Every year, climate-change enthusiasts tell us the earth is getting hotter. Phys.org warned the world, “New 'hottest year on record' likely to occur in the next five years.”

C2ES informed readers, “It’s certain: The Earth is getting warmer, and human activity is largely to blame.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ headline read, “Broken record: The planet is getting hotter. And hotter. And hotter.”

But are we really observing record hot years consecutively? While global warming is real and has been happening since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 18th century, the claims surrounding unprecedented temperatures are, at best, highly dubious.

Reality and some climate-change claims differ as much as day and night. Here are two examples.

Strange Things: Readjusted Data Points

A few official agencies across the globe are widely considered “leaders” or “authoritative” in disseminating climate data.

Among them are the Met Office in the UK and top U.S. state agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

However, these agencies have used their near-invincible status to adjust climate data points as they please, often resulting in an exaggerated warming trend.

NASA has been found to have adjusted past temperature data downward in order to make the present temperature levels look comparatively warmer. 

In July 2021, geologist Roger Higgs demonstrated how NASA lowered the 2016 data point for annual global mean temperature. NASA carried out the supposed downward shifting of data points so that the temperature levels for 2020 (which were about the same as 2016) would now appear more extreme. Higgs revealed the downward shifting on Researchgate.

Why did NASA adjust the 2016 data point to make it appear that 2020 beat it by a larger margin than originally appeared? You decide.

Growth of Glaciers: Greenland Registers Historic Increase in Surface Mass Balance for July 2021

Greenland ice has been a topic of discussion ever since climate change became a headline item in news circles. The reduction of ice mass is often projected as proof for global warming.

For example, in 2009, Grist reported that melting Greenland ice would cause an increase in climate refugees. NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, for example, refers to “melting ice sheets in Greenland as just a few of the many consequences of climate change.”

In 2019, Greenland recorded a very sharp summer meltdown. CNN stated suggested, “if these extreme melt seasons are becoming the new normal, it could have significant ramifications around the globe, especially for sea level rise.”

The BBC said, “recent media reports have suggested that Greenland may have passed a point of no return, that the level of global warming that the world is already committed to because of carbon emissions, means that all of Greenland will melt.”

But is Greenland really beyond the point of no return, and were the media reports right?

The logic of climate catastrophists has now backfired on them. July is the peak of Greenland’s melt season, a time when mainstream media loves to project the seasonal melt as a climate phenomenon.

But this year, the July 2021 melt has been well below the 30-year mean running from 1981 to 2010. The up-to-date advanced data on Greenland’s ice sheet, from Danish Arctic research institutions, indicate that ice sheet surface mass balance during some months of 2020–21 has been at historic highs!

 So does Greenland ice sheet growth suggest that the earth is cooling or that the earth is not warming? The answer to that is not straightforward. But what we do know is that there has been no alarming rate of melting, despite BBC’s panicky report a few years ago.

The predictions and claims made regarding a catastrophic change in climate are exaggerations. Real-world data and observations show us that the increase in global average temperature has been non-threatening, and glacial ice levels are nowhere near historic lows.

There has been a global deception on climate, perpetrated by mainstream news media and organizations like NASA, NOAA, and United Nations.

Unfortunately, these agencies and media utilize their wide access to disseminate climate falsehood. Leading social media platforms’ decisions to consider these sources authoritative has further elevated their platform, giving them a free pass to make claims about unprecedented climate change.

This makes people susceptible to continued deception. It is high time the media gave equal opportunity to scientists from a wide spectrum of opinions, enabling fact-checking and correction of climate claims that are often regarded as infallible.

Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), is a Research Contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and resides in Bengaluru, India.

Image: Artreve

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