Real zero vs net zero

The original idea of net zero was that we would cut emissions as close to zero by 2050 as we could, and what was left over we would try to offset.

This was greeted with cries of glee by big oil, airlines and others.   They decided not to wait until 2050, but to start immediately "reducing" their emissions by buying carbon offsets.   So, for example, an Ozzie petrol (gasoline) company started selling its "zero carbon" petrol.  How did it achieve this miracle?  But buying carbon offsets.  Qantas "offset" the emissions from its flights.   An electric utility announced its "green" credentials.  Zero emissions, it trumpeted, thanks to offsets.

But these offsets were dodgy.  For example, a farmer who had been paid not to clear scrub off some of his land admitted that he was never going to clear the land anyway.  The payments for the "offsets" were a handy increase to his income, but had absolutely zero effect on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.  

Peasants who promised not to clear some jungle near them were paid for these "offsets" and then, when this was checked up on 10 years later, were found to have cleared the jungle anyway.  Did they give that money back?  What do you think?  

CCS (Carbon capture and storage) projects used the carbon dioxide sucked from the atmosphere to increase the oil that could be pumped from underground.  And the CO2 likely escaped back into the atmosphere anyway.  

Forests planted to "remove CO2 from the atmosphere" burned down in one of Oz's periodic and ever more frequent bushfires thus putting all that carbon back in the atmosphere.  Meanwhile, of course, emissions kept on rising.

Net zero is irredeemably sullied.  It's a nonsense.  A lie.  A way to let hoi polloi believe that something is being done, when nothing is.  A way for carbon polluters to pretend they care.

So we need real zero.  We need to cut emissions by some minimum percentage each year, year after year, no phiffing and phaffing around with accounting book entries.  Real cuts to emissions.  Real reductions.  Real progress.

Also:  none of those blithely promising net zero by 2050 will be around in 2050 to explain why we haven't achieved it.  So we need annual targets, not so far-away airy-fairy promise.

If we all cut our emissions by just 3% a year, we would cut them by a cumulative 53% by 2050.  If we could increase that by 1%, to 4% a year, annual emissions would fall by 64% by 2050.

Both of these targets are feasible.   Together, electricity generation and land transport are responsible for ~50% of total CO2 emissions.  Given the fall in solar, battery and EV costs, which have made these cheaper than their fossil fuel alternatives, we will be able to cut emissions by 50% over the next 25 years as we replace coal power stations with zero-carbon alternatives and petrol cars and lorries with EVs.  We can replace gas heating by heat pumps, which will cut emissions by another ~8%.  

That still leaves air travel, steel and cement.  Yet here, too, we are making slow progress.  Then there's agriculture.  We might be saved despite ourselves by the growth of vat meat and milk, which will slash emissions and allow cleared land to be reforested.  

We can do it, but we must be alert to the scams fossil fuelists will try to fob us off with.  Let's start by banning the term net zero.

Big oil's deceptive climate ads

Source: 5 Examples of Greenwashing

From Inside Climate News

Four of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies have spent the last 25 years deceptively portraying themselves as leaders in addressing climate change while simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production and failing to meaningfully rein in their planet-heating emissions, according to a report released Thursday that examined over 300 of the companies’ climate-related advertisements from 2000 to 2025.

These ads collectively serve to mask the harmful impacts of the companies’ operations and to perpetuate a false narrative that the oil industry is an essential partner in the fight against climate change, the Center for Climate Integrity found.

CCI, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization supporting efforts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate harms, said its analysis is the first of its kind scrutinizing hundreds of climate-relevant ads from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell across the first quarter of the 21st century.

It was around the turn of the century, when outright denial of the reality of climate change had become untenable, that the fossil fuel industry pivoted in its messaging and advertising strategy toward promoting false promises and solutions for tackling the problem, CCI says in “Big Oil’s Deceptive Climate Ads.”

The report identifies and discusses seven categories of deceptive advertising during this time period, including overstating actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; exaggerating investments in renewable energy; deflecting responsibility by shifting it onto consumers; and falsely promoting natural gas, carbon capture, hydrogen and algae biofuels as viable climate solutions.

“Big Oil’s climate deception has evolved from lying about the problem to lying about solutions,” Richard Wiles, CCI’s president, said in a statement. “For two and half decades now, these companies have sold the public a false and misleading image of their industry as working to solve the climate crisis, all while doubling down on fossil fuels and making the problem worse.”

The analysis draws upon publicly accessible sources such as digital advertising libraries and archives, congressional investigations and reports, and corporate and public relations documents. It adds to a growing body of evidence of a decades-long and ongoing campaign of deception by the industry to deny or downplay its climate impacts, to delay the transition to clean energy and to obstruct climate action.

A joint staff report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Budget Committee released last year documents how major oil companies use what the Democrats described as deceptive messaging and tactics to promote false promises of new technologies and to mislead about their commitments to reducing emissions and about the climate safety of natural gas. The report marked the culmination of a multi-year investigation that involved hearings and subpoenas and revealed numerous internal company documents.

“As this joint report makes clear, the industry’s outright denial of climate change has evolved into a green-seeming cover for its ongoing covert operation—a campaign of deception, disinformation, and doublespeak waged using dark money, phony front groups, false economics, and relentless exertion of political influence—to block climate progress,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), then-chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a press release accompanying that report.

Greenwashed or deceptive advertising has also been a key part of this campaign, the CCI report says.

“In advertisements targeting the public, these four Big Oil companies repeatedly misrepresented the sustainability of their business practices, deflected responsibility for fueling climate harms, and lied about the viability of their proposed climate solutions, from carbon capture and storage to algae biofuels,” the report concludes.

Inside Climate News reached out to BP, Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil for comment. None immediately responded. Companies such as Exxon have pushed back in court against allegations of deceptive advertising by claiming the allegations are attacks on their protected free speech rights.

Ads touting the companies’ emission-reduction initiatives, the report found, tend to overinflate the impact of these actions and create a misleading impression that the companies have dramatically lowered their overall emissions. But in reality, the actions typically are limited to oil companies’ operational emissions, such as reducing flaring, and do not account for emissions generated by their products, which make up the vast majority of their carbon pollution.

Furthermore, ads highlighting future plans or promises to reduce emissions and transition to low-carbon business models are misleading, the report says, especially considering that the companies are now rolling back their green commitments.

“In 2024, less than four years after advertising plans to change their business plans to support a shift towards net zero emissions, BP and Shell both abandoned goals to significantly reduce emissions and lower the carbon intensity of their businesses,” the report says.

Some other ads from these companies published since 2000 depict them embracing renewable energy like wind and solar, but as the report says, this obscures the reality that oil companies’ actual investments in renewables are miniscule: “One analysis found that between 2010 and 2018, BP spent only 2.3 percent of its total capital expenditure on renewables, Shell spent 1.3 percent, Chevron spent 0.23 percent, and ExxonMobil spent 0.22 percent.”

In some cases, oil companies are also abandoning renewable energy projects and cutting back on their low carbon portfolio spending. BP and Shell, for example, are scrapping wind energy development, and earlier this year Shell announced plans to slash investments in low-carbon energy from 20 percent to 10 percent of its total capital expenditure by 2030. This week, ExxonMobil revealed its updated corporate plan that includes reducing its spending on low-carbon investments by one-third.

Another category of oil company ads the report identifies as deceptive is one in which responsibility for reducing emissions is shifted onto individual consumers. BP, through its advertising and PR, for example, popularized the concept of the individual’s carbon footprint, the report says. These types of ads deflect from the role that the oil and gas industry has played in locking society into dependency on its products, the report contends.

Big oil company advertisements touting natural gas as clean or climate-friendly or as an essential partner to renewable energy ignore the reality that gas still contributes substantially to climate change, especially considering methane venting and leakage, the report says. Natural gas is composed almost entirely of methane, which is a greenhouse gas that is 84 times more powerful than CO2 over a 20-year timeframe.

In addition to promoting what the report calls the false solution of natural gas, oil companies have used advertising to highlight and push false promises about carbon capture and storage and about hydrogen, claiming these technologies are key to a low-carbon future.

Carbon capture technologies have existed for decades and have failed to sequester more than a miniscule amount of global emissions. Most carbon capture and storage operations also end up using the captured CO2 to extract more oil—a process known as enhanced oil recovery—which critics say cancels out much of the supposed climate benefit and serves to further prolong the fossil fuel era.

Hydrogen, meanwhile, is conventionally produced using fossil fuels, and so-called green hydrogen made from water does not yet exist on any large scale. Despite company advertisements touting hydrogen’s promise, it remains decades away from wide-scale deployment, and almost all hydrogen production today is based on fossil fuels, contrary to its depictions in company ads as a clean fuel, the report says.

The report also discusses advertisements by ExxonMobil around algae biofuels, arguing the company deceptively portrayed these fuels as a climate solution when in reality it was never seriously committed to investing and scaling the technology. “While Exxon poured millions of dollars into algae advertisements, the company never built a commercial-scale algae biofuels facility—which would have cost around $5 billion—and ended its funding for algae research entirely in late-2022,” the report said.

Hundreds of ads across these categories from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell over the last 25 years collectively “feed a larger false narrative that oil and gas companies are part of the solution to climate change,” the report concludes, which allows them to sustain their social license to operate while they continue expanding production and fueling the climate crisis.

The report comes as the industry faces dozens of climate accountability lawsuits aiming to hold companies accountable for deceptive conduct, including ongoing greenwashing and false or misleading advertising. Some of the cases are already in pre-trial discovery and are closer than ever to getting to the stage of a public trial.

CCI says its analysis is intended to support these efforts.

“Any business that floods consumers with such brazenly deceptive advertising must be held accountable,” Wiles said.

Earth is trapping twice as much heat

Earth is trapping much more heat than climate models forecast – and the rate has doubled in 20 years

Ice and reflective clouds reflect heat back to space. As the Earth heats up, most trapped heat goes into the oceans but some melts ice and heats the land and air. Pictured: Icebergs from the Jacobshavn glacier in Greenland, the largest outside Antarctica. Ashley Cooper/Getty

From The Conversation

How do you measure climate change? One way is by recording temperatures in different places over a long period of time. While this works well, natural variation can make it harder to see longer-term trends.

But another approach can give us a very clear sense of what’s going on: track how much heat enters Earth’s atmosphere and how much heat leaves. This is Earth’s energy budget, and it’s now well and truly out of balance.

Our recent research found this imbalance has more than doubled over the last 20 years. Other researchers have come to the same conclusions. This imbalance is now substantially more than climate models have suggested.

In the mid-2000s, the energy imbalance was about 0.6 watts per square metre (W/m2) on average. In recent years, the average was about 1.3 W/m2. This means the rate at which energy is accumulating near the planet’s surface has doubled.

These findings suggest climate change might well accelerate in the coming years. Worse still, this worrying imbalance is emerging even as funding uncertainty in the United States threatens our ability to track the flows of heat.

Earth’s energy budget functions a bit like your bank account, where money comes in and money goes out. If you reduce your spending, you’ll build up cash in your account. Here, energy is the currency.

Life on Earth depends on a balance between heat coming in from the Sun and heat leaving. This balance is tipping to one side.

Solar energy hits Earth and warms it. The atmosphere’s heat-trapping greenhouse gases keep some of this energy.

But the burning of coal, oil and gas has now added more than two trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. These trap more and more heat, preventing it from leaving.

Some of this extra heat is warming the land or melting sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. But this is a tiny fraction. Fully 90% has gone into the oceans due to their huge heat capacity.

Earth naturally sheds heat in several ways. One way is by reflecting incoming heat off of clouds, snow and ice and back out to space. Infrared radiation is also emitted back to space.

From the beginning of human civilisation up until just a century ago, the average surface temperature was about 14°C. The accumulating energy imbalance has now pushed average temperatures 1.3-1.5°C higher.

Scientists keep track of the energy budget in two ways.

First, we can directly measure the heat coming from the Sun and going back out to space, using the sensitive radiometers on monitoring satellites. This dataset and its predecessors date back to the late 1980s.

Second, we can accurately track the build-up of heat in the oceans and atmosphere by taking temperature readings. Thousands of robotic floats have monitored temperatures in the world’s oceans since the 1990s.

Both methods show the energy imbalance has grown rapidly.

The doubling of the energy imbalance has come as a shock, because the sophisticated climate models we use largely didn’t predict such a large and rapid change.

Typically, the models forecast less than half of the change we’re seeing in the real world.

We don’t yet have a full explanation. But new research suggests changes in clouds is a big factor.

Clouds have a cooling effect overall. But the area covered by highly reflective white clouds has shrunk, while the area of jumbled, less reflective clouds has grown.

It isn’t clear why the clouds are changing. One possible factor could be the consequences of successful efforts to reduce sulfur in shipping fuel from 2020, as burning the dirtier fuel may have had a brightening effect on clouds. However, the accelerating energy budget imbalance began before this change.

Natural fluctuations in the climate system such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation might also be playing a role. Finally – and most worryingly – the cloud changes might be part of a trend caused by global warming itself, that is, a positive feedback on climate change.

These findings suggest recent extremely hot years are not one-offs but may reflect a strengthening of warming over the coming decade or longer.

This will mean a higher chance of more intense climate impacts from searing heatwaves, droughts and extreme rains on land, and more intense and long lasting marine heatwaves.

This imbalance may lead to worse longer-term consequences. New research shows the only climate models coming close to simulating real world measurements are those with a higher “climate sensitivity”. That means these models predict more severe warming beyond the next few decades in scenarios where emissions are not rapidly reduced.

One could despair.  Yet we're far from helpless.  

We can get to 95% renewables in our grid with solar plus storage plus wind, without compromising the reliability of our grids, and we can do this between latitudes of at least 55 degrees north or south of the equator.   Every country should be moving as rapidly as possible to this goal, and when I say as rapidly as possible, I don't mean that we should get there by 2040 but by 2030.   +-30% of emissions come from electricity generation. 

We can run almost all our land transport using battery-electric vehicles.  (+-20% of emissions)  The problem here is that even when we get to 100% EV sales, it will still take a decade or more for the existing stock of vehicles to be completely switched to EVs.  Governments need to tweak tax policy to accelerate EV sales as well as buybacks of old petrol and diesel cars.

If we also start using heat pumps instead of gas/oil heaters, we could cut emissions by a total of 60% over the next ten years.  It's doable.  If only our politician and CEOs stopped lying to us, and took action instead of greenwashing.

Polar ice keeps on plunging

 From Rick Thoman

Arctic-wide sea ice extent is the lowest in 47-year NSIDC satellite record for February 7, and it's the lowest by a lot: 430,000 km² of "lost ice" compared to the previous lowest (2017) and about 2.2 million km² less than was typical on February 7 in the early 1980s. #Arctic #SeaIce #ClimateChange

From Professor Eliot Jacobson

Breaking News! Code UFB!!! Global sea-ice extent is now at an all-time record low in recorded history, with global sea-ice extent now 2.14 million square kilometers below the 1991-2020 average. Images of the current Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice extent are in the following posts in this thread.

Yet companies, politicians and techbros continue to pretend they are doing something and they care.  They really, really do.

Oz's ACTUAL emissions are actually .... flat

 From The Australia Institute

The government boasts that emissions are now 28.2% below 2005 levels. Sounds great, except that is only when you include the very dodgy "emissions" from land clearing and land use (there was massive land clearing in 2005). The fall of "actual emissions" is a mere 1.8%.

Greenwashers are us.  Governments know we are very, very concerned about emissions and the climate catastrophe.  But they're not prepared to ACTUALLY do something about them.  So they pretend.

2024's true colours

 By Fiona Katauskas

Welcome to Hell

 World CO2 emissions continue to rise -- see the lower chart below.

These two charts show emissions from burning fossil fuels and from making cement and steel, i.e., they exclude emissions from agriculture and forest clearing.

The countries in the top chart produce ~60% of these types of emissions.  Emissions in the EU have fallen 40% from their peak in 1979, and are back at 1963 amounts.  Emissions in the USA peaked in 2007, and have fallen 20% since then.   Unfortunately, emissions from China and India have risen so much that they more than offset the reduction in the two biggest economic blocs in the world.  China passed the EU in 2000, and the US in 2006.  India's emissions already exceed Europe's. 

If China's emissions peak this year or next, because of the roll-out of renewables and the expansion of EVs, then world emissions will have peaked, except .... India's emissions are booming.  If India's emissions go on rising as fast as they have been, the fall in China's emissions will be completely offset.

The good news is that the costs of solar, wind and storage continue to decline.  Regardless of your stance on climate change, it now makes sense to switch from fossil fuels in electricity generation and land transport.  The process is slowed down because of the existing capital stock/vehicle fleet, which will prolly take 15 or 20 years to be replaced.  

But emissions from cement and steel production, and emissions in agriculture, remain problematic.  We are just at the beginning of technological advances which will find new ways of producing steel and cement, or low-carbon replacements for these products.  As for agriculture, no one is willing to forgo meat and dairy, and in fact poorer countries are consuming more as they get richer.

Also, the declines in emissions in the USA and the EU have been welcome, but they're not fast enough.  The US's emissions have fallen by just 1.8% per year since 2007, the EU's by 0.6% per annum since 1979, though the rate has increased to 2.1% per annum since 2006.  To stop temperatures rising, we need to slash emissions by at least 90%.  If emissions decline by 2% per annum, it will take 100 years before they fall by 90%.  At a 3% per annum decline, emissions will fall 90% in 65 years.  At a 4% per annum decline, we'll reach that goal in 45 years, at 5% in 35 years.  The logic is obvious.

10 years ago, I wrote about "The 4% Club", arguing for a 4% per annum cut in emissions in developed countries to allow for a 1% per annum rise in developing countries.  But global emissions have risen 6% since then, not fallen.  Global temperatures are now rising by 0.3 degrees per decade, not 0.2.  We are running out of time.

Setting a target of net-zero at some distant point in the future won't achieve the kind of cuts we need in emissions.  We need to set annual targets for emissions cuts.  High annual targets.  4% a year is just too little, now.  It might have worked if we'd started it in 2014.  It's way too slow now.

Developed countries need to target an annual emissions cut of at least 5% a year, every year.  China needs to peak its emissions, and start an accelerated decline.  Given China's investment in renewables and her huge expansion of EVs/PHEVs, I think that's likely.  But I've been wrong before.  And, even though India is investing in solar, the single-minded pursuit of "new energy markets" so obvious in China, isn't evident in India.  Try harder, India.

Yet I get the depressed feeling that none of this will happen.  In 2014, I thought rationality would triumph.  Now, I doubt that.  Mankind has shown a distressing ability to avoid serious action while pretending heartily that something is being done.   We collectively prefer greenwashing to actual steps to cut emissions.  Easy lies instead of hard truths.

At a 2% per annum decline---which is optimistic given China's and India's emissions pathways---we'll zoom past the 1.5 degree target (if we haven't already) and be heading for 2.7 degrees or more.

Welcome to Hell.

Source: Our World in Data

Even our climate "solutions" are delusions

Composite: Alex Mellon for the Guardian: Getty Images/Tetra Images RF/Alamy

From The Guardian

We now face, on all fronts, a war not just against the living planet and the common good, but against material reality. Power in the United States will soon be shared between people who believe they will ascend to sit at the right hand of God, perhaps after a cleansing apocalypse; and people who believe their consciousness will be uploaded on to machines in a great Singularity.

The Christian rapture and the tech rapture are essentially the same belief. Both are examples of “substance dualism”: the idea that the mind or soul can exist in a realm separate from the body. This idea often drives a desire to escape from the grubby immanence of life on Earth. Once the rapture is achieved, there will be no need for a living planet.

But while it is easy to point to the counter-qualified, science-denying fanatics Donald Trump is appointing to high office, the war against reality is everywhere. You can see it in the British government’s carbon capture and storage scheme, a new fossil fuel project that will greatly raise emissions but is dressed up as a climate solution. And it informs every aspect of this week’s Cop29 climate talks in Azerbaijan.

Here, as everywhere, the living planet is forgotten while capital extends its frontiers. The one thing Cop29 has achieved so far – and it may well be the only thing – is an attempt to rush through new rules for carbon markets, enabling countries and businesses to trade carbon credits – which amount, in effect, to permission to carry on polluting.

In theory, you could justify a role for such markets, if they were used only to counteract emissions that are otherwise impossible to reduce (each credit purchased is meant to represent a tonne of carbon dioxide that has been reduced or removed from the atmosphere). But they’re routinely used as a first resort: a substitute for decarbonisation at home. The living world has become a dump for policy failure.

Essential as ecological carbon stores are, trading them against fossil fuel emissions, which is how these markets operate, cannot possibly work. The carbon that current ecosystems can absorb in one year is pitched against the burning of fossil carbon accumulated by ancient ecosystems over many years.

Nowhere is this magical thinking more apparent than in soil carbon markets, a great new adventure for commodity traders selling both kinds of carbon market products: official “credits” and voluntary carbon offsets. Every form of wishful thinking, over-claiming and outright fraud that has blighted the carbon market so far is magnified when it comes to soil.

We should do all we can to protect and restore soil carbon. About 80% of the organic carbon on the land surface of the planet is held in soil. It’s essential for soil health. There should be strong rules and incentives for good soil management. But there is no realistic way in which carbon trading can help. 

Here are the reasons why.

First, tradable increments of soil carbon are impossible to measure. Because soil depths can vary greatly even within one field, there is currently no accurate, affordable means of estimating soil volume. Nor do we have a good-enough test, across a field or a farm, for bulk density – the amount of soil packed into a given volume. So, even if you could produce a reliable measure of carbon per cubic metre of soil, if you don’t know how much soil you have, you can’t calculate the impact of any changes you make.

A reliable measure of soil carbon per cubic metre is also elusive, as carbon levels can fluctuate massively from one spot to the next. Repeated measurements from thousands of sites across a farm, necessary to show how carbon levels are changing, would be prohibitively expensive. Nor are simulation models, on which the whole market relies, an effective substitute for measurement. So much for the “verification” supposed to underpin this trade.

Second, soil is a complex, biological system that seeks equilibrium. With the exception of peat, it reaches equilibrium at a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of roughly 12:1. This means that if you want to raise soil carbon, in most cases you will also need to raise soil nitrogen. But whether nitrogen is applied in synthetic fertilisers or in animal manure, it’s a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, which could counteract any gains in soil carbon. It is also one of the most potent causes of water pollution.

Third, carbon levels in agricultural soils soon saturate. Some promoters of soil carbon credits create the impression that accumulation can continue indefinitely. It can’t. There’s a limit to how much a given soil can absorb.

Fourth, any accumulation is reversible. Soil is a highly dynamic system: you cannot permanently lock carbon into it. Microbes constantly process carbon, sometimes stitching it into the soil, sometimes releasing it: this is an essential property of soil health. With rises in temperature, the carbon sequestration you’ve paid for can simply evaporate: there’s likely to be a massive outgassing of carbon from soils as a direct result of continued heating. Droughts can also hammer soil carbon.

Even under current market standards, in which science takes second place to money, you need to show that carbon storage will last for a minimum of 40 years. There is no way of guaranteeing that carbon accumulation in soil will last that long. But as a new paper in Nature argues: “A CO2 storage period of less than 1,000 years is insufficient for neutralising remaining fossil CO2 emissions.”

The only form of organic carbon that might last this long – though only under certain conditions – is added biochar (fine-grained charcoal). But biochar is phenomenally expensive: the cheapest source I was able to find costs roughly 26 times as much as agricultural lime, which itself costs too much for many farmers. There’s a limited amount of material that can be turned into biochar. While making it, if you get the burn just slightly wrong, the methane, nitrous oxide and black carbon you produce will cancel any carbon savings.

There is a kind of substance dualism at work here, too: a concept of soil and soil carbon entirely detached from their earthly realities. This bubble of delusion will burst. If I were a devious financier, I would short the stocks of companies selling these credits.

All such approaches are substitutes for action, whose primary purpose is to enable governments to avoid conflict with powerful interests, especially the fossil fuel industry. At a moment of existential crisis, governments everywhere are retreating into a dreamworld, in which impossible contradictions are reconciled. You can send your legions to war with reality, but eventually we all lose.

[Read more here]

90% of carbon credits/offsets are a furphy.  A lie.  Greenwashing.  So our companies and our politicians can pretend that they're doing something about the climate crisis.  One carbon capture and storage process seems to be genuine, provided all the energy used is green, and that's turning Co2 to rock.

Rise in world's temperatures accelerates

 Open Mind (Tamino) produced a previous piece about the acceleration in the rise in global temperatures, which I reported on here.  He has returned to the analysis, and confirms his position in his latest post. 

I now have global temperature data through October of this year from NASA, NOAA, and ERA5, as well as data through September from HadCRU and Berkeley. I’ve translated them to “since pre-industrial” values using one of the methods in the IPCC special report on 1.5°C. Then I computed yearly averages (this year is incomplete so values for 2024 are year-so-far averages)

There are two clear episodes in this plot: before and after 1975. Before, GMST was fluctuating but not trending either way; since, it has been trending consistenly up and fluctuating. As for its rate of increase, for four and a half decades (from 1975 until 2020) temperature seemed to rise at a pace (about 0.02°C per year) that was unchanging, and statistics couldn’t deny it.

But the last two years (2023 and 2024) have been “off the charts,” so to speak. For the data from ERA5, the value for 2024 year-so-far is already above 1.5°C, which is exactly what the Paris agreement seeks to avoid.

I investigated the rate of warming, and how it may have changed over time, in two ways. First, I fit a modified lowess smooth which I’ve programmed to estimate the rate as well as the value. Second, I computed a piecewise linear fit (PLF) with knots at 1975 and 2010. Both models (lowess and PLF) were fit to the monthly-average data, but in the graphs that follow I’ll plot yearly averages so the graphs will be less cluttered. Here’s how the PLF model fits the data from NASA:

PLF = piecewise linear fit 

 

[....]

For the 45-year period from 1975 through 2009, the average warming rate according to NASA data is just about 0.018°C/yr. For the 15-year period since 2010, it has been a lot faster at 0.031°C/yr. Statistically, the difference is significant at over 99% confidence.

I have also adjusted all the data sets, to compensate for the influence of el Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar variations, with a method not unlike that of Foster & Rahmstorf (2011). Here are the adjusted temperatures, together with their PLF fit, for the data from NASA:

This chart shows the temperature anomaly adjusted for El Niño/La Niña and for vulcanism. 
PLF = piecewise least fit.

The rate from 1975 to 2010 now seems to be only 0.017°C/yr, and after 2010, the best estimate is 0.033°C/yr. These aren’t much different from the estimates using the raw data, although the uncertainties are now smaller so the confidence intervals are narrower.

Falling emissions (which of course we don't have--emissions continue to rise) do NOT mean that temperatures will start falling.  The RISE in the temperature anomaly is proportional to the LEVEL of emissions.  In other words, for temperatures to stop rising, we need to reduce emissions to zero.  If we halve emissions, the increase in temperature anomaly will halve, but that only reduces it to what it was before this recent acceleration, 0.17 degrees per decade.  

There are positive signs that emissions will peak soon.  Wind and solar continue to expand exponentially.  The costs of battery storage are plunging, and the recent first commercial solid-state battery points to continued and sustained cost declines and efficiency improvements.  Yet, even if we completely switch ALL electricity generation and ALL land transport to carbon-free methods, that will still only halve emissions.  If we were to start cutting emissions by 5% a year, compound, it would take us 40 years to reduce emissions to 10% of current levels.  Assuming we did this (but we are not) temperatures would rise for the next decade by 0.33 degrees, for the decade after by 0.17, by the decade after that by 0.l2 degrees and for the final decade by 0.06.  Roughly.  In other words, temperatures would rise by another 0.33+0.17+0.12+0.06, or ~0.7 degrees, making the rise since 1850-1900, the traditional "pre-industrial" starting point 2.2 degrees.

We face catastrophe, and still we dither and phaff.  The Right is dead against doing anything at all to slash emissions, and the Left argues with itself about what to do.  Meanwhile, we are lied to by corporations and governments, and protesters go to jail while oil execs are fêted.

They made 1000 times more plastic than they cleaned up

Companies such as ExxonMobil, Dow, Shell, TotalEnergies and ChevronPhillips have only diverted 0.1% of the plastic they produced since 2019 away from the environment, according to data. Photograph: Larina Marina/Shutterstock

From The Guardian

Oil and chemical companies who created a high-profile alliance to end plastic pollution have produced 1,000 times more new plastic in five years than the waste they diverted from the environment, according to new data obtained by Greenpeace.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) was set up in 2019 by a group of companies which include ExxonMobil, Dow, Shell, TotalEnergies and ChevronPhillips, some of the world’s biggest producers of plastic. They promised to divert 15m tonnes of plastic waste from the environment in five years to the end of 2023, by improving collection and recycling, and creating a circular economy.

Documents from a PR company that have been seen by the Guardian suggest that a key aim of the AEPW was to “change the conversation” away from “simplistic bans of plastic” which were being proposed across the world in 2019 amid an outcry over the scale of plastic pollution leaching into rivers and harming public health.

Early last year the alliance target of clearing 15m tonnes of waste plastic was quietly scrapped as “just too ambitious”.

New analysis by energy consultants Wood Mackenzie, obtained by Greenpeace’s Unearthed team and shared with the Guardian, looked at the plastics output of the five alliance companies; chemical company Dow, which holds the AEPW’s chairmanship, the oil companies ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies, and ChevronPhillips, a joint venture of the US oil giants Chevron and Phillips 66.


The data reveals the five companies alone produced 132m tonnes of two types of plastic; polyethylene (PE) and PP (polypropylene) in five years – more than 1,000 times the weight of the 118,500 tonnes of waste plastic the alliance has removed from the environment in the same period. The waste plastic was diverted mostly by mechanical or chemical recycling, the use of landfill, or waste to fuel, AEPW documents state.

The amount of plastic produced is likely to be an underestimate as it only covers two of the most widely used polymers; polyethylene which is used for plastic bottles and bags, and polypropylene, used for food packaging. It does not include other major plastics such as polystyrene.

The new data were revealed as delegates prepared to meet in Busan, South Korea, to hammer out the world’s first treaty to cut plastic pollution. The treaty has a mandate to agree on a legally binding global agreement to tackle plastic pollution across the entire plastics life cycle.

But the talks, which have been subject to heavy lobbying by the alliance and fossil fuel companies, are on a knife-edge in a row over whether caps to global plastic production will be included in the final treaty.

Will McCallum, a co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, said the revelations had stripped off the thin layer of greenwash hiding the growing mountain of plastic waste oil companies were producing.

“The recycling schemes they’re promoting can barely make a dent in all the plastic these companies are pumping out,” he said. “They’re letting the running tap flood the house while trying to scoop up the water with a teaspoon. The only solution is to cut the amount of plastic produced in the first place.”

Bill McKibben, a US environmentalist, said: “It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of greenwashing in this world. The oil and gas industry – which is pretty much the same thing as the plastics industry – has been at this for decades.”

ProfSteve Fletcher, from the Revolution Plastics Institute at the University of Portsmouth, said recently there was now compelling evidence that only a reduction in primary plastic polymer production, or virgin plastic, would deliver a substantive cut in plastic pollution.

Documents from the PR company Weber Shandwick outline how the AEPW was created in 2019 after they were approached by the American Chemical Council seeking ways to counter the “demonisation” of plastic and the growing calls for bans on plastic items.

The alliance paid Weber Shandwick $5.6m for its work in 2019, according to US tax returns.

The documents state the alliance was intended to change the conversation away from “short-term simplistic bans of plastic” and create “real, long-term solutions” for managing waste, like recycling.

But documents filed in California in September, where the attorney general, Rob Bonta, is suing ExxonMobil, argue the company has deceived the public for 50 years, with misleading public statements and slick marketing, about the recyclability of plastic.

The UN treaty talks start as plastic production continues to soar. Between 2000 and 2019 the global annual production of plastics doubled, reaching 460m tonnes. Plastic waste has more than doubled, from 156m tonnes in 2000 to 353m tonnes in 2019, only 9% of which was ultimately recycled, according to an OECD report.

‘Minimal progress’ made this year on curbing global heating

Source: NOAA

From The Guardian

World leaders have promised to try to stop the planet heating by more than 1.5C (2.7F) [since pre-industrial times, which in practice is defined as 1850-1900]. But current policies put the temperature rise on track for 2.7C, a report has found.

The expected level of global heating by the end of the century has not changed since 2021, with “minimal progress” made this year, according to the Climate Action Tracker project. The consortium’s estimate has not shifted since the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow three years ago.

“We have clearly failed to bend the curve,” said the lead author of the analysis, Sofia Gonzales-Zuñiga, from Climate Analytics.

The expected level of warming is slightly lower when considering government pledges and targets, at 2.1C, but has also not changed since 2021. Warming in the most optimistic scenario rose slightly from 1.8C last year to 1.9C this year, the report found.

Changes in average global temperatures that sound small can lead to massive human suffering. Last month, a study found half of the 68,000 heat deaths in Europe in 2022 were the result of the 1.3C of global heating the world has seen so far. At the higher temperatures that are projected for the end of the century, the risk of irreversible and catastrophic extremes is also set to soar.

The findings were released as climate negotiators converge on the Cop29 summit in Azerbaijan for fraught negotiations over greenhouse gas pollution and the money needed to deal with it. The flatlining of progress comes despite the world seeing breakneck change in the rollout of clean technologies that can replace coal, oil and gas.

The report found fossil fuel subsidies have also hit all-time highs, and funding for such projects quadrupled between 2021 and 2022.

Prof Niklas Höhne, a climate scientist at the NewClimate Institute in Germany, said it was “not a paradox” to see rising emissions while renewables boomed. “In recent years, fossil fuels have won the race against renewables, leading to increasing emissions,” he said.

Still, he added, “renewables surprise us each year” with faster growth than expected. He said they would soon crowd out fossil fuels. “It allows a much faster decline in emissions than we thought only three years ago.”  [I've been optimistic for years, believing that because of the obvious need, and the raoid cost declines in renewables, emissions would peak soon.  And they still haven't. ]

Climate scientists say every fraction of a degree matters for the health of people and the planet.

The researchers warned their median warming estimate of 2.7C by 2100 had a wide enough margin of error that it could translate into far hotter temperatures than scientists were expecting.

“There is a 33% chance of our projection being 3C or higher, and a 10% chance of being 3.6C or higher,” said Gonzales-Zuniga. The latter would be “absolutely catastrophic”, she added.

A handful of world leaders at Cop29 expressed frustration at the slow pace of progress after 28 UN climate summits.

“What on earth are we doing in this gathering?” the Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, asked his fellow heads of state on Wednesday. “What does it mean for the future of the world if the biggest polluters continue as usual?”

Others pointed to progress made despite the shortcomings.

“Meetings like these are often perceived as talking shops,” said the Belgium prime minister, Alexander De Croo. “And yes, these strenuous negotiations are far from perfect. But if you compare climate policy now to a decade ago, we are in a different world.” [Really?  Where is the progress?  Forgive my cynicism.  COP29 will be just another gabfest, where promises are made for far-future virtue, while no action is taken now, and in fact the USA, the world's second-largest emitter, wants to stop any reduction in emissions and reverse the steps it's already taken.]

2 years for throwing soup

 From Just Stop Oil

Two Just Stop Oil supporters who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers have been sentenced to prison terms of up to 2 years by Judge Christopher Hehir at Southwark Crown Court today. 

Phoebe Plummer was jailed for 2 years for the soup throwing plus 3 months for a S7 offence, while Anna Holland received a prison sentence of 20 months. They are also subject to 3 year Criminal Behaviour Orders and are expected to serve at least half of their sentences in custody.

In July, Phoebe and Anna were found guilty of causing criminal damage exceeding £5,000 after they threw tins of tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting at the National Gallery in October 2022, although the painting was protected by glass and was unharmed. Judge Hehir preemptively dismissed all legal defences—including the defence of ‘proportionality’ and their Article 10 rights under the Human Rights Act 1998—without hearing any evidence from either side. 

In his sentencing remarks, Judge Hehir said:  “Your culpability is at level A. You did reconnaissance and planning and talked to a journalist. Your harm is at category 1, which means extreme harm to society.”

He indicated that conscience was not a mitigating factor and that “The action you took was extreme, disproportionate and criminally idiotic given the risks involved”. He continued  “There is nothing peaceful or nonviolent about throwing soup. Throwing soup in someone’s face is violent.” 

Addressing Phoebe he said “You think your beliefs entitle you to do anything. I was treated to a lengthy exposition to your political views. The suggestion that you and others like you in a democracy are political prisoners is ludicrous, offensive and idiotic. You have no remorse and you are proud.”

Addressing Anna he said “What you have done has had a substantial impact on your family, you’re a good student. I’ve anxiously considered all of this.”

Speaking before the sentencing Anna Holland said: 

“We do not expect justice from a broken system that has been corrupted by its dependence on fossil fuels. Prison sentences, no matter how long, will not deter us. We will not stop calling for an end to all extraction and burning of fossil fuels; if Keir Starmer wants to prove that he is a better Prime Minister than the last six Tory Prime Ministers, he will hear these calls and act upon them.”

Remarkable.  "Throwing soup in someone's face is violent".   But they didn't.   "Extreme harm to society".  What?????  Meanwhile, oil companies get a free pass, as they fund denialist stink tanks, right-wing politicians, and are sanitised by greenwashing publicists.  

 Despite all the talk by politicians and chief executives, despite their proud net-zero commitments, they do not in fact want to take any effective action to stop carbon/methane emissions.  Instead, they want to criminalise opposition to fossil fuels.  Pipeline protests, "slow marching", even just unfurling a banner---these are now criminal activities.  Just like China, eh?

Gab, gab, gab --- but do nothing

 Updating this chart by O=C=O  (updated for 2023 data)

Gab, gab, gab.  All talk but no action.  Solemn promises to do something, followed by doing nothing.  Greenwashing, which persuades an increasingly anxious public that something is being done, when in fact it isn't.  Fake carbon offset schemes.  Lies, obfuscations, distractions.  While climate dissent is criminalised.   Meanwhile, right wing parties, in the US and Australia, want to stop deployment of renewables altogether.

And to make ourselves feel better, we gab, gab, gab.  And when I say 'we', I mean almost all of us.  For example, at no extra cost to ourselves, we could give up meat, cutting our emissions by 25%.  But we do not.

Globally, 80% want more climate action

It's tempting to rail against ordinary people when it comes to climate action. To blame mankind as a whole for its stupidity and greed. After all, we know that temperatures are rising, that heatwaves, droughts and floods are becoming much worse and more common.  So why is there not enough action? But ordinary people do want action. It is the politicians, the rich, the owners of oil companies, directors of companies who, while pretending to want action, do their best to stop it.


From Al Jazeera

Four in five people want their countries to ramp up efforts in the fight against climate change, according to a United Nations survey billed as the largest yet on the issue.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) published the poll on Thursday, finding that a majority of people in 62 of the 77 countries surveyed said they supported a quick transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy.

These included the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, with 80 percent in China and 54 percent in the United States supporting the move, though respondents in Russia were notably less keen, with only 16 percent approving.

“As world leaders decide on the next round of pledges under the Paris Agreement by 2025, these results are undeniable evidence that people everywhere support bold climate action,” said Cassie Flynn, UNDP global climate director.

Conducted in collaboration with Oxford University and GeoPoll, the survey posed 15 questions by randomised telephone calls to 75,000 people in 77 countries, the populations of which represent 87 percent of the world’s total – making it the biggest poll of its kind.

Overall, 80 percent of those polled wanted to see stronger commitments to addressing the problem, the clamour for action rising to 89 percent in poorer countries feeling the brunt of climate change.

Climate anxiety was higher in poorer countries like Fiji, where 80 percent are more worried about the problem compared to a year ago, followed by Afghanistan (78 percent) and Turkey (77 percent). Saudi Arabia saw the lowest increase in climate fears, with 25 percent more concerned.

Overall, the survey found 56 percent of respondents said they think about climate change at least once a week. Over half of those surveyed said they were more worried about climate change than last year, compared with 15 percent who said they were less worried.

Climate change is also changing people’s lives, with 69 percent of respondents saying that global warming had impacted major decisions, such as where to live or work and what to buy.

But Achim Steiner, head of the UNDP, said these concerns do not necessarily translate into electoral and consumer decisions.

He pointed to what he called a “perception gap” when it comes to climate action, summing up people’s typical reaction as: “I would do more. But the others won’t. So I will not do anything."

There are things you can do.  

You could eat less meat, especially beef and mutton, and drink less cow's milk.  The less, the better.

You could buy an EV or a plug-in hybrid (PHEV).  Yes, that can be expensive in the USA, because it’s just placed a penal tariff on imports of Chinese EVs and Chinese EV batteries, which are the cheapest in the world.   But in the rest of the world, EVs are plummetting in price.  As are electric 3-wheelers.   An EV will soon cost the same as a petrol car, outside the USA, anyway.   Make your next car an EV.

You can put solar panels on your roof (if you own your own property.)   If you don't, and can't, buy your electricity from a green supplier.   If we all insist of buying renewables from a green electricity utility, they will be forced to build more solar and wind farms.  Don't buy from a so-called green electricity supplier which claims its green credentials because it buys carbon offsets.  These are (mostly) a furphy, a scam. 

You could switch your heating from gas/oil to electric.  There's been some opposition to heat pumps because they supposedly don't work.  That's piffle; they do.  They cost more up front than gas or oil boilers/heaters, but they're cheaper to run.  Some polities provide subsidies to encourage the switch.

Together, all these steps will cut your personal emissions by 80%.  

And, most important, you can vote.  Don't be distracted by other policy issues.  Vote for the Party which is going to do most to cut emissions.  Even if in other ways they are imperfect.

It's up to us, and most of us want to do something.  You can make a difference.  Start today.