Disaster averted
There has been no breakthrough at Copenhagen.
Barak Obama has spoken, and the crowd was disappointed. He was visibly angry.
China and India have walked out. The West did not offer enough.
The departure of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a major snub for the Western congregation, and guarantees that nothing binding or significant will arise out of Copenhagen. The walkout was exactly what they vowed to do in to the strategic plan they announced a few weeks ago.
The draft treaty has become the Copenhagen Accord, and deadlines have been dropped or postponed.
COP-15 has been roundly described as a failure of organisation, where 45,000 delegates were allowed to register for a venue with a capacity of just 15,000 people. Even sympathetic people were forced to wait hours in sub zero temperatures, and began to wonder if this organization was seriously capable of setting up a new world government.
But the real problem was that the developed nations can’t get support from within their own democracies for the massive cuts supposedly needed for the deal.
“Time and time again we have seen negotiators admitting in the middle of talks that they simply don’t have a mandate from their government to make progress on an issue, so their hands have been tied,” said Trish Harrup, an Australian observer of the talks for Greenpeace.
[The Australian]
For that, we can thank democracy itself and common sense, with some help from climategate.
As Lord Monckton puts it:
“Never in the field of human politics has so little been achieved at so much cost to so many for so little benefit to so few.”
Meanwhile The Al Gore effect has hit Copenhagen in the bluntest of ironies. Temperatures got down to minus 4, the city has been covered with a layer of snow 10 centimeters (4 inches) thick, and people are talking about the first white Christmas there in 14 years.
The Copenhagen Post declared: “Bitter cold and steady snowfall has paralyzed the country’s roads and public transport since yesterday, and the icy cold weather is expected to get even worse over the next couple days.”
It’s almost enough to make me believe there is a God.
UPDATE 1: Ironies pile on ironies.
The Al Gore effect blizzards that currently rage were predicted using solar activity a month ago and almost to the day by Piers Corbyn. They said then that Dec 14-16/17 would be particularly snowy with biting cold winds in the region. See the press release from WeatherAction. Their Solar Weather Technique depends on solar-particle and magnetic effects and has nothing to do with CO2. (Thanks Mohib 🙂 )
So the tribal gurus of warming are being buried under snow that was predicted by solar long range forecasters a month ago.
UPDATE 2: Last Ditch Attempt to Revive Talks
Obama and Wen held talks today and achieved little. (So Wen’s walkout may have been a negotiating ploy?) But they will meet again this afternoon. These are the two big giants in the room. If they both moved, then things might take off. But since Obama offered little in his formal speech, it’s not clear he can offer Wen a lot more behind the scenes. But who knows?
Wen also met with Singh (India) today and announced they are wary of a deal. However, there is also talk of a spillover into Saturday (on the last line of that page).
Remember, trillions of dollars is resting on this. Very big strings are being pulled... it’s not over yet.
UPDATE 3
Myron Ebell reports that there are a lot of very put-out greenies in Copenhagen, and that there is a fissure developing between the bureaucrats and their grass roots supporters. [Fox]