Flying Falsehoods and the Value of Numbers, By Ivor Williams
Take, for instance, the claim quoted by Reuters: ‘This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European scientists said on Wednesday’ (8 November).
Flying Falsehoods and the Value of Numbers
Flying Falsehoods and the Value of Number
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Ivor Williams
Part One: Flying Falsehoods
‘Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceived, it is too late.’ That was Jonathan Swift in 1710. You do wonder whether he might be referring to the more lurid descriptions of the Great Storm of 1703, which is still the by far the worst weather ever to have hit this country since written records were made. However, back to the twenty-first century.
Take, for instance, the claim quoted by Reuters: ‘This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European scientists said on Wednesday’ (8 November). We have recorded temperatures only for the last 150 years, but this irresponsible and totally fallacious comment then set off around the world, picked up by CNN the following day, featured on dozens of sites over the next week or two, and even turning up on the South China Morning Post in January..
Another version was ‘The world hasn’t been this warm for 100,000 years.’ Here is an announcement that had been decided back in July with the year still only six months old. The ‘expert’ in this instance did admit that ‘records are based on data that only goes back to the mid-20th century … [but] they are “almost certainly” the warmest the planet has seen … for at least 100,000 years,’ according to Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center.
That’s how the damage was done. Perhaps even worse was the comment from that august and well-respected scientific journal Nature. ‘Earth boiled in 2023,’ they proclaimed, 2023 was ‘officially the hottest on record.’ Note the use of that word ‘hottest’ rather than ‘warmest’ whenever an editor wants to ramp up the panic, and you might wonder about that ‘boiled’ when you read the next paragraph.
Part Two: The Value of Numbers
‘When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.’ That was Lord Kelvin in 1883 so let us take his advice and look at some numbers. Our own Met Office said: ‘The global average temperature for 2023 was 0.17 deg C warmer than the value for 2016, the previous warmest year on record.’ Less than one fifth of a degree warmer in eight years? Maybe dial down the panic somewhat.
There’s more: it was also 1.46 deg C above the pre-industrial period 1850-1900. Global annual temperatures are now always anomalies: higher than, lower than etc, never real values. The quoted global annual average by the World Meteorological Organisation for the period 1961-1990 is actually 14.0°C, but this does not sound anything like alarming enough so they use anomalies. It is possible (though not easy) to discover that the agreed ‘pre-industrial’ 1850-1900 average temperature is 0.31°C below that 1961-90 figure, which makes it 13.7°C.
The Met Office is not the only organisation to feature two places of decimals; this implied precision to hundredths of a degree takes us far into fairyland. How can they possibly measure the average temperature over the entire world over both land and sea for a whole year, and come up with those ludicrous second decimal points? Satellites perhaps? No – NASA explains that they do not give sufficiently reliable data.
There surely cannot possibly be any kind of meaningful global average annual temperatures for that 1850-1900 period. Even in 2024 we still have a thin coverage of reporting stations away from Europe and North America, and a very random coverage of the oceans. There were certainly very much larger gaps in the nineteenth century.
However, let us believe the data and see what it tells us. One message is contained in the sequence 2019-2023. All are anomalies, i.e. global averages compared with the 1850-1900 figure, and all are from the Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services by way of the official Met Office websites.
2019 MO19 1.05 ± 0.01°C above. (Later changed – see text below)
2020 MO20 1.28 ± 0.08°C.
2021 MO21 1.11 ± 0.13°C.
2022 MO22 1.16 ± 0.08°C.
2023 MO23 1.46 ± 0.01°C.
This is global warming? Using the official data: in five years the earth has warmed by two-fifths of a degree Celsius above that notional pre-industrial age.Do the maths: 1.46 – 1.05 = 0.41.
There’s more. The Hadley Centre switched from HadCRUT4 to 5 in 2020, and the value for 2019 was mysteriously changed from 1.05 to 1.25 (MO20). Using that figure as the starting point for the five-year run the maths looks even more strange:
Year 2023 @ 1.46 minus year 2019 @ 1.25 = 0.21°C. Now down to one fifth of a degree.
You might be suspicious of the unbelievably precise tolerances attached to what are doubtful values in the first place. But there is already a bold forecast for 2024 (MO24). The global annual average temperature will be ‘between 1.34 °C and 1.58 °C (with a central estimate of 1.46 °C) above the average for the pre-industrial period (1850-1900).’ Now there’s a message which has not gone limping after any falsehoods, because no-one has thought it exciting enough to bother. The result does not fit in with headlines using words like panic, boiling, runaway, doom and so on, because this year is forecast to be the same as last year. No story there, say the editors and bloggers. That bit of news has not gone beyond the Met Office’s own website.
Global warming? If 2024’s global annual average temperature anomaly from 1850-1900 levels is to be the same as 2023, then the total rise over six years (2019-2024) is forecast to be one fifth of one degree Celsius.Do the maths again – it’s not complicated: 1.46 – 1.25 = 0.21°C. That’s a global warming rate of 0.03°C/year. Far too small surely?
The January 2020 announcement from the Met Office (MO20) gave the revised HadCRUT5 annual temperature anomalies (compared to that 1850-1900 figure) from 2010 to 2020. In those ten years the somewhat less than frightening rise was from 1.00 in 2010 to 1.28 in 2020. A quarter of a degree in 11 years? Still too small?
Remember that these anomalies all refer back to the same constant: the global average temperature over the years 1850-1900 which has been agreed at 13.7°C. Now look at the years 2010-2024, but converted to real-world temperatures.
Year anomaly °C actual °C (13.7 added)
2010 1.0 14.7
2011 0.89 14.6
2012 0.93 14.6
2013 0.98 14.7
2014 1.03 14.7
2015 1.18 14.9
2016 1.29 15.0
2017 1.20 14.9
2018 1.12 14.8
2019 1.25 15.0
2020 1.28 15.0
2021 1.11 14.8
2022 1.16 14.9
2023 1.46 15.2
2024 1.46 15.2
Over fifteen years the officially declared annual average global temperature rise is therefore 0.5°C.
Over fifteen years the rate of increase is therefore 0.03°C/year.
Here’s Nature again with the conclusion to their ‘boiling’ comment: ‘Climate researchers look ahead with trepidation.’ If my research and maths are right then they must be getting worried about their forecasts.