Figure 1

Joe Marten’s Feb. 25 letter (“Addressing energy poverty and combatting climate change) states I am “essentially claiming climate change is a hoax.” I cry foul, “misinformation,” or maybe it is “disinformation,” or perhaps it’s both. Who knows, and in fairness, it doesn’t matter.

Climate change is NOT a hoax. It has been going on forever! For example, in the 1970s, climate change threatened a generation with a pending ice age. If you lived during that time, you might remember news reports regarding the cold weather and the coming doom. Such as the 1974 TIME magazine article “Another Ice Age?” and the New York Times article from 1975, “Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate Is Changing: a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.” And from the Chicago Tribune, “B-r-r-r-r: New Ice Age on the way soon?” Newsweek reported their concern about “The Cooling World” by citing a report from NOAA scientists “that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.”

Nevertheless, this 1970s climate change cooling was undoubtedly not a hoax. But it wasn’t because of a pending ice age. We know now that the unregulated and massive unloading of sulfur pollution after WW2 created climatic conditions in the northern hemisphere that led to darker skies and cold temperatures into the 1970s. Look at the attached plot of NOAA, maximum daily temperatures from Indian Lake, NY. (Figure 1).

The coldest 20th Century Adirondack temperatures peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the same time regulations to clean up the sulfur across the northern hemisphere started. They picked up in earnest after passing the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. My career as a scientist was fortunate to be part of an acid rain team born from this bipartisan legislation. We monitored the chemistry from sulfur pollution for years until Adirondack brook trout waters reached a healthy recovery point. Our acid rain data saw a significant positive shift in chemistry starting around 2007.

Interestingly, research shows that 2006-2007 began a positive trend and continues in annual sunshine hours relative to the satellite data. If you enjoy the sun, clean air and brook trout angling, you can thank the massive public efforts for passing clean air legislation. As a result, human sulfur dioxide pollution lost its grip over the northern hemisphere in the mid-late 2000s.

The Arctic has also recovered from years of sulfur pollution. Yet, the climate crowd continues to scare the public about “the existential threat” of rising sea levels per the melting of the summer Arctic Sea ice. They often anchor their questionable efforts in the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) satellite data, which conveniently started when sulfur pollution started its reduction. Yes, the Arctic shows a declining sea ice trend when you start the trendline in the late 1970s.

However, scientists were collecting Arctic data well before the late 1970s, and according to a 2017 report, “observations show an increase in sea ice from 1950 to 1975 as large as the subsequent decrease in sea ice observed from 1975 to 2005.” The conclusion is that unregulated sulfur pollution, not CO2, drove the changing climate of the Arctic across the second half of the 20th Century.

Therefore, it is reasonable, and relative to sulfur pollution, to hypothesize that the Arctic Sea ice has returned to a pre-WW2 level. The Arctic has maintained a consistent level of September-Summer ice for the last 18 years (2007-2024). NSIDC data also show that September 2024 ended with more sea ice than September 2007. All while CO2 keeps increasing. Further, there is no connection between sea levels and atmospheric CO2 concentration.

The climate change before WW2 wasn’t a hoax, either. The 1930s are associated with the warmest RECORDED temperatures and heat waves in the U.S. That information comes directly from the 2017 Fourth National Climate Assessment, NOAA and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The Adirondacks also experienced its warmest days before WW2, as the Indian Lake, NY temperatures support the national values and when CO2 values were lower (Figure 1.).

I also wouldn’t claim global climate change to be a hoax given the several thousand published papers establishing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) 900 A.D. to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age (LIA) 1300 A.D. to 1915 A.D. Don Easterbrook has reported: “During the Medieval Warm Period, wine grapes were grown as far north as England, where growing grapes is now not feasible. Grapes are presently grown in Germany up to elevations of about 1800 ft (560 m), but from about 1100 to 1300 AD, vineyards extended up to about 2500 ft (780 m), implying that temperatures were warmer by about 2-2.5F (1-1.4C).”

The LIA was a climate change nightmare when temperatures dropped by as much as two degrees Celsius. Dangerously low CO2 levels, indicative of weaker photosynthesis conditions, combined with the cold, caused hardships in farming and everyday living during the LIA. The reader and the next generation of scientists should know that CO2 is NOT a pollutant. It drives plant growth and the creation of life. And more people die from cold than warm climates!

However, the 2001 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 3rd Assessment Report effectively erased the MWP and LIA. After years of trying, it is at this point that climate activism took the lead. The reader should also know that quite a bit of mischief goes into the synthesis and evaluation-based policy summary documents, such as those from the IPCC, which poorly reflect the uncertainty and confidence associated with the underlying empirical scientific data.

Finally, nighttime minimum temperatures have been getting milder since the end of the LIA.

However, I agree with Princeton Professor Emeritus Dr. William Happer that “basic physics makes it clear that changes in greenhouse gas concentration are not enough to account for the warming since the end of the Little Ice Age.” Slightly warmer evenings and nights are not a reason to turn our energy world upside down, attach inequitable climate nonsense to billions of people in undeveloped countries and hold our children back from achieving a comfortable life. I further agree with Dr. Happer’s statement: “This whole field has been set back some 50 years by the crazed focus on CO2 as the ‘control knob’ of climate. It is nothing of the sort.”

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Jed Dukett lives in Tupper Lake and is a former acid rain scientist. A list of sources accompanies this commentary online.