The United Nations climate talks have kicked off in Dubai, where climate experts from around the globe have traveled in their private jets to lecture the rest of us about not eating meat or cooking on gas stoves. But this year’s event started off with a bit of a hitch. Their own scientists have finished crunching the latest round of numbers and concluded that their earlier predictions may not have been as accurate as we’ve been told for years. In fact, they’ve concluded that the planet isn’t warming nearly as quickly as they had previously asserted. But that’s not going to slow their roll at all. They were simultaneously conducting a review of the Paris Climate Accord and bemoaning how many countries are missing the goals that were set in 2015. This is apparently what passes for “The Science” in 2023. (Associated Press)

The world is heading for considerably less warming than projected a decade ago, but that good news is overwhelmed by much more pain from current climate change than scientists anticipated, experts said.

That’s just one of a set of seemingly contradictory conditions facing climate negotiators who this week gather in Dubai for marathon United Nations talks that include a first-ever assessment of how well the world is doing in its battle against global warming. It’s also a conference where one of the central topics will be whether fossil fuels should be phased out, but it will be run by the CEO of an oil company.

Key to the session is the first “global stocktake” on climate, when countries look at what’s happened since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, how off-track it is and probably say what’s needed to get back on track.

So here are the two primary takeaways from their latest data. First, the group concluded in 2015 that we were facing a global average temperature increase of 3.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial era levels. That figure is now “completely off the table,” according to their experts. The revised figure is 2.7 degrees. The second conclusion is that many countries are not meeting their goals, and emissions continue to rise every year, though not as quickly as they had previously anticipated.

The AP refers to these findings as both “contradictory” and “confusing.” (Ya think?) If you’re following all of this so far without your head spinning too much, there’s an easier way to describe the situation in layman’s terms. Global carbon emissions are still rising every year, but the rate of temperature increase is slowing rather than accelerating. And yet you still need to ditch your gas-powered car and buy solar panels. Makes total sense, right?

As we’ve discussed here in the past, there are already plenty of scientists questioning the entire methodology being used for these projections. The temperature sensors being used in an attempt to determine what the average temperature is for the entire globe are frequently found to be out of calibration or placed in the wrong locations. Further, we may produce a significant amount of carbon dioxide, but that’s a natural part of our atmosphere and it keeps the plants alive. (Fun fact: Did you know that the lion’s share of oxygen in the atmosphere isn’t produced by trees? Most of it is generated by plankton in the oceans.)

And then there is the overall history of the Earth as recorded in ice core samples. Is the planet warming up a bit? Probably. But the Earth has been through at least five major ice ages where nearly everything froze over. During the intervening periods, it warmed up to the point where there probably wasn’t a scrap of ice anywhere on the planet. (No doubt caused by some secret Tyrannosaurus fracking program we haven’t discovered yet.) It’s what the Earth does, and our scientists still aren’t entirely sure why.

And yet, in an effort to stop this cycle from warming the planet less than three degrees Celsius over the span of 200 years since the start of the industrial age in the early 1800s, we’re expected to bankrupt ourselves and upend our entire society while the major polluters of the world laugh at us and do as they please. Oh, that just makes complete and total sense. So let’s all go live in our pods and eat bugs while our betters in Dubai prepare to fly home in their air-conditioned private jets. It’s a wonderful world after all, people.