Last week, Reuters reported that European Union scientists are “virtually certain” that the 12 months just passed have been the warmest in 125,000 years. The absurd claim comes to us courtesy of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and has already been echoed by the UN and the World Meteorological Organization.
The C3S report dovetails with a report from Climate Central, a climate research group claiming that the 12-month period between November of 2022 and October 2023 was likely the warmest in human history, with an average global temperature of 1.32 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. C3S reported that October alone was 1.7 degrees Celsius warmer than the October average from 1850-1900, which C3S defines as the pre-industrial era.
So-called climate change, coupled with an El Niño in the Pacific Ocean, has led to the alleged record heat, according to Climate Central.
“The rising frequency and intensity of extreme heat across the U.S. and around the globe is consistent with well-established science on the consequences of carbon pollution — mainly from burning coal, oil, and natural gas,” the Climate Central report asserts.
“The key is this is not normal. These are temperatures we should not be experiencing,” said Andrew Pershing, the vice president for science at Climate Central. “We are only experiencing them because we have put too much carbon dioxide onto the atmosphere.”
“October 2023 has seen exceptional temperature anomalies, following on from four months of global temperature records being obliterated,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.
Burgess freely admits that their temperature data doesn’t go back 125,000 years, but only goes back to 1940. However, “when we combine our data with the IPCC, then we can say that this is the warmest year for the last 125,000 years,” Burgess said.
The IPCC data includes proxy data, such as tree rings, ice core samples, and coral deposits, which some climate scientists use to estimate temperatures from the distant past. In other words, guesses — not actual data.
The news of a warmer planet is nothing but bad if you believe the scientists making the claim.
“The likely impacts of this extra heat are well understood,” said Hannah Cloke, a climate scientist with the University of Reading. “We are already seeing its impact in more violent storms, heavier rains and floods, and more intense, frequent and longer heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.”
Recall that in July, the same group of alarmists were referring to a warm stretch as the “hottest day” ever recorded.
According to Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, that July stretch of warmth was likely the hottest in “at least 100,000 years.”
Now, those claims have transformed into an entire year and the time frame now goes back 125,000 years.
Of course, there are climate realists who disagree with the astounding “hottest year ever” pronouncements.
“Try to imagine what kind of miraculous science makes these headlines make sense?” asked Australian science presenter Jo Nova. “Did the EU team find neolithic newspapers hidden in caves in Turkey? Could they reconstruct temperatures from 10,000 B.C. to 1978 to a tenth of a degree Celsius? And not just Turkish temperatures but ones in Timbuktu and Peru too? Those goat herders needed a satellite program. Perhaps clay pots powered with goat dung?”
Others found the claim equally ridiculous.
“It is absolutely impossible to know whether this year’s temperatures were the hottest in the past 125,000 years or even hotter than average over that time period,” Dr. H. Sterling Burnett, a climate scientist with the Heartland Institute told The New American. “Proxy data, which is all we have to estimate past temperatures, only allow a range of estimated temperatures, not a precise figure, and present figures are biased by their dominance of locations in growing metropolitan areas.”
According to Burnett, the “hottest year ever” claims are nothing less than scientific “malfeasance.”
“This claim is nothing more nor less than one more unverifiable fairy tale propagated to drive progressive policies on climate change which limit freedom but that will do nothing to alter the weather or climate now, 100, or even 1000 years from now,” Burnett added.
In what passes for climate science today, the headline a claim can produce is far more important than any actual science behind the claim. As Burnett points out, there is simply no way to confirm whether this claim has any basis in truth. However, said loudly enough in somber tones, the claim will both enrage and terrify the Greta Thunbergs and Extinction Rebellion protesters of the world.
The climate-change movement does nothing but sell fear, which nefarious politicians use to subjugate the masses.
