Speaking of mere data, and crosscutting climate claims, over at Watts Up With That Eric Worrall notes a Guardian claim that “At 1.5C of global warming, up to 90% of coral reefs could be lost. The next few months could be a defining moment.” And while we’ll get to months being a moment in a moment, we want to start with Worrall’s observation that climate alarmists have been hollering at us for years that we already breached 1.5C. And to be fair they’ve also been hollering that the coral is on its deathseabed, and every time it hops back up they say yeah, just wait, it won’t make it to the door. But as Worrall objects: “The problem with claiming 1.5C is a tipping point for coral extinction is we already passed 1.5C, and Coral has not experienced a 90% extinction.” However climate science isn’t like the normal kind so although we did we didn’t, and although it didn’t it did.
As Worrall points out, the YaleEnvironment360 piece he cites on breaching the limit is a particularly egregious contortion into having it both ways. It says:
“The world is poised to overshoot the goal of limiting average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as for the first time, a three-year period, ending in 2025, has breached the threshold.”
Now hold on. If it breached it for a three-year period, how can it be poised to overshoot it?
We won’t belabour the point that 1.5C was pulled out of thin hot air. But it was and there’s no scientific reason to think 1.5C matters at all. Especially as linking it to mass death of corals is also utterly bogus since the corals are not dying. The Great Barrier Reef is in great shape. Does evidence no longer matter?
Actually, how could it, if breaching 1.5C doesn’t mean overshooting 1.5C? What do words even mean to such people? And when we say “such people” we should point out that the author of the Guardian piece, Jason Momoa, is “an actor, film-maker, and UNEP Advocate for Life Below Water” so um not a climate scientist. He is however one with the universe as an aboriginal:
“Where I come from – Hawai’i – the reef isn’t just something you look at. It’s part of us. It feeds our families, protects our shores, and lives at the center of our culture. In our stories, coral is one of our oldest ancestors. It’s a reminder that everything in the ocean, and all of us, are connected.”
Not being ourselves demonstrably descended from polyps, we are obliged to approach the matter less cosmically. Including objecting that Momoa plays fast and loose with numbers:
“Our coral reefs are under severe stress. The planet has just experienced the most widespread coral bleaching event ever recorded, lasting 33 months into 2025. Scientists warn that at 1.5C of global warming, up to 90% of coral reefs could be lost. Ninety per cent. And 1.5C is not lingering in the distance – it’s extremely close.”
Yes, well, objects in rear-view mirror are closer than they appear, right?
The Yale360 piece isn’t exactly forthright on such points, though it is certainly loud:
“The 1.5-degree target was set at the Paris climate conference a decade ago, at the insistence of more vulnerable nations, to forestall severe weather impacts and potential runaway warming that could lead to exceeding irreversible planetary tipping points. But climate scientists say that 10 years of weak action since mean that nothing can now stop the target being breached…. Meanwhile, a picture of what lies ahead is becoming clearer. In particular, there is a growing fear that climate change in the future won’t, as it has until now, happen gradually. It will happen suddenly, as formerly stable planetary systems transgress tipping points — thresholds beyond which things cannot be put back together again.”
And again we feel that multiple tipping points is a bad metaphor. If we pass one threshold where “things cannot be put back together again” rather than, say, tipping over, what’s the issue with another, or 16 more? And what has “things cannot be put back together again” have to do with climate? Will rain be in one place, clouds in another and the ground somewhere else altogether?
As with Orwell’s “Politics and the English language” the spectacle of hacks grinding out meaningless disconnected clichés is not something to be proud of. But it is noteworthy that this piece too has the odd quality of saying the devastating effects of climate change that we’re currently living with may well arrive soon. Especially in this key passage:
“A three-year breach of 1.5 degrees does not mean we have broken the Paris limit, which is framed as a long-term average. Conventionally, scientists measure this over 20 years, to smooth out year-on-year aberrations caused by natural cycles such as the El Niño oscillation. Using this method, it will be several more years before researchers can say for certain if warming has reached 1.5 degrees. But according to two studies published last year, the world has likely already surpassed this critical threshold.”
So first they admit that breaching the target isn’t breaching the target. Then they say we’ll have to wait another 17 years. Then they say “several more years”. And then they say never mind all that silly statistical soundness, it did happen. Oh, and will:
“Without an abrupt change of course, the warming will only accelerate. James Hansen, the Columbia University climatologist who first put climate change on the world’s front pages during testimony to Senate hearings in 1988, believes we could hit 2 degrees C as soon as 2045, a forecast based on several climate models under a high-emissions scenario.”
Gaaah! Not RCP8.5 again. Have they no shame? Anyway, the settled science goes up in flames in the process:
“The reason for the escalation is that the climate system is in a pincer grip. First, emissions of planet-warming gases remain stubbornly high, and second, natural carbon sinks are weakening. The result is an accelerating rise in atmospheric concentrations of CO2. 2024 saw the biggest jump ever. The faltering natural sink is perplexing scientists. For as long as we know, nature has been quietly mitigating our damage to the climate by soaking up around half of all the CO2 we put into the air. Trees have grown faster in a warmer climate, capturing carbon in the process; oceans have been absorbing excess atmospheric CO2, burying it in the depths. There are also fears of a domino effect, in which crossing one tipping point triggers the exceeding of another. But now oceans are becoming more stratified, reducing their ability to remove CO2. And trees are succumbing to heat and drought. A string of recent research papers has reported an ‘unprecedented’ weakening of natural land-based carbon sinks in 2023 and 2024, triggered in part by an epidemic of extreme wildfires, which have doubled globally in the past two decades.”
Sure. Except most of it isn’t happening including the weakening of carbon sinks or the rise in wildfires. And they have no idea what’s going on so they fearlessly predict the future.
Now back to Momoa having a moment with coral.
“The months ahead could be a defining moment for coral reefs. New science and a slew of major global gatherings – from Kenya and New Zealand to the Global Coral Reef Summit – are going to help coral reefs get the attention they deserve.”
It’s silly. No, really. What rational observer of the climate debate, or people’s vacation habits, could possibly believe that coral reefs have been ignored? Don’t they have Google on their computers? Punch in “coral reefs and climate change” and see if you get a blank screen… or a balanced view. No. You get the silly AI summary starting:
“Climate change is the greatest threat to coral reefs, with over 90% projected to perish at 1.5˚C of warming.”
And if you persist, you get NOAA back in 2024 bellowing:
“Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems. Scientific evidence now clearly indicates that the Earth’s atmosphere and ocean are warming, and that these changes are primarily due to greenhouse gases derived from human activities. As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent.”
Sounds like attention to us.
And another thing. This idea that the solution to endless blah-blah-blah meetings and ineffective policy on inaccurate data is to do it all again is also silly. A slew of major global gatherings will see the same people say the same stuff to one another while enjoying fancy locales. And now the moment.
Climate is, by definition, the typical conditions in some place big or small over at least 30 years. It is big, complicated, often vexing, and frequently inexorable. If you live in, say, “Tornado Alley,” then the tornadoes are coming, decade after decade, and you cannot make them go away or go somewhere else. If you live in an ice age, you can’t make the ice go away. If a glacier is retreating you can’t bring it back and if it’s advancing you can’t make it stop.
Nothing we do in the next few months is going to have a measurable impact on the weather, ecosystems, coral reefs or anything else. Plus these gabfests never result in anyone doing anything important. So not one word of the story is true.
Not one word.
