Hard evidence of climate change?

In an article in Time magazine, a Dr Hans Ahlmann speculates on impending global warming.

Greenland is getting greener and Iceland's ice is shrinking. The Arctic is losing its chill. According to Dr. Hans Ahlmann, professor of geography at Stockholm University, all the cold lands around the northernmost Atlantic are entering a balmier climatological era.

Dr. Ahlmann has been collecting evidence from a variety of sources: temperature records, glaciers, trees, fish. In the Scandinavian countries, he says, the winters have been getting milder since the 19th Century.

Well, we've all heard this before haven't we. The article states nothing new so far.

Retreating Glaciers. Mountain glaciers, "very sensitive to climatic changes," also support Dr. Ahlmann's theory. In central Norway, Lapland and Greenland, the glaciers have been drawing back their long tongues of ice. Some have disappeared entirely. Icelandic glaciers are yielding up farmland which they have overridden for the last 600 years.

The Rev. Gore is always on about retreating mounting glaciers to, so Dr Ahlmann isn't telling us anything we don't already know is he? Hang on, though - Dr Ahlmann has another angle. Cod (Pardon the pun).

Advancing Fish. In the 19th Century only a few cod were caught off southwestern Greenland. Now they are schooling far north of the Arctic Circle, where grateful Greenlanders and Eskimos are hauling them up by the ton. Many times in geological history, over long periods of years, the ice has piled up in the north and crunched down into the temperate zones.

So that's why there is no cod left in the North Sea. They've all gone north for the cold! And there was me blaming Spanish factory trawlers for overfishing our waters. Despite all the evidence of a warming climate, Dr Ahlmann is unable to point the finger at man for the cause of global warming.

Scientists do not agree on the causes of these fluctuations. One theory: the sun's radiation may vary at different periods. Another: the sun may have drifted through belts of cosmic dust which kept some of its rays from reaching the circling planets.

Between the great cycles come lesser cycles, when the cold advances or retreats a little. This is probably what is happening now; it may be only a short spell of fever, to be followed soon by chills.

That's a brave prediction to make with the current furore over anthropogenic causes of climate change. Even more so when you consider that the IPCC have dismissed the sun as a major factor in global warming. It gets even more remarkable when Dr Ahlmann goes on to say that ....

The change for the better amounts to only a degree or two, but that is enough to make all the difference in countries that fringe the Arctic.

Change for the better? Crikey! Don't hear many climate scientists saying that, do we? Is Dr Ahlmann just being a selfish Scandinavian or is there another reason why he thinks it could be change for the better? Maybe.

The article was published in 1947.

And we all know what happened then, don't we. Yep - it got cooler. Just like they predicted when they said "Between the great cycles come lesser cycles, when the cold advances or retreats a little. This is probably what is happening now; it may be only a short spell of fever, to be followed soon by chills."

I guess they hadn't thought of "scientific consensus" as proof back in 1947.