COP28 meets in the UAE
Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels
Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves
The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.
The comments were “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial”, scientists said, and they were at odds with the position of the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
Al Jaber made the comments in ill-tempered responses to questions from Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change, during a live online event on 21 November. As well as running Cop28 in Dubai, Al Jaber is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc, which many observers see as a serious conflict of interest….[ ]
Germany now! Munich is in chaos! A terrible snowstorm buried cars and houses
The irony
“Winter may no longer be cold, but our jackets are getting thicker and thicker. This fashion satisfies our longings for a climate that no longer exists
Bavaria in the Snow”
4 DEC 2023
In a brief Zeit article on winter fashion from 13 October 2023, one reads the following deeply amusing lines:
Winter may no longer be cold, but our jackets are getting thicker and thicker. This fashion satisfies our longings for a climate that no longer exists.
….
This year saw the highest worldwide temperatures ever recorded. Even on some days in mid-October, you could still go outside in a T-shirt in this country. How many real opportunities will there be this winter to walk around the world in ballooning, maximally padded down jackets? The radical winter posing of this year’s jackets and coats seems to appeal less to real needs than to satisfy our longings – longings for a climate in which it is still freezing cold, in which snow falls regularly and the winter weather lasts longer than a few random February days. The longing for a world, in other words, where climate change doesn’t exist …
The weather, much like viruses, sooner or later makes a fool of all forecasters. Sometime last night, the winter storm finally stopped, and I awoke this morning to a clear and cold morning. The sun shone down on 60 centimetres of snow in the Bavarian highlands. An avalanche warning has been issued for all Alpine elevations above 1600 metres, and it is still only the start of December. Munich, somewhat lower and to the north, labours under 44 centimetres, more than has ever fallen on the city in a single day since record-keeping began. They have finally dug out Munich Main Station and reopened the airport, but still very few trains and planes are going anywhere……