We were barely gone for a week to the Arctic and the climate shattered, fell over and otherwise went into doom mode. (Yes, again.) At least so said the UN, and the herd of independent minds bleated on cue and in unison things like “The Balance That Keeps Climate Stable Is Out of Whack, U.N. Report Finds” or “There is no historical precedent for how badly out of balance the climate is now, U.N. warns” or “The Earth’s climate is further out of balance than at any time in recorded history, the UN’s weather agency has warned.” And we hate to intrude with calm rational inquiry when they’re having so much fun stampeding in circles screaming and shouting. But what does “out of balance” mean in this context? What does the climate look like when it’s “in balance” and how often is it, and when it’s out of balance does it fall over? Also what is “historical precedent” or “recorded history”? Do they stop before the Little Ice Age (apparently less controversial than Michael Mann once had it) with its rapid descend into the coldest conditions since the last glaciation and documented fluctuations both up and down within that broad band? Or is it all a bunch of hooey?
Yes. And not least because, as Clintel promptly observed, the degree of uncertainty in the measurements alone would render the finding suspect and moreover it relies on comparing two data sets, the ARGO Ocean Heat Content data and NASA’s CERES satellite measurements, when the latter are actually “routinely adjusted to align with the ARGO data.” Which is pretty basic.
It gets worse. For instance when it comes to unprecedented, the first thing we quoted, from the New York Times, immediately continued:
“The continued burning of fossil fuels is locking heat in Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land – instead of allowing it to reflect back into space, a new report finds.”
Which, whether true or not, sounds like a banal restatement of the same global warming orthodoxy that has prevailed for 30 years in the corridors of power and those of conventionality, not some stunning breakthrough. But the deeper question is what is this “balance” of which they speak and how do they know it’s never been this far out of same?
The implication, and it’s a familiar claim from actual deniers, as in the people who deny that climate has always changed, is that things were just about completely stable and hunky-dory until James Watt invented carbon dioxide and then we had the industrial revolution and everything sweltered and stank. But the former is absurd and the latter hardly any better.
Consider the phrase “There is no historical precedent for how badly out of balance the climate is now”. The climate. Out of balance. No historical precedent.
What does it actually mean? That the temperature is changing? If so, is the claim that it never changed before? Bosh. That it never changed as fast as in the last 100 years? Fiddlesticks. That nothing that happened before recorded history counts? The latter would seem especially weird, and not only because the invention of writing predates the Minoan Warm Period, Iron Age cooling, Roman Warm Period, Dark Ages cooling, Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age all of which saw rapid and dramatic temperature changes. Not to mention the Younger Dryas.
As for recorded history, if that term is intended to refer to the invention of writing, what difference could it possibly make to the question whether what’s happening now is unusual whether it happened frequently after or only before hieroglyphs were devised? After all, our knowledge of temperature and CO2 anywhere more than about a century ago depends on proxies, as does our knowledge of almost any weather conditions with any degree of exactitude, occasional exceptions like measurements of Nile river minimum depth notwithstanding. Yet there that word “historical” sits, apparently trying to do something to our brains. Like intimidate them.
It is not hard to imagine that “out of balance” is meant to convey more than simply that at the moment more solar radiation seems to be entering the atmosphere than is leaving. It conjures up the usual hooting and hollering about hurricanes and wildfires that are not supported by statistical evidence.
Thus for instance the Guardian version is:
“Earth being ‘pushed beyond its limits’ as energy imbalance reaches record high/ State of the Climate report finds Earth’s energy has moved dangerously out of balance, with oceans absorbing vast majority of trapped heat”
And the word “dangerously” implies that bad things are happening because of this “record high” they have no way of knowing happened. What can the Guardian say with justified confidence, and note please the “justified”, about the balance between incoming and outgoing solar radiation on that particular Ides of March that saw an outgoing Julius Caesar. Nothing, obviously. Nor can one point to any sign that they thought about it.
A German professor of physics in reposting that article said:
“Every decision maker in politics, industry etc. should read this. Or better yet the original WMO report it’s about (linked in the article). And then think very seriously:/ What am I doing to stop this?/ Is it enough?/ How do I want to be remembered?”
And indeed we agree that people should indeed ask themselves the last question when they encounter any form of dangerous folly or malice. Especially before they run in circles screaming and shouting and confirm their legacy as a shrill and panicky. Because they should also, of course, ask themselves: “Is it true?” And then the crucial “How do I think I know?” Plus the real character-tester: “What, if anything, would lead me to reconsider?”
So what would lead people to reconsider the claim that the Earth’s energy thingy is more dangerously out of balance than at any time since the invention of the sun? Because if the answer is nothing, it’s not just their particular opinion on this point that’s worth nothing.
