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.

alas babylon
Reply to  Edward Katz
March 17, 2026 9:44 am

Yes, but who cares? None of those previous events let the powers that be institute command economies and full government controls onto the unspecting public like today. Dinosaurs didn’t go around blaming other dinosuars for the heat, and woolly mammoths didn’t blame other mammoths for the cold. It took real humans to pump up the blame game used to control the masses!

Reply to  Edward Katz
March 17, 2026 3:19 pm

Nothing at all new here . . . just do a Web search on the terms ” Dansgaard Oeschger events” to see that 500-2000 year durations of momentary spikes in global lower atmospheric temperatures happen every 1500 years or so (ref: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/dansgaard-oeschger-cycle ).

IOW, nothing rules out that our last 250 or so years (“since the Industrial Revolution”) of observed GLAT temperature increase is nothing more than a D-O event.

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 9:11 pm

If the error bars for the poor-quality data are wide enough, then all the other data will ‘agree.’ However, since the question revolves around how applicable the high-resolution Vostock ice-core data is to questions about rate of change and the cause and effect relationship of temperature and CO2, the poor quality data may be of no use. That seems to be the justification for using the Vostock data. I think that you are just ‘arm waving’ without having thought through your claim.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 6:46 am

You dodged the question.

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 5:53 pm

Bullsh*t. You don’t even know what the “error margins” are, nevertheless the uncertainty, which is never addressed.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 8:19 pm

[past the three response to an individual user limit ~ mod]

Reply to  bnice2000
March 17, 2026 1:16 am

BLATANT AND PATHETIC CENSORSHIP, YOU MEAN !

is TFN your “friend”

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 9:14 pm

And what satellite was being used 200,000 years before the present to obtain data to compare to?

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 6:48 am

The satellite “data” used model conversions to translate EM into T and the measurements have error bands from 0.5% to 1.0% based on the sensor circuits. In addition, those satellites have acquisition angles that means they do not get all of the EM radiated from the environment.

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 6:07 pm

UAH is one of the fastest-warming global temperature data sets

That does not make it fast. Unless you can show us the a similar warming rate say during the early stages of, say, the Roman Warm period was slower. (Hint – Jesus did a lot of sweating)

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 10:28 am

So the climate is IMPROVING more rapidly? Awesome!

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 10:46 am

Don’t know if you will see this but I’ve been thinking about this and other statements similar to this and have a couple honest questions.

Assuming the global temperature data sets are valid and global average temperatures mean something and are warming quickly (with, as you point out, UAH as one of the fastest-warming global temperature data sets over the past 20-years), so what? What is your concern or what does it mean to you? Why is it so important and why should anyone else care?

My second question is, compared to what? If you say GAT (either instrument average or UAH) is rising quickly, then compared to what? “Quickly” is a subjective assessment and has no meaning unless compared to something else that is not rising quickly. So, compared to what?

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!

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 6:50 am

Peer review. Snort. Those have become pay to publish with very few accepting and publishing for free. No mention of peer review is too often pal review.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 4:41 pm

No, their methods are all published in peer-reviewed journals 

Red herring alert!!! That is not an answer to what I asked.

“Is being consistent now the proper goal for science research?”.

Try answering this simple question.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 6:46 am

There is no such thing as validity in a global temperature average.
Climate is more than temperature.

You may wish to consider ceasing to prove you are an idiot, although I will defend your right to do so,

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.

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
March 16, 2026 5:01 pm

Having “conversations” with people doesn’t make them co-authors. Otherwise they would be listed as such, right?

The reviewers also helped us substantially in framing the arguments.

There he goes again with the “us”!

What “us”?

There is only one name on the paper.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 9:29 pm

Many journals have writers guides and it may be a requirement that is not only suggested, but enforced. It probably depends on the journal. You are being absurd in bringing up the issue here. As I recollect, my thesis committee had the final say on the choice of words such as “I” and “we.”

I have always been a little uncomfortable in using “we” when it was clearly my personal opinion being expressed. However, that is the way it is in the real world.

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
March 17, 2026 4:55 am

and of course it’s irrelevant to his research

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 4:54 am

Nitpicking. Who cares? Maybe it IS the royal we. 🙂

Why not look at his research.

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.!

Reply to  bnice2000
March 16, 2026 5:10 pm

Says the man who thinks oscillations can only add heat to a system and not subtract it

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 9:35 pm

You have obviously not learned that an ad hominem attack does not strengthen one’s claim. Indeed, it is generally accepted as a tacit admission that they have no logical riposte and are basically at a lose for words.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 9:07 am

Say the person who does not know the concise, scientific definition of heat and prefers common/social language, context derived definitions.

Reply to  Scissor
March 16, 2026 5:09 pm

Your reference is, characteristically, un-cited and unlinked.

Here’s another one (complete with citation and link):

Use first-person pronouns in APA Style to describe your work as well as your personal reactions. If you are writing a paper by yourself, use the pronoun “I” to refer to yourself. If you are writing a paper with co-authors, use the pronoun “we” to refer yourself and your co-authors together.

Referring to yourself in the third person

Do not use the third person to refer to yourself. Writers are often tempted to do this as a way to sound more formal or scholarly; however, it can create ambiguity for readers about whether you or someone else performed an action.

https://apastyle.apa.org/products/publication-manual-7th-edition

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 9:42 pm

Writers are often tempted to do this as a way to sound more formal or scholarly; …

Did you ask yourself why anyone would think that it would make it sound more scholarly? It is because it has long been the practice in scholarly journals!

I’m not sure that physical scientists are as progressive as psychologists. Anyway, you are making a classic mountain out of a mole hill, which strongly suggests that you are inexperienced.

Scissor
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 4:34 am

Climate “science” should be committed to the American Psychological Association.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 4:58 am

But what’s this got to do with his actual research? So, maybe it was inappropriate use of “we” and “us”. Big f deal. Gonna hang him for that?

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
March 17, 2026 6:53 am

In the current DEI/trans phase we are trying to escape, I am surprised it was not they/them. /s

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
March 17, 2026 10:01 am

I can’t think of many things I dislike more than the pronoun thing. It’s just so incredibly dumb. I can’t imagine what purpose it’s supposed to serve. I just don’t get it.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 9:08 am

“Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (2020)”

Definitely a STEM source.

Reply to  Scissor
March 16, 2026 7:16 pm

It would be polite to use ‘we’, even if a single author, if the paper references others’ work.

‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ should be acknowledged

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 5:35 pm

This use of the first-person plural in a scientific article is very common in France; it is even a formal requirement. It expresses the author’s stepping back and the withdrawal of their subjectivity in relation to the object of study. It is called the “modesty we,” which is quite different in its intention from the “royal we” that you mentioned with regard to members of royalty. I checked, and although the “modesty we” is not commonly used in English-language scientific literature, it does not seem to be forbidden, even if it may seem somewhat intriguing.

Michael Flynn
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 5:46 pm

Sounds much more better? Share the blame?

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 9:23 pm

That is a very strange question that suggests that you aren’t very familiar with academic publications. The use of the ‘Royal We” has been a standard of ‘academese’ for a very long time. While some may object to the practice (as some insist on establishing their own rules for capitalization, and never capitalize “i”) it probably goes back to the practice of establishing that the observer is “disinterested” or objective. Have you read T. C. Chamberlain’s “The Method of Multiple Working Hypothesis?”

2hotel9
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 4:44 am

Feel that dirt raining down on your head? It is an indicator to stop digging.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 6:51 am

So, you cannot do anything but attack the writing style? Woof!

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 9:05 am

1918 – 1920

“The use of “we” for single authors is most common in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). In contrast, humanities often retain the first-person singular “I” for single-author work.”

We is used rather than I to prevent the perception of arrogance by the author.

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.

Reply to  gyan1
March 16, 2026 5:12 pm

Global temperature is a nonsensical measurement.

Yet WUWT published monthly global temperature updates and provides links to them on the side-panel of its site.

Take it up with Anthony.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 5:01 am

If he finds it out there in the word- he’s passing it along. Doesn’t me he’s confirming it as fact. We all want to know what’s out there, right or wrong.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  gyan1
March 17, 2026 9:09 am

Global temperature is not a measurement. It is a statistical calculation.

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  Tom Halla
March 16, 2026 5:13 pm

Eh?

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  Phil R
March 16, 2026 5:17 pm

There is no such thing as a global temperature or data point. 

Who says there is?

You accept that there are numerous “single location” data points but you don’t thein we can figure out an average from those?

You prefer a hundreds of thousands of years worth of low-resolution average temperatures gleaned from proxy data at a single location over modern instrumental global temperature records because….?

(Because you don’t like what the instrumental record implies, I presume.)

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 6:00 pm

A measurement is a data point. An average is a model, and a model in which you have already lost information just by the averaging. You can average anything you want. Simple calculation, even you can do it. Whether the average has any meaning is up to interpretation.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 9:51 pm

If one were to compare ice core data with tropical marine foram’ O-18 isotope data, would the average tell us anything useful about mid-latitude air temperatures? One has to be careful about averaging things that are unrelated.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 9:12 am

Temperature is an intrinsic property that cannot be averaged for any meaningful use.

20 C & 40 C average 30 C
10 C & 50 C average 30 C

Are they the same? No.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 12:24 pm

There is no such thing as a global temperature or data point. 

Who says there is?

You have on many occasions.

Such sophistry. I best get another award ready.

Reply to  Phil R
March 17, 2026 5:06 am

You’d need millions of thermometers to get a reasonably accurate measurement of the average temperature of the Earth at any moment. There are 197 million square miles on the surface of the Earth. And a few million proxies for past temperatures, even assuming the proxies are an accurate measurement- which they aren’t.

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  Jim Gorman
March 16, 2026 5:21 pm

Do you have data that other proxies going back that far have better than one data point per century? 

Missing the point. The point being that you can’t compare low-resolution averaged proxy data with high-resolution instrumental data in any meaningful way.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 9:54 pm

Yet, you claim that all the data agrees! Which claim is true?

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 5:08 am

Do you have any high-resolution instrumental data for the distant past to compare with?

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 6:57 am

why don’t you take all the so-called high resolution data that is available for whatever time period, say the last 50 years just for fun, average it all together and report back what the 50-year average is? You can then compare this value to historical proxy values with approximately the same temporal resolution.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 9:13 am

Resolution is not accuracy. Resolution is decimal places.

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
March 17, 2026 4:37 pm

Resolution is not accuracy. Resolution is decimal places.

I am probably guilty of not using the correct term of temporal resolution. That is different than measurement resolution which is “decimal places”. Measurement resolution of proxies that allow multiple decimal digits in order to show anomalies to 2 or 3 decimal places is a joke. The uncertainty should be several degrees with most.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 12:25 pm

The point being that you can’t compare low-resolution averaged proxy data with high-resolution instrumental data in any meaningful way.

Funny that. Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick makes precisely that error.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 1:11 pm

You’ll need to take up your objections with so-called “climate science.” 😅🤣😂

BTW, thanks for your debunking of the “hockey stick!”

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
Reply to  bnice2000
March 16, 2026 5:29 pm

That GISP data stops around 1855.

For goodness sake look at the thing. It says that “present” (shown as “0” [zero] on the chart) is 1950 and the data shown stop well before that.

You make the my point about the ice-core resolution issue clearer than I could!

Reply to  bnice2000
March 17, 2026 1:21 am

The Mann Hockey stick clearly shows that the little up-tick starts in 1900

The peak is at 1940, and real data from the Arctic shows that around 2000 was NO WARMER.

arctic_temp
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 6:06 pm

This encapsulates the whole problem with this article.

Your comment encapsulates the whole problem with you. You are a ”nailed”-on alarmist.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented with the current weather/climate – at all. There never was. The climate ”emergency” is made-up. When will this fact sink in, I wonder….

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 7:24 pm

“..comparing ‘smoothed’ ~100 year ice-core averages to modern instrumental data is not a like-for-like comparison…”
And that is the exect reason that the ‘hockey stick’ is a hoax! With the last century as one data point, to make the numbers compareable, there is NO HOCKEY STICK!:)

leefor
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 7:37 pm

But CO2 is supposed to cause a global problem. If that is true it should hold true for individual locations.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 9:01 pm

On point 1, local data are not a good proxy for global temperature fluctuations.

Yes, one cannot say with confidence that whatever is observed with that location is representative of the entire globe. However, in the absence of data of equal quality (temporal resolution and the same proxy method) across the entire globe, one also can’t say with certainty that the rest of the globe had different fluctuations. That is, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” — Carl Sagan. The Vostok ice core data set is probably the highest quality data that we have. It establishes the standard for what is knowable. Unless you can establish that lower-quality data from proxies like stomata or tree rings, adjusted for latitude, makes the Vostok record an improbable surrogate for lower latitudes, it is probably best to simply say we are uncertain about the rest of the globe.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 10:53 pm

It uses data from a single location, not ‘global’

Yet YAD061 did precisely that.

ozspeaksup
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 6:29 am

a study…using just 2 or 3 fish near Tassie was enough to make wild claims that fish were shrinking or absent cos climate change a few yrs ago

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 10:26 am

comparing ‘smoothed’ ~100 year ice-core averages to modern instrumental data is not a like-for-like comparison

So then we can stop worrying, as ALL of the “climate change” hysteria is based on EXACTLY THAT.

conrad ziefle
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 1:52 pm

So you want them to take ice cores, not a simple matter, every square mile of the Antarctic? I doubt that while the glacier was forming, it was mild in one part and cold in another part.

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  bnice2000
March 16, 2026 9:59 pm

So much for the oft seen claim about currently experiencing “unprecedented” warming. Then there is also the issue that most proxy data that are very old are probably a lower-bound because of time acting like a low-pass filter, suppressing and widening peaks.

Anthony Banton
Reply to  bnice2000
March 17, 2026 1:26 am

Why can’t you grok that graph is from a single site on an ice sheet (rhetorical), that is presently at a height of 10,000ft in Greenland and that Greenland lies just north of the Atlantic Ocean and just south of the frozen Arctic ocean – which depending on the state of the NAO would either have a predominant airmass influence from the frigid/dry north or from the warm/moist (more snow at that altitude) mid N Atlantic. This is in no way a proxy for the whole globe, none are, but this spectacularly not so. And as TFN says that graph ends in 1855, before modern (global) warming began. You continually disregard the influence of oceans in the moderation of land temperatures. Why? The answer is obvious – but it’s because it fits into your cognitive dissonance as regards ignoring/denying that all single site temperature data do not have the same influences/drivers. It is not a one-size-fits-all thing. They do not, as basic thermodynamics lays plain, and the world’s SSTs vs land temperatures shows, and this case intermittent influence from the ice filled Arctic Ocean, vs intermittent influence from the Atlantic.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Anthony Banton
March 17, 2026 9:20 am

Modern global warming started in 1850, pre-industrial benchmark.
At least that is what shows up repetitively.

“Mauna Loa volcano, Big Island of Hawaii, at ~3,400 meters ( feet) elevation.”

So in one case altitude does matter but in another it does?

So the NAO and ocean affects only Greenland? How convenient.

 but it’s because it fits into your cognitive dissonance as regards ignoring/denying that all single site temperature data do not have the same influences/drivers.

But you claim that those temperatures can be averaged?

I bet you have a copy of one of those flat earth energy imbalance graphics pinned to the wall in front of you.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
March 17, 2026 12:26 pm

Quote did not copy. Mouna Loa is 11,000 feet.

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
March 17, 2026 1:20 pm

Actually it started nearly a century before that. They just use ~1850 so they can call it “pre-industrial” which carries the incorrect inference that it started warming *because of* human activity.

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

Reply to  Jim Gorman
March 16, 2026 5:36 pm

You do realize that the GAT is an extremely “smoothed” temperature also, right? 

Yes. But it’s based on global instrumental data and many of the reporting stations are automated with real-time updates.

Are you seriously comparing that level of accuracy to ~100-year resolution proxy data derived from hundreds of thousands of years old ice cores at a single location in Antarctica?

Question: What sort of ‘skeptic’ prefers low resolution proxy data to high-resolution state-of-the-art instrumental data?

Answer: the sort of ‘skeptic’ who doesn’t like what the state-of-the-art data implies.

Mr.
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 8:21 pm

You use the term “data” very loosely.

data/ˈdaetə/
noun1.  (plural: data) A measurement of something on a scale understood by both the recorder (a person or device) and the reader (another person or device). The scale is arbitrarily defined, such as from 1 to 10 by ones, 1 to 100 by 0.1, or simply true or false, on or off, yes, no, or maybe, etc.
2.  (plural: data) A fact known from direct observation.
3.  (plural: data) A premise from which conclusions are drawn.
4.  (plural: datums) A fixed reference point, or a coordinate system.

A recorded measurement used “as-is” is “data”.

If the recorded measurements are “adjusted”, “homogenized”, “averaged” or otherwise changed from what was measured / recorded, the numbers are no longer “data”, just made-up numeric constructs.

So just the “constructors'” version of what took place, not the actual “data”.
With very dubious probity.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Mr.
March 17, 2026 9:21 am

Oh gone are the days of datum versus data.

Life goes on.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 7:56 am

You do realize that the GAT is an extremely “smoothed” temperature also, right? 

Yes.

You can stop right there. You answered the question correctly. Anything after that is just irrelevant rationalization.

Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 4:32 pm

Question: What sort of ‘skeptic’ prefers low resolution proxy data to high-resolution state-of-the-art instrumental data?

Low resolution proxy data is all there is once one looks further into the past beyond instrument measurements. If you don’t like low time resolution data, perhaps you should find something else to criticize.

Reply to  Jim Gorman
March 17, 2026 1:25 am

Fabrications like GISS are based on a majority of totally JUNK DATA.

Averaging massively urban affected and “adjusted” 2m surface data, with random bucket sea surface data.

DOESN’T EVEN REACH TO THE LEVEL OF JUNK SCIENCE.

Reply to  bnice2000
March 17, 2026 4:27 pm

DOESN’T EVEN REACH TO THE LEVEL OF JUNK SCIENCE.

When they have to infill CRN stations do they use other CRN stations or do they use ASOS? ASOS stations have about 4 to 5 times the uncertainty. That’s scientific for sure.

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
Reply to  bnice2000
March 16, 2026 5:40 pm

Better tell Roy at UAH his Antarctic data are wrong.

Currently +0.04C warming in Antarctica since 1979

leefor
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 16, 2026 10:51 pm

Is that due to different sensors or different algorithms or both?

Victor
Reply to  leefor
March 17, 2026 1:09 am

The research stations in Antarctica measure the temperature in their vicinity.
https://www.swoop-antarctica.com/blog/10-research-stations-in-antarctica-you-should-know-about/

The research stations in Antarctica are located where it is most suitable. It is warmest in Antarctica where there are volcanoes. That is the reason why the research stations are located near the volcanoes.
https://www.coolantarctica.com/schools/Antarctica-maps-ross-island.php

Are the volcanoes affecting the research stations temperature measurements in Antarctica?

leefor
Reply to  Victor
March 17, 2026 1:39 am

Who knows? And nothing to do with satellite data over time.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  TheFinalNail
March 17, 2026 9:22 am

+0.04C +/-???

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
March 17, 2026 10:29 am

I was going to comment on that but left it alone. He wouldn’t understand it. Nevermind that the average of 0.04C since 1979 is a global average 0.0009C (+???) per year, which obviously is undetectable and unresolvable. But hey, it’s TFN.

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

March 16, 2026 6:56 pm

C4 plants do quite well at 150 ppm. Some are trees, but forests retreat during low CO2 periods. You may have to thank low CO2 for our own evolution. Without abundant trees, we could not ‘hang around’ in them, so we got down and ran for our lives, picking up tools along the way.

Reply to  whsmith@wustl.edu
March 18, 2026 9:16 am

C4 trees are very rare, the only species I’m aware of are native to Hawaii!

Bill Parsons
March 16, 2026 9:33 pm

Arguments against a single point source of CO2 / Temperature contradict the narrative that CO2 is “well-mixed” in the atmosphere within a few years. And then there’s that pesky relationship – with temps leading CO2 as the Vostok data (and other sources) clearly show over the Phanerozoic Eon.

Bruce Cobb
March 17, 2026 3:05 am

The thing that The Foolish Nincompoop and his cohorts fail to realize (or wish to ignore) about the Vostok ice core records is that their power lies in the fact that they cover 200k years. Over such a long time period, no matter where temperature records were taken the graph would be exactly the same, as long as the same methods were used. And what do they show? That CO2 follows temperature, not the other way round. Oops.

Anthony Banton
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
March 17, 2026 4:59 am

That CO2 follows temperature, not the other way round. Oops.”

For the gazillionth time on here.
OF COURSE IT DID!

Oops !

As that is what the natural carbon cycle does.

It is only when CO2 comes first that temperature follows by rising.

And the only other time that we know of is during the PETM when outgassing from volcanic acivity drove up the atmos. CO2 content which then drove up global temp.

CO2 is both a feedback and a driver.

Put a large pulse of it into the atmosphere (like the last ~150y by guess who) and then it drives the global temp to follow via the GHE.

It really isn’t that difficult a concept.

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  Anthony Banton
March 17, 2026 5:23 am

“It is only when CO2 comes first that temperature follows by rising.”
Possibly the dumbest comment by a Warmunist ever. Wrong as ever. CO2 is nothing but a bit player in climate. It is not, nor can it be, a “control knob” as you Climate Morons try to claim.

Reply to  Anthony Banton
March 17, 2026 11:17 am

Funny that – if CO2 changed BEFORE temperatures, would that be evidence for or against the hypothesis that CO2 is the control knob?

Reply to  Anthony Banton
March 17, 2026 1:35 pm

Still waiting for the explanation of 10x today’s CO2 being incapable of stopping a full blown GLACIATION.

CO2 “drives” NOTHING.

2hotel9
March 17, 2026 4:41 am

Once again, for the galacticly stupid. There is nothing wrong with the climate or the weather. Climate changes, constantly. Humans are not causing it to change and cannot stop it from changing. And weather is variable. VARIABLE Look that word up. Thus endeth the lesson.

Sparta Nova 4
March 17, 2026 6:43 am

Until they define the optimum climate in metrics that are testable and measurable by anyone, we cannot know if we have departed the optimum or moving towards it. A greening planet is striking evidence that we are progressing towards it.

The earth’s energy systems can be likened to a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Picking up a corner piece (aka CO2) and declaring the puzzle is solved would be laughed at, rightly so. Continuing with this metaphor, we have not yet completed the edge border of the puzzle.

It is extreme hubris to think we can control the planetary temperature to a 2-decimal fraction of C when we cannot due better the +/- 2 F in our environmentally controlled living rooms.

conrad ziefle
March 17, 2026 1:49 pm

They’ve had ice core data for 50,60 yrs? Suddenly people are realizing this?