OK one more RCP8.5 story. There’s a video clip of Bobby “Boris” Pickett, whose musical career consisted of one huge success namely “The Monster Mash”, promising to sing “a medley of my hit.” Evidently he had a sense of humour about having one big number … unlike the alarmists who do “The Greenland Melt” over and over with no sense of irony. It’s going down fast, folks. Within 80 years, unsettling science says, 4000 years’ worth of cumulative ice growth will be lost. And Michael Mann was apparently working in the lab late one night when his eyes beheld an eerie sight: He says that two years ago the Greenland ice was melting so fast “you would be able to see the rise in global sea level from that, the human eye would have been able to see the rise in global sea level”. Sure. And Greta Thunberg “can see CO2 with the naked eye”. They did the melt. They did the Greenland Melt.

According to the study, reported in Physics World, “These latest results are consistent with previous research that shows that if we continue our current high trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions we can expect Greenland to become ice-free in as little as 1000 years.” Now we know what you’re thinking… or at least we hope we do: Did someone seriously do a thousand-year projection of GHG emissions based on their having sufficiently detailed knowledge to nail not only the science but the economics, the geopolitics, the technological change and so forth?

If they say yes, we invite them to plug the year 1020 into their computer and show us 2020. Don’t leave out the Reformation, folks. Or the Little Ice Age. Or the computer, Hitler and Rock and Roll. Because otherwise you’ll just be blowing silicon here.

Oh, speaking of past temperatures, that piece also says “The scientists found that the highest rates of ice melt during the Holocene (the last 12,000 years) occurred during a warm period between 10,000–7000 years ago when it was 3–5 °C warmer than today. This resulted in ice being shed at a rate of around 6000 billion tonnes per century, which is similar to the loss rate seen over the last 20 years.” Say what? It was as much as 5 °C warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum? How can it be? Was there way more CO2? Did something else dare drive temperature? And why didn’t the polar bears fall dead onto piles of bleached coral while a runaway greenhouse effect took us to Mars? Indeed, and why was ice accumulating in Greenland during an interglacial, and what comes next?

Meanwhile you know what we’re thinking… or at least we hope you do. We’re thinking this study was based on good old RCP8.5, the equivalent of Wolfman, Dracula and his son when it comes to climate. And as David Middleton points out it was, and as usual it was misleadingly labeled “a high-emissions ‘business as usual’ scenario.” Middleton also shows some charts that reveal that there’s been an erratic downward trend in the GISP2 Central Greenland Temperature Reconstruction since the Holocene Climate Optimum, with a conspicuous spike in the Medieval Warm Period way above today’s temperatures and, for what it’s worth, a smaller spike before 2000 and then declining temperatures. Which are apparently melting the ice so fast Michael Mann and the CO2-Kickers can see the water rising.

When you get there to spoil the fun, tell them CDN sent you.