The Washington Post newspaper recently published an article praising a new study that claims to show that the Arctic is warming much faster than originally thought.

The study makes use of a ‘hockey stick’ graph, based on the original world temperature hockey stick graph of Professor Michael Mann. This graph was dramatic in appearance but was soon shown to be incorrect – Mann had got his maths wrong.

This revelation must have been a huge embarrassment for him, particularly since he is a young fellow at the early stage of his career.

The fact that the hockey stick graph has been discredited entirely did not stop Washington Post journalist Juliet Eilperin from lauding the same type of maths in the current Arctic ice report.

She seems to have made no attempt to bal- ance the claims with other scientific evidence that totally contradicts the results. Unfortunately, it appears that the Washington Post is trying to manipulate its readers into holding a particular viewpoint, rather than attempting to project the truth.

Prominent climate experts, such as Dr Richard Lindzen, of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, and Steve McIntyre, who publishes Climate Audit, both questioned the report’s objectivity.

McIntyre pointed out that the report made use of temperature proxies, which are not accurate, and doing this is not necessary, bearing in mind that real temperature data exist. Proxies are a group of factors, such as study- ing pollen grains trapped in very old ice, to infer what the temperatures were at times in the distant past.

Proxies are useful for dates of many thousands of years ago, but, as Dr Fred Singer, former director of the US Weather Satellite Services, points out, there are real temperature data available for the twentieth century and, therefore, there is no need to use the reasonably inaccurate proxy data. The actual temperature data show, in fact, that 1935 was the warmest year in the Arctic. These data were presented in a study by Arctic scientist Igor Polyakov, who also showed that the warmest period in the Arctic was from the 1930s through to the 1940s.

A new Arctic study published by Håkan Grudd, of Stockholm University’s Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, confirms the conclusion that the Arctic is not warmer now than it was previously.

He states: “The late twentieth century is not exceptionally warm in the new Torneträsk record. On decadal to centurial timescales, periods around AD750, 1000, 1400, and 1750 were all equally warm, or warmer.”

In addition, Danish Metrological Institute records show that the “Arctic was warmer in the 1940s than now” – this was published May 13, 2009.

A study published in Geographical Research Letters by astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon states that Arctic temperatures were found to follow an increasing and decreasing pattern consistent with changes in solar irradiance.

This argument is borne out by a study by the US’s Duke University, which shows that the North Atlantic Ocean’s surface waters warmed in the 50 years between 1950 and 2000 but that the subpolar regions cooled at the same time. This resulted in patterns of cooling and warming waters, and which, the researchers indicated, can be largely explained by a natural cycle of wind circulation known as the North Atlantic Oscillation.

The study, quoted by the Washington Post, mentions, in the abstract, the well-known Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age period when temperatures were respectively warmer and colder than now, without any link to industrially produced carbon dioxide. Amazingly, the study then ignores these two incredibly important scientific facts in the body of its findings.

The Washington Post does, at least, interview the credible scientist, Singer, who pointed out that the Medieval Warm Period lasted from 800 to 1300 AD and exhibited higher temperatures than the last 30 years of the present.

The Washington Post’s Eilperin then rather shoots herself in the foot by claiming that this Medieval Warm Period was primarily about Europe. Not true! It has been clearly shown that this important warm period, a period of great prosperity and health, was, in fact, global in extent. Eilperin did not do her homework.

Meantime, on September 3, in the BBC programme Hard Talk, interviewer Stephen Sackur interviewed retiring head of Greenpeace Gerd Leipold, who admitted that Greenpeace had erred in claiming that all Arctic ice would melt by 2030. “I don’t think it will be melting by 2030 . . . that may have been a mistake,” he said. Sackur pointed out that the Arctic ice is 1,6-million square kilometres in extent, and, at the middle, is 3 km thick, and has survived much warmer periods in the past.

However, after admitting that Greenpeace had exaggerated the ice-melting rate, Leipold then went on to advocate the staggering pro- position that world economic growth must be suppressed. He maintained that economic growth could not be allowed to go ahead at 3% to 8%, because of the potential consequent damage to the environment.

I wonder if Leipold would like to tell many rural Africans that they can forget about electricity in their homes and, instead, must live with dung and wood cooking fires, and candles for home lighting. It is really tough for kids to do school work by candlelight. I know – I have been into these homes. Those people really know the value of energy – they don’t waste any.

Imagine Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb and then announcing that only some people of the planet will be allowed to use it. Imagine Henry Ford announcing that the freedom to travel in a motor car will be denied to half the planet.

It may sound great to promote a no-growth strategy, if you happen to live in the half of the planet that has all the growth.

The Medieval Warm Period really existed – there is no scientific or historical doubt about that. It was warm, and it was 500 years in duration. History shows that people pros- pered and were healthier than during cold periods.

Industrial greenhouse-gas emissions did not cause the Medieval Warm Period, so why blindly blame gaseous emissions now? That is bad science. One would have expected the Washington Post to open its eyes a bit wider.

Readers of the Washington Post, one ima- gines, are generally smart folks, and it should not take them too long to realise that they have had a green woolly jersey pulled over their eyes.
Genuine science should prevail in the end.