Science denial is still an issue ahead of COP28 – Beragampengetahuan

Why is climate denial – I prefer to call it climate ignorance, but you could also call it “oiligarchic climadness” – still an “issue”? Because this is a global power struggle, not a seminar. The globally ruling classes don’t acknowledge the problem with fossil fuels and the socalled “growth”, *because they aren’t willing to.* In a manner of speaking, they are obsessed with moneymaking, we all live under the unenlightened absolutism of moneyed oligarchies, a lot of – objectively seen: mad and childish tyrants like Trump, Musk, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Putin, Bin Salman etc. etc. etc.

And now they are being represented by this oil sultan (!) Ali Jaber chairing the COP28: a complete parody for sure. What does he say?

“Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels. Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’”.

Why does he say this? Only all the usual smirking and babbling mediots and all the other politicians won’t admit the obvious: of course because he is an oil sultan! Instead they act as advised by Goebbels: “the masses will only believe a lie, if it is sufficiently rude.” Their job is to get the masses to believe the oiligarchic lie about global heating.

“Senior executives from the UAE’s national oil company are working with the Cop28 team as the country ramps up its PR campaign ahead of the major UN climate summit later this year, leaked internal records show.

Two PR professionals from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) are identified as providing “additional support” to the team running the summit, according to a Cop28 communications strategy document obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and the Guardian. It adds to growing evidence of blurred lines between the UAE’s Cop28 team and its fossil fuel industry (…)

“The meeting at the UN will “set the tone, inform the climate agenda and *shape the climate narrative* (my exclamation marks, KJ) in the lead up to Cop28”, the document states.”

The COP process is being turned into a trojan horse for the fossil lobby. At the same time, news confirm that current “progress” in the production of renewables isn’t changing the total dominance of fossil fuels. Around 1975 the percentage of fossil fuels out of total global energy consumption was around 75 pct., according to a lecture by Wally Broecker in 2010. Now this percentage is around 82:

“Renewables Growth Did Not Dent Fossil Fuel Dominance in 2022, Report Says, Reuters, June 26, 2023

Global energy demand rose 1% last year and record renewables growth did nothing to shift the dominance of fossil fuels, which still accounted for 82% of supply, the industry’s Statistical Review of World Energy report said on Monday.

Last year was marked by turmoil in the energy markets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which helped to boost gas and coal prices to record levels in Europe and Asia.

The stubborn lead of oil, gas and coal products in covering most energy demand cemented itself in 2022 despite the largest ever increase in renewables capacity at a combined 266 gigawatts, with solar leading wind power growth, the report said.

“Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,” said the president of the UK-based global industry body Energy Institute, Juliet Davenport.

“We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.””

But then of course this “agreement” (what is an “agreement” consisting of voluntary promises which aren’t kept?) was from the very beginning what James Hansen called it in an interview in november 2015: “Pure bullshit”.

Hansen: “Get ready for the great deceit and hypocrisy planned for December in Paris. Negotiators do not want the global leaders to look like fools again, as they did in Copenhagen. They are determined to have leaders clap each other on the back and declare the Paris climate negotiations a success. A prelude of Paris deceit is shown by Chart 3, a press conference with John Podesta, once czar of Obama’s climate policy, and Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz. They express optimism on the Paris summit, citing an agreement of the U.S. and China to work together to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS). That spin is so gross, it is best described as unadulterated 100% pure bullshit.”

It is now often said that CO2 levels are: (1) 50% higher than pre-industrial (2) the highest in the modern atmospheric record (3) the highest in the paleoclimate records over the past 800,000 years.

But this is not even close to a sober recognition of the harsh reality.

You often read statements like this one from the NOAA about paleoclimatic CO2 levels. But this only what you get from the airbubbles in the deepest ice-cores from Antarctica. There are other paleoclimate records going much further back in the deep past. Why does the NOAA, IPCC etc. never mention them?

In fact present CO2 levels are probably higher than anytime in at least 23 million years, according to this research:

“Across the past 23 m.y., CO2 likely ranged between ∼230 ppmv and 350 ppmv (68% confidence interval: ∼170–540 ppm). CO2 was found to be highest during the early and middle Miocene and likely below present-day levels during the middle Pliocene (84th percentile: ∼400 ppmv). These data suggest present-day CO2 (412 ppmv) exceeds the highest levels that Earth experienced at least since the Miocene, further highlighting the present-day disruption of long-established CO2 trends within Earth’s atmosphere”, “A 23 m.y. record of low atmospheric CO2”, Cui et al. 2020.

This deserves much more attention than it gets.

Furthermore, the present rise in CO2-levels is probably at least five times faster than anytime before in the known geological record:

1) PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum): “Modern rates are many, and projection to a longer PETM time scale is tightly constrained—modern rates are some 9–10 times higher than those during onset of the PETM. If the present trend of anthropogenic emissions continues, we can expect to reach a PETM-scale accumulation of atmospheric carbon in as few as 140 to 259 years (about 5 to 10 human generations).”
“Temporal Scaling of Carbon Emission and Accumulation Rates: Modern Anthropogenic Emissions Compared to Estimates of PETM Onset Accumulation”, Gingerich 2019.

PETM occurred around 56 million years ago.

Se also: “We calculate that the initial carbon release during the onset of the PETM occurred over at least 4,000 years. This constrains the maximum sustained PETM carbon release rate to less than 1.1 Pg C yr−1. We conclude that, given currently available records, the present anthropogenic carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years. We suggest that such a ‘no-analogue’ state represents a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections. Also, future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM.” , Zeebe et al.: “Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years”, 2016.

2) The end-permian extinction event: The fastest calculated CO2 release rate I have found for the end permian extinction event 252 million years ago (the volcanic eruptions which created the Siberian Traps), is around twice as fast as the rate calculated for PETM: “In contrast, Clarkson et al. (12) came to an opposite model-based conclusion, with a slow emission of CO2 (δ13Csource < −12.5‰) followed by faster rate of emissions (2.4 Pg C year−1 over 10,000 years)” “Volcanic CO2 degassing postdates thermogenic carbon emission during the end-Permian mass extinction”, Wu et al. 2023.

Present CO2 release rates are around five times faster than this. So the same conclusion as abovementioned in Zeebe et al. 2016 about the PETM: “We suggest that such a ‘no-analogue’ state represents a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections” also applies in the case concerning the end-permian extinction event, even as the duration of the CO2 release during that event went on for much longer (ten thousand years) than will be possible for the release caused by humans – “only” maybe hundred more years, probably much less, since the industrial exploration of fossil fuels will be brought to an end by it’s own catastrophic consequences for mankind long before they all have been burned.

3) I don’t know any big volcanic events in the deep past with known faster release rates of CO2 than the end-permian extinction event. According to this article
, the volcanic eruptions that caused the “snowball earth” icehouse(s) – the socalled “Cryogenic” period – to end around 635 million years ago had release rates only half so fast as during than later volcanic events:

“To summarise our results, CO2 degassing rates appear to have increased twofold between the Cryogenian and early Palaeozoic, and remained reasonably high until the Cenozoic. When combined with the increasing solar flux, the Cryogenian emerges as a unique period of extremely low background temperature, in which the Earth could have easily been pushed into global glaciation under moderate enhancements of carbon sinks due to weathering and biological events”, “Elevated CO2 degassing rates prevented the return of Snowball Earth during the Phanerozoic”, Mills et al. 2017.

4) There are theories about the extinction of the dinosaurs being caused by the volcanic eruptions creating the Deccan traps 66 million years ago, but according to table 1 in this article “Volume and rate of volcanic CO2 emissions governed the severity of past environmental crises the release rates of CO2”, Jiang et al. 2022, the release rate of CO2 then was around three to ten times slower than during the PETM. There are, as seen in the table, other events, but except for the end permian event the fastest release rates are only about as fast as during the PETM.

But after 33 years of “climate” “talks”, where are we heading? *In the completely opposite direction of what is needed!* By 1975 around 75 pct. of global energy consumption was fossil fuels. As I cited above, this number has now grown to over 82 pct.!

It isn’t difficult at all to understand why this madness is going on and on:

It’s the ruling classes, stupid. They are both mad and stupid. By the way not exactly a new situation in the history of mankind…