Saharan Expert Says Climate Tipping Points ‘Complete Nonsense’
Dr. Stefan Kröpelin is an award-winning geologist and climate researcher at the University of Cologne and specializes in studying the eastern Sahara desert and its climatic history
He’s been active out in the field there for more than 40 years.
In an AUF 1 video interview, Dr. Kröpelin contradicts the alarmist claims of growing deserts and rapidly approaching climate ‘tipping points’.
He says that already in the late 1980s rains had begun spreading into northern Sudan and have since indeed developed into a trend.
Since then, rains have increased and vegetation has spread northwards. “The desert is shrinking; it is not growing.”
Kröpelin confirms that when the last ice age ended some 12,000 years ago, the eastern Sahara turned green with vegetation, teemed with wildlife, and had numerous bodies of water 5000 – 10,000 years ago (more here).
Later in the interview, Kröpelin explains how the eastern Sahara climate was reconstructed using a vast multitude of sediment cores and the proxy data they yielded.
According to the German geology expert: “The most important studies that we conducted all show that after the ice age, when global temperatures rose, the Sahara greened”… “the monsoon rains increased, the groundwater rose.”
This all led to vegetation and wildlife taking hold over thousands of years.
Then over the past few thousands of years, the region dried out. It didn’t happen all of a sudden like climate models suggest.
Modelers don’t understand climate complexity
When asked about dramatic ‘tipping points’ (8:00) such as those claimed to be approaching by the Potsdam Institute (PIK), Kröpelin says he’s very skeptical and doesn’t believe crisis scenarios such as those proposed by former PIK head, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber.
He says people making such claims “never did any studies themselves in any climate zone on the earth and they don’t understand how complex the climate is.”
Except for catastrophic geological events, “it’s not how nature works,” Kröpelin says. “Things change gradually.”
The claim that “we have to be careful that things don’t get half a degree warmer, otherwise everything will collapse is, of course, complete nonsense.”
“I would say this concept [tipping points] is baseless. Much more [evidence] indicates that they won’t happen than that they will happen.”
Late last year in Munich, he called the notion of CO2-induced climate ‘tipping points’ scientifically outlandish.
He also called the prospect of the Sahara spreading into Europe preposterous.
See more here climatechangedispatch
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Alan
| #
It is impossible to have a tipping point in a natural system because thermodynamics means that temperatures will always tend to an equilibrium. The only way they can go higher or lower is if the heat input changes.
Reply