Recently, many media cited a new scientific study “A 485 million year history of the earth’s surface temperature” as evidence that a moderate increase in temperature during the last 150 years will be catastrophic. The data and methodology used strongly suggests that these claims are false.
For example, in coverage, Washington Post (WaPo) quoted one of the authors of the study, saying:
At no point in the nearly half a billion years that Judd and his colleagues analyzed did the Earth change as rapidly as it does now, they added:
“In the same way that asteroids hit Earth, what we’re doing now is unprecedented.”
How absurd. There are no end-of-the-world events from space, like the gentle warming we’ve seen over the past century.
Second, using research-limited proxy data, there is no way to determine whether the speed of temperature change in the past was faster, slower, or similar to what we are experiencing today.
Bloomberg, in We Only Have Wake-Up Calls From Before The Dinosaurssaid this: “The Earth has gone through periods of rapid climate change before. All of them produced mass deaths. The implication is that we are on the same track as the dinosaurs, which ironically ended with “a large asteroid that hit the Earth.”
Technology news has these main headlines: 500 Million Years of Climate History Tells of Coming Disaster
All of these media outlets are predicting doom and gloom in the future due to climate change, but in doing so, they are ignoring the bigger picture that these studies provide. Most importantly, the study itself does not make predictions of future doom due to climate change; The terrible prediction was spun entirely by the media.
What is clearly visible in the graph provided by WaPo and the graph in the actual study (Figure 1 appears below), but ignored by the media, is the fact that now is the coolest Earth in 485 million years. Furthermore, the media ignores the fact that the temperature changes recorded throughout history all occurred before humans and the industrial revolution came along.
Note the blue line in Figure 1 (added), showing that according to the data, the current period is the coolest in the history of the temperature of 485 million years.
But somehow, this got lost in the media. WaPo focused entirely on the small blip at the very end of the chart, with its own magnified version, seen below:
WaPo ignores the evidence in the research presented, such as the new surface station project carried out by The Heartland Institute, showing that the Urban Heat Island effect and the lack of temperature stations used to measure temperature, from which long-term trend data is collected. , can account for up to 50 percent of recent warming, and the rest may be partly or entirely natural.
Then the WaPo sounded the obligatory “climate crisis” alarm, saying:
The planet has become hot for the past 20,000 years – but human-caused emissions in recent centuries have pushed the rate of warming to unprecedented levels.
Without quick action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6 F (17 C) by the end of the century – levels not seen in the timeline since the Miocene, more than 5 million years ago.
It’s false. We are not in “uncharted territory”. The graph proves that like other parts of the WaPo article, such as, “At its hottest, the study showed, Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) – higher than the 58.96 F (14.98 C) which is historic. ) the planet hit last year.
Of course, the peak of 96.8°F occurred before the existence of humans, indicating that the planet, as a result of natural factors, has been very hot and cold in the past without any human contribution. To be clear, WaPo cites no data or theory, and certainly none in the study, that human CO2 emissions could have caused the highest levels in the past. An increase of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius is not dangerous, and it certainly does not get the world from the current 14.98 ℃ to the 36 ℃ WaPo figures are discussing to scare readers.
This passage from the WaPo story comes to the honest conclusion that the Earth is likely to be warmer than it has been in geologic history:
The study also explains that the conditions humans are used to are very different from the conditions that have dominated our planet’s history. For most of the Phanerozoic, the research suggests, average temperatures have exceeded 71.6 F (22 C), with little or no ice at the poles. Coldhouse climate – including us today — winning only 13 percent of the time.
Therefore, it is possible that the Earth will return to a “hothouse climate” without human help.
It is clear that the media wants to make this scientific study, which does not make any alarming claims, into a tool to propagate the false point of view that the world is facing a human-caused “climate crisis”. However, the data clearly show that the Earth’s temperature and the climate of different regions have changed radically in the past, that the current temperature is cooler than the standard for the majority of Earth’s geological history, and that humans have lived through it. colder and warmer temperatures than we are currently experiencing at various points in history.
It’s a shame, but unexpected, that the mainstream media spins reports like this into something scary. Such behavior is not only dishonest, but also reprehensible.
Originally published in Climate Realism
Anthony Watts
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and now does a daily radio forecast. He has created a weather graphic presentation system for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as peer-reviewed papers together on climate issues. He operates the world’s most viewed website on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
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