The article from Climate Change Dispatch (a great site known for promoting climate sceptic perspectives) highlights a recent 2026 analysis by Hatton: DOI: 10.53234/scc202603/05. It uses temperature reconstructions derived from the Vostok ice core in Antarctica to argue that the modern ~1.1°C global warming over the past century (roughly since the 1920s) is "not even unusual" or "statistically unremarkable."
Key points from the sceptic viewpoint, as presented in the piece:
A statistical probability assessment of century-scale temperature changes in the Vostok record over the last ~20,000 years (since the end of the last Ice Age) shows that 16% of centuries experienced a warming of at least 1.1°C — meaning the current rise falls well within natural variability and has plenty of historical precedents.
Current warming rates are described as "quite commonplace," which the article uses to question the mainstream attribution of recent changes primarily to human greenhouse gas emissions.
For added context, it references past rapid events: e.g., the Northern Hemisphere allegedly warmed 4–5°C in mere decades around 14,500 years ago (citing Ivanovic et al., 2017), and sea levels rose up to 7.5 meters per century during deglaciation phases — rates far exceeding today's ~3–4 mm/year sea level rise.
From this sceptic lens, the takeaway is that alarm over "unprecedented" warming ignores paleo-climate evidence from ice cores, which are often cited (including by mainstream sources) for long-term CO₂ and temperature correlations over hundreds of thousands of years. The Vostok core, in particular, is a staple in both alarmist and sceptic arguments because it shows natural swings between glacial and interglacial periods, with CO₂ often lagging temperature changes in natural deglaciations (though modern climate change ideology attributes current rapid CO₂ rise to human activity overriding that pattern).
Sceptics like those behind this article frame this as evidence that:
Modern warming is just another fluctuation in a naturally variable Holocene interglacial.
Claims of exceptionalism (e.g., "warmest in thousands of years" or "fastest rate") are overstated when viewed against multi-millennial ice core variability.
This weakens the case for urgent, drastic policy responses to CO₂ emissions.
Overall, from a climate sceptic position, this study reinforces the narrative that "the climate has always changed," modern warming is mild and unexceptional in deep-time context, and the focus on human causation is politically driven rather than purely data-driven. It's presented as a counter to claims of crisis-level urgency.
It is another good argument for political opposition to current climate change hysterical zero net/ net zero fanaticism, which threatens to deindustrialise the West, while supporting communist China, which is given a pass (i.e. "developing country" nonsense).
https://climatechangedispatch.com/ice-core-data-modern-warming-statistically-unremarkable/