Cycles of Rapid Climate Warming

Published in the Pacifca Tribune May 28, 2019

What’s Natural

Cycles of Rapid Climate Warming

The globally averaged temperature rose 1.5°F from 1880 to today. Various narratives suggest the rise since 1950 was driven by increasing concentrations of CO2. The rising temperature before 1950 was considered natural. Since 1990, Arctic temperatures rose 2 to 3 times faster than the global average. So, are rapidly rising Arctic temperatures evidence of an impending climate crisis? 

Astute students of climate history recall rapid Arctic warming has happened often and naturally. During the last Ice Age when CO₂ concentrations were just half of today’s, 25 abrupt warming eventshappened. Arctic temperatures rose 9°F, and sometimes as much as 14°F in just 40 years. These rapid warming episodes are now called Dansgaard–Oeschgerevents (D-O events) in honor of the researchers who first detected them in Greenland’s ice cores. These D-O episodes affected global climate, changed ocean currents along California’s coast and altered the range of European forests.

What caused such abrupt warming? Basic physics dismisses changes in greenhouse gases or solar insolation because neither radiative effect induces such rapid warming. The most reasonable explanation suggests episodes of ventilating heat, that had accumulated in the Arctic Ocean, rapidly warmed the air. 

The notion of stored heat in a freezing Arctic Ocean seems unfathomable to many laypeople. But it is scientifically well documented.Tropical Atlantic waters experience intense heating and evaporation. This results in warm salty water that is relatively dense. The Gulf Stream and its branching currents then transport that warm water northward. Because the water is salty and dense it sinks below colder and fresher surface waters as it approaches the Arctic Ocean. As a result, there is a layer of warm Atlantic water stored at depths between 300 and 2,700 feet below the Arctic Ocean’s surface.Arctic researchers report, “the total quantity of heat is substantial, enough to melt the Arctic sea ice cover several times over.”

Warm Atlantic Water in the Arctic Ocean

Sea ice and a layer of cold fresh water normally inhibit subsurface heat from ventilating to the atmosphere. But as the incoming heat increases and accumulates, the warm Atlantic Waters can eventually melt the overlying ice cover. Other times, changes in the direction of Arctic winds will blow sea ice out into the Atlantic, as it did in the late 1990s. Either way, without insulating ice, a burst of heat ventilates from the ocean and warms the atmosphere. 

Recently, anthropologists studying past Arctic cultures found the pre-Dorsett culture periodically abandoned then recolonized the Arctic coast as changes in sea ice affected temperatures. When sea ice covered coastal waters for 2 months longer than today, temperatures became 3-7°F cooler. Arctic people then abandoned the coast and moved south. A few hundred years later they re-colonized the coast when periods of open water, lasting 4 months longer than today, allowed heat to ventilate and raise temperatures 10°F warmer than today.  Such changes alternated over several hundred years. And that raises the question, is the Arctic still experiencing similar cyclical warming?

Over the past several hundred years, melting Arctic sea ice corresponds with observed periods of increased intrusions of warm Atlantic waters. The dramatic Arctic warming during the 1920s and 1930s corresponded with increased intrusions of warm water accompanied by Atlantic fish species normally found further south. As the 1922 newspaper clipping reveals (see above), the warming of the Arctic was so dramatic it raised concerns the frigid Arctic would soon be converted to a warmer “temperate zone”. 

Arctic 1922

When warm water inflows began retreating around 1950 so did the Atlantic fish. Sea ice then increased.  Such cycles have been recorded infishery data for hundreds of years. The most recent cycle of melting Arctic sea ice likewise coincided with intruding warm Atlantic waters with patterns of invading fish very similar to the 1920s-1930s warming episode.

So, we are now in the midst of an instructive natural experiment. If the loss of Arctic sea ice and warmer temperatures are due to rising CO₂concentrations, we should soon see a total loss of Arctic sea ice as predicted by some climate scientists. In contrast, if natural oscillations are controlling intrusions of warm Atlantic waters, Arctic sea ice will soon rebound. Indeed, a recent shift in ocean oscillations is now decreasing warm water intrusions. Temperatures should fall as less heat ventilates into the atmosphere. Based on earlier 20^thcentury patterns when lost sea ice rebounded in the 1960s and 70s, Arctic sea ice should begin rebounding by the year 2030. But then again, warmer temperatures did last for 300 years during cycles a few thousand years ago. Either way, natural climate cycles predict Arctic temperatures will not experience further accelerated warming. We will soon see which theory is most accurate within the coming decade.

Jim Steele is retired director of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU

and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Listing the Bearded Seal as Threatened: A Disturbing Victory for Untestable Hypotheses and Flawed Models

Bearded Seal on typical small ice floe

I’m a longtime supporter of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). When properly abided by, it seeks to prevent extinctions and requires humanity to seek a win-win scenario where both humans and all the other species can thrive. Unfortunately, some organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity have weaponized the ESA in order to manipulate the debate on energy policy and climate change by petitioning the courts to designate perfectly robust species as endangered or threatened from future climate change. Such abuse has understandably caused a growing backlash that ultimately threatens the ESA’s original mission. The listing of the polar bear is a case in point. Despite Center for Biological Diversity assertions that “Arctic sea ice melt is a disaster for the polar bears”, research shows polar bear populations have continued to thrive and increase.

The Center for Biological Diversity also petitioned to list thriving populations of Bearded Seals as threatened or endangered by melting sea ice. In response to their petition, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) assembled a Bearded Seal Biological Review Team (BRT). The BRT’s report can be read here. Oddly, despite promoting a threatened designation, the BRT reports Bearded Seals have existed for over 1-2 million years, surviving far greater bouts of climate change as the earth bounced between several ice ages and warmer interglacials.

On average, every hundred thousand years for the past half million years, the earth has descended into an ice age. Ice accumulation on land lowered sea level by about 400 feet (120 meters). The Arctic’s presently bountiful shallow seas were left high and dry and passage from the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Ocean was completely blocked by the resultant Beringia land bridge. Any seals trapped in a frozen Arctic were likely extirpated. During the last ice age, seals also experienced far more rapid changes than they are experiencing now or that are predicted in the future. Despite the extreme cold of the last ice age, the BRT reported “more than 20 so‐called Dansgaard‐Oeschger oscillations have been documented … each with rapid warming to near inter‐glacial temperatures over just a few decades.” 

Melting ice during our recent interglacial, known as the Holocene, has been good for seals. Sea levels rose and flooded coastal areas to create what is now the seal’s prime shallow-water habitat. Our best scientific data has determined Arctic temperatures between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago were a few degrees warmer than today, eliminating remnant glaciers and minimizing Arctic sea ice. Sea levels peaked around 6000 years ago, allowing an increased flow of warm, nutrient-rich “Pacific Water” across the shallow Bering Strait into the western Arctic. Our best scientific evidence reveals periodic warm water inflows coincide with peak marine productivity.

Unaffected by a slight increase in CO2 concentrations, sea levels began to fall as glaciers began to expand over the past 5000 years, the Neoglacial. Glaciers reached their greatest extent during the Little Ice Age 150 years ago. During the Neoglacial, average Pacific Water inflows subsided, average sea ice has increased, and marine productivity decreased. During this cooling trend, there were several warm spikes, usually associated with life-enhancing inflows of both warm Pacific and Atlantic water. High inflows consistently correlate with reduced sea ice and greater marine productivity. If the hypothesized warming from greenhouse gases proves to be true and if it can prevent further descent into another ice age or another little Ice Age, it is more likely than not such a warming effect would benefit the entire Arctic food web that sustains “threatened” bearded seals.

The state of Alaska and the Alaskan Oil and Gas Association correctly challenged the “threatened” designation as an “arbitrary, capricious abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law”. A district court agreed concluding that the listing indeed violated the Administrative Procedure Act. In that decision, the court reported it was troubling that the Beringia population of bearded seals was listed as threatened simply based on threats predicted by climate models that would not manifest until the end of the 21st century. However, that ruling was quickly appealed and now reversed, as the courts upheld the “threatened” designation.

The judge wrote the court was required to “defer to the agency’s [NMFS] interpretation of complex scientific data so long as the agency provides a reasonable explanation for adopting its approach.” The court also ruled that the ESA requirement for proving an imminent threat in the “foreseeable future” only required a scenario that it was “more likely than not” seals could be endangered.

The court ruling maintained that “as long as the agency states a rational connection between the facts found and the decision made [for listing] it must be upheld.”  Unfortunately judges who decide the validity of a Center for Biological Diversity claim, rarely have any background in biology or climate science. Those judges must rely on what lawyers assert are “the best available scientific data”. But lawyers and advocacy scientists only present the “best available scientific data” that supports their arguments, and ignore equally valid scientific data that contradict their claims. Unfortunately all the known facts were not presented. So even though 2 million years of climate history illustrated bearded seals are highly resilient, the court was swayed by a limited selection of models and untestable predictions. So, as Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story.

Defining Sea Ice as Critical Habitat

Although the Biological Review Team acknowledged “there is ample evidence that bearded seals have

adapted successfully many times to both large and rapid ecological changes” they argued “history is not, on its own, an assurance that bearded seals can adapt to the changes projected for the foreseeable future.” To make the case bearded seals were threatened, the BRT argued sea ice is a critical habitat required for birthing, nursing, molting and for resting while over prime foraging habitat. Because global climate models predict critical sea ice habitat will disappear as CO2 concentrations rise, they argue the seals are ultimately endangered. However ample evidence suggests sea ice is not a survival requirement.

When Bearded Seals do haul out onto sea ice, they prefer tiny floes of thin first-year ice. Climate change, whether natural or anthropogenic, will not eliminate that first-year ice. As the BRT reported, “sea ice will always persist from late fall through mid‐summer due to cold and dark winter conditions.”  Much of the Bearded Seal’s habitat encompasses seasonal ice zones where first-year sea ice is renewed every winter but melts completely every summer. The Bering Sea, Barents Sea, Baffin Bay, the Sea of Okhotsk, and Hudson Bay are all seasonal ice zones. Renewed winter ice reaches its maximum in late March about the time of the solar equinox. Simultaneously whelping (giving birth) begins in March and peaks in April followed by 2 to 3 weeks of nursing, a time with plenty of ice. The loss of thick multi-year ice over the deep Arctic basin in September has no effect on bearded seals survival.

Heavy sea ice is a bigger threat to bearded seals, so they avoid regions where sea ice cover is more than 90%. Heavy sea ice acts as a barrier that prevents access to their feeding grounds. Each winter bearded seals in the Pacific sector migrate southward as winter ice prevents access to their favored feeding grounds. As sea ice recedes with increasing spring and summer insolation, feeding grounds once again become available. Bearded seals are in competition with other benthic (sea floor) feeders, walrus and gray whales, who likewise migrate into the Arctic as the ice melts. Due to the advantage of accessing the sea floor as soon as dwindling sea ice permits, bearded seals are frequently associated with 70 to 90% sea ice concentrations. Although resting on floating ice above their feeding grounds imparts a small energetic benefit, it is not a life-saving requirement.

For example, although the sample size has been very small, studies of radio-collared seals in the Bering and Chukchi Seas observed those seals rarely hauled out at all, on land or sea ice, even when occupying ice covered areas. The BRT concluded that “at least in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, bearded seals may not require the presence sea ice for a significant part of the year”.

The BRT then manufactured an untested sea-ice threshold based solely on circumstantial evidence to assert whelping and nursing required sea ice concentrations over 25%. As the BRT stated, “Research suggests that, during the time of whelping and nursing, bearded seals prefer areas where the percent concentration of sea ice is >25%. Lacking a more direct measure of the relationship between bearded seal vital rates and ice coverage, the BRT assumed that this preference relationship reflects the species requirements for sea‐ice coverage.” Based Solely on that assumption wherever climate models projected ice falling below 25% concentration, they deemed it “inadequate for whelping and nursing.” [all emphasis mine]

But breeding seals’ ice association is not a matter of preference or a requirement!  To maximize the time spent over accessible foraging grounds, pups are born in the spring when winter sea ice begins its retreat. As the BRT reported, bearded seals prefer foraging in open ice cover where the sea floor is less tan 100 meters deep. Thus, to whelp in April and still remain for over shallow feeding grounds, seals are coincidentally surrounded by extensive winter sea ice. Figure 1 below illustrates the Pacific sector’s potential foraging grounds. White regions mark shallow areas, typically 50 to 100 meters depth. Because bearded seals cannot forage in deep waters (illustrated by the dark blue color), they cannot breed in ice free waters located south of the shallow Bering Sea.

The illustration’s colored lines represent the “ice front” position each month. In March, sea ice concentrations less than 15% are found to the south of the light green line. By peak whelping time in April, heavy sea ice concentrations (turquoise line) largely remain as in March. Thus, during the optimal season for whelping, 99% of their foraging habitat is covered by ice concentrations greater than 15% and as high as 100%. Seals do not prefer to breed in this heavy ice! They are forced to if they want access to required shallow feeding grounds. Consistent with this analysis, the BRT reports during the spring in the eastern and northern Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea, and the Laptev Sea, where much of the first-year sea ice is heavily compacted, breeding bearded seals are not found in any significant numbers.

 

Figure 1. Monthly location of west Arctic ice front

On the other hand, bearded seals are definitely adapted to survive in ice free waters. Mating always happens in the water. Native Arctic hunters observe seals giving birth in the water. Furthermore, bearded seal pups are well adapted to enter the water immediately after birth. Harp Seals for example require weeks of development on the ice. To thermo-regulate harp seal pups are born with a white fur called the lanugo. The lanugo provides excellent protection from cold air, which is why baby Harp seals were heavily hunted for the fur trade. But the lanugo provides little insulation when wet. So after a few weeks, Harp seals molt their lanugo and gain a protective layer of fat so they can enter the sea. In contrast, most Bearded Seal pups amazingly molt their lanugo within the uterus. They are also born with a thicker layer of blubber and begin foraging in the sea right after birth. So, birthing on an ice floe is more likely a convenience, but not a requirement.

Although it has not yet been reported, newborn pups are probably capable of nursing underwater as well. Based on the amount of time spent in the water right after birth this seems likely. Marine mammals such as whales and manatees must nurse underwater. And although California Sea lion pups primarily nurse on land, they too have been observed nursing underwater.

In habitat where sea ice either melts completely or recedes beyond the limits of shallow-water feeding grounds, bearded seals simply come ashore. Observations of seals on dry land have been documented for the White and Laptev Seas, the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, for Svalbard, the Hudson Bay and the Okhotsk Sea. The Okhotsk and Kamchatka populations thrive in the most southerly part of the seal’s range where ice melts completely each summer. There, bearded seals form numerous shore rookeries comprised of tens to hundreds of individuals, during a time that overlaps with molting.

Finally, their preferred small ice floes do not offer protection from the seals’ 2 major predators. Polar bears are well adapted for surreptitiously swimming up to floating ice and snatching an unwary seal. Killer Whales readily grab a seal from floating ice or tip that ice over, dumping the seal into the water where it is no match for the Orca. Thus, many lines of evidence suggest it is “more likely than not” that observations of bearded seals resting on sea ice platforms is only evidence of a convenience, not a survival requirement.

Small ice floes do not protect bearded seals from their predators

The IPCC Models

The Biological Review Team included one climate scientist, James Overland and he predicts the Arctic will be ice free within the next decade or two. (By “ice free” he means September ice will be reduced to about 1 million square kilometers.). Although there is a general consensus among models that rising CO2 will drive warming and continued ice melt into the future, IPCC models failed to predict the current level of rapid sea ice reduction. Because IPCC models projected currently observed sea-ice reduction would not occur until 2070, Overland believes IPCC models were simply too conservative. However other evidence suggests the models are flawed because they did not accurately incorporate natural variability. Nonetheless, Overland used a select group of 6 IPCC models to convince the courts rising CO2 concentrations threatened to destroy and modify the seals’ sea ice habitat.

For the BRT analysis, Overland culled the most flawed IPCC models. His chosen models had to simulate the seasonal changes in ice cover to demonstrate an accurate sensitivity to changes in solar insolation. In addition, chosen models had to simulate (hindcast), within 20% accuracy, September sea ice extent observed from 1980 to 1999. The number of IPCC models fitting this selection criteria was reduced to six. However, the time span to accurately test the models’ reliability was far too short. IPCC models attempting to replicate 20^th century Arctic air temperatures have failed to reproduce the rapid warming from 1920 to 1940. Furthermore, those 6 models failed to accurately simulate observed sea ice extent for individual Arctic basins.

Of Overland’s 6 best models, all 6 only simulated past sea ice correctly in the Chukchi and Siberian seas. Four models correctly simulated sea ice in the eastern Bering seas.  Only one model could simulate recent sea ice in the western Bering and Barents sea. None of the models satisfactorily simulated sea ice in the Sea of Okhotsk, Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay, the Canadian Archipelago, or Greenland, Kara and Laptev Seas. As the BRT correctly cautioned, “loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic cannot be extrapolated to the seasonal ice zones which are behaving differently than the Arctic. For example, the Bering Sea has had 4 years of colder than normal winter and spring conditions from 2007‐2010, with near record sea‐ice extents, rivaling the sea ice maximum in the mid‐1970s, despite record retreats during summer in the Arctic.”

 

From Gillett 2008: IPCC models fail to simulate natural Arctic warming 1920-1940

As seen in the graph above from Gillett 2008, IPCC model simulations based solely on known natural factors (the blue line labeled NAT), erroneously reported no change in 20^th century Arctic temperatures. Observations revealed (the black line labeled OBS) temperatures had naturally oscillated. Actual temperatures compared to model results were as much as 0.6 C degrees higher in the 1930s and 40s but then lower after the 1960s. More disconcerting, when models added the effects of CO2 and aerosols to natural factors (the red line labeled ALL), discrepancies between models and 1940s observations worsened. A modeling study by Johannessen 2004 failed similarly. In contrast to flawed CO2-driven models, it is well-documented that warming from 1920-1940 as well as the current sea ice loss is more parsimoniously attributed to changes in atmospheric and ocean circulations that pump warm southerly air and water into the Arctic. Although judges believed they were presented with the “best scientific models”, those best scientific predictions had failed to simulate past natural climate change.

The BRT did not inform the courts of research that shows a small Arctic cooling trend for the period 1901 to 1997, a trend contrary to the CO2 global warming hypothesis. A similar cooling trend was reported in the 1993 paper, “Absence of Evidence for Greenhouse Warming over the Arctic Ocean in the Past 40 years”. Nor did the BRT discuss research detailing how the loss of sea ice in the 1990s was not caused by warmer air, but by a shift in the Arctic Oscillation resulting in below-freezing winds that pushed thick insulating ice out into the Atlantic.

Furthermore, it’s not obvious that the BRT advised the judges that our best scientific data has observed that past and recent reductions of sea ice have coincided with intrusions of relatively warm Atlantic and Pacific waters. Fishery data shows warming in the 1930s coincided with the arrival of fish normally found further south. Recent analyses show similar northward fish migrations are associated with intruding warm Atlantic waters, driven by natural shifts in the North Atlantic Oscillations and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. In the Atlantic sector, the greatest loss of Arctic ice occurs in the Barents Sea and associated with the pathways of intruding warm water.

Intruding dense salty warm water also generates a reservoir of Arctic heat stored between 100 and 900 meters depth. That heat reservoir can melt all Arctic sea ice several times over. Indeed, the most recent scientific research reveals that warm reservoir has been rising closer to the surface and thinning sea ice. Researchers called this dynamic the atlantification of the Arctic Ocean.

In 2007, the greatest reduction of sea ice happened in the Chukchi Sea. Research by Rebecca Woodgate using mooring and satellite data, documented that the volume and heat content of intruding warm water. She reported Pacific water passing through the Bering Strait into the Chukchi had doubled since 2001. The inflowing Pacific Waters spread across half the Arctic Ocean with a heat equivalent equal to, and up to twice as great, as possible heat estimated from CO2 back-radiation. The amount of heat carried by those intruding waters was comparable to the solar heating of the entre Chukchi Sea.

The resulting enhanced loss of summer and winter sea ice resulted in feedbacks, associated with Arctic Amplification, which has raised Arctic air temperatures at a rate twice the global average. Less insulating ice allows the heat reservoir to more easily ventilate, cooling the ocean but warming the air. Furthermore, researchers show the loss of sea ice reconnects the oceans with the winds causing a stirring effect that brings warmer water to the surface. Less ice lowers the ocean’s albedo allowing more solar heat to be absorbed. Finally, the re-formation of lost ice, releases more latent heat. All those warming effects caused by increased inflows, have been myopically attributed to rising CO2.

Less ice benefits the food web. As outlined by Grebmeir 2015, the productivity in the Chukchi Sea (and likely the entire Arctic ocean) depends on the inflows of nutrient rich waters. The same intrusions of warm water through the Bering Strait that reduces sea ice, also bring vital nutrients that increases productivity, as well as bringing warmth that enhances faster growth. Our best scientific evidence suggests that if the Arctic becomes ice free by mid-21^st century, more open water will enhance photosynthesis so that marine productivity will increase by 67%. Thus, it is “more likely than not” that the dynamics that are now reducing Arctic sea ice are also increasing the food supply, not just for bearded seals but for the whole food web. Because bearded seals currently consume a huge variety of fish and invertebrates, it is highly likely bearded seals will easily adapt to any foreseeable changes in the food web.

When the “rest of the story” is told, it seems highly unlikely bearded seals will be endangered by reduced sea ice or warming temperatures. It is the Endangered Species Act itself that is endangered because the Center for Biological Diversity and their ilk abuse the ESA to promote climate fear. Instead what should rightfully evoke our greatest concern is how climate change alarmism is eroding objective science, allowing untestable hypotheses and flawed models to become codified in our legal system.

Attenborough’s “Breaking Boundaries” documentary; Distorting Science to Shill for One World Government

 

Welcome everyone

Below is thee  transcript for  

Attenborough’s “Breaking Boundaries” documentary; Distorting Science to Shill for One World Government

View at https://youtu.be/w8IbgqVgxP8

Today I will look at how one of my environmental heroes is now betraying the science. When I taught ecological classes, I would eagerly incorporate many of Attenborough’s beautiful wildlife videos.

But after just recently viewing his 2021 video, "Breaking Boundaries: the science of our planet", I’ve been disturbed, to see Attenborough’s magnificent cinematography increasingly used to distort the science, instill fear and shill for “a globalist agenda”

The video alternates between parallel narratives from Attenborough and narratives by a Swedish scientist, Johan Rockstrum. Together they pushed a myth that we are turning a planet that was once our friend, into a planet that is our foe.

But anyone with the least amount of knowledge about earth's history knows the earth has always been both friend and foe to wildlife and humanity. Deadly weather commonly unleashed throughout history, eliminated all that did not adapt, causing mass extinctions and collapsing civilizations.

Oddly, Attenborough argues that by simply adhering to globalist Johan Rockstrum’s planetary boundaries, we can save the world.

And like all demagogues and false prophets, he offers a utopian fantasy that his guidelines ensure the earth remains the "perfect home.”

Attenborough and Rockstrum begin by suggesting that this graph of Greenland’s ice core temperatures is science’s most important and most relevant for guiding human civilization.

Rockstrum points to the great instability of temperatures over the past 100,000 years during the last glacial maximum. The numbered peaks are Dansgaard–Oeschger events, caused when accumulating ocean heat that had been transported from the tropics into the Arctic, periodically melted enough of the insulating ice to let heat ventilate, causing temperatures to rapidly rise by 10 ºC (18 ºF) in just 10 years. That instability, Rockstrum claimed caused great environmental hardships for humans.

But during the most recent 11,7000 years, a period called the Holocene, the average temperature stabilized, and varied only by plus or minus 1 °C. However they don’t mention that stability was due to less ice.

Despite the fact that humans did not create the Holocene, they suggest humans can now magically maintain the Holocene’s stable climate, if only we follow Rockstrum’s guidelines and keep the earth within his so-called 1 ºC planetary boundary.

Attenborough repeats a false narrative that he frequently espouses, bemoaning, "The Holocene has ended. The garden of Eden is no more. We have changed the world so much that scientists say we are in a new geological age: the Anthropocene, the age of humans"

Therefore, to prevent further catastrophes and return to Eden our “immediate priority, is to reduce carbon emissions to zero and stabilize temperatures as low as we possibly can”

In contrast, according to the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences, the official group of scientists who define the earth’s geological ages, the Holocene has not ended. And despite political efforts by some scientists to declare the Anthropocene as an official age in order to highlight humanity's negative impacts, there has yet to be any consensus on the proposal that the Holocene has ended.

Instead of formalizing the Anthropocene, the International Union of Geological Sciences officially defined 3 distinct ages of the Holocene The first 2 ages are defined by dramatic changes in Greenland’s ice core. Accordingly, the Greenlandian Age began 11,700 years ago marking the end of the last glacial maximum, the re-arrangement of ocean and atmospheric circulation and a rapid warming of about 10 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the transition from the Pleistocene’s last glacial maximum into the Holocene resulted in one of the world’s greatest mass extinctions, mostly of large animals, and the loss of biodiversity.

In contrast to Attenborough’s stable Garden of Eden, Greenland’s ice cores also reveal just how unstable the Holocene climate has truly been.

The Northgrippian Age, named after the location of one ice core, began when temperatures plummeted to the lowest point in the entire Holocene 8,200 years ago. Temperatures then rose, reaching 1 to 2 degrees Celsius warmer than today, that warm period has been informally called the Holocene Climate Optimum. Then a cooling and drying trend occurred that established many of the world's deserts.

The most recent period, the Meghalayan began 4,200 years ago marked by a 200-year global mega-drought that collapsed many Eurasian civilizations, as well as a megadrought in sparsely populated North America, stretching from Massachusetts to Idaho.

Indeed, it has been droughts and famine, during cooling trends that have destabilized the environment and human civilizations.

The Meghalayan’s cooling trend was interrupted by warm spikes lasting several decades such as the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods. In addition, more intense El Nino and La Nina events evolved. Such instability has made it difficult for scientists to determine if recent extreme weather events are just more of the same, or perhaps signal an end of the Holocene and the start of the Anthropocene.

During the Greenlandian Age, the Sahara was a rich grassland with scattered shallow lakes, supporting a wealth of wildlife that supported several tribes of hunters and gatherers. Those stone age people celebrated that abundance of wildlife in numerous cave paintings

But around 6000 years ago as rainfall decreased, the green Sahara transitioned to the Sahara Desert, again greatly reducing biodiversity, and forcing humans to seek more hospitable conditions elsewhere.

The Sahara’s reduced rainfall was largely caused by a shift in the location of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ. The location of the greatest solar heating within the global tropics, causes intense currents of rising air which then draw in moist surface air from the north and south via the Trade Winds, and concentrates that moisture where the winds converge.

As the moist air rises, cools and condenses, that moisture rains out, bringing a heavy rainy season to the land below. The remaining dry air continues to circulate, eventually sinking further to the north and south, bringing deserts and arid climates to those regions below.

The ITCZ moves seasonally with the sun Bringing a rainy season to the tropics north of the equator during June and July, while simultaneously causing a tropical dry season south of the equator.

By December and January, the ITCZ has brought a rainy season south of the equator, leaving a dry season to the north

In addition, the ITCZ also migrates over millennia due to the sun's orbital cycles. Throughout the Holocene, the ITCZ has exhibited a trend that has continuously contracted southward, and it is that migration that reduced the rains that once supported a green Sahara.

In response to the Holocene’s drying trends, humans either perished or moved to the great river valleys where ample water enabled civilizations to continue. Great civilizations emerged in the mid Holocene along China's Yellow River, within India and Pakistan’s Indus River Valley, and along Egypt’s Nile River. Great Stone Age civilizations emerged in Mesopotamia along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 

But as the ITCZ continued to migrate, the Akkadian empire in northern Mesopotamia and dependent on rainfall, collapsed during the 200-year drought that marks the beginning of the Holocene’s Meghalayan Age.    Regional rainfall decreased by 20-30% and water levels of the Dead Sea abruptly fell by 100 meters.

The Old Kingdom of Egypt, also known as the Age of Pyramids, also collapsed as drought reduced the Nile River's flow and the floods that had previously renewed the fertile soils and maintained Egypt’s agriculture.

Late Bronze Age civilizations such as those that flourished in Greece, or Troy or had re-emerged in Egypt, collapsed due to megadroughts 3,200 years ago

The greatest droughts and deadliest famines occurred during conditions of low CO2 and cooler temperatures of the Little Ice Age, under the very conditions that Attenborough and Rockstrum argue that we must return to.

The Great El Nino and resulting droughts of the 1790s devastated east India and caused widespread civil unrest. The Victorian Great Drought of 1876 resulted in 30 million deaths The mid–1700s Strange Parallels Drought caused famine and substantial societal upheaval across southeast Asia, India, and the Siberian plains.

Climate change during the Little Ice Age also brought murderous diseases such as the Bubonic Plague, but that was never mentioned by Attenborough. Instead, despite mounting evidence that the Covid pandemic was caused by an escaped virus designed in China's Wuhan laboratory by medical experts whose gain of function research was globally funded, Attenborough featured a cholera expert who fear mongered that the Covid epidemic is evidence of the world exceeding our planetary boundaries.

Yet the Bubonic Plague, the greatest killer of all, that had truly been affected by climate change, was ignored. That plague killed over 200 million people worldwide, even though we were well within Rockstrum’s climate boundary. The Bubonic Plague periodically disappears when temperatures rise above 81.5 ºF (27.5℃), because its transmission is greatly reduced by that warmth. But that fact does not support Attenborough’s CO2 driven global warming climate crisis narrative

Furthermore, La Ninas drive Asia’s wet periods, increasing vegetation and promoting greater rodent populations. In turn, more rodents support more fleas that transmit the deadly bubonic bacteria. When El Ninos bring dry periods that reduce the Asian rodent population, flea populations are forced to seek other hosts and so bite and infect other animals and people.

By the end of the video the reason for Attenborough’s sins of omission and fear mongering become clear. By Rockstrum’s own words, they reveal their true motive for the video's "end of the world" fear mongering.

They want Rockstrum’s planetary boundaries to be the guide for a global governance that could be enforced by the United Nations Security Council.

The natural causes of climate change, a migrating ITCZ, the El Nino cycles of droughts and famines, or the cool conditions that enabled several Bubonic Plague outbreaks, don’t support their arguments that there is a need for a world government, and so, get ignored.

Like all demagogues and false prophets, Rockstrum combined climate fear with a promised utopia, but only if we follow their mandates. He promises clean air, healthier children, longer life spans, stable markets, stable jobs, and less conflicts. But such pie-in-the-sky promises should make all sane people wonder just how badly his politics have biased his science.

Unsurprisingly, Rockstrum is on the board of directors of the "global challenges foundation" whose founder states, “our intention is to start a debate on the need for an international political system” …"the need for a world government” … “one that can enforce its rules”

Rockstrum is also on the board of the "Eat Foundation" that proudly announces it is working to build consensus for a grand food system transformation. You got to wonder what could go wrong when such experts' control the economy? Well, Venezuela, Ghana, and now Sri Lanka quickly come to mind?

The Holocene’s southward migration of the ITCZ also caused increasing climate instability by promoting greater El Nino and La Nina events. Alternating El Nino-like and La Nina-like ocean temperatures in the Pacific cause a natural global see-saw of droughts, floods, and heatwaves, but those events have been falsely portrayed as evidence of co2 driven climate instability.

During La Nina-like conditions, strong trade winds cause warm water to pile up in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean warm pools, promoting strong summer monsoon rainfalls that sustain the crops that feed half the world's population. La Nina-like conditions may only last a few years, or for 30 or more years during a negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and even longer when strong solar irradiance strengthens the Trade Winds. Simultaneously, La Nina-like conditions force cooler surface temperatures due to upwelling in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which then promotes descending dry air and drought conditions over portions of western North and South America.

Conversely during El Nino-like conditions, warm water stored in the warm pools, more readily slosh eastward, surfacing somewhere between the central and far eastern pacific, bringing heavy rainfall to the Americas but drought to Asia and Australia. El Nino-like conditions dominate during periods of a positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation or periods of weak solar irradiance as was the case during the Little Ice Age sunspot minimums.

Cooler little ice age temperatures and low CO2 concentrations, never spared the world from massive droughts, famine, or collapsed civilizations and millions of deaths.

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The El Nino-like conditions that dominated the 1300s and 1400s, brought decades-long droughts that collapsed Cambodia’s Khmer empire, as well as the  Victorian Great Drought and other previously mentioned droughts.

During more La Nina-like conditions during the Medieval Warm Period, extreme drought conditions in the American southwest forced the Anasazi civilization to abandon that region.

To achieve their political aims, demagogues and false prophets always fear monger impending doom. Edmund Burke warned in the 1700s “no passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers to act, ...and to reason, ...as does fear.”

Tragically, instead of educating the public about the complexities of Holocene climate change and droughts, Attenborough chose to stunt the public's ability to reason by pushing fear. To that end, he included parts of a speech by Greta Thunberg, the teenage actress who first learned to fear climate change at the ripe old age of eight years old.

Although the media has systematically denigrated and silenced knowledgeable skeptical scientists, Greta’s handlers easily featured her so-called in-depth knowledge of climate science at the "World Economic Forum" in 2019 at Davos. 

Her words are repeated in his video, clearly echoing Attenborough’s intent! Greta ranted “I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel everyday”

Like most mainstream media, every bad weather event becomes a click-bait story about the impending doom of climate change. The NY Times reviewed "Breaking Boundaries", calling it a documentary about the end of the world. Although many outlets criticized the video's animations and presentation style, mainstream media never challenged its abundant distortions and misleading omissions.

Likewise, in the political struggle for power in the USA, the Senate Democrats created the "Special Committee on the Climate Crisis". Their goal was not to uncover the truth by fostering robust scientific debate, but to shut down debate. As their first priority clearly stated, the Committee's purpose was to provide "oversight and investigation of the efforts of special interests to foster climate denial". Gee, how dare our democracy allow citizens to challenge the climate crisis fears pushed by demagogues.

So, it is not surprising that the NY Times just published on July 8, 2022, an article titled “Democrats can win [upcoming elections] if they Embrace the Politics of Fear”. Accordingly, climate fear has been a staple of so many democrat politicians and policies.

Finally, one last example of how Attenborough and Rockstrum distorted the science. Early in the video's narratives they claimed the polar ice caps reflect just the perfect amount of sunlight to prevent the earth from overheating. But now the warming and melting from rising CO2 is disrupting that perfect balance. Yet the history of Greenland’s ice cap tells a very different story.

During the early Greenlandian age, Greenland’s glaciers were still growing. But during the Northgrippian age, glaciers such as the Jakobshavn retreated 100 meters per year and its margin remained behind the glacier's current boundary for 7000 years. Despite reflecting much less sunlight than Attenborough’s perfect balance would suggest, that lack of polar ice never triggered a tipping point or runaway warming. Instead, the earth entered a cooling trend. The recent Meghalayan age had been informally called the neo-glacial as glaciers expanded at higher latitudes with maximum extents culminating in the Little Ice Age.

But due to natural climate oscillations, glacier growth and retreat has oscillated. Between 1960 and 1990, the Jakobshavn did not retreat, and Greenland gained ice.

Similarly, alternating periods of ice growth and retreat, frequently happened between 6500 and 2600 years ago as summer sea surface temperatures alternated between 2–4 °C cooler to 6 °C warmer than present while sea ice ranged between 2 months more ice and 4 months more open water than today. Accordingly, the so-called paleo-Eskimo cultures periodically abandoned and reclaimed the arctic ocean's coastal habitats. So, is the current loss of arctic sea ice simply a continuation of the Holocene’s natural oscillations?

Scientists tell a similar story about Norway’s glaciers that completely melted away at least once during the Holocene. The Hardangerjøkulen glacier, seen here, (and I do apologize to native Norwegian speakers for any mispronunciations) it melted away 8000 years ago when the mean summer temperatures were 1 °C higher than today. 

 The Jostedalsbreen glacier melted away 7600 years ago when mean summer temperatures were 0.7 °C warmer than today.

But most informative, the Folgefonna glacier melted away 9700 years ago when temperatures were similar to today but precipitation, had been reduced by 70%.

Likewise, glacier advances and retreats during the little ice age, in both the Swiss Alps and Africa’s Kilimanjaro, have correlated with changes in precipitation, as evidenced by simultaneous changes in surrounding lake levels. And despite the doomsday narratives, correlations between temperature and ice extent are often lacking. Yet again, Attenborough and Rockstrum ignored those scientific observations so they can push their warming crisis.

Climate truths will always be resisted by those who profit from fear and those who have been naively convinced by chicken little scientists and cinematographers. But the truth will set you free. Indeed, these truths provide the critical thinking to minimize to what degree you will be manipulated by dishonest political agendas. 

So please, share these truths!

Our democracy depends on a diverse array of good critical thinkers. So, please shun mindless group think.

Instead embrace renowned scientist, Thomas Huxley’s advice Skepticism is the highest of duties and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.