NRSP Allied Scientist Dr. Tim Ball analyzes the following excerpt from the CBC Web piece “Global warming explained”

“Scientists tend to point to the Arctic and the Antarctic climates as the signs of things to come. Climate change in those areas could rise as high as six degrees in the winter months, according to some projections from the IPCC.”

By Dr. Ball:

This is typical threatening but actually meaningless statements made about climate change. Look at the conditional words like "tend," "could" and "some." The IPCC projections are based on computer models that have been wrong in every projection to date. This is not surprising considering the serious lack of data for both Polar Regions.

Here is a diagram from the Arctic Impact Assessment Report that was a basis of the IPCC assessment. It shows that there is insufficient temperature data for most of the Arctic Basin."

In fact the changes occurring are not new and contrary to reports and speculation well within natural historic records of change. There were much warmer periods in the 1940s, in the Medieval Warm Period from 900 to 1200 AD and in the Holocene Optimum from 9000 to 5000 BP. Here is a photograph of a White Spruce radiocarbon dated to the middle of that time (4940±150) yet now 100 km of north of the current tree line. Global temperatures at least 5°C warmer than at present are required for a tree of this size at this location.

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