Let's hear it for the Age of the Boil

As I’m sure all of you have already heard, global warming is over and we have entered the era of global boiling.

The revelation came from UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres and was based on data released by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The data is neat. The data is scary. The data is also colour-coded lest anyone remains unimpressed by it. Of course, the data is also carefully crafted to be scary, forcing us into assuming the planet Earth has never ever been hotter than it was this month.

Never. Ever. Because, obviously, the planet Earth is only as old as temperature record-keeping began in the 20th century and even if there were any hotter Julies before July 2023 we can ignore them because they’re not scientific, and they’re not scientific because we say they’re not.

When you read — or, if you dare, watch — Guterres talking about global boiling you can sense the righteous outrage the man is feeling. The frustration is palpable. And so is the desperation.

The head of the UN has provided us all with a good many laughs in the past couple of years thanks to his apparent flair for hyperbole but this latest outburst really took the cake. Unfortunately, there is no other cake. With the global boiling statement, Mr. Guterres effectively sabotaged himself because it will be extremely hard to beat that particular hyperbole.

This unfortunate event could have been the result of Mr. Guterres’ ignorance of what boiling actually means. Since it is difficult to believe that, given that boiling, freezing, and similar concepts are taught in middle school, I find another explanation more plausible.

That explanation is Mr. Guterres’ ignorance of what makes a good hyperbole or, indeed, any metaphor. He can be excused because the man studied physics and electrical engineering at university. Those writing his speeches, however, should not be excused. It’s little things like this that can screw up the whole climate catastrophising venture.

So far, Guterres and his speech writers were doing quite well. They were building up the pressure with messaging about a drowning planet, a burning planet, a highway to hell and, now, the arrival of the age of global boiling. With that last one, they scored an own goal that could cost them dearly.

All this happened because they didn’t ask themselves a very simple question: is there any further to go after boiling? As physicist, Mr. Guterres would probably say that yes, of course, we’ve got lava, magma and plasma.

But can you really sell “Global lava” and “Global plasma” to the eagerly anxious masses? It lacks that certain something that “global boiling” has, which is an immediate image, at least in my head, of a planet bubbling up like soup, possibly primordial soup.

There’s another problem, too. If you can’t go any further with the hyperbole, then you’d have to double down on your current stage of stylistic device abuse. This sadly risks boring people from some point onwards and desensitising them to the existential threat that is climate change per the Official Narrative.

It’s unavoidable. You can’t keep people constantly interested in one thing and maintain this level of interest — or rather panic — forever. And that’s exactly why you need to build the panic, craft it and direct it where you want it to go.

Yet sooner or later, as evidenced by Guterres’ evolution as a high priest of alarmism, you hit the peak of the panic-building. You’re now stuck. You can’t go back dialling down the alarmism and there’s no further up to go. You’ve reached boiling point.

The thing about reaching boiling point is that this is the point when water starts turning from liquid into vapour and yes, I know you all know it, but I’m painting an image here, so bear with me.

So, water begins to turn into vapour and dissipates into the air to eventually rejoin the clouds. What you’ve got left in the pot in case you’re absent-minded like me and sometimes forget you’re boiling water, is, well, nothing. You’ve got an empty pot. or, if you’re boiling some other than water, such as soup, you get a ruined meal.

This is pretty much what seems to be happening in Guterres circles. The narrative spinners have been so busy dialling up the alarm, the panic, and the mortification, that, basically, they’ve forgotten they were boiling water — or rather a soup — and what happens when water boils.

The spinners were especially busy this month as summer proper settled across the northern hemisphere, going to great lengths to crank up the gas — I mean electricity — under that pot of boiling water, I mean soup.

Measuring land temperature instead of air temperatures, reporting outright false numbers only to get yelled at by people who actually live in the places they are reporting those numbers for, it has been a large pot of boiling disinformation in dark red.

Unfortunately, they forgot to leave someone to watch how the pot fares and stir it occasionally, adding bits and pieces of fact for a stronger flavour and maybe, just maybe, putting the lid on to avoid having the whole thing boil over, evaporate and leave an unwashable mess.

As a result that’s exactly what’s happened. The soup boiled over, everyone now knows that the BBC lies to their faces and it’s not the only one. And chances are that a lot more people are now starting to wonder what’s all the catastrophising about if it’s just normal summer outside, like last summer, so what is the big deal and what’s with the dark red maps?

This is what happens if you don’t watch the pot. This is what happens when you don’t just turn up the heat but turn it all the way up, forgetting there is no further for it to go. This is, finally, what happens when you forget there are limits to what you can shove down people’s throats. Hit those limits and you get reflux and vomit.

Why, one may wonder as I did, did so much forgetting take place this month in the narrative-spinning circles? Why did they lose sight of the limits? Why did they turn the heat all the way up?

Well, for the same reason an inexperienced cook tries to make a stew at 250C/480F while hungry. Because the inexperienced cook forgets that faster is not always better and it’s especially not better when you’re making a stew. Or a soup for that matter. The reason the cook forgets this is that the cook is hungry. Desperately so.

Climate change has been moving down people’s priority list. People have other things to worry about and there’s no space at the top of their minds for climate change. This has made the spinners — and their instructors — desperate and desperation is never a good state to be in when you’re boiling disinformation soup. Or stew.

When you’re desperate, you turn the heat all the way up and start forgetting things, eventually ending up with a soup (or stew) that is, at best, bland and unappetising, or, at worst, a total loss that even the hungriest stray cat won’t try. Welcome to the Age of the Boil or rather, the Age of the Boiled-Over Climate Narrative.