UK Socialist blog

As disasters and heat intensify, can the world meet the urgency of the moment at the COP28 climate talks?

Shutterstock

Brendan Mackey, Griffith University

Eight years ago, the world agreed to an ambitious target in the Paris Agreement: hold warming to 1.5°C to limit further dangerous levels of climate change.

Since then, greenhouse gas emissions have kept increasing – and climate disasters have become front page news, from mega-bushfires to unprecedented floods.

In 2023, the world is at 1.2°C of warming over pre-industrial levels. Heatwaves of increasing intensity and duration are arriving around the world. We now have less than 10 years before we reach 1.5°C of warming.

This week, the COP28 climate talks will begin against a backdrop of evermore strident warnings from climate scientists and world leaders. United Nations chief António Guterres has warned climate action is “dwarfed by the scale of the challenge” and that we have “opened the gates of hell”. In his latest climate letter, Pope Francis quotes bishops from Africa who dub the climate crisis a “tragic and striking example of structural sin”.

Global monthly land and ocean anomalies from 1850, relative to the 1901-2000 average
Global monthly land and ocean anomalies from 1850, relative to the 1901-2000 average.
NOAA, CC BY-SA

In the United Arab Emirates, the 198 nations in the UN’s climate framework will gather for COP28. Can we expect to see real progress – or half-measures?

Watch for these three key issues facing negotiators.

1. Taking stock of progress on climate action

This year, a critical issue will be the global stocktake, the key mechanism designed to ratchet up climate ambition under the 2015 Paris Agreement. This is the first time each nation’s emission cut targets and benefits from climate adaptation or economic diversification plans have been assessed.

The stocktake reveals what track we are on. Do the combined emission cut promises from all countries mean we can limit warming to 1.5°C? If not, what is the “emissions gap” – and how much more ambitious do nation’s emission reductions need to be?

There’s been progress, but not nearly enough. If all national emissions pledges became a reality, global warming would peak between 2.1-2.8°C.

That leaves an emissions gap of around 22.9 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the period to 2030.

It is very good that the worst-case scenarios – unchecked warming and 4+ degrees of global heating by 2100 are now looking unlikely. But a 2°C world would bring unacceptable harm and irreversible damage.

We’ll need much more ambitious targets and support to cut global greenhouse gas emissions 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 compared with 2019 levels if we are to reach net zero CO₂ emissions by 2050 globally. A major measure of COP28’s success will be whether the major emitting nations agree on more ambitious emission reduction actions.

2. Who pays for climate loss and damage?

For decades, nations have wrestled over the fraught question of who should pay for loss and damage resulting from climate change.

Now we’re close to finalising arrangements for the new Loss and Damage Fund. This will be the second major issue for negotiators at COP28.

So far, governments have drawn up a blueprint for the new fund. Expect to see debate over who will manage the fund – the World Bank? A UN agency? – and whether emerging economies such as China will provide funds. To date, there’s no target for how much money the fund will hold and disburse. The blueprint must be formally adopted at COP28 before it can begin operating.

Why a new fund? Other climate finance commitments are aimed at cutting emissions or helping societies adapt to climate impacts. This fund deals specifically with the loss and damage from the unavoidable impacts of climate change, like rising sea levels, prolonged heatwaves, desertification, the acidification of the sea, extreme weather and crop failures.

Think of the damage from the unprecedented floods in Pakistan or Libya, for instance.

libya flood, image of destroyed city with floodwater from air
Libya’s devastating floods in September killed thousands.
Shutterstock

3. Where’s the climate finance?

A major issue in climate negotiations is how countries can transform their economies so they are “climate ready”, with lower emissions and boosted resilience. For developing countries, this requires massive levels of investment and new technologies to let them “leapfrog” fossil fuel dependency.

This is likely to be a critical sticking point. To date, climate finance has flowed too slowly. Under the Paris Agreement, rich countries promised to provide funds of A$150 billion a year every year. This has been slow in coming, though it is nudging closer, with $130 billion flowing in 2021.

Unless we see significant progress on climate finance – including making the Loss and Damage Fund a reality and meeting the existing commitments – we’re unlikely to see progress on other key issues such as ratcheting up emission cuts under the stocktake mechanism, phasing out fossil fuels and work on preserving biodiversity.

How do you build a 198-government consensus?

One reason climate negotiations advance slowly is the need for consensus.

All 198 governments must agree on each decision. This means any one nation or group of countries can block a proposal or force the wording to be changed in order for it to be approved.

The votes of less wealthy countries – including small island nations and least developed countries – therefore carry as much weight as the G20 nations, who account for about 85% of global GDP. This has in the past worked to increase the level of climate action, including the focus on 1.5°C as the global warming target.

The COP28 President is Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who has attracted controversy due to the fact he heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Expect to see considerable debate over wording. Will governments agree to the “phasing down of fossil fuels” or just the “phasing down of unabated fossil fuels”?

It might sound like quibbling but it’s not – the second option, for instance, implies the heavy use of yet-to-be-proven carbon capture and storage technologies and offsets.

Sultan al-Jaber has, to his credit, promoted some progressive agenda items including a focus on the conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of nature to help achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Here, there are welcome commonalities with the major global biodiversity pact struck late last year, the Global Biodiversity Framework, aimed at stemming the extinction of species and degradation of ecosystems. Healthy ecosystems store carbon and help people adapt to the climate change already here.

As nations prepare for a fortnight of intense negotiation, the stakes are higher than they have ever been. Now the question is – can the world community seize the moment? The Conversation

Brendan Mackey, Director, Griffith Climate Action Beacon, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingAs disasters and heat intensify, can the world meet the urgency of the moment at the COP28 climate talks?

COP28: Earth’s frozen zones are in trouble – we’re already seeing the consequences

Image of an iceberg
The tip of the iceberg

Timothy Naish, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

As this year’s UN climate summit (COP28) gets under way in Dubai, scientists studying Earth’s frozen regions have been delivering an urgent call for action to policy makers. But is anyone listening?

Throughout 2023, we have been warning of an impending series of crises occurring in the cryosphere – polar ice sheets, ice shelves, sea ice, mountain glaciers and permafrost.

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) released its decadal synopsis on the state of Antarctic climate change and ecosystems. It led the recent Antarctic Treaty meeting to issue the Helsinki Declaration to highlight that significant observed changes in Antarctica influence climate impacts globally.

The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) has prepared the Kigali Declaration, summarising the latest climate science to highlight the urgency at COP28.

And this month, a State of the Cryosphere 2023 report assessing the most recent science warned that even 2°C of warming would trigger irreversible loss of ice sheets, glaciers, snow, sea ice and permafrost, with disastrous consequences for society and nature.

I have contributed to all three documents. Some of the most dramatic changes are occurring in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, including extreme heatwaves, record lows in sea ice and the emergence of an amplified warming pattern across the entire Antarctic continent.

These changes are melting Antarctica’s ice sheet and delivering vast quantities of freshwater to the ocean. This in turn drives an accelerating rise in shorelines around the world.

Polar warming is also contributing to drought and wildfires in Australia, floods in New Zealand and extreme weather at every latitude.

Breaching planetary thresholds

In July this year, average monthly global temperatures breached 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. With a large El Niño event underway in the Pacific, 2023 is virtually certain to be the hottest year on record.

The World Meteorological Organisation predicts the world is on track to exceed the Paris target to keep warming below 2°C within the next five years, on an annual basis.

Scientific evidence is clear that due to the current trajectory of human-derived greenhouse gas emissions, the polar regions will continue to warm at rates of up to four times the global average.

This is because of self-reinforcing feedbacks, such as those related to retreating sea ice. The more sea ice melts, the more energy the darker ocean surface absorbs, in turn leading to more land ice melting and the potential crossing of tipping points linked to temperature thresholds close to 1.5-2°C of global warming.

This map shows the location of climate elements in the cryosphere (blue), biosphere (green), and ocean/atmosphere (orange), and global warming levels at which their tipping points will likely be triggered.
Several of Earth’s potential tipping points are in the cryosphere.
Author supplied, CC BY-SA

There are two key planetary thresholds in the polar regions. Firstly, thawing permafrost in the Arctic has the potential for widespread release of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further enhancing global heating.

Secondly, meltdown of up to two-thirds of Antarctica’s ice sheet may become irreversible, locking in multi-metre sea-level rise for generations to come even if the warming were to stop or reverse after peaking before 2100.

Dramatic consequences at all latitudes

The Southern Ocean has taken up most of the heat from global warming (70%). This excess energy will remain in the ocean for centuries and continue melting parts of the coastal fringes of Antarctica from underneath.

The amplified polar warming is accelerating the melting of ice sheets. They are now the largest contributors to rising global sea levels. But they respond slowly, trapping heat and releasing it over long timescales. Sea-level rise will therefore continue for centuries to come, even with net zero emissions.

Projections show substantial differences between low- and high-emissions scenarios, especially after 2050. A high-emissions scenario could result in multi-metre sea-level rise for coming centuries. This includes a “low likelihood, high impact” scenario in which two metres by 2100 cannot be ruled out due to rapid loss of Antarctica’s fringing ice shelves and consequent melting of the ice sheet.

The ice shelves currently stabilise the interior ice sheet and protect it from erosion by encroaching warming ocean waters. Evidence suggests the Paris climate target of limiting heating to 1.5-2C°C is a threshold for widespread ice shelf loss.

The loss of two-thirds of the world’s high mountain glaciers (often referred to as the third pole) is also likely. This will affect two billion people who depend on these frozen water stores for their drinking, power production, agriculture and related ecosystems services.

As glacial lakes fill up, more people will be exposed to hazards such as the recent glacial outburst flood and landslides in Sikkim in India’s northeast.

Intense high-latitude, low-pressure systems – “bomb cyclones” – are now bringing extreme temperatures and precipitation via atmospheric rivers to coastal regions and the interior of Antarctica and Greenland. These extremes cause unseasonal weather not only in polar regions, but also in lower latitudes, including New Zealand.

Changing icescapes

An unprecedented heat wave occurred over East Antarctica in March 2022, peaking at 39°C above the climatological average. It was the largest temperature anomaly ever recorded globally. A local ice shelf, which was in a vulnerable state, collapsed within days.

This demonstrates the potential of future heatwaves over the warmer, lower-elevation West Antarctic Ice Sheet to trigger surface melting and collapse of ice shelves.

During this year’s southern hemisphere winter, Antarctica’s sea ice cover reached a 40-year low. This followed the record low annual sea-ice minimum in early 2023, due to an unseasonably warm Southern Ocean and changed atmospheric circulation patterns that brought warm air south.

This graph shows anomalies in Antarctica’s sea-ice extent (in millions of square kilometres) for each year from 1978 to 2023.
During 2023, the extent of Antarctica’s sea ice reached a record low.
National Snow and Ice Data Centre, CC BY-SA

These unprecedented changes were well outside the range of natural variability. They coincide with new evidence from a study of ice cores that shows the emergence of an amplified surface-warming pattern over Antarctica.

Decision makers still hold the power

The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reinforces that “limiting warming well below 2°C involves rapid, deep and in most cases immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions”.

However, it is now clearer than ever that policy is not responding at the pace and scale required to avert the impending nexus of global climate, ecological and environmental catastrophes.

Every nation’s emissions policy settings are insufficient to achieve the Paris target. New Zealand’s climate policies are assessed as “highly insufficient”, but the country is not alone. The global policy response remains grossly ineffective and has been that way since the IPCC’s first report in 1990.

But the report provides some hope through “multiple feasible and effective, sustainable and equitable options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human caused climate change”.

Scientists made this clear in a policy briefing on sea-level rise to the UN General Assembly, stating:

Ambitious mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement is critical to avoiding thresholds that would yield rapid and irreversible sea-level rise and to enabling successful adaptation.The Conversation

Timothy Naish, Professor in Earth Sciences, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingCOP28: Earth’s frozen zones are in trouble – we’re already seeing the consequences

Carbon Capture’s Publicly Funded Failure

https://priceofoil.org/2023/11/29/ccs-data/

Extinction Rebellion NL image reads STOP FOSSIELE SUBSIDIES
Extinction Rebellion NL image reads STOP FOSSIELE SUBSIDIES

Summary

  • Governments have spent over $20 billion – and have approved up to $200 billion more – of public money on carbon capture and storage (CCS), providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.
  • 79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery).
  • Many of the largest CCS projects in the world overpromise and under-deliver, operating far below capacity.

Carbon, Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCS or CCUS) has a 50-year history of failure. CCS is often presented as a new technology to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by trapping CO2 from a smokestack or directly from the air and then injecting it into the ground for storage. In fact, CCS was first developed in the 1970s to enhance oil production, and increased oil production remains its primary use. Oil Change International research finds that 79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery).

The story of CCS as a method to reduce CO2 emissions is one of overpromising and under-delivering. Analysis after analysis has concluded that CCS is not a climate solution. In September 2023, the International Energy Agency noted that: “The history of CCUS has largely been one of “underperformance” and “unmet expectations.”

Yet Big Oil consistently tells us that CCS is central to the fight against climate change. Chevron, for example, says that CCS will make a “lower carbon future possible.”

In the run-up to COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, the oil industry and many governments are ramping up their promotion of CCS as an integral part of the collective response to climate change. There has been a flurry of renewed government commitments, conferences, and new industry initiatives, coupled with continuing misinformation. Governments around the world have spent over $20 billion – and have approved up to $200 billion more – of public money on CCS, providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.

In October 2023, ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, whose CEO, Sultan Al Jaber, is the COP28 President, announced that it planned to double its CCS capacity to 10 million tonnes per year. But ADNOC’s existing flagship CCS project, which is supposed to capture emissions from a steel plant, is only designed to capture around 17% of that plant’s maximum CO2 pollution. Furthermore, there is no publicly available information about how much CO2 it has actually captured. What the CCS project does capture is used to increase oil production, leading to more emissions when burned.

As governments prepare to spend up to $200 million of public money on CCS, it must be clear: CCS is a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry, not people and planet.

…

Subsidies

Governments have spent over $20 billion – and have legislated or announced policies that could spend up to $200 billion more – of public money on CCS, providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.

Key facts

  • Ten governments have already spent at least $22 billion on CCS and Fossil-Hydrogen.
  • This number is likely very conservative due to a shocking lack of transparency on government subsidies and tax credits.
  • Twelve governments have approved policies that could funnel up to $200 billion more toward CCS and Hydrogen.

…

Carbon Capture Serves Oil and Gas Production

A Majority of Carbon Capture Projects Serve To Produce More Oil and Gas, Not Reduce Emissions

Data from our project’s database and analysis from leading experts such as IEEFA and others show that the majority of carbon capture (CCS) projects exist only to enable oil and gas production and fail to reduce overall emissions.

Key facts

  • 79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery)
  • 67% of operating carbon capture capacity globally captures emissions from processing CO2-rich gas.

…

Read this article at https://priceofoil.org/2023/11/29/ccs-data/

Continue ReadingCarbon Capture’s Publicly Funded Failure

Why the world’s first flight powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel is a green mirage

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner landing at Heathrow international airport in London.
Fasttailwind/Shutterstock

Gareth Dale, Brunel University London and Josh Moos, Leeds Beckett University

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner is set to take off from Heathrow on November 28 and head for JFK airport in New York, powered by so-called sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). According to its operator, Virgin Atlantic, the world’s “first 100% SAF flight” will mark “a historic moment in aviation’s roadmap to decarbonisation”.

It is proof of concept, we are led to believe, of the dawn of “guilt-free” flying. Unfortunately, we have been here before, and the results last time were anything but green.

Based on our research into how wealth and power shape the environment, we argue that continued growth of the aviation sector, as with the economy in general, is incompatible with preventing runaway climate change. The technology currently being developed by the aviation industry has zero chance of changing that. And the fuels being used in Virgin’s latest experiment are not significantly more sustainable than those in its previous attempt.

Virgin’s sustainability initiative dates back to the 2000s, when British business magnate Richard Branson was at the helm. In 2008, to some fanfare, a Virgin aircraft flew from London to Amsterdam using a fuel derived in part from palm oil and coconuts. Technically, the mission was a success, but the sustainability claims were laughable.

To have fuelled that short hop with 100% coconut oil would have consumed 3 million coconuts. The entire global crop would supply Heathrow for only a few weeks — and it is one of 18,000 commercial airports worldwide. Following this stunt, Virgin gave up on coconut oil.

Virgin’s latest flight is simply a repeat of 2008. It’s a smoke-and-mirrors exercise to convince governments that SAF will enable aviation to continue its relentless growth on a sustainable basis – and in this, it is succeeding.

Even waste products aren’t sustainable

Virgin’s defence rests on the claim that its new SAF no longer comes exclusively from crops. It is blended with waste products. One of the main suppliers for Virgin’s transatlantic flight is Virent, an organisation based in Wisconsin. Virent makes SAF from conventional sugars such as corn, mixed with wood, agricultural waste and used cooking oil.

As with coconuts, any crop grown for fuel competes with foodstuffs and pushes the agricultural frontier further into forests and peatlands, with large releases of carbon.

But what of the waste products? Surely reusing cooking oils offers a sustainable solution? Unfortunately, in a notoriously unregulated market, it seems not.

Another of Virgin’s suppliers, Neste, collects cooking oils from sources worldwide, including McDonald’s restaurants in the Netherlands and food processing plants in California, Oregon and Washington. The US Department of Agriculture alleges that some trade in SAF feedstocks – including from Indonesia to Neste’s refinery in Singapore – may be “fraudulent”.

Neste has denied the claim. But, even if its used cooking oil is entirely legitimate, there is still an allegation that palm oil from plantations responsible for tropical deforestation is being marketed as used cooking oil.

Virgin Atlantic maintains that the SAF it uses is made entirely from used cooking oil. However, if the aviation industry bets big on used cooking oil, it is feared it will turbocharge tropical logging and the extermination of the orangutan and countless other endangered species.

Orangutan in the rainforest on Borneo island with trees and palms behind.
More tropical logging would threaten the orangutan and countless other endangered species.
Michail_Vorobyev/Shutterstock

The real kicker is that even if all used cooking oils were traceable and sustainably sourced, they are not scalable. The US collects around 600,000 tonnes of used cooking oil each year. If every last drop were diverted to SAFs, it would meet at most 1% of America’s current aviation demand.

Capturing the White House

The problems of scalability, the competition of agricultural inputs with foodstuffs, forests and wildlife, and the carbon emissions that result from land use change are just three of the shortcomings that ensure SAFs will not be the magic bullet that the aviation industry would have us believe. Despite this, SAF fever has won over the White House.

The Inflation Reduction Act set targets for SAF production at 3 billion gallons by 2030 and 35 billion by 2050. These targets are fantasies. But, to the extent that they are approached, they will only add to the pressure on food prices and wildlife.

That SAF is being touted so zealously attests to the shortage of alternative technologies. Battery-powered planes are viable but only as short-haul “flying taxis” that compete with ground transport. The other panacea, hydrogen, confronts colossal technological and infrastructural barriers, problems of scalability, competing uses, and environmental concerns.

Tinkering with aircraft technology, such as engine size or wing shape has also faced diminishing returns. Efficiency improvements lag far behind the sector’s growth, which is why aviation emissions are still soaring.

Where do we go from here?

Ahead of the 2008 coconut-fuelled flight, Virgin’s chief executive Steve Ridgway explained its logic. He said the aviation industry needs “to be seen to be doing something”. Fifteen years on and the playbook remains the same.

The Virgin Atlantic SAF flight promises to rescue the airline from the threat of climate change, allowing them and their passengers to “keep calm and carry on”. In buying into this fantasy, governments give themselves an excuse to avoid taking climate breakdown seriously – an emergency that requires radical action if the planet is to remain habitable for humans.

There is the potential to create a good life for all within planetary boundaries. But getting there requires clipping the wings of the aviation industry.

This would begin, for short-haul, with ground-based alternatives. Within the US, many flights could be swiftly replaced by coach travel, and over a quarter of flights between EU destinations could be replaced by high-speed rail. For long-haul, the first step is demand management, which will expedite the use of virtual conferencing, marine transportation and other alternatives.

Modern high-speed train driving past a station in a city.
Many flights could be replaced by high-speed rail.
aappp/Shutterstock

Developing alternatives would be practical, efficient and create jobs. And now is a good time to begin. Americans have been “falling out of love with flying” in recent years, in part due to large numbers of flight cancellations following bad weather, which is only likely to increase with climate breakdown.

As the weather chaos worsens, the aviation industry will find it harder to shrug off its responsibility through PR stunts and greenwashed gimmickry.

In response to this article, a Virgin Atlantic spokesperson said that the organisation is committed to achieving net zero by 2050, and has set interim targets, including 10% SAF by 2030. It sees SAF as a mid-term solution for decarbonising aviation, and that Flight100 aims to demonstrate the safe use of 100% SAF within existing infrastructure. Virgin Atlantic referred to a Sustainable Aviation report, which indicates that there is sufficient feedstock to meet the government’s 2030 target without environmental impact or competition with crop production.

Imagine weekly climate newsletter

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 20,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.The Conversation

Gareth Dale, Reader in Political Economy, Brunel University London and Josh Moos, Lecturer in Economics and Politics, Leeds Beckett University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingWhy the world’s first flight powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel is a green mirage

Reform UK Party taken apart over inaccurate and bizarre climate science denial video

“Man catastrophically fails GCSE biology”

The leader of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party has been rinsed over a video he posted on X in which he attempts to “challenge the climate change nonsense” by making a scientifically false claim which viewers have argued a primary school pupil could debunk.

In what has been described as a bizarre and “eye-watering stupid” 41 second climate denial rant, leader of the right-wing populist political party, Richard Tice, attempts to claim that C02 is “plant food” and therefore “not a problem”.

 “C02, people make out that it’s some sort of poison,” says Tice in the video. “It’s not. It’s plant food. It’s responsible for photosynthesis, without which we get no plants, no food, we all die. You’ve got to challenge the mainstream narrative on this.”

Scientists have proven how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increases by 50% due to human activities in less than 200 years, and that C02 in the atmosphere is responsible for warming the planet, therefore causing climate change.

Viewers were quick to add a bit of context in the community notes under the video on X, which read: “CO2 is not regarded as a toxic pollutant and this has never been a part of the scientific case for reducing our emissions. Although the proportion of atmospheric CO2 is small, its effect on climate is well understood and backed up by an overwhelming scientific consensus.”

Though Tice’s scientific illiteracy is also amusing, there is of course a huge danger in his spread of disinformation, as ‘Tice’s take’ on the climate attempts to legitimise further the continued drilling for new gas and oil.

This is particularly revealing when you look at the funders to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, which received a total of £135,000 from climate science deniers and fossil fuel interests in 2023.

While all of Reform’s funders in 2023 were found to have oil and gas investments or ties to climate science denial, as revealed by the climate disinformation site DeSmog, helping to put Tice’s video into context.

…

Continue ReadingReform UK Party taken apart over inaccurate and bizarre climate science denial video