Russian Arctic Scientist: Permafrost Changes Due To Natural Factors…”It’s Going To Be Colder”!

Sebastian Lüning’s and Fritz Vahrenholt’s Die kalte Sonne presents an interesting view on permafrost from Russia. I’ve added some extra quotes from the video for non-German readers.

After widespread sea ice melt in the Arctic in the 1930s and 40s, the ice re-established itself. In the 1970s the temperature dropped and sea ice increased. In the 1970s and 90s at the Hudson Bay and Beaufort Sea, seals suffered under the extensive ice and the population fell dramatically.

In Siberia today the permafrost is supposed to be gradually melting, so we are told. But if you ask local Russian scientists, this cannot be confirmed (see video above).

Russian permafrost expert slaps down AGW

In the video a German journalist travels to Siberia and speaks with Russian permafrost expert Michali Grigoryev on the state of the permafrost (2007). Grigoryev shows the journalist a rare baby mammoth uncovered from the ice, and adds that such finds are becoming more and more frequent today. “Because of climate change”, the journalist asks at the 0:48 mark? Grigoryev answers:

No, you are wrong. The permafrost is not melting. There is no man-made climate change.”

The journalist then quotes the Russian scientist:

Indeed above at the surface it has gotten warmer, but that’s just part of a normal cycle. The permafrost is rock hard, And that is how it is going to stay. There’s no talk of thawing.”

At the 1:24 mark, the scientist says:

The cyclic warming is coming to an end. It is going to get colder soon. The climate depends on the sun and the oceans. Three factors have coincided and have warmed the climate, but in 8 to 15 years, it’s going to be colder again.”

As the clip was made in 2007, that means we have just 3 to 10 years left before the cooling sets in in earnest. We note that there’s been no warming in 15 years and that the signs for cooling are mounting.

In another another study from Siberia, multiple super warm periods were found over the last 2.8 million years. Those were certainly caused by purely natural processes, and not anthropogenic influences.

But let’s look at the more recent 10,000 years, i.e. the current interglacial. A German-Norwegian team led by Juliane Müller of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bermerhaven, Germany, recently discovered that the sea ice cover west of Greenland gradually increased from 8500 to 1000 years before present. Off Eastern Greenland sea ice pretty much remained constant during this period. The study appeared in July 2012 in the Quaternary Science Reviews.

In yet another study by a team led by Funder shows that the Arctic sea ice 8000 years ago was less than half of the minimum we saw in 2007. In the meantime most of the climate models are able to reproduce this lack of ice during the middle of the interglacial (Berger et al 2012, Climate of the Past Discussions). The cause of this warming and the ice melt in this case was the Milankovitch cycles.

Finally, we have the Medieval Warm Period back. Canadian scientists have just discovered that the Northwest Passage had been completely ice-free during the summer, which today is still not the case.