Big news of the day was a leak of a Danish document proposing the outline of a new agreement which didn’t involve the UN, or the Kyoto Protocol, the only current treaty on limiting emissions. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the Copenhagen talks, was keen to point out that “This was an informal paper ahead of the conference given to a number of people for the purposes of consultations”
Development agency representative Sol Oyuela was not so sure.
“The document should not even exist. To be working on a rival text is a kick in the teeth to the UN process that has been negotiated for so long.”
The leaked document proposed $10 billion of aid for poorer countries to adapt to climate change. “Quite good” said an Oxfam representative. “This isn’t even enough to pay for our coffins” said an official representing the 77 poorest countries.
Disapointingly, the leak showed the rich and the poor divided on the amount of emissions cuts poor countries should make, the date by which global emissions should start to fall, and how any deal should be funded. Quite a lot to sort out in 12 days.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organisations (WMO), a body made up of the UK Met Office and equivalents around the world, announced that this decade has been the warmest on record.
“Oh but releasing that now is an attempt to influence the negotiations” said the same people who’d been giving out stolen emails last week . “That’s right” said the WMO. The US space agency Nasa weighed in, predicting that a new global temperature record will be set “in the next one or two years”.
In a curious coincidence, Filipino Bernarditas de Castro Muller, an outspoken campaigner for the worlds poorer countries and at the centre of climate negotiations for 20 years, was left off the list of the Filipino delegation just after a visit from Hilary Clinton. She was snapped up by Sudan, who seem to be offering shelter to out of favour diplomats.
The Copenhagen mayor sent postcards to all central hotels warning summit guests not to visit Danish sex workers. The prostitutes have negotiated a solution far more effectively than anything yet achieved by the summit delegates, and are now all offering major discounts to anyone carrying the mayor’s postcards.
The EU delegation showed some journalists around their rooms at the Bella Centre, where the negotiations are taking place. In a strange twist, they have been assigned rooms which carry the names of great Swedish inventions. Their meetings move between Safety Match, Adjustable Spanner, Cream Separator or Zipper. Meanwhile, as you would expect, the US have a hi tech operations centre, and the 77 countries that make up the G77 of the worlds poorest nations have a few broom cupboards.
On the other side of the Atlantic, good old Nigel Lawson was taking place in a Canadian climate debate. The more their Tar Sands oil industry expands, the more funding there seems to be for climate sceptics to travel over there. “There has been no further global warming this century.” said Nigel, as normal. But when asked to reveal his statistical source, what it actually showed is that 8 of the 10 warmest years since record began have occurred since 2001.
Dodgy sources were the order of the day.
James Delingpole is a climate-sceptic writer and broadcaster who he says is ‘right about everything. In a debate with George Monibot, the Guardian columist, James revealed the brilliant scientific mind that can prove Global Warming science to be an elaborate, non profitable conspiracy between every national scientific institute in the developed world. He’s called Nils-Axel Morner. He proved that sea levels are actually falling, in a study that ignored all direct measurements of sea level. His former employer (he’s retired), the International Union for Quaternary Research, asked to be disassociated from any of his claims.
Nevertheless, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon felt the need to weigh in again yesterday and point out that “Nothing that has come out in the public as a result of the recent email hackings has cast doubt on the basic scientific message on climate change and that message is quite clear – that climate is changing much, much faster than we realized and we human beings are the primary cause”
Title of the day
‘Survival of the fattest’. The name given to a sculpture in Copenhagen harbour of an overweight lady justice sitting on the shoulders of a painfully think African man.
Finally, we learnt that the delegates at Copenhagen will be standing on, eating from, and looking at a variety of existing applications of biopolymer,” thanks to the efforts of biopolymer maker NatureWorks and its working partners.”
This new product seems to be a plant based way of manufacturing materials. Saving the best for last “from a polymer industry point of view”, after the conference the Belgian company will convert all the materials back “to virgin lactic acid, the building block for the Ingeo biopolymer”
Good luck to them
