Antero Järvinen on February 17, 2015 at 6:59 am
Dear friends,
I have followed climate research and debate since the early 1970s.
When I was a student (University of Helsinki, Finland), Global Cooling was considered the biggest threat to mankind.
I was fortunate to have prof. Olavi Kalela (1908-1974) as the supervisor of my master’s thesis which concerned the effects of weather and climate on population dynamics of northern bird species. Kalela, the founder of Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in Lapland 69° N;
University of Helsinki - Kilpisjärvi Biological Station
had studied global warming/climate change in 1920-40, especially how natural warming affects the distribution of birds and mammals. He published several papers in German (and in Finnish, of course) and one in English, too. This paper, published in USA in 1949, has a very modern title “Changes in geographic ranges in the avifauna of Northern and Central Europe in relation to recent changes in climate”. After Kalela’s death I took over the long-term ecological research at the station.
At first I was quite enthusiastic about “global warming”.
For instance, in 1990 I belonged to a two men strong Finnish delegation which participated a large workshop (Monitoring climate change using plant response) organized by the Michigan State University W. K. Kellogg Biological Station. The workshop led to the launching of International Tundra Experiment (ITEX), a network of northern research stations to which ‘my’ station, Kilpisjärvi Biological Station, immediately joined. I also published some climate change related papers
"Global warming and egg size of birds & Correlation between egg size and clutch size in the Pied Flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca in cold and warm summers"
JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie Correlation between egg size and clutch size in the Pied Flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca in cold and warm summers - J[]rvinen - 2008 - Ibis - Wiley Online Library).
About in 2000 I started to analyze my long-term ecological data sets (50 years long data sets, among the longest from the North). I was quite surprised to find that there were hardly any clear trends.
In 2008 I wrote an article “Is Lapland really warming” (in Finnish; published in the biggest Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat). I also submitted a scientific manuscript to a high-quality magazine. The editor-in-chief rejected the MS by saying: Every magazine would be glad to publish your results, if you only had trends. My answer to him was: “When an editor rejects a manuscript like mine that fails to find significant trends, differences, etc., he/she will contribute to the fact that journals are being filled with the 5% of studies that show Type I errors (false alarms), while authors’ file drawers are filled with the 95% of the studies that show non-significant results. If and when meta-analyses or other reviews are carried out on Arctic or other matters, they are automatically biased. This will have very serious consequences on our common cause, science.”
I published the first meta-analysis in ecology in 1991
(
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1474-919X.1991.tb04811.x/abstract)] 
After the Hockeystick- and Climategate-scandals I was more or less convinced that there is something very wrong with climate science.
I was especially shocked that those who misbehaved did not apology and the scientific community did not condemn such a behavior. Once again I wrote to “Helsingin Sanomat” and demanded open discussion of the matter. At that time I also started to read climate-related blogs (in Finland there is at least one good blog
“Ilmastorealismia”, Climate Realism;
Ilmastorealismia: Ilmastoharhan lyhyt historia sivustakatsojan silmin).
Recently I have been shocked by the bullying Matt Ridley, David Rose and others have experienced. I even submitted a comment on these cases to Helsingin Sanomat but the editors did not want to publish it. It was, however, published here:
Ilmastorealismia: Sananvapautta on puolustettava aina ja kaikissa tapauksissa.
I have lectured in Finland and abroad of climate and northern nature [e.g. “Observations from the Arctic – science. Facts only, hardly any fiction (opinions, scenarios, models)”]. To my great surprise I have noticed that people – scientists, sponsors, editors & NGOs included – love trends (scary scenarios) and are very disappointed when they do not see them! However, non-alarming (non-significant) messages should be a delight, not a disappointment!
Based on my +40 years of field experience in the North, I conclude that there is huge annual and natural variation in all variables. Therefore, we need very, very long time-series to be able to demonstrate “alarming” or other trends.
Almost all trends you believe you have found tend to disappear if/when you continue to collect more data.
A major problem is that scientists do not read old studies since they cannot find them on the internet (you have to visit a library, i.e., a place full of books). In Finland the icons of “global warming” have been the Arctic charr, the glacier buttercup and the Siberian tit, all species studied by me for years. Based on my and other studies, these species are OK and not suffering from global warming (glacial buttercup is threatened by reindeer overgrazing).
The reliability of climate change science, and science as a whole, has suffered from the fact that almost all alarms have proved to be false alarms. Natural variation and cycles are much more important than assumed!
And finally, perhaps we should pay less attention to global warming/climate change and more attention to decreased biodiversity and, ultimately, increased human population size behind it!
Best & good luck JC & others, Antero
!
