Austrian AUF 1 has posted a video interview with prominent German geologist and Sahara expert Dr. Stefan Kröpelin.
Dr. Kröpelin is an award-winning geologist and climate researcher at the University of Cologne and specializes in studying the eastern Sahara desert and its climatic history.
He’s been active out in the field there for more than 40 years. [emphasis, links added]
In the Auf 1 interview, Dr. Kröpelin contradicts the alarmist claims of growing deserts and rapidly approaching climate tipping points.
He says that already in the late 1980s rains had begun spreading into northern Sudan and have since indeed developed into a trend.
Since then, rains have increased and vegetation has spread northwards. “The desert is shrinking; it is not growing.”
Kröpelin confirms that when the last ice age ended some 12,000 years ago, the eastern Sahara turned green with vegetation, teemed with wildlife, and had numerous bodies of water 5000 – 10,000 years ago (more here).
Later in the interview, Kröpelin explains how the eastern Sahara climate was reconstructed using a vast multitude of sediment cores and the proxy data they yielded.
According to the German geology expert: “The most important studies that we conducted all show that after the ice age, when global temperatures rose, the Sahara greened”… “the monsoon rains increased, the groundwater rose.”
This all led to vegetation and wildlife taking hold over thousands of years.
Then over the past few thousands of years, the region dried out. It didn’t happen all of a sudden like climate models suggest.
Modelers don’t understand climate complexity
When asked about dramatic tipping points (8:00) such as those claimed to be approaching by the Potsdam Institute (PIK), Kröpelin says he’s very skeptical and doesn’t believe crisis scenarios such as those proposed by former PIK head, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber.
He says people making such claims “never did any studies themselves in any climate zone on the earth and they don’t understand how complex climate change is.”
Except for catastrophic geological events, “it’s not how nature works,” Kröpelin says. “Things change gradually.”
The claim that “we have to be careful that things don’t get half a degree warmer, otherwise everything will collapse is, of course, complete nonsense.”
“I would say this concept [tipping points] is baseless. Much more [evidence] indicates that they won’t happen than that they will happen.”
Late last year in Munich, he called the notion of CO2-induced climate tipping points scientifically outlandish.
He also called the prospect of the Sahara spreading into Europe preposterous.
Read more at No Tricks Zone
The climate change movement is busy coming up with as many excuses as it can to justify its draconian agenda. Expanding deserts are excuses without merit.
The Sahara has an interesting history. There are of course the times when there was more rain fall in the past few thousand years. At one time all of Africa from sea shore to sea shore was continuous jungle. Then continental drift slammed India into Asia at warp speed in terms of how fast continents drift. This pushed up the Andy Mountain range which is a significant block to much moisture that was going to Africa. This created the Sahara Desert and grass lands.
Two of the biggest lies we get from the Eco-Freaks is The Earth is Fragile and The Delicate Balance of Nature and The Later is the oldest Lie from the Eco-Freaks