As everyone knows, the language of climate change is constantly evolving. The Guardian is proud to be at the vanguard of those upping the ante by promoting the use of more extreme terminology around the issue. It is around three years since the Guardian publicly announced that its journalists were under instruction to change the language they used when writing about the issue. They returned to the theme more than once and an articlei (on 16th October 2019) summarised them for the umpteenth time. Of the six changes then announced, three in particular appear to have had a profound impact in terms of changing the parameters of the debate, with the language urged by the Guardian being gleefully picked up by much of the mainstream media. The first, and possibly most important, change, was:
“climate emergency” or “climate crisis” to be used instead of “climate change”
In this context we were told:
Climate change is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the overall situation; use climate emergency or climate crisis instead to describe the broader impact of climate change. However, use climate breakdown or climate change or global heating when describing it specifically in a scientific or geophysical sense eg “Scientists say climate breakdown has led to an increase in the intensity of hurricanes”.
We are not told by whom “climate change” is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the overall situation. By scientists? By the Guardian editorial team? The failure to elucidate the thinking behind the decision speaks volumes to me. Despite the attempt to dress it up as a scientific decision, it looks like a political and campaigning decision. If I’m right, then fair play to them – it’s worked big style.
“climate science denier” or “climate denier” to be used instead of “climate sceptic”
This was the second of the six changes. It really ought to be very controversial, especially given the smear associated with the use of the word “denier”, and the widespread use of the phrase “Holocaust denial”. Intentionally or not, the use of the phrase “climate denier” has had the effect of denigrating those who question the narrative. And it’s pretty inaccurate too. Who among the sceptic community denies “climate” or “climate science”. Not I, and I suspect not you either, dear reader. However, seek to request a cost-benefit analysis of “net zero” policies, or challenge any part of the narrative of Apocalyptic hysteria surrounding climate change, and you can expect pretty quickly to be labelled (smeared would be a better word) as a “climate denier” (however nonsensical that form of words is). The Guardian’s explanation for the change in the use of language doesn’t come close to cutting the mustard, so far as I am concerned:
The OED defines a sceptic as “a seeker of the truth; an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definite conclusions”. Most “climate sceptics”, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, deny climate change is happening, or is caused by human activity, so ‘denier’ is more accurate.
I wonder just how many sceptics they spoke to at length to enable them to arrive at that rather smug (and inaccurate) conclusion? The third change of language is:
Use “global heating” not “global warming”
The justification offered up for this change is also dubious:
‘Global heating’ is more scientifically accurate. Greenhouse gases form an atmospheric blanket that stops the sun’s heat escaping back to space.
Perhaps they should once more have consulted the OED, which defines “warm” as “of or at a comfortably high temperature” and “heat” as being “the quality of being hot; high temperature”, with “warming” and “heating” being derivatives of those terms. I am not sure where the scientific accuracy arises in deciding whether temperatures are high or comfortably high. The phrase “[g]reenhouse gases form an atmospheric blanket that stops the sun’s heat escaping back to space” could just as easily and accurately be rephrased as “[g]reenhouse gases form an atmospheric blanket that stops the sun’s warmth escaping back to space”.
In June 2019 the Guardian’s readers’ editor, Paul Chadwick, had already rather undermined the claims that the new language was being used because it was scientifically more accurate, when he wroteii:
I support Viner’s direction of travel. She is harnessing the power of language usage to focus minds on an urgent global issue. One challenge for the Guardian and the Observer will be to weigh, in specific journalistic contexts, two sometimes competing aspects of terminology used in public debates: language as description, and language as exhortation.
Carbon Bombs
Recent Guardian reporting has, seemingly unannounced, upped the ante once more. Over the last few days I have seen several articles referring to “carbon bombs”. For now the Guardian is putting the phrase in inverted commas, as though recognising that it’s not really a meaningful form of words at all, and is instead a phrase that someone has made up in an apparently unscientific way, with a view once more to using language as exhortation.
On 11th May 2022 an articleiii appeared with the rather dramatic headline: “Revealed: the ‘carbon bombs’ set to trigger catastrophic climate breakdown”. Please do read the article for yourselves – it’s all there. The sub-heading was equally dramatic: “Exclusive:Oil and gas majors are planning scores of vast projects that threaten to shatter the 1.5C climate goal. If governments do not act, these firms will continue to cash in as the world burns”. I don’t deny that there have been a lot of wildfires lately, though as a sceptic – not a denier – I would query the extent that this is down to climate change.After all, a Guardian “long read” article on 3rd February 2022iv told us that:
Satellites allow researchers to monitor wildfires around the world. And when they do, they don’t see a planet igniting. Rather, they see one where fires are going out, and quickly. Fire has a long and productive place in human history, but there’s now less of it around than at any point since antiquity. We’re driving fire from the land and from our daily lives, where it was once a constant presence…
…Thus far, the raised temperatures haven’t resulted in more fire overall; the global trend is still downward…
So, “carbon bombs”?; “as the world burns”? Scientific language, or exhortatory? My money’s on the latter, especially as the Guardian followed up on the following day with an articlev headlined: “Climate chaos certain if oil and gas mega-projects go ahead, warns IEA chief – Fatih Birol says ‘carbon bombs’, revealed in Guardian investigation, will not solve global energy crisis”.
Read the article, however, and you do not find Fatih Birol referring to “carbon bombs”. Those words appear, at least from the way the story is reported, to be used by the Guardian and not by the IEA or by Mr Birol.
Clearly feeling that the whole bomb thing still needed a bit of a push, we saw an editorialvi in the Guardian on the same day, headlined: “The Guardian view on carbon bombs: governments must say no”.
Science or exhortation?
It is long past time to admit that our global energy system is itself a bomb. Unchecked greed is driving us ever closer to the abyss. Both separately and together, governments must find ways to promote the long-term health of the planet over short-term profit. There is no alternative but to force companies to write off the most dangerous investments. Of course, this will cause an economic shock, but advances in renewables mean there are options other than carbon addiction. Total emissions must fall by half by 2030, if the worst scenarios are to be avoided. To continue on our current course would be nihilistic. The carbon bomb-makers must be stopped.
A couple of days later and Fiona Harvey was writing about COP27vii, with this “understated” headline: “‘This is about survival’: will Cop27 bring action on Glasgow climate pact?”. In the course of a long and alarmist article, I didn’t actually find any reference to “carbon bombs”, but I did find what I consider to be a rather distasteful turn of phrase, given events in Ukraine:
But the pace and brutality of the geopolitical changes since mid-November have been to a climate deal on life support like a cluster bomb dropped on a hospital.
And so we find the language becoming ever more extreme. Will it ever stop? Will it ever, at least, moderate? Or are we destined to find our blood being chilled by increasingly desperate language?
Conclusion
Despite the recent flurry of Guardian articles talking about “carbon bombs”, it seems that what is going on here is the resurrection of an old term that they have run with before, but which didn’t catch on at the time. Back in 2015 there was a pieceviii on the Guardian website which purported to define carbon bombs as being:
Gigantic coal, oil and gas projects from around the world that, if they go ahead, will raise global emissions and cause dangerous climate change.
I assume that given the failure of COP26 and the wholesale turn back to fossil fuels in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Guardian has felt it necessary to re-visit the dramatic phrase, and dust it down in order to crank things up again. And it may be working. Even the Daily Mail has an online articleix this week with the heading: “Gazprom, BP, Shell and other fossil fuel firms are quietly planning almost 200 ‘carbon bomb’ oil and gas projects that could doom efforts to limit global warming to 2.7°F, investigation reveals“. If even the Daily Mail has picked up on the use of this language, then it would appear to be gaining traction. How long before “carbon bombs” are mainstream and are referenced daily on BBC radio, TV and website? Not long, I’d wager.
Endnotes
i https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/16/guardian-language-changes-climate-environment
ii https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/16/urgency-climate-crisis-robust-new-language-guardian-katharine-viner
iii https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/may/11/fossil-fuel-carbon-bombs-climate-breakdown-oil-gas
iv https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/03/a-deranged-pyroscape-how-fires-across-the-world-have-grown-weirder
v https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/12/oil-gas-mega-projects-climate-iea-fatih-birol-carbon-bombs-global-energy-crisis-fossil-fuel
vi https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/12/the-guardian-view-on-carbon-bombs-governments-must-say-no
vii https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/14/this-is-about-survival-will-cop27-bring-action-on-glasgow-climate-pact
viii https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/carbon-bombs
ix https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10809079/Fossil-fuel-firms-quietly-planning-200-carbon-bomb-oil-gas-projects.html
Climate Scepticism 
What’s in a word? Just a matter of who will be master,
that’s all.
And say, what could be wrong about ‘harnessing the power
of language usage to focus on what you surmise is an
urgent global issue?’ Using language to bewitch is a
common practise in drama and poetry, just not usual
in traditional science methodology.
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It’s just the same old ad-speak we’ve seen so many times before:
Daz -> New Daz -> Improved Daz -> Improved New Daz -> etc, etc.
Maybe it’s time to start labelling any the Grauniad says about climate as ‘Fantasy’.
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Bill,
It’s all about the narrative, and narrative thrives on good adjectives and engaging metaphor.
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John, indeed. Worth a re-read, or a first read if anyone missed it:
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When you are blowing the notes of a crazy-ass apocalyptic delusion through your kazoo, the last thing you need is people who aren’t rocking along.
Every scrap of opposition flows from scepticism. Why would I sign on to your brutal self-destructive schemes, unless I believe that the alternative is worse?
No amount of hectoring will crack the sceptic. Data might. But so far the data is hardly benefiting the cult’s narrative. Carbon bomb indeed. We’re in more danger from the bomb of stupid that seems explode more potently with every spin of Earth on its axis.
As for that simile from Harvey, it is disgraceful. And if she thinks for one moment that such language will actually sway any of the fence-sitters (deniers a lost cause), then I think I lately scraped a lump of something from the sole of my trainer that was in possession of a more accurate understanding of the world.
In research for a script about George Holyoake years back (for a competition; my effort did not trouble the scorers – pdf available for the interested reader) I came across a fire and brimstone sermon given by Rev. C. H. Spurgeon in 1855. Its target was unbelief. A brief and striking excerpt:
The evolution of rhetoric is a natural consequence of the “threat” being generally ignored.
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We were listening to Radio 3 whilst driving to Scotland a little over a week ago. The guest on Jess Gilliam’s show was German harpist Magdalena Hoffman who started to rattle on about the climate ‘catastrophe’….at which point the radio was turned off!
Anyway, a very pleasant week was had in Comrie with Spring bursting forth, the bluebells in Trowan Woods were spectacular, the dawn chorus chirped away merrily at some unholy hour, red squirrels were aplenty, the first cuckoos, swallows and house martins made their way back from Africa. Some Catastrophe!
William Wordsworth wrote the line in Tintern Abbey ‘nature never did betray the heart that loved her’. I do so wish that environmentalists, climate protesters and so on would just go out and spend some time in nature. Sure, we can all do much to improve the world we live in but I don’t think the world is a truly catastrophic state just yet and there is still much beauty to marvel at.
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“We are not told by whom “climate change” is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the overall situation. By scientists? By the Guardian editorial team? The failure to elucidate the thinking behind the decision speaks volumes to me. Despite the attempt to dress it up as a scientific decision, it looks like a political and campaigning decision. If I’m right, then fair play to them – it’s worked big style.”
Of course you’re right Mark, no less than the IPCC confirms it!
A word search of AR6 WG1 Climate Change 2021 “The Physical Science Basis” contains not a single reference to a “climate crisis’ by any of the contributing authors or climate scientists in its 3,949 pages.
However, the document “Section 1.2.3.4 Media coverage of climate change” confirms that the phrase “climate crisis” is a
media fabrication.
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So the interesting thing is how the climate fear mind virus spreads and worsens. I believe, as I watch rational society succumb, that the climate virus was a sort of benign ubiquitous thing: a well documented cycling between concerns of too hot/cold/wet/dry into a pathology. But now we are self-destructiveky approaching nearly every piblic issue the same way. What Graunian is doing openly evil obvious mind control and deception. They are anti-informing, dehumanizing both their readers and the targets of their manipulation. The US Federal Reserve chairman, a pathetic aparatchik named Yelin, just announced that the banks are so infected with the climate pathology that they are goingvto destroy their portfolios of energy investments by writing them down. No wonder Russia and Chiina are slow walking their part of ww3. Why hurry up when the intended victims are killing themselves for you?Climate, energy, covid, gender, immigration, “woke”, race, tolerance: all full fledged social cancers hitting all at once
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Mark
Actually, the phrase “[g]reenhouse gases form an atmospheric blanket that stops the sun’s heat escaping back to space” could just as easily and even more accurately be rephrased as “[g]reenhouse gases form an atmospheric blanket that prevents the earth from freezing”. 😉
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It seems the phrase is now to be embedded in Guardian reporting of climate change and related issues, along with its continued campaigning to shut down fossil fuel use. Goodness knows how they think life as we know it will continue.
“Shut down fossil fuel production sites early to avoid climate chaos, says study
Exclusive: Nearly half existing facilities will need to close prematurely to limit heating to 1.5C, scientists say”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/17/shut-down-fossil-fuel-production-sites-early-to-avoid-climate-chaos-says-study
“Nearly half of existing fossil fuel production sites need to be shut down early if global heating is to be limited to 1.5C, the internationally agreed goal for avoiding climate catastrophe, according to a new scientific study.
The assessment goes beyond the call by the International Energy Agency in 2021 to stop all new fossil fuel development to avoid the worst impacts of global heating, a statement seen as radical at the time.
The new research reaches its starker conclusion by not assuming that new technologies will be able to suck huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to compensate for the burning of coal, oil and gas. Experts said relying on such technologies was a risky gamble.
The Guardian revealed last week that 195 oil and gas “carbon bombs” are planned by the industry. This means projects that would each produce at least 1bn tonnes of CO2. Together, these carbon bombs alone would drive global heating beyond the 1.5C limit. But the dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103m (£81m) a day until 2030 on climate-busting schemes….”.
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Even worse, the so-called ‘bombing’ in Ukraine is in danger of distracting us from dealing with these very real carbon bombs. And if they start dropping nuclear ‘bombs’ what a distraction that might be!
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I’m still sheltering from the “population bomb”.
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There’s also a podcast:
“The ‘carbon bombs’ set to blow up the world’s climate pledges”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2022/may/18/the-carbon-bombs-set-to-blow-up-the-worlds-climate-pledges
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Now Guardian letters have picked it up:
“‘Carbon bomb’ makers are putting all our lives at risk”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/fossil-fuel-based-industries-are-a-threat-to-human-rights
“…This linkage between climate change and human rights is a major step towards acknowledging that fossil-fuel-based industries are a significant threat to human rights. It offers a basis for mass legal challenges against the purveyors of carbon bombs. Sadly, the UK and other governments don’t see it this way and continue to subsidise such projects. In this, they may well be complicit in mass violations of human rights. Uncontrolled fossil fuel investment should be seen as a direct threat to the human right to life, and the law should impose severe financial penalties on firms and governments that continue to invest in carbon bomb projects.
Unfortunately, the English courts have yet to respond, having thrown out a recent case challenging UK oil regulators’ practices that effectively subsidise further oil and gas investments in the North Sea.
Peter Muchlinski
Emeritus professor of law, Soas University of London”
Also:
“…Unfortunately, democratically elected governments do not control access to the earth’s resources. The world’s playbook for energy transition is a rapid scale-up of clean energy and a transformational change in energy efficiency. It is perfectly within the control of governments and regulators to accelerate both these critical trends. Doing so will send the market the signals required, and then the fear of stranded carbon bomb assets will make them unfinanceable.
Andy Bradley
Director, Delta-EE”
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had to google “Delta-EE”
they sound good at what they do, one snippet from the website –
“We are a diverse team made up of statisticians,
commercial directors, data analysts, policy experts,
blockchain specialists, customer insight experts,
economists, social scientists, thought leaders,
environmentalists, marketers, energy managers,
business developers, chemists, physicists,
technologists, industry leaders, geoscientists,
mathematicians, modellers, sustainability
practitioners, carbon managers, product managers,
and engineers.
50% of our staff are women. We represent 14
nationalities. We speak 16 different languages.
We are all passionate about the energy
transition”
think they oversell on that bit, maybe !!!
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There are 3 references to “carbon bombs” in this short article:
“G7 countries to stop funding fossil fuel development overseas
Ministers from world’s biggest economies reach agreement that could shift estimated $33bn a year to clean energy sources”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/30/g7-countries-to-stop-funding-fossil-fuel-development-overseas
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The ante is still being upped:
“Environmentalists join forces to fight ‘carbon bomb’ fossil fuel projects
Coalition of lawyers, journalists and campaigners challenge climate-busting mega projects exposed in Guardian investigation”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/06/environmentalists-carbon-bomb-fossil-fuel-projects-coalition
“A coalition of environmental lawyers, investigative journalists and campaigners has launched a group to challenge the “carbon bomb” fossil fuel projects revealed in a Guardian investigation.
After a meeting in May, more than 70 NGOs and activist groups from around the world have formed a “carbon bomb defusal” network to share expertise and resources in the fight to halt the projects and prevent the catastrophic climate breakdown they would cause.
The Guardian investigation identified 195 carbon bombs, gigantic oil and gas projects that would each result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes, in total equivalent to about 18 years of current global CO2 emissions. About 60% of these have started pumping.
The US is the leading source of emissions from these mega projects, with its 22 carbon bombs spanning the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the foothills of the Front Range in Colorado to the Permian Basin. Together they have the potential to emit 140bn tonnes of CO2, almost four times more than the entire world emits each year.
Saudi Arabia is the second biggest potential emitter after the US, with 107bn tonnes, followed by Russia, Qatar, Iraq, Canada, China and Brazil.
The new campaigning network aims to coordinate legal challenges and activist campaigns against these projects and the companies and politicians supporting them.”
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“climate-busting”
Once the climate is bust, presumably, we won’t be able to use it. It will be an ex-climate. It will be no more, it will have ceased to be, it will have expired and gone to meet its maker.
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Next:
“Funding needed for climate disasters has risen ‘more than 800%’ in 20 years
Only about half the funds required are being provided by rich countries, according to a report by Oxfam”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/07/funding-needed-for-climate-disasters-has-risen-more-than-800-in-20-years
800% in 20 years? I don’t believe you. There would be an article in that if I had time to dig deeper, but I’m already deep in writing “Reasons To Be Sceptical”, and have another one up my sleeve after that.
Meanwhile, how’s this also (from the same article) for upping the ante?
“Asad Rehman, the director of War on Want, added that the report showed “the brutal reality of a climate apartheid that is unfolding before our eyes”.
“Rich countries are committing arson on a planetary scale and refusing to stop pouring more oil and gas on the fire they started. But when faced with the bill for the damage they have caused they claim to have empty pockets,” he said. “It’s a deadly response shaped by a colonial mentality that for 500 years inflicted injustice and inequity, with the lives of those with black or brown skins in poorer countries deemed less valuable to those of western citizens.””
Climate apartheid and arson now!
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The planet is literally going to split into two separate hemispheres, orbiting the Sun in different and dangerous ways, if we don’t reduce our CO2 emissions immediately. That’s what science is telling us. And when you lose sight of your grandma, spinning on the other hemisphere, what will you say then? Buy that electric car NOW.
Sorry, I now see that story was embargoed by the Guardian Climate Crisis team for tomorrow. My mistake.
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It’s gaining traction – among Guardian readers, at least:
“We must join forces to defuse ‘carbon bombs’
Charles Secrett says exposing those behind these disastrous fossil fuel projects and drawing the public into the fight are essential to prevent runaway global heating”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/08/we-must-join-forces-to-defuse-carbon-bombs
“It is great news that a global coalition of activists and experts is to confront the governments and corporations responsible for the mega-carbon projects, recently exposed by the Guardian, that threaten life on Earth (Environmentalists join forces to fight ‘carbon’ bomb fossil fuel projects, 6 June).
Exposing the politicians and executives behind these madcap schemes, challenging them in court, organising shareholder and investor rebellions, and running activist campaigns to draw the wider public into the fight are essential measures if we are to avoid irreversible, runaway global heating.
But in the UK, and elsewhere, we need much stronger climate and nature protection laws to stand the best chance of winning. We also need tax and subsidy systems that reward emissions reductions and penalise the polluters.
I hope that the coalition will back Zero Hour’s campaign to persuade parliament to pass the climate and ecology bill, which would legally ensure that corporations rapidly transition away from fossil fuels and reverse the destruction of nature….”.
Unfortunately, “renewable” energy “solutions” also destroy nature. People need to wake up to that fact.
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It would appear that it’s not just the Guardian that uses exaggerated language:
“Fossil fuel firms ‘have humanity by the throat’, says UN head in blistering attack
António Guterres compares climate inaction to tobacco firms dismissing links between smoking and cancer”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/17/fossil-fuel-firms-un-head-antonio-guterres-blistering-attack
“Fossil fuel companies and the banks that finance them “have humanity by the throat”, the UN secretary general has said, in a “blistering” attack on the industry and its backers, who are pulling in record profits amid energy prices sent soaring by the Ukraine war.
António Guterres compared fossil fuel companies to the tobacco companies that continued to push their addictive products while concealing or attacking health advice that showed clear links between smoking and cancer, the first time he has drawn such a parallel.
He said: “We seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested heavily in pseudoscience and public relations – with a false narrative to minimise their responsibility for climate change and undermine ambitious climate policies.
“They exploited precisely the same scandalous tactics as big tobacco decades before. Like tobacco interests, fossil fuel interests and their financial accomplices must not escape responsibility.”
Speaking to the Major Economies Forum, a climate conference organised by the White House, Guterres also castigated governments that are failing to rein in fossil fuels, and in many cases seeking increased production of gas, oil and even coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.
He said: “Nothing could be more clear or present than the danger of fossil fuel expansion. Even in the short-term, fossil fuels don’t make political or economic sense.””
Even in the short term? I beg to differ.
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World war two language continues at the Guardian. It’s not enough to talk about climate deniers, apparently. Now we also have climate appeasers!
“Whether you’re a climate ‘doomer’ or ‘appeaser’, it’s best to prepare for the worst
Bill McGuire
While more extreme threats are unlikely to be realised, sticking to the precautionary principle is just plain common sense”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/22/climate-emergency-doomer-appeaser-precautionary-principle
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“…sticking to the precautionary principle is just plain common sense.”
No, it is just plain uncertainty aversion and, as such, it is often the worst thing to resort to when managing risk. If I want a lecture on what is plain common sense I will not be going to someone who believes that climate change is going to increase the number of earthquakes. That is an example of what a good imagination backed by plenty of climate research funding can come up with. We need to be careful that we do not become hostages to our imagination, or, in this case, Mcguire’s.
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The Guardian has been quiet about carbon bombs since introducing the concept, thus upping the ante. However, it seems they’ve decided to give it another push:
“UK and US banks among biggest backers of Russian ‘carbon bombs’, data shows
Ukrainian campaigners call for immediate end to investments, to cut funds to war and help avoid climate breakdown”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/24/uk-and-us-banks-among-biggest-backers-of-russian-carbon-bombs-data-shows
Apparently carbon bombs are a thing, that can be defined and identified:
“Carbon bombs are fossil-fuel extraction projects identified by researchers to contain at least 1bn tonnes of climate-heating CO2, triple the UK’s annual emissions. Russia is a hotspot, with 40 carbon bombs, 19 of them operated or developed by Russian companies backed by foreign finance. The companies are Gazprom, Novatek, Lukoil, Rosneft oil company and Tatneft.”
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They certainly go for it in this summary:
“Carbon bombs and Gulf Stream collapse: the most urgent climate stories of our time
The last 12 months have produced alarming incidents of extreme weather across the globe, leading to serious ripple effects, from energy shortages to severe food insecurity. Guardian journalists are prioritising this foremost crisis of our times”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/27/guardian-climate-journalism-impact-carbon-bombs-gulf-stream
If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can read more about each of those subjects. If you’re really determined to suffer, you can sign up for Down to Earth, the Guardian’s climate newsletter
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Carl Wunch ( an oceanographer) argued in Channel 4’s award-winning “Great Climate Change Swindle” that as long as the Earth turned, the Gulf Stream would continue flowing. He later regretted appearing on the programme but was unable to falsify his contribution.
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Carl WUNSCH was the conflicted oceanographer.
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More carbon bombs. How dare Africans think of raising their living standards?
“‘Monstrous’ east African oil project will emit vast amounts of carbon, data shows
Experts say crude oil pipeline from Uganda to Tanzania will produce 25 times host nations’ combined annual emissions”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/east-african-crude-oil-pipeline-carbon
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Apparently, it’s climate carnage now. Any advance on carnage?
“Climate carnage: whose job is it to save the planet? – documentary”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2022/nov/10/climate-carnage-whose-job-is-it-to-save-the-planet-documentary
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We may just have upped the ante from “climate carnage”
“The country’s going to the dogs, but at least the police have cleared the M25
David Mitchell
The Met says Just Stop Oil are a tiny minority causing ‘disproportionate’ disruption. Isn’t environmental Armageddon enough justification?”
I think environmental Armageddon might trump climate carnage, though it’s a close-run thing. What’s truly worrying is the views expressed, though perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, given the author’s place as a BBC and Guardian stalwart:
An uninhabitable planet, the world is ending (because of climate change, not the fear of nuclear war), views which apparently may be right and are not irrational. It’s going to take quite something to trump that.
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The latest bid from the Guardian is “climate arsonists”!
“Banks still investing heavily in fossil fuels despite net zero pledges – study
Financial institutions signed up to GFANZ initiative accused of acting as ‘climate arsonists’”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/17/banks-still-investing-heavily-in-fossil-fuels-despite-net-zero-pledges-study
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and – from that link – https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Throwing-fuel-on-the-fire-GFANZ-financing-of-fossil-fuel-expansion.pdf
“This report shows that the message on the incompatibility of net zero and fossil
fuel expansion is yet to be taken on board by the big GFANZ players. They are
continuing to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the biggest corporations
that are developing new fossil fuel projects. These projects can only be judged
as economically viable if it is assumed that they will keep carbon flowing into the
atmosphere for decades to come.
The guidelines of GFANZ’s sectoral alliances, and the policies of the alliances’
financial institution members, must urgently be upgraded to push funding away
from fossil fuel infrastructure and toward clean energy. And as the UN Secretary
General’s High-Level Expert Group has recommended, this redirection in finance
must be rapid and deep — and done in a way that enhances equity, justice, empowers
women, and respects Indigenous rights.”
what PC Bull
ps – Mark, they have a good open cast mine pic 🙂
pps – (FANZ) was launched in April 2021 by UN climate envoy Mark Carney in collaboration with the UN Race
to Zero Campaign.
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Here’s Peter Thiel (2011) on the West’s stalled innovation engine.
It’s back to the Dark Ages stagnation..’Oops, mind where you’re going!’
https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thiel/
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“‘Super-tipping points’ could trigger cascade of climate action”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/20/super-tipping-points-climate-electric-cars-meat-emissions
Wow, that sounds scary. But it isn’t – it’s great news It isn’t just climate that reaches tipping-points, it’s climate action too. Hurrah!
La-La Land.
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“‘The Breakthrough Effect: How to trigger a cascade of tipping points to accelerate the net zero transition’, developed by Systemiq in partnership with the University of Exeter and Simon Sharpe, is a contribution to Systems Change Lab with the support of Bezos Earth Fund”
had a look at https://www.systemiq.earth/what-is-systemiq/
quote – “To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, we must build an economy that provides prosperity for all, stabilises the climate, and regenerates nature for generations to come.”
La-La Land indeed, with “loads of money” maybe.
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La-La Land WEF vision. The 5 minute city utopia.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/01/19/wef-panel-city-of-the-future-is-pretty-scary-n690969
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dfhunter:
“we must build an economy that provides prosperity for all, stabilises the climate, and regenerates nature”
I wonder when (if) they will ever realise that these are mutually contradictory objectives, insofar as their chosen method of achieving these aims is environmentally-damaging, expensive and unreliable renewable energy.
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It seems that “carbon bombs” are still a thing:
“Biden urged not to approve oil terminals that could create ‘carbon bombs’
Report finds four new offshore depots would emit around three times what the entire US emits each year, pushing world closer to climate catastrophe”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/21/joe-biden-oil-terminals-texas-carbon-bombs-fossil-fuels
There is so much overlap in stores these days, I could just as easily have posted this below the line here:
or here:
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It’s time to add methane bombs to the vocabulary:
“Revealed: 1,000 super-emitting methane leaks risk triggering climate tipping points”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed-1000-super-emitting-methane-leaks-risk-triggering-climate-tipping-points
Note – “researchers” [not scientists] say.
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The Guardian, it seems, is on a mission regarding methane:
“Meat, dairy and rice production will bust 1.5C climate target, shows study
Emissions from food system alone will drive the world past target, unless high-methane foods are tackled”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/meat-dairy-rice-high-methane-food-production-bust-climate-target-study
If interested, the study referred to can be found here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01605-8
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Astonishingly hyped reporting by the Guardian on some warmth, the first of the year, which isn’t really surprising giving that we have left winter behind and are now progressing through spring towards summer:
“UK hotter than Rome as Easter weekend brings brief temperature highs
Scotland records its highest temperature yet for 2023 and whole of UK could follow suit on Easter Sunday”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/08/uk-hotter-than-rome-as-easter-weekend-brings-brief-temperature-highs
It’s relatively cold in Italy and southern France, so we get headlines about UK heat. I loved this:
I imagine a few of those “records” will tumble, as we continue moving towards summer….What next? “The warmest 9th April since 2022”?
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I should have added that the article concludes with this:
It’s called weather.
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Good grief, these people are nuts, bonkers, clinically insane, away with the fairies. How’s that for the power of dramatic language? I just checked my weather for Easter Sunday – 14C – hotter than Rome! It’s going to plunge to 9C next week – a mini Ice Age cometh! I bet Rome was hotter 2000 years when they crucified Christ. Now that IS climate change.
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*ago*
Clunky, Dinosaur WordPress. You can edit all comments on Substack – Elon’s favourite platform!
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The mathematics of record-breaking is quite interesting. If one takes a time-sequenced set of values, such as rainfall at a given location, then records will inevitably feature, even if there is no trend in the values, i.e. even if they represent a random sequence. Of course, these records are more likely at the start of the sequence, but the possibility of a new record never reaches zero. In fact, the sum of the probabilities forms a harmonic series that tends to infinity. Interestingly, deviation from the harmonic series can be used as a test for non-randomness. For example, a climate change signal can be distinguished from random noise by measuring the same deviation. A good discussion of the mathematics of record-breaking and randomness can be found here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2978044
However, we are not dealing with serious scientists examining harmonic series when it comes to climate change messaging. The problem arises as a consequence of what I’ve already said about records congregating towards the start of a sequence. Any sequence can be shortened simply by introducing extra conditions for inclusion. This shortening of the sequence causes a return to dominant harmonics. You don’t have to truncate time to do this (i.e. by focussing only on recent values), you can achieve the same effect simply by creating a rarer sequence. With all the data out there, a record is always being broken somewhere if you look hard enough for it. It’s called data mining, but data torture is also an apt term.
Hockey sticks created from random data? Where have I heard that before?
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Records, records.
“Climate scientists said preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) showed the average temperature at the ocean’s surface has been at 21.1C since the start of April – beating the previous high of 21C set in 2016.
“The current trajectory looks like it’s headed off the charts, smashing previous records,” said Prof Matthew England, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Prof Dietmar Dommenget, a climate scientist and modeller at Monash University, said the signal of human-caused global heating was much clearer in the oceans.
“Obviously we’re in a fast-warming climate and we’re going to see new records all the time. A lot of our forecasts are predicting an El Niño.
“If this happens, we’ll see new records not just in the ocean but on land. This data is already suggesting we’re seeing a record and there could be more coming later this year.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/08/headed-off-the-charts-worlds-ocean-surface-temperature-hits-record-high
Matthew England is the UNSW ‘scientist’ aka policy advocate responsible for the latest model-driven, evidence-free drivel on the Antarctic ocean conveyor overturning shutdown – obligingly amplified as ‘scary climate crisis’ throughout the mainstream media, much like the north Atlantic AMOC shutdown has been for years. The only way to stop these fanatics is to stop funding their ‘research’ – which is not going to happen any time soon.
https://theconversation.com/torrents-of-antarctic-meltwater-are-slowing-the-currents-that-drive-our-vital-ocean-overturning-and-threaten-its-collapse-202108
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My apologies, but I’ve only just realised that I provided the wrong link in my previous comment. The link only pointed to a preview of the paper. The link I should have used is this one, which presents the paper in full:
Click to access Glick1978.pdf
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Jaime, thanks for that quote:
I should have thought that 0.1C must be close to being within the margin of error, yet a temperature 0.1C than that recorded 7 years ago is described as “headed off the charts, smashing previous records”. Hmmm.
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It must be difficult to keep thinking of new hyperbole, but Antonio Guterres at the UN seems to be doing just that, and of course the Guardian delightedly turns his words into a headline:
“UN says climate change ‘out of control’ after likely hottest week on record
After record breaking days on Monday and Tuesday, unofficial analysis shows the world may have seen its hottest seven days in a row”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/07/un-climate-change-hottest-week-world
Truly extraordinary, what hubris! If it’s out of control, how has it been “controlled” to date? How do we control Mother Nature?
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What is spinning out of control is climate alarmism. This is complete bullshit and it joins a long and growing list of complete bullshit emanating from the Green Blob who are using the illusory ‘climate control knob’ as a much more real people control knob – and are getting ever more desperate in their attempts to do so.
“The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose figures are considered the gold standard in climate data, said on Thursday it could not validate the unofficial numbers.
It noted that the reanalyzer uses model output data, which it called “not suitable” as substitutes for actual temperatures and climate records. The NOAA monitors global temperatures and records on a monthly and an annual basis, not daily.”
They’re only analysing data from 1979 and even that is highly suspect because it’s not real data, it’s data driven model output. But the Washington Post reckons it was the hottest day in 125,000 years. That has now been toned down to the hottest week since 1979.
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The BBC is at it now too:
“How warming oceans are driving the climate juggernaut”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66143682
Climate “juggernaut” indeed. How very scientific.
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A tissue of lies, misinformation and disinformation. They wheel out the now thoroughly discredited (at least in the eyes of sane sceptics) climate activist (Leonardo Di Caprio-esque) ‘experts’: Betts, Lenton and Otto, to firm up this bloated tissue for public consumption. I’m beginning to think that the only way to counter this insanity now is not to try to deconstruct it, painstakingly and forensically, but to completely ignore it; failing that, ridicule it.
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I see the Guardian is now describing the hot weather in southern Europe (which, no doubt to their frustration, is stubbornly refusing so far to set a new temperature record, not even at an airport) as a “heat storm”. That’s a new one. Full marks for inventiveness. Will it ever stop?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/16/thousands-forced-out-of-homes-la-palma-canary-islands-as-heatwave-grips-europe
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“‘People need to be riled up’: meteorologist names US heatwaves after oil and gas giants
Guy Walton has christened two previous heatwaves this summer Amoco and BP in attempt to name and shame fossil fuel firms”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/20/ex-meteorologist-names-us-heatwaves-after-oil-gas-firms
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“‘Era of global boiling has arrived,’ says UN chief as July set to be hottest month on record
Head of World Meteorological Organization also warns ‘climate action is not a luxury but a must’ as temperatures soar”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/27/scientists-july-world-hottest-month-record-climate-temperatures
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Mark,
I find it all very depressing. It is tempting to concede that all there is left to do now is to solemnly document mankind’s descent into hysterical madness. Panic has removed all remaining hope of rational debate, so we are reduced to being horrified observers.
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“In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.”
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It looks like the new head of the IPCC is trying to down the ante:
“Don’t overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says”
https://www.dw.com/en/dont-overstate-15-degrees-c-threat-new-ipcc-head-says/a-66386523
“‘The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees,’ Skea told Der Spiegel.”
Who knew that a climate denier could make it to the top of the IPCC?
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John, I think it’s more a case of:
‘Catastrophic warming is 2C, no scrub that, it’s 1.5C. Oops, scrub that; it looks like we’re now going to go above 1.5C with all these ‘adjustments’ and nothing really bad is happening, so the new threshold for catastrophic warming is 2C – which is the old threshold.’
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Thank you Brendan O’Neill.
“Global boiling? Don’t be ridiculous
It’s time to stand up to the eco-fearmongering of our medieval elites.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/31/global-boiling-dont-be-ridiculous/
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I could have posted this in so many places, but here seems as good as anywhere. A good news story about butterflies has to involve the words “climate breakdown” in the Guardian…
“Red admiral butterfly population soars 400% in UK as winters warm
Sightings rise to 170,000 so far this year as climate breakdown changes behaviour of species”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/03/red-admiral-butterfly-population-uk-sightings-winters-warm-climate
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“Dramatic climate action needed to curtail ‘crazy’ extreme weather
Heatwaves, wildfires and floods are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, leading climate scientists say”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/28/dramatic-climate-action-needed-curtail-extreme-weather
As the “crisis” becomes ever more extreme, as approach ever nearer to terrible and irreversible tipping-points, thank goodness that window of opportunity never quite closes:
So, in order to avoid rendering life almost unliveable, we have to render life almost unliveable. That’s reassuring.
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And when one article on the same (Guardian-made) story just isn’t enough:
“Off-the-charts records’: has humanity finally broken the climate?
Extreme weather is ‘smacking us in the face’ with worse to come, but a ‘tiny window’ of hope remains, say leading climate scientists”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/28/crazy-off-the-charts-records-has-humanity-finally-broken-the-climate
I’m so glad they keep reassuring us there’s a tiny window of hope.
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“July was the hottest month in human history and people around the world are suffering the consequences,” said Prof Piers Forster at the University of Leeds, UK. “But this is what we expected at [this level] of warming. This will become the average summer in 10 years’ time unless the world cooperates and puts climate action top of the agenda.”
the usual BS, “unless the world cooperates” Dream on Piers, but you know that is not going to happen, so you just spout the usual guff on demand.
ps – Piers, are you saying the UK will have another crappy summer in 2033?
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Dougie. You know full well that climate maestros don’t make short term predictions (like next year’s summers). Their models only produce long term scenarios that only come to fruition long after their own elevation to peerages, retirements, or deaths.
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Mark, I have never read such a contradictory load of waffle from supposed ‘scientists’ concentrated in just one article. They really don’t have a clue what they’re talking about but they’re paid to promote a ‘climate emergency’ so they open their mouths and say the first thing which comes into their heads. I am tempted to analyse their statements and tease out the many contradictions for all to see, but it’s painful, quite frankly, having to read carefully through that heap of garbage in order to make (non)sense of it.
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Otto takes away first prize as usual. She really is phenomenal:
“The weather is changing as expected and predicted by scientists, but our societies and ecosystems are more vulnerable to even small changes than expected previously, and so the damages are worse,” said Dr Friederike Otto, of Imperial College London, UK.
One short paragraph is enough to set you up for brain ache for the rest of the day!
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I often wonder how these quotes are obtained from “leading climate scientists”.
are they on speed dial & all the article Author asks is –
“a short comment on climate crisis to reinforce our narrative would be good, thanks in advance.
ps – your name & position will be quoted in the article as a thank you for your time”
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Dougie,
I suspect that’s exactly how it works. The Guardian admitted as much, I would say:
Perhaps nobody had issued yet another catastrophic climate survey with associated press release for a few days, so the Guardian had to do something to generate an article or two.
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Mark referenced this Daily Sceptic article yesterday I think, on another thread. Chris Morrison says:
The recent cancellation of Alimonti et al shows clearly that catastrophising bad weather events and attributing them to a collapse of the climate is now the main weapon deployed to scare populations into embracing the Net Zero agenda. Of course, reference is still made to global warming, but most recent rises seem to owe more to frequent upward retrospective adjustments of temperature, rather than any significant natural boost. Perhaps we should not be surprised by this turn of events. In a short essay titled ‘The New Apocalypticism’, the science writer Roger Pielke Jr. noted: “For the secular millenarian, extreme events – floods, hurricanes, fires – are more than mere portents, they are evidence of our sins of the past and provide opportunities for redemption in the future, if only we listen, accept and change.”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/08/29/retraction-of-paper-saying-there-is-no-climate-emergency-illustrates-how-dependent-climate-activists-are-on-scaremongering/
He’s right. Catastrophising extreme weather, even normal weather, is now at the cutting edge of the global propaganda campaign to get the public to accept Net Zero using fear porn. That’s why, as I have pointed out many times, it is important to challenge their attempts to link bad weather with climate change, and to do that, you need to challenge the science. There’s no way round it. They are pushing ‘climate breakdown’ very hard now and they are doing it by claiming that an ‘acceleration’ in extreme weather events across the globe (particularly wildfires) is being driven by man-made greenhouse gas warming. The Guardian even asks the question, ‘Have we finally broken the climate?’ but it makes sure that it leaves a ‘tiny window of opportunity’ open to fix it. Extreme weather is the new front line of climate alarmism and if you want to fight alarmists ON the front line you need to be conversant with the science.
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“Climate change: Pope Francis warns world ‘may be nearing breaking point'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-67005362
No more flights for His Holiness then, I assume. It’s a pity he didn’t point out that per capita CO2 emissions in China are more than 50% higher than in the UK with our irresponsible western lifestyle.
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Mark – wonder what “His Holiness” thinks about the Noah biblical story?
seems all christian faith leaders (i think) have to spout this “irresponsible lifestyles in the west” line.
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One might have thought that they would have run out of OTT language by now, but it seems not…:
“‘Gobsmackingly bananas’: scientists stunned by planet’s record September heat”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/05/gobsmackingly-bananas-scientists-stunned-by-planets-record-september-heat
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When you think it’s impossible for the Guardian and its ilk to come up with any more exaggerated language, they rise to the occasion:
“‘Carbon mega bomb’: climate experts urge Biden to block gas export hub
Despite pressure from environmentalists to halt Louisiana construction, the US president touts gas exports to Europe”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/23/louisiana-gas-export-hub-biden-climate-crisis
That said, I could have posted this story on loads of threads – perhaps most obviously on Business as Usual, since it contains things like this:
There’s a good riposte from the scheme’s promoters, too:
I give some credit to the Guardian for publishing that.
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More carbon bombs, apparently:
“France is Europe’s biggest supporter of ‘carbon bomb’ projects, data shows
French banks have financed $154bn to firms running biggest fossil fuel projects since 2015 climate pact”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/31/france-carbon-bomb-projects-banks-fossil-fuels-climate
Perhaps Sunak’s off the hook and macron is the new climate pariah?
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I would advise the Guardian to tread cautiously. The last time someone talked endlessly of weapons of mass destruction, it ended badly:
“The Guardian view on a non-proliferation treaty: fossil fuels are weapons of mass destruction”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/03/the-guardian-view-on-a-non-proliferation-treaty-fossil-fuels-are-weapons-of-mass-destruction
I suspect there’s the same level of factual accuracy in both claims.
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UAE is the new Iraq, the 1.5C limit is the new dodgy dossier and Al Jaber is the new Saddam Hussein.
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Maybe I’m just over-interpreting the language, but I get the impression that these canny Arabs are running rings around the usual dimwits at COP28:
“The Cop presidency has been very clear that 1.5C is the North Star.”
If you know your astronomy, you know that most star names are Arabic, because the Arabs were originally very proficient in astronomy and mathematics, and hence the Latin world inherited their extensive catalogue of star names. Polaris, the North Star, is a rare exception. But the amusing thing is, the North Star is not fixed, because of precession, and in 3000BC, it was Thuban (Arabic ‘The Snake’) and in 13k years or so, it will be Vega (Arabic ‘The Stooping Eagle’). All of which kind of adds some interesting context to the statement: 1.5C is the North Star! Even if Al Jaber is not intentionally and very cleverly taking the piss out of the largely western driven ‘climate crisis’ ideology which has given rise to these endless, tedious COPs, and the blustering, scientifically ignorant and irritatingly woke majority of attendees, it is still very amusing to contemplate this subtle subtext.
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Any advance on five?
“Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn
Humanity faces ‘devastating domino effects’ including mass displacement and financial ruin as planet warms”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/06/earth-on-verge-of-five-catastrophic-tipping-points-scientists-warn
Yes! Perhaps there are eight tipping points:
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Oh no! Not the ‘five catastrophic climate tipping points’! Nobody expects the five catastrophic climate tipping points! What did the Industrial Revolution ever do for us? It gave us the five catastrophic tipping points, that’s what!
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“Australia urged to name heatwaves to combat dangers of extreme temperatures”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/12/australia-name-heatwaves-like-cyclones-hurricanes-temperatures-summer-weather
Naming storms, heatwaves, etc strikes me as little more than the remorseless drip, drip, drip of climate propaganda.
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David Turver suggests that we should start naming blackouts after prominent Green fanatics.
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Love it Jaime. On the day the private jets have all landed at Davos to lecture us.
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How’s this for a measured headline?
“Arctic zombie viruses in Siberia could spark terrifying new pandemic, scientists warn”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/21/arctic-zombie-viruses-in-siberia-could-spark-terrifying-new-pandemic-scientists-warn
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“UK heatwave plan urgently needed to save lives, say MPs
Nature-based solutions such as parks and ponds are recommended – as is giving heatwaves names”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/31/uk-heatwave-plan-urgently-needed-to-save-lives-say-mps
Naming heatwaves? Oh, for pity’s sake!
As for this:
Where are the fact checkers? “…poor sleep due to hot nights can cost the economy £60bn a year in lost productivity…”. It’s absolute rot. And far more people die in the UK (and indeed globally) from the cold than from heat, but nobody seems to care. Upping the ante is all that seems to matter to these people; facts are a nuisance.
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BBC weatherman was on at lunchtime saying that the Met office is frivously naming storms “There are far too many named, many turn out to be minor”
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“Climate crisis: average world incomes to drop by nearly a fifth by 2050”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/17/climate-crisis-average-world-incomes-to-drop-by-nearly-a-fifth-by-2050
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“Billions more in overseas aid needed to avert climate disaster, say economists
Pressure piles on World Bank and IMF to steer countries to low-carbon transition at spring summit”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/17/billions-more-overseas-aid-climate-world-bank-imf-spring-summit
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“World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target
Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature
Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed.
Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.
Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.
Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”
In the next five years? Because of climate change? (as opposed to it being because of the measures adopted to try to tackle climate change?). I’ll take that bet.
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There’s more:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/may/08/hopeless-and-broken-why-the-worlds-top-climate-scientists-are-in-despair
I’m not sure how much of the narrative in there represents verbatim quotes and how much of it is Guardian spin, but the absurd nature of some of the claims are what scare me:
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Mark – thanks for the links
“The breaking point for me was a meeting in Singapore,” says Cerezo-Mota, an expert in climate modelling at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. There, she listened to other experts spell out the connection between rising global temperatures and heatwaves, fires, storms and floods hurting people – not at the end of the century, but today. “That was when everything clicked.
“I got a depression,” she says. “It was a very dark point in my life. I was unable to do anything and was just sort of surviving.”
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I didn’t read any of the Carrington doomster truck fire but did see and retweet Pielke:
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The climate emergency is already here. Even just 1C of heating has supercharged the planet’s extreme weather……………………
Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.
Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
What I find annoying about the “clear scientific evidence provided ” is the lack of reporting of any evidence at all. If the Guardian has made the effort to interview all these “climate scientists” the very least that the “scientists” should provide is statistical evidence of increasingly extreme weather. It’s not that hard to carry out time series analysis of actual data and test the statistical significance of any apparent trends. The fact that this is never addressed in these types of articles makes me suspicious that statistically signifiant trends have not been found. This of course would not support the official narrative so maybe the Guardian is not interested in reporting actual evidence.
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dfhunter, Richard, potentilla,
As I said, the depressing and worrying thing isn’t the thought of the climate hell they claim is being/to be unleashed on us, it’s the thought that so many intelligent people so heavily involved in studying the climate and helping to inform policy-makers can say so much that is so patently absurd and – as potentilla says – that the Guardian can regurgitate so much of it without providing a shred of evidence to back it up. It’s hysterical, and should be treated with contempt, not bigged up.
The other absurd part of it is the claims towards the end that “saving the planet” is technically and financially achievable, if only we had the will.
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All these ‘scientists’ are either genuinely mentally disturbed and suffer from a mass psychosis or they are being paid handsomely to spread alarmist garbage which has no basis in fact or data or science. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. What is truly alarming is the sheer scale of the hysteria; it appears now to have gripped almost the entire academic establishment and the price WE (and the environment) pay for easing the acute mass contagious anxiety symptoms which afflict these highly disturbed individuals is to suffer the very REAL societal and environmental consequences of the insane and unachievable attempt to get to Net Zero. They feel a bit better; our world falls apart.
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Robin. Perhaps you are being somewhat harsh about the mental capacities of the climate scientists enthralled by the Guardian’s dystopian future. It might be too much to ask for them to recall, when conjuring up such climate cataclysms, that the world consists of more than the Anglosphere and China, India et al. emit far more CO2.
Why this very perceptible increase in the stridency of climate alarm, especially obvious within the Guardian? I am unaware of any “scientific” breakthrough that might justify the scaremongering.
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Alan,
This is why:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68921215
Ben Pile says that the science is a distraction and that the real culprit is climate lawfare enabled by lavishly funded Green interest groups using the Climate Change Act 2008 to force the government to adhere to Net Zero targets. He’s correct in respect of the latter, but the ‘science’ is still driving the urgency and necessity argument and throwing fuel on the fire of climate lawfare.
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Jaime the scare regarding sea temperatures is part and parcel of the strident climate alarm that currently afflicts us. Increased levels of alarm used to presage COP meetings, but the next one (COP 29, Baku, Azerbaijan) is not until November, which surely is too distant to explain the current upsurge? Just how bad could this fearmongering get as we approach the next climate fest?
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Alan,
My guess is that with a ‘super La Nina’ possibly on the cards for this autumn/winter, and possibly a sharp drop in global temperature, the climate alarmists will make hay whilst the sun shines (or doesn’t, as the case may be!)
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‘I am starting to panic about my child’s future’: climate scientists wary of starting families”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/climate-scientists-starting-families-children
An exclusive Guardian survey has found that almost a fifth of the female climate experts who responded have chosen to have no children, or fewer children, due to the environmental crises afflicting the world.
Such decisions were extremely difficult, they said. Dr Shobha Maharaj, an expert on the effects of the climate crisis from Trinidad and Tobago, has chosen to have only one child, a son who is now six years old. “Choosing to have a child was and continues to be a struggle,” she said.
Maharaj said fear of what her child’s future would hold, as well as adding another human to the planet, were part of the struggle: “When you grow up on a small island, it becomes part of you. Small islands are already being very adversely impacted, so there is this constant sense of impending loss and I just didn’t want to have to transfer that to my child.”
“However, my husband is the most family-oriented person I know,” Maharaj said. “So this was a compromise: one child, no more. Who knows, maybe my son will grow up to be someone who can help find a solution?”
The Guardian approached every contactable lead author or review editor of all reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2018. The IPCC’s reports are the gold standard of climate knowledge. Of the 843 contacted, 360 replied to the question on life decisions, a high response rate.
Interesting – less than 50% is a high response rate?
Still, let’s look on the bright side. If only almost a fifth of those responding, being less than half of those asked, were worried, that suggests that as many as 10 in 11 might not be unduly worried. I’d say that calls for a happy headline!
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Can the ante be upped any further?
“‘The stakes could not be higher’: world is on edge of climate abyss, UN warns”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/world-is-on-verge-of-climate-abyss-un-warns
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Mark – thanks for the link, liked this quote –
Rachel Kyte, a professor of practice in climate policy at the University of Oxford, said: “It is desperately frustrating that our political, economic and social systems don’t know what to do with the science. We need … innovations in our democracy to give scientists the politics they deserve.”
Wonder if Rachel is unbiased – from wiki – She was the former Chief Executive Officer of Sustainable Energy for All, and Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All.
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dfhunter,
That quote’s a gem, and is indicative of the hostility to democracy that we now face (and which I regularly bang on about here). Democracy is no longer about giving the people what they want – it’s about the people letting the establishment do what it wants, because the establishment knows best (or presumes that it does).
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“Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look Like Climate scientists have told the Guardian they expect catastrophic levels of global heating. Here’s what that would mean for the planet”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/11/brutal-heatwaves-submerged-cities-what-3c-world-would-look-like
Global heating is likely to soar past internationally agreed limits, according to a Guardian survey of hundreds of leading climate experts, bringing catastrophic heatwaves, floods and storms.
It’s interesting how the approach keeps shifting as circumstances change. Once upon a time we had to do everything imaginable to prevent temperature s increasing by 1.5C, or else it would all go to hell in a handcart. However, now that (apparently) only 6% of climate scientists believe that this is attainable, that’s no reason to give up. Certainly not:
However, the experts were clear that giving up was not an option, and that 1.5C was not a cliff-edge leading to a significant change in climate damage. Instead, the climate crisis increases incrementally, meaning every tonne of CO2 avoided reduces people’s suffering.
“Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5C – it already is – and it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2C, which we might well do,” said Prof Peter Cox, of the University of Exeter, in the UK.
Dr Henri Waisman, at the IDDRI policy research institute in France, said: “Climate change is not a black or white question and every tenth of a degree matters a lot, especially when you look at the socioeconomic impacts. This means it is still useful to continue the fight.”
Phew. The gravy train can happily keep running.
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“Earth’s ‘vital signs’ show humanity’s future in balance, say climate experts
Record emissions, temperatures and population mean more scientists are looking into possibility of societal collapse, report says”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/08/earths-vital-signs-show-humanitys-future-in-balance-say-climate-experts
Many of Earth’s “vital signs” have hit record extremes, indicating that “the future of humanity hangs in the balance”, a group of the world’s most senior climate experts have said.
More and more scientists are now looking into the possibility of societal collapse, says the report, which assessed 35 vital signs in 2023 and found that 25 were worse than ever recorded, including carbon dioxide levels and human population. This indicates a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”, it says…..
Good going. I think that’s possibly the most extreme use of language yet. Future of humanity hanging in the balance, societal collapse. I wonder what the next instalment will bring?
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“Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?
The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/14/nature-carbon-sink-collapse-global-heating-models-emissions-targets-evidence-aoe
As usual, it seems, everything is so much worse than we thought.
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No BBC, it’s not a weather bomb, it’s a storm, and while it might cut up rather rough, it’s not particularly unusual. Someone has spent too much time reading the Guardian:
“Travel and power cut alert as ‘weather bomb’ approaches Scotland”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3dn4053jo
Power cuts, travel disruption and possible damage to buildings are expected this weekend as Storm Ashley sweeps across Scotland, bringing high winds and rain.
The Met Office has issued an amber high wind warning for some western areas on Sunday, with gusts of 70-80 mph (113-129km/h) expected.
A yellow alert for high winds gusting up to 60 mph (97km/h) covers the whole of the country, and for northern areas will last over the rush hour on Monday.
Meteorologists say Storm Ashley, the first named storm of the season, will see a rapid drop of pressure as it moves in from the Atlantic on Saturday night – a phenomenon called a “weather bomb”.
Since when has a rapid drop in pressure been called a “weather bomb” and who so christened it?
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Sure our weather presenters will reply – “explosive cyclogensis’ or a ‘weather bomb’, that’s the technical name we now give to these weather events. The name ‘weather bomb’ is designed to scare people sh*tless.”
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“‘Crunch time for real’: UN says time for climate delays has run out
Means to stop catastrophic global heating exist, says UN chief, but political courage is needed to end world’s fossil fuel addiction”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/24/crunch-time-for-real-un-says-time-for-climate-delays-has-run-out
The huge cuts in carbon emissions now needed to end the climate crisis mean it is “crunch time for real”, according to the UN’s environment chief.
An unprecedented global mobilisation of renewable energy, forest protection and other measures is needed to steer the world off the current path towards a catastrophic temperature rise of 3.1C, a report from the UN environment programme (Unep) has found. Extreme heatwaves, storms, droughts and floods are already ravaging communities with less than 1.5C of global heating to date.
Current carbon-cutting promises by countries for 2030 are not being met, according to the report, and even if they were met, the temperature rise would only be limited to a still-disastrous 2.6C to 2.8C. There is no more time for “hot air”, the report said, urging nations to act at the Cop29 summit in November.
Keeping the international goal of 1.5C within reach was technically possible, said the report, but it required emissions to fall by 7.5% annually until 2035. That means halting emissions equivalent to those of the EU every year for a decade. Delaying emissions cuts only means steeper reductions would be needed in future.
Unep said countries must collectively commit to cut 42% off annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 57% by 2035 in their next UN pledges, called nationally determined contributions and due in February. Without these pledges, and rapid action to back them up, the 1.5C goal would be gone, the UN said…
They must know that the cuts they are calling for aren’t going to be achieved, so what’s the point? Do they just want to scare us? Do they really believe it? The narrative seems to me to be increasingly unhinged.
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Mark – from your link –
“However, the head of Unep, Inger Andersen, said it was misguided to fixate only on whether the 1.5C target was kept or not, because every fraction of a degree of global heating avoided would save lives, damage and costs: “Don’t over-focus on a magic number. Keeping temperature as low as possible is where we need to be.””
You end with “The narrative seems to me to be increasingly unhinged.”
I often wonder what is discussed by the UN before they put out these “reports”. Does anybody have the savvy/guts to say – “we may have a little influence in some small parts of the world, but globally!!! but if you think we have any influence to stop carbon emissions globally, it shows you get payed to much & have a messia complex.”
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oops – meant – messiah complex
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I think this is a new one:
“‘Bomb cyclone’ brings high winds and soaking rain to north-west US
Strongest atmospheric river seen by California, Washington and Oregon this season knocks out power and downs trees”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/bomb-cyclone-pacific-north-west
…The Weather Prediction Center issued excessive rainfall risks beginning on Tuesday and lasting through Friday as the strongest atmospheric river – a large plume of moisture – that California and the Pacific north-west has seen this season bears down on the region. The storm system is considered a “ bomb cyclone”, which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly….
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A “bomb cyclone” eh? How long before they blame Putin? Cliff Mass, being only a humble trained meteorologist, calls it a storm. He really needs to get with the times. The biggest threat is strong winds (40-70 mph) coming not from the usual direction. Terrible. The Pacific North West is doomed (again).
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-storm-reveals-itself-eastside-wind.html
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Here we go – another climate bomb:
“‘Climate bomb’ warning over $200bn wave of new gas projects
New liquefied natural gas projects could produce 10 gigatonnes of emissions by the end of the decade, close to the annual emissions of all coal plants”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/05/climate-bomb-warning-over-200bn-wave-of-new-gas-projects
A $200bn wave of new gas projects could lead to a “climate bomb” equivalent to releasing the annual emissions of all the world’s operating coal power plants, according to a report.
Large banks have invested $213bn into plans to build terminals that export and import gas that is chilled and shipped on ocean tankers. But a report has warned that they could be more damaging than coal power.
The report, by the climate group Reclaim Finance, found a sharp rise in projects to boost the global trade of gas in recent years, driven by a shift from coal to gas in developing countries and Russia’s war on Ukraine, which caused pipeline imports into Europe to dry up....
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Here’s a new one:
“Climate ‘whiplash’ link to raging LA fires”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0ewe4p9128o
Climate bombs, bomb cyclones, and now climate whiplash. I’ll say this for them, they’re endlessly inventive as they try to terrify us about the climate.
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Climate whiplash definitely seems to be the latest choice of phrase to try to scare us all to death:
“Climate ‘whiplash’ events increasing exponentially around world
Global heating means atmosphere can drive both extreme droughts and floods with rapid switches”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/15/climate-whiplash-events-increasing-exponentially-around-world
Climate “whiplash” between extremely wet and dry conditions, which spurred catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, is increasing exponentially around the world because of global heating, analysis has found.
Climate whiplash is a rapid swing between very wet or dry conditions and can cause far more harm to people than individual extreme events alone. In recent years, whiplash events have been linked to disastrous floods in east Africa, Pakistan and Australia and to worsening heatwaves in Europe and China.
The research found that almost everywhere on the planet has experienced between 31% and 66% more whiplash events since the mid-20th century, as emissions from fossil fuel burning heated the atmosphere. The scientists said whiplash events would rise exponentially as heating continued, more than doubling if the world heats to 3C. Humanity is on track for 2.7C of heating.
The underlying cause for whiplash events is that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour. This means more torrential downpours when it rains but also more intense drought when it is dry, as the thirstier atmosphere sucks up more water from soil and plants. The experts liken the effect to a sponge absorbing water then releasing it when squeezed. As temperature rises, the atmospheric sponge gets larger at an even faster rate….
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Who could have guessed that global warming aka climate change aka the climate crisis/climate breakdown/climate emergency, after developing late onset extremist tendencies, would then get kinky? It really is full of surprises.
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It’s not just the Guardian that likes to go in for absurd phrases to up the ante around climate change:
“World’s addiction to fossil fuels is ‘Frankenstein’s monster’, says UN chief”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/22/worlds-addiction-to-fossil-fuels-is-frankensteins-monster-says-un-chief
The world’s addiction to fossil fuels is a “Frankenstein’s monster sparing nothing and no one”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
“Our fossil fuel addiction is a Frankenstein’s monster, sparing nothing and no one. All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master,” Guterres said in a speech days after 2024 was revealed to have been the hottest year on record and Donald Trump began his second term as US president by pulling the country out of the Paris climate agreement and pledging to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas. The fossil fuel industry gave $75m (£60m) to Trump’s campaign.
Guterres said: “What we are seeing today – sea-level rise, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts and wildfires – are just a preview of the horror movie to come.”
He also told the leaders of major banks, many of whom pulled out of climate agreements before Trump returned to office, that they were “on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of science and the wrong side of consumers who are looking for more sustainability, not less”….
That delusional thought process continued a little later:
…he pointed to the “extraordinary economic opportunity” of renewable energy, “that will benefit people in every country and make the end of the fossil fuel age inevitable – no matter how hard vested interests try to stop it”.…
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According to the BBC, today’s weather is a sting jet:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cy5kwlpzlnkt
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Words no longer mean what they mean:
“Global sea ice hit ‘all-time minimum’ in February, scientists say
Scientists called the news ‘particularly worrying’ because ice reflects sunlight and cools the planet”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/06/global-sea-ice-hit-all-time-minimum-in-february-scientists-say
Global sea ice fell to a record low in February, scientists have said, a symptom of an atmosphere fouled by planet-heating pollutants.
The combined area of ice around the north and south poles hit a new daily minimum in early February and stayed below the previous record for the rest of the month, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday.
“One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice,” said the C3S deputy director, Samantha Burgess. “The record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum.”…
Not since records began (which wasn’t very long ago), but an all-time minimum. The Guardian tells us that:
Its [Copernicus Climate Change Service’s] satellite observations stretch back to the late 1970s and its historical observations to the middle of the 20th century.
The “all-time low” claim simply isn’t true. Scientists have long told us that there were times in the earth’s history when the poles were as warm as the tropics are today. I call that out as a misleading headline – putting the words in inverted commas doesn’t get the Guardian off the hook.
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That’s quite a line. Almost as if it comes from a failing newspaper riddled with brain-eating worms.
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“‘Global weirding’: climate whiplash hitting world’s biggest cities, study reveals”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/12/global-weirding-climate-whiplash-hitting-worlds-biggest-cities-study-reveals
I haven’t looked at the study, as I’m dashing off to do other things this morning, but I note that the Guardian article says of its methodology:
The researchers analysed the changing climate of cities using a standard index (SPEI) that combined precipitation with evaporation each month from 1983 to 2023. Index values above a widely-used threshold were categorised as extreme.
To assess changes over the four decades, the data was split into two 21-year periods. The cities that experienced at least 12 months more of one type of extreme climate (wet or dry) and at least 12 months less of the other type of extreme climate in the second 21-year period were classed as having a climate flip. The cities that had at least five months more of both extreme wet and extreme dry in the second period were classed as having developed climate whiplash. The overall wetting or drying trends were determined from all 42 years of data.
Do we have data for a similar 42 year period for these cities from 100+ years ago? The global climate saw astonishing extremes in the 1920s and 1930s. If we can’t compare the data in this study with data from then, then what do we really know? And “global weirding”? Seriously?
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It sounds like a case of data dredging. Were the reported stats the *first* ones the researchers looked at? Or the nth set, and the first to give a nice, Guardian-compliant, alarming story?
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Gotta increase the punishment for the non-believers. So “climate whiplash” sounds about right. Unless weather conditions are average, any deviation must be climate breakdown or now “whiplash”. The only thing normal about climate is variability.
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The story has now been discussed by Jo Nova. She is as unimpressed as we are.
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Global Warming Weirdos: Kinky-pervy climate whiplash is the new climate breakdown.
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Only in the Guardian, which is fast becoming a parody of itself:
“UK banks put £75bn into firms building climate-wrecking ‘carbon bombs’, study finds
Exclusive: Britain is key financial hub for destructive fossil fuel mega-projects, according to research”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/01/uk-banks-put-75bn-into-firms-building-climate-wrecking-carbon-bombs-study-finds
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Continued:
…the countries found to have the most carbon bomb plans were the US, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Russia and China, with the UK playing a minor role.
However, the findings, which look at how the companies behind these projects are being financed, reveal the UK is a key financial hub for destructive fossil fuel mega-projects, financing companies that are involved in more than a quarter of the carbon bombs identified across the globe.…
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Can’t be bothered to read any further than usual call for money –
“Under pressure, undeterred, Can you help us hit our support goal?
7,625 of 50,000 readers
The urgent threats facing the free press today would have been unimaginable for most of our history. With big tech, billionaires, and authoritarians seizing more control of the world’s news and information, our independent journalism needs your support.
We will never give in to pressure from the powerful. If you agree that facts are sacred, please help us hit our support goal.“
You can see the BEEB (The fight for truth is on – BBC) pushing the same desperate message for relevance.
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The BBC increasingly looks and sounds like the Guardian:
“Dry heat to torrential rain – enter the age of ‘weather whiplash'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz63g95nxxno
…This flip between extremes has introduced a new phrase to our forecasting vocabulary – weather whiplash.
Some scientists believe we will have to get used to the idea that our weather will see wild swings from one extreme to another over short periods of time because of climate change….
Or then again , it might just be weather.
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Mark – partial quote from your link –
“Climate scientist Dr Matt Patterson, from the University of St Andrews, told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland: “In terms of how it is changing, that is something scientists are not really sure about.
“There is no clear trend with climate change as far as we can tell in the observations so far and that’s because there is a lot of variability from year to year that contributes to our weather.”
Seems BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland could have asked for your “expert” opinion & got the same answer 🙂
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dfhunter, that’s a good quote, and yet, despite including it, the BBC article still says (without qualification):
We know that our weather will continue to become more extreme, because global temperatures are rising due to human-induced climate change.
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Related – Weaponizing Uncertainty: Climate Scientists Admit They Don’t Know—Then Demand You Obey Anyway – Watts Up With That?
Think John Ridgway will like it !!!
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Dfhunter,
I sort of do like the WUWT article and yet don’t. The author is right in having a go at the Nature paper but I don’t think he has a sufficient background in risk science to nail it. The key quote from the paper is this:
To which the WUWT author responds:
In fact, it’s not tautological and it’s not illogical. It’s just plain wrong. I also fail to see the distinction being made between ‘actual risk’ and the ‘range of possible outcomes’.
What the Nature paper should actually say is this:
So what the Nature paper fails to do is correctly discriminate between uncertainty aversion and risk aversion. Conflating the two is never a good idea because they should be handled differently, leading to different policies.
As a footnote, I should add that there are those (e.g. Lewandowsky) who claim to have proven mathematically that in climate science high uncertainty automatically means high risk, leading to the concept of “actionable uncertainty” and the aphorism that “uncertainty is not the sceptic’s friend”. Unfortunately, the ‘proof’ is invalid because it uses the mathematics of aleatory uncertainty analysis to analyze epistemic uncertainty – another sad case of climate scientists not knowing the difference.
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John – thanks for your response & critique.
My above comment “Think John Ridgway will like it” was poorly worded. What I meant was you would/might find it an interesting read & offer your thoughts, which you have. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
PS – the WUWT author is Charles Rotter, which, unless I’m mistaken is a good friend of Mosher 🙂
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“Nordic countries hit by ‘truly unprecedented’ heatwave
Scientists record longest streak of temperatures higher than 30C in region in records going back to 1961″
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/nordic-countries-hit-by-truly-unprecedented-heatwave
How does “truly unprecedented” differ from “unprecedented”, I wonder?
…In Sweden, meteorologists said long-term heatwaves were noted at several stations in the north of the country, with a weather station in Haparanda measuring 25C or more for 14 days in a row. In Jokkmokk, Lappland, the heatwave lasted for 15 days.
“To find a longer period at these stations, you have to go back more than a century,” [my emphasis] said Sverker Hellström, a scientist at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute....
Truly unprecedented?
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Mark – the spin makes my head explode. Can they even understand what they are saying is pathetic I wonder?
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“Hot, dry summers bring new ‘firewave’ risk to UK cities, scientists warn”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9vd79x97zlo
…The Imperial College London researchers argue that the Met Office’s current definition of a heatwave does not adequately reflect the wildfire risk in urban areas.
They propose it adopts the term “firewave” to signal periods of extreme fire danger in cities – a concept they hope will inform future public safety strategies and climate resilience planning….
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I was going to make a note of this in “The Summer’s…” thread. It’s obviously wrong, for a number of reasons. One reason is that fine fuels don’t take weeks to dry out – they take under an hour. Then we must note that all the fires spoken of are either arson or accident, mostly arson. The blocks of flammable habitats in cities are fragmented, meaning that any fires will be contained in small areas. And so on.
It’s worth revisiting some of the 2022 commentary on John’s thread beginning at around:
[comment box broken hence no inline link.]
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Loved the visual lab based experiment that accompanied that BBC news piece featuring Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at Imperial College London. And this partial quote from the linked article –
“”Vegetation doesn’t just become a bit more flammable,” explained Professor Rein, “it becomes much more flammable.” “Once the moisture content of the vegetation drops below a certain threshold, even a small spark can lead to a fast-spreading fire,” he added.”
Well thanks for stating the bleeding obvious.
At least the TV news & web article add this – “Most fires are started by humans, whether accidentally or deliberately. But a warming world is creating conditions more conducive to these blazes. “Climate change is bringing more heatwaves and longer dry spells,” Prof Rein said. “These conditions dry out fuels and increase the risk of wildfires. That risk is much greater now than it was even a decade ago.”
In the US at least “These conditions dry out fuels and increase the risk of wildfires” has been covered many times.
Think I remember a post/comment/graph showing wildfires in the past, but can’t find it.
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“Heatwaves are making people age faster, study suggests
Exposure to high temperatures could result in long-lasting damage to health of billions of people, scientists warn”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/25/heatwaves-making-people-age-faster-study-suggests
Repeated exposure to heatwaves is accelerating ageing in people, according to a study. The impact is broadly comparable with the damage smoking, alcohol use, poor diet or limited exercise can have on health, the researchers said.
Extreme temperatures are increasingly common owing to the climate crisis, potentially causing widespread and long-lasting damage to the health of billions, the scientists warned.…
Billions? Seriously ?
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“Met Office: 2026 will bring heat more than 1.4C above preindustrial levels
Forecast is slightly cooler than the record 1.55C reached in 2024, but 2026 set to be among four hottest years since 1850″
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/18/met-office-2026-will-bring-heat-more-than-14c-above-preindustrial-levels
Perhaps if the Met Office spent more time focusing on the day job it might avoid things like telling us that this very wet winter was likely to be dryer than usual. However, that isn’t the reason for posting the link. No, that’s down to the gloriously ludicrous wording from the Guardian:
A blanket of carbon smothering the Earth has begun to jeopardise the stable conditions in which humanity has thrived, worsening weather extremes and increasing the risk of catastrophic tipping points.…
…Levels of carbon dioxide clogging the atmosphere soared to unprecedented levels last year, a UN report found in October. As well as the unrelenting burning of fossil fuels and the fallout from rampant wildfires, scientists fear the Earth’s natural “carbon sinks” may be beginning to fail.
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“Is chorus of winter birdsong a herald of spring – or warning of climate crisis?”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/dec/18/is-chorus-of-winter-birdsong-a-herald-of-spring-or-warning-of-climate-crisis
…So far I have not broken my December record, set on an unexpectedly warm and sunny afternoon in late 2015. That day, no fewer than seven species were singing, the usual trio being accompanied by dunnock, goldcrest, chiffchaff and the explosively loud Cetti’s warbler. But were these birds heralding the distant coming of spring or warning us of the dangers of the climate crisis?
Short answer – no.
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This piece about the flu in the BBC is interesting. It highlights the fact that alarmist language is counterproductive in the long term. It’s a shame they can’t read the same idea across to the “climate crisis.”
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