Scientists under skepticism regarding the COP28 agreement

The agreement reached in dubai in the framework of the conference on the climate change of the UN (COP28), with a call to abandon the fossil fuelsleaves mixed feelings: while the organizers and many rulers hailed it as a “historical milestone”specialized scientists received it with skepticism, criticism or cautious optimism.

Many climate scientists believe that the jubilation among those who signed it on Wednesday in the capital of the United Arab Emirates does not accurately reflect the limited scope of the agreement.

“Lame”

Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania, criticized the vagueness of the fossil fuel declaration, which has no firm, responsible limits on how much countries should do and also does not set precise target dates.

“The deal to ‘get off fossil fuels’ is weak at best,” declared. “It’s not convincing. “It’s like promising your doctor that you’ll give up donuts after you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes.” he said as a graphic example.

“The lack of an agreement to phase out fossil fuels was devastating”he sentenced.

Mann called for substantial reform of the rules of COP conferences, for example allowing qualified majorities to approve decisions over the objections of reluctant oil states like Saudi Arabia, and also prohibiting oil executives like the chief organizer of the COP28the Emirati Sultan Al Jaber, chair future summits.

“Let them amend them, but don’t finish them. We still have to continue with the COPs. “They are our only multilateral framework for negotiating global climate policies,” he stressed.

However, Mann warned that “The failure of COP28 to make significant progress at a time when our window of opportunity to limit global warming below catastrophic levels is closing is a cause for serious concern.”

“Death warrant”

“No doubt there will be a lot of jubilation and back-slapping (…) but physics won’t care about that,” said Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester (Great Britain).

Humanity has five to eight years of emissions ahead of us at current levels before exhausting the “carbon budget” necessary to keep long-term warming at the 1.5ºC needed to avoid the worst impacts of long-term global temperature rise, he explained.

Even if gas emissions began to be reduced as early as 2024, which is not a requirement set out in the agreement, the use of fossil fuels worldwide by 2040, instead of the “fraudulent language of net zero emissions by 2050″ provided for in the agreement, according to Anderson.

In his opinion, it is a “death warrant” by 1.5ºC, and even the less ambitious goal of reducing global temperatures by 2ºC, which still carries a significant risk of triggering dangerous tipping points in the world’s climate systems, is moving further away.

“Many will die”

Friederike Otto, a climatologist specializing in analyzing the role of climate change in specific extreme weather phenomena, was also critical of what was agreed: “The short-term financial interests of a few have once again trumped the health, lives and livelihoods of the majority of people living on this planet.”

“It is considered a commitment, but we must be very clear about what it has committed to”said Otto, a professor at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change in the United Kingdom.

In that sense, he warned: “with every vague verb, every empty promise in the final text, millions more people will enter the front lines of climate change and many will die.”

However, Johan Rockstrom, professor of Environmental Sciences who directs the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, argued that although the COP agreement would not bring the increase in the planet’s average annual temperature to 1.5ºC , was still a “crucial milestone”.

“This agreement makes it clear to all financial institutions, companies and societies that we are now finally – eight years behind the schedule established in the Paris Agreement– at the true “beginning of the end” of the global economy based on fossil fuels”, indicated the Swedish expert.