In a startling divergence from the conventional climate dialogue, COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber has boldly questioned the so-called scientific consensus on the need to phase out fossil fuels to achieve the 1.5°C climate goal. At a recent event, Al Jaber’s remarks signaled a stark departure from UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s stance, drawing sharp criticism from environmentalists.
Al Jaber’s assertion that there is
“I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
is a direct challenge to the prevailing climate doctrine. His argument strikes at the heart of policy discussions that have been increasingly dominated by calls for the rapid elimination of fossil fuels.
Drawing a line in the sand, Al Jaber posits that a wholesale phase-out of fossil fuels would regress society to a pre-industrial state, “back into caves.” This hyperbolic metaphor underscores his contention that current sustainable development cannot be disentangled from fossil fuel use.
“Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
“I don’t think [you] will be able to help solve the climate problem by pointing fingers or contributing to the polarisation and the divide that is already happening in the world. Show me the solutions. Stop the pointing of fingers. Stop it,”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
Critics point to Al Jaber’s dual role as the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc, as a serious conflict of interest. This dual capacity has led to accusations that Al Jaber cannot impartially preside over COP28 while also steering an oil conglomerate.
The debate over fossil fuels is anticipated to be one of the most contentious issues at COP28. The final language of the agreement, whether it calls for a phase-out or a weaker “phase-down,” is expected to be a bellwether of the summit’s outcome.
While Al Jaber has called for solutions beyond finger-pointing, alarmist scientists like Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, assert that the science mandates a phase-out by mid-century. Similarly, the alarmist choir of Prof Sir David King and Dr. Friederike Otto stress the urgent need to curtail carbon emissions and dismiss the idea that fossil fuels are necessary for development.
Despite the controversy, COP28 aims to set ambitious decarbonization targets for the oil and gas industry and triple renewable energy. Al Jaber himself, also the head of the UAE’s renewable energy company Masdar, has advocated for clean energy investments and tackling operational emissions.
Al Jaber’s statements have introduced an interesting and provocative counter-narrative to the climate debate. While his comments have attracted derision from environmental groups, they reflect a broader discourse on the pragmatic challenges of transitioning from fossil fuels. As COP28 unfolds, the tension between economic pragmatism and environmental idealism will undoubtedly remain a central theme.
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Critics point to Al Jaber’s dual role as the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc, as a serious conflict of interest.
Depends on whose interest, doesn’t it? What if your interest is in economic transactions that provide all energy uses to all people at affordable prices? It would appear that the catastrophists who decree the shutting down of the economical energy-generators BEFORE they’ve made even the first demonstration of large-scale competitively-priced, year-round, all-purpose non-fossil energy to large populations are more interested in self-aggrandizement than in serving humans with reliable, affordable energy. We KNOW their private planes will keep flying and they’ll not adopt insect diets.
Come on, critics, give us a demonstration of your lifestyles under net-zero energy. And less quibble about ‘conflicts of interest’.
What an unexpected source to hear truth from. I didn’t expect anyone at COP28 to say anything truthful about anything at all. Sometimes it’s good to be wrong.
Now, if he would just go all the way and admit that:
1. There are no significant adverse effects from anthropogenic GHG emissions.
Of course there are storms, droughts & floods, but those have always happened. None of those problems, and none of the myriad other problems which climate industry propagandists dishonestly blame on manmade climate change, are actually worsening.
2. The highest quality long measurement records show that coastal sea-level trends are not significantly different from 90+ years ago.
3. Hurricanes and tropical cyclones have been decreasing slightly.
4. Droughts have also decreased, though only slightly. However, they’ve become much less destructive, as rising CO2 levels make plants more water-efficient and drought-hardy.
5. Major tornadoes have decreased dramatically in frequency.
6. Global warming is saving hundreds of thousands of human lives. That should not surprise you when you consider that humans are a tropical species, and most of the Earth is much too cold for us.
7. But savings in human lives due to warming is dwarfed by the impact of drastically improved food security due higher CO2 levels. That benefit is saving millions of lives.
That’s due to two things:
7.1. It’s because elevated CO2 makes crops much more productive. That’s why commercial greenhouse operators commonly employ CO2 generators to raise the CO2 level in greenhouses by about 1000 ppmv above average outdoor levels. (For comparison, mankind has only managed to raise outdoor CO2 levels by about 140 ppmv since the industrial revolution.)
7.2. Additionally, elevated CO2 makes plants much less vulnerable to drought. That’s not only tremendously valuable for human agriculture, it is also helping to green the Earth. NASA measures it from space; this is their video about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOwHT8yS1XI
8. The best scientific evidence indicates that manmade climate change is modest and benign, CO2 emissions are net-beneficial rather than harmful, and the social cost of carbon is negative.
Dave Burton, sorry for the delay in retrieving your comment from the awaiting-moderation file. That’s a boat-load of hyperlinks. Little wonder the comment-moderation software held it.
If you’d broken it down into multiple comments with only a few links each, I suspect they wouldn’t have been stuck there.
Regards,
Bob
Thanks for all that. Great Info.
Yes, much appreciated.
Many thanks for the clear uncluttered slides, Dave. If only Al Jabba had been presented with such clear data by the alarmists. Had they done that, then they could have taken an early finish to the conference and celebrated, what heroes they all are, as they flew home on their private jets.
Were you referring to Al Jabba the Hutt?
“…phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
That IS the whole point. This was never about the climate or protecting the environment. These people (the Left) want to undermine capitalism so as to ultimately undermine Western Civilization. Capitalism is powered by energy, and its lifeblood has primarily been fossil fuels. They needed to find a way to undermine it, and found their most compelling method by using the climate change argument. It’s like everything else with them; they pretend to care about one cause or another until it gets in the way and is no longer useful (notice how they no longer care about antisemitism or women’s rights now that Hamas is carrying out the direct objective, i.e. destruction).
So-called environmentalists don’t seem to care about the millions of birds and bats minced every year by wind turbines.
Drop JF Kerry into the fifteen minute city in Scotland and tell him to get home decarboned!
Lots of people complain about private jets, and their fuel usage. A minor change will solve the problem.
Just coat the wings with solar panels, and connect the engine turbines to electric generators to generate electrical power when running.
Fill the fuel tanks with water, then use the solar panels to produce oxygen and hydrogen from the water, and feed it to the jet. The jet will fire up, and will produce scads of electricity to make even more hydrogen and oxygen from the water, producing ever more power and speed.
Of course, the jet exhaust now consist of pure water vapour, which can be easily removed from the exhaust, condensed back into water (at high altitudes the air is very cold), and pumped back into the fuel tanks.
Very good for surveillance drones which should be able to fly around for months at no cost, using water as fuel.
i reckon that with a bit of polishing here and there, and including a lot of fancy scientific words like forcings, ECF, TSI, W/m2, and stuff like that, the US Dept of Energy or something could give me a billion or so to develop the idea, which is admittedly only a concept at the moment.
i’m sure the idea has merit, and even in a cave, you could just park the aircraft outside, and sit inside if you need air conditioning, or want to go to the toilet. I haven’t figured out how to make the process noiseless, but that’s only a minor detail.
Does anybody think COP 28 might be a good place to suggest my renewable power initiative?
I hope you are joking, but if not, I’ll do some calculations for a solar powered airplane: Boeing 787-8 specifications from Wikipedia: Wing area 377 m2. Length 57 m. Assume the fuselage top can be covered with solar panels an average of 4 m wide. The total solar panel area is 605 m2. Maximum solar irradiance is 1600 W/m2 (assuming a tropical location, clear sky with zero absorption of sunlight, and the sun at a 90 degree angle to the panel); with a 30% efficiency, you get a maximum power density of 480 w/m2. That’s 290 KW or 387 horsepower from all the cells under the most optimistic conditions.
Now, I have a problem: jet engines are rated by thrust, not horsepower or KW. I think you can convert by multiplying the thrust by the speed, but I don’t have the expertise to know if I’m doing this right. However, I have a couple of ways to view 387 horsepower against the power demands of a large airplane. One of the last and best piston engined airliners, the Super-Constellation, needed 13,000 horsepower total to carry 100 passengers at 300 mph. The 787-8 carries about 300 passengers at 500 mph. It needs many, many times 387 horsepower.
Two, a 2020 Corvette base engine is 465 hp. If you covered a 300-passenger jet airliner with solar cells, at noon on the equator (with one heck of a power cord!) you’d get most of the power needed to run a muscle car seating 4 at a quarter the speed. It might be enough power to run the tractor that tows the airliner on the ground at around 10 mph. You certainly don’t get anywhere near enough power to keep the jet in the air.
You can’t even charge batteries or electrolyze hydrogen and store it to fly. The difference is so great the airplane would have to sit idle on the pavement charging from the sun for days to accumulate enough energy for a 1 hour flight. And airlines don’t let their airplanes sit on the ground in the daytime. They quickly go broke if they can’t keep their airliners flying most of the day, with a full load of ticket-paying passengers.
“Thanks, King.”
-James “Bright Path” Thorp
Native American Olympian, Baseball and Football player.
to Gustav V of Sweden
Hey, Michael Mann, sue that guy.
What?
In reality, they will never get very far with their net zero plans. People expect near 100% reliability in the electric grid, transportation system food supply etc. There is a point where it will become exceedingly clear that none of this decarbonization plan will work.
Unfortunately it does not take much of this “ malinvestment “ as I like to call it before we burn through all the discretionary income of the population( a portion of which must be invested in “ productive pusuits”to assure our future) and economic growth stops.
Things are going rather well at COP28.
We have the President of the conference questioning the basic underpinnings of the whole show.
We have growing support for nuclear and an unspoken tacit admission that “renewables” aren’t going to cut it.
We have delegate’s jets stranded due to snow and ice.
We have South Africa and Indonesia backtracking on previous commitments.
Hoping for more good news before this shindig is over.
“We have delegate’s jets stranded due to snow and ice.”
I saw a climate change demonstration on tv this morning taking place in Brussels, and I thought it was a little ironic because the crowd was marching through the street holding up a sign that showed a drawing of the Earth with fire burning from the top of the globe, and meanwhile, it was snowing huge snowflakes all over the crowd as they marched.
The are saying the Earth is burning up while marching in a snow storm.
Al Gore must have been involved somehow.
An understanding of irony requires a certain self-awareness and mental acuity, attributes usually lacking in Leftists.
Taking the pledge-
Australia commits to COP28 renewables pledge to triple generation by 2030 (msn.com)
but not quite-
Emmanuel Macron calls on Albanese government to lift nuclear ban (msn.com)
PS: Not exactly the outcome Minister Bowen was hoping for-
‘Anti-nuclear hysteric’: Chris Bowen lashed for not signing nuclear pledge (msn.com)
Gaia is not the benevolent earth-mother, she is an ironic bitch. Sooner those green idjits learn that the better.
Word torture. If it’s wrong for one team to arrange words in misleading ways to support a proposition then it’s all wrong for the other team too – sez me.
Fantastic! Maybe now the open debate can begin, and we can educate as to the correct uncensored science. Then we can eliminate the hysteria.
But wait, what about the reparations for a decade of lies and insanity?
Unfortunately, the original culprits in the human-caused climate change scam, the temperature data mannipulators, don’t have much money. Certainly not enough to compensate all those they have injured with their climate change lies about the temperature record and supposed CO2 correlation.
Er, 5 decades and counting…
Maybe there is hope for humanity after all?
Perhaps it just takes a ‘few good men’ to demand the truth from the perennial doom mongers, to finally get the world to wake up from the nightmare of ongoing energy starvation policy Alarmists demand.
This COP may go down as the turning point in climate change science. We have already seen the demand for nuclear power generation to be put back on the agenda. Now we have a conference leader asking for data, to support the hysterical rhetoric adopted by the Climate Alarmists. They failed to provide any, Why? Because as all relists know, there is none.
Fingers crossed, the billions these gatherings cost might just turn out the right result….eventually.
Al Jaber was born in Umm Al Quwain, UAE. He holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern California, a PhD in business and economics from Coventry University, and an MBA from the California State University at Los Angeles.
And so might be the only educated person at the COPfest.
What was his MBA in, out of interest?
Where is the plan from the learned gentlemen who say fossil fuels are not necessary for development?
What do they suggest can replace fossil fuels, at what cost and in what time frame?
What evidence do they have that makes this momentous, probably insurmountable with present technology, task necessary?
Words are cheap when someone else has to shoulder the work and finacial burden!
All good questions, that climate change alarmist never address.
LOL!!! – Still in LaLa Land…
Amazing. Somebody at COP 28 with some sense.
They made a massive and to me fortunate mistake in choosing Dubai for a COP. Here is a man with the intellectual honesty to call a spade a spade and the political and economic clout to just be able to do so. Mickey Mann, John Kerry, Al Gore, they will be livid to the point of heads exploding, but they can huff and puff as loud as they want, it will have no effect.
With a bit of luck this is the last COP. Good riddance.
How did we get to a stage in modern society where the most alarming and unwelcome words that can ever be spoken are the truth.
Do any scientists truly believe in the science behind these IPCC scenarios? I’m guessing they are not fools. Why aren’t there any “whistle-blowers”? Aren’t there any other dissenting scientists?
There is no point in making arguments and mocking folks in this echo-chamber unless that’s all you want to do. And you’ve been doing it for a very long time.
Science requires debate. You guys need to find a way to publish.
Sounded like he was trying to backpedal a bit, today. Saying his comments were taken out of context.