Yes, Popular Mechanics, Scientists ‘Have Miscalculated Our Global Warming Timeline’

An article published in Popular Mechanics magazine titled, “Oops, Scientists May Have Miscalculated Our Global Warming Timeline” with the subtitle “Clues have emerged that reveal a much hotter history than we thought” makes a refreshing admission that confirms what Climate Realism has pointed out since its inception – Earth has already surpassed the arbitrary 1.5°C limit imposed at the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.

It is important to note that the 1.5°C threshold is an arbitrary number, not one established or defined by science. It was defined by political negotiations in the Paris Accord agreement of 2015. An Associated Press article, The magic 1.5: What’s behind climate talks’ key elusive goal, admits this stating, “in a way both the ‘1.5 and 2 degree C thresholds are somewhat arbitrary,’ Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said in an email. ‘Every tenth of a degree matters!’”

The Popular Mechanics article, by writer Darren Orf published on February 9th says this:

A new study from University Western Australia Oceans Institute studied long-lived Caribbean sclerosponges and created an ocean temperature timeline dating back to the 1700s.

. . .

By analyzing strontium to calcium ratios in these sponges, the team could effectively calculate water temperatures dating back to 1700.

The study concludes that the world started warming roughly 80 years before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has maintained throughout its history, reports, and treaty negotiations, and that the Earth had likely already experienced more than 1.7 degrees Celsius by 2020.

While some scientists are questioning the validity of that data and conclusions of the article, since it goes against the dominant narrative, it does in mesh with the instrumental temperature record from Europe which ClimateRealism has written about extensively.

Climate at a Glance: Tipping Point – 1.5 Degrees Celsius Warming, succinctly sums up the issue, pointing out: climate alarmists (and the IPCC) say we need to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times to avoid disastrous consequences, but data show we have already exceeded such temperatures, with no confirmed ill effects.

As seen in Figure 1 below we’ve actually exceeded 2.0° C rise in temperature according to the European temperature data.

The European temperature data show temperatures began rising about the year 1820. Note that this was 130 years before the large modern rise in carbon dioxide emissions began, that are claimed to to be driving dangerous warming.

Going hand in hand with the arbitrary 1.5°C temperature limit, climate alarmists warn we must take drastic steps within the next 10 years to keep warming to below or near 1.5°C above pre-industrial conditions. They claim that warming beyond that 1.5°C threshold will unleash a crisis of substantially worse extreme weather events and other climate harms. Yet the evidence suggests that we have already exceeded the much hyped 1.5℃ threshold, and data shows no disasters are arising.

Extreme weather is not becoming more common or severe, and fewer people every year are dying due to temperature and weather-related causes. Those predicting disaster from 1.5℃ have been wrong for decades. Climate Realism reported on the lack of “tipping point” occurrences in the article, Media Can’t Agree on the Number of Climate Tipping Points, Much less When, for example.

The bottom line is that climate science is very likely wrong on both the temperature record as well as the catastrophic predictions that are made from extrapolations into the future by climate models and other predictive methods. Kudos to Popular Mechanics for highlighting research which undermines this climate catastrophe narrative.