As I pointed out several years ago, the climate alarmists have a civil war going on between radicals and moderates. Radical leader Greta Thunberg’s famous “How dare you” was addressed to moderate COP negotiators, not skeptics.
In recent years, every COP had been dominated by an angry motion from the radicals, which was ultimately defeated in the final hours. Ironically these noisy motions tend actually to inhibit progress on the big green agenda, so I welcome them.
COP 28 was no different. The basic idea was to finally mention fossil fuels in the final statement after 27 COPS did not so. Makes sense, given that burning fossil fuels are the supposed reason for the climate alarm.
Seemed simple enough, but the radicals had to go full bore on it. They demanded an agreement to actually phase out fossil fuels. Out in the sense of none. No oil, no gas, no coal, nothing.
To see how radical this phase-out stuff really is, note that the alarmist abomination called net zero does not do this. The net in net zero specifically allows for future fossil fuel emissions, provided these are offset in some way. Moreover, it allows for unlimited fossil fuel use if carbon capture can ever be made to work. Net zero is about emissions, not fuel.
Moreover, a lot of fossil fuels are used as petrochemical feedstock, which does not create CO2 emissions. As my colleague Ron Stein strenuously points out, petrochemical products are fundamental to our way of life. Phasing out fossil fuels would mean ending petrochemicals.
A lot of countries objected to this radical phase-out insistence. Some were oil and gas producers, and the radical press focused on them. But a bunch of others were countries that rightly saw fossil fuel as powering economic improvement. This humanitarian side of the argument seldom got reported.
There was an exquisite moment in the middle of all this mindless ho-ha. The moderate President of COP 28 had said there was no science supporting the need to obliterate fossil fuel use. The radicals were outraged and said so.
In response, the Pres then held a press conference featuring the Chief of the IPCC. The Chief said that meeting the holy target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C just required reducing oil use by 60% and nat gas use by 45% (not even half). Nothing like phasing out fossil fuel use was required. He specifically said the President was correct.
None of this made the slightest difference to the radicals. The radical rag CNN even did a long piece on the press conference without mentioning the IPCC or its Chief. This is the clearest proof that science is of no interest to the radical alarmists that I have seen to date.
When push came to shove, at the end, the radicals simply lost big time. The final statement says nothing about phasing out fossil fuels. It doesn’t even say that about the demon coal, which is just supposed to be phased down, not out, someday.
The final COP 28 statement simply “calls on Parties” (the P in COP, actually member countries) to “contribute” to “Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science;”
So it is just contributing to net zero by 2050. The nature of this contribution is up to each country, and some have net zero targets later than 2050, like China and India.
Note that a transition is significantly different from a phase-out. A transition implies that the needed energy is still there, just from a different source. Phase-out says nothing about meeting energy needs.
The Chinese may have had something to do with this language because they repeatedly say they will switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources when those sources actually provide the needed energy (which is likely never, and they know it). In any case, a transition is nothing like a phase-out.
It is also likely that the phrase “in keeping with the science” comes from the COP President. Keeping his voice on the table, as it were. He should smile.
In COP 28, the moderates won, and the radical alarmists lost, wasting everybody’s time in the process. The actual negotiations got no press. It was noise all the way down.
Unfortunately, it is net zero (by 2050) that is the problem so all the rest is piffle.
Here is a challenge for them…
Stop using Oil, Gas and Coal in their daily lives!
Start producing their “Clean Energy” Generators USING only “Clean Energy”
No Coking Coal for Steel or Silicon
No Petrochemicals for Turbine Blades
No Asphalt for road surfaces
No Concrete that isn’t manufactured using only “Clean Energy”
Only Battery Powered transportation for construction and installation
Only “Clean Energy” for mineral purification and manufacturing
Show the world that FF aren’t needed then the world might listen
Show the world that “Clean Energy” is up to the task of powering every aspect of modern society
I see you’ve been to the dark continent.
Unfortunately for us in the UK all three main political parties are still full on for Net Zero.
Elimination of internal combustion engine cars, compulsory switch to expensive unreliable electric vehicles. Compulsory switch to heat pumps and phase out of gas heating.
We already have the most expensive domestic fuel costs in the world I believe.
It is nonsense.
The U.K. has a particularly nasty dose of the woke mind virus
UK also has a particularly Large and Nasty Deficit
Bless them all but all the enforced spending (EVs, heat-pumps etc) they are inflicting of people is an attempt to fix that deficit.
The number we see is the Official Government Figure.
i.e. A Lie – the true number will be 3 or 4 times that.
How they give themselves away is that that £2Billion number is exactly the unfunded liability to cover JUST the pensions of ex-Government employees
Just the pensions, which they cheerfully ramped up by 10% barely a few months ago.
Salaries for current civil servants also rose = Inflation at 7%
nice
Sorry, but somewhere I have not seen the change in climate that “net zero” is supposed to achieve.
Is it temperature? is it sea level? glacier retreat or advance?
I’m confused.
Gums sends…
It’s another in a long line of CoP-outs
Greta is an adult now. I wonder if she’ll ever get a real job.
She has what passes as a [upper middle class] job
December 5th
“We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights
Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future Sweden
This article was written by:
Greta Thunberg (she/her)
Alde Nilsson (all pronouns)
Jamie Mater (they/them)
Raquel Frescia (she/they)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/05/gaza-climate-justice-human-rights-greta-thunberg
Give the green in your life a gift they’ll love this Christmas; rubber wallpaper.
oh, no- the pronoun thing! A while back, I didn’t think it was real- until I got a brochure from the medical clinic I go to- all the staff were listed with their pronouns…. Well, this is Wokeachusetts.
They really are mental.
I heard Brian Kilmeade, a Fox News jack-of-all-trades, say yesterday that if he recieves an email that includes a person’s pronouns, he immediately sends it to the trash without reading it.
Don’t include pronouns if you want Brian Kilmeade to read your emails or texts.
If i received an email that included pronouns, I wouldn’t necessarily send it to the trash without reading it, but I would not take the sender as seriously as I would if they didn’t include pronouns. Including pronounce would cause me to think I was dealing with a radical, or someone who is very confused.
Right!
Joe (pronouns: he-man, macho-man, sexy-guy) 🙂
How dare you? It’s reported that she has a net worth of $18 million and annual income of $2 million.
but… but… she must be living in a hut- and only rides a bike- and only eats lettuce- and she must give the money to the poor
Hmmm … That’s a lot of green but where does she keep it and in what form?
Is there a bank somewhere that’s powered by only “fossil fuel free energy”?
Or maybe she just has a huge stockpile of wooden nickels?
no wooden nickels ’cause you’d have to DEFOREST the landscape using fossil fuels- or the tree cutting would have to be done only with an ax, and dragging the wood out only with a mule to a horse drawn cart to deliver it to a sawmill using only a water wheel for energy
Joseph, I understand she is already a millionairess so she won’t need a real job.
Correction: Greta will never be an adult.
And everybody lost again. A slow inexorable smart toward net-zero for the people of the world. Zero money, zero freedom, zero autonomy, zero energy, zero …
looks like our branch of the ape family has finally reached a dead end 🙂
Homo Sapiens is being replaced by Homo Motus (or Emovere) – that’s the evolutionary dead end.
The overall thesis of the post is correct, though the following statement needs more context. “Moreover, a lot of fossil fuels are used as petrochemical feedstock, which does not create CO2 emissions.”
While it may be true that petrochemicals often go into products that do not emit carbon dioxide in the sense they sequester carbon in final products, their production, processing, and distribution of requires the use of energy which does emit carbon dioxide. For instance, the production of olefinic petrochemicals, like ethylene and propylene, are often produced via high temperature processes of cracking or pyrolysis. The reactors are typically heated by natural gas and fuel gases.
I appreciate the point being made by the author of this post, and that it is a good thing that the “phase out” language was avoided. But I do not see the COP28 conclusion as a moderate statement at all. It is nuts. Delusional. Misguided. Pointless. Useless. Wasteful. Harmful to human interests.
Here is some of the relevant text as of December 13th.
Emphasis mine.
“28. Further recognizes the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 °C pathways and calls on Parties to contribute to the following global efforts, in a nationally determined manner, taking into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances, pathways and approaches:
(a) Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030;
(b) Accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power;
(c) Accelerating efforts globally towards net zero emission energy systems, utilizing zero- and low-carbon fuels well before or by around mid-century;
(d) Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science;
(e) Accelerating zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production;
(f) Accelerating and substantially reducing non-carbon-dioxide emissions globally, including in particular methane emissions by 2030;
(g) Accelerating the reduction of emissions from road transport on a range of pathways, including through development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zero-and low-emission vehicles;
(h) Phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible;
29. Recognizes that transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security;
30. Welcomes that over the past decade mitigation technologies have become increasingly available, and that the unit costs of several low-emission technologies have fallen continuously, notably wind power and solar power and storage, thanks to technological advancements, economies of scale, increased efficiency and streamlined manufacturing processes, while recognizing the need to increase the affordability and accessibility of such technologies…”
“ Delusional. Misguided. Pointless. Useless.”
The very definition of the UNhinged. (Prop. A. Guterres)
It is moderate compared to what the radicals want. The civil war in alarmism gets almost no attention, but the radicals are making little headway.
“It is moderate compared to what the radicals want.” Understood.
The Bolsheviks made little headway until they won. Like everything else, the so-called ‘moderate’ position on energy is unstable – it must either revert to a free market or collapse into socialist chaos.
I think there is an entire spectrum between these extremes. For example in the US electricity is mostly from state regulated monopolies.
Nutty, I agree. Yet, if you do a bit of editing to make it seem possible, then it doesn’t read all that differently from some of the stuff from the utilities — their IRPs, for example.
True. The one good thing in the text is that nuclear is mentioned.
Very few, if any countries have met their obligations under the Paris COP of 2015? COP 28 is virtually a repeat.
CO2 concentration continues unabated!
1. Activists, alarmists are really just troublemakers and perhaps should be labelled as such.
2. As far as I know, hydrocarbons are not derived from fossils and perhaps we should stop referring to them as such
3. We’ll know that commonsense is returning to the Western world when the troublemakers are not invited to attend any future meetings, thus neutralising their destructive influence on our lives.
Ah, but the 100,000 supplicants at the Hajj earned credits towards their journey to, Paradise.
A 60% decrease in fossil fuels usage is a prescription for poverty. David D., summarizes goals from this document like doubling our rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. Wht does this actually mean? If a person is as old as I am and can recall what the 1950s-1970s were like, we used a lot of energy. It looks wasteful in retrospect, but we built a lot of wealth. The “efficiency” of energy usage has improved greatly since then — mileage of automobiles, better insulated buildings, improvements to lighting, and so forth. But the real improvements are very slow, and the only reasonable metric I think is energy used per dollar of economic activity. But the time-line is long and the economy is always changing. There are new demands — like for data centers, AI, etc.
There are improvements to be made for sure, but in the short run rate of wealth creation and economic activity is proportional to energy usage. Force reduced usage too quickly and you just make people poor.
Good points here.
Indeed, I think net zero is nuts. My point was that the moderate Pres was right, under the IPCC, and the alarmists wrong. My article is about the internal politics of alarmism, which it is useful to understand.
My take on net zero madness:
https://www.cfact.org/2023/03/17/a-simple-reason-why-net-zero-is-impossible/
Nut-Zero
You’re standing in front of a jail cell and you have the key.
You step in, lock the door and throw away the key.
The moderates throw the key so it will land within arms reach.
The radicals throw it as far as they can.
(Meanwhile, China holds the door and courteously says, “You first.”
While I don’t know their basic correctness, a number of reports conclude that all studies of increased energy efficiency, after a short time duration, lead to a net increase of energy usage, mostly related to the decreased cost of using energy for the particular purpose that has the increased efficiency plus the resulting greater availability of energy for new uses.
You are, I’m afraid, an optimist, KK. Another way to reach a 60% or greater reduction in fossil fuel use is to get rid of 90% of the population.
Apart from the fact that they straight up say that they want depopulation and degrowth, you can also deduce it without a lot of analysis. What are their greatest passions? Abortion, all forms of sterile sexuality, euthanasia. The culture of death.
Looks like a productive conference!
It’s necessary to understand how things work. The climate maniacs are engaging in what’s turning out to be a long bargaining process. They know very well that the elimination of fossil fuels is an impossibility. However, they will demand it but eventually settle for something less, maybe EVs, mandatory heat pumps, CO2 capture, green hydrogen or some other fantasy. Adoption of just one of these will be a tactical victory for the greens, another step in a strategy that will go on for years. In fact, the whirling blades of wind turbines, visible for miles, already prove to the disinterested that the implementation of their ideas is taking place.Nothing could be more obvious.
Once again, it must be recognized that at this moment replacement of fossil fuels with renewables is an official policy of the US government and its employees, so the climate Cassandras have an important ally in maintaining their delusion. Working in opposition to official government climate policy is akin to objecting to the Federal Reserve Bank, the Internal Revenue Service, the EPA or the FBI. It won’t be easy, or maybe even possible, to arrest a movement that has become embedded in government bureaucracy, academia, business and the media. The best hope for a return of rational thinking will be the less developed world, like Africa, which desires reliable, inexpensive energy to raise their own standard of living. Recognition of their situation and the best way to advance it is just as important for the ordinary world as it is for them.
I think you are giving these climate alarmists too much credit for the appreciation of ‘realpolitik’. The climate fanatics are not likely to compromise and will not stop until their unreasonable demands are met or they are removed from the situation. Some of the more alarmist of the COP delegates might compromise, if given enough funding, but will likely be attacked by the climate fanatics. It’s not at all simple.
Are you saying that atmospheric CO2 isn’t a concern of the US and state governments? Are you saying that on shore and offshore wind turbine complexes aren’t being licensed? Maybe you’re saying that a drive through central Iowa won’t reveal giant, spinning wind turbines? Or that millions of enpixelated dollars aren’t being gifted to research universities to explore the possibilities of “green hydrogen”? These schemes are taking place now. Some will fail for one reason or another but some will be adopted as time goes by because it’s in the interest of elements of academia, government or business. It can’t all come to pass simultaneously. How far it goes is in an unpredictable future.
regardless of the detrimental results.
>> But a bunch of others were countries that rightly saw fossil fuel as powering economic improvement.
To me it is like the 97% or 99% consensus, depending on the exact question, it will be very hard to find one in a hundred to disagree with it, for example the daily warming till noon by sunlight.
Cheap energy and petrochemistry are essential to the Western world especially, that you can only wonder about the statements various leaders and politicians made. They clearly act against the interest of their population! And should be called out for that!
Maybe they said something they didn´t mean (why soever). but phasing out fossil fuel cannot be in the interest of any country I know! (well maybe places like Iceland could get by without it, but not easily and definitely not at a net benefit)
Story tip
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/generator-retirements-threaten-grid-reliability-NERC/702504/
Rising peak demand, 83 GW of planned retirements create blackout risks for most of US: NERC
NERC’s 10-year reliability assessment warns environmental regulations and energy policies “that are overly rigid” can jeopardize “the orderly transition of the resource mix.”
Published Dec. 14, 2023
Robert Walton Senior Reporter
“Rising peak demand and the planned retirement of 83 GW of fossil fuel and nuclear generation over the next 10 years creates blackout risks for most of the United States, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Wednesday in its annual Long-Term Reliability Assessment.”
end excerpt
Climate change alarmists are going to destroy our nations if they continue down the path they are going.
But possibly not on the schedule they want.
What wins every year is physics and economics. Nature doesn’t allow that human society can exist and flourish without energy. Nature doesn’t allow wind and solar electrical generation to provide more than a small proportion of that energy, and economics makes that small proportion prohibitively expensive compared to more reliable sources. No COP statement can do anything to change reality and no government can ignore reality without signaling its own resignation from power. COP’s and IPCC events are a pantomime for the slow witted.
Let’s not forget the body of science that says ECS is very low for a doubling of CO 2 and there’s a ‘saturation’ hypothesis which if true blows the whole caravanserai out of the water.
It’s obvious that the countries with the most to lose by eliminating fossil fuels are the least likely to actually do something about it. The West/industrialized countries understand what the outcome will be and are performing minimal do diligence to appear they are on board …. that’s another way of saying they are big on virtue signaling and little on substantial action. After almost 30 years of COP the CO2 level is still steadily rising and the only thing the COP has to show for itself is more attendees every year.
Very nice David, clear and concise. My question is are the radicals whole countries or just some zealots from some countries? I would love to find a whole country that demanded we stop fossil fuel use. It would be our obligation to make that happen, only in their country of course. We would have a first hand example of what a world without fossil fuels would look like and all it would cost us is a blockade.
The reality about the COP conferences is that the delegates don’t do anything except going through the motions on the issues. After all, they are not held responsible if they don’t accomplish anything, so they just pretend to take things seriously. Why admit failure when doing so would provide the rationale for cancelling future conferences and spoil a free ride for the attendees?
Honestly, if you pay me a million dollars a month and fly me to exotic resort locales on a regular basis, I am perfectly willing to pretend that I believe in invisible winged unicorns (IWUs) that control the weather. It would clearly be my duty to assure our safety by studying their habits. Are IWUs affecting the quality of the world’s most expensive wines and finest cuisine? Somebody must do this critical work. As a selfless servant leader, I throw myself into the work!
Are they working for the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
If Trump wins the election, future COP’s will be very interesting.
I can hear the whining and crying now.
Trump is way ahead of Biden now in all the polls in Battleground States.
Trump will get even more support as the Republican nomination process winds down and Trump is the last one standing.
The Democrats are going to have to cheat real hard to win this next presidential election.