Thanks Hillary

Just as the Copenhagen climate summit appeared to be on the verge of unraveling, the United States Thursday announced its support of an annual $100 billion climate protection fund, the Associated Press reports.

“The US is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

Included in the conditions for the US’ contribution, Clinton demanded that China’s emissions reductions be scrutinized independently and that 193 countries sign a climate deal tomorrow. This would keep the US and other rich nations on top of developing countries who want them to increase emission cuts, the AP reports.

Clinton revealed that the U.S. would not be decreasing emissions by 2020 beyond the 4 percent it committed to in 1990.

While she would not disclose how much the U.S. would be contribution to the climate fund, Clinton said there would be a fair amount contributed to the pot that would be made available in 2020. The finances will reportedly be raised partially by taxing aviation and shipping, as proposed by the European Union.

For the rest of this story:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/12/17/2009-12-17_us_will_contribute_to_100b_climate_fund_for_developing_countries_hillary_clinton.html

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Prospects for a strong U.N. climate pact grew more remote on Thursday at the climax of two-year talks as ministers and leaders blamed leading emitters China and the United States for deadlock on carbon cuts.

Dozens of heads of state were arriving in the Danish capital to address the December 7-18 conference, meant to sign a new pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions on Friday. Negotiators’ failure to draft a coherent text means they have a mountain to climb.

“The news that we’ve been receiving is not good,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told the German parliament.

“I must say very honestly, that the United States’ offer to cut by 4 percent compared to 1990 levels is not ambitious.”

Environment ministers at the talks have so far failed to close a rift over how far the developing world should join industrialized countries in cutting carbon emissions.

U.S. President Barack Obama has offered cuts in greenhouse gases of 3-4 percent versus 1990 levels by 2020, or 17 percent against 2005 levels. The European Union has said it will cut by at least 20 percent against 1990.

Talks stalled overnight on procedure, after some developing nations and China rejected a proposal by the Danish hosts to break talks into smaller groups to speed up progress. They insisted that everyone should see Denmark’s proposal.

“I fear a triumph of form over substance,” said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

China told participants it saw no possibility of achieving a detailed accord to tackle global warming, an official from another nation involved in the talks said. The official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters the Chinese had instead suggested issuing “a short political declaration of some sort.”

India’s environment minister accused rich countries of planning a “propaganda campaign” to blame developing nations for any breakdown in negotiations. Developing economies are expected to add almost all future growth in carbon emissions.

“We are in the end game,” said Jairam Ramesh. “It’s only a matter of time before the blame game starts. Already some developed countries are accusing the G77 (developing nation group), Africa. This is completely, incomprehensively wrong.”

European environment ministers said talks were in danger.

“We’ve got a serious situation,” German environment minister Norbert Roettgen told Reuters.

For the rest of the story please go here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSGEE5BB07F20091217?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Face Forward Comments: 

And still no one says that the talks are about control and wealth transfer.

Nothing is real in Copenhagen – not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the “solution”. In fact, here’s how fake it all is:

The lead negotiator for the small island nation of Tuvalu, the bow-tie wearing Ian Fry, broke down as he begged delegates to take tough action.

“I woke up this morning crying,” and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit,” Mr Fry said on Saturday, as his eyes welled with tears.

”The fate of my country rests in your hands,” he concluded, as the audience exploded with wild applause.

So moving. But let’s now learn more from Samantha Maiden about this former Greenpeace official from “Tuvalu”:

But the part-time PhD scholar at the Australian National University actually resides in Queanbeyan, NSW, where he’s not likely to be troubled by rising sea levels because the closest beach at Batemans Bay is a two-hour, 90 mile drive away. Asked whether he had ever lived in Tuvalu, his wife told The Australian last night she would “rather not comment”….

Still, it’s a long way from the endangered atolls of Tuvalu, with his neighbour Michelle Ormay confirming he’s lived in Queanbeyan for more than a decade, while he has worked his way up to being “very high up in climate change”.

There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.

The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

Mr Gore is not the only titan of the world stage finding Copenhagen to be a tricky deal.

World leaders — with Gordon Brown arriving tonight in the vanguard — are facing the humiliating prospect of having little of substance to sign on Friday, when they are supposed to be clinching an historic deal.

Meanwhile, five hours of negotiating time were lost yesterday when developing countries walked out in protest over the lack of progress on their demand for legally binding emissions targets from rich nations. The move underlined the distrust between rich and poor countries over the proposed legal framework for the deal.

For the rest of this story please go here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956783.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

Face Forward Comments:

Have you asked yourself, “if the earth has been warming since the industrial age began, and the ice around the north and south poles have been melting, where’s the water?”  We always hear about New Orleans but that really should be an example of how little additional water there is.  New Orleans was built at or just under sea level and kept afloat by the silt bought  down by he Mississippi river.  New Orlean’s problem is that it’s sinking not that it is being covered by global warming’s waters.  And what about Venice or Holland…..  Last time I checked they were still there.

Climatgate debate erupts in angry words and slurs

One day after reports that Britain’s Met office intends to reexamine 160 years’ worth of temperature data, emotions over what’s now being dubbed “Climategate” are getting more raw by the day.

During a live television faceoff hosted by the BBC, Marc Morano, a former communications director of the U.S. Senate Environment Committee and now an editor with the Web site Climate Depot squared off against Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. It didn’t take long before the two got in each other’s face and Watson became increasingly annoyed with Morano’s loud interruptions. He finally lost it by the end when the anchor thanked the participants.

“What an asshole,” Watson said.

For the rest of this article please go here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/05/blogs/coopscorner/entry5905404.shtml

The Fiction Of Climate Science: 1975 the coming Ice Age

Gary Sutton

Why the climatologists get it wrong.

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed “the coming ice age.”

Random House dutifully printed “THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age.” This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported “many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age.”

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: “During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age

For the rest of this article please go here:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/03/climate-science-gore-intelligent-technology-sutton.html

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

“We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says. “But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report.”

Q&A: the thinking person’s guide Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

Please go here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html