Climate draft text signals breakthroughs - The Globe and Mail

In an informal session aimed at giving countries the opportunity to object and spark further talks, Ms. Espinosa received a 75-second standing ovation and no objections...The proposed agreements would endorse the view that “climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time” and requires “long-term co-operative action” in order to prevent catastrophic impacts across the planet. And they pledged that countries would consider strengthening the long-term goal to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees, something demanded by small island states who fear the 2-degree target would leave their countries literally under water as a result of rising sea levels.

UPDATE 1-Climate draft proposes $100 bln financing | Energy & Oil | Reuters

http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFN1015284120101211

The text drops a demand from developing countries that rich countries offer 1.5 percent of their gross domestic product in financing.

Missouri: Body Found; Victim May Have Frozen to Death - KTVI

VALLEY PARK, MO (KTVI - FOX2now.com) — St. Louis County police are investigating the discovery of a body in Valley Park, MO. Details are still unclear, but the man may have frozen to death. Officials believe the older man fell near 150 Crescent in Valley Park. A cell phone found near his body lead authorities to believe he was trying to call someone but did not get through.

Officials think he laid there all night and may have died from hypothermia.

Montana: Columbia Falls Man Freezes To Death - News Story - NBCMontana NBC Montana

COLUMBIA FALLS, Mont. -- A Columbia Falls man froze to death in his car Sunday night.

56 year old Jeffery Tolson lost his job as a truck driver a couple of weeks ago. Police say he turned down offers to help him find a warm place to sleep. Tolson reportedly plugged an electric blanket into his cigarette lighter to keep warm. On Monday morning, Tolson's battery apparently ran down as he slept. He was found by a police officer cold to the touch, and incoherent. An ambulance rushed Tolson to the hospital, but he died a few hours later, from hypothermia.

Iowa: Cedar Rapids man died of exposure - chicagotribune.com

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Authorities say a Cedar Rapids man found dead along a street wearing only boxer shorts in subzero temperatures died of hypothermia due to exposure.

Maryland Weather: Three Marylanders dead from hypothermia so far

This week's unusually cold weather has contributed to the death of an elderly Anne Arundel County resident, according to state health officials. The death was the third this fall attributed in part to hypothermia. All were 65 or older and all had underlying illnesses that contributed to their deaths.
...
Last year, 42 Marylanders died in circumstances in which hypothermia played a role, state health officials said.

Climate-change giveaway pledges looking pretty iffy these days « Hot Air

Ethanol subsidies should have ended long ago. But if the solar and wind producers are still only existing on the grace of federal subsidies, then perhaps those should end as well. The US has been underwriting wind and solar for decades in the hope that they would eventually transform into profitable and high-production industries. Even the progressives that back them in principle and insist on subsidizing them wind up opposing construction of sites like the wind farm off of Cape Cod (the Cape Wind project) and solar farms like Ridgway and Teanaway. The use of these technologies in practice for mass production creates eyesore sites, eats up tons of land, and has their own impacts on the local environment.

It’s time to stop wasting money, and certainly time to stop the push for redistribution of wealth using “global warming” as the excuse du jour.

Icy winds sweep across north-west India | NetIndian | India News

Icy winds swept across northwest India which shivered under severe cold conditions and witnessing foggy mornings and low mercury levels today.

Across many areas in the region, the night temperature was at a record low.

Science Criticized in Cancún for Timing of Paper on Cloud Feedback - ScienceInsider

A climate skeptic has suggested that Science tried to influence the climate change talks ending today in Cancún, Mexico, by publishing a paper that supports the idea that clouds tend to, at least in the short term, enhance global warming. An editor at the journal says that's not the case.

Cancun climate talks hit crunch time | Grist

In a gesture that startled observers in Cancun and at home, India on Thursday broke with China and said it would consider binding action, although not in the foreseeable future.

BBC News - Pupils in Newcastle forced to move after roof collapse

Pupils from a Newcastle primary school are being forced to move to another building after snow made their main hall roof collapse.

Twitter / Andy Revkin: Mike Shanahan of IIED on ' ...

Mike Shanahan of IIED on 'The Nazi threat and climate-change denial': http://t.co/DCGN61m

Meet the youth climate [hoax] leaders | Environment | guardian.co.uk

"You once super-glued what to Gordon Brown?" I ask, unable to hear clearly on the fuzzy telephone line. "Myself!" says Dan Glass, "I once super-glued myself to Gordon Brown. Google it – I've got to go back into the courtroom."

Like many leading young activists, Dan's trying to stop climate change by whatever means possible.
...
Niel Bowerman, 23, climate scientist

"Most of the carbon we emit today will still be in the atmosphere heating the planet in 2050, but most of today's decision-makers won't be here. "
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Tom Youngman, 17, eco-schools advocate

"I'm pretty damn terrified right now"
...
Dan Glass, 27, activist

"Whenever anybody sticks their head above the parapet they're seen as a lunatic, but we need to show the inadequacies of the legal system for protecting the earth."

Youth climate activists blog : Dan Glass

Dan was recently named one of Attitude Magazine's 66 new role models for his work on bridging the gay rights and environmental justice movements.

Hypocrisy alive and well at Cancun climate conference | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

The unbearable spectacle of it all is what prompted one climate scholar to stop attending the conferences all together. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the newly-released “Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America,” told The Daily Caller he hasn’t been to the annual U.N. climate change conference since it was held in Montreal in 2005.

“The ritual teary-eyed Europeans declaring a never-ending series of ‘historic agreements,’ which were no such thing, became too farcical to continue attending,” said Horner. “The enterprise is pompously and risibly dedicated in equal parts to wealth redistribution and self-perpetuation, as a platform for, and along the way, engaging in visceral anti-Americanism.”
...
The Telegraph article also pointed out that although recycling bins were located throughout the lavish Moon Palace hotel, the closest actual recycling facility was hundreds of miles away.

White House Brags That They Stole $900 From Each Taxpayer To Solve A Non-Existent Problem | Real Science

Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, told delegates at Cancun that Washington spent more than $90 billion to tackle domestic environmental issues meant to reduce overall emissions of greenhouse gases.

Major Shift: Germany Now Views Climate Change As Positive!

For those of you out there still worried that leaders might do something really stupid, and actually sign something – stop worrying. Merkel hasn’t jumped on any jet to Cancun, and she isn’t going to. Cancun was pronounced dead before it even got started.

Parading the dead body that is Cancun through the conference may make it look like it’s alive, but it’s still dead. Time to bury it.

C3: Russian Mega Heat Waves & Mega Forest Fires Documented To Be Of Frequent Occurence

The 2010 summer Russian heat wave and resulting forest fires have been claimed to be the result of global warming and climate change. Unfortunately for the AGW alarmists and activist scientists, NASA found these claims to be of little merit.

Cancun: What will our climate legacy be? « Climate Progress

Kiribati President: "Whoever thinks they are more vulnerable than we are, they can swap countries."

Bastardi Forecast: “Severe Event” For Europe

Joe Bastardi’s latest video Europe Gets Hit by Extreme Cold is not good news. By Tuesday night the cold will spread over Central and Western Europe. Bastardi:

By the time we get to the latter part of next week and on into the Christmas week, this is a severe event, no question about it.

We’re looking at a top 5 or 10 cold December.

I feel we should warn you, things are going to be real nasty in the next 2 weeks, and perhaps 3 weeks.”

“Gore Effect” on Steroids: Six straight days of record low temperatures during COP16 in Cancun Mexico – more coming | Watts Up With That?

The irony, it burns. Do you think maybe Gaia is trying to send the U.N. and the delegates a message? One record low was funny, three in a row was hilarious, a new record low for the month of December was ROFL, but now six straight days of record lows during the U.N. COP16 Global Warming conference? That’s galactically inconvenient.

Revkin on the Cancun climate hoax fest: "the extravagance of some of the parties was beyond parody..."

Climate and Energy Beyond Cancún - NYTimes.com

My departure does not mean I think the talks are a waste of time. (Mind you, I do think they waste a lot of resources and money; much of the first week of jockeying and events could have been done virtually, for instance, and the extravagance of some of the parties was beyond parody considering the poverty outside the hotel zone.)*

BBC iPlayer - Kate Silverton: President Nasheed of The Maldives on the heroes and villains in the fight against climate change. - 05/12/2010

[Start at the 37 minute mark]

Does Rain Call GISS Liars? « Musings from the Chiefio

So what do you think? Does that GISS temperature data look kind of ‘odd’ or ‘cooked’? Or can CO2 have an opposite sign in different halves of a century?

Deadlock over Kyoto means Cancún talks have little to show after two weeks | World news | The Guardian

After two weeks of talks, despite an all-night bargaining session, ministers had managed by mid-morning on the final day to agree on just one paragraph of text.

Cancun climate change summit: protests in pictures - Telegraph

Members of delegations from the Philippines share a table in the sea in Cancun with Australian Ody Kamal and Dominican Vanesa Taveras, both members of the NGO 350.org, representing a negotiation table regarding the islands in danger of disappearing due to the rising ocean levels caused by global warming

Cancun climate change summit: protests in pictures - Telegraph

People walk past an activist in a polar bear costume lying on the floor at the Moon Palace Hotel during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun

Cancun climate change summit: protests in pictures - Telegraph

An environmental activist dressed as Christ demonstrates in front of riot police outside the Pitaya Cancun Messe where climate talks are taking place in Cancun

Cancun climate change summit: Viscount Monckton admits that global warming is happening - Telegraph

Earlier this month Nasa confirmed that the last decade will be the hottest on record and a new analysis of peer-reviewed science by the Met Office warned the consequences of global warming could be worse than ever because of ‘feed backs’ [note the single quotes and the space in the middle] like melting sea ice and die back of the Amazon rainforest.

The American Spectator : Wasting Away in Margaritaville

What a difference a year makes.

At this time last year, the lunatics were in full command of the asylum. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and a supporting cast of thousands were jetting off to Copenhagen to swear their undying allegiance to the idea that it is necessary to save the planet from the scourge of human life. That would be human life, most particularly, as it is lived here in the United States and other parts of the world that have not yet gotten around to pulling the plug on capitalism and moving on to a more enlightened way of organizing production and redistributing material wealth.

"Climate change is a religion for them, so there was no way they were going to miss this," said one GOP aide of the huge contingent of Democratic representatives and senators who boarded Air Force and commercial jets for Copenhagen. "This is their Hajj."

Cold weather causes stubble turnip feed risk - 12/10/2010 - Farmers Weekly

Stubble turnips being fed this winter could have seriously deteriorated following the recent cold weather, with frosted crops also potentially toxic, experts warn.

Developing countries hint at Cancun compromise - 10 Dec 2010 - News from BusinessGreen

However, fears remain that Bolivia could oppose any deal reach in Cancun after president Evo Morales gave a impassioned defence of the country's calls for industrialised nations to sign up to far more ambitious emission reduction targets.

He said that deaths resulting from climate change were effectively "genocide" caused by capitalism and reiterated his view that the entire world order would have to change to cut emissions.

Movie enthusiasts enjoy Kathmandu Int'l Film Festival

"In 2008, the theme was Global Warming; in 2009, Climate Change and this year is cultural and bio-diversity and migration," Thapa said.

Wikileaks is just the new Climategate

Dr. William Gray, emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University (and one of the well-credentialled climate skeptics that are claimed not to exist) suggested that the Climategate revelations "are but the tip of a giant iceberg of a well-organized international climate-warming conspiracy that has been gathering momentum for the last 25 years. This conspiracy would become much more manifest if all the emails of the publicly funded climate research groups of the U.S. and of foreign governments were ever made public."

Wikileaks' next project?

Unprecedented number manatees die from cold this year

TAMPA - An unprecedented number of manatees have died in 2010 according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. The Commission says cold weather is to blame for many of these deaths.

668 manatees have died this year to date and 244 of those deaths were attributed to cold stress. 65 manatees were killed by watercraft according to the same FWC statistics. These numbers account for all Florida counties.

Bill McKibben: Climate Talks So Weakened by U.S., Major Polluters that Walkout Could Be Good News for Planet

NSIDC Records Start At Peak Ice | Real Science

Satellite records started in 1978, when ice was at the highest level of the century. That was also when the PDO shift occurred. Of course Arctic ice has declined. Blaming the decline on CO2 is both clueless and intellectually lazy.

1975 Bangladesh Flood Blamed On Global Cooling | Real Science

Now they blame them on global warming.

American Thinker: Small Complicated Climate Building Codes

A century and a half ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson preached self-reliance in Massachusetts. Today's legislators treat citizens like dependent children who have to be told how many lights they need in their kitchens. De Tocqueville noted that we entrust the people with the awesome responsibility of electing our leaders, but "to manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task." It is not the role, nor the right, of our government to mandate energy efficiency solutions in private homes.

Twitter / Brad Johnson: Ala @BarackObama, the US d ...

Ala @BarackObama, the US delegation does as few press conferences and briefings as possible, dribbling info out on background #cop16

Kate Sheppard (kate_sheppard) on Twitter

# Russia's Alexander Bedritsky: "would be neither scientifically, economically nor politically effective" to enter 2nd Kyoto period #COP16
# suzyji U know ur summit not going well when host starts talking abt airplane disaster scenarios http://bit.ly/i81vZs #Cancun #cop16 #eg

3 dead as cold conditions intensify in Punjab, Haryana - The Times of India

CHANDIGARH: With one more person dying, the toll in the cold wave sweeping Punjab and Haryana this season rose to three even as the mercury dropped by upto three degrees Celsius below normal in several places of the region.

Why you should eat insects instead of meat [VIDEO] | Grist

Marcel Dicke (it's French or something, you perv) gave a TED talk on why insects are a savory, eco-friendly alternative to meat. Apparently this is not a joke.

Cancún climate change conference: Russia will not renew Kyoto protocol | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Summit cast into doubt as Russia says it will not sign extension to treaty that has governed climate negotiations for more than a decade

“I Have A Nightmare!” Activists Searching For A Climate Martin Luther King

So what do you do to revitalise a dud issue? You repackage the product and re-market it. Der Spiegel piece presents the ideas that activists want to use to get the issue back into the headlines and in people’s minds.

According to the report, some activists want to use emotion, sex, critical debate, improved communication and a new scientific language to better communicate with the public. These are some of the less spectacular methods. Others are calling for more controversial methods, such as advocacy journalism.

Congress's New Science Chairman to Fight "Global Freezing" : TreeHugger

Is it too much to ask that the Science Chairman in the United States Congress have a basic understanding of one of the preeminent scientific topics of the day? I mean, not even the wildest, most asinine climate skeptic on the planet -- not even Lord Monckton or Rush Limbaugh -- would suggest that there's something called "global freezing" going on (okay, maybe Glenn Beck would).

Sigh.

CHESSER: All lights on Upton - Washington Times

About the light bulb ban, Mr. Upton said, "We have heard the grassroots loud and clear, and will have a hearing early next Congress. The last thing we wanted to do was infringe upon personal liberties - and this has been a good lesson that Congress does not always know best."

A promise to hear testimony is hardly a strong signal that Mr. Upton intends to pursue a repeal of the ban. Even more telling is that there was nothing in his personal constitution - much less in the U.S. Constitution - that told him a light bulb ban curbed basic freedoms. He needed a lesson for this?

Wet Cold and Hot Dry Cycles « Musings from the Chiefio

It also looks like we are not only at a cold inflection of the 60 year PDO cycle, but also a cold inflection of the 600 year quasi cycle AND a cold inflection of the 1500 year cycle. If that’s in fact the case, we’ve got a big problem. It would explain the high peak in 1998 as all three reached a high roughly together, but it also implies a big plunge right after it. Very “Not Good”.

Die Klimazwiebel: Climate science & Politics

Democrats see themselves "as keepers of enlightenment" (remember the Bush era!), while Republicans "have come to believe that mainstream science is corrupted by ideology." This is a problem, indeed. There are not enough Republicans in science.

Why California Should Adopt a Global Warming Gas Emission Fee | Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit

The carbon dioxide emissions fee would not be popular with anyone except the green power producers and the environmental organizations; but like mom’s spoonful of cod-liver oil when we were sick, a little ick can make good medicine. I would suggest $20 ton in 2011, rising at $5 a year. Once revenues are balanced with expenditures all future increases in CO2 fees would be used to offset personal income and business tax.

The climate stampede has started | Stuff.co.nz

Absent from the talks is the climate-science elephant.

All 192 governments are unanimous that climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and the costs of action are a fraction of the costs of doing nothing. The national science academies of every major country agree, as do the 259 major investment companies who signed a statement last week calling for urgent action - they manage assets of US$20 trillion internationally.

YouTube - Felipe Calderon: 'As We're Squabbling, The Plane Is Going Down'

Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Dec 9th 2010 « The Daily Bayonet

Al Gore gets religion, everything the weather does proves global warming is real and the WWF gives the world a document format that won’t print. On purpose.

CLIMATE [HOAX] SPECTATOR: Cancun calling – Night of the long knives | Giles Parkinson | Commentary | Business Spectator

There were reports of numerous walk-outs. US negotiator Jonathon Pershing was said to have stormed out of a crucial meeting on transparency, threatening to reconsider his country’s Copenhagen pledges if India did not offer more on monitoring and verification. Bolivia was also said to have stormed out of talks on forestry (they don’t like market mechanisms) and the UN and the US both cancelled scheduled press conferences at the last minute.

One exhausted negotiator, back from a near all-night session on adaptation blamed all sides and complained: “They are just seeking to provoke each other. There is a complete lack of trust. There are blockages everywhere and I don’t know how they're going to produce a document at the end of this.”

“A typical Thursday,” noted Artur Runge Metzger, adding that the landmark Kyoto Protocol was concluded after a similar 48 hours of apparent mayhem. Although he conceded, “No one is quite sure how it’s going to fit together.” One optimistic negotiator from the Alliance of Small Island States observed that the spate of extreme weather events across the globe – fires, cold and floods – were making some negotiators realise that it was not simply about numbers.
...
In the appropriately named Desierto press conference room, the good Lord and Dr Roy Spencer told a small audience of 12 people and a man dressed in a polar bear suit that man-made activities had contributed to global warming, they just didn’t know how much, but suspected it was small. Monckton then changed his mind and declared there had been no global warming at all, at least for the last 15 years, that the recent cold weather in the UK showed there was a greater threat from global cooling, and that we should burn as much fossil fuel as we possibly could to alleviate energy poverty.
...
“We know climate change is real, we know it is significant, and we need to deal with the uncertainty of its impacts,” Rear Admiral David Titley said. Brigadier General Juan Ayala pointed to mass migration, natural disasters and the threat to democratically elected government as particular threats of climate change. They’ve even got solar – providing up to 20 per cent of energy on some of their bases.

Twitter / Karl Ritter: Wacky press conf at #COP16 ...

Wacky press conf at #COP16: 'His Holiness Shri Shri 1008 Soham Babaji,' an Indian 'spirtual leader,' calls for climate change 'inside us'

The Climate Post: Some progress in Cancun climate talks, but mostly a morass of competing interests | Grist

Is the U.S. going to pay for the damage it did to the climate?

Cancún climate talks risk becoming a 'car crash', says Chris Huhne | Environment | The Guardian

About 50 negotiators, recruited by the Mexican hosts, worked into the early hours to try to avoid a last-minute confrontation that would destroy even the incremental progress of the two weeks of talks.
...
Huhne said he feared that if there was no outcome by tomorrow night, the danger was that the UN climate talks would become a "zombie conference", where decisions were endlessly deferred.

"Next year people will say, well, we're not going to make any progress and we end up with a zombie conference where there won't be anybody at a senior enough level to take any serious decisions at all."
...
But the more immediate focus today was to try to find a resolution to the dispute over Kyoto – perhaps by getting leaders to agree to defer to the climate summit in South Africa next year. Ministers and negotiators were said today to be working on the diplomatic language to support such an outcome.

Don't miss this: University of East Anglia's Hubert Lamb in 1972: "[Temperatures] are on a definite downhill course for the next two centuries"

The Windsor Star - Google News Archive Search

We're saved!: Before taking ski trips around the planet, warmist Alison Gannett pees

Meet the extreme skier environmentalist

Actually, the 45-year-old extreme freeskier from Colorado has given up heli-skiing and her snowmobile. She also photo documents glacier change on her ski trips around the planet. ...the woman Outside Magazine named as one of its 'Green All-Stars' this year offers practical eco-living ideas without sounding holier than thou.

Intrigued by her eco-cred - Gannett graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies from the Universidad del Valle de Mexico and founded her first business to battle climate change back in 1991 ... My plug-in-hybrid solar-panelled SUV actually increased my carbon footprint by 100 tons in one year ...
"As a climate change solutions consultant I travel the globe working with individuals, companies, events, schools, communities and governments
...
"Heli-skiing is about 75 US gallons of gas an hour
...
Q: What is your favourite non-skiing hobby?

"Surfing in warm water, eating my high-carbon footprint chocolate." she says with a laugh.
...
Q: People might laugh at the idea of peeing before you fly to reduce jet fuel emissions. But how much difference does it make when every passenger urinates before they get on the plane?

"For every 2.2 pounds of weight reduction, airlines save 9,000 pounds of fuel per year..."

Most scientists in this country are Democrats. That's a problem. - By Daniel Sarewitz - Slate Magazine

A Pew Research Center Poll from July 2009 showed that only around 6 percent of U.S. scientists are Republicans; 55 percent are Democrats, 32 percent are independent, and the rest "don't know" their affiliation.
...
Or could it be that disagreements over climate change are essentially political—and that science is just carried along for the ride? For 20 years, evidence about global warming has been directly and explicitly linked to a set of policy responses demanding international governance regimes, large-scale social engineering, and the redistribution of wealth. These are the sort of things that most Democrats welcome, and most Republicans hate. No wonder the Republicans are suspicious of the science.

Think about it: The results of climate science, delivered by scientists who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are used over a period of decades to advance a political agenda that happens to align precisely with the ideological preferences of Democrats. Coincidence—or causation? Now this would be a good case for Mythbusters.

“Gore Effect” strikes again: new coldest ever December record low temperature in Cancun | Watts Up With That?

Either way, 50°F is a new record for December low temperature, and it couldn’t happen at a more inconvenient time for the Cancun COP16 climate conference.