COP28 Achieves Nothing
By Paul Homewood
COP28 has finished with the usual backslapping, tears and claims of a historic, planet saving, landmark deal.
As usual though, when you dive into the detail of the agreement, you find that it is mostly smoke and mirrors:
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The main so-called achievement is the mention of the need to move away from fossil fuels, the first time it has ever been included in a Final Agreement. As one Professor points out, it has only taken 28 COPs, rather like the Ents in the Lord of the Rings, who took three hours to say hello to each other!
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But just as in Glasgow at COP26 with coal, there was a total refusal from many countries to endorse the term “Phase-Out”, or even “Phase-Down”. Instead the Agreement states:
“Transitioning away from fossil fuels in our energy systems, beginning in this decade, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”
This is, to all intents and purposes, a meaningless fudge. The get out clause, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, will allow China , India and the rest of the 24 strong Like-Minded grouping of developing countries (LDMC), who vetoed the phase out of coal at COP26, to carry on using as much fossil fuel as they like.
Even the term “transitioning” is weaker than “phase-down”. China, for example, could argue it is already transitioning away, because it is increasing the share of renewables. It is of course also increasing its fossil fuel consumption in absolute terms if not share!
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The Agreement is also notable for making no mention of any financial package. It says nothing about how much money must be provided to developing countries, how it should be funded or distributed. This is a bitter blow to poorer countries, who are only interested in cash.
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The rest of the Agreement seems to be full of loopholes as well.
- Rapidly phasing down coal – this was already agreed in Glasgow, and the “limiting” of new coal power generation is another meaningless term, which will allow China and India to carry on as usual
- “Accelerating efforts towards Net Zero emission systems” is another meaningless statement.
- “Accelerating zero and low emissions technologies” notably includes carbon capture, which will ensure a future for fossil fuels. There is also mention of “low carbon hydrogen”, which implies steam reforming natural gas. (After all, green hydrogen is “carbon free”)
- “Phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible.” – Energy poverty, just transitions and as soon as possible, of course, will allow all countries to carry on as usual.
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There is also mention in the Agreement of the need for “transitional fuels”, which is a code word for natural gas!
Even the tripling of renewable capacity by 2030 will probably do no more than offset the increase in demand for energy in the interim.
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But the biggest weakness of all in this Agreement is that it is not binding on any country. There are no national targets laid down as to who must do what. Instead it merely calls on countries to contribute to global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels.
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It is interesting that, according to the Guardian, there was no debate on the final text;
There was confusion in the plenary hall shortly after the agreement was passed as many parties had assumed there would be a debate over the text, which was released to countries for consideration only four hours before it was passed.
The Alliance of Small Island States, representing 39 countries, said it had not been in the room when the deal was adopted as it was still coordinating its response. Its lead negotiator, Anne Rasmussen from Samoa, did not formally object to that decision and believed the deal had “many good elements”, but she said “the process has failed us” and did not go far enough. She said the deal had a “litany of loopholes”
I suspect there was a very real fear that it would have been rejected by some countries, because it was so weak.
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The Agreement will of course be used by our politicians and media to demand that we must do our share, and decarbonise faster. They will try to gaslight us into thinking that the rest of the world is doing more than us.
But without doubt, in a few months time we will have all of the usual warnings that next year’s COP will be the last chance to save the world, just as we hear every year.
And the world will carry on using fossil fuels regardless!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The BBC sent 40 to cover this ?
This ‘movement’ is starting to choke on reality. The conceit that a prescriptive or mandatory approach can continue is being eroded and it will continue at COP 29 – xx .
But but bit Justin Rowpratt was ecstatic, so it must be a good agreement (or he is too thick to understand it).
Option 2 gets my vote
Except that Rowlattt’s goal is even more remote.
As you say Paul, a load of global boiling weasel words to keep the elites self pleasuring
We are fortunate it “achieved” so little, when its measure of “achievement” is simply how much damage it can do to the West. Maurice Strong would have been disappointed. That’s good enough for me.
Paul: could you provide a link to the actual agreed text? Thanks
I’ve found it. You have to go to the UN FCCC website and search under:
Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement
Agenda item 4
First global stocktake
Draft decision -/CMA.5
As you indicate, it’s vague and largely meaningless. But in particular it specifically lets the big developing country emitters (the source of over 65% of global emissions) off the hook. In other words, the whole COP28 process was a pointless absurdity.
Thank goodness all they came up with is a stinking pile of twisted twaddle.
They should also be held guilty of torturing and abusing the English language.
They agreed to “Endeavor to persevere.” — Lone Watie, Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976
‘And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue’
Optimistic on bottom falling out just yet probably but we live in hope.
‘We told him about how our land had been stolen and how our people were dying. When we finished he shook our hands and said, “endeavor to persevere!”
They stood us in a line: John Jumper, Chili McIntosh, Buffalo Hump, Jim Buckmark, and me — I am Lone Watie. They took our pictures. And the newspapers said, “Indians vow to endeavor to persevere.”
We thought about for a long time. “Endeavor to persevere.” And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union.’
Anyone else aware of SCO? shanghai Cooperation Organisation formed in 2001 and a group of autuocracies.
A rival to both the UN and WEF?
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/12/12/with-the-self-hating-west-stuck-in-a-net-zero-doom-loop-is-the-ascendancy-of-the-autocracies-now-unstoppable/
What exactly do “unabated” and “abated” mean. Does it mean “cleaned of carbon”? If so why not say so rather than damage another once perfectly clear English word?
I find most of this an absurd contortion with little real meaning. For example what does “in keeping with the science”. Is science a singular, clearly defined, unchanging absolute truth internationally agreed? Not in the world of science I live in it most certainly isn’t. So the agreement is that we must all work towards something actually unknown and highly pliable – at best.
How much had it cost for all these world leading academics, mainly of none science subjects, to fail to write anything definite and demonstrable. Plato and Aristotle must screaming in their graves at the failure of their project to teach logic.
“In keeping with the science” is obviously a deliberately weasel worded phrase designed to allow signatories to do anything they want as long as it’s consistent their desired interpretation – it’s obvious to me that carbon dioxide has very little to do with global boiling so I can continue to generate as much as I like since it is “in keeping with the science” as I see it.
I wrote about this on another thread. Science is something fairly abstract, inasmuch as it covers a multitude of disciplines, but if you give it a definite article it becomes strong, factual and objective. To some, it becomes a deity and cannot be denied.
Pretend you’re a teacher and you say, ‘I teach science’. Pretty bland. BUT, if you say, ‘I teach the science’, you are on a different plane (for some, it’s a private one to Dubai).
Y’all are putting too much effort into it.
Communist focus groups told them that people respect and honor ‘science.’ So that use the word. It’s totalist language intended to get you to STFU.
They have no idea what ‘science’ means. They know people respect it.
I see the use of the definite article in “The” Science somewhat differently to Harry’s interpretation.
To me it signals that the normal rules governing science do not apply and are being relaxed with a view to tailor them to a desired agenda. That agenda has been set out in IPCC terms of reference as being to confirm that human-caused emissions are responsible for damaging climate change. In normal science such a claim would be set up as a hypothesis for testing – here in “the” science it is elevated to the status of indisputable paradigm.
A consequence is how “the” science expresses its findings when it reports on how consistent is the data with the paradigm. I’m thinking in particular of those convoluted formulations where observations aren’t in accordance with the paradigm such as the absence of observed trends in extreme weather time series. This is not straightforwardly reported as such but instead is summarised as being weakly in accord (hinting at merely awaiting strengthening by future data or research).
More fundamentally, this topsy-turvy way of doing science by confirmation rather than by hypothesis testing means that there is no requirement (a) to consider alternative hypotheses, or (b) to present counterevidence. These are the missing elements that are the hallmarks of kosher science.
To summarise using the statistical language of hypothesis testing, “the” science says “given the hypothesis how likely are these observations”, while conventional science says, “given these observations, what is the likelihood of this hypothesis”. The reversal of the conditionality requires just those points in (a) and (b) above and its neglect has permitted those massive overstatements and exaggerations that are our constant battleground.
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Exactly so Max. But this is the intellectually corrupt state we are in where arts grads with PPE (Oxon) run the country – and the BBC – and want things made simple enough for them to make the “hard decisions” which scientists must be kept away from.
Have you been watching the Covid Enquiry? It is a horror story of the wrong sort of people drowning out of their depth and using the excuse: “We followed ‘the’ science”.
We, the world, are in trouble as long as these political and infighting ignorant people think they know best and are pulling the levers.
I was of course addressing the narrow point of the meaning behind the definite article. On your wider point, I am not convinced that being run by STEM graduates would improve matters. They have just as many hang-ups and blind-spots and a capacity for being led to nonsensical conclusions equal to a ppe graduate. In the area at issue here – climate and energy – fear of being out of sync with current environmental and social mores and lacking confidence to apply commonsense overrides still afflict STM types, perhaps less the E’s. In the old days, what one looked for in political and thought leaders were described as “sound chaps” (we didn’t used to have sound chapesses). Hard to define, but absence of enthusiasms in self and suspicion of them in others was one ingredient. An ability to see things for what they were rather than for what one might like them to be was another. Sticking to the point was important coupled with an alertness to when and why others did not do likewise. And perhaps, most important of all, a readiness to sell one’s grandmother for the greater good! A sound chap would come over as a bit of a cold fish but none the worse for that. Oh, and I nearly forgot – an ability to fake sincerity. If you can fake sincerity, you can fake most anything.
Max
Absolutely on all that. But first, in my first response to the agreement latched directly onto the definite article as you did.
But whilst what you say is broadly fine but sixty years of almost being the exclusive bums (?) on seats in the Cabinet Office the Oxon PPEs have definitively demonstrated their incompetence. How much more evidence do we need?
Not impressed by those sort of rhetorical questions masquerading as argument killers. Much more to the point is what you would have done differently not weighed down with an Oxford ppe with the big era-defining issues. Would you have stayed on the gold standard; not cancelled Blue Streak, sent the air force to bomb the IRA; given in to Arthur’s miners; stood by the Falklanders; followed Uncle Sam into Vietnam/Korea; kept going with 4 dollars to the pound; kept direct grant grammars; capital punishment; scrapped the commonwealth; clause 4; bailing out the banks; giving the people their heads over Brexit; and on and on and on..
Dear Max,
I thought I made a clear statement, not a rhetorical question.
I am a Capitalist Quaker of the kind who created the large scale retail banks with the other none conformists and Jews to make capital available to fund the Industrial Revolution and so create work for the masses displaced from the countryside. I qualified, in a hard four year full time Engineering degree and worked designing and developing British Cars.
My ambition was to support and grow British owned and taxpaying manufacturing in the UK. Clearly I wasted my life – every company I worked for has been closed or sold abroad.
But I tried, – hard. What did you do?
To answer your strange list of questions:-
Gold standard – I would have stayed on it, better than the “dollar standard”.
I would have kept Blue Streak and its successors and built our own GPS and electronics industry. I would also have kept TSR2 and new version of Concord.
As a dedicated “defend but not attack” pacifist of course I would not have bombed IRA – that is a silly question, no one would.
Scargils Miners were provoked by Thatcher as part of her plans to shut down manufacturing. Regan in US put her up to that as part of US policy to undermine UK. So I would never have made that stupid mess. Right now I would send the miners back down to dig rather than import coal and restore their communities. Like Jim Lovelock, I think we are dangerously over reacting to “greenhouse gases” and that will cause dreadful consequences.
The Falklands war was absurd – another Thatcher “achievement”. We saw it coming years before but ignored the signs and got caught out. A trivial matter anyway.
No, I most certainly not have followed America into Korea/Vietnam/the Gulf/Iraq/North Africa/Afghanistan. They were immoral attack wars that killed millions in total and as always with American lead wars were doomed to be lost in the end and always without a plan for the consequences.
Yes. I would have kept direct grant private schools. Government run schools become political tools and we now live with their semi literate products.
Quakers, like me, oppose Capital Punishment. We lead opposition to, and helped stop, the Atlantic slave trade.
I did not know the Commonwealth had been scrapped. I would have strengthened it with a new Commonwealth Parliament and kept building a world, post Empire, liberal community.
Clause 4 was a semi-communist fantasy which crashed and burned in its own failure. It should never have been written!
Brexit was excellent – but as always with Westminster, it was not thought through and the PPEs have totally dropped the ball when it was passed to them. These are pieces we must pick up. But watching what is happening in Europe (e.g. Hungary blocking support for Ukraine) thank the Lord we are out.
What would your answers have been? I bet you don’t answer, especially my first question.
Sorry to have led you to wade through that long list of era-defining issues which was meant only to drive home the point that policy is all about cases and the suggestion (implicit in your “first question” about blanket incompetence) could magically be made right by a change in policy-maker’s education. But it was a very interesting read which puts my relatively eventless and achievement-lite life in the shade. The idea of having to come up with an opinion about all those matters also fills me with horror and reveals how much I need to devolve such matters to others. So again many kudos and apologies for wading through them.
Lovelock was a disappointment in later life following a visit to the Hadley Centre who seemingly impressed him with their modelling capability. I had always thought he had the measure of what was modellable and not prone to road to Damascus revelations. To me Gaia is a spot-on metaphor for how large systems self-generate their way to a fluctuating quasi-equilibrium. It’s not just politics and governance where you are on a hiding to nothing asking for a nice neat cause and effect narrative – large areas of “science” are the same.
I too have always been intrigued by how non-conformists played way way above their weight in building the businesses and communities of provincial England.
Max
I think we are on the same page,
Of course Gaia is right, if the Earth were not rather better than quasi stable then definition it would have failed millions of years ago. I call it Geostasis and have a concept I call Sociostasis (damned by the Social Science Profs none of whom will write back to me with the exception of E.O. Wilson who was very encouraging.
As you clearly understand Gaia then you will know what I mean by Sociostasis. Do you know MacKays quote (roughly) “we think in herds, go mad in herds and only recover slowly and one at a time”. These revovering souls are what I call “sociosts” or social thermostats who trigger when things have become extreme and so influence the “recovery”.
As for Jim – I think he just grew old! He was, in my view, right about modelling until almost the end.
Thank you for this little exchange. I think we may have outstayed our welcome here?
Key points?
Looks like a letter to Santa.
“Transitioning away from fossil fuels … so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”. With the science – as applicable then, after one or two Eureka moments. ‘The latest science says we shouldn’t be too alarmed about (fill in your favourite warming lie)’.
Transitioning away from fossil fuels in the production of energy. Nothing about transitioning away from fossil fuels in transportation, which lets the 70,000+ COP28 attendees get back in their private planes and fly home, sanctimoniously assured that they have done everything they could to save the plane from climate change… except lower their own actual carbon footprint — assuming that CO2 is the ‘debbil greenhouse gas’ that the IPCC models claim.
You still have to process the crude oil to obtain the various products for use in different sectors. You remove a major sector customer, and the price of all the other sector products rise, and you also then have to somehow dispose of that sector’s product.
I doubt our mentally substandard MPs have any idea of the whole interconnected web of products that come from refining oil and what will happen if you close off the market for some of the products. And therein lies something the Davos Fascists and their ilk have overlooked in thinking they can lord it above us with an unchanged lifestyle. The analogy with the communist regimes such as the Soviet Union ignores the fact that they did still have industries, albeit not very good ones. In the Net Zero future there won’t be.
As you say, our political activists will leap on the bits they like and push for draconian policy changes. Does no one ask the question “Even if we did reduce CO2 could you guarantee a global temperature reduction”?
When will it finally dawn on the West: The climate grift is a ploy for abject control by The Party of Davos, and aided and abetted by their psychopathic overlords in the CCP.
Signaling one’s virtue is import to a depressingly large number of people, CCP watches and waits. Still think China’s demographic crisis will overwhelm them in time for West to squeak through but it will be ‘the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’.
Thank you for your hopeful reply. I too hope an economic collapse will befall Xi before he takes Taiwan, or Barrator Biden gives him more of Americans’ pension money. I will keep a good thought. In the mean time; buy Gold and stay strapped–it’s comin’.
Yes! I think you have a point, Mr Bond.(BD). For some time I’ve begun to believe NZC etc is a diversion. While we argue the toss and the press report, analyse and critique various COPs, the ones at the top are playing a different game. Other than global socialism or Attenbollocks’ desire for Malthusian principles, I am a loss to see IT clearly. But I’m sure it’s there.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, Wm Richard
It’s the “in keeping with the science” bit that gets up my nose. Lord knows I’m no scientist (scraped an ‘O’-level pass more years ago than I care to think) but I have always adhered to the idea that science is a process that evolves over time and usually in the face of resistance from those whose research days are over and who are growing fat on their high opinion of themselves.
To compound the felony, modern climatology is not founded on research or observation but upon computer models, probably the most easily corrupted form of “investigation” ever invented.
The evidence is right in front of us. Of over 50 climate predictions — supposedly based on “the science” and all predicted to “mature” by 2020 not a single one has yet to come to pass. It’s the ‘End of the World’ sketch writ large and about as believable.
The “in keeping with the science” phrase reminds me of item 7 in “The 213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army” — Not allowed to add ‘In accordance with the prophesy’ to the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me.
some people’s science my vary
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I would only add the caveat that explains this all: Follow the Money. Chairman Xi is laughing all the way to the WEF.
The main achievement was the addition of 210,000 pounds of humanity.
Tobias Ellwood MP fancies himself as a military expert in Parliament. He must also think he can spout on climate. I just heard him claim that our new(ish) Type 45 Destroyer can’t operate everywhere any longer because the sea water is too warm for engine cooling!
Sounds like a design failure to me.
Not new – “Several reports in recent years have detailed propulsion breakdowns leaving Type 45s without power when the ship is deployed to areas with high temperatures.“. Pathetic that TE repurposed this issue.
Sounds like a basic lack of knowledge of the physical world to me. Precious things on this planet hold more heat than water–even slightly, just a smidge, possibly imperceptibly warmer oceans offer an unlimited heat sink.
Covering Climate Now is an outfit backed, I believe by Rockefeller money, which coaches journalists, corporations, businesses and public departments on what to say in any of their pronouncements on climate change. It advises them on how to combat “misinformation” and hype up the propaganda and their own misinformation on climate change.
Why would the 28th COP bunfight achieve anything when the 27 previous ones haven’t? And we can celebrate the failure since they were not working for our benefit.
Hi Mike above.
Any chance to see your list of 50 plus failed predictions.
Thanks in advance.
A Cop out.
Thank you for your insightful comment. The Rockefeller foundation are Pikers compared to the other big names in on this con.
So we’re now transitioning away from fossil fuels starting this decade, it’s official and therefore undermines just stop oil, so now they’ll stop their stunts and if not the police will give them a real good walloping and then I woke up.
That would be an ecumenical matter
Paul, congratulations on getting this out so quickly. I was a bit slower, so I hope you don’t mind:
As the carnival float of Net Zero hits the concrete tank bollards of reality …
The engineering, science and economics always said it was a bad idea, but the zealots never believed us. Now, they have to believe the reality of the engineering, science and economics, and there is nothing they can do about it except cry.
I was incensed to read that the RSPB had sent 2 delegates to COP 28 so emailed them querying why, the cost and threatening to withdraw my support. The response that I received implies that they were successful in their aims, to quote:
“NGOS such as the RSPB who are accredited observers to the UNFCCC play a critical scrutiny role in the process. We are there to hold governments and the process to account to deliver ambitious outcomes from the negotiations including rapid fossil fuel phase out. Every year counts in efforts to try and avert catastrophe so we can’t turn our backs on any COP.
The RSPB colleagues attending coordinate the NGOs working on the role of nature in the UN climate negotiations. Despite the challenge of getting 195 countries to progress international action on climate change we have seen significant strides forward at this COP in recognition that the nature loss and climate crises are intrinsically linked with significant new commitments on nature. International agreements on climate are also critical to drive global momentum to tackling a global problem.”
You need to be a Russel group arts grad. of some kind to be able to construct such a perfect vacuum of meaning.
Vague impractical ambiguous waffle with no specifics. No surprise. The practical engineering reality to achieve the numerous green fantasy dreams will stop the vast majority & mother earths mineral resources limit the whole thing.