Ignoring the Warning Light

Imagine you’re driving down the highway. Your engine temperature gauge creeps up into the red. The next day again. Then the next. Twenty-eight days in a row. Would you ignore the gauge or accuse it of alarmism? Would you insist it was exaggerating? Or would stop and you ask the obvious question: Why is my engine getting hotter and what can I do to fix it?

Earth’s oceans are our temperature gauge. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases ends up in the oceans. That’s why global sea-surface temperature is one of the clearest indicators of whether the planet is over heating. And right now, that gauge has been flashing red. For 28 consecutive days, global sea-surface temperatures have set new records.

The record itself isn’t the problem. The warning light isn’t the problem. It’s telling us the problem. But instead of asking why it keeps flashing red, most of our politicians and media are ignoring it. And discussion that does occur, focuses on whether the reading is unusual, whether this year is because of El Niño, or whether next year might be a little cooler.

That’s like driving an overheating car and blaming the accuracy of the dashboard while steam pours out from under the bonnet. The oceans have been protecting us for decades. By absorbing most of the excess heat we’ve generated, they’ve spared us from even faster atmospheric warming. But that protection comes at a cost. Warmer oceans mean more marine heatwaves, coral bleaching, stronger tropical cyclones, heavier rainfall, rising sea levels and profound disruption to marine ecosystems. And their capacity to absorb that heat is also declining.

Every new temperature record is another reminder that we’re still trapping more heat than the Earth can shed. The solution isn’t to ignore or debate the temperature guage. It’s to stop overheating the engine.

As long as we keep burning coal, oil and gas, the needle will keep climbing. Ignoring the gauge won’t help. It will ll wreck the engine. But the problem for Earth, is that we can’t just go out and buy a new planet.

Chart from Professor Elliot Jacobson.