Sensational New Findings: Higher Warming Trend at Start of 20th Century Casts Serious Doubt on Role of Human-Caused CO2

Recently published remarkable research analysing over 42 million global temperature recordings from nearly 1,000 stations has cast serious doubt on the claimed link between carbon dioxide emissions and rising temperatures. The huge statistical work collected data from before 1900 to 2024 and found an overall annual warming trend of 0.0054°C after adjusting for growing unnatural urban heat effects. What is truly revealing about this important analysis is that it shows an obvious disconnect between the rise in anthropogenic CO₂ and the sharpest warming occurring in the early 20th century, when industrialisation was confined to relatively few countries.

The annual 0.0054°C translates to warming of little more than 0.8°C during the industrial era and is below claims of well over 1°C from other, often politicised, sources. The disconnect with CO₂ is evidenced by slower warming and even cooling trends over the last 125 years at a time when emissions of the trace gas have been rising in the atmosphere. The results of the work are tabulated below:

The largest warming over a 42-year period occurred between 1899 and 1940 when cumulative CO₂ emissions were only 139.6 billion tonnes. The next period, from 1941 to 1982, saw annual average cooling of -0.013°C, leading to widespread fears at the time of a new global ice age despite a 3.3 times jump in cumulative CO₂. From 1983 to 2024, the average annual temperature warming of 0.017°C was less than the period up to 1940, when CO₂ levels were 8.7 times lower. When considering these figures, it is worth noting that the notion humans cause most climate change is a hypothesis – in other words, an opinion, a guess given unwarranted credibility by computer models based on the current or selective state of knowledge. Political interference based on promoting the Net Zero fantasy does little to advance the current state of factual knowledge.

Of course, these patterns do not align well with the ‘settled’ political view that increasing CO₂ from the use of hydrocarbons is the primary driver of recent global warming. In fact, they do not align at all with the UK Met Office’s recent risible pseudoscientific claim that its “rapid attribution study” showed that human-induced climate change made the UK’s record-breaking annual temperature of 2025 approximately 260 times more likely. A record, it might be noted, of six hundredths of a degree centigrade culled from a largely ‘junk’ measuring network made essentially useless by massive unnatural and uncorrected heat corruptions.

Not only are there few, if any, adjustments made for urban heat corruptions, but global temperature datasets promoting warming over the industrial age of up to 1.3°C are frequently adjusted higher retrospectively. GISS, which is part of NASA, increased past warming from January 1915 to January 2000 from 0.45°C to 0.67°C, a massive 49% boost. HADCrut is run by the UK Met Office, which once wrote a paper on the inconvenient temperature ‘pause’ from 1998 to 2013. Alas, the pause did not survive substantial retrospective warming adjustments, although it is still visible in the accurate satellite record.

The cynical have been known to observe there are more fiddles in global temperature datasets than the music cupboard at the Royal Philharmonic.

Back in the real scientific world, the author of this new analysis of temperature data stretching back to the 19th century is Dr Bibek Bhatta. Operating out of Queen’s University in Belfast, his research spans energy policy, finance and climate, with a focus on leveraging ‘Big Data’ to uncover hidden patterns and systemic misalignments. In his latest work, Dr. Bhatta argues that academic researchers should approach the concept of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) with a degree of caution. “Rather than treating AGW as a foregone conclusion, scholars in all fields should be encouraged to acknowledge the existing uncertainties,” he said. When building models or theories that assume CO₂ is the primary driver of changing weather, they should note that “empirical evidence for this direct link is still a subject of debate”.

In an earlier section of his paper, Bhatta addresses the widely debunked suggestion of a 97% consensus among scientists about AGW. The claim arose from a supposed examination of nearly 4,000 papers published over a 21-year period, implying an average of one new paper produced every other day on the topic. This would suggest a “herd mentality” rather than a proliferation of independent evidence, commented Bhatta. “If one strong piece of empirical evidence for AGW exists, such repetitive endorsement would be unnecessary,” he argues. Perhaps Dr. Bhatta is too polite to add that the 97% figure, along with a subsequent 99% claim, was largely fabricated anyway.

Dr. Bhatta’s work on big meteorological data is fascinating. He presents his findings over several time periods; full details and methodology can be found in the enclosed link at the top of this story. His aim is simple – to investigate whether global warming trends recorded by actual weather stations can be “primarily attributed” to human emissions of CO₂. His work follows a long line of research seeking to provide a truer picture of constantly changing past climate at a time when CO₂ levels have been much higher and no obvious link exists with movements in local or global temperatures. Such work, effectively banned from consideration in most anti-science mainstream media, examines the role of natural weather variation and the possible ‘saturation’ of gases with atmospheric warming properties.

In total, 105 million global temperature recordings were downloaded from the Global Historical Climatology Network. After extensive cleaning, the final sample numbered around 42 million measurements with continuous records from at least 1900. All records supplied maximum and minimum daily temperatures and came from 992 stations across 29 countries. Data for annual human CO₂ emissions was taken from Our World in Data. To adjust for urban heat influences, satellite information showing the build-up of urbanisation within a 10km radius was used. Similar work using this information has been done by other researchers trying to estimate urban heat effect on ambient air temperature measurements. As the table above noted, the annual warming for 1983–2024 was 0.0167°C compared to an urban heat corrupted 0.0209°C. Aficionados of the Met Office’s ‘hottest year evah’ claims might take note of these figures.

In conclusion, Dr. Bhatta observes that his evidence raises serious questions about the established assumptions regarding the impact of CO₂ emissions on global warming. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims “unequivocally” that humans have caused global warming, he continues, “the empirical evidence presented herein does not provide support to such straightforward relationship”.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.