Friday was hysterical marching day, so they dutifully filled a street in Madrid. In addition, in a carefully orchestrated show, hundreds of demonstrators were let into the COP 25 conference center. These marches are family social affairs, so there were mothers with babies, etc.

Ironically, while this family social occupied one part of the center, the 26,000 negotiators, observers and press were busily ignoring them in another part. The great gulf between action demanding hysterics and no action moderates was within a single building.

The march did have one very interesting feature, which for a change was not Greta Thunberg, queen of the hysterics, even though she was around. According to the website, this march was co-sponsored by Greenpeace.

To my knowledge this is the first time a mainstream green group has publicly aligned itself with the Greta group. Greenpeace is a very deep pocket, with annual income in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This could give the hysterics serious money muscle.

On the hilarious side, Greta gave us a true “out of the mouths of babes” moment. Speaking at a pre-march press conference she said their many marches had “achieved nothing.” I am sure she meant it as yet another call for action, but it correctly describes the futility of what the hysterics are doing, at least for now and especially at COP 25. Her speech writers, who are normally very good, seem to have flubbed the sound bite.

The point of these negotiations is to get compromises between well established and opposing national positions. There are no surprises. All these hysterical calls for bold action are irrelevant. Even the smallish goal of increased ambition in reducing emissions is simply not on the agenda.

I mean that literally, there is no item on the crowded COP 25 agenda that even allows for tabling increased ambition. That item is scheduled for COP 26, a solid year from now in Glasgow UK. These are, after all, Soviet style five year plans and the next plans are not due until 2020.

Of course at this point the hysterics can still hope (against hope). Next Friday will be a different story, as COP 25 comes down to the wire. Mind you there will be a fanciful reason for hope, at least for a while.

Each COP is run in two stages. In the first week or so the grunt national negotiators work to make the major disagreements as clear and simple as possible. In the second week we get what is called the ministerial session. Here the high ranking national politicos fly in (for shame) to shoot for settlements.

There is always a cliff hanger over the biggest issue, which in this case is emissions trading. Technically this is Article 6 of the goofy Paris Accord, the only article left to finalize. The differences between nations are enormous, with potentially billions of dollars at stake for giant countries like China and Brazil. This is funny money which many smaller countries want to deny them, in the name of integrity. Yes integrity; I am not making this up.

The last day’s session typically goes into a prolonged overnight overtime. But the hysterics despise emissions trading, as it is the opposite of bold action, so they will see no significance in this late suspense. Moreover, this last day happens to fall on a Friday, so it is a marching day. At this point all hope for bold action will be lost, barring some sort of miraculous change in UN procedures.

I can hardly wait to see what happens in the streets, as the hysteric’s complete failure to generate bold action becomes crystal clear next Friday. It is hard to imagine these gentle folk rioting, but who knows. There is a lot of emotion here. What will Greta say?

More deeply the question is how will the hysterics recover from this almost certain monster failure? The critical COP 26 is a long year off. Have the hysterics peaked to soon or will they continue to march, and march, and march? Perhaps the U.S. Presidential race will restore them.

In the short run the end of COP 25 looms very large. By coincidence this supremely unlucky day for the hysterics is Friday the 13th. How cool is that? Time will soon tell. Stay tuned to CFACT.