Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
My week at the United Nations Climate Summit has come to end as a CFACT Senior Fellow and I’m “homeward bound” (to quote Simon and Garfunkel) via the Saudi Arabian capital. The CFACT team remains on the ground for the upcoming second and final week of COP27. I offer below several summary experiences during week one (with five other articles found here).
CFACT is a rare but vital presence among the massive climate industrial complex that gathers at COP 27. The attendees are typically put off-guard by our tough questions when CFACT challenges their orthodoxy. The climate faithful clearly do not expect any dissent. There exists in Sharm el-Sheikh pervasive groupthink.
Not surprisingly UN climate summits provide little opportunity for actual real debate on climate issues. Absent CFACT and its allies, debate probably would not exist. But periodically we are able to crack through and progress is being made – albeit slowly.
There is limited time for audience participation at the end of a panel discussion (for those who can stay awake), and there’s the stopping by the pavilions on display to chat with delegates from the many nations present. Typically, some panelist bureaucrat or activist blithely claims that the planet is warming by multiple degrees decades into the future and their nation is doing its part in the larger attempt to change the weather. Everyone nods in agreement…until we challenge them.
Despite the obstacles of getting our CFACT message out in such a dark place, progress is being made little by little.
We bring up issues like the enormous ramifications of drastic, expensive societal changes being proposed to deal with climate change, which primarily will harm the poor and working class. Less fossil fuel use and more wind, solar and electric (battery-powered) vehicles will do little if anything to cool the planet. And, we point out that other planetary, natural phenomenon impact the climate should be discussed; except they are not considered since it would blow open how unrealistic is this entire climate crusade by zeroing in solely on greenhouse gases.
We also have raised the issue–the elephant in the room–otherwise absent in any discussion of climate mitigation and “decarbonization,” that is, China, Russia and even India are not going along. In fact, the leaders of two of these nations blew off attending COP27 and India’s prime minister said his nation plans to burn coal at least until 2040 – all of which negates any pinprick climate efforts in Kenya, Qatar, the U.S. and the world over, no matter how fancy they showcase their efforts.
Another point of realism missing that CFACT points out is the wildly unrealistic cost estimates of global decarbonization, which totals $2 trillion annually for the next seven years, according to a recent UN-supported study (something even John Kerry acknowledges). The most climate-friendly northern hemispheric governments of developed nations, chiefly the Biden administration in the United States, could never deliver a fraction of this amount. The money does not exist and won’t be forthcoming any time soon, no matter the attempts by southern hemispheric nations at shaming the developed world.
Finally, we remind COP27 delegates there is no acknowledgement of the litany of doomsday climate predictions of the previous 26 climate conferences that have gone bust. Climate speakers, including heads of state, UN officials, celebrities and activists offer no reflection and are impervious to embarrassment for their alarmist falsehoods dating to the early 1990s. The climate goalposts for the imminent catastrophe simply get moved to the next decade, and the beat goes on.
I finished my week in Egypt with an observation I noticed on the first day I arrived: namely, COP27 spared no comforts for its elites while us peasants had long lines for bread and water (literally). This included the multitude of high-ranking government officials transported to and fro by private jets and gas-guzzling SUVs. Throughout the week, every indoor space was duly air conditioned, though November in Egypt is quite bearable at 75 to 80 degrees. Yet all doors on these makeshift buildings remained wide open for coming and going – meaning plenty of AC energy every second of each day was blowing outdoors and wasted.
It was a subtle reminder that those hosting these UN climate summits are completely impervious with respect to their hypocrisy — sacrifice for thee, not for me.