Global carbon emissions will reach record levels this year
So much for all the policies that claim to lower it. Greenie policies are a total failure
Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels will reach a record high this year after the COVID-19 pandemic, with no sign of the deep reductions urgently needed to tackle global heating.
Preliminary data for 2022 shows a slight increase – about 1 per cent – in carbon emissions from fossil fuels relative to 2021, according to the Global Carbon Project, a network of dozens of researchers from around the world that has tracked carbon emissions for 16 years.
This projected growth brings global fossil CO2 emissions for 2022 slightly above the 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
This increase was primarily driven by the growth in oil consumption from the return of aviation following the COVID-19 lockdowns. If the current emission levels persist, there is a 50 per cent chance global warming of 1.5 degrees will be exceeded in nine years.
“The climate crisis requires crisis-like actions which I don’t see happening,” said Dr Pep Canadell, a CSIRO research scientist based in Australia and executive director of the Global Carbon Project. “It is a mistake to think that the energy transition will be a smooth transition.”
There is expected to be 40.2 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions from all human activity in 2022, which includes 36.6 gigatonnes of fossil CO2 emissions from coal, gas, oil and cement.
To get to zero emissions by 2050, which is the stated goal of many countries, including Australia, global emissions will need to decline by 1.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide each year, which is a similar amount to the fall in emissions seen in 2020 due to pandemic lockdowns.
Globally, during the pandemic, emissions declined about 5.5 per cent on 2019 levels because of COVID-19 measures. But in 2021, emissions rebounded about 5 per cent from the previous year.
Oil emissions – which represent about one third of global emissions – are projected to rise more than 2 per cent and dominate the global rise in fossil fuel carbon emissions.
Global gas emissions are projected to decline a tiny amount, due to the tightness of supply related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while cement emissions are projected to decrease about 1.5 per cent due to the slowdown of construction in China.
As the graph below shows, globally there has been a small but uncertain decline in emissions from land use change – the way that humans modify the natural landscape. Indonesia, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo contribute almost 60 per cent of global land use change emissions.
Global Carbon Project research does not include Australian-specific data, but government figures show our national greenhouse gas emissions were about 22 per cent lower in the year 2022 compared with 2005.
Professor Frank Jotzo, an expert on climate change from Australian National University, said Australia would need to cut about 16 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year over the next eight years to reach its new goal of reducing emissions 43 per cent by 2030.
But the electricity sector is the only industry where Australia has seen consistent and continuing decreases in greenhouse gas emissions in recent years, Professor Jotzo said.
“What’s driving that is a very substantial shift away from coal-fired [electricity] generation … made up for by increases in renewable energy, principally solar,” he said. “A lot needs to change in Australia’s emissions profile in order to achieve that 2030 target.”
Despite the negative impact of climate change, the land and carbon sinks continue to absorb about half of the world’s carbon emissions. But they have registered a 70 per cent loss of efficiency and 4 per cent, effectively. Oceans are less able to dissolve carbon dioxide when temperatures are higher.
The atmospheric level of CO2 is projected to average 417.2 ppm in 2022, 50 per cent above pre-industrial levels.
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Greenie rip-off in Egypt
Not since Howard Carter risked the curse of the Pharaohs to plunder the pyramids a hundred years ago this month at the Valley of the Kings has Egypt seen such a gang of thieves.
Only this time, forget the grave robbers, it’s the gravy train robbers who are pilfering the untold wealth of the West in the Valley of the Despots also known as the luxury climate change junket Cop 27 at Sharm el-Sheikh. As the Daily Mail reports, ‘World leaders and delegates jetting into Egypt for the Cop 27 climate conference will be able to dine out on £90 mushroom sauce covered beef medallions – and sip on fancy bottomless cocktails – while facing calls to cut down on meat consumption to save the planet. Those with a taste for the luxurious can snap up an Angus beef medallion with sautéed potatoes… after scoffing back a £43 seafood platter for starter.’
No wonder all the greatest and most powerful leaders of the climate cult are descending from far-flung cities, flying in by Lear Jet or luxury gas-guzzling yacht to lecture the rest of the world on how we should eat bugs and insects in order to reduce our emissions. Indeed, our Climate Change Minister has bravely gone to Egypt this week in search of riches beyond his wildest dreams. Mr Bowen, now known as the Nefertiti of Net Zero, the Ramses of Renewables, or the King Tut-tut of the nanny state, has returned Mummy-like from his dead career as a Rudd minister to plunder the hidden treasures of endless government renewables subsidies in order to save the planet. The poor old humble Aussie taxpayer will be defiled and desecrated and dragged into an afterlife of perpetual impoverishment.
Already the Australian delegation has insisted that the controversial issue of ‘loss and damage’ be added at the last minute to the agenda of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference as a gesture of solidarity for Pacific countries. Which translated means: Aussie taxpayers are going to hand over a king’s ransom to any lucky Pacific leader who sticks his hand out because apparently we ghastly Australians are to blame for their islands sinking under the waves even though, er, plenty of them are actually increasing in size as even the ABC admits.
When Howard Carter broke his way into Tutankhamen’s secret burial chamber in 1922 the wealth he discovered was estimated to be worth around $15 million. But that’s peanuts to the gold and rubies that Chris Bowen and his expedition intend to excavate from the coffers of the humble Aussie taxpayer. Australia owes an extra $2.6 billion to the UN’s $100 billion climate finance target, according to the luvvies. Australia has paid only 38 per cent of its fair share, apparently, ranking us third-worst country behind the US and Canada.
And in news that would have Carter spinning in his own grave, the eco-warriors are demanding that the United Kingdom pays up to £1 trillion in damages to the rest of the world for her role in ‘creating climate change’. You know, by inventing all the modern equipment, transportation, drugs, manufacturing, goods and products that have created the modern prosperity, good health and civilisation that we all enjoy.
That is Great Britain’s curse – to have been at the forefront of industrialisation, technological progress, innovation, and mainly peaceful colonisation that shared the just laws and moral values of the Enlightenment around the world in an era, today, where the past is denigrated and despised in favour of pagan earth-worship, superstition and cultural and racial guilt-trips. Indeed, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is already proposing ‘climate reparations’ to poorer countries like Pakistan.
The curse of Australia is to have fellow-traveller and climate carpet-bagger Chris ‘Blackouts’ Bowen as our Climate Change Minister at a time when we desperately need to be increasing our energy supplies and fossil fuel and uranium resources but instead are concentrating on madcap schemes like pushing water uphill and green hydrogen hubs.
Of course, like any ancient Egyptian cult, the climate change cult relies on scaring the living daylights out of anyone who dares question the orthodoxy. But forget ancient skeletons and mummies coming back to life from secret burial chambers, today’s climate warriors are much more adept at striking fear into the hearts of their loyal followers.
So we have Roger Hallam, the ‘founder’ of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and other fanatical groups, threatening that thanks to the inevitable social disruption caused by climate change in the future your sister and mother will be gang-raped in their own home before having their eyes poked out with a burnt stick.
Or you have UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres proclaiming that thanks to climate change we are in a global ‘suicide pact’ and we are all on ‘a road to hell with our foot on the accelerator’.
Take your pick which of these leaders is the most irresponsible.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/the-dummy/
**************************************************An Indigenous community in Ecuador fights to save its river from the greentransition fallout
What Clemente Grefa remembers most about his childhood are the sounds of the Piatúa River: the hum of insects, the chatter of children playing, the women whistling as they clean clothes, and the burble of water trickling.
“Living here has always been magnificent,” says Clemente, a 67-year-old Kichwa man who lives off the land. “We’ve been blessed with all the enchantments of the river.” The Piatúa, a tributary of the Amazon located in the Pastaza region of Ecuador, is thought to be millions of years old. It is one of the most biodiverse areas of the world; scientists believe it is home to many flora and fauna yet to be cataloged by academia. For the Kichwa Indigenous people of Piatúa, the river is sacred. It is a living being, with its own temperament, mood swings, and pulse. It is revered and feared, loved and protected.
Early one morning in 2018, while Clemente and his family gathered around the fire to drink their daily wayusa tea, they heard a crash. Upstream, a hydropower-dam company was blasting dynamite to clear the way for a $60 million project that if built would generate some 30 MW of electricity— but would also threaten the river’s ecosystem, and the lifestyle and cosmologies of the people who inhabit the area. Since 2014, the Ecuadorean electricity company Genefran S.A. has been approved by the Ministry of the Environment, Water, and Ecological Transition to build a hydro dam along the Piatúa River. Though the project is part of the government’s larger strategy to shift away from fossil fuels toward clean energy, the people of Piatúa don’t see it as a green endeavor. For them, the dam’s construction is an environmental death sentence: an estimated 90% of the river’s water volume would be lost, according to Yajaira Curipallo, who works for a governmental environment watchdog, and a potentially dangerous flood risk would be created at the nearby Jandiayacu River. “If they destroy the [Piatúa] river that gives us life,” says Clemente, “what will we be left with?”
For years, the people of Piatúa have resisted the dam. In 2018, when the initial construction began, Kichwa people took their case to the provincial courts. The judges granted the river partial protection, ruling the hydro dam could not be built until Genefran S.A. received consent from the Indigenous people. But in interviews, multiple river defenders reported receiving threatening phone calls and being told not to protest. Though they could not prove whom the calls came from, they say they feel the project is being pushed on them.
The people of Piatúa have not relented: while a date has not yet been set, they hope their case will soon be heard at the Constitutional Court, the country’s most powerful judicial body. It would be the first time a renewable- energy project is accused of violating the rights of nature as enshrined in Ecuador’s constitution. “This case could set a precedent worldwide for how we think about the impacts of renewables,” says Natalia Greene, a rights-of-nature expert and an executive committee member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. But for the Indigenous communities, there is a bigger question at stake: Will their voices be heard in the green transition?
Ecuador made history in 2008 when it became the first country in the world to recognize, and legally protect, nature’s right to exist and thrive under its constitution. The goal was to incorporate Indigenous worldviews into the country’s legal system, and to reflect the belief that nature is alive and thus has value that can’t be accounted for in a capitalist market system. “When we’re talking about the rights of nature, we’re not just talking about protecting plants and animals, but about respecting nature’s cosmologies and its spiritual worlds,” says Greene.
Although Ecuador’s constitution states companies have to get prior free and informed consent from Indigenous communities before an infrastructure project begins, there is no clear definition of what consent entails. Oil and mining companies have exploited this legal loophole by withholding information about their activities when consulting with communities, in order to secure a few signatures of consent, and both Indigenous people and environmentalists have grown to expect this behavior from them. But these groups are disappointed to see renewable- energy companies increasingly taking advantage of the same loopholes.
Ecuador is not the only country grappling with this issue. Around the world, some clean- energy companies are being scrutinized for wreaking havoc on biodiversity, and perpetuating many of the same human- rights abuses as polluting industries, with Indigenous communities often paying the price. Experts say part of the challenge in holding these industries to account is that people are hesitant to critique the renewables sector over fears this may temper enthusiasm to move away from fossil fuels. But as Greene notes, “You cannot justify biodiversity loss and injustice on the basis that a project creates clean energy.”
https://blendle.com/i/time/arivers-day-in-court/bnl-time-20221028-adc72526286
**********************************************The UN takes on corporate greenwashing
Readers looking for thrills rarely turn to official reports written by groups of worthies. At first glance, one from a body soporifically named the UN HighLevel Expert Group on the NetZero Emissions Commitments of NonState Entities might be expected to cure insomnia. The team of experts, led by Catherine Mckenna, a former Canadian minister, has spent the past seven months poring over the proliferating climate commitments of banks and big businesses, as well as cities and regions.
Yawn? Not a bit of it. The group’s conclusions, presented to the un Secretary General on November 8th at the annual climate summit taking place in Egypt, made both ceos and activists sit up. In her opening letter, the refreshingly direct Ms Mc Kenna set the tone: “It’s time to draw a red line around greenwashing.”
Many companies are making bold promises to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to zero. According to Accenture, a consultancy, around onethird of the world’s 2,000 biggest firms by revenue now have publicly stated netzero goals. Of those, however, 93% have no chance of achieving their targets without doing much more than they are at the moment. Few businesses lay out credible investment plans or specify milestones against which progress can be judged.
In order to curb such “dishonest climate accounting”, the report urges companies to make public disclosures of their progress towards decarbonisation using verified and comparable data. It implores regulators to make these disclosures mandatory. In addition, the authors say, firms should not claim to be netzero while investing in new fossilfuel supplies (which puts many investment funds in a bind) nor rely on reporting the intensity of emissions (per unit of output) rather than their absolute volume. And organisations making green claims must not simultaneously lobby against climate policies.
All very bracing, and perfectly sensible.
Will business take it to heart? The UN has no authority to enforce any of the recommendations. The idea that increased scrutiny will inevitably lead to better behaviour remains untested. It is all too easy to imagine that it might instead lead to what you might call greenhushing. A survey of some 1,200 big firms in 12 countries by South Pole, a climate consultancy, found that a quarter have set themselves stringent emissionreduction targets but do not intend to publicise them. Some companies are staying quiet to avoid attracting the ire of conservative politicians in places such as Texas, who decry “woke” corporations. Others, particularly in progressive redoubts like Europe, fear activist ire for not meeting targets quickly enough.
Many state entities are not helping— and not only because they shy away from policies with bite, such as carbon taxes. The day after Ms Mckenna set out her red lines, the American government launched a new scheme to spur large companies in rich countries to purchase carbon credits from developing countries that expand their renewablepowergeneration capacity. In theory, this could bring muchneeded capital to the urgent task of scaling up clean energy in emerging markets. In practice, worries Chris Cote of MSCI, a research firm, it will be hard to tell if a given project would have been financed even without inducements from deeppocketed multinationals. Without proper oversight, that could mean more greenwash, not less.
https://www.economist.com/business/2022/11/10/the-un-takes-on-corporate-greenwashing
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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