GISS shows temperatures declining from 1880 to 1912, with 1912 being one of the coldest years on record.
However, people who lived during that period reported the exact opposite. The polar ice cap was melting, glaciers were disappearing, winters were disappearing, birds were migrating north.
BIRDS MOVING NORTHWARDS. Zoologically the same change is ob- served, and it is not long ago since I read a letter from a nephew of Mr George R. Sims giving a list of birds which formerly inhabited the United States only, but have recently migrated northward and are now commonly found in Lower Canada. This shows that the northern climate is becoming warmer, and the statement is con- firmed by the fact that the records of the Hudson Bay Company state that”the winter on the shores of the Bay has grown shorter, at the rate of one day in every ten years.” The same change is noticeable in Siberia, Green- land, and Alaska. The northern ice cap is decreasing in area and thickness, and the land, which was tropical and bore the grape-vine the magnolia, and the water-lily before the Great Ice Age, will become habit- able again. As an instance in confir- mation of this, in 1907 Dr W. S. Bruce’s expedition explored the whole ofPrince Charles Foreland, an island 60 miles long lying to the west of Spitz-bergen, and where only ice and snow had previously existed, “brilliant ver-dent vegetatilon was found in several places.”
19 Mar 1912 – CHANGE IN CLIMATE. “GREEN CHRISTMASES.”