Arctic temperatures are at a 44,000-year high - and greenhouse gases are to blame, claim scientists (?)

Anthony Watts has made some reasonable criticisms of the report below but seems to have missed a feat of illogic that stands out like dog's balls to me.  As the article itself mentions, temperatures on Baffin Island have a life of their own.  They do not even match temperature changes in adjoining Greenland.  But if Baffin Island is so out of line with the rest of the world, how can we made deductions about the rest of the world from it?  Only a Warmist would think you could.

The Arctic generally is a patchwork of quite widely varying temperatures to this day.  There appear to be several culprits for that, including variations in wind currents, variations in ocean currents and subsea vulcanism


Average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past 44,000 years, scientists warned.

The study said that temperatures in the region could even be hotter than as long as 120,000 years ago.

The U.S. researchers believe the 'unprecedented warming' of Arctic Canada is due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
A couple of walruses are pictured

Average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past 44,000 years, scientists warned.

Gifford Miller, study leader and geological sciences professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said: 'This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.'

Scientists at the university believe their study is the first direct evidence that the present warmth in the Eastern Canadian Arctic exceeds the peak warmth there in the Early Holocene, when the amount of the sun’s energy reaching the Northern Hemisphere in summer was roughly nine per cent greater than today.

The Holocene is a geological epoch that began after Earth’s last glacial period ended roughly 11,700 years ago and continues today.

Professor Miller and his colleagues used dead moss clumps emerging from receding ice caps on Baffin Island as tiny clocks.

According to their paper, published in journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists compared 145 radiocarbon-dated plants with gas bubbles trapped in ice cores from the region, which show layers of snow over time and enable researchers to reconstruct past temperatures.

The plants were collected in the highlands of Baffin Island, which is located east of Greenland is the fifth largest island in the world and lies mostly inside the Arctic Circle.

The results showed the plants had been trapped in the ice for at least 44,000 years but could have been entombed for up to 120,000 years - suggesting that the temperatures in the area have not been so high for as long as 120,000 years.

'The key piece [of information] here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is,' said Professor Miller, who is also a fellow at the university's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

The scientists examined 145 radiocarbon-dated plants in the highlands of Baffin Island, which is located east of Greenland is the fifth largest island in the world, lying predominately inside the Arctic Circle

'Although the Arctic has been warming since about 1900, the most significant warming in the Baffin Island region didn’t really start until the 1970s,' said Professor Miller.

'It is really in the past 20 years that the warming signal from that region has been just stunning. All of Baffin Island is melting, and we expect all of the ice caps to eventually disappear, even if there is no additional warming,' he added.

The scientists said temperatures across the Arctic have been rising substantially in recent decades as a result of the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.

Studies in Greenland by other researchers at the university  indicate temperatures on the ice sheet have climbed 7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1991.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).