Yet Another Global Warming Keystone Crumbles: Arctic Ice 'Tipping Point' Disproven

New evidence now undermines one of the linchpins of the Catastrophic Global Warming hypothesis — the feedback loop which is projected to cause global temperatures to spike upward in future decades once the Arctic ice sheet sheds enough square mileage; the loss of the ice’s reflectivity will (in theory) allow the absorption of more sunlight, which will cause more warming, which will melt more ice, and so on, until the polar ice caps are gone completely.

But a new study by Danish researchers and reported by the BBC now throws that basic assumption into question:

Arctic ‘tipping point’ may not be reached

Scientists say that current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced.

Danish researchers analysed ancient pieces of driftwood found in Northern Greenland which they say is an accurate way of measuring the extent of the ancient ice loss.

Writing in the journal Science, the team found evidence that sea ice levels were about 50% lower than today when temperatures warmed around 5,000 years ago.

They argue that a tipping point under current scenarios is unlikely, as changes to wind systems can slow down the rate of melting.

To put the rest of the article into plain English:

Danish scientists found they could accurately estimate past Arctic ice extent by analyzing frozen driftwood embedded in ancient ice. And they discovered that during a long-ago warming phase called the Holocene Climate Optimum, there was actually much less Arctic ice coverage back then than there is today (or will be in the future under pessimistic projections). And yet, even so — the Holocene ice sheet recovered and regained all its losses, even though it was well past the supposed “tipping point” beyond which the ice was projected to never return.

So it turns out there may not be a “tipping point” after all — that the ice extent can shrink and grow naturally, and that the loss of reflectivity during low ice periods will not allow so much solar absorption that the polar ice caps will be lost forever due to a runaway positive feedback loop.

While this may seem like a minor esoteric point, it actually refutes most of the disaster scenarios promulgated by global warming alarmists, most of which — rising sea levels, flooded coastlines, irreversible climate change, sudden rapid increase in global temperatures — are based on the assumption of this runaway feedback loop.

But now we can see that it was just that — an “assumption.” They never had any proof that it was true. And now that we finally have some direct evidence of past Arctic ice extent, we see that the tipping point was not reached when it ought to have been under the alarmists’ theories.

Add this to the ever-growing pile of new evidence emerging this year which seriously calls into question the entire Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis.