Is the Global Temperature Average Hiding the Real Climate Story?
Climate discussions are often reduced to one number: the change in global average temperature. But what if that average conceals more than it reveals?
In this short video, Dr. John Robson examines Chapter 13 of Canary in a Climate World, Climate Realism vs The Net Zero Myth titled “Misrepresentations of Climate Science,” by meteorologist William Kininmonth.
Kininmonth headed Australia’s National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology from 1986 to 1998. He represented Australia at the World Meteorological Organization’s Commission for Climatology and participated in international negotiations leading to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
He argues that the conventional explanation for recent warming does not adequately explain what observations reveal.
Earth is not warming uniformly
Using observational data from 1979 through 2023, Kininmonth shows striking differences among regions and seasons.
The polar regions warmed much faster than the tropics and middle latitudes, while the Southern Ocean showed almost no warming trend. Arctic and Antarctic warming was also substantially greater during winter than during summer.
This raises an important question:
If rising atmospheric CO₂ is the principal cause of recent warming, why does the warming differ so dramatically by latitude and season?
A valid explanation must account for more than a global average. It must explain where the warming occurs, when it occurs and why different regions respond so differently.
Look to the oceans
Kininmonth directs attention to the tropical oceans, which he describes as the climate system’s great ‘heat bank‘.
The oceans possess vastly more thermal capacity than the atmosphere. They absorb solar energy and redistribute immense quantities of heat through currents, evaporation and interaction with the air.
Kininmonth’s analysis finds that changes in tropical atmospheric temperature follow changes in ocean temperature. His interpretation is that the atmosphere is responding to the oceans.
He argues that natural variations in ocean circulation and the transport of heat toward the poles provide a more convincing explanation for the observed pattern of recent warming than rising CO₂.
One chapter in a much larger scientific case
Kininmonth’s argument does not stand alone. Other contributors approach the climate question from different scientific directions:
- Professor Ian Clark examines paleoclimate records, water vapour, clouds and the relationship between CO₂ and temperature. In the 2007 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle he questions why people are saying CO2 is now driving temperature when it never has in the past.
- Professor Richard Lindzen explains why Earth’s complex climate system cannot be reduced to a simple CO₂ control knob.
- Professor Ian Plimer places today’s warming within hundreds of millions of years of geological climatic changes.
- Dr. John Christy compares climate-model projections with temperatures actually measured by satellites.
Their approaches differ, but they converge on one central warning: the climate system is far more complex than the political Net Zero narrative suggests.
Together with 34 other contributors, they present the broader case in Canary in a Climate World: Climate Realism vs. the Net Zero Myth.
His conclusion is blunt
Kininmonth concludes that attempts to stop warming by reducing atmospheric CO₂ will fail.
That is an enormously consequential argument when governments are restructuring energy systems and committing trillions of dollars to ‘net zero’ policies.
His complete chapter presents the temperature observations, radiation calculations and physical reasoning behind that conclusion.
It is one of 38 chapters in Canary in a Climate World, bringing together scientists, researchers and other independent voices whose evidence is too often excluded from public discussion.
The book can be found on Amazon.
See more here substack.com
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