2023 WILL BE THE WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD

I've been on a long trip and have not said much about Ukraine, Israel, Donald Trump and global warming.  I don't feel particularly spiritual today, so will spend this Sunday on the latter.

The media have trumpeted the seriousness of how hot Planet Earth's atmosphere is getting.

• A new report by the Global Climate Project consortium says that we will reach an all-time high this year in carbon emissions.  I thought renewables and conservation measures were beginning to work.  Guess not, especially in reducing coal usage.  
• Meanwhile, the USA has done well.  What are those emission numbers on the second graphic?  The graph was obscured, but the trends look good.  You can go to this article for details.

• The World Meteorological  Organization and Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that 2023 will certainly be the warmest year on record, with last month being the hottest November.

With all that happening, the world is dawdling on what to do.  The current Conference of the Parties, #28, gathering drew 84,000 delegates to Dubai.  Did nothing much.  The next summit next year, COP #29, will be in Baku, Azerbaijan.  Why?  The Eastern European group of mostly former Soviet countries was supposed to select a site, had great difficulty, but finally settled on Baku.  Russia approved.  You know nothing much will happen there because the economy of the Middle East and the Eastern European group is stuck with fossil fuels.  Plus, global warming helps Russia.

What is COP, anyway?

• COP, for Conference of the Parties, is the supreme governing body of the United Nations to bring the world together through the instrument of an annual conference..
• COP 1 in 1995 was held in Berlin.  4,000 in attendance.
• COP2  in 1996:  Geneva.
• 
  1997 COP3 in Kyoto was the first truly meaningful one, resulting in the Kyoto Protocol.  While nothing much has happened, this was the first real step in the process to combat global warming.  That's then Veep Al Gore shaking the hand of Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.
• The 2015 COP21 resulted in the Paris Agreement.

• 
  Watch Greta Thunberg at the 2019 COP 25 in Madrid, Spain.
• Watch her again at the 2020 COP26 in Glasgow.
• 2023:  COP28 in Dubai, UAE.  84,000 in attendance. Said Pascoe Sabido of the Corporate Europe Observatory.

“These talks are supposed to be aimed at keeping temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius,” he said, referring to the goal of the 2015 Paris agreement. “Instead, we’ve got all of these industry executives and lobbyists whose main goal is to ensure that their industry continues to make money and that they stay in a job.”

• 
  2024:  COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
• 2025:  COP30 in Belem, Brazil.
• The USA has never hosted any COP.

Mind you, Planet Earth has been hotter in our geological past.

• Following collision of our globe with a Mars-sized planet around 4.5 billion years ago, the ejecta formed our Moon, and the surface temperature of Planet Earth was around 3680 F.

• Keep in mind that the average surface temperature is today at 59 F.
• Moon
• 
  daytime  250 F
• nightime  -208 F
• Mercury  333 F.
• Venus  464 F.
• Mars  -85 F.
• Jupiter  -166 F.
• Dwarf Planet Pluto  -375 F.
• Near the end of the Neoproterozoic Eon (began 2.5 billion years ago and ended 541 million years ago), the temperature was still higher than 90 F.
• Since then:

• More recently:

In 1988 James Hansen said to the U.S. Senate he was 99% sure that global warming was affecting our planet now.  This was a watershed moment in the history of climate change.

But Calvin brought this matter up in 1987.

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