Is there science behind a fossil fuel phaseout? (Patreon)

 [This is a transcript with links to references.]

I though, I have a talent for pissing off climate scientists, but I have to bow to Sultan Al Jaber who had climate scientists fuming for saying that there’s no science behind a fossil fuel phase out. He is, of course, entirely correct, which raises the interesting question whether fuming climate scientists emit carbon dioxide, and if we need to phase that out.

But first some background. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is the minister of industry and advanced technology of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE are the world’s sixth largest producers of petroleum, after the United States and Canada.

Yes, that’s right, they actually produce less than either of our friends in North America, it’s just that they’re less good at keeping quiet about it. Al Jaber is also head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and was head of the COP28 climate meeting which took place two weeks ago.

The COP28 meeting was rather foreseeably a waste of time, but let’s listen to what the man said that upset climate scientists so much. “And there’s no science or no scenario out there that says that the phase-out of fossil fuels is what’s going to achieve 1.5. 1.5 is my North star and a phase down and phase of fossil fuel in my view is inevitable, it is essential, but we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it. “

To me, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Science tells us that the reason for global warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused primarily by our continued burning of fossil fuels. It doesn’t tell us that we need to do anything about it. And if we do anything, it doesn’t have to be phasing our fossil fuels. That might be the smart thing to do, but there’s no law of nature that says humans need to be smart, is there.

Indeed, it seems very likely to me that we’ll decide on a stupid way to handle the situation, which is to continue pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and then try to get it back out. This is called carbon dioxide removal, CDR for short, and it makes about as much sense as letting the dog pee into the pool because, well, you can filter it out, right? One type of Carbon Dioxide Removal is Direct Air Capture, which works by pushing air through filters, extracting the carbon, and burying it under ground.

It's not much of a secret that the oil industry hopes they can use some sort of carbon dioxide removal to offset their emissions, not including the emissions caused by burning their products which really isn’t their fault is it. Indeed, the Oil Company that Al Jaber is head of launched a new carbon capture plant just a few days before the COP meeting. The target for the plant is one ton of carbon dioxide a day. Just for context, at the moment we emit globally about 55 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year.

But it’s not just oil companies who have taken a linking in carbon dioxide removal. The U.S. Department of Energy funds several of these projects, for example this one which is a collaboration between Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and the company Advanced Cooling Technologies. They want to extract energy for the process from geothermal sources. These projects are now popping up all over the world.

Of all the stupid ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, direct air capture is quite possibly the stupidest. It makes considerably more sense to prevent the carbon from getting into the air to begin with, which is called “Carbon Capture and Storage”. This can reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels. But you can also do it when you are burning trees or other vegetation.  In this case you have basically used the trees to filter the carbon dioxide out of the air, and you can then store it. This is called “Bio energy with carbon capture and storage”  and has the added benefit that it also generates energy.

The issue is now, as I explained in our recent video on net zero, that all remaining plans to get to net zero by 2050 rely on carbon dioxide removal. This will give fossil fuel companies an excuse to keep on digging. Some climate scientists don’t like this because rather than fighting against climate change, they are now really fighting against the fossil fuel industry and have lost the goal out of sight.

You can see this in their reactions. According to the guardian, “Dr Friederike Otto, of Imperial College London, UK, said: “The science of climate change has been clear for decades: we need to stop burning fossil fuels.” But science says nothing like that. And on twitter Al Jaber has been widely disparaged as a climate change denier.

I find it hugely problematic that some very visible climate scientists mix up their opinion about what should be done with scientific facts. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with scientists who have opinions. I have a problem with scientists who present their opinions as scientific facts, and then call everyone who doesn’t like their opinion a “denier”.

According to those climate scientists, not only does this make me a “denier”, but also some of their own colleagues, for example Myles Allen  from the University of Oxford. Allen is the one who coined the phrase “net zero” and who invented extreme event attribution. He had the following to say about the reaction of his colleagues to Al Jaber:

“It’s depressing to see the climate establishment reacting so furiously to a perfectly accurate statement by the COP28 President. To limit warming even close to 1 point 5 degrees, we must both scale down the use of fossil fuels and scale up safe and permanent carbon dioxide disposal. It's simply not true that to stop global warming we have to stop using fossil fuels: what we have to do is stop dumping the carbon dioxide they generate into the atmosphere.”

Yes. Fact is, fossil fuels are the major cause of global warming.  But fact is, too, that the problem isn’t the companies digging up fossil fuels, it’s not the fossil fuels, and it isn’t even the burning of the fossil fuels, it’s the carbon dioxide. The goal is decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Let’s not leave the goal out of sight. And let’s not confuse facts with opinions.

I also think we should appreciate the irony that climate activists are against fossil fuels unless their meetings are basically paid by it.