the Internet Age has facilitated a new culture of superstitious belief.

    Facts become easily obtainable.
    But, counter factual propaganda is also easily proliferated.
    Unfortunately, people prefer the movie fantasy over the less exciting truth.

    Think of the funny Pandemic agitprop … “the Science changed.”

    Of course, the science only ‘changes’ because it was found to be wrong.

    The fact that the alleged elites of our society say and repeat things like “the Science changed”, means we have passed into a post Enlightenment neo-Feudal social and political structure.

    Wielding facts in the current political battle space may be akin to Samurai charging honorably into battle against guns.

    It is a New Dark Age.

    The few remaining traditional honorables, especially those educated in the last century (when science was a method of inquiry and not a religion) … will read and digest information like that offered in this post.
    Only to be accused of being ‘far right’.

    Our children have already left on crusade, never to return.

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    Ruairi

    Perhaps a catastrophic pole shift,
    Caused climate-change, sudden and swift,
    Making Greenland glaciate,
    And frozen regions ablate,
    By a jolt in continental drift.

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    observor

    you’all get into too many particulars. Was it ‘Erik the Red’ who sailed out there? And set up farms because Greenland was “green”. That’s all that needs to be said.

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    […] Scientists have discovered that Greenland was one actually green.  (Hat tip to Jo Nova) […]

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    Ian Mac

    The attached paper on Camp Century has a major problem. In it, the claim is made that when the ice had melted all those years ago Greenland was 440 metres higher than it is today. This raises a very basic question. With 6 sea level cycles occurring over the same period, what happened to the water? Antarctica will, when the ANARE drill their hole to depth in 6 years, they will find a similar result to Camp Century. With no ‘old ice’ at either ends of the Earth where is the water. The known sea level adjustments do not count for anything outside the range of +15 to -140 metres over the life of a Milankovitch cycles.

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    […] Lost for 30 years in a freezer: The whole of Greenland melted away when CO2 was perfect — cons… […]

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