While detailed experiential and scientific dissection such as the 'Using electricity when carbon intensity is lowest' is what GBF does supremely and valuably well, I'm incredulous that there's been no as-it-happens discussion or even post-analysis of the wide (i.e. not just about energy in building) issues in CoP26. What does the team think?

blah blah blah

If we think Morrison's Aus govt is dumb stupid, his junior coallition partner the National Party is Rotweiller-dangerous. This from its leader Barnaby Joyce, Aus Deputy PM:

"The Australian political leader also contended Sharma had displayed a double standard. ā€œHe wants to shut down our coal industry but he never talked about shutting down the oilfields in the North Sea, Brent oil, you know he doesnā€™t want to shut that down.ā€

He has a point.

ā€œHe wants to shut down industries in other peopleā€™s countries, not in his country.ā€

Posted By: Cliff PopeWe are supposed to be in an emergency, but I don't see anyone taking any emergency measures.

Hit the emergency stop on a train carrying 7 billion people and it not going to stop very quickly and likely youd do well to even see if its slowing.

Dealing with global energy consumption and its tie in with the global economy is going to take a long time to change without causing major upset.

Posted By: djh

Posted By: SimonDIt's interesting that there is not a genuine consensus within climate science that we are in a climate emergency

Would you like to explain or justify that claim some?

I thought that question would arise To be cheeky, I could just as well ask the basis upon which it is assumed and accepted there is scientific consensus that there is a climate emergency. And one which ignores the politicisation of the field. This is not to be confused with the near 100% consensus that the global climate is warming and it is "extremely" (quote NASA) likely that this is caused by human activity.

However, there are numerous climate scientists still making representations to bodies like the UN questioning the notion of the climate emergency, which is fairly easy to verify. Here is one example from 2019 which is unfortunately lacking in better detail. However, it is an illustration (https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ecd-letter-to-un.pdf, https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ED-brochureversieNWA4.pdf)

Like I said before. For me the field is largely looking in the wrong direction as I think it far more important and urgent to curb our unsustainable use of natural resources and destructive behaviour towards natural ecosystems rather than carbon emissions which actually hides the most significant and difficult problems we face in terms of the climate and our environment. For me it seems to be a highly convenient smoke screen behind which to justify for instance the vast expenditure of money on questionable technologies, many of which are largely uneconomic and likely to remain so too, all the while carrying on more or less as we are. It doesn't take a huge amount of analytical thought to pinpoint the inconsistencies and flaws in the current narrative now largely labelled as the climate emergency and the problematic way in which it is planned to be financed - who's really going to benefit? Gaslighting is a term that comes to mind for this too.

Just feel defeated in recent years Tom

I said this elsewhere before the event

"Cant say I even follow this sort of event anymore. They will waffle on and sound well-meaning but unlikely to make more than token gestures to the problems at hand. Politics is so short term most just kick things down the road for the next sucker. "

There's a certain irony that the UK did have the world's largest coal industry, which was largely shut down by competition from other countries selling cheaper coal, including Australia.

And the Brent oil field was actually closed down earlier this year, the UK has reduced it's oil industry by 70% since Kyoto.

Looking back at previous summits such as Kyoto and Paris, immediately afterwards there's always complaining that there wasn't more agreement, but we seemed to make progress despite/nonetheless. Kyoto was negotiating about 3ā°C temperature rises, Paris <2ā°C, Glasgow 1.5ā°C, so the targets are improving even if the delivery on them isn't very good.

Posted By: SimonDfar more important and urgent to curb our unsustainable use of natural resources and destructive behaviour towards natural ecosystems rather than carbon emissions

Interesting, just to check - do you feel that doing the former wholeheartedly would automatically tend to solve the latter?

Posted By: WillInAberdeenFrom Simon's link:

"Enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial...
CO2 is not a pollutant"

That's a fairly minority viewpoint these days....!

I would not have expected anything else from clintel.nl. The founders are Shell man Berkhout and controversial journo Marcel Crok. Better check all their claims on skeptcalscience.com, which is a much better place to look for resources on climate change anyway.

Posted By: djhA quick google for 'climate emergency scientific evidence' gives three top hits:
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/71/9/894/6325731
https://www.nytimes.com/article/climate-change-global-warming-faq.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/19/case-closed-999-of-scientists-agree-climate-emergency-caused-by-humans
any one of which seems more convincing to me than what you have shown so far.

It's interesting and dissappointing for me that you appear to be conflating the issues here.

In my statement I made a distinction between the claimed climate emergency and climate change, suggesting the former did not have consensus while the second did. I think this is an extremely important distinction, notably because the former may cause panic, anxiety, and then very poor decision making in terms of how to tackle the problems at hand (well, we know already it's having negative consequences socially and psychologically). The latter, does and will, I hope assist in the human race making more appropriate decisions. Examples as to why? In recent history the EU and individual member states have made some large scale policy decisions, each of which, due to the narrow and poorly considered goals has had a negative effect on the environment - i.e. unintended consquences. These are; promoting diesel vehicles; supporting and subsidising biomass heating systems; decommisioning of nuclear energy capacity in Germany leading to increased use of coal and consequent increase in carbon emissions as well as other harmful emissions. The German decision was very much based upon knee-jerk reactions and hysteria (btw I'm not pro nuclear but have historically been against it. However, I recognise there are compromises to be made in how we manage energy generation transition).

In the articles you link to, the Guardian piece does not evidence climate emergency but the wording clearly appears from the perspective of journalistic impact for the story - none of the quotes mention emergency.
In the NY Times the piece details a lot of scietific evidence regarding climate change and global warming but it does not say emergency.
As for the bioscience piece, that one clearly does mention emergency. I agree with a lot of what it says yet on the evidence presented, it's actually unclear on the emergency case. It seems to me more like a collective hysteria whipped up to get people and policymakers to listen and act, rather than produce actual evidence to the fact. I'm not entirely surprised they think this way, but I think it's the wrong strategy as it basicaly says we have to do everything and we have to do it right now - unhelpful in many respects. Yes, there are thousands of scientists putting their names to it, but that does not equal a consensus, nor does the piece suggest it does.

I do however also find myself quite critical of what is said in some of those pieces, which points more towards the underlying philosophy of western science which so dominates the whole debate. I think that this underlying philosophy is also a hindrance as it deals poorly with complex systems due to its mechanistic and reductionist approach. For example, in the NY Times it refers to recent wildfire incidents and while it does acknowledge that modern forestry management plays a role, it dismisses this to a lower level, preferring to conclude that global warming is mostly the cause. This reductionism is one of those problems because we actually understand so little about the system's behaviour. There are inclings of how much more resilient the forest systems might be had it not been for modern forestry management practise, including such things as high density monoculture forestry. I suspect that these practises play a much more important role in the problem than is currently recognised, and there are a number of specialists with the same suspicions who are looking to resurect knowledge and practise from indigenous populations, for example.

I've just dug out the 2021 IPCC report summary for policymakers and did a search for the word emergency. None were to be found within the document.

I think the fundamental question is whether it is actually helpful to be using the loaded term of emergency (and crisis for that matter) over and above other tactics for changing attitudes and behaviour. I think there are more positive and effective ones that are less dangerous and destructive.

Posted By: djhwho seems like a typical upper class tw*t

I've met a number of scientists, several globally eminent ones in their field that I would classify as tw*ts. Several of them were pretty arrogant and closed to alternative ideas and suggestions, even evidence contrary to their positions. However, they still had value to add, a huge amount in some instances. I therefore prefer to put aside a blanket dismissal of a name and instead be open to what they've got to say, even if it disagrees with my views, and then analyse the substance of that against other evidence too - it's always useful to triangulate. A lot of the time I find it quite helpful to hold conflicting views in mind, especially when it's a complex subject.

I'm also open to people changing their views, despite their history, but again checking things out from a wider perspective.

I'm sure that there are more than a few tw*ts on the list in the bioscience article but that would not entriely detract from where there is validity in its content.

Posted By: djhbut the people who are paid to try to solve it seem to have the same problem.

Yes, there is certainly something rather intractable in the air (pardon the pun).

Posted By: bhommels

Posted By: WillInAberdeenFrom Simon's link:

"Enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial...
CO2 is not a pollutant"

That's a fairly minority viewpoint these days....!

I would not have expected anything else from clintel.nl. The founders are Shell man Berkhout and controversial journo Marcel Crok. Better check all their claims on skeptcalscience.com, which is a much better place to look for resources on climate change anyway.

I'm aware of Crok and what he has been saying. I understand the questions he's asking about the climate models and how they are being used, including the risks inherent in those models. Some of his criticisms are fair yet there are also some fundamental errors I think in his own conclusions. One of these is around how he talks about natural oscillations that are not particularly sensitive. Often the problems with self-organising systems is you can see what appears to be endless resilience, only for the system to incomprehensibly re-organise itself. I'm also rather dubious of his claims about global greening - for me it's not a question of just greening, but how it might be greening (if it really is at all). I do think he realistically highlights many of the problems we face in dealing with climate change in that it will have lots of social and economic impacts and that getting ourselves free of fossils fuels is going to be an incredibly difficult and complex process.

I read skepticalscience.com too and I don't think that site uses the loaded term emergency, which was the original point. IIRC there was some debate on one of its pages about Co2 being a pollutant where pollutant was labelled 'loaded' as well as related semantics!

Posted By: fostertom

Posted By: SimonDfar more important and urgent to curb our unsustainable use of natural resources and destructive behaviour towards natural ecosystems rather than carbon emissions

Interesting, just to check - do you feel that doing the former wholeheartedly would automatically tend to solve the latter?

Yes, that is what I feel. I do feel that we also need to promote regeneration, but I'm not sure whether I think this should best be done passively by allowing self-organisation as we learn to live within limits, or whether it should be done actively through more intervention.

Incidentally, in
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dawn-Everything-New-History-Humanity/dp/0241402425/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=dawn+of+everything&qid=1637165747&sr=8-1
another brand-new changes-everything anthropological/archaeological destruction of the conventional 'human nature' theory that justifies market capitalism and all that, is this definition of 'The West':

"... obsession with property rights as the basis of society, and as a foundation of social power, is a peculiarly Western phenomenon - indeed if 'the West' has any real meaning, it would probably refer to that legal and intellectual tradition which conceives soociety in those terms"

Great Simon - I'm never sure if anyone's interested!

I haven't got 'Bullshit Jobs' but the first of Graeber's must-have trio is 'Debt - the first 5000 years' - great title. Again all drawing on Anthropological and Archeological evidence rather than 'philosophical' deduction (such as Adam Smith's work).

Seems that barter was almost unknown until primal societies realised that's what colonial intruders wanted to do. So no such thing as 'primitive money', hence 'everything has a price' economics is a 18C-invented Western extractive technique, does not have the inevitability of any ancient 'human nature' thing.

Dunno what others feel, but I think I noticed the noisy publicity around CoP26 has registered with some of the people I have to interact with, who previously I would have labelled as "denialists". They have shifted towards being "delayalists".

So whereas one loudmouth in the pub used to tell everyone "there is no climate change", he's shifted position to "there is climate change, but I shouldn't do anything about it yet, until .... "

His dubious reasons for inaction are: "the scientists might be wrong", "it'll cost too much to fix it now, so wait till it gets cheaper", "somebody else should fix it" and "rich people get private jets, so should I, my actions are swamped by theirs". I paraphrase.

Overall this seems like slight progress, thanks to the activists, though clearly a long way to go....

Can I just add as a retort to the Amazon links (which of course I appreciate make it easy to identify the exact book that you are talking about) that your local bookshop will usually order in any book for you directly on request, thus avoiding the use of Amazon at all.
There are more than enough billionaires but perhaps not enough local bookshops!

Thank you for the great link Simon, I hadn't heard of it before.
My local Bookshop, "Picture Book" in Leek, often gives me a discount as well which is nice, I am pleased to see it is on their site.