2023 was by far the hottest year on record, and for many people it was a wake-up call about the fierce urgency of now when it comes to doing something about our climate crisis. That being said, I want to suggest something that might at first seem counterintuitive, and it is this: Don’t overly focus on 2023.
There were at least two factors that contributed to the extreme heat of 2023 compared to the past few years. The first is that we are experiencing an El Niño year, and that normally contributes to some extra atmospheric warming. Secondly, the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the South Pacific near Tonga in early 2022 spewed massive amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere, and that has a temporary global warming effect. In 2023, the combination of El Niño and increased atmospheric water vapor from Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apa likely made 2023 significantly warmer than it would have been otherwise.
You may have read the last paragraph and exhaled a sigh of relief thinking that the climate crisis is not as bad as we thought, and 2023 is simply an outlier year that we can ignore and soon forget. That would be an even bigger mistake than focusing too much on the preview of climate chaos that was 2023.
This past year may have been something of an outlier in relation to extreme global temperatures, but the trend of increasing global temperatures is very clear, and we ignore that trend at our peril – a peril that threatens the existence of human civilization and much of the life on this planet. The trend of rapidly increasing global temperatures is real, and it is clearly connected to global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.
The fossil fuel industry and its merchants of doubt, who continuously sow seeds of doubt about the reality of the climate crisis, want those of us working for climate justice to focus on how extreme 2023 was. They would like to be able to use a sadly very effective strategy from their climate change denial playbook. This strategy was last used in the decade after 1998, a year of extreme warming exacerbated by a Super El Niño event. At the time, 1998, like 2023, was by far the warmest year on record, and predictably there were a number of years after 1998 that, although very warm, were less warm than 1998. The merchants of doubt seized their opportunity and used the scientifically understood temporary pause in warming and ran with it, making the erroneous claim that climate change was a hoax.
The decade after 1998 was not the first time the merchants of doubt cherry picked the data to sow seeds of doubt about the reality of our climate crisis. They used the few years of global cooling caused by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 to make similar claims that global warming was a myth.
If those working for climate justice focus too much on 2023 rather than on the overall trend, it will enhance the strategy of the fossil fuel company companies to stall systemic action to address the climate crisis by keeping the public confused about its reality and severity. The trend of global warming is not a straight line going up, but rather a jagged line of ups and downs, often resembling something a stairway going up with uneven stairs, but up it still goes, even if the fossil fuel companies would rather us focus on the uneven nature of one of the steps rather than the overall stairway to climate chaos.
2023 was a horrible year for the climate. It likely provides us with a glimpse of what the norm will be in the very near future, but it is also likely not yet the norm. If we mistakenly make the case that 2023 is the new normal, the merchants of doubt will seize the opportunity to sow more seeds of doubt and stall for more time that we cannot afford.
One World House - Mark Davies 
Mark,
This is Clyde Oakley from Earthkeeper Training in Colorado. I enjoyed talking with you and I agree with your post. It is a mistake to treat anomalies as trends. It is a mistake for those of who are rightfully concerned about Climate Change to overstate our case. The deniers often base their case on a single misstatement or apparent anomaly.
I only disagreed with one comment you made. I think that saying climate change “threatens the existence of human civilization” is not correct. I think wealthy nations, such as the USA, can build seawalls and create air conditioning system to compensate (at the expense of faster warming). If storms really do get worse, we’ll deal with the damage. Some areas of the earth will become more habitable while others because very expensive places to keep habitable.
Wealthy nations might agree to consider the costs of avoiding more carbon release to the costs of keeping our economies running in a warmer world. Right now, the deniers are not even doing that. But more important to us, as people concerned about justice, are the poorer nations and poorer people in our own nation.
In our nation, our homeless and people in non-air conditioned apartments in Phoenix are already dying and that will only get worse. There are several island nations that will cease to exist through no fault of their own. World wide nearly 2 billion people live within 100 m elevation above sea level. (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.95.24.14009). Sea level rise will result in more storm deaths and the need for migration that will be both very expensive and likely to cause political instability. This doesn’t take into account the loss of species, the stress on water availability and loss of habitat that many humans count on for entertainment and other purposes. (Colorado may no longer have down hill skiing in as little as 50 years.)
I think is is more appropriate to say that global warming will create grave injustice, produce political instability and cost more money to deal with than to prevent. It’s not as flashy but I think it’s more accurate.
Thank you for your work in this area. It is so critical to have people working on keeping the discussion honest.
Clyde
Thanks for your comments. I would hold to my contention that over time the climate crisis is a threat to human civilization, especially given the speed at which climate change is occurring. Currently human civilization is dependent on vast systems that have been developed in a relatively stable climate, and climate change poses a threat to the stability of those systems that sustain human civilization as it currently exists.
In addition to the issues of sea level rise, water availability, and habitat loss you mention; we are also dealing with a loss of biodiversity at a rate that could appropriately be described as the beginning of the Sixth Great Extinction, we are experiencing ocean heating and acidification that is threatening coral reefs and marine ecosystems around the planet, we are seeing droughts and floods greatly exacerbated by climate change that will only get much worse if global temperatures continue to rise, agricultural systems will become more and more difficult to sustain in a rapidly warming conflict, and global conflicts will continue to increase owing to the instability caused by the climate crisis.
All together, the loss of biodiversity, the disruptions to the water cycle, the heating and acidification of the oceans, the disruptions to food systems, the increased conflicts, the climate refugees, new diseases exacerbated by climate change, and many other unforeseen crises all pose a threat to the continued existence of human civilization. In the short term, this will certainly be experienced as grave injustice to the most vulnerable and costly political instability for all, but over some period of time (especially if we allow warming to continue at its current pace), it threatens that stability of systems that allow for human civilization to flourish and exist in any way similar to its current form.
Thank you, Mark. You make many good points. I’m still not quite convinced but neither of us picture a pleasant future.
Clyde