Climate change
This four-year-old presentation by Dr. John Robson investigates the unsound origins and fundamental inaccuracy, even dishonesty, of the claim that 97% of scientists, or “the world’s scientists”, or something agree that climate change is man-made, urgent and dangerous.
For a transcript of this video including links to some of the sources, please visit https://climatediscussionnexus.com/videos/the-97-consensus-slogan/
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TRANSCRIPT
There are so many empty slogans out there I wish we could tackle all of them at once. But the “97% of scientists agree” is surely the elephant in the room. Lots of people have tried to rebut it by dismissing the notion of consensus itself, or by praising the historical examples of renegade scientists who went against a prevailing consensus and turned out to be right. But that unnecessarily concedes the major claim itself, which the evidence shows is simply not true. I hope you enjoy the video, and that you’ll share it widely.
-JR
Narrator
The claim that 97% of the world’s scientists agree is pretty much the ace of trumps in the whole climate debate. After all, who’s going to argue against a consensus that strong, backed by so many experts. But what exactly are they supposed to agree on? If you look behind the curtain, no one seems sure what the experts actually said. Or who they are. Or… anything.
John
At first glance it seems straightforward enough. In 2013 President Barack Obama famously tweeted that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”
In 2014, his Secretary of State John Kerry said 97% of “the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent.” And that same year, CNN said “97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening now, that it’s damaging the planet and that it’s manmade.”
Narrator
That’s pretty much what most people think when they hear the 97% slogan: Every scientist believes man-made climate change is an urgent crisis.
But there are millions of scientists in the world. How many exactly were surveyed? When were they surveyed? Who did it? And what exactly did they agree on?
John
Let’s find out. I’m John Robson and this is a Climate Discussion Nexus Fact Check on the 97 percent consensus slogan.
To begin with, there are some ideas that pretty much all scientists accept. For instance that birds are descended from dinosaurs, though that idea was once dismissed as highly eccentric. And when it comes to climate, you don’t need a poll to tell you that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, meaning it likely has some overall warming effect. That’s been known since the mid-1800s. And if you did do a survey, you would find overwhelming scientific agreement on that point.
Also, there are lots of indications that the world is somewhat warmer now than it was in the mid-1800s, the end of a natural cooling period called the Little Ice Age.
Finally, virtually nobody disputes that humans have changed the environment of our planet, by releasing emissions into the air, changing the land surface, putting things in the water, and so forth.
These aren’t controversial ideas, and they’re accepted even by most climate skeptics. What we don’t accept is that any of them prove that humans are the only cause of global warming, or that climate change is a dangerous threat.
If 97% of scientists believed that, it would be troubling. Though even so, we’d still have to find some plan whose benefits outweighed its costs. In any event, that level of consensus that the problem was manmade and urgent would certainly be noteworthy. But the thing is, they don’t agree on that.
A close look at what survey data we have, and there isn’t much, tells us, yes, there is a great deal of agreement that CO2 is a greenhouse gas to some degree, that the Earth has warmed in the last 160 years, and that humans affect their surroundings. But that survey data also tell us there’s far less agreement on everything else including whether we face a crisis.
So where did this 97% claim come from and why is it so widely repeated?
Narrator
The 97% claim seems to have begun with a historian of science named Naomi Oreskes who, in 2004, claimed she’d looked at 928 articles about climate change in scientific journals, that 75% of them endorsed the “consensus view” that “Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities” and that none directly disputed it.
By 2006, in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, this finding had somehow morphed into “a massive study of every scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal written on global warming for the last 10 years and they took a big sample of 10%, 928 articles, and you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we’re causing global warming and that it’s a serious problem? Out of the 928, zero.”
John
That was a fib. Gore took a study that found 75% endorsed the idea that humans have some effect on climate and turned it into proof that 100% of scientists believe it’s a serious problem. It does no such thing.
Narrator
And nor do the handful of other surveys on the subject. For instance five years later, in 2009, a pair of researchers at the University of Illinois sent an online survey to over 10,000 Earth scientists asking two simple questions: Do you agree that global temperatures have generally risen since the pre-1800s? and Do you think that human activity is a significant contributing factor? [Note: They asked some other questions too, but didn’t report the questions or results in the publication.]
John
They didn’t single out greenhouse gases, they didn’t explain what the term “significant” meant and they didn’t refer to danger or crisis. So what was the result?
Narrator
Of the 3,146 responses they received, 90 percent said yes to the first question, that global temperatures had risen since the Little Ice Age, and only 82 percent said yes to the second, that human activity was a significant contributing factor.
Interestingly, among meteorologists only 64 percent said yes to the second, meaning a third of the experts in the study of weather patterns who replied didn’t think humans play a significant role in global warming, let alone a dominant one.
What got the most media attention was that among the 77 respondents who described themselves as climate experts, 75 said yes to the second question. 75 out of 77 is 97%.
John
OK, it didn’t get any media attention that they took 77 out of 3,146 responses. But that’s the key statistical trick. They found a 97 percent consensus among 2 percent of the survey respondents. And even so it was only that there’d been some warming since the 1800s, which virtually nobody denies, and that humans are partly responsible. These experts didn’t say it was dangerous or urgent, because they weren’t asked. [Note: or as noted above, if they were the results weren’t reported.]
So far the claim that 97% of “world scientists” are saying there’s a climate crisis is pure fiction. But wait, you say. There must be more. Yes, there is. But not much.
Narrator
Another survey appeared in 2013, by Australian researcher John Cook and his coauthors, in which they claimed to have examined about 12,000 scientific papers related to climate change, and found that 97% endorsed the consensus view that greenhouse gases were at least partly responsible for global warming. This study generated headlines around the world, and it was the one to which Obama’s tweet was referring.
John
But here again, appearances were deceiving.
Two-thirds of the papers that Cook and his colleagues examined expressed no view at all on the consensus. Of the remaining 34%, the authors claimed that 33% endorsed the consensus. Divide 33 by 34 and you get 97%. But this result is essentially meaningless, because they set the bar so low.
The survey authors didn’t ask if climate change was dangerous or “manmade”. They only asked if a given paper accepted that humans have some effect on the climate, which as already noted is uncontroversial. It could mean as little as accepting the “urban heat island” effect.
So a far better question would be: How many of the studies claimed that humans have caused most of the observed global warming? And oddly, we do know. Because buried in the authors’ data was the answer: A mere 64 out of nearly 12,000 papers! That’s not 97%, it’s one half of one percent. It’s one in 200.
And it gets worse. In a follow-up study, climatologist David Legates read those 64 papers and found that a third of them didn’t even say what Cook and his team claimed. Only 41 actually endorsed the view that global warming is mostly manmade. And we still haven’t got to it being “dangerous”. That part of the survey results was simply invented, by politicians and activists.
Other researchers have condemned the Cook study on other grounds too. For instance economist Richard Tol showed that over three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsing even the weak consensus actually said nothing at all on the subject. And evidence later emerged that the authors of the paper were drafting press releases about their findings before they even started doing the research, which indicates an alarming level not of warming or of consensus but of bias.
The reality is that neither this study, nor a handful of others like it, prove that 97% of scientists believe climate change is mostly manmade, let alone that it’s a crisis. The fact that people who claim to put such stock in “settled science” accept such obvious statistical hocus pocus is both astounding and disappointing.
Narrator
So what do climate experts really think? The year before Obama sent out his tweet, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) surveyed its 7,000 members. They got about 1,800 responses. Of those, only 52% said they think global warming over the 20th century has happened and is mostly manmade. The remaining 48% either think it happened but is mostly natural, or it didn’t happen, or they don’t know. And while it’s possible that the three-quarters who didn’t answer split the same way as those who did, it’s also possible that committed alarmists are more likely to answer such surveys. In any case, it’s a small sample, even of AMS members, let alone of the world’s scientists.
John
There was one more survey a few years later by the Netherlands Environment Agency that claimed 66% of climate experts believed humans were mostly responsible for warming since 1950. Which falls far short of 97% even if it outperforms the other studies.
A social psychologist named Jose Duarte, who specializes in survey design, published an analysis of that one, pointing out that they diluted the sample by including large numbers of psychologists, philosophers, political scientists, and other non-experts, making their results meaningless as a measure of what scientists think. Just as you’ll find that the people who cite that 97% number are overwhelmingly not trained scientists, certainly not trained statisticians.
Narrator
So we’re no farther ahead than when we began. Most experts agree on the basics, namely that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and probably causes some warming and that humans have some impact on climate probably including some warming. But they actively debate the rest: How much warming will there be? Is it a problem? Should we try to stop it, or adapt, or wait and see? These are all important questions and we need good answers.
John
And there’s the claim that many of the world’s national science academies, representing hundreds of thousands of scientists across the globe, have issued statements supporting the consensus about global warming and demanding government efforts to cut emissions. The problem is, not a single one of those societies took a survey of their members before issuing their statements in the name of their members. The statements were put out by a small number of activists using their committee positions to make it look as though their views are shared by all the world’s experts. But if they are, why didn’t these authors survey their members before publishing the statements?
There are a couple of other studies that claimed to prove a consensus. But they run into the same problems. All they show is wide agreement on the uncontroversial bits. They offer no information about whether a majority of scientists think global warming is a crisis. And then they’re spun wildly by non-scientists to tell us things they don’t begin to say, often about questions they didn’t even attempt to investigate .
The problem isn’t just that we don’t know what percentage of scientists agrees with this or that statement about global warming. It’s something much worse. All this talk of a 97% consensus amounts to a dishonest bullying campaign to stifle scientific debate just when we need it most because the question looms so large in public policy.
As physicist Richard Feynmann once said, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” And that’s especially true when we’re asked to take drastic action based on those answers.
Not long ago that survey expert I mentioned earlier, Jose Duarte, warned his fellow scientists about the negative consequences of claiming consensus. He said:
“It is ill advised to report a consensus as though it is an aggregation of independent judgments. Humans are an ultrasocial species, and dissent is far costlier than assent to a perceived majority… A scientist who contests the prevailing narrative on human-caused warming, or merely produces smaller estimates, will likely end up on a McCarthyite blacklist of ‘deniers’. Self-described mainstream climate scientists refer the public to such lists, implicitly endorsing the smearing of their colleagues. This is disturbing, and unheard of in other sciences.”
The unfortunate truth is that there is strong political pressure for climate experts not to question claims of impending doom. Those who do so face steep personal and professional costs, including a barrage of abuse that can be highly unpleasant for people who mostly wanted to devote their lives to the quiet pursuit of knowledge not to noisy polemics. And that means we should listen carefully to them when they feel compelled to speak out anyway.
Whether they represent 50%, or 10%, or 3% of experts, what matters is the evidence they bring and the quality of their arguments.
And on that, I would hope we have 100 percent agreement.
For the Climate Discussion Nexus, I’m John Robson.
HT/Pierre Gosselin
That is because “…the common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
https://www.sott.net/article/490777-A-Collective-Common-Enemy-Now-Stalks-Mankind
Stephen Karganovic
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sat, 20 Apr 2024
© Rumble.com
Yuval Hariri, Klaus Schwab’s spokesman, recently made a statement that should send chills up everyone’s spine. “If bad comes to worse and the Flood comes,” Harari said, he and the likeminded cabal of shadowy world masters will “build an Ark and leave the rest to drown.”
Elsewhere, Harari elaborates on the reasons for his fellow elitists’ cold-hearted indifference to the fate of the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants:
“If you go back to the middle of the 20th century …and you think about building the future, then your building materials are those millions of people who are working hard in the factories, in the farms, the soldiers. You need them. You don’t have any kind of future without them.”
What he means is that you – referring to the dominant social and financial elites of that era – still “needed” the labour of millions in the various fields of economic endeavour in order to turn a profit. Since then, how have things changed according to “futurologist” Harari?
“Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population, because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing something useful, these technologies increasingly will make them redundant and will make it possible to replace those people.”
Elitist mouthpiece Harari deserves credit for blood-curdling honesty, if not for the morality of his and his masters’ “visions.” He is plainly signalling the view that this writer, the editors of this portal, its readers and the rest of mankind are expendable and apart from whatever economic utility they still might possess are bereft of any inherent dignity or value.
Harari and his immediate superior in the elitist nomenklatura, Klaus Schwab, technically are private individuals. Their organisational vehicle, the World Economic Forum, is a private NGO registered in Switzerland. Formally, they neither represent nor do they speak for any government or official structure with a proper claim to legitimacy. They have no licence to plan or arrange the future of humanity, besides the self-authorisation to do so which they and the oligarchical globalist power centres they commune and mingle with have arrogated to themselves. No one elected or empowered them to plan anybody’s future, other than their own, and even that strictly in their private capacity.
Yet disposing of the future of mankind is precisely what they presume to do, in Davos in plenary session once a year and the rest of the time in conspiratorial confabulation amongst themselves.
The nature of the “planning” in which they engage should be of deep interest and grave concern to everyone. Not just for the unbridled hubris it displays but more pointedly for the homicidal design that underlies it, on a vast and hitherto unimaginable scale which Raphael Lemkin was incapable of conceiving when he coined the term “genocide.”
When and if the predicted “tsunami” to drown mankind occurs, and we may be confident that Harari and his cohorts have the capacity to make it happen at a time and in the manner of their choosing, as the recently fabricated health event has shown, they will not be mourning the victims. On the contrary, they will be delighted at the success of their handiwork. As the bulk of mankind “drowns,” they will gloat.
It is indisputable that Harari speaks not just in his own or Schwab’s name. He is publicly articulating the ideological vision of a depopulated Earth, cleansed of human presence and tinged with occultist misanthropy. That vision is widely shared by the luminaries of his elitist set. A high profile member of that set, Bill Gates, has been insistently stressing the need to dispose of the useless multitudes by any means, fair or foul. One of Gates’ alarmingly explicit elocutions on this subject was removed by YouTube, allegedly for “violating community guidelines.” The real reason for expunging his remarks from the internet was the danger that they could raise an alarm amongst the targeted “flood victims,” provoking them to react with uncontrollable rage once they discovered what the elitist “visionaries” have in store for them.
These psychopathic serial killers (we should not mince words) using their vast financial, political and media (brainwashing) resources are inexorably putting into effect a homicidal global depopulation agenda. Depopulation, as Harari has honestly admitted, means physically eliminating as many human beings as they deem superfluous or useless for their purposes. The concept of population control, again not to mince words, is their code for global genocide.
The Club of Rome, one of the institutional components of the depopulation network, in a programmatic document published in 1974 could not have put the main principle of their genocidal philosophy more starkly: “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.” Is it necessary to clarify that cancers are not nurtured and cultivated? Cancers are to be extirpated.
F. William Engdahl recently shined extraordinary light on the deep roots of the nefarious plan, discussed and implemented openly by its malevolent promoters in plain view of the intended victims. Engdahl has shown that perverts like Schwab and Harari are but public faces of a malevolent trans-generational scheme.
Engdahl quotes from a report issued by the Club of Rome, “The First Global Revolution.” It is admitted there that the CO2 global warming claims, serving as the convenient rationale to forcefully impose upon humanity an endless array of destructive structural changes, are merely an invented ruse.
That is because “…the common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
“The agenda,” Engdahl sombrely concludes, “is dark, dystopian and meant to eliminate billions of us ‘ordinary humans.'”
An important clarification needs to be made. Humanity is not the enemy but is on the contrary the crown of God’s creation. And it is humanity itself that now is facing an implacable enemy, in this case, a collective incarnation of the defining characteristic Edward Gibbon attributed to the depraved emperors Commodus and Caracalla: “common enemy of mankind.”
This time round, however, humanity is no longer facing the perverse eccentricities of an individual deviant. Today, it must confront Commodus’ and Caracalla’s collective personification, in the form of a depraved global oligarchy, imbued with dangerous delusions of omnipotence and impunity.
Why have we chosen to dwell on this dark subject? In the first place, because the intended genocide victims worldwide are entitled to be informed and naturally they also have the right to self-defence, in order to preserve their own and their families’ lives, as well as to ensure the integrity of their societies, cultures, historical memory, and way of life.
But there is also another important reason, to expose the cynicism and utter amorality of the genocidal fanatics who still are directing the destiny of a considerable portion of mankind and exert their energies continuously to regain complete control over the remainder.
Acting through their proxies Germany and Rwanda, recently joined by France and a few other puppet governments, they had the impudence to submit in the General Assembly of the United Nations a resolution to condemn and memorialise the fabricated “genocide” in Srebrenica, censuring for genocide a nation that throughout the twentieth century has itself been the target for effective extinction.
That is the very crime that they themselves are brazenly plotting to commit, not in some remote Balkan municipality but upon humanity as a whole.
The film that lifts the lid on the climate alarm, and the dark forces behind the climate consensus.
“They’re frightened at this point… People no longer believe in [man-made climate change], and I think they’re catching on to the fact that it’s a gigantic lie.”
First published on December 14, 2022
COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber speaks during a press conference at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai on December 4, 2023.
(Photo: Karim Sahib/AFP via Getty Images)
“This dismisses decades of work by IPCC scientists,” said one expert. “Disgraceful.”
Al Jaber added. “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phaseout of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/cop-28-al-jaber-no-science
Scientists and climate advocates responded with outrage Sunday to COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber’s claim that there is “no science” behind the push to rapidly phase out planet-warming fossil fuels, which Al Jaber’s company is extracting on a large scale .
Al Jaber’s comments, first reported by The Guardian on Sunday, came in response to questioning from Elders chair Mary Robinson during a virtual She Changes Climate discussion. Robinson told Al Jaber that “we’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone… and it’s because we have not yet committed to phasing out fossil fuel.”
The COP28 chief and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) CEO responded dismissively, saying he “accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation” and not to take part in “any discussion that is alarmist,” according to audio published by The Guardian.
“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C,” Al Jaber added. “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phaseout of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
That position runs directly counter to the outspoken stance of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Friday that “the 1.5°C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels,” arguing that “the science is clear.”
Joelle Gergis, a climate scientist and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report , called Al Jaber’s remarks “disgraceful.”
“This dismisses decades of work by IPCC scientists,” Gergis wrote on social media.
“‘Sending us back to caves’ is the oldest of fossil fuel industry tropes: it’s verging on climate denial.”
The IPCC, which has synthesized the research of hundreds of climate scientists from around the world, has argued that any successful effort to prevent catastrophic planetary warming “will involve a substantial reduction in fossil fuel use.”
“More than a century of burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use has led to global warming of 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels,” the IPCC said following the release of its latest report earlier this year. “This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world.”
Other recent research has warned that rich nations must completely halt oil and gas production by 2034 to give the world a 50% chance of limiting warming to the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement.
Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, told The Guardian that Al Jaber’s response to Robinson was “extraordinary, revealing, worrying, and belligerent.”
“‘Sending us back to caves’ is the oldest of fossil fuel industry tropes: it’s verging on climate denial,” said Hare.
Al Jaber’s comments, which he says have been misrepresented , were seen as further confirmation that he is ill-suited to lead a climate summit given his simultaneous role as the top executive at one of the world’s largest fossil fuel firms. A Global Witness analysis released over the weekend found that ADNOC is on track to become the second-largest oil producer in the world by 2050, and Al Jaber has been accused of using his position as COP28 president to pursue oil and gas deals.
“ADNOC plans to produce more oil than any of the ‘Big 5’ supermajors—ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, TotalEnergies,” Global Witness found. “In fact, its projected output will positively dwarf that of the European majors; ADNOC’s 35.9 billion barrels is 49% higher alone than the projected 24.1 billion barrels production of Shell, BP, and Total combined.”
On Monday, the COP28 presidency published a summary of the World Climate Action Summit, a gathering of more than 150 heads of state aimed at facilitating coordinated climate action.
The document states that world leaders “highlighted the opportunities to cut emissions in every sector and to accelerate the technology innovation to address scope 3 emissions, as well as the phase-down of fossil fuels in support of a transition consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.”
Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at Oil Change International , said in a statement that “strong support from the leaders’ summit to address fossil fuels in the final COP28 agreement is a promising sign, but it is just good enough.”
“Leaders must raise their ambition above a phase-down, and agree to immediately stop new fossil fuel expansion, and build a fast, full, fair, and funded phaseout of all fossil fuels while rapidly phasing in renewables,” said Ioualalen. “Contrary to the COP28 president’s assertions, the science is abundantly clear that warming will continue as long as we keep producing and burning fossil fuels.”
The pontiff also told the COP28 summit that ‘the destruction of the environment is an offense against God’
“I am relaunching a proposal,” Francis’ statement continued, “with the money used on weapons and other military expenditure, we will set up a global fund to finally eliminate hunger.” It added that the “sustainable development of the poorest countries” must be actively promoted if these states are to have a solid foundation from which to fight climate change.
https://www.rt.com/news/588395-cop28-pope-francis-climate-change/
Dec 3, 2023
Pope Francis greets Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg, right, during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, April 17, 2019 © Getty Images / Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Pope has called on world leaders to divert money being used to support conflicts across the globe into a fund to help eliminate world hunger, and also sounded the alarm about the impact of climate change, in an address to the COP28 summit in Dubai.
Pope Francis’ comments, delivered by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, cast a dire long-term outlook on the effects of climate change. In the wide-ranging statement, he called for an end to the fossil fuel industry and for debt forgiveness to be introduced for poorer nations struggling to adapt to the impacts of a deteriorating environment.
As well as the proposed global fund to fight world hunger, the statement by the head of the Catholic Church, made in absentia as the 86-year-old is unwell, also signaled that the COP28 summit must be a turning point for major political change and a shift towards renewable energy.
“How much energy is humanity wasting in the many ongoing wars, such as in Israel and Palestine, in Ukraine and in many regions in the world: conflicts that will not solve the problems, but increase them,” the Pope asked the leaders through Cardinal Parolin.
Humanity experiencing climate collapse – UN
“I am relaunching a proposal,” Francis’ statement continued, “with the money used on weapons and other military expenditure, we will set up a global fund to finally eliminate hunger.” It added that the “sustainable development of the poorest countries” must be actively promoted if these states are to have a solid foundation from which to fight climate change.
According to global data firm Statista, the United States was – by a wide margin – the biggest military spender in 2022 at about $877 billion, followed by China ($292 billion) and Russia ($86.4 billion).
Despite being unable to attend in person at the Dubai conference, the Pope stressed in his speech that “I am with you because now, more than ever, the future of us all depends on the present that we now choose. I am with you because the destruction of the environment is an offense against God.”
He added that the largest carbon-emitting countries are “responsible for a deeply troubling ecological debt.”
Pope Francis, a long-standing advocate of climate issues, has made the environment a central topic of his decade-long papacy. He has published two major papers on the subject, including one in October in which he argued that humanity has played a major role in worsening climate problems.
The COP28 summit continues until December 12.
“It is my belief that there is no climate crisis.”
John Clauser reveals significant errors in UN climate research.
14 Nov 2023
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.
The main greenhouse gases that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building, for example. Clearing land and cutting down forests can also release carbon dioxide. Agriculture, oil and gas operations are major sources of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main sectors causing greenhouse gases.