Mark Pickering

The foundational flaw of the climate narrative is the deliberate omission of context. We were told current temperatures and CO₂ levels were unprecedented, yet geological history says the exact opposite. Earth has been locked in the Late Cenozoic Ice Age for the past 34 million years, triggered by the glaciation of Antarctica. On geological timescales, the world's climate state is overwhelmingly driven by tectonic shifts and changing ocean currents. These ice age conditions intensified 2.58 million years ago into the Quaternary glaciation, characterised by long, brutal glacial periods of around 100,000 years, interrupted by temporary, warmer interglacials like the Holocene we live in today. We live in a far cooler global regime than 90% of the past 541 million years of the Phanerozoic Eon. Global average temperatures today sit around 15°C - markedly cooler than the Phanerozoic average of approximately 24°C, which historically swung between cold glacial lows and thermal peaks over 30°C. By historical standards, we are living in unusually cold times. The alarming predictions of extreme warming - such as projections of up to 5°C based on high-emissions models - are increasingly recognised across scientific literature as implausible upper bounds rather than realistic baselines. Atmospheric CO₂ is the indispensable foundation for photosynthesis, agriculture and the rise of complex life on Earth. Rather than suffering from an excess of carbon, the modern Earth has emerged from a long-term geological carbon shortfall - a prolonged period during which lower CO₂ levels contributed to global aridity and the retreat of ancient green biomass. An increase in atmospheric CO₂ represents life's biological resurgence. Acting as a natural fertiliser, it stimulates plant growth, improves water-use efficiency, and expands the planet's green canopy - a transformation clearly visible from satellite observation. The natural world has endured genuine, cataclysmic upheavals in the deep past. The great extinction events and climate shifts of history - such as the Carnian Pluvial Episode or the End-Permian transition - played out over tens of thousands to millions of years. Yet through every transformation, the biosphere adapted, survived and ultimately thrived. These events became opportunities for new life forms to emerge, such as the dinosaurs, and us. When the planet experienced sustained greenhouse conditions, life did not collapse - it flourished. During the Eocene Epoch 56 million years ago, palm trees grew in the Arctic, permanent ice disappeared from the poles and lush rainforests blanketed much of the planet's landmass. Far from a barren wasteland, the Eocene was a time of astonishing biological abundance, dense vegetation and a massive evolutionary radiation of mammalian life. The lessons of history show us that warmer conditions and elevated carbon levels are not the forces of destruction; historically, they have been the catalysts for biological growth and global greening. IMAGE: Global mean surface temperature curve over the past 485 million years of the Phanerozoic Eon, showing Earth's current position within a deep icehouse regime. Data adapted from paleoclimate reconstructions by C.R. Scotese et al. (2021) and E.J. Judd et al. Science (2024).

Dramatic predictions of a 5.5°C rise by 2100 are now dismissed as 'implausible' - and planet Earth is not even remotely facing runaway warming. The United Nations warming scenario is now widely acknowledged by scientists as implausible. We also live within a cooler ice age regime that has lasted tens of millions of years. Global temperatures remain a full 9°C colder than the 24°C average spanning the past 485 million years (Judd et al., Science 2024). Also, world temperatures have only changed by up to 1.4°C over the roughly 250 years since the start of the Industrial Revolution. This is not sufficient justification for a crisis. First introduced in 2011 to guide policy, this extreme scenario - known as RCP8.5 (and later SSP5-8.5) - served as the primary engine for the terrifying headlines for over a decade. With the retirement of the extreme 5.5°C baseline ahead of the 7th Assessment Report (AR7), the ceiling for high-emissions temperature projections has been dropped. The IPCC's high-end baselines have been downgraded toward a maximum around 3.3°C, and even this is likely to be just as implausible. Perhaps this is why the latest AR7 committee hearings have just been suspended. Changes in CO₂ concentrations do not automatically trigger runaway temperatures. The world is too complex, and too many other factors have been left out. Any analysis of past climate reveals the world does not have a single temperature or a single climate; these are computerised composites, designed to maximise existential dread. A lift in CO₂ has already delivered measurable green leaf expansion across the world, as captured by NASA satellite data. Some cereal crop yields have jumped by 280%. CO₂ is a trace atmospheric gas - around 420 parts per million - which is among the lowest concentrations in all geological history, while the atmosphere is over 99% nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, with water vapor exceeding CO₂ many times over. This deceptive original scenario - promoted heavily through the UN and the media - galvanised Net Zero and unleashed global hysteria. It forced the premature decline of reliable energy systems across the West and deindustrialised heavy industry. The West's arch competitor, China, inherited the title of the world's greatest manufacturing nation in history. Now Beijing provides around 90% of the world's turbines, solar panels and components. Its industrial power is built on the world's greatest volume of coal-fired power stations. It is also the world's largest annual emitter of carbon dioxide, producing roughly 30% to 33% of global carbon dioxide emissions annually - releasing over 13 billion tons per year. This is the greatest transfer of wealth in history - without a shot fired in anger.