A high level of scientific skill

There is a 50:50 chance that the increase in global average temperatures will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times in at least one of the next five years, the World Meteorological Organisation has reported. Flip a coin, anyone?

The WMO report is the stuff golden breaking news is made of and I’m sure plenty of media are grabbing the chance to milk it to the last ounce of horror, floods, and death. Me, I looked at the headline of the WMO release and noticed a word. Temporarily.

WMO update: 50:50 chance of global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5°C threshold in next five years. This is how the news is titled by the WMO itself. And in its press release, the organisation notes the temporary nature of the potential global temperature increase in the lead, as well.

Please feel free to call me a nit-picker. I’ll take it as a compliment because literal nits are a major nuisance. I’ve been 10. I’ve had lice. Nits must be picked, even when not literal.

Normally, I shy away from commenting on climate-related reports because I lack any sort of in-depth knowledge about meteorology. All I know about it is that weather forecasts can change dramatically within a single week. This naturally prompts the question of just how accurate a science meteorology is. Knowing weather, probably not completely, beyond a supershort horizon of about a month (excluding seasonal patterns, that is), I’d say as a regular user of weather forecasts.

Predicting the weather, to me, seems quite similar to predicting oil prices. Those who make the predictions have knowledge about the forces that move the values of the object of their forecasts, and historical patterns these values have had, but because these forces are many, a completely accurate prediction is literally impossible.

“There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time,” the WMO warned in its report.

In all honesty, a 50:50 chance means, quite literally, that either something will happen or it won’t. I have a 50:50 chance of dying by the end of the week. You do, too. Everyone does. The 50:50 chance is the safety net of predictions. What it isn’t, is particularly informative.

But here’s another figure: “There is a 93% likelihood of at least one year between 2022-2026 becoming the warmest on record and dislodging 2016 from the top ranking. The chance of the five-year average for 2022-2026 being higher than the last five years (2017-2021) is also 93%.”

In other words, it is almost certain that 2023, 2024, 2025 or 2026 will be the warmest year on record, dethroning 2016. However, what this also tells me is that the five years between 2016 and 2022 were, in fact, cooler than 2016. So, one might tentatively surmise that the rate of global warming is not a straight line inexorably moving higher and higher with each year as we continue to spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. On with the nit-picking.

“The annual update harnesses the expertise of internationally acclaimed climate scientists and the best prediction systems from leading climate centres around the world to produce actionable information for decision-makers.”

“Internationally acclaimed climate scientists”. “The best prediction systems”. “Leading climate centres”. And all this produced was a 50:50 chance of average global temperatures temporarily touching a point that is 1.5 degrees Celsius above the average global temperatures in pre-industrial times? Incidentally, what’s the span of years that is being referred to as “pre-industrial times” or it doesn’t matter because were weren’t emitting greenhouse gases then? This last one is a genuine question, by the way.

“This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet,” said the head of the WMO, Professor Petteri Taalas.

I couldn’t resist bolding that part of the statement. It’s one of the brilliant examples of someone insuring themselves against future accusations of inaccuracy or even lies by modifying their statement with small but important words such as “temporarily”. And then Professor Taalas went and spoiled it all with the next sentence.

“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise. And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.”

If 2016 was the year with the highest global temperatures on record and the following five years weren’t, doesn’t this mean that average global temperatures actually fell, at least from 2016 to 2017? And they continued to be lower in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 than they were in 2016 since that is the last record year, so… we continued to emit greenhouse gases in all these years but temperatures fell from the 2016 record high.

That’s despite, not to put too fine a point on it, continued — and rising — emissions. Despite the actual fact that while in 2016 the world emitted 47.41 billion tons of CO2 equivalent, it emitted 47.99 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent during the following year but average global temperatures were lower, as is my understanding based on the reference to 2016 as “the warmest year on record.” In 2018, global emissions topped 48 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, yet global average temperatures remained stubbornly lower than they were in 2016. Apparently.

Here, a meteorologist could rightly point out that I’ve no idea what I’m talking about because the climate is a lot more complex than a single average temperature value. Indeed, I’m sure the climate is a complex set of inter-related phenomena, which is why I get suspicious when such reports summarise this complex set of phenomena in a couple of degree values and a few percentages.

“A single year of exceedance above 1.5 °C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris Agreement, but it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5 °C could be exceeded for an extended period,” one of the authors of the report, Dr Leon Hermanson from the UK’s Met Office, said.

Judging from the situation in 2016 and since then, I’d say it doesn’t reveal anything much except that the planet’s climate is not immutable. After all, wouldn’t it be equally valid to say the following: The fact that the 2016 global temperature record have not been broken since then reveals that the link between CO2 emissions and global temperatures may not be as straightforward and direct as previously believed.

Actually, the record was, if not broken, then matched by 2021, I’m learning from the BBC. This still leaves four years, during which the rise in average annual temperatures was lower than in 2016, reinforcing the argument for a not-so-linear climate change trajectory, which in turn weakens the 50:50 argument.

One might wonder why I’m wasting my time literally combing through a press release with one more apocalyptic warning about the climate. I’ll happily answer. The reason is that laser focus on the climate. The climate, a set of meteorological phenomena, has become some sort of victim of human activity, a sort of embodiment of the tragedy we cause the planet, at our own expense, at that.

I’d much rather hear more about the actual ecosystems human activity destroys, about the loss of animal species that has been going on for centuries but has severely accelerated in the last century, and about the stubborn rate of overconsumption in wealthier nations that is depleting the planet’s natural resources faster than ever before.

Of course, these problems are being talked about, they are just not being talked about anywhere near as loudly as climate change. The reason, of course, is right there under our noses. You can’t lament the loss of biodiversity and promote wind parks and solar farms with the same mouth, now, can you?

Actually, many can. A dear friend of mine and a great fan of wind energy once asked me if I didn’t think the mining industry was in effect plundering the earth. It probably was, I said, but if we want places to live in and energy to live with, it’s what we have to do. Live with it or take yourself out of the picture. There’s always a choice.