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. You can follow him on X.
This piece was first published in The Daily Sceptic, and is reproduced by kind permission.
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Stolen from a commentator on another site but think worth passing on to TNC:
Putting climate in front of scientist is the equivalent of putting witch in front of doctor.
Says it all really.
😂🤣 I’ll remember that one!!
Without adequate CO2 in the atmosphere we all die. It is not a climate driver or a pollutant.
It is impossible for CO2 to cause the climate to warm. There are only two ways of increasing the temperature known to man. The first is by adding thermal energy (from fossil or nuclear) and the second is by doing work on the system. An example of this is pumping up a tyre with a hand pump. The pumping action is work compressing the air. The pump gets warm and this is the ideal gas law at work. In the atmosphere, gravity compresses the air creating a warmer temperature at the surface. It can also be observed in mines. The temperature is higher because there is more compression. Cooler surface air cannot be pumped in the keep mines cooler because its temperature will increase due to the higher pressure.
Venus is used to support climate change and the “experts” on the Royal Institution 2025 Christmas lecture were promoting this. Venus has an atmosphere of about 96% CO2 and a high surface temperature. It is the density of the atmosphere and gravity that causes the high surface temperature.
But an important factor is that air contains very little energy. There is about 3,500 times more energy in water compared to the same volume of air. The air will not heat the surface and carbon dioxide is only 0.04% of the air volume. The lack of energy is air can be observed by putting a hand in an oven at 200C (but don’t touch anything). You don’t get a burn, but put your hand in water at 60C and you will suffer a nasty burn.
No complex science or endless measurements are necessary to show that human released CO2 cannot cause any heating of the earth. The measurements that matter are the surface sea temperature and the air above it. The sea temperature is always higher. This is because the sun heats the earth’s surface this heats the atmosphere.
Another major issue is that an average temperature is just a statistic with no physical meaning. No experiment can be conducted to show that an average temperature exists and this is because there is no total temperature, unlike mass for example, where there is a total.
Common sense and a bit of rational thinking is all we need but the majority of the human race seems to have lost the capacity to do this and will readily believe any nonsense.
As someone who found out about this greenhouse gas stuff in the 80s while working in The Seychelles (a chance article in the New Scientist) and thinking about the economic implications, I introduced the subject into my economic research organisation on my return to Canberra. It was all new to them. Despite emphasising all the scientific uncertainties, and the likely impossibility of obtaining the necessary degree of international co-operation if the worse case scenario happened to be correct, the Director grabbed the subject and started pushing out complex economic models on how Australia could play its part in reducing emissions. He ignored the basic message that nothing was proven or even necessarily probable, and that no single country on its own could achieve anything except make itself poorer. The one certainty was that it would give the State more power, and research organisations large budgets for life. Academics loved it (and we were largely composed of former academics).
Within a year, I was moved off the topic. My negative comments on the Director’s direction were not appreciated. I was sidelined, and also had any promotion blocked when I tried to move sideways into other areas. I could have done nothing for the next 18 years and then collected my pension. That is typical public service. But I wanted a life, so I left. The first opportunity to come my way was in the UK, so I returned. I never worked again on “global warming” (or climate change as it was later called when people realised it was a description too easily ridiculed), but I followed it in the background to my other work. And nothing I have ever read since has made me change my opinion formed in 1990
I like this guy Bhatta his research confirms what have always believed you can sell an idiot politician anything that increases his power over people all the politicians that believe the conventional thoughts on global warming deserve a very painful death for calling for the shit they have caused.