Climate Scientists Overlook Natural Variability – Trapped in Group Think
In his latest video presentation, climate scientist Dr Peter Ridd explains why so many of his colleagues stubbornly refuse to see how big a part natural variability explains our climate system.
Climate science produces valuable data on past environmental changes, yet too often the interpretation of that data reveals a classic case of “madness of crowds” — the tendency for otherwise rational people to adopt exaggerated or distorted views when caught in a prevailing narrative. Professor Peter Ridd highlights how researchers repeatedly discover evidence of massive natural climate swings, only to frame them as harbingers of human-caused doom.
A striking example comes from Greenland. Roughly 7,000 years ago — well within the era of early human civilizations — an area now covered by about 500 meters (1,700 feet) of ice became completely ice-free. Scientists described this dramatic loss as occurring during a “relatively mild natural warming period.” Yet Ridd notes this was actually one of the warmest periods of the last 100,000 years. The scale of change dwarfs anything observed in the past century.
see the full video below:
Another study drilled through Greenland’s ice cap and found twigs and insects in the soil beneath, evidence that the ice sheet had largely disappeared half a million to a million years ago when two miles of ice melted away. The logical takeaway — that past natural climate variability has been enormous and today’s conditions remain well within the range of natural swings — was largely sidelined. Instead, the authors warned of the ice cap’s “fragility” and impending catastrophe, predicting several feet of sea-level rise this century that would submerge major coastal cities.
Real-world observations show more modest changes. Global sea levels have risen roughly 200 mm (about 8 inches) over the past 120 years, with possible slight acceleration recently but nothing suggesting the dramatic acceleration needed for the most alarming projections.
A third case involves deep-sea corals around the Galápagos Islands that vanished entirely for about 1,000 years some 5,000 years ago. No SUVs, coal plants, or cattle existed. Scientists link the disappearance to natural shifts in El Niño cycles affecting oxygen levels in seawater. This occurred during the Holocene Climatic Optimum — a notably warmer period, as the name (coined decades before today’s climate alarm) implies. Similar natural variability explains past transformations, such as the once-green Sahara with its lakes and megafauna turning to desert.
Ridd argues these researchers often perform excellent empirical work uncovering real history, yet “filter out” the clear demonstration of natural variability and instead default to attributing risk to human greenhouse gases. This echoes Charles Mackay’s 1840s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which catalogued financial bubbles and manias where groups lost touch with reality.
As the late climate scientist Bob Carter told a younger Ridd: the climate has always changed, and we must adapt. Preparing food systems, infrastructure, and societies for genuine natural variability — including rapid shifts from volcanic events or ocean cycle changes — matters far more than obsessing over modest human contributions.
By downplaying evidence of past large-scale natural swings, parts of the scientific community risk misdirecting policy away from resilience and toward costly transformations that may deliver little benefit. The Greenland ice that came and went millennia ago, and the corals that disappeared and returned, remind us that the climate system has always been dynamic. Understanding that history, rather than fitting every discovery into a predetermined narrative, remains essential.
John O’Sullivan is CEO and co-founder (with Dr Tim Ball among 45 scientists) of Principia Scientific International (PSI). He is a seasoned science writer, retired teacher and legal analyst who assisted skeptic climatologist Dr Ball in defeating UN climate expert, Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann in the multi-million-dollar ‘science trial of the century‘. From 2010 O’Sullivan led the original ‘Slayers’ group of scientists who compiled the book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ debunking alarmist lies about carbon dioxide plus their follow-up climate book. His most recent publication, ‘Slaying the Virus and Vaccine Dragon’ broadens PSI’s critiques of mainstream medical group think and junk science.