Thread: Any doubts about Climate Change?

• Cop28: King Charles warns of ‘vast, frightening experiment’ on natural world

The world has embarked on a “vast, frightening experiment” on the natural world, King Charles has told world leaders, which risks triggering “feedback loops” in the climate system that will cause irreversible disaster.

Noting that 2023 was the hottest year on record, the king told the Cop28 UN climate summit on Friday: “Records are now being broken so often that we are perhaps becoming immune to what they are really telling us. We need to pause to process what this actually means: we are taking the natural world outside balanced norms and limits, and into dangerous, uncharted territory.”

In an opening speech calling on leaders to make Cop28 “a critical turning point”, he warned: “We are carrying out a vast, frightening experiment of changing every ecological condition, all at once, at a pace that far outstrips nature’s ability to cope … Our choice is now a starker, and darker, one: how dangerous are we actually prepared to make our world?”

___________

• World to hit 1.4C of warming in record hot 2023

With a month to run, 2023 will reach global warming of about 1.4C above pre-industrial levels, adding to "a deafening cacophony" of broken climate records, the World Meteorological Organisation says.

The WMO's provisional State of the Global Climate report confirms that 2023 will be the warmest year on record by a large margin, replacing the previous record-holder 2016, when the world was about 1.2C warmer than the pre-industrial average.

It adds to the urgency world leaders face as they wrestle with phasing out fossil fuels at the United Nations annual climate summit COP28, which begins on Thursday in Dubai.

"Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice record low," WMO secretary-general Peterri Taalas said.

The report's finding, however, does not mean the world is about to cross the long-term warming threshold of 1.5C that scientists say is the ceiling for avoiding catastrophic climate change under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

For that, the level of warming would need to be sustained for longer.

Already, a year of 1.4C has provided a frightening preview of what permanently crossing 1.5C might mean.

This year, Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest winter maximum extent on record, some 1 million square kilometres less than the previous record.

• Cop28: US powers past coal, Australia relies on ‘drug dealer’ defence

The US joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance today by committing to close all its coal-fired power plants, in a move hailed at Cop28 as “huge news” that puts pressure on the world’s biggest burner of coal, China.

Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel – about 40% of fossil fuel emissions – and its phase-out is essential to fighting the climate crisis. The US has the world’s third biggest fleet of coal-burning power stations. The deadline set by the US for ending coal appears to be 2035, five years after the 2030 date seen as compatible with keeping global heating below 1.5C.

The Czech Republic and Kosovo, both heavily reliant on coal, also joined the PPCA today. The alliance now has more than 50 nations as members, including 35 out of the 43 countries in the OECD, a club of rich countries.

Leo Roberts, at the E3G thinktank, said: “The US is a huge coal consumer. So this is hugely symbolic, not just in terms of emissions, but also in terms of the US stepping up on the international stage.”

“This puts a huge amount of pressure on the other OECD countries to make Paris-aligned coal exit commitments, particularly Japan, Australia and South Korea,” he said: “This is also putting direct pressure on China, which has over half of the world’s coal and nearly 75% of the world’s new coal project pipeline. I think that’s an intentional tactic by the countries who have stood up.”

Bill Hare, at Climate Analytics, said: “Australia still is a very coal-intensive country and still is approving new mines to export coal. It is essentially using the drug-dealer defence, saying that other countries are demanding the coal.”

“Expanding coal production runs completely counter to what the global scientific community and the International Energy Agency is saying,” he said. “So I’m still very concerned about the Australian position.”

Evan Gach, from the Kiko Network, an NGO in Japan, said: “It’s disappointing to not see Japan on the PPCA list, but maybe not a surprise. Japan has over 170 existing coal units, and there’s no plan or roadmap to phase these out. Japan is committed to extending the life of fossil fuels for as long as they can profit from it.”

Solar and wind energy is the cheapest electricity in the world today, and often even cheaper than simply continuing to buy the fuel for coal-fired power stations. Vivian Sunwoo Lee, from the Solutions for our Climate group in Korea, said: “If Korea doesn’t want to fall behind the major economies, it will also need to phase out coal.”

_______

Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry - #COP28 , I joined President @EmmanuelMacron & other leaders to proudly announce the United States is joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance.

We will work with partners around the world to phase out unabated coal, an absolutely essential step for keeping 1.5 C within reach.: https://twitter.com/ClimateEnvoy/sta...54613996257518

• US outlines measures to cut methane emissions by 80% in next 15 years

The United States has announced a major crackdown on methane emissions as part of a new effort by several countries at the Cop28 summit to curb the “super pollutant” that is responsible for turbocharging the climate crisis.

The US has used the climate conference, which is administered by the UN and being held in Dubai, to unveil new regulations it estimates will cut methane emissions from its vast oil and gas industry by 80% from levels that would be expected without the rule, a total of 58m tonnes by 2038.

The rule is the centrepiece of a series of actions by countries at Cop28 to limit methane, which is much shorter-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide but up to 80 times more powerful in heating the Earth. Methane is responsible for about a third of the warming already experienced by the planet and the US is one of the world’s largest emitters.

“Sharp cuts in methane emissions are among the most critical actions the United States can take in the short term to slow the rate of climate change,” said Michael Regan, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, which has created the rule.

Regan said the new regulations would cut the equivalent of 1.5bn metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is nearly the amount of pollution emitted by the US’s entire power sector, or 28m fossil fuel-powered cars, over the next 15 years. The rule will require oil and gas companies to plug leaks from existing facilities, eliminate routine flaring of gas from wells and to better monitor escaping methane.

“The impact of this historic rule can’t be overstated,” Regan said. “This is what global climate leadership looks like.”

Countries, businesses and donors have raised $1bn in funding to help reduce methane emissions around the world, an update at Cop28 revealed. Angola, Kenya, Romania, Kenya, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have also joined the global methane pledge, an initiative set up by the US and European Union in Scotland at Cop26 with the aim of slashing methane emissions 30% by 2030. More than 150 countries have now signed up.

• Pope: are we working for a culture of life or a culture of death?

Pope Francis had been lined up to open today’s speeches, but was forced to stay home with a bout of “very acute infectious bronchitis”.

He sent the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in his place with a missive, which Parolin read out.

“I am with you because now more than ever, the future of us all depends on the present that we now choose,” he said.

“I am with you because the destruction of the environment is an offence against God, a sin that is not only personal but also structural, one that greatly endangers all human beings, especially the most vulnerable in our midst and threatens to unleash a conflict between generations.

“I am with you because climate change is a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life. I am with you to raise the question which we must answer now: Are we working for a culture of life or a culture of death?

“To all of you I make this heartfelt appeal: Let us choose life. Let us choose the future. May we be attentive to the cry of the earth, may we hear the plea of the poor, may we be sensitive to the hopes of the young and the dreams of children. We have a grave responsibility: to ensure that they not be denied their future.”

The Vatican has published a full transcript of the speech which can be found here.

Discorso del Santo Padre alla Conferenza degli Stati parte alla Convenzione quadro delle Nazioni Unite sui cambiamenti climatici (COP28)

_______

JMA – October 2023 was the warmest October recorded

Five Warmest Years (Anomalies)

1st. 2023 (+0.74°C), 2nd. 2015 (+0.38°C), 3rd. 2019 (+0.35°C), 4th. 2022,2021 (+0.30°C)

JMA

__________

• World’s biggest iceberg moving beyond Antarctic waters

One of the world’s largest icebergs is drifting beyond Antarctic waters, after being grounded for more than three decades, according to the British Antarctic Survey.

The iceberg, known as A23a, split from the Antarctic’s Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986. But it became stuck to the ocean floor and had remained for many years in the Weddell Sea.

Not any more. Recent satellite images reveal that the iceberg, weighing nearly a trillion metric tonnes, is now drifting quickly past the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, aided by strong winds and currents.

The iceberg is about three times the size of New York City and more than twice the size of Greater London, measuring about 4,000 sq km (1,500 square miles).

It’s rare to see an iceberg of this size on the move, said British Antarctic Survey glaciologist Oliver Marsh, so scientists will be watching its trajectory closely.

As it gains steam, the colossal iceberg will probably be launched into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This will funnel it toward the Southern Ocean on a path known as “iceberg alley” where others of its kind can be found bobbing in dark waters. It is not clear why it is making a run for it now.

“Over time it’s probably just thinned slightly and got that little bit of extra buoyancy that’s allowed it to lift off the ocean floor and get pushed by ocean currents,” said Marsh. A23a is also among the world’s oldest icebergs.

Andrew Fleming, a remote sensing expert from the British Antarctic Survey, told the BBC on Friday that the iceberg had been drifting for the past year and now appeared to be picking up speed.

“I asked a couple of colleagues about this, wondering if there was any possible change in shelf water temperatures that might have provoked it, but the consensus is the time had just come,” Fleming told the BBC.

Fleming said he had first spotted movement from the iceberg in 2020. The British Antarctic Survey said it had now ungrounded and is moving along ocean currents to sub-Antarctic South Georgia.

It’s possible A23a could again become grounded at South Georgia island. That would pose a problem for Antarctica’s wildlife. Millions of seals, penguins, and seabirds breed on the island and forage in the surrounding waters. Behemoth A23a could cut off such access.

In 2020, another giant iceberg, A68, stirred fears that it would collide with South Georgia, crushing marine life on the sea floor and cutting off food access. Such a catastrophe was ultimately averted when the iceberg broke up into smaller chunks – a possible end game for A23a as well.

But “an iceberg of this scale has the potential to survive for quite a long time in the Southern Ocean, even though it’s much warmer, and it could make its way farther north up toward South Africa where it can disrupt shipping,” said Marsh.

________

• Air pollution from fossil fuels ‘kills 5 million people a year’

Air pollution from fossil fuel use is killing 5 million people worldwide every year, a death toll much higher than previously estimated, according to the largest study of its kind.

The stark figures, published on the eve of the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, will increase pressure on world leaders to take action. Among the decisions they must make at the UN conference will be whether to agree, for the first time, to gradually “phase out” fossil fuels.

Research has shown that switching from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources would save many lives from air pollution and help combat global heating. However, until now, mortality estimates have varied widely.

A new modelling study suggests air pollution, from the use of fossil fuels in industry, power generation, and transportation, accounts for 5.1 million avoidable deaths a year globally. These findings were published in The BMJ.

The contribution of fossil fuels equates to 61% of a total estimated 8.3 million deaths worldwide due to outdoor air pollution from all sources in 2019.

The new estimates of fossil fuel-related deaths are larger than most previously reported values, suggesting that phasing out fossil fuels might have a greater impact on attributable mortality than previously thought.

“Our results suggest that a global phase-out of fossil fuels will have large health benefits, much larger than indicated by most previous studies,” the global team of researchers wrote in the BMJ. “These data support increasing the share of clean, renewable energy, advocated by the UN through the sustainable development goals for 2030 and the ambition of climate neutrality for 2050.”

Ambient air pollution is the leading environmental health risk factor for illness and death, but few global studies have attributed deaths to specific air pollution sources and their results widely differ.

To address this, an international team of researchers from the UK, US, Germany, Spain and Cyprus, used a new model to estimate deaths due to air pollution related to fossil fuels, and to assess potential health benefits from policies that replace fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy sources.

They assessed excess deaths using data from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study, as well as Nasa satellite-based fine particulate matter and population data, and atmospheric chemistry, aerosol, and relative risk modelling for 2019.

The results show that in 2019, 8.3 million deaths worldwide were attributable to fine particles (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) in ambient air, of which 61% (5.1 million) were linked to fossil fuels.

“Major reductions in air pollution emissions, notably through a phase-out of fossil fuels, could have large, positive health outcomes. Results show that the mortality burden attributable to air pollution from fossil fuel use is higher than most previous estimates,” the researchers wrote.

They said one reason for their model producing larger estimates than most previous studies was its being based solely on studies of outdoor air pollution. Uncertainty remained but given the Paris climate agreement’s goal of climate neutrality by 2050, “the replacement of fossil fuels by clean, renewable energy sources would have tremendous public health and climate co-benefits”.

https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj-2023-077784

__________

• Antarctic Sea Ice Extent

COP28

• COP28 focus on health draws $777 million to fight tropical disease

The United Arab Emirates and several charities at the U.N. climate summit on Sunday offered $777 million in financing for eradicating neglected tropical diseases that are expected to worsen as temperatures climb.

Climate-related factors "have become one of the greatest threats to human health in the 21st century", COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber said in a statement.

The pledges, made as the COP28 summit on Sunday focused on climate-related health risks, included $100 million from the UAE and another $100 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Others to announce funds for climate-related health issues included Belgium, Germany and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The World Bank launched a program to explore possible support measures for public health in developing countries, where climate-related health risks are especially high.

The burden of tropical diseases will worsen as the world warms, along with other climate-driven health threats including malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.

Many tropical diseases are already easy to treat. River blindness and sleeping sickness, for example, are both endemic to Africa and spread through parasitic worms and flies that are likely to proliferate in a warming world.

More than 120 countries have signed a COP28 declaration acknowledging their responsibility to keep people safe amid global warming.

The declaration made no mention of fossil fuels, the main source of climate-warming emissions, which the Global Climate and Health Alliance called a "glaring omission".

Activists including physicians in white coats held a small demonstration on Sunday within the COP28 compound to raise awareness of the issue.

"We are in a lot of trouble," said Joseph Vipond, an emergency physician from Alberta, Canada. He recalled the case of a child dying from an asthma attack made worse by smoke inhalation from Western Canada's record wildfires this year. "This is having real world impacts."

Climate change is also increasing the frequency of dangerous storms and more erratic rainfall.

In September Storm Daniel killed more than 11,000 people in Libya, and last year's massive flooding in Pakistan fueled a 400% increase in malaria cases across the country, according to the World Health Organization.

Earlier on Sunday, Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates said scientists were working on new treatments for and prevention of mosquito-spread malaria as the rise in temperatures creates more hospitable habitat for the insects to breed.

"We have new tools at the lab level that decimate mosquito populations," said Gates, whose foundation supports public health research and projects for the developing world.

"These new innovations give us a chance, at a reasonable cost, to make progress."

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also spoke on Sunday, urging reform to the world's insurance system as another key requirement to keep people safe.

"Right now insurance companies are pulling out of so many places, they're not insuring homes, they're not insuring businesses," Clinton said, addressing a panel on women and climate resiliency.

"It's people everywhere who are going to be left out with no backup, no insurance for their business or their home.

• COP28: Japan, France Support Plan to Boost Climate Finance

Japan and France Back Plan to Quadruple Climate Finance at COP28

At the recently concluded COP28 climate conference in Dubai, Japan and France have thrown their weight behind a plan proposed by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Inter American Development Bank (IDB). The plan aims to harness International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) – reserve assets backed by a basket of international currencies – for climate finance and development. This move arrives on the heels of a $650 billion increase in SDRs in 2021, a measure taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quadrupling Climate Financing

The intention of AfDB and IDB is to leverage these SDRs to bolster climate financing in developing markets, potentially quadrupling the available funds. This massive scale-up in funding could help bridge the yawning gap in finance for climate adaptation and disaster relief – a key focus of COP28. However, for the plan to materialize, it requires approval from the IMF Executive Board and the re-channeling of SDRs by member countries.

Global Support for the Initiative

Japan has signaled its readiness to contribute to a proposed hybrid capital, while France, hemmed in by European regulations, plans to provide a guarantee through a liquidity support agreement. Spain and Britain are also mulling over support for the initiative. The AfDB is optimistic that with $5 billion of SDRs, it could trigger a $20 billion increase in lending for climate-related projects.

Addressing the Climate Finance Gap

The COP28 conference underscored the urgent need for climate finance. The United Arab Emirates pledged 270 billion in green finance by 2030, and several development banks are upping their funding efforts. The shortfall in investment, particularly in emerging markets and developing nations outside China, was identified as a stumbling block in achieving the Paris Agreement goals. A report estimates that these countries will require $2.4 trillion per year in investment to cap emissions and adapt to climate change. Amidst these challenges, vulnerable countries are seeking billions more through a newly formed disaster fund.

_________

• Zeke Hausfather - November 2023 global surface temperatures are now out from ERA5 as well as JRA-55. Both show this November as the warmest on record by a large margin (~0.3C).

JRA-55 has this November at 1.6C above preindustrial levels, while ERA5 has it at 1.7C. https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1731759002063937850

Originally Posted by S Landreth

The United Arab Emirates pledged 270 billion in green finance by 2030

Did the climate summit chief deny climate science? 'Ridiculous'


New footage makes the climate summit chairman appear as someone who denies climate science. He himself feels misunderstood.







COP28 chairman Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is already a controversial choice to lead the climate negotiations because he is also the CEO of one of the world's largest oil companies. (Photo: © Giuseppe Cacace, Ritzau Scanpix
Agnete Finnemann Scheel

Klaus Schjerning Andersen

A two-week-old audio recording has set the stage for the UN climate conference in Dubai today.

In it, the chairman of the summit, Sultan Al Jaber, can be heard making a statement that challenges the scientific premise of the climate fight: namely that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically and quickly if we are to avoid the very worst climate changes and perhaps stay below 1.5 degrees global warming.

Precisely the 1.5 degrees is something that the countries of the world have shaken hands on in the Paris Agreement and which numerous scientific reports state is necessary to avoid catastrophic global warming.
Sultan Al Jaber, who in addition to being head of the climate summit is also the head of one of the world's largest oil companies, says in the recordings:

"There is no research or scenarios out there that say that phasing out fossil fuels is what will get us to the goal of 1.5 degrees.

This is in an emotional debate with Mary Robinson, who is chairman of the Elders Group and former president of Ireland.

It is the media The Guardian that first wrote about the audio file, which is also available on Youtube.

In the audio file, Sultan Al Jaber paints a prehistoric picture of the world after a rapid phase-out of greenhouse gases.

- Please help me. Show me the way to a phase-out of fossil fuels that will make room for socio-economic development – unless you want to send the world back into caves," he says.

On the verge of climate denial


The statements have caused frustration among climate scientists.

Bill Hare, director of the global climate institute Climate Analysis, said the statements "border on climate denial."

"This is an extraordinarily revealing, worrying and crass attitude," he told the Guardian.

On social media, UN chief Antonio Guterres was invited to comment on the statement. The well-known American climate scientist Michael E. Mann writes directly to Guterres:

"The COP president appointed by the Emirates, oil director Sultan Al Jaber, ridicules the climate summit. It would be good if you commented on that."............................................ .

• Food is finally on the table at COP. But will it serve the climate solutions we need?

After years of being virtually ignored, the critical role of food and agriculture in the climate crisis finally has a seat at the table at COP28.

The conference has dedicated a day to the theme of “Food, Agriculture, and Water,” which acknowledges that agriculture accounts for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions and uses 70 percent of water consumed worldwide. The U.N. is expected to release a roadmap to align food systems with the Paris Agreement that will call for wealthy countries to consume less meat. For the first time, even the menus at COP will be mostly plant-based to reflect the conference’s goals.

But bringing food systems into the conversation won’t be enough to fight the climate crisis unless it’s paired with action and accountability. And it could even push us in the wrong direction if we’re served false solutions.
It seems that every few months — sandwiched between stories of climate-related extreme storms, droughts, flooding and fires — a new analysis finds that the world is on course to hurtle past the emissions-reduction targets that would avert the worst harms of climate change. The U.N. itself just published a report that current national climate plans aren’t enough to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But we’re not beyond hope yet. Scientists have made it clear that every degree we can slow global warming matters for the frequency and severity of storms, our ability to grow food, the health of ecosystems and the number of lives at risk.

'You don't bring arsonists to a firefighting convention'

• Record number of fossil fuel lobbyists get access to Cop28 climate talks

UAE-hosted summit admitted at least 2,456 people affiliated with oil and gas industries, analysis finds

At least 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the Cop28 climate negotiations, according to an analysis.

The figure calculated by the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition is a record number that raises further questions about the fossil fuel industry’s influence over this year’s UN summit, which is being run by the president of the United Arab Emirates’ national oil company.

The scale of oil and gas influence in Dubai is unprecedented, with almost four times as many industry-affiliated lobbyists than the number registered for Cop27 in Sharm el-sheikh – which itself was a record year.

Lobbyists vying to push the interests of oil and gas companies such as Shell, Total and ExxonMobil outnumber every country delegation apart from Brazil (3,081), which is expected to run Cop30 in 2025, and the host country, which registered 4,409 attenders.

Fossil fuel lobbyists also outnumber official Indigenous representatives (316) by seven to one – another sign, say campaigners, that oil and gas industry profits are being prioritised over a sustainable planet and frontline communities.

Caroline Muturi, a coordinator the campaign group Ibon Africa, said: “These findings tell us that the dynamics within these spaces remain fundamentally colonial. Cops have become an avenue for these corporations to greenwash their polluting businesses and foist dangerous distractions from real climate action.”

The revelations come during another catastrophic year for the climate, with supercharged extreme weather events striking every corner of the world, from unprecedented rainfall in Libya, severe drought threatening the Amazon, and a sharp increase in heat deaths from Arizona to southern Europe.

Scientists say such destructive storms, drought and heat would have been almost impossible without the warming caused by burning fossil fuels, which must be phased out to avoid total climate breakdown.

Momentum to secure a commitment to phase out fossil fuels at Cop28 has been growing, especially among the most vulnerable countries, but many of the biggest polluting countries are holding out.

• Fossil fuel firms should volunteer to help vulnerable countries, says Spanish minister

If fossil fuel companies are serious about tackling the climate crisis, they could contribute to funds for poor and vulnerable countries stricken by its effects, Spain’s environment minister has said.

Teresa Ribera, a co-leader of the EU delegation at the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai, said: “Private corporates should be stepping into a different development model in vulnerable countries. We went through some language on that that was broadly supported by all [EU] member states, which is: why not just start by an invitation to the oil and gas companies to dedicate part of the profits to invest in sustainable development of the most vulnerable countries. And that’s on a voluntary basis [at first], because why not?”

Mandatory green taxes may also be needed on fossil fuel and other high-carbon companies, and potential levies on shipping and frequent flyers, that could generate funds for poor countries, she added. This would be in line with the “polluter pays” principle, she said, but she warned there was not yet broad agreement on such an approach.

“This is still quite challenging,” Ribera said. “There is a reluctance on the creation of these new sources of finance.”

Ribera occupies a central position at the Cop28 climate talks because Spain holds the EU’s revolving presidency, giving her a key role in the bloc’s negotiations.

Every financial and economic decision governments and businesses make should be informed by its impacts on the climate crisis, Ribera said. “We need to change the whole way we understand production and consumption everywhere,” she told the Guardian in an interview.

“The built environment, assets, infrastructure and so on – we need to reverse the understanding of what value is and what is wasting money.”

She added: “We need different arrangements [for financial and economic decision-making] so that financial understanding does take into consideration the climate aspects of every single decision. We need [to work towards] a new climate-proof economy.”

_________

• Oil and gas firms must convert to renewables or face decline, says IEA chief

Oil and gas producers must convert their operations to renewable energy or face steep economic decline, the world’s chief energy adviser has said amid the forging of a new alliance of energy companies at the UN Cop28 climate summit.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said: “We have to find a way to reduce fossil fuel consumption, and as such there is an important role that the oil and gas industry can play. I very much hope that they can show in Dubai that they can be part of the solution when it comes to tackling climate change.”

Birol warned that oil and gas companies would find it more difficult to operate in future. “It is not just people in Europe or the US, or Australia, who are raising the alarm – more and more people around the world, from the streets of New Delhi and Jakarta, to Nairobi and Rio. They are seeing the clear links between the continued high use of fossil fuels and the increasingly severe climate impacts they are seeing almost on a daily basis.”

Governments should bring in policies to encourage the switch, but even if they did not, on current policies fossil fuel use would peak by 2030, leaving companies with an uncertain future, he warned.

Currently only 2.5% of the capital investment of oil and gas companies goes towards renewable energy, which Birol said was insufficient.

“I very much hope we will see [from Cop28] a strong signal to energy markets that fossil fuel use needs to decline,” he told the Guardian.

• Cop28: UN climate chief warns nations not to ‘fall into the trap of point-scoring’

Countries negotiating at Cop28 must not fall into the trap of point-scoring and “lowest common denominator politics”, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, has said.

Stiell, who is executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, the structure under the auspices of which the climate summit is held, spoke at a press conference in Dubai as Cop28 reached its midpoint. He said:

All governments must give their negotiators clear marching orders. We need highest ambition, not point scoring or lowest common denominator politics.

We have a starting text on the table … but it’s a grab bag of wishlists and heavy on posturing. The key now is to sort the wheat from the chaff.

There are many options that are on the table right now which speak to the phasing out of fossil fuels. It is for parties to unpick that, but come up with a very clear statement that signals the terminal decline of the fossil fuel era as we know it.

_______

• I’ve just been sent some figures by the Cop presidency, breaking down all the funding pledges made so far at the summit.

Breakdown of financial pledges and contributions so far:

• Loss and damage: $726m
• Green climate fund: $3.5bn (increasing second replenishment to $12.8bn)
• Adaptation fund: $133.6m
• Least developed countries fund: $129.3m
• Special climate change fund (SCCF): $31m
• Renewable energy: $5bn
• Cooling: $25.5m
• Clean cooking: $30m
• Technology: $568m
• Methane: $1.2bn
• Climate finance: $30bn from UAE, $200m in special drawing rights, and $32bn from multilateral development banks (MDBs)
• Food: $3.1bn
• Nature: $2.6bn
• Health: $2.7bn
• Water: $150m
• Gender: $2.8m
• Relief, recovery and peace: $1.2bn

• Cop28: highlights and lowlights so far

Loss and damage fund agreed – but the money doesn’t add up

Shock over comments from the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber

Draft global stocktake text published with focus on fossil fuel language

Leaders in the spotlight at Cop28 – or not so much

UK: In a speech at the opening of the conference, King Charles warned of a “vast, frightening experiment” on the natural world.

US: The president, Joe Biden, sent the vice-president, Kamala Harris, instead of appearing himself, and her appearance got a mixed response, not least because of the US’s booming oil and gas extraction industry.

Colombia: The president, Gustavo Petro, formally joined an alliance of nations calling for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty to prevent the “omnicide of planet Earth”. Petro said some would ask why a country reliant on fossil fuels would want to “commit suicide” but said “we are avoiding the omnicide of the world” the Guardian’s Patrick Greenfield reported.

Brazil: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, said it was not possible to tackle the climate crisis without also tackling inequality. Meanwhile, campaigners expressed alarm that Brazil chose the first day of the conference to announce it was aligning itself with the world’s biggest oil cartel, Opec.

Russia: On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, arrived in the UAE to discuss the Israel-Gaza conflict, to the alarm of the Ukrainian delegation.

• Why is the phase-out of fossil fuels the biggest flashpoint at Cop28?

The question of whether the final agreement from Cop28 includes a call for a “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels is seen by many as being the single most important indicator of success at the UN summit. The issue may appear to be a simple scientific one but is in fact complex and deeply political.

A call for a phase-out of fossil fuels gives the strongest possible signal to the world that the burning of coal, oil and gas must be reduced rapidly to have a hope of keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5C. And that is why some fossil-fuel-heavy countries are so opposed to it.

What is the difference between a phase-out and phase-down of fossil fuels?

A big problem is that neither are defined and can therefore be used to mean different things by different people. That is why the issue is so slippery and contentious. Broadly speaking, a phase-out is taken to mean a radical reduction in fossil-fuel burning down to zero, or as close to zero as makes little difference, by 2050. Phase down is a weaker term, indicating that fossil-fuel burning must decline without specifying by how much or when.

What does the science say?

The science is crystal clear: fossil fuel burning is the overwhelming cause of the climate crisis; CO2 emissions must plummet by almost half by 2030 to have an even a chance of meeting the 1.5C target; emissions must then plunge to net zero by 2050. The science also finds that some CO2 emissions will be very hard to stop, such as from some heavy industry and aviation, meaning technology will be needed to either capture and bury those emissions, or suck CO2 from the air.

There are many potential paths to net zero by 2050, with the scale of carbon capture the key variable. Prof Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: “I cannot see scientifically there being any other communication than that we need to phase out fossil fuels.”

• John Kerry warns against carbon capture’s ‘great facade’ as a climate cure-all

Some countries at the COP28 climate talks are lying about the potential for capturing the greenhouse gases fossil fuels emit, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said.

Kerry was speaking at an event on Friday evening on the sidelines of the U.N. COP28 climate talks in Dubai, where the nations of the world are wrangling over the draft of a pledge to end fossil fuel use.

The deal has been forcefully opposed by fossil fuel-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia. Negotiators from Riyadh argue carbon pollution can be largely captured and buried using scrubbing technology that Kerry said remains largely unproven at the needed scale.

“There are people here who want to just continue business as usual. And the great facade is: ‘Oh no, we'll be able to capture everything,’” said Kerry, his voice hoarse from a chest cold. “No scientist tells me we can capture it all. Can't do it. Can we capture some? Yes, and by the way, I'm for it.”

Kerry said it was up to the gas industry "to show us they can capture all those emissions, to tell us whether it's really going to be part of the future. But don’t lie to people and tell them it's green. And don't pretend to people that that's the main alternative."

Kerry said the next few days of talks, which are scheduled to end Tuesday, would be "absolutely critical. Without any question whatsoever."

A draft text released on Friday by the United Arab Emirates government, which is hosting the conference, included several options for a deal between almost 200 countries to “phase out” fossil fuels — a phrase being pushed by small island states, the U.S. and the European Union. But it also included an option for no deal at all, which is the result many countries, including Saudi Arabia, China and Russia prefer.

“I am concerned that not everyone is engaging in a constructive manner," German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said in a statement shared with reporters.

Saudi negotiators have pushed for the deal to focus on the emissions that cause climate change, rather than the fuels that cause the emissions, UAE chief negotiator Hana Al Hashimi told reporters Saturday. That necessitates the use of carbon capture — but countries are divided over how much the technology can be used, versus the need to simply stamp out the use of the fuels.

The EU is arguing for the deal at COP28 to include a stipulation that carbon capture and storage (CCS) only be used for the hardest sectors to cut out the use of fossil fuels, such as the manufacture of cement.

“Make no mistake, we cannot CCS ourselves out of the problem,” said EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra at a press conference Friday, adding that carbon capture and storage was “a minor part of the solution space.”

Advocates for a fossil fuel phase-out deal believe it will scare investors away from fossil fuel projects. “One thing I know to absolute certainty,” Kerry said, “we are not going to go back to the old energy paradigm, you can absolutely bank on that. We are not going back.”

Copernicus – November 2023 was the warmest November recorded.

Autumn 2023 was the warmest Autumn recorded

Past 12 months were the warmest 12 months recorded

More than a third of days in 2023 were more than 1.5°C above preindustrial level

Copernicus

_________

• Growth of Chinese fossil CO2 emissions drives new global record in 2023

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement have increased by 1.1% in 2023, hitting a new record high of 36.8bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to the 2023 Global Carbon Budget report by the Global Carbon Project.

The new report finds that the increase in fossil emissions in 2023 has been largely driven by increased emissions in China – without which the global total would have remained approximately flat at 2022 levels.

Total global CO2 emissions – including land use and fossil CO2 – increased by approximately 0.5% in 2023, driven by a combination of a small drop in land-use emissions, but an increase in fossil CO2 emissions.

However, total CO2 emissions remain ever so slightly below the highs set in 2019 and have been relatively flat since 2015.

The 18th edition of the Global Carbon Budget, which is published today, also reveals:

• Global land-use emissions have likely been falling over the past two decades, driven by decreasing rates of deforestation in Brazil and other countries. However, land-use emissions remain highly uncertain and trends should be interpreted with caution.
• Most of the increase in fossil emissions was from coal and oil. Global coal emissions reached a new record high, though oil emissions still remain below pre-pandemic levels. Gas emissions and those from cement and other sources remained relatively unchanged.
• China’s fossil CO2 emissions are estimated to be up 4% this year, while India’s are up 8.2%. US and European Union emissions are expected to fall by 3% and 7.5%, respectively.
• Emissions from international aviation and shipping have grown by an estimated 11.9% in 2023, reflecting a 28% increase in aviation emissions (as the sector continues to recover from pandemic lows) and a 1% increase in shipping emissions.
• Global CO2 concentrations in 2023 set a new record of 419.3 parts per million (ppm), up 2.4ppm from 2022 levels. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are now 51% above pre-industrial levels.

________

• ‘Unprecedented mass coral bleaching’ expected in 2024, says expert

Record-breaking land and sea temperatures, driven by climate breakdown, will probably cause “unprecedented mass coral bleaching and mortality” throughout 2024, according to a pioneering coral scientist.

The impact of climate change on coral reefs has reached “uncharted territory”, said Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, from the University of Queensland, Australia, leading to concerns that we could be at a “tipping point”.

The upper ocean is undergoing unmatched changes in conditions, ecosystems and communities that can be traced back to the 1980s, when mass coral bleaching first appeared. In a paper published in the journal Science, US and Australian researchers say that historical data on sea surface temperatures, over four decades, suggests that this year’s extreme marine heatwaves may be a precursor to a mass bleaching and coral mortality event across the Indo-Pacific in 2024-25.

Mass coral bleaching happens when delicate corals become stressed due to factors including heat, causing them to lose their brown microbial algae, turning them white. At low stress levels, the algae can return to corals over a few months. But many Caribbean reef areas have recently experienced historically high sea temperatures that began one or two months earlier and lasted longer than usual.

Crucially, 2023 is the first year of a potential pair of El Niño years, with the warmest average global surface sea temperature from February to July on record. Since 1997, every instance of these El Niño pairs has led to a global mass coral bleaching event.

Hoegh-Guldberg, whose work has helped to shape the world’s understanding of the risks to the ocean’s richest ecosystems, said: “The probability is that somewhere in the next 12 to 24 months, we are going see El Niño combine with warming sea temperatures and have a really big impact.

“We are literally in uncharted territory, which we know very little about and don’t know how to respond to and I think we’re dangerously exposed.”

“We don’t know the implications of such a spike in temperature,” said the scientist, speaking from Dubai, where he is attending the Cop28 climate summit. “We may see storms that are even larger than the ones we’ve been seeing. These are the warmest temperatures ever on land and sea.”

________

• Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn

Many of the gravest threats to humanity are drawing closer, as carbon pollution heats the planet to ever more dangerous levels, scientists have warned.

Five important natural thresholds already risk being crossed, according to the Global Tipping Points report, and three more may be reached in the 2030s if the world heats 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial temperatures.

Triggering these planetary shifts will not cause temperatures to spiral out of control in the coming centuries but will unleash dangerous and sweeping damage to people and nature that cannot be undone.

“Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity,” said Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute. “They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse.”

The tipping points at risk include the collapse of big ice sheets in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the widespread thawing of permafrost, the death of coral reefs in warm waters, and the collapse of one oceanic current in the North Atlantic.

Unlike other changes to the climate such as hotter heatwaves and heavier rainfall, these systems do not slowly shift in line with greenhouse gas emissions but can instead flip from one state to an entirely different one. When a climatic system tips – sometimes with a sudden shock – it may permanently alter the way the planet works.

Scientists warn that there are large uncertainties around when such systems will shift but the report found that three more may soon join the list. These include mangroves and seagrass meadows, which are expected to die off in some regions if the temperatures rise between 1.5C and 2C, and boreal forests, which may tip as early as 1.4C of heating or as late as 5C.

The warning comes as world leaders meet for the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai. On Tuesday, Climate Action Tracker estimated that their emissions targets for 2030 put the planet on track to heat 2.5C by the end of the century, despite promises from countries at a previous summit to try to limit it to 1.5C.

The tipping point report, produced by an international team of 200 researchers and funded by Bezos Earth Fund, is the latest in a series of warnings about the most extreme effects of climate change.

Scientists have warned that some of the shifts can create feedback loops that heat the planet further or alter weather patterns in a way that triggers other tipping points.

The researchers said the systems were so tightly linked they could not rule out “tipping cascades”. If the Greenland ice sheet disintegrates, for instance, it could lead to an abrupt shift in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an important current that delivers most of the heat to the gulf stream. That, in turn, can intensify the El Niño southern oscillation, one of the most powerful weather patterns on the planet.

The co-author Sina Loriani, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said tipping-point risks could be disastrous and should be taken very seriously, despite the remaining uncertainties.

“Crossing these thresholds may trigger fundamental and sometimes abrupt changes that could irreversibly determine the fate of essential parts of our Earth system for the coming hundreds or thousands of years,” he said.

• Cop28: China ‘would like to see agreement to substitute renewables for fossil fuels’

China would like to see nations agree to substitute renewable energy for fossil fuels, the country’s chief climate official has said, as nations wrangled over the weekend on the wording of a deal on the climate crisis.

Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy, would not be explicit on whether China supported or opposed a phase-out of fossil fuels, which more than 100 governments are pushing for at crucial climate talks, the Cop28 UN summit.

But he did indicate that he and his delegation were engaging positively to try to find a compromise on the contentious issue, which has become the focal point of the fortnight-long negotiations, now reaching their final stages in Dubai and scheduled to end on Tuesday.

He gave an indication of what China sees as a possible compromise, by referring to a joint statement made with John Kerry, the US climate envoy, at a meeting in Sunnylands, California, in November. “We had this language which said that both China and the US will massively promote renewable energy deployment and use it to gradually and orderly substitute oil, gas and coal power generation, so that we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Xie said through an interpreter at a small press conference attended by the Guardian on Saturday evening.

He added: “I’ve also heard another option for the language [in a Cop28 agreement] that is to gradually reduce the share of fossil energy in the global energy mix.”

But he said: “Of course, there are also some other options. I will not list them all, and we will not prejudge the final outcome. But I think we will all work together to try to find a language that accommodates the needs of all parties and also reflect the big trends of transition and innovation. I think this is also in line with the requirements of the Paris agreement.”

China is the world’s biggest emitter and the second biggest economy, and is highly dependent on coal. Other delegations have told the Guardian that China has been blocking discussions of a phase-out of fossil fuels.

• Greens erupt as oil, gas and coal ‘phaseout’ is dropped from proposed COP28 climate deal

The prospect of a deal to end fossil fuels faded on Monday in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, when organizers of the U.N. climate summit released a draft proposal that merely suggested reducing them instead.

That outcome would fall far short of the demands that environmental groups, the U.S., the European Union and vulnerable island nations had laid out before the COP28 summit in Dubai, with some activists saying the talks would be a failure if they did not call for phasing out the production of coal, oil and natural gas.

The draft “really doesn’t meet the expectations of this COP in terms of the urgently needed transition to clean sources of energy and the phaseout of fossil fuels,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said during a fractious, closed-door meeting late Monday night and early Tuesday, which POLITICO listened to via an unsanctioned feed.

But representatives of other countries, including a bloc that includes China and India, said they would not accept any language proposing either a “phaseout” or “phase-down” of specific energy sources.

Negotiations at the Expo City campus on Dubai’s outskirts were expected to continue through the wee hours on Tuesday — the scheduled final day of the summit.

Earlier that evening, summit president Sultan al-Jaber urged the nearly 200 governments assembled to be flexible and make a deal. The “world is watching” after almost two weeks of discussion, said al-Jaber, who is also the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company.

Protesters stood outside chanting: “This text is bullshit.”

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore unloaded on the proposal, saying in a statement that “COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure.”

“The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word,” Gore said. “It is even worse than many had feared.”

The U.S. State Department said the text needs improvements to “secure a strong outcome” for the summit.

“We appreciate the effort on the part of many to produce the text, which seeks to balance a variety of interests,” department spokesperson Chad Houghton said in a statement. But he said some of the language, “including the issue of fossil fuels, needs to be substantially strengthened.”

The text released Monday included a list of measures that nations would agree to pursue — albeit voluntarily. They included tripling global capacity of renewables by 2030, doubling the rate of energy savings through efficiency measures, “rapidly phasing down unabated coal” and limiting licenses for new power plants. The tripling of renewables was a key goal that the U.S. and China had agreed to in a separate meeting last month.

But most controversially, the text avoided the demands from the EU, U.S. and small island nations to “phase out” fossil fuels. (The U.S., EU, Australia and other industrialized countries specifically targeted “unabated” fossil fuels — those whose greenhouse gas pollution is not captured before entering the atmosphere.) Instead, it suggests that countries commit to “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels … so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050.”

Al-Jaber’s proposal was met with dismay by small island nations, the EU and green advocates, who viewed the announcement as a betrayal of their hopes that COP28 would declare unequivocally that fossil fuels must be ended.

“The Republic of the Marshall Islands did not come here to sign our death warrant,” said John Silk, the nation’s minister of natural resources and commerce.

“Overall it is clearly insufficient and not adequate to addressing the problem we’re here to address,” said the EU’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra.

French Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher echoed that sentiment during the closed-door meeting late Monday, saying, “I don’t know what will happens to my kids tomorrow if we stick to this text.”

Others were more sanguine.

Mohamed Adow, the director of the Power Shift Africa think tank, said the deal “lays the ground for transformational change.”

He said it was a compromise between oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which opposed any mention of fossil fuels, and the more “progressive” nations. “We will be lucky if we get this adopted.”

Two diplomats from African countries, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the sensitive discussions, said that for many countries on their continent the idea of a fossil fuel phaseout was unworkable.

“It was a non-starter,” said one.

Bolivian official Diego Pacheco Balanza, speaking in the closed meeting on behalf of a bloc of countries that includes India, China and more than a dozen other large developing countries, said those nations could “see no space for targeting any sources of energy. Any phaseout or phase-down or prescribing actions of countries is unacceptable to us.”

The talks are officially scheduled to conclude by Tuesday, a few days before a winter festival is due to take over the sprawling, eco-futurist Expo City. But Hoekstra, for one, expressed skepticism that a quick conclusion is in store.

“There is a great majority of countries who actually want and demand more in terms of phasing out, and in terms of what is in the text, and in terms of getting rid of coal, and in terms of making this decade the decade in which we show the most urgency,” he said. “And it is up to us to make sure that these voices are being heard and that this is solved in the next day or next days or however long it takes.”

Climate summit draft decision drops fossil fuel phaseout language, instead calling for reduction

________

In other news……..

Al Gore - COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure. The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared. It is “Of the Petrostates, By the Petrostates and For the Petrostates.” It is deeply offensive to all who have taken this process seriously. There are 24 hours left to show whose side the world is on: the side that wants to protect humanity’s future by kickstarting the orderly phase out of fossil fuels or the side of the petrostates and the leaders of the oil and gas companies that are fueling the historic climate catastrophe. In order to prevent COP28 from being the most embarrassing and dismal failure in 28 years of international climate negotiations, the final text must include clear language on phasing out fossil fuels. Anything else is a massive step backwards from where the world needs to be to truly address the climate crisis and make sure the 1.5°C goal doesn’t die in Dubai. https://twitter.com/algore/status/1734238192608411989

• Cop28: second draft text of climate deal calls for ‘transitioning away’ from fossil fuels

A new draft climate agreement released at the Cop28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates has for the first time explicitly called on nations to transition away from fossil fuels to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

But the latest proposed text, released by the Cop president, Sultan Al Jaber, early on Wednesday, did not include an explicit commitment to phase out or phase down fossil fuels, as many countries, civil society groups and scientists have urged.

Instead, it called on countries to contribute to global efforts to transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems “in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.

The release of the proposed compromise followed a fraught 36 hours of negotiations after Al Jaber released a draft which was roundly rejected by rich and poor countries, who described it as “grossly insufficient”, “incoherent” and a “death certificate” for low-lying and vulnerable nations.

The new proposal said countries recognised “the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5C pathways”.

It called for a tripling of global renewable energy capacity by 2030 and repeated previously agreed language that they would accelerate efforts “towards the phase-down of unabated coal power”.

It also called for the development of “zero- and low-emission technologies” including “renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilisation and storage, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production”.

The draft is meant to reflect the consensus view of nearly 200 countries gathered at the conference in Dubai, where scores of governments have insisted on strong language to signal an eventual end to the fossil fuel era against protests from Saudi Arabia and members of the oil producing group OPEC.

Country representatives have been called to what the Cop28 presidency hopes is a final meeting later Wednesday morning, where they could pass the deal and end two weeks of tough negotiations that have run a day into overtime.

Norway’s minister for climate and the environment, Espen Barth Eide, said the new draft was the first time that the world had united around “such a clear text on the need to transition away from fossil fuels”. “It has been the elephant in the room, at last we address it head on,” he said.

Stephen Cornelius, WWF’s deputy global climate and energy lead, said the new draft was a “sorely needed improvement from the last version, which rightly caused outrage”, but should have gone further. “The language on fossil fuels is much improved, but still falls short of calling for the full phase out of coal, oil and gas,” he said.


Rachel Cleetus, policy director and a lead economist for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists the text sent a strong signal that world leaders recognised the need for a sharp turn away from fossil fuels towards clean energy in this decade, aligned with scientific warnings.

“The finance and equity provisions, however, are seriously insufficient and must be improved in the time ahead in order to ensure low- and middle-income countries can transition to clean energy and close the energy poverty gap,” she said.

Melanie Robinson, global climate program director at the World Resources Institute, said: “This text makes a clear call for the world to transition away from fossil fuels and accelerate action this decade. This would dramatically move the needle in the fight against climate change and overcome immense pressure from oil and gas interests.”

But Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, said there were major problems with the text, and it looked like a “major victory for the oil and gas producing countries and fossil fuel exporters”. He said it included no commitment to peak global emissions by 2025, as was necessary, and included language “opens the door to false solutions”.

Deals struck at UN climate summits must be passed by consensus, at which point individual countries are responsible for delivering on the agreements through national policies and investments.

If the language about transitioning away from fossil fuels was adopted it would mark the first time in three decades of COP climate summits that nations agreed on a concerted move away from oil, gas and coal – products that now account for about 80% of global energy.

Scientists say fossil fuels are by far the largest source of the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.

Sultan Al Jaber, president of the talks on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, had earlier engaged in an intense round of shuttle diplomacy throughout Tuesday and had meetings with heads of delegation singly and in groups planned until 3am on Wednesday.

Climate justice advocates have told the Guardian that rich countries have failed to show the leadership necessary to solve the climate crisis, and many are too mired in their own hypocrisy over fossil fuels to break the impasse at Cop28,

Saudi Arabia and a few allied countries were in a small minority that had publicly raised strong objections to the inclusion of any reference to reducing the production and consumption of fossil fuels in the text of a potential deal.

Many developed countries have publicly pushed hard for a phase-out of coal, oil and gas – but with caveats such as “unabated” or just coal, in the case of the US.

In contrast, many in the developing world – despite their desire to see global temperatures limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – say any commitment to phasing out fossil fuels must be “fair, funded, and fast”, with the rich polluting countries transitioning first.

Yawn, zzzzz.

NOAA – November 2023 was the warmest November recorded

Autumn 2023 was the warmest Autumn recorded

January – November 2023 was the warmest Jan – Nov recorded

NOAA

______

• After 30 years of waiting, Cop28 deal addresses the elephant in the room

As temperatures broke records around the world this summer, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, warned in September: “Humanity has opened the gates of hell.”

On Wednesday, he hailed delegates at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, as two weeks of fraught talks ended. “For the first time, the outcome recognises the need to transition away from fossil fuels,” he said. “The era of fossil fuels must end, and it must end with justice and equity.”

_______

• Failure of Cop28 on fossil fuel phase-out is ‘devastating’, say scientists

The failure of Cop28 to call for a phase-out of fossil fuels is “devastating” and “dangerous” given the urgent need for action to tackle the climate crisis, scientists have said.

One called it a “tragedy for the planet and our future” while another said it was the “dream outcome” for the fossil fuel industry.

The UN climate summit ended on Wednesday with a compromise deal that called for a “transition away” from fossil fuels. The stronger term “phase-out” had been backed by 130 of the 198 countries negotiating in Dubai but was blocked by petrostates including Saudi Arabia.

The deal was hailed as historic as it was the first citing of fossil fuels, the root cause of the climate crisis, in 30 years of climate negotiations. But scientists said the agreement contained many loopholes and did not match the severity of the climate emergency.

“The lack of an agreement to phase out fossil fuels was devastating,” said Prof Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. “To ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ was weak tea at best. It’s like promising your doctor that you will ‘transition away from doughnuts’ after being diagnosed with diabetes.”

Dr Magdalena Skipper, the editor in chief of the science journal Nature, said: “The science is clear – fossil fuels must go. World leaders will fail their people and the planet unless they accept this reality.”

An editorial in Nature said the failure over the phase-out was “more than a missed opportunity”, it was “dangerous” and ran “counter to the core goals laid down in the 2015 Paris climate agreement” of limiting global heating to 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels.

“The climate doesn’t care who emits greenhouse gases,” the editorial continued. “There is only one viable path forward, and that is for everybody to phase out almost all fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”

Sir David King, the chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and a former UK chief scientific adviser, said: “The wording of the deal is feeble. Ensuring 1.5C remains viable will require total commitment to a range of far-reaching measures, including full fossil fuel phase-out.”

There was a chasm between the stark statement of the emissions cuts needed and the action proposed to deliver those reductions, he said: “The Cop28 text recognises there is a need for ‘deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions’ to stay in line with 1.5C. But then it lists a whole bunch of efforts that don’t have a chance of achieving that.”

The scientists said the loopholes included the call to “accelerate” carbon capture and storage to trap emissions from burning fossil fuels, an option that can play a minor role at best.

Dr Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London, said: “Until fossil fuels are phased out, the world will continue to become a more dangerous, more expensive and more uncertain place to live. With every vague verb, every empty promise in the final text, millions more people will enter the frontline of climate change and many will die.”

Prof Martin Siegert, a polar scientist and deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Exeter, said: “The science is perfectly clear. Cop28, by not making a clear declaration to stop fossil fuel burning is a tragedy for the planet and our future. The world is heating faster and more powerfully than the Cop response to deal with it.”

Prof Mike Berners-Lee, an expert on carbon footprinting at Lancaster University, said: “Cop28 is the fossil fuel industry’s dream outcome, because it looks like progress, but it isn’t.”

Dr Elena Cantarello, a senior lecturer in sustainability science at Bournemouth University, UK, said: “It is hugely disappointing to see how a very small number of countries have been able to put short-term national interests ahead of the future of people and nature.”

Dr James Dyke, an associate professor in earth system dynamics at the University of Exeter, said: “Cop28 needed to deliver an unambiguous statement. While the agreement’s call for the need to transition away from fossil fuels is welcome, it has numerous caveats and loopholes that risks rendering it meaningless.

“That this deal has been hailed as a landmark is more a measure of previous failures than any step change when it comes to the increasingly urgent need to rapidly stop burning coal, oil and gas.”

The scientists comments echoed those of Anne Rasmussen, the lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States group, whose speech at the closing of Cop28 won a standing ovation from delegates: “It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do.”

Climate science was at the heart of a row that dominated the first week of the summit after the Guardian revealed comments by the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, in which he said: “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.” Al Jaber later said: “I have said over and over the phase-down and the phase-out of fossil fuel is inevitable. In fact, it is essential.”

Dr Lisa Schipper, a professor of development geography at the University of Bonn in Germany, said: “The early statement by the Cop president about the lack of science behind phasing out fossil fuels sent shockwaves to scientists, especially those who had contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s [most recent report], since the science in the report is so clear that fossil fuels need to be phased out to prevent a point of no return.”

Mann said Cop rules needed to be reformed, for example by allowing super-majorities to vote through decisions over the objections of holdout petrostates and by barring oil executives such as Al Jaber, who runs the United Arab Emirate’s state oil company, from presiding over future summits.

“Mend it, don’t end it,” Mann said. “Cops are our only multilateral framework for negotiating global climate policies. But the failure of Cop28 to achieve any meaningful progress at a time when our window of opportunity to limit warming below catastrophic levels is closing, is a source of great concern.”

________

• COP28: IUCN welcomes recognition of nature and urges a fossil-fuel free future

IUCN recognises the decision taken by governments at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) to transition away from fossil fuels as a step forward. We continue to call for greater climate action and a clear phase-out of fossil fuels. This phase-out is imperative to prevent the worst impacts of runaway climate change, and to allow nature to play its full role in addressing the climate crisis.

IUCN welcomes the strong recognition of the contribution of nature in the formal outcomes of the Global Stocktake. We believe that, alongside a rapid and just energy transition, investing in healthy ecosystems and nature-based solutions is critical to keeping the 1.5 C goal alive. Nature will deliver powerful adaptation and mitigation benefits, provided we take ambitious action towards decarbonising our economies and societies.

COP28, which ended today, was exceptional in its recognition of the importance of nature. There was a groundswell of support for jointly addressing the climate and biodiversity crises. Progress was made on a number of key initiatives on nature-based solutions, agriculture, water, mangroves, and oceans, among others.

Science tells us that every increment of warming will result in increased losses and damages for humans and nature alike. As the IUCN Red List update, launched here in Dubai, underscored, climate change is already impacting species and ecosystems, with disastrous consequences for human wellbeing.

A notable achievement at COP28 was the operationalisation of the loss and damage fund, and initial funding pledges to it. We remain concerned at the lack of progress on effectively delivering climate finance, in particular for adaptation. We welcome the greater recognition of the role of Indigenous peoples in safeguarding healthy, biodiverse ecosystems. IUCN calls for greater climate financing to be provided directly to them as a matter of priority.

By recognising the role of nature we are taking steps in the right direction. Combined with scaled-up climate finance and the phase-out of fossil fuels, this will help realise a sustainable future for us all.

The biosphere cannot save us on its own

COP28 Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People

NASA – November 2023 was the warmest November recorded

Autumn (Sept/Oct/Nov) 2023 was the warmest Autumn recorded

NASA

Using NASA data, November 2023 was 1.67 degrees Celsius above the temperature of the 1880-1899 period, which is commonly called “preindustrial” (the difference between the 1951-1980 baseline reported on the NASA website and the 1880-1899 period is 0.226 °C). This is the second-highest departure from average in the NASA database, behind only September 2023 (1.7 °C). Their other top-five departures from average are February 2016 (1.59 °C), March 2016 (1.58 °C), and October 2023 (1.57 °C).

Land and ocean areas each had their warmest November on record in 2023, and November was the eighth consecutive month with record-high global ocean temperatures. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2...ber-on-record/
________

• 2023 Arctic Report Card

NOAA’s 2023 Arctic Report Card documents new records showing that human-caused warming of the air, ocean and land is affecting people, ecosystems and communities across the Arctic region, which is heating up faster than any other part of the world.

Yearly temperatures in the Arctic (red line) compared to the global average (black line) each year from 1900 to 2023. The Arctic monitoring year runs from October of one year through September of the next to avoid splitting the cold season. The Arctic is warming more quickly than the rest of the planet, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification of climate change.

________

Looking ahead……..

Gavin Schmidt - With the November GISTEMP data, the projected 2023 annual mean is certain to be new record, and clearly outside of the spread of the predictions I made at the beginning of the year - underlining the exceptional nature of how this year's anomalies unfolded. https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/s...89013635469663

________

• Changing climate casts a shadow over the future of the Panama Canal – and global trade

Facing a near unprecedented ‘rainfall deficit’, the Panama Canal has been forced to restrict the number of vessels passing through it

From his office perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, Steven Paton looks over the entrance to the Panama Canal; the high rises of the country’s capital resting upon the horizon behind him, and an increasingly long queue of tankers lining up in the bay.

For 33 years his job with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute monitoring the region’s climate has given him a front-row seat to how the weather’s familiar patterns have changed, upending axioms of old and calling into question the future viability of one of the most important trade routes in the world.

Over the last year, as the region has suffered through what Paton calls a “rainfall deficit”, passage through the Panama Canal has slowed and the queue of tankers waiting in the bay to pass through it has grown. Now, with warnings that the situation is set to get much worse, experts say that the effects of a restricted Panama Canal could be felt all over the world.

Connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the canal revolutionised global shipping when it opened in 1914, eliminating the need to travel around the dangerous southern tip of South America, shortening the trip by more than 13,000km.

In 2022, more than 14,000 ships traversed the canal, transporting fuel, grain, minerals and goods from the factories of east Asia to the consumers of New York and beyond. More than 40% of consumer goods traded between north-east Asia and the US east coast are transported through the canal.

To make the journey, ships – some up to 350 metres long – enter through a narrow waterway and rise more than 26 metres above sea level into the man-made Lake Gatun through a series of locks. On the other side of the canal, the process is reversed and the ships descend to sea level through another series of locks before exiting the canal on the other side of the continent.

The locking system relies on fresh water from Lake Gatun and another nearby reservoir to function. Every ship that passes through the canal uses 200m litres of water most of which then flows out into the sea.

The same sources also provide water for more than half of Panama’s 4.3 million inhabitants, forcing administrators to balance the demands of international shipping with the needs of the locals.

Snip

As bad as the situation is at the Panama Canal, experts say the conditions are likely to only get worse next year.

“The expectation is that March to April next year could be the lowest level for Lake Gatun … on record”, says Steven Paton. “Panama’s dry season usually begins earlier than normal during major El Niño events so we’ll get the double whammy. We’ll come in with a deficit and then lose the rainfall earlier.”

The Panama Canal authority has said this prediction matches up with its own forecasts and that it might consider further restrictions on vessels.

Despite falling in the middle of its rainy season, October this year was the driest since 1950, with 41% less rainfall than usual, according to the authority.

“The Canal and the country face the challenge of the upcoming dry season with a minimum water reserve that must guarantee supply for more than 50% of the population and, at the same time, maintain the [canal] operations,” the authority said in October.

Snip

For years, experts have warned that the changing climate will have far-reaching effects on global supply chains and the systems that govern them.

Structures like the Panama Canal are miracles of the modern world – solid totems of engineering wonder that were responsible for accelerating the economic boom of the 20th century, pulling up living standards across the globe and ushering in a revolution in technology, healthcare and consumer culture.

The tacit implication was that the natural world had been tamed. But as the seas rise and temperatures soar, those assumptions are falling like dominoes.

JMA – November 2023 was the warmest November recorded

Five Warmest Years (Anomalies)

1st. 2023 (+0.76°C), 2nd. 2015 (+0.42°C), 3rd. 2020 (+0.36°C), 4th. 2021 (+0.29°C), 5th. 2019 (+0.28°C)

Autumn 2023 was the warmest Autumn recorded

Five Warmest Years (Anomalies)

1st. 2023 (+0.75°C), 2nd. 2015 (+0.38°C), 3rd. 2019 (+0.31°C), 4th. 2021 (+0.30°C), 5th. 2020 (+0.29°C)

Japan Meteorological Agency

__________

• Is climate change speeding up? Here’s what the science says.

For the past several years, a small group of scientists has warned that sometime early this century, the rate of global warming — which has remained largely steady for decades — might accelerate. Temperatures could rise higher, faster. The drumbeat of weather disasters may become more insistent.

And now, after what is poised to be the hottest year in recorded history, the same experts believe that it is already happening.

In a paper published last month, climate scientist James E. Hansen and a group of colleagues argued that the pace of global warming is poised to increase by 50 percent in the coming decades, with an accompanying escalation of impacts.

According to the scientists, an increased amount of heat energy trapped within the planet’s system — known as the planet’s “energy imbalance” — will accelerate warming. “If there’s more energy coming in than going out, you get warmer, and if you double that imbalance, you’re going to get warmer faster,” Hansen said in a phone interview.

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Berkeley Earth, has similarly called the last few months of temperatures “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” and noted, “there is increasing evidence that global warming has accelerated over the past 15 years.”

But not everyone agrees. University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann has argued that no acceleration is visible yet: “The truth is bad enough,” he wrote in a blog post. Many other researchers also remain skeptical, saying that while such an increase may be predicted in some climate simulations, they don’t see it clearly in the data from the planet itself. At least not yet.

The Washington Post used a data set from NASA to to analyze global average surface temperatures from 1880 to 2023.

The record shows that the pace of warming clearly sped up around the year 1970. Scientists have long known that this acceleration stems from a steep increase in greenhouse gas emissions, combined with efforts in many countries to reduce the amount of sun-reflecting pollution in the air. But the data is much more uncertain on whether a second acceleration is underway.

The increased rate of global warming

Values are relative to the 1951-1980 global mean temperature, in degrees Celsius

Between 1880 and 1969, the planet warmed slowly — at a rate of around 0.04 degrees Celsius (0.07 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. But starting around the early 1970s, warming accelerated — reaching 0.19 degrees C (0.34 degrees F) per decade between 1970 and 2023.

That acceleration isn’t controversial. Prior to the 1970s and 1980s, humans were burning fossil fuels — but also were releasing huge amounts of air pollution, or aerosols. Sulfate aerosols are lightly colored particles that have the ability to temporarily offset part of the warming caused by fossil fuels. They reflect sunlight back to space themselves, and also influence the formation of reflective clouds.

The more aerosols in the air, the slower the planet will heat up: a trade-off that Hansen calls a “Faustian bargain.” The idea is that because the aerosol pollutants have dangerous health effects on people, eventually societies decide to clean them up — causing dramatic warming to reveal itself in the process.

In the early and mid-20th century, developed countries were so heavily polluted that the world was warming slowly. “This was the era of the London fogs and of very extreme pollution in the U.S.,” said Gabi Hegerl, a climatologist at the University of Edinburgh. A recent study in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, for instance, found that in the 1980s these particles offset approximately 80 percent of climate warming.

Since the 1970s and 80s, however, the influence of aerosol pollution has leveled off, thanks in part to policies like the U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. As the figure above shows, at the same time, greenhouse gas emissions have climbed — leaving aerosols unable to keep up. The result is a planet that is warming much faster now than in the first half of the 20th century.

But the data is murkier when it comes to whether the pace of warming over the past few decades has quickened even more — an increase that could accelerate the wildfires, floods, heat waves and other impacts around the globe. It may require more years of evidence to clear the statistical hurdles that climate science demands.

“I think we probably need maybe three or four more years" of data, said Chris Smith, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds. “It’s just a bit too early right now.”

Scientists are wary, in part, because some had reached the opposite conclusion roughly a decade ago. Back then, a few scientists and many political commentators suggested that the rate of climate change had stalled or was slowing down. The case for what some called a warming “hiatus” was never especially strong — and in retrospect it does not appear that the rate of warming substantially changed — but it serves as a cautionary note about declarations that warming is getting faster or slower.

To see why matters are currently ambiguous, consider the following “trend of trends” figure, based on an analysis by Mark Richardson, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who published a statistics paper last year that found that an acceleration of warming is not yet clearly detectable.

Richardson looked at each 30-year trend in the NASA temperature record, starting with the period from 1880 to 1909 and ending with the period from 1994 to 2023. Higher values indicate higher rates of global warming. Here, we show the result from the period between 1941 and 1970 onward, to better tease out how the rate of warming changed in the second half of the 20th century, and whether it is still changing now:

While there is a hint of an increasing warming rate at the very end of the record, it is nowhere nearly as pronounced as the shift since 1970. This helps explain why many scientists are remaining noncommittal, for now, on acceleration.

“The temperature near the Earth is only a thin layer, and it’s easy for the temperatures to swing about a lot,” Richardson said. For this reason, it takes longer for scientists to be sure that a change is outside what you would normally expect, he said.

But some scientists believe that the temperature data is simply not yet showing an impending acceleration.

Hansen argues that recent changes in aerosols will cause a strong increase in the warming rate in just the next few years. In 2020, the International Maritime Organization instituted a rule requiring a substantial reduction in the sulfur content of fuel oil. Sulfate aerosol pollution from ocean shipping plunged.

Much of the current debate over whether warming is getting faster turns on the consequences of these maritime changes, which have the potential to affect how much heat is being absorbed over enormous stretches of the world’s oceans. Hansen and his co-authors argue that the change in ship emissions is contributing to a major increase in the Earth’s energy imbalance — the extra amount of heat that is staying within the Earth system rather than escaping to space. But not all scientists agree that the pollution regulations for ocean-going vessels have had such an outsize impact.

Hansen acknowledges that the global surface temperature data, alone, isn’t presenting an entirely clear picture of acceleration yet – but he predicts that it will be soon, as temperatures spike much further in the current El Niño.

“There won’t be any argument [by] late next spring, we’ll be way off the trend line,” Hansen said.

Some climate models also predict an acceleration of warming in the years to come, as aerosols decline. “While there is increasing evidence of an acceleration of warming, it’s not necessarily ‘worse than we thought’ because scientists largely expected something like this,” said Hausfather.

Most agree that it’s too early to tell if the second acceleration is underway. “Trying to estimate the underlying rate of warming from a short time period is really hard,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.

“Just because you get a trend that looks like it’s really rapid — that doesn’t tell you what the underlying rate of warming is.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/to...ys/ar-AA1m2KRr

___________

• 2023’s costliest climate disasters show poor lose out in ‘global postcode lottery’

A list of the 20 costliest climate disasters of 2023 has revealed a “global postcode lottery stacked against the poor”, according to an analysis.

The research by the charity Christian Aid found that devastating wildfires and floods are hitting those who can least afford to rebuild, and the countries that have contributed least to the climate crisis by burning far fewer fossil fuels than wealthy nations, which have faced fewer climate disasters.

The cost ranges from more than $4,000 (£3,155) per person due to a wildfire in Hawaiito $9 (£7) per person due to flooding in Peru.

The research examined 20 natural disasters exacerbated by climate breakdown that hit 14 countries over the past year. The highest per capita cost was the wildfires in Hawaii in August, which far outstrips the second costliest, which was Guam’s storms in May, at a cost of nearly $1,500 (£1,182) per person.

The analysis published on Wednesday highlights that countries with worse infrastructure and flimsier homes face larger costs after a climate disaster as their inhabited areas are more easily destroyed. In the areas where people have faced the highest costs, many are employed in agriculture, which is vulnerable to extreme weather, and the government is less likely to invest in prevention or rebuilding.

Patrick Watt, the chief executive of Christian Aid, said: “When it comes to the climate crisis, there is a global postcode lottery that is stacked against the poor. In poorer countries, people are often less prepared for climate-related disasters and have fewer resources with which to bounce back. The upshot is that more people die, and recovery is slower and more unequal. There is a double injustice in the fact that the communities worst affected by global warming have contributed little to the problem.

“Governments urgently need to take further action at home and internationally, to cut emissions, and adapt to the effects of climate change. And where the impacts go beyond what people can adapt to, the loss and damage fund must be resourced to compensate the poorest countries for the effects of a crisis that isn’t of their making.”

Loss and damage, which refers to payments from wealthier, more polluting countries to those who emit fewer fossil fuels but bear the brunt of climate breakdown, has become part of climate negotiations in recent years. Developing countries have demanded climate justice after facing disasters that have been extremely costly to fix. At the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai this year, wealthy countries most responsible for the climate emergency promised a combined total of just over $700m (£556m) to the loss and damage fund – the equivalent of less than 0.2% of the irreversible economic and non-economic losses developing countries are facing from global heating every year.

The top 20 climate disasters in 2023 by cost per capita

1 Hawaii, US, wildfire – $4,161
2 Guam, storm – $1,455
3 Vanuatu, storm – $947
4 New Zealand, storm – $468
5 New Zealand, flood – $371
6 Italy, flood – $164
7 Libya, flood – $105
8 Peru, flood – $66
9 Spain, drought – $50
10 Myanmar, storm – $41
11 Chile, flood – $39
12 Haiti, flood – $36
13 Mexico, storm – $35
14 Chile, wildfire – $30
15 US, storm – $25
16 China, flood – $23
17 Peru, storm – $20
18 Malawi, storm – $17
19 US, storm – $16
20 Peru, flood – $9

• Ski resorts battle for a future as snow declines in climate crisis

After promising early dumps of snow in some areas of Europe this autumn, the pattern of recent years resumed and rain and sleet took over.

In the ski resorts of Morzine and Les Gets in the French Alps, the heavy rainfall meant that full opening of resorts was delayed until two days before Christmas, leaving the industry and the millions of tourists planning trips to stare at the sky in hope.

But no amount of wishing and hoping will overcome what is an existential threat to skiing in the Alps, an industry worth $30bn (£23.8bn) that provides the most popular ski destination in the world.

The science is clear, and is spelled out in carefully weighed-up peer reviewed reports. The most recent, this year, warned that at 2C of global heating above pre-industrial levels, 53% of the 28 European resorts examined would be at very high risk of a scarce amount of snow.

Scarce snow has been defined as the poorest coverage seen on average every five years between 1961 and 1990.

If the world were to hit 4C of heating, 98% of the resorts would be at very high risk of scarce snow cover.

Another study has revealed the way in which snow cover in the Alps has had an “unprecedented” decline over the past 600 years, with the duration of the cover now shorter by 36 days.

Some respond by holding on to the idea that skiing will and can survive if global temperatures are kept to the limits set by the Paris agreement, and if the industry adapts.

But rumblings of discontent at the lack of action to ensure the survival of the sport by the International Ski Federation (FIS) broke into the open this year.

The FIS was at the centre of a climate row in 2019 when Gian Franco Kasper, its president at the time, revealed himself as a climate denier in an interview, arguing that he would rather mingle with dictators than have to deal with environmentalists.

He subsequently left and was replaced by Johan Eliasch. But that has not taken the heat off the federation.

This year 500 professional winter sports athletes published a letter calling for greater climate action by FIS. They highlighted a competition schedule that forced skiers to take air flights backwards and forwards over the Atlantic from week to week, creating unnecessarily large carbon footprints, and called on the federation to open the season later and end it earlier to respect the changing climate.

This was followed in October by a petition calling for the federation to do more to tackle climate change, which has attracted more than 35,000 signatures.

The campaign wants the FIS to publish its own environmental impact with full transparency, move the race calendar by at least one month to respect the changing climate, reduce the requirement for air travel, and use its political influence to advocate for climate action at a governmental level.

The FIS said that as a signatory to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework (UNFCCC) it was committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. “We are working on a sustainability plan that will see us collecting as much data during the upcoming winter season as possible to provide the most accurate estimate of our CO2 footprint.

“We have delayed the start of the season for one week and will continue to closely monitor whether we need to start the season even later.”

Dom Winter, of Protect our Winters UK, which is behind the petition, said the science showed the death of skiing was not inevitable if global emissions were reduced and that was motivating climate action in the winter sports community. “The future of winter sport relies on how well we reduce emissions in the coming decades,” said Winter.

He added: “Certainly at 2C the lower elevation resorts would be in big trouble. But there will still be places with natural snow in the Alps, so higher elevation resorts could survive. The concern is how expensive and elitist they might become.”

Small amounts of snowmaking would help to keep some resorts going, he said, particularly those at lower altitude. But snowmaking at scale will never be able to supplant real snow as it is too expensive and uses too much energy and water.

According to the most recent study, the use of snowmaking to achieve 50% snow coverage on pistes reduces the number of European resorts at high risk of loss of snow cover to 27% at 2C and 71% at 4C.

Although the same study shows emissions from snowmaking are small, at just 2% of overall resort emissions, artificial snow use at scale creates problems in energy and water use.

A study by the University of Basel found resorts located below 1,800 to 2,000 metres would have to abandon their lower slopes and increasingly rely on artificial snow to keep just their higher slopes open.

The impact of artificial snow use for up to 100 consecutive days would raise water consumption by about 540m litres of water and pitch resorts against local communities because of competition over water use.

In the French Alps water consumption could increase ninefold by 2100 from this reliance on artificial snow, according to the study.

The federation said only by using carbon offsetting would it be possible to meet the 1.5c target of the Paris Agreement; and it had created the FIS Rainforest Initiative to do so.

So while some are pushing for the industry to do more to adapt to keep the sport alive, others are working to embrace a new future rather than concentrating everything on the one sport.

In Morzine, the non-profit sustainability Montagne Verte group is working at grassroots level to support a move to a low-carbon future in the area.

Cécile Burton, general manager of Montagne Verte, said: “Temperatures in the Alps are rising at more than twice the global average and that is not good news for an industry dependent on snow.

“Our approach is to focus on four-season tourism in the valley and to make the valley and mountains somewhere you can live all year.

“There is life after skiing but we have to adapt and we have to imagine what our future will look like. This is an area where you can climb, mountain bike, walk, or just be in the environment and that is all year round.

“We need to put more value in other times of the year not only from an environmental and sustainability perspective but from a human perspective because for somewhere to be a place you can live in all year round you have to have employment all year round.”

As well as working to envision and support a new future, the collective works with local politicians and the industry to push for policies that reduce emissions.

Most emissions from skiing come from the tourist flights to resorts, car travel in resorts, and energy used in the accommodation, so Montagne Verte is working on persuading politicians and businesses to move to car-free resorts.

The group recently took eight local mayors to the car-free resort of Zermatt in Switzerland to examine whether Morzine could follow where that resort had led.

The group has also succeeded in encouraging 100 businesses to become part of an Alpine express pass that offers discounts for snow passes, ski guides, spas massages and yoga to people who travel to their holiday by train.

Al Judge, president of the luxury chalet holiday company AliKats is trying to adapt for the day when the snow stops.

“We want to move the focus of our season from winter skiing,” said Judge. “Summer is our second biggest season, but we are trying to focus on getting a stronger demand for spring and autumn holidays so that when the snow does stop we have adapted to become a four-season, year round, business.”

Zeke Hausfather - Finally, we can look at absolute global temperatures for 2023 compared to prior years in the JRA-55 dataset: https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1742296425231466604

Zeke Hausfather - Here are monthly temperature anomalies for the year, showing how 2023 was far warmer than any prior year for each month of the year from June onward, with a particularly large record (0.5C!) set in September: https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1742296422249374163