An article on the climate activist website Inside Climate News (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23122019/greenland-ice-sheet-climate-tipping-point-temperature-duration-sea-level-rise-pnas-study) claims Greenland is perilously close to a tipping point that will destabilize the Greenland ice sheet and result in substantial ice melt and sea level rise. The ice sheet’s stability through much warmer temperatures that lasted several thousand years during early human civilization, however, strongly contradicts the assertion.

Even climate alarmists have long acknowledged that temperatures would need to continue rising for many centuries before threatening a substantial melting of the Greenland ice sheet. A new study, however, claims that analysis of fossilized sea shells off of the coast of Greenland shows sustained warm temperatures several hundred thousand years ago indicate Greenland could eventually reach a tipping point of substantial sustained ice loss. Inside Climate News reports the authors of the study claim the sea shells indicate a similar tipping point may be just a few decades away.

“Our best estimate suggests that modest warming was able to dramatically reduce the parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet that are hard to melt away,” said one of the authors of the study, according to Inside Climate News.

Large sections of the ice sheet could melt “due to only a small increase in temperatures relative to today,” said the author.

However, peer-reviewed scientific research and even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have long established that temperatures remained much warmer than today for 4,000 years, during a period between 4,000 and 8,000 years ago. Yet the Greenland ice sheet did not experience any such tipping point.

No, Greenland is not approaching a melting ‘tipping point’

Figure 1: Global temperatures were much warmer than today during the Holocene Maximum and remained that way for thousands of years. Chart published in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change First Assessment Report.

Data published by the UN IPCC show quite clearly that temperatures can be much warmer than today and remain that way for thousands of years without reaching a tipping point for the Greenland ice sheet. But that won’t stop alarmists from continuing to assert their Climate Delusion that defies scientific facts.

Author

  • James M. Taylor is an American lawyer, senior fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute and a CFACT contributor. James Taylor is a keen analyst of science and public policy and a competition level poker player.