Climate Change Australia 2024 - the elephant in the room that all three tiers of Australian government are failing to address - the indoor heat in metropolitan & regional urban areas

 

Although science had been warning about a marked global land-sea surface warming trend for longer, it wasn't until around 1972 that a global conversation about anthropomorphic global warming or climate change began.

This conversation began to formalize under the auspices of the United Nations and by 1988 its member states, including Australia, were broad brush level aware of the timeline and scale science was predicting.

Over the years since, science has been pointing at Australia when calculating where the impacts of climate change would first be felt in a recognizable and widespread way.

Between 1983 and 2022 there had been four Liberal Party prime ministers leading federal Coalition governments setting national policy and legislation (across a combined of total of just over 20 years) and four Labor prime minister leading federal Labor governments setting national policy and legislation (across a combined of total of just over 18 years).

Over that same 39 year time frame New South Wales has had six Liberal premiers and six Labor premiers.

During all these years it was only between 2007 to 2012 that an Australian federal government could be seen as genuinely attempting (and often failing) to set the nation on the path to reduce the nation's CO2-e emissions.

Since 22 May 2022 Australia has once more a Labor prime minister and federal government setting national policy and legislation for the last 625 days, as well as another NSW Labor state premier and government setting state policy and legislation for the last 316 days.

One of the early Albanese Government decisions was to create the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), with the ministers having portfolio responsibility identified as Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy & Tanya Plibersek, Minister for the Environment and Water.

The webpage transcript excerpt set at the end of this post is one aspect of information shared online by the DCCEEW which is barely mentioned by the media or NSW federal & state members of their respective parliaments.

It is certainly not information which has translated into action at state or local government planning level in any meaningful way in New South Wales.

This was New South Wales between 1 January to 5 February 2024:

Click on images to enlarge

This was the Australian Bureau of Meteorology NSW Heatwave Map on 3 February 2024:

Look around your town or village and count how many houses built in the last 20 years which appear to have been constructed to a design that will be likely to cope with the predicted increasing number of  days per year of maximum heatwave conditions of 35°C and over.

If your count is so low in the streets near you that it shocks, perhaps now is the time to insist that at federal, state and local government level a new mandatory building code be implemented which requires as part of development consent conditions:  (i) passive building design; (ii) indoor temperature-mitigating building material use; and (iv) subdivisions layouts and streetscapes which avoid heat island effects.

Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (est. July 2022), Your Home, "Australia's Guide To Environmentally Adaptable Homes", excerpt:

Designing for climate change

You can design or renovate your home to take into account the sort of climate impacts you expect to be most relevant for your area.

Temperature increase and heatwaves

One of the main expected effects of global climate change across Australia is increasing temperatures and a greater number of extremely hot days (CSIRO and BOM 2020). Australian households need to consider how they can adapt to maintain comfort, manage household energy costs, and reduce the risk of heat stress and heat-related illness and mortality.

The need to keep your home cool during the summer months will be greater. On the other hand, there should be less need to heat the home in winter. Good passive design can lessen the need to rely on air-conditioners and help to capture the savings from lowered heating energy needs.

Consider the impact of increased numbers of heatwaves in your region. Over the past several decades, heatwaves have increased in duration, frequency and intensity in many parts of Australia (Steffen et al. 2019). New homes are not typically constructed to provide maximum protection from heatwaves as standard. In urban areas, tree canopy cover is decreasing as development intensifies. Urban areas may be particularly prone to heatwave conditions because of the ‘heat island’ effect, in which the abundance of heat-absorbing materials such as concrete, and lack of vegetation, increases their temperature compared with the surrounding area. Good tree canopy and other vegetation around your home and neighbourhood can reduce the impact of the urban heat island effect (see Green roofs and walls).

In addition, electricity demand rises sharply during heatwaves because of increased air-conditioning usage, contributing to blackouts. Excess peak demand drives up electricity prices, making air-conditioning use during heatwaves too expensive for some low-income households.

The NCC heating and cooling load limits under the NatHERS compliance pathway assist to keep homes at a comfortable temperature year-round. The load limits have been developed using the 2022 NatHERS climate files based on historical weather data, and the requirements change depending on which climate zone the home is built in.....

Tip

In the early stage of design, decide if your home will be air-conditioned, naturally ventilated, or a combination. This will affect further design decisions including the type and level of insulation.

Overall, adapting to cope with increased temperatures requires appropriate heat-resistant building materials and design. Key design strategies include:

• orientating living rooms appropriately and using shading to minimise summer heat gain

• using thermal mass appropriately

• locating bedrooms in the coolest part of the building and using insulation, shading and so on to ensure comfortable temperatures for sleeping

• providing opportunities for night-time ventilation, including natural ventilation and mechanical systems

• using light-coloured roofs and ‘cool roof’ technology (specially designed roofing materials and coatings with high solar reflectance and thermal emittance)

• creating a ‘cool retreat’ – a portion of the dwelling designed to provide comfort during heatwave periods. This could be a shaded, ventilated room or basement that is well insulated and able to be closed off from warmer parts of the house so it can be efficiently air-conditioned

• using cooling technologies powered by renewable energy

• using landscape to decrease the need for cooling (for example, by shading, channelling cool breezes, lowering surface temperatures).

Refer to Passive cooling for more information on cooling design strategies....     [my yellow highlighting]

Magistrate finds guilty climate activists to have ‘muscular good character due to their strong records of community service ’

 

Echo, 30 January 2024:

More than thirty climate activists controversially charged under NSW laws are free to continue life without penalty after their matters were heard in the Newcastle Local Court last week.

Police arrested 109 activists at the 12th Rising Tide anti-coal blockade of Newcastle Port late last year when the protest continued past the officially permitted time.

Officers said afterward they would allege in court some protesters deliberately entered the harbour channel after the permitted end time for the protest at 4pm on the Sunday, after three days of protests, despite police warnings and directions.

Protestors this week said police had subsequently charged 99 people with s14a of the Maritime Safety Act, Unreasonable interference by operation or use of vessel.

Twenty-one activists reportedly received convictions in the first related court hearing on 11 January while no convictions were recorded for another 40.

Last Friday, charges against 36 protestors were heard in the Newcastle Local Court, with the case against one, who was pleading not guilty, adjourned until 15 February.

Magistrate finds guilty climate activists to have ‘muscular good character’

Byron Shire climate and housing advocate Chels Hood-Withey on Monday said the other 35 protestors pleaded guilty, with five receiving convictions.

Many had their charges handled under a ‘Section 10A’ in NSW law effectively allowing for groups of people facing similar or the same minor charges to receive the one judicial finding.

Ms Hood-Withey said neither she, nor many of the other protestors pleading guilty in Newcastle Local Court, received a penalty or recording of the offence.

Magistrate John Chicken told the court protestors had ‘noble intentions, albeit they ended up in an infraction of the law,’ Ms Hood-Withey told The Echo.

‘They were motivated by selflessness and a genuine concern for the climate and the future of the earth,’ Magistrate Chicken was quoted as saying.

He characterised the defendants, aged 24 and 71, as being of ‘muscular good character due to their strong records of community service’......

Returning to the matters heard in Newcastle last week that protestors said included five Northern Rivers residents, Ms Hood-Withey said many represented themselves.

Some had the support of the Environmental Defenders Office, she said.

Several opted to enter their guilty pleas through the court’s online system and didn’t have to face court in person.

There were no conditions placed on their release from the court matters......

Read the full article here.

Note:

John Chicken was appointed to the bench of the NSW Local Court by NSW Attorney General John Hatzistergos in 2009, after practicing law in New South Wales for 21 years with a strong background in criminal law having appeared extensively as a criminal advocate in the Local, District and Supreme Court of NSW.

SEA LEVEL RISE 2024 : It's later than you think

Most of what we the general public think we know about sea level rise calculations by inundation height and rate is derived from models which did not anticipate global land and sea surface temperatures accelerating as sharply as they have in the last two years nor thought that an average annual global temperature anomaly of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels was quite literally just around the corner.

So it is highly possible that what is quoted below by way of text and maps is an underestimation of what the Australian East Coast will begin to experience between now and 2030. While it is also likely that the most common established timelines of climate change milestones which run out to 2100 will be truncated to a marked degree.

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), AR6 Synthesis Report (2020-23), Headline Statements, excerpt:

Continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term in considered scenarios and modelled pathways. Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards (high confidence).

AdaptNSW, excerpt, retrieved 15 January 2024:

IPCC modelling suggests slightly higher sea level rise to the north of the state and slightly lower to the south. These projections do not include processes associated with the melting of ice sheets which for NSW could result in sea level rise of up to 2.3m by 2100 and 5.5m by 2150.

In the longer term, the IPCC show sea level is committed to rise for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt, and will remain elevated for thousands of years.

• If warming is limited to 1.5°C, global mean sea level will rise by about 2 to 3m.

• for 2°C, 2 to 6m is expected, and

• for 5° 19 to 22m is expected. [my yellow highlighting]

National Oceanography Centre, Clarence Coast Mean Sea Level 1986 – 2022

YAMBA

NASA, Projected Sea Level Rise Under Different SSP Scenarios, Yamba:

Clarence Valley Sea Level Rise 2030 onwards based on Climate Central Interactive Mapping

Extent of inundation at 2 metre rise

Extent of inundation at 3 metre rise

Rise by 2030 - six years time

Rise by 2040 - sixteen years time

Headline To Remember

 

The Guardian, 30 December 2023

CLIMATE CRISIS: I don't know how many times and in how many ways governments & big business will have to be told the world had run out of time before they accept the science. A moot point because it is already too late

It is hard reading the United Nations Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (COP28) final document titled "Outcome of Global Stocktake" Revised Advance Version, 13 December 2023.

It announces itself pleased that the world is on track to limit global warming to "an increase in the range of 2.1–2.8 °C with the full implementation of the latest nationally determined contributions" by the 196 parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement (COP21).

The document posits that the world has until 2050 before it needs to have completed "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems" by using, among other things, "renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production". This tool kit is expected to keep the global surface temperature of the Earth at an average1.5°C with no or limited overshoot.

The Closing Plenary Remarks of COP28 President Dr. Sultan Al Jaber were just as unrealistic:

"Excellencies, colleagues and friends. First let me say As-Salamu Alaykum … and thank you…We have travelled a long road together… in a short amount of time. Over the last two weeks, we have worked very hard to secure a better future for our people and our planet. We should be proud of our historic achievement. And the United Arab

Emirates…my country… is rightly proud of its role in helping you to move this forward.

Ladies and gentlemen, the world needed to find a new way. By following our North Star, we have found that path. We have delivered a comprehensive response to the Global Stocktake and all the other mandates. Together, we have confronted realities and we have set the world in the right direction. We have given it a robust action plan to keep 1.5 within reach. It is a plan that is led by the science. It is a balanced plan, that tackles emissions, bridges the gap on adaptation, reimagines global finance, and delivers on loss and damage. It is built on common ground. It is strengthened by inclusivity. And it is reinforced by collaboration.

It is an enhanced, balanced, but… make no mistake… historic package to accelerate climate action. It is…the UAE Consensus".....

The situation we find ourselves in is very different from the unrealistic imagining of government and industry representatives in Dubai UAE over the fourteen conference days between 30 November to 13 December 2023.

Fig. 1. Global temperature relative to 1880-1920 based on the GISS analysis.[1],[2] 

Global Warming Acceleration: El Nino Measuring Stick Looks Good

14 November 2023

James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy

Abstract. Global warming is accelerating because the drive for warming, Earth’s energy imbalance, has doubled in the past decade. Measurement of the acceleration is hampered by unforced tropical (El Nino/La Nina) variability, but a good measuring stick is provided by warming between successive large El Ninos. Strengthening of the current (2023-24) El Nino has raised it to a level similar to the 1997-98 and 2015-16 El Ninos. The first six months of the current El Nino are 0.39°C warmer than the same six months of the 2015-16 El Nino, a global warming rate of 0.49°C/decade, consistent with expectation of a large acceleration of global warming. We expect the 12-month mean temperature by May 2024 to eliminate any doubt about global warming acceleration. Subsequent decline of the 12-month temperature below 1.5°C will likely be limited, confirming that the 1.5°C limit has already been passed.

Global temperature has increased 0.18°C/decade since 1970 (Fig. 1). Temperature prior to the current El Nino was ~1.2°C above the preindustrial level (taken to be the 1880-1920 average, the earliest period with reasonable global coverage of instrumental measurements). The goal of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change[3] and the Paris Agreement[4] is for the rate of warming to slow down so that global warming stabilizes at a level of 1.5°C or less. We find,[5] on the contrary, that global warming post-2010 must be in an accelerated warming phase, based on a large increase in Earth’s energy imbalance, which is the immediate drive for global temperature change. We project an acceleration of the post-2010 warming rate by 50-100 percent (yellow area in Fig. 1). Thus, global temperature is now accelerating past 1.5°C and it could reach 2°C in the 2030s, barring purposeful actions to reduce or reverse Earth’s energy imbalance.

Acceleration of global warming has been hidden so far by the large natural variability of global temperature, especially because of the unusual 3-year period of strong La Ninas that ended this year. If we wait long enough, say another decade, the changed trend will be obvious, but we need to understand the situation sooner. We will argue elsewhere[6] that actions to cool the planet should be taken within less than a decade if we are to have a good chance of avoiding polar climate change amplifications that would be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.....

[my yellow highlighting]

Read the full paper at:

https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-warming-acceleration-el-nino-measuring-stick-looks-good?e=[UNIQID] 

Representatives of national governments and industry representatives have flown out of the United Arab Emirates safe in the knowledge that they can do as they please while Earth continues to overheat towards the point of global extinctions

 

Suggested reading.....

United Nations COP28, First... by clarencegirl

 

This document apparently caused a round of self-congratulatory clapping at the conclusion of COP28. 

As the following excerpts indicate government representatives and industry lobbyists has gone home having given themselves permission to do as they please.

18. Acknowledges that significant collective progress towards the Paris Agreement temperature goal has been made, from an expected global temperature increase of 4 °C according to some projections prior to the adoption of the Agreement to an increase in the range of 2.1–2.8 °C with the full implementation of the latest nationally determined contributions;....

28. Further recognizes the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 °C pathways and calls on Parties to contribute to the following global efforts, in a nationally determined manner, taking into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances, pathways and approaches:

(a) Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030;

(b) Accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power;

(c) Accelerating efforts globally towards net zero emission energy systems, utilizing zero- and low-carbon fuels well before or by around mid-century;

(d) 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;

(e) Accelerating zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production;

(f) Accelerating and substantially reducing non-carbon-dioxide emissions globally, including in particular methane emissions by 2030;

(g) Accelerating the reduction of emissions from road transport on a range of pathways, including through development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zero and low-emission vehicles;

(h) Phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible;

29. Recognizes that transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security;..... 

[my yellow highlighting]

COP28 Global Climate Action State of Play: the 1 Per Cent are mocking the rest of the world

Shorter version of two of the documents set out below which were produced by the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP28) which was held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 30 November to 12 December 2023:

• There should be no restraints placed on the production of fossil fuels - especially oil, gas and coal.

• All that is needed is for nations to magically make the greenhouse gas emissions (created by the production and use of fossil fuels) disappear so all manifestations of the global fossil fuel industry can claim they are clean and green.

• Some of the ways to disappear emissions might be to create new definitions for old problems, use more creative carbon accounting, shove those national emissions into a dark cupboard somewhere and, make the end users of fossil fuels pay more for the product.

•  The nations of the world need to relax, there's plenty of time, so go back home and think about the fact that fossil fuels are good and climate scientists are just being alarmist.

Summary of Global Climate Action at COP 28, created 11/12/2023, 23:32:26, excerpt:

III. Fast-tracking a just, orderly, and equitable energy transition

6. A rapid decarbonization of the energy system is the key to keeping the goal of 1.5 oC within reach. This requires accelerating clean energy transition both from the demand and supply side, while such transformation should be orderly, just and equitable and also account for energy security.....

DRAFT TEXT, excerpt:

on CMA agenda item 4

First global stocktake under the Paris Agreement

Version 11/12/2023 16:30

Draft text by the President

First global stocktake under the Paris Agreement

38. Recognizes the need to accelerate sustainable, affordable, and inclusive energy transitions, taking into account different starting points, national circumstances and pathways as well as ensuring energy security, affordability and accessibility and the need for sustainable development, eradication of poverty and international cooperation;

39. Also recognizes the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in GHG emissions and calls upon Parties to take actions that could include, inter alia:

(a) Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030;

(b) Rapidly phasing down unabated coal and limitations on permitting new and unabated coal power generation;

(c) Accelerating efforts globally towards net zero emissions energy systems, utilizing zero and low carbon fuels well before or by around mid-century;

(d) Accelerating zero and low emissions technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies, including such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, and low carbon hydrogen production, so as to enhance efforts towards substitution of unabated fossil fuels in energy systems.

(e) Reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science;

(f) Accelerating and substantially reducing non-CO2 emissions, including, in particular, methane emissions globally by 2030;

(g) Accelerating emissions reductions from road transport through a range of pathways, including development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zero and low emission vehicles;

(h) Phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible;....

The Guardian, 12 December 2023

A statement delivered by the Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, on behalf of what’s known as the umbrella group of countries, came as tensions flared at the United Arab Emirates over the text of a draft deal proposed by the summit presidency.....

Bowen referred to Schuster’s statement in his intervention in a later meeting between government representatives and the UAE summit president, Sultan Al Jaber. He was speaking on behalf of the umbrella group of countries, which also includes New Zealand, Norway, Israel, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

“My friend Cedric Schuster, the Samoan minister, said tonight of this draft that we will not sign our death certificates,” Bowen said. “That’s what’s at stake for many countries who are represented here tonight and many people who do not have a voice. We will not be a co-signatory to those death certificates.”

Summary of Global Climate Action at COP 28 by clarencegirl on Scribd

UNFCCC COP28: Draft text by the President First global stocktake under the Paris Agreement by clarencegirl on Scribd

Is United Arab Emirates & international fossil fuel industry scheming about to turn UN COP28 into a crime against humanity?

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is a 50 year old Emirati politician with a undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering, a Master in Business Administration and a PhD in Business and Economics. 

His studies appear to have been funded by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) - a state-owned multinational corporation of which he is currently Director-General & Chief Executive Officer. ADNOC is considered one of the world's largest energy companies measured by both fossil fuel reserves and production.

Critics tend to characterise ADNOC under his guidance as a corporation which focuses on 'greenwashing' rather than genuine greenhouse gas emissions reduction/climate change mitigation.

Al Jaber is currently the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology.

He is also President of the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) which is being hosted by oil-rich UAE and therein lies an immense conflict of interest which has the potential to fatally weaken the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

COP28 was convened for thirteen days with around 199 nations participating and concludes on Tuesday 12 December 2023. 

AlJazeera, 8 December 2023:

The head of OPEC has urged members to reject any COP28 agreement that “targets” fossil fuels, highlighting deep divisions as the UN climate conference in Dubai enters its final week.

A new draft of the final agreement published on Friday includes a range of options, from agreeing to a “phase out of fossil fuels in line with best available science”, to phasing out “unabated fossil fuels”, to including no language on them at all....

The nearly 200 nations gathered in Dubai are now expected to focus on the issue of fossil fuels in the hope of reaching a consensus before the gathering’s scheduled end......

The most vocal holdout to calls to end fossil fuels is Saudi Arabia, which like summit host United Arab Emirates, is a major oil producer.....

TheGuardian, 3 December 2023:

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 CEO of the United Arab Emirates’s state oil company, Adnoc, which many observers see as a serious conflict of interest.

More than 100 countries already support a phase-out of fossil fuels and whether the final Cop28 agreement calls for this or uses weaker language such as “phase-down” is one of the most fiercely fought issues at the summit and may be the key determinant of its success. Deep and rapid cuts are needed to bring fossil fuel emissions to zero and limit fast-worsening climate impacts.....

Guterres told Cop28 delegates on Friday: “The science is clear: The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe.”.......

Newsweek, 1 December 2023:

The annual United Nations climate summit started yesterday. We're up to the 28th edition: "COP28." Past UN summits have obviously failed us, but this is a new low. Everyone on Earth needs to know that the meeting has been overrun by fossil fuel executives, making it a sick, planet-destroying joke. There's no real hope of stopping catastrophic global heating until we fix this.

The primary cause of global heating is fossil fuels; and global heating is what's driving all the crazy heat, fire, smoke, storms, flooding, drought, crop yield losses, and ecosystem death that is intensifying everywhere as Earth breaks down. This is basic physics and it's merciless. If left unchecked, every year on average will be hotter than the last, and at some point—no one knows exactly when or how it will unfold—global heating will take down civilization as we know it. Billions of lives are at risk, and the damage to Earth's habitability will last for so long that it will be essentially permanent as far as humans are concerned.

Since fossil fuels are the cause, the only way out of this emergency is to ramp down and ultimately end the fossil fuel industry. Recycling and composting aren't bad things in and of themselves, but they will not stop global heating. The cause is fossil fuels. The only real solution is ending fossil fuels. If you want to help, and you should, forget recycling. Instead, fight the fossil fuel industry every way you can.

It's easy to imagine an alternate universe in which fossil fuel executives were like, "We already have more money than we know what to do with, so let's not destroy the planet." In this alternate universe, the fossil fuel industry uses its vast power and resources to accelerate humanity's transition to clean energy, so we can all have a planet to live on. Makes sense.

In reality of course, fossil fuel executives made the opposite choice: to spend billions to hire the best and brightest to spread disinformation and block action. Which is sad, and horrible, and nightmarish. They've been doing this for half a century. And they recently promised to keep doing it.

In 2021, six fossil fuel executives testified before congress. They were Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil; Michael Wirth, CEO of Chevron; David Lawler, CEO of BP America; Gretchen Watkins, president of Shell Oil; Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute; and Suzanne Clark, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. When asked in several instances by Congress if they would agree to stop spending to spread disinformation and block climate action, these fossil fuel executives refused. They clearly signaled to the world that they plan to blithely continue dishonestly destroying Earth's habitability for the sake of corporate greed. They are literal supervillains, stealing our future.

This year, 2023, is the hottest in recorded human history. This should surprise no one: global heating is driven inexorably by trending accumulation of fossil fuel carbon dioxide and methane emissions. In this hottest year in human history, the climate summit is being held in the United Arab Emirates and presided over by a fossil fuel chief executive named Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber. It's hard to imagine anything more cynical or more evil. And yet, things did get more cynical and more evil, with recent revelations that the U.A.E. has been abusing its host role to strike side deals to expand fossil fuels......

Read the full article by Dr. Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at:

https://www.newsweek.com/climate-summit-sick-joke-you-should-angry-afraid-opinion-1848719

The New York Times (Late Edition), 29 November 2023:

A leaked document has talking points for the president of the United Nations climate conference, who is an oil executive in the United Arab Emirates, to advance oil and gas deals.

As the host of global climate talks that begin this week, the United Arab Emirates is expected to play a central role in forging an agreement to move the world more rapidly away from coal, oil and gas.

But behind the scenes, the Emirates has sought to use its position as host to pursue a contradictory goal: to lobby on oil and gas deals around the world, according to an internal document made public by a whistle-blower.

In one example, the document offers guidance for Emirati climate officials to use meetings with Brazil's environment minister to enlist her help with a local petrochemical deal by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the Emirates' state-run oil and gas company, known as Adnoc.

Emirati officials should also inform their Chinese counterparts that Adnoc was "willing to jointly evaluate international LNG opportunities" in Mozambique, Canada and Australia, the document indicates. LNG stands for liquefied natural gas, which is a fossil fuel and a driver of global warming.

These and other details in the nearly 50-page document -- obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC -- have cast a pall over the climate summit, which begins on Thursday. They are indications, experts said, that the U.A.E. is blurring the boundary between its powerful standing as host of the United Nations climate conference, and U.A.E.'s position as one of the world's largest oil and gas exporters.

"I can't believe it," António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, said at a news conference Monday. The U.A.E. had been "caught red-handed," Christiana Figueres, a former United Nations diplomat posted on X. Ms. Figueres led the negotiations that yielded the 2015 Paris Agreement, the pact among nations of the world to work to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"At this point we might as well meet inside an actual oil refinery," said Joseph Moeono-Kolio, lead adviser to the campaign for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, an advocacy network.

Members of Emirates' climate delegation didn't respond to requests for comment.....