THEY DON'T LINE UP AND THEY NEVER WILL

Celsius and Fahrenheit walk into a bar.

Know how every so often you’ll encounter a comedy short that seems to find new ways to make you laugh no matter how many times you rewatch it? For me, the SNL sketch currently occupying that rare air is Washington’s Dream, which was given a sequel in this season’s opener when standup Nate Bargatze hosted for the second time. In both iterations, he plays the titular General Washington. But while the second episode features him and his men crossing the Delaware, his task in the original is to inspire his men on a frigid winter’s night at Valley Forge. As they huddle around the campfire, he regales them with his dream for an independent future where we “choose our own system of weights and measures.”

As the big-speech music builds behind him, he proclaims:

“I dream that one day our proud nation will measure weights in pounds and that 2,000 pounds will be called a ton.”

A soldier asks, “And what will 1,000 pounds be called, sir?”

He pats his shoulder reassuringly. “Nothing.”

He goes on to lay out the uneven correlations between feet, yards, and miles. When a soldier confesses that it all “feels a little complicated, sir,” General Bargatzington answers:

“Do not worry, for in our new nation we will have rulers with two sets of numbers. Inches on one side, centimeters on the other.”

Their faces relax. “So we can see where they line up!” exclaims one.

“Yes,” he replies, “except that they don’t line up and they never will.”

He’s not wrong. Whether we’re talking yards or meters, pounds or kilos, gallons or liters, celsius or Fahrenheit or whatever else, they don’t line up. And when it comes to the task of effectively communicating the accelerating severity of the climate crisis, it’s a chronically stupid problem to insist on inflicting upon ourselves. But insist we do, and inflict we do, and damage it does.

The climate crisis has so many discrete elements. And so many of said elements are combining to create physical and biological feedback loops that are pushing us across irreversible tipping points—16 of which have been identified, and no fewer than five of which we’re bound to cross* even if we somehow manage to limit warming to 2.7F—that trying to get a holistic picture of the problem is a task that falls somewhere between disorienting, like gazing at the honeycombed eye of a fly and trying to decide where to focus, and existentially exhausting, like gazing into the eye of Sauron.

*Those five tipping points: The melting of the 1) Greenland and 2) West Antarctic ice sheets and 3) Barents Sea ice; 4) the extinction of low-latitude coral reefs; and 5) the melting of boreal permafrost (found in northern parts of Canada, Alaska, Russia, and Scandinavia. As it melts, it releases its bounteous stores of methane and CO2 into the air).

Per the jaw-dropping + heart-stopping 2024 state of the climate report:

Several climate tipping elements are connected, and if one tips, others may tip, triggering a tipping point cascade. Overall, this points to a complex situation where climate controlling feedback loops and tipping point systems are interconnected in a way that could trigger self-perpetuating processes that amplify warming beyond human control.

Here at CHAMP, our goal—and by our I mean my, but there’s comfort to be had in the hypothetical plural—is to do exactly what the name suggests and tackle just one of climate’s Hydra-headed problems: messaging.

Each time out, we’ll aim to loosen the noose around the neck of one particular aspect of climate communications. This week, in our first proper post, we’re getting loose by reaching for a particularly low-hanging fruit:

Why on earth is essentially all American climate content written using the metric system?

A tiny number for an impossible problem

At another point in the SNL sketch, General Bargatzington proclaims:

“We shall have two different unrelated scales of temperature. One of them will make sense to the entire world, and the other will be super random. Our great nation will use the random one.”

Quizzical looks from his men. “What is the scale called, sir?” asks one.

“Fahrenheit.”

More furrowed brows. “Spell that for me?”

He stares into the night. “Impossible.”

What I’m proposing is so simple it’s almost too simple:

Let’s stop using Celsius and exclusively use Fahrenheit.

If you’re from the USA, do you have a clue what 1C actually feels like? Likely not, because practically nobody from these parts does. We just don’t know. So why are we using it? Why the hell are people native to these 50 states producing climate content that speaks in celsius? Here’s a current example, from a piece in the Guardian about the certain climate impacts of a certain climate denier potentially being elected president:

Already, major emitters such as the US are lagging badly in commitments to cut emissions enough to avoid a 1.5C (2.7F) rise in global temperature above the pre-industrial era.

Hey, decent job, Guardian editors! Not a great job—this is the US edition of the Guardian, after all, yet you still put the number we all know second (and in parentheses)—but still, you included a number that ends in F, which puts you well ahead of the curve. We’re not saying you should ask for our number. But we’re not saying you shouldn’t.

With just over 1C in average warming so far, the world already has record heatwaves, a rash of wildfires, turbocharged hurricanes, plunging wildlife losses, a crumbling and increasingly green Antarctica, the looming collapse of the oceans and a faltering ability of forests, plants and soil to absorb carbon.

Whyyyyyy??? You were right there, Guardian. So close to being the one to speak to me in the Fahrenheit of my climate comms dreams . . . and then you’re back to 1C in the very next sentence? I feel disrespected. Worse, I feel tricked. And let’s be real, the “just over” phrasing isn’t helping matters either. “Just over” makes whatever number it accompanies feel like an approximation.

So is it? Are we just ball-parking how much global temperatures have warmed? We are not. The current global average in warming above preindustrial levels is 2.2F.

The F Principle

Speaking of F, here’s our question for today: Why the F are we persisting in using a metric that makes the climate crisis sound roughly half as big a deal as it is? Is it so we can get half the people all excited? Or so we can get all the people half-excited?

Neither option is going to do the job.

And with that, I’d like to propose something we could call the F Principle:

Never roll with numbers that minimize the problem.

We don’t have to convert to the metric system. While in some cases we already have—although, as General Bargatzington points out, “only in certain unpopular sports like track and swimming”—the simple truth is that we just have to use the numbers we all know.

Now, granted, a seismic shift from C to F in American climate reporting will require accumulated collective action. But on an individual, how-can-I-get-involved level, it’s the definition of a small thing, because it requires multiplying every 1C by 1.8F and that is literally all it takes. Let’s say you’re reading a piece about climate that talks about the 2.7F target limit agreed upon by the Paris Accord. Doesn’t 2.7 have a whole different vibe to it than 1.5? 2.7F is most of the way to 3F—and let’s take a moment to appreciate how big 3F is. Doesn’t sound like it at first. But put in context: 65F tells you to put on a sweatshirt; 68F tells you to take it off; the difference between them is three.

If we’re to have any hope of successfully conveying the immediacy of this alarmingly accelerating crisis—that is to say, if we’re to do what good messaging does, which is pave the way for people to join us—then it’s on us to start using numbers they can feel.