The Guardian is Confused, 1.5°C of Warming is Not Catastrophic

A recent article at The Guardian, “Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like,” claims that 1.5°C of warming, while not the end of the world, still will have many catastrophic effects on the planet, including the death of tropical corals, intense storms, and ice sheet collapse. This is false. There is no evidence that 1.5°C will have any of these effects, this is mere fearmongering.

The article is somewhat confused in its presentation, claiming at once that passing the 1.5°C limit will lead to “catastrophic heatwaves, floods, and storms,” while also saying it is not a “cliff-edge leading to a significant change in climate damage.” Catastrophe certainly sounds like “significant change,” and later comments further confuse the point. It’s important to note that, according to the E.U.’s climate and weather agency Copernicus, the average annual temperature has already exceeded 1.48°C the pre-industrial benchmark. Also, data from the longest continuously running temperature network indicates that Europe has already exceeded a 2.0℃ temperature rise with no appreciable negative climate impacts.

In an interactive graphic in the center of the article, the 1.5°C warming “benchmark” is claimed to be the point at which “heatwaves and storms intensify, tropical corals die off and tipping points for ice sheet collapse and permafrost thawing may be triggered.”

There are no citations or sources given for these claims. Luckily, Climate Realism has dug into the available data in previous posts on all of the mentioned subjects.

Regarding the 1.5°C warming claim, scientists have admitted that the value is arbitrary and political, and was not settled upon based on scientific or data-driven reasoning. The fact of the matter is, as discussed in “Reason is Right, There is No ‘Climate Cliff’,” that threshold was developed in the 90s by an 11-member German political “advisory board,” only one of whom was a meteorologist. The panel’s stated goal was to find a way to preserve the state of the Earth in its current form at the time, which is of course impossible in a dynamic system that is influenced not only by human activity but also by things well outside our control and ability, like space weather and tectonics.

There is no evidence showing that storms are getting worse, from tropical cyclones to drought, no climate signal is visible despite the warming of the past hundred-plus years. In regards to heatwaves, many recent media-promoted record-breaking heat spell claims have been shown to most likely to be a artifact of the Urban Heat Island effect due to the proximity to urbanization, which skews results much hotter than they otherwise would have been. In the United States at least, where a good reliable record exists, average temperature anomalies have not been on an upward trajectory. In fact, the worst recorded heatwaves occurred in the 1930s. (See figure below)

As Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves explains, “the lion’s share of the Earth’s modest warming occurs during winter, at night, and closer to the poles.”

The coral reef death claim is particularly strange, especially since far from dying off, corals in locations that previously suffered bleaching like the Great Barrier Reef are at their highest extent ever right now despite (or perhaps because of) recent warming. Corals arose, evolved, survived, and thrived when global average temperatures were much higher than they are today. There is no reason to think this trend would suddenly reverse with another 0.02 degrees warming. The empirical data rebuts this claim so thoroughly, it’s a wonder The Guardian would try to slip it by.

The ice sheets likewise do not appear to be on the verge of collapse. Several posts at Climate Realism (here, here, here, for samples) demonstrate that, while a short-term decline polar ice loss in the arctic occurred at the beginning of the 21^st century, sea ice extent has largely stabilized since then. The previous decline  is hardly alarming, and definitely did not provide evidence for or presage an imminent total collapse. Two-time Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report Expert Reviewer Dave Burton pointed out in “Media Regurgitates Nonsense About Greenland Ice Cap and Sea Level Rise,” that hysteria over Greenland melt ignores the facts on the ground, that is, it’s way too cold to have a total ice loss in the region without a much more dramatic warming trend.

“Thanks to “Arctic Amplification,” Greenland should get more warming than most other places, but still no more than a few degrees,” Burton wrote. “That much warming would be nice for the hardy people who live there, but it could not melt the southern part of the Greenland Ice Sheet, because water has to get above 0°C to melt, and the southern part of the Greenland Ice Sheet averages much colder than that.”

Finally, the permafrost “tipping point” claim is also meritless. Predictions about the loss of northern permafrost have failed to materialize since at least 2005.

In a shameful display of science-free propaganda, The Guardian revealed it does not care at all about providing their readers with facts. It is quite simple to look up weather records and the current state of coral reefs. Instead, The Guardian chose to outsource their thinking to alarmist fearmongers, eschewing data for the drama of doomsday predictions. This is yet another instance of mainstream media outlets failing in their duty to responsibly and accurately inform the public concerning the true, unalarming, state of the planet.