Scrap Net Zero: Dramatic New Ice Core Evidence Shows Current Century Warming Common Throughout the Last 400,000 Years

From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

by Chris Morrison

Lies, disinformation and fictional accounting are the order of the day as a desperate hard-Left UK government, aided by its pet Climate Change Committee, tries to keep its impossible Net Zero controlling agenda intact. The bedrock unproven science claims surround the suggestion that recent limited global warming presents an existential threat to the planet. Statistics are routinely tortured to produce claims of up to 1.7°C warming from the pre-industrial age, notable as reported in a recent silly ‘Trump’s brave new world’ article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph. In fact, temperatures have only risen by around 1.1°C over the last 100 years. Moving away from the tortured stats measured over a few cherry-picked months, it has recently been discovered from ice core records that rises of 1.1°C in the current interglacial, which started about 20,000 years ago, occurred in about one in six centuries.

Moreover, similar, although less frequent, temperature rises appear in earlier periods going back 150,000 years. The frequency here was around one in six to one in 20 centuries. Of further interest was the discovery that these routine rises became rarer before this date. None of these findings suggest that current warming is either unusual or solely caused by humans burning hydrocarbons. Needless to say, the findings will be ignored – as is most other inconvenient palaeo evidence – by climate headbangers and political activists prepared to fib about the climate and waste trillions of pounds on their command-and-control Net Zero fantasy.

In the meantime, we can all laugh at one of Damian Carrington’s recent beauties published in the Guardian, headlined: “Point of no return: a hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ gets closer, scientists say”.

Not yet in the rapidly pauperising UK, but in many others parts of the world, Net Zero is dead or entering its death throes. In addition, the 30-year ‘emergency’ around ‘settled’ climate science, with its political orders not to question scientific opinions, is being seen for the scam it is. Even in the UK, long gone are the days when this piffle from BBC presenter Jeremy Vine could be tweeted, seemingly with a straight face. 

In so many ways, this ludicrous tweet sums up the dumbing down of education over decades. This allowed climate psychosis to take general hold, with a school-skipping doom goblin child meeting a famous TV voice over-artist to the accompaniment of chirping praise from another UK State broadcasting presenter.

Climate models, which are ultimately responsible for all the Attenborough/Thunberg et al ‘tipping point’ nonsense that drives the mainstream settled narrative, are almost invariably wrong in their conclusions. Decades of failed predictions confirm the fact that they cannot realistically model a chaotic climate. Knowledge of the role of clouds, the Sun and even ocean and air currents is too basic to be effectively modelled. Using these models should come with a warning that any human involvement in changes in the climate cannot be distinguished from natural variation. Computer-generated claims to be able to attribute individual weather events to human involvement should be supplied with a picture of the late Tommy ‘Just Like That’ Cooper, a great comedic conjuror famous for wearing a Fez and waving a magic wand.

It is natural variation that the headbangers try to ignore. Only then can they demonise recent gentle global warming and spin the lie that collectivist action can stop the weather. This is why this latest temperature paper is important, and why it will be ignored in the mainstream. It would be impossible to impose a Marxist wet dream costing trillions of pounds and involving horrendous lifestyle changes if it became generally known that the recent rise in temperature was common throughout the last 200,000 years.

Written by the Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Kingston University Les Hatton, the paper analyses publicly-available temperature information going back around 420,000 years from the Epica-Vostok Antarctica ice core dataset. It accepts that the data do not provide a global figure, which it is noted is a statistical amalgam with many assumptions and numerous proxies. The more cynical might note here that current global temperature datasets contain a great deal of ‘junk’ unnatural heat measurements, and are subject to considerable suspicious retrospective adjustments. The author notes that the Vostok ice core is a ”pure” record since it is based on a single location in a consistent manner over a long period. Again, sceptics might welcome the lack of measurements next to airport runways, solar farms and glass-clad high-rise buildings.

Professor Hatton has some interesting general comments about temperature, noting that interglacial peaks starting 400,000 years ago appear to be getting hotter. The interglacials are followed by ice ages and these seem to be getting colder. Carbon dioxide levels do not seem to play a large part in all this natural variation as the graph below going back 200,000 years clearly shows. In some periods, the red temperature line moves in a different direction to the blue CO2 marker.

Carbon dioxide levels in this dataset vary between 170 parts per million (ppm) and 280 ppm. If the level had fallen below 150 ppm, photosynthesis would have stopped and an almost certain mass extinction of land-based life would have occurred. Hatton observes that in 556 centuries of the 800,000-year Vostok database, CO2 was below 190 ppm.

Whatever the cause of the recent upturn in CO2, which has ‘greened’ the planet by up to 20% in the last 50 years, we seem to have dodged a very dangerous extinction bullet.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

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Edward Katz
March 16, 2026 2:23 pm

So what else is new? How did the Age of Dinosaurs last so long if it weren’t for a prolonged period of above normal global warmth? And how many ice ages have scientists identified during the past millennia? So revelations like the above just reinforce the theory that frequent periods of global warmth and cold are the norm here, not something to panic about.

March 16, 2026 2:45 pm

The abstract of the paper states (my emphases):

… we use the Epica-Vostok Ice core dataset, a single proxy dataset for temperature data sampled every century for the last 800,000 years or so and ask the question “Is a 1.1°C temperature rise in a century unusual in this dataset?”

This encapsulates the whole problem with this article.

  1. It uses data from a single location, not ‘global’
  2. The data have a resolution of approximately one datum point per century

On point 1, local data are not a good proxy for global temperature fluctuations. On point 2, comparing ‘smoothed’ ~100 year ice-core averages to modern instrumental data is not a like-for-like comparison.

Mr.
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 2:54 pm

Hey, if you’re going to start on questioning the PROBITY of climate “data” from any sources, you should do that for ALL sources.

The global average temperature constructs would make for face-palming discoveries, for a start.

Reply to  Mr.
March 16, 2026 3:00 pm

Of course it should be questioned from all sources.

Global average temperature constructs using a variety of methods are independently produced by many scientific institutions worldwide and their findings are all consistent.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 3:30 pm

What are the error bars in all those methods (proxies?) that you approve of?

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
March 16, 2026 4:51 pm

They all agree within their error margins.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 3:33 pm

They’re consistent because they use the same data.

Mr.
Reply to  Phil R
March 16, 2026 3:35 pm

“data”

Reply to  Phil R
March 16, 2026 4:52 pm

The satellite data use a completely different method than the surface data. They all agree with one another within their error margins.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 4:16 pm

And they universally use JUNK data that is totally worthless for determining “global” temperature change.

Or just made-up fantasy data.

Reply to  bnice2000
March 16, 2026 4:53 pm

UAH is one of the fastest-warming global temperature data sets over the past 20-years.

Yet you love UAH.

It’s weird.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 4:18 pm

their findings are all consistent.

Is being consistent now the proper goal for science research? Does that mean the consistent view should not be questioned?

Do you have any clue about how many “consistent” views have been proven wrong in the past? How about cold fusion, phlogiston, geocentrism, Aether, flat earth, etc.

Reply to  Jim Gorman
March 16, 2026 4:56 pm

Is being consistent now the proper goal for science research? 

No, their methods are all published in peer-reviewed journals (not the ‘pay-to-publish’ ones, mind you….)

So all you have to do is look them up, read them and then publish your own devastating peer-reviewed comment or rebuttal.

Off you go, Jim!

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 2:54 pm

Also, since when did single-author of papers start referring to their work in the plural “… we use…”?

Maybe this author is royalty of some sort…

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 3:34 pm

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge numerous conversations with Dr. David King and Dr. Debbie Ancell. The reviewers also helped us substantially in framing the arguments. We would also like to thank the many scientists responsible for acquiring this extraordinary dataset and their foresight in making it publicly available.

Scissor
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 3:48 pm

TFN is obviously not familiar with the scientific literature and this long ago established practice. A simple search would have yielded something like the following.

“Single authors of scientific journal articles often refer to themselves as “we” due to long-standing academic conventions that emphasize objectivity and the collaborative nature of research, even when only one person writes the final paper.”

Reply to  Scissor
March 16, 2026 4:18 pm

TFH has proven to be unfamiliar with basically anything to do with real science.!

gyan1
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 2:58 pm

Global temperature is a nonsensical measurement. Regional proxies that have better resolution show that many areas have had temperatures 8C warmer than today for centuries during the Holocene.

Tom Halla
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 3:15 pm

Fearing warming is perverse, given the record of the LIA, war, plague, and famine.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 3:31 pm

Your response encapsulates the whole problem with “climate science.”

  1. There is no such thing as a global temperature or data point. Anything even remotely resembling a “global temperature” is an average of,,,wait for it….single location data. If the data from a single location sucks, your model sucks. Period. And temporal resolution was apparently never a concern in the proxy record.
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 4:09 pm

This encapsulates the whole problem with this article.

Do you have information that refutes it not being representative of global change? Show us.

Do you have data that other proxies going back that far have better than one data point per century? You do realize that many, many data sets going back that far have far worse time/value resolution, right? Are any data sets of the same or worse resolution not worth the paper they are written on? Show us how your arrived at that conclusion for this study.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 4:14 pm

Arctic ice core data shows exactly the same thing. GISP show many warming, and cooling periods at least as steep and FAR MORE PROTRACTED than the tiny warming since 1900…

.. and that is just in the Holocene.

Greenland_Gisp2_Temperature_svg
gyan1
March 16, 2026 2:51 pm

The Vostok temperature reconstruction shows 10 periods in just the last 3,000 years with faster warming rates than today. The fastest was 2.6C in 83 years.

Reply to  gyan1
March 16, 2026 2:57 pm

Is that faster at Vostok or faster globally?

And have you taken into account the effect that ‘smoothing’ ice core data has at resolutions of one sample per century?

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 3:35 pm

You need to take three deep breaths and take a long, hard look into the “climate science” smoothing mirror.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 4:20 pm

In the Arctic as well.. Many periods of warming and cooling FAR GREATER than the tiny, almost insignificant, warming since 1900.

Greenland_Gisp2_Temperature_svg
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 4:48 pm

And have you taken into account the effect that ‘smoothing’ ice core data has at resolutions of one sample per century?

You do realize that the GAT is an extremely “smoothed” temperature also, right? Every time you average and throw away the variance, you smooth. Worse, you use that smoothed data as an input to another smoothing procedure, thereby eliminating even more variance.

Read this. Why You Don’t Have To Worry About Climate Change: Multiplication Of Uncertainties

Chris Hanley
March 16, 2026 3:36 pm

it has recently been discovered from ice core records that rises of 1.1°C in the current interglacial, which started about 20,000 years ago, occurred in about one in six centuries

The measured surface annual air temperature trend at Vostok since 1958 shows little change (a longer record 1958 – 2025 can be seen at climate4you > polar temperatures) as opposed to the global record, so it would be reasonable to infer that the longterm proxy data from Vostok ice cores similarly underestimates past global temperature fluctuations.

Reply to  Chris Hanley
March 16, 2026 4:23 pm

Antarctic has actually been COOLING over the last 2000 years

Antarctic-temp
Reply to  Chris Hanley
March 16, 2026 4:25 pm

Antarctic has been cooling since 1979…

antarctic-cfsr-ant-ta-monthly-1979-2021-01
Forrest Gardener
March 16, 2026 3:49 pm

From the paper “The temperature and CO2 levels at a particular level in the ice-core can be inferred from oxygen and deuterium isotope levels in the tiny bubbles trapped in the ice as the surface snow is buried and compacted over the centuries.”

Fascinating. Where can I read more about the inferral process?

Michael Flynn
March 16, 2026 4:10 pm

Shows Current Century Warming Common Throughout the Last 400,000 Years

Just what you would expect in chaotic systems like those that comprise the Earth.

Nothing odd.

March 16, 2026 4:14 pm

That is not Tommy Cooper.

Mr.
Reply to  Bellman
March 16, 2026 4:56 pm

No sh1t, Sherlock.
We’re so fortunate that ‘Dinger’ Bell is on the case.

1saveenergy
March 16, 2026 4:46 pm

That’s NOT a picture of the late great Tommy ‘Just Like That’ Cooper … it’s a fake.
Here’s the REAL Tommy Cooper – Magician – doing “Glass Bottle, Bottle Glass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZcPmqRgg9s

More … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijGdXL0NAMA