The hits just keep coming for the climate scolds. The more evidence is gathered and analyzed, the more we realize what many of us suspected all along: While, yes, the climate changes, as it always has and always will, and while, yes, humans have some effect, that effect is overshadowed by the natural cycles of the Earth and its climate. And, yes, there's no reason, no compelling justification, for doing away with our modern, energy-hungry lifestyles to address a problem that we can't really change in any measurable way.
The Daily Sceptic's Climate Editor, Chris Morrison, has another one of those hits, and this new research has been done on using some pretty pristine evidence: Antarctic ice cores, buried out of sight, out of reach, and out of range of any climate changes for thousands and thousands of years. Every layer in these cores is a little time capsule of temperature and CO2 data, and what that data tells us is compelling.
It is natural variation that the headbangers try to ignore. Only then can they demonise recent gentle global warming and spin the lie that collectivist action can stop the weather. This is why this latest temperature paper is important, and why it will be ignored in the mainstream. It would be impossible to impose a Marxist wet dream costing trillions of pounds and involving horrendous lifestyle changes if it became generally known that the recent rise in temperature was common throughout the last 200,000 years.
Written by the Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Kingston University Les Hatton, the paper analyses publicly-available temperature information going back around 420,000 years from the Epica-Vostok Antarctica ice core dataset. It accepts that the data do not provide a global figure, which it is noted is a statistical amalgam with many assumptions and numerous proxies. The more cynical might note here that current global temperature datasets contain a great deal of ‘junk’ unnatural heat measurements, and are subject to considerable suspicious retrospective adjustments. The author notes that the Vostok ice core is a ”pure” record since it is based on a single location in a consistent manner over a long period. Again, sceptics might welcome the lack of measurements next to airport runways, solar farms and glass-clad high-rise buildings.
Note the depth of the data selected for analysis here, that being 420,000 years back through not only the most recent major glaciation (which one might colloquially call an "ice age," even though we are still in an ice age now, just in a warm interglacial period). That's a lot of data, and through isotope analysis, we can get a broad look at temperature and CO2 trends - and that shows some warming starting about 200,000 years ago that isn't necessarily connected to CO2 trends.
Professor Hatton has some interesting general comments about temperature, noting that interglacial peaks starting 400,000 years ago appear to be getting hotter. The interglacials are followed by ice ages and these seem to be getting colder. Carbon dioxide levels do not seem to play a large part in all this natural variation as the graph below going back 200,000 years clearly shows. In some periods, the red temperature line moves in a different direction to the blue CO2 marker.
Here's that graph:
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) March 16, 2026
Yes, there is some tentative language here. That's how actual science works. Every finding, every hypothesis, is tentative, subject to new data. That's not how the climate scolds work, though; they are working backward from a conclusion, and no amount of data will change their minds.
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Chris Morrison also brings up something the scolds aren't anxious to talk about: The fact that we have been in a historic CO2 low point, and remember, CO2 is necessary for plant life.
Carbon dioxide levels in this dataset vary between 170 parts per million (ppm) and 280 ppm. If the level had fallen below 150 ppm, photosynthesis would have stopped and an almost certain mass extinction of land-based life would have occurred. Hatton observes that in 556 centuries of the 800,000-year Vostok database, CO2 was below 190 ppm.
Whatever the cause of the recent upturn in CO2, which has ‘greened’ the planet by up to 20% in the last 50 years, we seem to have dodged a very dangerous extinction bullet.
This latest example of climate investigation is especially relevant due to the high quality of the source of the data: Ice cores taken from the Antarctic's Epica-Vostok ice sheet. These samples were taken from layers as deep as nearly 3,000 meters below the surface, and they are pristine, exposed to neither air, water, nor sunshine for up to 400,000 years. Data sources just don't get any more pristine than that, and sample contamination can be a major source of bad data.
Science works when properly applied, when it's driven by data, when that data is analyzed dispassionately and with scrupulous attention to accuracy. And when that's done, as we've seen time and again, the panic-mongering of the climate scolds is shown, time and again, to be irrelevant and unnecessary.
Earth is a marvelous place. It operates on time scales that are so vast, so complex, that they are difficult for us to imagine, much less understand. There are ocean current cycles, orbital cycles, and even solar cycles that affect our global climate. Those influences dwarf our efforts. One good volcano can erase decades of human influence. It's good to see more and more serious work being done to further our understanding of this fascinating planet - and to counter the hysterical claims of the scolds.
