Data Doesn’t Back Up Media Hype That 2024 Will Break 1.5°C ‘Limit’
Multiple outlets have posted articles covering a report from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (“Copernicus”) which says that 2024 will be the first to surpass 1.5°C warming since preindustrial times, which the media claims will cause untold weather disasters
This is mostly false.
Although 2024 will likely have higher average temperatures than in recent decades, it is not the end of the year yet, and there is limited evidence to support the claim that it will represent the highest temperatures humans have ever experienced and no evidence whatsoever that weather disasters have gotten or will get worse.
The BBC and CNN are among the numerous mainstream media outlets reporting on Copernicus’ report.
CNN describes the report as “devastating news for the planet that comes as America chooses a president that has promised to undo its climate progress both at home and abroad.”
The Copernicus group estimates that 2024 will end up 1.55°C hotter than the 1850-1900 average, which is 0.05°C above the warming ‘limit’ set by the Paris Agreement. This may be true, but there is no evidence that the 1.5℃ threshold is some kind of deadly tipping point for weather disasters.
The same organization sounded the alarm last year that the “limit” was breached for several months in a row while ignoring natural factors like an underwater volcano eruption.
As for the 1.5-degree limit itself, it was NOT established by professional climate scientists.
Only one of the people who were on the panel who came up with the value was even a meteorologist.
Two other points worth noting. The claim is a bit of sleight of hand, cherry-picking the data for comparison. Earth was only just coming out of the Little Ice Age at the onset of the 1850 period, one of the coldest periods during the past millennia.
When you pick an unusually cold period for comparison, modest warming seems more dramatic than it is.
Second, the 1.5℃ is an arbitrary temperature choice. As Climate Realism has discussed repeatedly here, here, and here, it was chosen by politicians for political reasons.
There is no scientific evidence it represents some tipping point for catastrophic climate change. The world has likely warmed more than 2°C since the 1700s, with no apocalypse.
One would think that if warming causes more extreme weather there would be solid data and identifiable consistent trends showing an increase in extreme weather, but there is none.
Three of the weather events CNN cites at the end of their article as proof of a supposed climate emergency, Hurricane Milton, the flooding in Spain, and low snow amounts at Mt. Fuji are not proof of a climate emergency.
CNN frames any bad weather as “climate change-fueled”, which is unscientific at best, and propagandistic and dishonest at worst.
Hurricane Milton, as Climate Realism covered here, here, and here was not unprecedented. Nor was it caused by ‘climate change’. Similar storms struck the area in the mid-1800s and early 1900s before modern modest warming started in earnest.
Data for Florida in particular show no trends in hurricane severity. (See figure below)
Hurricanes in general are also not intensifying.
The flooding in Spain this fall likewise has no actual data to back up any ideas of being “climate-fueled” – again, weather history shows that the event was not unprecedented or unexpected.
While it is true that warmer air can hold more moisture, this does not mean that every severe rainfall event is being influenced by this effect. There is not a direct linear correlation between the ability of the air to hold more water vapor and an increase in the amount of rain that falls when a storm occurs.
In addition, massive flooding with similar deadly impacts has occurred repeatedly in Spain’s history, at times when temperatures were cooler. All of this was covered in more detail in the Climate Realism post, “Flooding Facts Drowned by Climate Hysteria: The BBC Ignores Spain’s Weather History”
As for Mt. Fuji, CNN is once again exaggerating. The previous records for late snow on the mountain were set in 1955 and 2016 on October 26, while this year the mountain saw snow on November 6, which is rather late, but not cataclysmic.
Experts in Japan say it is too early to link this late snow to ‘climate change’.
The BBC (for once! – Ed) is a bit more tempered in its approach, going so far as to admit that much of the warmth this year and last was due to the “natural El Niño weather pattern.”
This is true, and an important context to keep in mind when discussing weather patterns and warming.
Climate at a Glance: El Niño and Global Warming points out that removing those phenomena from the climate record causes almost half of global warming in the 21st century to disappear.
This is a natural weather pattern that has a major influence on global conditions – no amount of ‘fossil fuel’ abandonment would change that.
The news media is abuzz about this latest warming scare story, but as usual, digging into the facts reveals that there is little “news” in the stories and even less to actually be worried about.
CNN and the BBC would serve their audiences better by checking their biases toward climate alarm at the door, doing some fact-checking on reports from advocacy groups like Copernicus, and sticking to facts consisting of data that can be confirmed, rather than relying on scary anecdotes and alarming assertions.
Alarmism may make for good headlines, but it makes for poor reporting.
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