‘No Science’ to Support Phasing Out Fossil Fuels to Limit Global Warming: COP28 President

Phasing out fossil fuels would lead the world ‘back into caves,’ he warned.

John Kerry (L), U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, and Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, president of the COP28 UNFCCC Climate Conference, speak to each other during Day 2 of the high-level segment of the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Dec. 2, 2023. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The president of the U.N Climate Change Conference, also known as COP28, dismissed the idea that there’s “science” supporting the elimination of fossil fuel usage to meet climate change targets.

“There is no science out there or no scenario out there that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve” the target of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber said during a Nov. 28 online discussion held by activist group SHE Changes Climate.

While admitting that a phase-out of fossil fuel is “inevitable,” Mr. Al Jaber insisted that “we need to be real, serious, and pragmatic about it.”

In a heated discussion with Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders, a global leadership group, Mr. Al Jaber criticized the push for eliminating the use of fossil fuel.

“You’re asking for a phase-out of fossil fuel. Please help me, show me a roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves. Show me. Give me the solution,” said Mr. Al Jaber, who’s also the United Arab Emirates (UAE) minister of industry and advanced technology.

Mr. Al Jaber said the UAE is a leader in low-carbon energy but that the world will continue to need reliable energy sources.

“We don’t want alarmists. We want solutions. Enough of alarmists. Enough of pointing fingers,” he said.

Mr. Al Jaber’s COP28 presidency has been controversial as he’s the head of state-owned UAE energy firm Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Reaction to Comments

Responding to Mr. Al Jaber’s comments, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told CNBC that “every decision we make should be geared to say, ‘Does this advance the 1.5 degrees or is it going to be more destructive and take us in the wrong direction?’”

The COP28 president’s comments were welcomed by some online.

“Kaboom at #COP28 ... conference president Sultan Al Jaber rejects climate hoax,” Steve Milloy, a Fox News contributor, said in a Dec. 4 X post. “The hoax will never be the same.”

“FINALLY SOMEONE IS TELLING THE TRUTH,” Australian politician Craig Kelley said in a Dec. 3 X post. “This is a death blow to NET ZERO—Australia must abandon NET ZERO.”

Mr. Al Jaber also faced criticism for rejecting the climate change narrative.

“The COP ‘president’ designated by UAE, oil exec Sultan Al Jaber, is making a complete mockery of the #COP28 climate summit,” Michael Mann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a post. He asked U.N Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to “speak out on this.”

As Mr. Al Jaber’s comments spread online, COP28 came out with a clarification that reports about no phase-out of fossil fuels were “another attempt to undermine the Presidency’s agenda,” per CNBC.

“The COP President is clear that phasing down and out of fossil fuels is inevitable and that we must keep 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach. We are not sure what this story was supposedly revealing. Nothing in it is new or breaking news.”

Climate Change Alarmism

The Conference of Parties (COP) is the “supreme decision-making body” of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. COP28, or the 28th U.N. climate change conference, is currently being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, through Dec. 12.

Mr. Al Jaber’s rejection of immediate fossil fuel phase-out as a means to keep global warming below the 1.5 degree limit contrasts sharply with the official U.N. position on the matter.

“My hopes for #COP28—commitments to get nationally determined contributions in line with 1.5 degrees Celsius limit, fossil fuel phase-out & big investments in renewables, acceleration of climate justice,” Mr. Guterres said in a Dec. 3 X post.

A U.N. report found that global governments “still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

It suggested that “countries should aim for a near total phase-out of coal production and use by 2040 and a combined reduction in oil and gas production and use by three-quarters by 2050 from 2020 levels, at a minimum.”

During a speech at COP28, Mr. Kerry said that “there shouldn’t be any more coal-fired power plants permitted anywhere in the world.” According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal accounted for 19.7 percent of electricity generated in the United States last year.

The Real Data

While climate alarmists, along with the United Nations, continue to insist that global warming is a catastrophic threat, data suggests otherwise. The issue of climate change is broadly more complicated and involves a range of variables, most of which are ignored by mainstream scientists and media.

Over 1,800 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed a World Climate Declaration, stating that there is “no climate emergency.”

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures,” the declaration stated.

In July 19 testimony submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, two professors—one from Princeton University and another from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—criticized the climate models being used to support climate change policies.

“All of the models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific method: they grossly overpredict the warming versus actual data,” they wrote. “Even at today’s relatively low levels, atmospheric CO2 is now ‘heavily saturated,’ in physics terms, meaning that additional increases in atmospheric CO2 can have little warming effect.”

“600 million years of data prove that today’s CO2 level of 420 parts per million (ppm) is very low, not high. 600 million years of data show that higher levels of CO2 do not cause or even correlate with higher temperatures.”