COP-Out China

 COP28 Climate Change Conference

They're throwing another Climate Change feast somewhere and the number 28 means there were 27 previous party-hardies for the Climate Control Crowd. Peter Zeihan provides a short summation of what is going on. Apparently China, often held up as a model, is in "count me out" mode on the latest proposal.

Zeihan makes a point similar to the one I've been making for decades: CO2 is like "the little gas that could" in the global warming catastrophe scenario.  It works on a narrow spectrum of sunlight and is quite potent when first introduced but soon approaches its "upper limit" when it comes to greenhouse warming. At this point, its additional effects are rather small (water vapor is more powerful and when will they do something about the rain?). To get its assigned Civilization-destroying job done, CO2 needs a lot of help. This comes in the form of "feedback loops."

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.  There is a lot of methane hydrate at the bottom of the ocean, where the pressure and the cold keep it trapped.  Warm the Oceans and this methane is released, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect and a potential mass extinction event.  This is the "feedback loop" that all the other "feedback loops" lead to.

There is a problem though. Methane breaks down rapidly in the atmosphere and in a few years much of it is gone and in ten years all of it. So it can't be a slow, steady release of methane, it has to happen quickly to produce the kind of effects that will make fearful populations willing to pay more taxes, higher more bureaucrats and submit to more control. Not Enough Government seems to be the real crisis all these Climate COPs are addressing.