Benny Peiser, director of Global Warming Policy Fund, talked about Irish Climate Science Forum and CLINTEL. His online presentation is titled: After COP26, with an energy crisis looming, is there any practical alternative to Net Zero?
The GWPF recently rebranded their advocacy arm Net Zero Watch. So it’s no surprise that the focus of his talk is on the obsessions of current Western leaders, like Biden and Johnson, with Net Zero.
The reason for this obsession is that the 1.5 target is now the main focus of the COP26 conference in Glasgow. Remember, in 2015 in Paris, countries agreed that they would strive to keep temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably even below 1.5 degrees. The IPCC then published a special report in 2018 on this threshold of 1.5 C. In this report, they calculated the residual carbon budget at less than 1.5 and 2 degrees. Since then, these carbon budgets have played an important role in international climate negotiations. You get messages like “we only have 12 years to save the planet”.
In fact, staying below 1.5C would mean Net Zero for the whole world by 2050. Peiser has shown with charts from the recent past and projections from the EIA that the targets are ambitious. Such hope is completely unrealistic.
At the top, what is needed (according to the models) to stay below certain goals. According to the EIA forecast. From the presentation by Benny Peiser.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that energy production from renewables will increase in the coming decades, but so will contributions from coal, oil and gas. Peiser calls a rapid change to Net Zero completely impractical and an “impossible change”. He reminds us that groups like the Exctinction Rebellion seem to truly believe we’ll go extinct if we get past the magical 1.5 C barrier. He showed a google search for “climate emergency” which showed the term popping up pretty quickly in 2019 as governments around the world announced a “climate emergency”. this climate”. We live in an age of climate hysteria.
Boris Johnson and Biden want countries to accelerate the phase-out of coal entirely. However, throughout the conference, they had to reject the formula until in the end, a meaningless promise by countries like India and China remained. Peiser came up with different formulations.
Literally, minutes before the closing of the conference, China forced Western countries to supply water for the “shutdown phase” of coal power (whatever that means) and even turned it off. it turns into “targeted assistance” which means that India is in fact asking for a trillion dollars if the West really wants India to give up coal soon. So as the skeptics predicted the conference ended in a big lie. Targets are non-binding and still conditional on massive asset transfers.
Problem attention cycle
Peiser called this 1972 figure of the problem attention cycle the main graph of his presentation. According to him, we are just entering – in the UK at least – phase 3 of this cycle, in which people are starting to realize the costs of policies. In phase 1, scientists try to put the problem on the agenda. These are the fifties to the eighties. Since the beginning of the IPCC, we are in phase two, which includes “disturbing discovery and extreme excitement”. The media are helping a lot to hype the issue. Peiser says that during this period, the public discussion was all about the science (is it really CO2? Is it really that bad?) which led to the science settling down and we had to do something about it. . On the policy front, it is said that climate policies will improve the climate and environment, while benefiting the economy (green jobs).
However, now that mitigation policies are implemented, people are starting to feel it is in their pocket. And this is painful. In the UK this winter, especially when it’s going to be cold, a lot of people will be sitting in the dark and cold in their homes, unable to pay the bills. People are starting to realize that climate policies make them poorer and colder. Peiser sees a new movement emerging, including a tenth of MPs who want to scrutinize the costs of coming to Net Zero. Peiser also finds that he is more exposed to the media than he was a few years ago. The media is embracing it, they have to.
It is impossible to predict how long the third phase of the problem attention cycle will last. It could certainly take at least ten years. So skeptics hoping for a sudden change in atmosphere around climate change will need to be patient.
Peiser’s focus with Net Zero Watch and the GWPF will remain the same in the coming years. “Shows that there really is no climate crisis and that there is plenty of time for slow decarbonisation, first for gas and then for nuclear combined with adaptation.” They published recently a piece of paper document this more realistic climate approach.
Peiser has become known for his CCnet newsletter which he has been running since 1997. Their current newsletter (several times a week) is still a must-follow if you want to stay up to date with news on climate change and climate policy. Please register here.
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