“The curious incident of the (missing) Vacuum Cleaner”  

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Sherlock Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”A. Conan Doyle, “Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, ‘Silver Blaze’”, 1892.In climate change policies and reporting, there is another strange, unreported fact that no-one is talking about. The weird inclusion of “negative emissions” which are absurdly unrealistic.

“Australians need to stop breathing” 

I lived in Germany before the ban on smoking in public places was introduced. As I entered a restaurant, the waiter asked me if I wanted a smoking or non-smoking table. I asked for non-smoking, and he took me to a table in the middle of the room, and took away the ashtray.That was it.In this article, some surprising truths emerge when you look at the details of the CUTx Index. Some nations are filling that atmosphere with GHG far more than others. And 1.5°C is just a few short breaths away.

“The Missing x”  

“A man asks a waiter for a coffee without cream. The waiter apologises and informs the man that they don’t have any cream, only milk. Could he bring the man some coffee without milk?”This is a little joke Slavoj Zizek uses about negation, that coffee without cream is somehow different from coffee without milk. But it can point us at what is (absurdly) missing in all our thinking and reporting about climate change, a reliable, comparable index for emissions.