The Black Mark on COP28 is not what you think

"Al-Jaber found himself hiding in a place where no one ever goes: the science."

 

His Eminence, Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, President of the 28th Conference of the Parties (#COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (#UNFCCC) was all decked out in his fresh, brilliant white dishdasha and keffiah. He was striding from the door of his residence to the awaiting limo when his nose detected an unpleasant odor. He stopped, raised one foot and saw the cause on the sole of his shoe. He had stepped in it.

Having occasionally shared that experience, I can only feel for the man. And honestly, there is no blame. It was not his fault. S**t happens.

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On Monday morning, I rose at an ungodly hour to attend the Sultan’s press conference and see what he had to say about the viral meme infecting the interwebs.

The Guardian:

The Cop28 president told a shocking lie about fossil fuels — and he’s wrong about climate economics too

CNN:

Climate summit leader defends controversial comments that alarmed scientists and sent shockwaves through meeting

The New York Times:

Climate Summit Leader Tries to Calm Uproar Over a Remark on Fossil Fuels

Within the Blue and Green Zones of the COP, there was a Cat 5 snownado of outrage slamming the Sultan’s purported ignorance of the science and his defense of the oil lobby. It blew down road signs and wailed through the concrete canyons, each time louder and slightly more distorted — a Banshee’s cry of distrust, disgust, and disinformation.

What did the Sultan actually tell Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and UN special climate envoy, during a live event on November 21? I had to rewind that tape and see. What they disagreed about was her insistence that all fossil fuels can and should be phased out immediately, like within 5 or 10 years. Al-Jaber respectfully begged to differ. Such a rapid phase-out would “take the world back into caves,” he said.

Mrs. Robinson had clearly learned to help herself. Looking around, all she saw were sympathetic eyes. She felt quite at home. Al-Jaber found himself, by contrast, hiding in a place where no one ever goes. He had to defend the indefensible.

He was in one sense correct, although finding that many caves to house 8 billion people would be quite the task. That is not to say we won’t be doing just that in a few decades.

One needs to acknowledge that at this moment, oil and gas exploration and production only make up 3.8% of the global economy, and while it would be an economic blow to many countries to phase that industry out (some 40 countries would forfeit more than 60% of their income), it would not cripple the rest. I believe that was Mrs. Robinson’s point. Al-Jaber’s point was that such a timetable would cripple those who burn that carbon for fuel.

One barrel of oil has 1.7 million Watt-hours of energy. By comparison, a human at hard labor can generate around 2.4 kWh in a full day, so each barrel of oil provided two years of hard physical toil. Our global labor force leapt from one billion humans to one billion humans with 500 billion human-equivalent energy slaves.

In our current era you can buy that barrel for the cost of a book, a family trip to a restaurant, or a cheap suit. Because it has been so inexpensive — little more than the cost of extraction and refining — people are continually consuming more of it in all its different forms, from gasoline to plastics. Today the average human keeps 100 fossil slaves working for him or her non-stop.

— Bates, Retropopulationism

 

Seriously, Mary, can we instantly phase-out 84% of global primary energy? In the USA and Germany, we’d be cutting about 50% of electricity, in Australia 67%, in Mexico 74%, and in South Africa 86%. So how, exactly, would those shiny new electric cars take the gas-powered dinosaurs off the roads?

What really got the Sultan in trouble, though, was saying that the “science did not support” a finding that such a rapid phase-out was required. Again, Al-Jaber was technically correct but on the sour side of the torch-carrying mob forming just outside his window.

The science, which for the UNFCCC is pronounced by the esteemed Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the infallible authority, is quite clear on the point. Their most current Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) said that a gradual phase-out of 43% by 2030 and to zero by 2050 would adhere to the 1.5°C limit. Specifically, the IPCC prescribed 60% less oil, 45% less gas, and 100% less coal by 2030 to maintain the 1.5°C global temperature guardrail erected in Paris in 2015. With miraculous technological carbon removal roll-outs expected by 2050, IPCC’s prescription will equate with “net zero” while not getting rid of fossil extraction entirely.

There is good news in that at least some of our problems can be addressed by reversing climate change and building ecosystem health through a multitude of natural, antifragile and frugal means. However, none of these choices are being taken at any significant scale, and that scaling seems dangerously far off. We are poised at the edge of the cliff and will need to find a better way down than by leaping without a parachute.

— Bates, Retropopulationism

Al-Jaber already advanced the marker by getting fifty oil and gas companies, which account for more than 40 percent of global oil production, to join 150 supporting members in pledging “near-zero” methane emissions by 2030, at a cost of $75 billion, something that was not in the Paris Agreement and might not have been possible had not the Sultan invited more than 2456 oil executives to attend the Dubai COP.

Let’s be clear: the actual pledge by the United States, the world’s largest methane emitter, as announced on December 6 by Climate Envoy John Kerry, is to reduce new global methane pollution by 30% by 2030. “That is the equivalent of every car in the world, every truck in the world, every ship in the world, every airplane in the world, all going to zero emissions in that period of time,” he said. It begs the question of how much damage the remaining 70% is being left to do.

God Bless You please, Mrs. Robinson

When Al-Jaber told Mary Robinson there was “no science” showing that her proposed rapid phasing out of fossil fuels — 100% less oil, 100% less gas, and 100% less coal by 2030 — would keep the world beneath the 1.5° guardrail, he was technically correct. The IPCC did not even consider that, and had it done so, it may well have concluded that the aerosol masking effect — a.k.a. the McPherson Paradox or Hansen’s Faustian Bargain — would spike the world 4°C warmer. At his press conference, Al-Jaber brought along the COP28 IPCC spokesperson to confirm precisely what “science” had to say on the matter.

That, of course mattered not at all to the mob. Within hours, The New York Times, CNN, BBC and the rest were ignoring Al-Jaber’s protests and parroting the trending X-line portraying him as a climate denier. All nuance was lost.

“I am a man of science” Al Jaber said. “Science is stating the fact of which we must decrease fossil fuel to 43% by 2030 and to 0% by 2050 in order for humanity to be able to have an inhabitable planet.”

— Sultan Al-Jaber, December 4 Press Conference

ECO, the daily NGO paper of record at the COP’s glittering desert metropolis, led its front-page story, “Contrary to the COP28 President’s assertions, ECO knows the science is abundantly clear that warming will continue as long as we keep producing and burning fossil fuels.” It was all fact, no nuance.

But as Norman Mailer instructed Judge Julius Hoffman in the trial of the Chicago Seven, “Facts are nothing without their nuance, sir.”

The real problem with the press conference came not from the man in 6white sitting at the center of the dias but the man from the IPCC seated to his left. The esteemed arbiter of the science had got the science wrong.

The mob knew that, not from reading all the published, peer-reviewed journal articles or parsing the computer model print-outs, but from peering out their windows in the countries they had just come from.

 

Munich snownado

Earlier this year, Cyclone Freddy, one of history’s most energetic storms, lasted in Malawi and Mozambique for more than a month. California experienced bomb cyclones and landslides. As many people were killed by tornadoes in the Midwest, South and mid-Atlantic in the first three months of 2023 as are killed in an entire “normal” year. Bangladesh, India, Laos, and Thailand saw temperatures top 113°F in April. Spain and Morocco went over 101°F (38°C). With the arrival of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, wildfires raged in Canada from coast to coast, Cyclone Mocha hit Myanmar and Pakistan, and Mawar hit Guam. India topped 45°C (113°F) and even Maui burned. Phoenix topped 100°F for 148 straight days. In September, biblical floods ravaged Libya, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. In November, high temperatures — 20 to 35 degrees above normal — ranged from Mongolia to Russia and the Philippines, while Munich airport had a snownado.

North Stars and Black Holes

The Black Dot

I took the liberty of superimposing a black spot for where global temperature anomaly stood in November 2023, compared to the IPCC AR4 models that assume a gradual, mid-to-late century phase-out of fossil fuels.

I recognize that a monthly average global temperature change is not the same as annual or decadal averages, which is what we must go by, and that the immediate effects of the maritime rules on sulfur fuels, wildfire haze, El Niño, and methane from fracking may obscure the longer trends. That said, we are, at least for the time being, well above 1.5 and closing in on 2.0. We don’t have until mid-century for an orderly phase-down.

For Al-Jaber, my black dot is a mark on his otherwise perfectly white dishdasha. He is fond of saying that science is his “North Star,” but in this case, the science arbiter, the IPCC, got it wrong. The poles shifted. The North Star is somewhere else in the sky.

That said, it is an entirely different point than Al-Jaber’s critics make. They have been calling for his ouster since his appointment. They do not recognize the value of someone who can pull together divergent views and bring to the table those who have opposed the entire process and turn them into allies.

When asked during a television interview whether his country would support an agreement that called for the phase-down or phaseout of fossil fuels, Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said, “Absolutely not.” And yet, the Prince was persuaded by the Sultan to join the pledge to cut methane emissions by 2030.

Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, told the Financial Times that the discussions had “put way too much emphasis on getting rid of fossil fuels, oil and gas” and not enough on “dealing with the emissions associated with them.” Yet, Exxon was also brought into the tent and joined the methane deal.

Weasel words

Exxon is fine with phasing out “unabated” fossil power stations but expects that utilities will soon be exclusively designing and building carbon capture and storage versions that are emissions-free, i.e.: abated. Never mind that those are uneconomic and don’t work very well. The “clean coal” or CCS plants have the problem of what to do with the greenhouse gases once you’ve netted them. Putting them into soft drinks is all well and good until the drinkers burp. Oil companies plan to pump the CO2 down oil wells to push their oil out faster. Oil wells also burp, as do pipelines.

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland who tried unsuccessfully to press Mr. Al Jaber to support an end to fossil fuels, said the COP28 president was “compromised.” But she added, “He said to judge him by results, and we will.”

— The New York Times

“Absolutely not”

My pet peeve every year about this time is the claims by critics of the United Nations COP process that it is a wasted effort and has never accomplished much. What is their alternative? To let each country go their own way? To offer no guidance or peer pressure at all?

There is also a campaign by Kick Big Polluters Out and others to expel the 2456 registered attendees from Big Oil invited by the Sultan. The protesters correctly point out that is four times the number of fossil lobbyists at COP26-Glasgow. Media outlets like Democracy Now!, Climate Action Network (publisher of ECO) and Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project have jumped on that bandwagon. And yet strangely, there is no call for expulsion of the United States, the world’s largest oil and gas producer, which also happens to be the largest gas and petroleum product exporter and is responsible for over one-third of all planned oil and gas expansion. Nor is there any effort to expel the second and third largest polluters, China and Russia.

Ever since Eleanor Roosevelt conceived of it, the United Nations has been a watering hole, not a battlefield. It does not have its own army. It can’t force those who sign its treaties to abide by them. Roosevelt saw the value, however, of being able to talk. To negotiate. To set a North Star in the sky. Can we all agree that genocide is bad? Can we establish laws of war? A Law of the Ocean? A Convention on Biodiversity? A Framework Convention on Climate Change by which we come together each year and set targets and ratchet ambition, even if we lack the power to enforce? To quote the Executive Secretary, “Parties must know what is needed to put NDCs [Nationally Determined Contributions] on a pathway to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030, and 60% by 2035.”

I find value in that.

Occasionally, the principles of multilateralism, consensus, and inclusion — even of those you despise and see as evil incarnate — produce results. They did in 2015 with the aspirational Paris Agreement. They did this year with the methane agreement for which we have Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber to thank.

The black mark on COP28 is not what you may think. It is not putting an Oil Company executive in charge. It is the mob that can’t see the genius in that.

References

Anderson, Kevin, Holly Jean Buck, Lili Fuhr, Oliver Geden, Glen P. Peters, and Eve Tamme. “Controversies of carbon dioxide removal.” Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2023): 1–7.

Palazzo Corner, Sofia, Martin Siegert, Paulo Ceppi, Baylor Fox-Kemper, Thomas L. Frölicher, Angela Gallego-Sala, Joanna Haigh et al. “The Zero Emissions Commitment and climate stabilization.” Frontiers in Science 1 (2023): 1170744.\

 

 

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