Given the usual anxieties of life, the UN COP31 conference taking place in Antalya in Turkiye resembles a comic break.
It’s an annual jamboree for 100,000 climate alarmists to absorb the latest climate theology and prepare for the planet’s incineration when temperatures exceed the ordained fatal precipice of a 1.5°C increase. Taking this delusion to an even more alarmist level, Brussels has warned Europe to be ready for a four-degree increase in warming.
That warning comes in the wake of globalist claims that more than 50,000 were killed in Europe by heat waves during the summer. Not disclosed was that the figure is based on a computer model, not on certified dead bodies and natural, normal mortality.
Nonetheless, this time the UN Secretary-General Tedros Gebreyesus has come up with a new climate crisis — a health crisis. Climate change, he says, is driving higher rates of heart and lung disease as well as cancer. Of course, this fabricated alarmism is devoid of empirical truth, but it fits the climate theology narrative.
Incompatible with climate theology, however, are temperature findings from two different hemispheres. NASA has established that the Arctic melt stopped in 2010 and has stabilised. It also reported that not a single recent temperature in the US exceeded those recorded since 1881. Records from Australia show that temperatures recorded in 1858 and 1914-15 have yet to be exceeded.
Amusing aspects of the COP31 jamboree are some of the exhibits. Azerbaijan’s backs “just transition”, yet without oil it would have no economy. Dirt-poor Gabon in West Africa, tyrannically suppressed for decades by General Nguema, is all for “transition justice.” But Nguema wants money for it. Fiji in the Pacific Ocean wants money to finance “transition” so as to curb the vast Pacific from swamping ancestral habitats.
Prominent climate apostles, the host, Turkiye, together with Britain and Australia, are experiencing embarrassing green climate aberrations. In June, the Turkish government approved a 1,050 MW expansion of its Cenal Coal Plant to augment electricity supplies.
The UK’s Labour Government recently approved a huge new North Sea gas project – the Jackdaw Field, because of the need for “energy security.” Australia’s government has just approved the extension of the Saraji open-cut coal mine in Queensland.
A new wacky direction from COP31 is “green building.” To effect a 25% emissions reduction by 2035, gas and fuel oil systems in existing buildings must be replaced with renewable electricity sources. To assist in constructing new buildings, “green mortgage finance” can be arranged.
Rounding off the delusional COP31 agenda is a new concern: “climate refugees.” Amnesty International and the UK Labour government believe these unfortunates fleeing the adversities of climate change in Africa must be treated sympathetically.
The COP 30 conference called for “road maps to transition.” But a year later, despite all the alarmism, the climate apostles are finding it difficult to reconcile their objectives with socio-economic realities. Maybe they could get some direction from George Harrison: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”
