COP28 Climate Science Denial – Avoiding Transition to Renewable Energy Sources

There were recent comments by the COP28 President in UAE denying climate science around fossil fuels, hence, no need to transition from the same; but no credible support for his claims?

These talking points are very common across right wing media for ageing and less educated voters to support fossil fuel right wing policies, often with ‘Koch Network’ in the background, but simply promoting deflection and conspiracies? 

In 2022 Burn-Murdoch showed in Financial Times how following economics makes for fast transition from fossil fuels & carbon emissions to renewable sources, result? Lower emission and higher economic growth.

‘FT Opinion Data Points Economics may take us to net zero all on its own. The plummeting cost of low-carbon energy has already allowed many countries to decouple economic growth from emissions’

‘COP28 president is wrong – science clearly shows fossil fuels must go (and fast)

Steve Pye

Associate Professor in Energy Systems, UCL

According to the president of COP28, the latest round of UN climate negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, there is “no science” indicating that phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to restrict global heating to 1.5°C.

President Sultan Al Jaber is wrong. There is a wealth of scientific evidence demonstrating that a fossil fuel phase-out will be essential for reining in the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. I know because I have published some of it.

Back in 2021, just before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, my colleagues and I published a paper in Nature entitled Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5°C world. It argued that 90% of the world’s coal and around 60% of its oil and gas needed to remain underground if humanity is to have any chance of meeting the Paris agreement’s temperature goals.

Crucially, our research also highlighted that the production of oil and gas needed to start declining immediately (from 2020), at around 3% each year until 2050.

This assessment was based on a clear understanding that the production and use of fossil fuels, as the primary cause of CO₂ emissions (90%), needs to be reduced in order to stop further heating. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that net zero CO₂ emissions will only be reached globally in the early 2050s, and warming stabilised at 1.5°C, if a shift away from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources begins immediately.

If global emissions and fossil fuel burning continue at their current rates, this warming level will be breached by 2030.

Since the publication of our Nature paper, scientists have modelled hundreds of scenarios to explore the world’s options for limiting warming to 1.5°C. Many feature in the latest report by the IPCC. Here is what they tell us about the necessary scale of a fossil fuel phase-out.

Fossil fuel use must fall fast

A recent paper led by atmospheric scientist Ploy Achakulwisut took a detailed look at existing scenarios for limiting warming to 1.5°C. For pathways consistent with 1.5°C, coal, oil and gas supply must decline by 95%, 62% and 42% respectively, between 2020 and 2050.

However, many of these pathways assume rates of carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal that are likely to be greater than what could be feasibly achieved. Filtering out these scenarios shows that gas actually needs to be eliminated twice as fast, declining by 84% in 2050 relative to 2020 levels. Coal and oil would also see larger declines: 99% and 70% respectively.

In fact, oil and gas may need to be eliminated even quicker than that. A study by energy economist Greg Muttitt showed that many of the pathways used in the most recent IPCC report assume coal can be phased out in developing countries faster than is realistic, considering the speed of history’s most rapid energy transitions. A more feasible scenario would oblige developed countries in particular to get off oil and gas faster.

A fair and orderly transition

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has added to evidence in favour of phasing out fossil fuels by concluding that there is no need to license and exploit new oil and gas fields, first in a 2021 report and again this year.

This latest IEA analysis also estimates that existing oil and gas fields would need to wind down their production by 2.5% a year on average to 2030, accelerating to 5% a year from 2030 (and 7.5% for gas between 2030-40).

A separate analysis of the IPCC’s scenarios for holding global warming at 1.5°C came to the same conclusion. Since no new fields need to be brought into development, global production of oil and gas should be falling.

A fair and orderly transition

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has added to evidence in favour of phasing out fossil fuels by concluding that there is no need to license and exploit new oil and gas fields, first in a 2021 report and again this year.

This latest IEA analysis also estimates that existing oil and gas fields would need to wind down their production by 2.5% a year on average to 2030, accelerating to 5% a year from 2030 (and 7.5% for gas between 2030-40).

A separate analysis of the IPCC’s scenarios for holding global warming at 1.5°C came to the same conclusion. Since no new fields need to be brought into development, global production of oil and gas should be falling.’

For more related articles and blogs on Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Fossil Fuel Pollution, Koch Network, Political Strategy and Science Literacy click through:

Environment – Fossil Fuels – Climate Science Denial – Populationism – Anti-Immigration – Far Right – Tanton Network

Jeff Sparrow in Overland rebuts a counter critique of his book ‘Crimes Against Nature’ by a faux expert Edward Smith who appears to be au faire with faux environmental and anti-immigrant arguments promoted by the US Tanton Network linked NGO Sustainable Population Australia.

One would not bother using high level analysis to rebut low level faux science nativist agitprop inspired by former ZPG Zero Population Growth types, namely deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton whose colleague was Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich, with support from the Rockefeller Bros., ‘limits to growth’ PR constructs promoted by Club of Rome and drawing on Malthus, Galton and Madison Grant.

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Some would not be surprised with the doubts and confusion being created round the COVID-19 crisis, especially by those wanting all economic activity to continue and ignore the human costs. 

However, much of this agitprop, astro-turfing and junk science used by non experts has much in common with the information, media and political techniques used by radical right libertarian think tanks funded by the fossil fuel sector and related media, to influence society on climate science to avoid constraints and preserve income streams, with some eugenics in the background.

Nativist Conservative MPs for Fossil Fuels versus Science, Education, Research, Analysis & Society

Interesting article from a science journalist at The Guardian on comments made about ‘woke’ science by the Tories in the UK at the Conservative Conference in  ‘Science hasn’t gone ‘woke’ – the only people meddling with it are the Tories’ by Philip Ball.

However, this is neither unique to the UK Conservatives nor dissimilar elsewhere, but it is a long game strategy against grounded science, research and analysis, like Trojan horses to disrupt curricula and universities, why? 

Climate Change Science Attitudes Australia and Koch in USA

Climate science or climate change denialism have been apparent for some decades since the 1970s with Koch Industries being central along with ‘big oil’ of Exxon Mobil etc. in funding through ‘Dark Money’ academia, research, think tanks, media, politicians and PR techniques to influence society.  Now we see the results including wide-spread climate denialism, avoidance of environmental protections and negative media PR campaigns; meanwhile the roots of this strategy have become more transparent with legal action following.

Polls Used for Snapshots are neither Research nor News Events

Article by Molly Jong-Fast in Vanity Fair on prolific polling and polls on Biden versus Trump in the 2024 Presidential elections, appearing daily in media outlets, but she explains what’s wrong with focus upon polls.

Selective questions, snapshots conducted a year out from an election, media cherry picking outcomes, polls are now deemed to be media ‘events’, ‘horse race coverage’ that ignore substantive policy issues, measurement error and sampling eg. people not picking up phones vs. those who do which is only 1/100.

One would also add, that hollowed out media and resources for reporting not only leads to desk based scraping social media for news, but too much reliance upon polling for ‘news’; becomes circular when media no longer informs citizenry?  

Let’s Stop Treating Polls as Actual News Events

The stakes of 2024 are too important for the media to obsess over every “snapshot” of the electorate.

By Molly Jong-Fast NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Pick up a newspaper, turn on cable news, click on Drudge or listen to a podcast and you will encounter multiple stories on polls. Did you know that Joe Biden is polling poorly? Did you know Americans are deeply unhappy with the economy despite its metrics being very good? Did you know that Biden’s weakness among young voters should be taken seriously?

Everywhere you look there are polls, and these polls provide fodder for stories, which then fuel news cycles and shape narratives around the 2024 election, such as how Biden should drop out because of his age. “Voters think Biden’s too old,” says contrarian comedian Bill Maher, and indeed, there are polls, like one from The Wall Street Journal, in which voters are asked if Biden, 81—along with Donald Trump, 77—is “too old to run.” The poll, in which 73% of voters consider Biden too old, was cited in a separate Journal story asking, “Is Biden Too Old to Run Again?”

Of course, polls can be upended when voters actually go to the polls. Reuters gave Hillary Clinton about a 90% chance of winning on Election Day 2016, while the Huffington Post told us that Trump had “essentially no path to an Electoral College victory.” Everyone knows what happened next.

And yet recent 2024 polls, which serve, at best, as snapshots of the electorate a year out, become news events unto themselves, generating reams of coverage and endless commentary. They’re not actually breaking news events, like, say, a train derailment, even if treated as such. They’re more creations of a media industrial complex that longs for easy data points, for things that feel like facts but are actually imprecise measuring mechanisms. 

For every piece that is directly about polling, like one from Politico proclaiming “the polls keep getting worse for Biden,” there are others based on the suppositions gleaned from poll results, such The Washington Post examining “Trump’s improved image.” Even pieces downplaying some headline-grabbing polls as the “wrong” ones, may seize on others to make a point.

“The odd thing about media polls is that they are reported as a newsworthy event, but this kind of event ‘happens’ only when a newsroom decides it’s time for one—and when it has the money,” NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote in an email.

Polls may fall into the category of pseudo-events, a term coined in 1962 by Daniel J. Boorstin and defined as something that “planted primarily (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced.” Just like polls, a pseudo-event’s “relation to the underlying reality of the situation is ambiguous.” (This idea was recently discussed by on John Dickerson on Slate’s Political Gabfest episode on polling episode). In this way, a poll may be more like a press conference, something that is created to shape a narrative.

There are other problems with polls, according to Margaret Sullivan, the media critic and recently named executive director of Columbia University’s journalism ethics center. “Polls are, by definition, horse race coverage, which focused on who’s up or down, not substance, ignoring what Jay Rosen calls ‘the stakes,’” she told me. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say never write a poll story but, in general, journalists are bad at predictions and should do some more meaningful reporting instead.”

Rosen has been out front this presidential election cycle with an “organizing principle” for journalists: “Not the odds, but the stakes.” The focus, he argues, should be “not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for American democracy.” Placing too much emphasis on polls can shift the political conversation from critical reporting about what’s happening—such as the impact of Biden’s administration’s policies or Trump’s authoritarian plans for a second term—to predictions about what may happen a year later.

G. Elliott Morris, editorial director of data analytics for ABC News’ FiveThirtyEight, noted in an email how “pollsters like to market their work as ‘snapshots in time’—quick, one-off readings of the public’s attitudes that get less accurate the further you get from that moment in time. That means that polls of the 2024 election are of very little utility this far ahead—roughly of zero predictive value, historically speaking, though there’s reasons to believe they’re more predictive now with higher levels of polarization.”

“But they’re also subject to a lot of measurement error,” Morris continued. “Only about one out of every 100 people a pollster calls picks up the phone. Those respondents can be really weird, politically speaking, and are also prone to overreacting to the news cycle. This means we need to be even more careful when reading into a single poll’s results.”

Even if the intention of conducting a poll is to capture the views and sentiments of voters, the outsized coverage of it may distort the picture of what’s going on. As Boorstin wrote, “The shadow has become the substance…. By a diabolical irony the very facsimiles of the world which we make on purpose to bring it within our grasp, to make it less elusive, have transported us into a new world of blurs.”

For more related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Consumer Behaviour, Evaluation, Media, Political Strategy, Research Customer Behaviour through Feedback and Survey instrument design click through:

Lobbyists and Media – Push Politicians to Right – But Not Voters?

Interesting article from The Conversation ‘Politicians believe voters to be more conservative than they really are’ analysing the mismatch between media and politicians versus the electorate and society at large in Europe, US and Australia, why?

‘on a majority of issues, politicians consistently overestimate the share of citizens who hold right-wing views.  Importantly, politicians’ overestimation of how many citizens hold right-wing views is consistent across the ideological spectrum. Politicians hold a conservative bias regardless of whether they represent left- or right-wing parties’

Student Evaluations in Higher Education and Universities

While student evaluations or ‘happy sheets’ become routine in higher education and universities, some question both effectiveness and efficiency in using such instruments to assess quality. Further, what is quality in teaching, learning, assessment, technology, administration and student well-being, then how and when should it be applied?

Focus Group Feedback – Qualitative Data Analysis – Grounded Theory & Coding

Potential respondents must have the ethics of research explained before any interview or feedback, not only verbally at start of an interview or related interaction, but inclusion on a briefing document explaining study and research, storage of data, along with ethics.

Focus interviews, individual or via a group, based on psychoanalysis, can be very adaptable, allow expression of body language, in addition to concept checking or informal communication which would be precluded by the written form.  However, there are disadvantages, interviews can be very time consuming to conduct, transcribe, code and analyse when using open questions to elicit perceptions, attitudes and experience of the research area, plus they can be subjective or prone to bias.

Focus Group Research for Digital e-Marketing Strategy Development

Optimal research is based on triangulation between scholarly and industry research representing a process with related factors, then analysis and coding of key stakeholder feedback according to same process.  Thirdly, it can be followed by quantitative data gathering or survey of customers’ attitudes on the factors that emerged, joining the circle or triangulation.

The literature review can highlight research and industry issues or views of marketing and communications for international education or related products and services, leading to an optimal marketing and communications construct to inform strategy and professional practice.  Additionally, to inform or validate any construct, qualitative data needs to be collected through focus type respondents from industry or target market, coded and analysed for inclusion of important factors in a survey instrument.

Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

Throughout the world, especially now with social media, the digital volume of information and velocity, all citizens need skills of critical analysis, especially through the education system, community and media.

While newsrooms cut costs, headcounts and resources, many journalists or reporters now have less time and fewer resources to produce more news content.  However, this comes with the commensurate risk of media being gamed by corporate and political forces of the right, due to media using heuristic shortcuts on any issue and inherently biassed towards parties of the right.