Sleep deprivation is beginning to bite. A Times journalist reported that at 9am this morning, some microphones in the main hall were switched on and all they could hear was manic laughter. An Indian Negotiator stumbled out into the daylight.  “The situation is desperate. There is no agreement on even what to call the text.”

Gordon Brown’s office had sent out a 1am tweet. “Late night haggling with 30 leaders. Tough, but we’re determined to crack it.” At 2am, Gordon told UK Climate Secretary Ed Miliband “Keep talking and I’ll see you at 6”. Ed Miliband tweeted “Haven’t slept since Wed night”.

Despite the all night talks, this morning Gordon was still trying to pull a deal together in a hotel room with Obama and 24 other leaders. Danish PM Rasmussen did his best to keep the meeting in order but as he went through outlines of an agreement, the two Chinese negotiators intervened “after every point of substance.” President Sarkozy broke ranks and had a go at the Chinese in public. “There is a lot of tension” he admitted.

Meanwhile, the rest of the delegates were listening to a series of speeches from world leaders.

Chinese Premier Wen stepped up to the platform and admitted that China has a particular difficulty with cutting carbon emissions because of its reliance on coal. But we should rest assured that “targets for cuts will be included in our long-term plans.”

Then came Brazil’s president Lula. He said he wasn’t happy about being kept up until 2am in last minute negotiations. Ed Miliband would regard that as an early night. But Lula went on to say that Brazil will spend $166 billion on reducing emissions by 38% and reducing amazon deforestation by 80%, both by 2020. He also offered to contribute to, rather than receive, climate funds destined for developing nations. He said he hoped this would help to turn the talks around. “Since I believe in God, I believe in miracles, and I want to be part of that miracle.”

It was a tough act to follow for Greece, although they were helped by a memorable introduction. The urbane Greek PM Andreas Papandreou was introduced by a stand-in chaiman as ‘Andras Papa-papa-papandroo’.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe managed to turn heads. ”I’d like to draw your attention to drug trafficking,” he said. Unexpected, but there was a climate link. ”Drug trafficking has destroyed more than two million hectares of our forest. Whenever a citizen in an industrialised nation consumes cocaine, he is destroying one of the world’s lungs”.

Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, was back again with more straight talking. He urged that doing nothing “would be tantamount to genocide by inaction.” But the people he was talking to had effectively been removed from the process. The real negotiations were happening in a hotel down the road.

Finally Obama took the floor. “This is not fiction it is science. Unchecked climate change will pose unacceptable risks to security, economy and the planet,” he said. A good start. “There is no time to waste”, he continued. “America has made our choice. We have charted our course. We will do what we say. Now its time for the nations of the world to come to a common purpose.” The problem is that the course the US has chartered involves emission reductions of less than 4% from 1990 levels and a climate catastrophe.

Friends of the Earth director Andy Atkins declared that Obama “has disappointed the whole world”.

Outside the conference centre, perhaps in preparation for rapidly rising temperatures, activists were cutting off their hair. As it fell amid the snow, Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish Environment Minister and EU team leader,  was talking down the prospects of a deal. He concluded “The great victims of this is the big group of developing countries. The EU really wanted to reach out to the developing countries. That was made impossible because of the US and China.”

The US and China aren’t getting on. This evening, the Chinese PM Wen was said to be furious about Obama’s pointed reference to the US being the world’s second largest emitter. Wen has a point in that, per head, the Americans are 5 times as carbon intensive as the Chinese.

Back in the UK meanwhile, there were more words of wisdom from The Telegraph’s climate sceptic blogger James Delingpole. Today James revealed the last nail in the coffin for climate science. If the stolen emails from the UEA have left anyone in any doubt that climate change is the world’s biggest scam, he now has the final proof. Firstly, he said, it’s snowing in Copenhagen. Secondly, he quoted an article citing claims from the Institute of Economic Analysis in Moscow that the UK’s Hadley centre for climate research had manipulated Russian data.

So in one corner, we have 100 years of scientific research, the national scientific bodies of every developed nation, and daily observations of expanding desert and retreating ice, all agreed that we’re in the grip of rapid, man-made climate change. In the other corner we have some stolen emails that first appeared on Russian servers just before Copenhagen, and a new claim from the Institute of Economic Analysis in Moscow about manipulated data on the last day of Copenhagen. Quite a coincidence. Especially when you consider that Russian oil and gas account for 60 percent of government revenue as well as 60 percent of all exports.

Then there’s the source of the latest claims. The IEA Moscow says it is an organisation which ‘focuses on mutual influence of economic growth’. It’s articles only appear in Russian. Delingpole was using a posting on the climate-sceptic Icecap website. The posting came from an article attributed to an outside source on a Russian news website that states “It is not responsible for the content of outside sources”.

The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev didn’t mention it when he became the first high-level departure from Copenhagen. A Kremlin spokesman said Mr Medvedev left in order to visit to Kazakhstan.

Over in Kansas, another climate sceptic oil producer, Dick Shremmer, told his interviewer that he hoped the Copenhagen process failed.  “I wouldn’t say the climate isn’t changing. But, you know, it is always changing. We once had an ice age thousands of years ago, and during that ice age where we are standing used to be covered with an ocean. I think it is something that is going to drive up the price people’s electrical bills, people’s fuel bills and I don’t see any reason for it”

Maybe one reason for it is so that where he’s standing isn’t an ocean.

Dick Shremmer’s neighbour, Oklahoma, Senator James Inhofe, has long believed that man-made climate change is “a Hollywood Hoax”. He arrived in Copenhagen today to tell the world that the president can’t deliver on his promise of a 4% cut in 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. “It’s dead. In the Senate it’s dead. Let me restate that so that nobody has any misunderstanding, there are two pieces of legislation. Both are dead.”

As the day wore on, the UN secretary general appealed for extra time, asking delegates not to leave tonight. But a golden goal looks unlikely. So far there are no overall commitments to 2020 targets for emissions reductions. The European Union’s plan to raise its pledge from a 20% to 30% cut in emissions was blocked, killing the hope of a series on increased offers from other nations. And the latest text omitted a deadline for reaching a legally binding agreement by the end of 2010. 5 days ago, Gordon Brown was saying that a 6 month delay was the maximum we could afford.

Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, lead the charge for South American states angry at the “pitiful” sums of money being offered by the developed world. “$10bn a year is a joke. The military expenditure of the US is $700bn per year. If the climate were a bank it would have been saved already.”

Writing his final piece from Copenhagen, the Guardian’s George Monibot was similarly angry.

“The interests of states and the interests of the world’s people are not the same. Often they are diametrically opposed. In this case, most rich and rapidly developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can – to grab bigger rights to pollute than their competitors. Corporate profits and political expediency have proved more urgent considerations than human civilisation.”

As the talks rolled on tonight, the latest draft text said there should be a review in 2016 and that the review should consider strengthening the target on global temperature to an increase of only 1.5C. But everyone knows that by then this will be impossible.

Andy Cato