Recently, many media outlets have promoted a new scientific study, “The 485-Million-Year History of Earth's Surface Temperature,” which proves that a small increase in temperature over the past 150 years will be catastrophic. The data and methods used strongly suggest that this claim is false.
For example, in their report, washington post (WaPo) quotes one of the study's authors as saying:
In the nearly half a billion years Judd and her colleagues analyzed, Earth has never changed as fast, she added:
“Like a giant asteroid hitting the Earth, what we're doing now is unprecedented.”
How ridiculous. An apocalyptic event in space would be nothing like the mild warming we've seen over the past century.
Second, using proxy data to which their study was limited, it was not possible to determine whether past temperature changes occurred faster, slower, or similar to what we are currently experiencing.
Bloomberg, in We just got a warning before the dinosaurs showed up“The Earth has experienced periods of rapid climate change before. They all caused mass die-offs. This means we are in the same orbit as the dinosaurs, who ironically ended up being hit by a giant asteroid,” said Dr. And end.
Science and technology news has this ominous headline: Half a billion years of climate history tells us about a coming disaster
All of these media outlets predict doom and gloom in our near future due to climate change, but in doing so, they completely ignore the larger picture presented by this research. Most importantly, the study itself does not predict future doom from climate change; such dire predictions are entirely fabricated by the media.
The graphs provided by WaPo and those from the actual study (see Figure 1 below) make it clear, but ignored by the media, that the Earth today is the coldest it has been in 485 million years. Furthermore, the media completely ignores the fact that the large temperature fluctuations recorded throughout history occurred naturally long before humans and the Industrial Revolution.
Note the blue line in Figure 1 (added), indicating what is currently the coldest temperature in the 485 million year history, according to their data.
Yet somehow the media ignored this. WaPo focuses entirely on the small dot at the end of the chart, and has its own enlarged version, like this:
WaPo completely ignores evidence from existing studies, such as the Heartland Institute's recent ground station project, which shows that the urban heat island effect and poorly placed temperature stations used to measure temperatures, from which long-term trend data were collected, may account for recent changes. 50% is warm, the remainder may be partly or entirely natural factors.
Then WaPo sounded the obligatory “climate crisis” alarm, saying:
This planet has heating up Over the past 20,000 years, human-caused emissions have driven warming rates to unprecedented levels.
If swift action is not taken to contain Scientists say that due to greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century – the highest on record since the Miocene Epoch more than 5 million years ago.
That's wrong. We are not in “unprecedented territory.” The chart itself proves this, as does other parts of the WaPo article, such as “Research shows that at its hottest, the Earth's average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius)—far higher than in history A recorded temperature of 58.96 degrees Fahrenheit (14.98 degrees Celsius) was hit by the planet last year. “
Of course, the 96.8°F peak occurred long before humans existed, suggesting that the Earth warmed and cooled dramatically in the past as a result of entirely natural factors without any human contribution. To be clear, WaPo cites no data or theory, and there's certainly nothing in the study that suggests human CO2 emissions could lead to the highest levels seen in the past. A rise of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius is not dangerous and certainly will not take the world from the current 14.98 degrees Celsius to the 36 degrees Celsius that WaPo discusses to scare readers.
This passage from the WaPo story does lead to an honest conclusion: throughout geological history, the Earth has tended to be warmer than it is today:
Research also clearly shows that the conditions humans are accustomed to are very different from those that have dominated Earth's history. Research shows that the average temperature over much of the Phanerozoic was over 71.6 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius), with almost no ice at the poles. Cold storage climate – including our current climate — Only a 13% success rate.
Therefore, it is very likely that the earth will return to a “greenhouse climate” without any help from humans.
It’s clear that the media wants to turn this scientific study, which contains no alarming arguments, into a tool to support their erroneous view that the world currently faces a human-caused “climate crisis.” However, the data clearly show that the Earth's temperature and climate in different regions have changed radically in the past, with current temperatures being much lower than normal for most of Earth's geological history, and that humans have experienced more severe temperatures than we currently experience. Different periods in history have experienced cooler and warmer temperatures.
It is regrettable but not surprising that the mainstream media has turned such reports into frightening content. This behavior is not only dishonest, it is reprehensible.
Originally published in Climate Realism
Anthony Watts
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow in environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of and behind the scenes since 1978 as a live television meteorologist and currently oversees daily broadcast forecasts. He created television weather graphics presentation systems, professional weather instruments, and co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He runs the world's most viewed climate website, the award-winning wattsupwiththat.com.
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