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Opinion

Crisis What Crisis?

27 Nov 2024 7 minute read
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev meeting at Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan – Photo Carl Court/PA Wire

Gareth Wyn Jones

 COP 29 has come and gone. The global community gathered in oil and gas-enriched Baku in Azerbaijan to try and agree to slow the growing pace of global warming and climate change caused by our burning the very same oil and gas (and coal).

The prospects of rapid major global cuts in emissions are minimal despite the overwhelming evidence of impending disaster. Baku produced another fudge.

In reality global air and sea temperatures are continuing to rise, maybe faster than anticipated. After 28 COPs, the atmospheric concentrations of the main Green House Gases (GHG)[CO2, CH4 and N20] are actually rising faster than even before.

Despite all the conferences and real world evidence, we are accelerating towards the precipice not slowing. The floods in Valencia, Hurricane Helene, the droughts in the Amazon and southern Africa, the fires in Canada and even the lack of water for ships to pass through the Panama canal are harbingers of that precipice.

Drastic

This year will see a mean global temperate rise of +1.5oC compared with the pre-fossil fuel period. Not the running average admittedly, but there is now no realistic prospect of the 2015 Paris Accords being achieved. Average global increases of between +2.5 and + 3oC  are probable unless improbably drastic and rapid cuts in GHGs are made in next decade.

These global means disguise the fact that temperature increases overland will be significantly higher and in some places, especially near the poles, much greater. We must expect more extreme weather. The sea ice will retreat. The glaciers and ice sheets melt, probably irreversibly.

The former threatening water supplies to major cities. The latter increasing the rate and extent of sea level rise. And now we have the orange cloud of incoming President Trump emboldening the deniers and undermining the little that has been achieved: negating the cuts and promoting GHG technology. Anyone for a gas guzzler – drill baby drill – America an energy superpower!

As I seek to explain in my book, humanity is addicted to energy and specifically to fossil fuel energy and power. The dealers supplying our present addiction and their acolytes are not only happy to oblige but will work ceaselessly in Baku and elsewhere to protect their lucrative markets. Denial has become an emblem of macho-capitalism. Global warming can be discounted and any future problem can be cured by technological fixes – carbon capture and storage and global geo-engineering.

Zero emissions

Some, including the UK Labour government appear committed to major GHG reductions -net zero emissions by mid-century. Although they remain fixated on energy-dependent, economic growth.  As I’ve explored in Energy and Power: Our perilous Obsessions, there are strong grounds to fear this is a seductive but false prospectus.

We indeed feed off optimism. Humans need rays of hope to lighten our lives. Despair is debilitating, counterproductive. We all hope that better times will be on the horizon if not for ourselves then certainly our children and grandchildren.

This vital spark of immemorial hope has been part of our make-up for tens of thousands of years ago. However, quite recently it has been transformed into and focussed on an assumption of continuing material growth. More stuff. More and better technology, better perhaps bigger and warmer houses, bigger cars, faster travel, more exotic holidays, even longer lives.

We, the better off, want more and more. We call it ‘progress’. This progress is measured in economic growth – in consumerism, in increasing GDP. We vote for it. Politics requires that anyone seeking political office must play the game and promise more but humans overshooting several safe planetary limits, despite the major being dirt poor raises serious doubts.

Is our current version of progress realistic?

Flags at Cop29 – Photo Cop29 website

Universal cry

Faster economic growth was the Labour’s key promise to win the election as well as the abject failures of the last 14 years. Of course not just Labour in Westminster, it’s a near universal cry.

Growth is seen as a painless way to increase frayed public services and to put money in people’s pockets without upsetting the ‘City’ and the all-powerful financial markets.

The fact that equality and inequity have grown dramatically in the last 50 years especially in the Anglo-American world (to which we are umbilically attached) is accepted. Sometimes with regret but actually celebrated by others as sign of virility.

I would argue that this whole mind set is mistaken and minimises the threats that our addiction to energy as well as the dangers implicit in anthropogenic global warming.

I contend that the more energy, irrespective of the source, we can effectively couple to work and power, the more complex our society will become and the faster everything will change. Both complexity itself and the ever accelerating rate of change pose threaten to destabilise our society and undermine our humanity.

These trends will result in more regulation and are leading to the emergence of new controlling elites. These problems, I would argue, are in addition to the specific threats from GHG emissions from fossil fuel burning.

Humanity is at a crossroads and new thinking is required.

We should prioritize policies and interventions to allow people to live well on less energy so cutting both energy use and GHG emissions.

This approach has a better chance of meeting both our climate/ GHG emissions dilemma and the longer term ‘energy’ problem, on the required timescale, than building new disputed infra-structure.

Yes, we need to develop renewable energy but the lower the total demand the more easily that demand can be satisfied with less dissent.

Nuclear  power, both fission and fusion, are irrelevant in the short time we have left. We must also ask ourselves: do we have right to bequeath to future generation not only the likelihood of catastrophic climate change but also nuclear waste dangerous for thousands of years?

For a new approach to emerge some factors must be recognised.

As has been said so many times, we must accepted our common humanity and cooperate rather than participate in the geopolitical competition of egomaniacs.

The limits of both the ‘market’ and commercialization and indeed human intervention must recognised. Current hubris reigns. Sadly. the respect for understanding, truth and even science has been undermined.

The really rich

Both anthropogenic climate change and accelerating change and growing  complexity mainly  arise from the activities of the better off and the really rich.

They, but it is to a significant extent, we must not only embrace change but must also be the source of the funds to bring about change—a very tough sell. Global inequality is gross but few of us feel rich.

The really rich have perfected systems to protect their wealth, to use political clout to their own advantage and propaganda to convince the rest of us that without their cooperation all will be consigned to penury.  But the Masters of the Universe are no match for reality.

 Many of you will have heard of King Canute who foolishly and arrogantly in my schoolboy version tried to stop the incoming tide. The real story is different.

The King sat on his throne before the incoming tide and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not to wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person.

Then the king leapt backwards, saying: ‘Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.'”

He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again “to the honour of God the almighty King”.

Imagine an apparently true believer Donald Trump placing his ‘throne’ with the world media in attendance, on the beach near Mar-a-Lago and trying his luck.


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Adrian
Adrian
1 day ago

Oh do calm down! The imminent climate catastrophe is about as real as fairies at the bottom of the garden, and gender identity: not even the IPCC can produce any evidence for it. Thankfully the wheels are finally coming off the Net Zero crazy train, Mad Miliband will soon be quietly got rid of and, once the blackouts start, the Labour party will have to admit that the whole thing was never achievable. Unfortunately for us we’re now stuck with no industry to speak of, the highest energy costs in the developed world, and net zero energy security. Roll on… Read more »

Margaret Helen Parish
Margaret Helen Parish
2 hours ago
Reply to  Adrian

Well said

Deiniol
Deiniol
8 minutes ago
Reply to  Adrian

ipcc seem to think that there is evidence for human made global warming and that it is and will cause climate castrophe.https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/resources/spm-headline-statements

Deej
Deej
1 day ago

Have some real fairies….

global_temp_vs_carbon_dioxide_2023update
Adrian
Adrian
1 day ago
Reply to  Deej

Why do you think rising CO2 is a problem? It’s crucial to all life on the planet, and it’s been shown to lag temperature increases.

IMG_0077
Last edited 1 day ago by Adrian
Deej
Deej
1 day ago
Reply to  Adrian

Never been so high….

co2-graph-072623
Adrian
Adrian
23 hours ago
Reply to  Deej

So? It has nothing to do with my comment.

Adrian
Adrian
1 day ago
Reply to  Deej

Oh dear!
The fact that CO2 – the gas essential to all life on the planet – has been rising since the ‘little ice age’ does not constitute evidence of an impending climate catastrophe. Also, to head off your next attempt, changes atmospheric CO2 are now known to lag temperature changes….try again though by all means.

IMG_0077
Doctor Trousers
Doctor Trousers
1 day ago
Reply to  Adrian

If you think that being essential to all life on the planet means you can’t have too much of something, try breathing water.
Really, please do.

Adrian
Adrian
1 day ago

So what do you consider to be the ‘correct’ amount of atmospheric CO2?

Doctor Trousers
Doctor Trousers
1 day ago
Reply to  Adrian

As far as the correct amount of atmospheric CO2 is concerned, I would defer to the people whose job it is to know these things.
Now which part of the science is it that you doubt? Is it the relationship between CO2 and infrared radiation, or is it the amount of CO2 that has actually been released into the atmosphere?
Because for man made climate change not to be real, one or both of those established and uncontroversial scientific facts must be untrue.
So which one is it?

Last edited 1 day ago by Doctor Trousers
Adrian
Adrian
1 day ago

I could get into all that, but I did not assert that man-made climate change isn’t real, so why don’t we deal with what I actually say, rather than stuff you make up? My assertion is this: there is no evidence to support the notion that we are facing a climate catastrophe in the near future…over to you.

Doctor Trousers
Doctor Trousers
1 day ago
Reply to  Adrian

You can’t answer it, can you?

Adrian
Adrian
1 day ago

I can, I’m just choosing not to because you’re talking past me and debating with the person in your head. Why don’t you address the actual issue I posted about?

Doctor Trousers
Doctor Trousers
23 hours ago
Reply to  Adrian

You’ve stated, more than once, that atmospheric CO2 is nothing to be concerned about. Now, I’m sure you would just love it if I were to fall into playing some ludicrous semantic game with you, about whether or not saying atmospheric CO2 is nothing to worry about amounts to denying climate change, but I’m not going to do that. If atmospheric CO2 is nothing to worry about, then that means that releasing CO2 into the atmosphere isn’t heating the planet at the rate that scientists say it is. There’s only two ways that can be true. One, is that scientists… Read more »

Adrian
Adrian
23 hours ago

You’re making things up again: at no point have I said that rising CO2 is ‘nothing to worry about’. I said that rising CO2 levels do not constitute evidence of an impending climate catastrophe. I also asked why someone else was concerned about rising CO2, since recent research finds that CO2 level fluctuation follows temperature change, not the other way around. You really should read comments properly before replying.

Doctor Trousers
Doctor Trousers
22 hours ago
Reply to  Adrian

You can’t actually engage with fundamental scientific facts, can you?
If rising CO2 levels don’t constitute an impending climate catastrophe, then that must mean that scientists are wrong about the relationship between CO2 and infrared radiation.

Adrian
Adrian
22 hours ago

Science finds that there is a relationship, but the inverse of the one that alarmists have been banging on about since the ’80s: which is probably why they’ve been wrong on every single prediction they’ve made. One more time – CO2 level fluctuation is now known to follow temperature fluctuations, not cause them.
Consider this – if Net Zero was a sound strategy then why, after almost halving the UK’s CO2 emissions has it made absolutely no difference?

Doctor Trousers
Doctor Trousers
22 hours ago
Reply to  Adrian

So you do disagree about the well established and well observed relationship between CO2 and infrared radiation?

Adrian
Adrian
21 hours ago

My point is that currently-understood science finds that historic CO2 level fluctuations followed temperature fluctuations: that’s it.

Doctor Trousers
Doctor Trousers
21 hours ago
Reply to  Adrian

You said that scientists are wrong for believing that releasing CO2 into the atmosphere is leading us to impending catastrophe, yes?

Algie
Algie
1 day ago
Reply to  Adrian

‘No evidence ‘ ? I must be reading different scientific models and research to you then.

Adrian
Adrian
23 hours ago
Reply to  Algie

Oh I don’t doubt it.

Chris Jones
Chris Jones
1 day ago

I don’t understand what the ‘new thinking‘ suggested by the good professor above is or could be. Is it Political? Military enforcement? Financial inducement? Religious revival? Tech advancements? Please clarify. In the meantime, I shall be re-watching Mad Max and Waterworld and playing Fallout 76 and 7 Days to Die. Cory Doctorow has it right in this article. Oh, what did I do with that rusty pitchfork?

Adrian
Adrian
1 day ago
Reply to  Chris Jones

The ‘new thinking’ Chris is now starting to reveal itself. Less driving, less flying, less meat, colder homes, no industry, and higher energy bills….only for the plebs though: Starmer et al. will still need to travel by motorcade and private jet because they’re too important to have too suffer any sacrifices.

Jack
Jack
1 day ago

The world is warming up. The UK is only responsible for 1% of it so Net Zero is a pointless waste of UK money. Let’s accept that global warming will hit 3% above the questionable mid 1800s figures (Questionable? How many accurate measurements were being made in the mid 1800s especially in places like Africa? As well the mid 1800s was th end of a mini cool period in the UK so temperature were cooler than it should have been). So, even if the UK went to the very, very expensive Net Zero it would NO have impact on global… Read more »

Rob Pountney
Rob Pountney
1 day ago

I see the dinosaurs are out in force today…

Adrian
Adrian
1 day ago
Reply to  Rob Pountney

If you’re. Seeing dinosaurs I’d get some help!

hdavies15
hdavies15
21 hours ago
Reply to  Adrian

Small herd of Mammoths just cantered through my winter veg patch. One of them was humming the theme music from one of those Ice Age films, or maybe that was the chap dressed in hides minding the herd.

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
17 hours ago
Reply to  hdavies15

Diversification in farming, a loop hole finds Mammoth teeth fall outside the ‘Age of Ivory’ rules hence white balls are no longer under the threat of extinction…

Tell that to the US Marines…

Mawkernewek
20 hours ago
Reply to  Rob Pountney

It wouldn’t be a great idea to reintroduce dinosaurs as the sauropods were a significant source of methane.

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