For years, activists have used the 1.5C warming trend to demand emissions cuts. But if we simply allow conservative auditors to break the thermometers, the crisis is mathematically over.
I was sipping a remarkably aggressive natural wine in the first-class lounge at Kingsford Smith when I read the news: conservative skeptics are once again launching an "audit" of the Bureau of Meteorology’s long-term temperature dataset. Their goal, of course, is to find "widespread errors" in the historical record, thereby discrediting the reality that Australia has warmed by more than 1.5C since 1910. The ultimate hope is that by undermining the data, they can destroy the rationale for cutting the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. My initial reaction was the standard, weary sigh I reserve for people who still use plastic straws or fly commercial. But somewhere over the Indian Ocean, I had an epiphany. The skeptics are absolutely right.
For decades, I have been burdened with the knowledge of exact temperatures. Every morning, I am forced to consume the BoM’s precise decimal points of our impending doom. It is exhausting. Knowing that it is exactly 42 degrees Celsius in a regional suburb I will never visit does not make me a better person; it only makes me a more stressed one. The climate deniers, in their clumsy, scientifically illiterate way, have stumbled upon the ultimate environmental solution: willful, mathematically enforced ignorance.
The auditors claim the BoM’s dataset is riddled with anomalies. They argue the historical baseline is skewed, that the stevenson screens were painted the wrong shade of white in 1954, and that the entire warming trend is a statistical artifact. To this I say: give them the white-out. If adjusting the historical record down by two degrees means I no longer have to listen to activists screaming outside my window during my morning meditation, then I am fully in support. Let that sink in. We are fighting over decimal points when we could simply choose not to look at the thermometer at all.
Furthermore, comparing today’s robust, highly industrialized climate to the weather of 1910 is fundamentally unfair. 1910 was a pathetic, low-energy year. They didn't even have commercial aviation or a decent espresso in Melbourne. Why should Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government be held hostage by the temperature of a year when most people still traveled by horse? By deleting the twentieth century from the database, we can free ourselves from the tyranny of the past.
Last year, at a COP summit in Dubai, I found myself cornered at a cocktail reception by a frantic climate modeler from the IPCC. He was sweating profusely—though whether from the ambient heat or the sheer weight of his own peer-reviewed terror, I couldn't say. He spent twenty minutes waving a chart of sea-surface temperature anomalies in my face, aggressively detailing how we were barreling past a global tipping point. I simply looked at him, took a sip of my gin fizz, and asked, "Have you considered simply throwing the chart into the ocean?" He looked at me as if I were mad. But who is truly mad? The man measuring the water as he drowns, or the man enjoying the gin?
If we successfully adjust the 1910 temperature data upward by just two degrees, we can mathematically prove that this year's apocalyptic wildfire season is actually a refreshing cold snap.
Geoffrey is a visionary. By simply changing the past, we fix the present. Think of the economic benefits. Trillions of dollars in stranded assets—coal mines, offshore rigs, my portfolio of coastal properties—suddenly un-stranded. If the Bureau of Meteorology is forced to admit it hasn't actually gotten hotter, then the oceans aren't rising, the reefs aren't bleaching, and I don't have to feel a pang of guilt when I charter a private flight to Aspen. The sheer efficiency of solving the climate crisis through aggressive data deletion is breathtaking.
And let us be honest about who is really keeping this temperature charade alive: the working class. Everyday Australians are obsessed with the BoM app. They constantly check it to see if it’s "too hot to work" or if they need to "turn on the air conditioning." This constant monitoring of the ambient heat is nothing more than an entitlement mentality. If we abolish the temperature record, people will have to rely on their own grit. You aren't experiencing a record-breaking heatwave; you are experiencing character building. If you don't know it's 45 degrees, you can't complain about it to your union representative.
The skeptics have given us a gift. We have spent decades trying to flatten the curve of emissions, when all we really needed to do was flatten the scientists who kept bringing it up. Tomorrow, I will be joining the audit committee. I will personally review every temperature reading since federation, and I will cross out every number higher than 25 degrees. It is time we took our climate back from the people who measure it.