Something is rotten in the state of Denmark - COP15

[pecan]

CLIMATE CONFERENCE in Copenhagen, 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15)

Official Website of COP15

Representatives from some 200 countries gather in Copenhagen for the United Nations' climate-change summit. News that Barrack Obama, the U.S. President, changed his schedule to appear at the end rather than the start of the conference has sparked a surge in optimism that a new global-warming pact might be reached, with climate change activists branding the conference "Hopenhagen.


COPENHAGEN -- The head of the UN's panel of climate scientists on Monday strongly defended findings that humans are warming the planet, after critics said that leaked emails from a British university had undermined evidence.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told a climate conference that its findings were "subjected to extensive and repeated reviews by experts as well as by governments."

The IPCC concluded in 2007 that it was at least 90% certain that humans were to blame for global warming.

But climate change sceptics have seized on a series of hacked emails written by climate specialists, accusing them of colluding to suppress others' data and enhance their own.

"The evidence is now overwhelming that the world would benefit greatly from early action," Mr. Pachauri told delegates at the opening session of the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen summit.

"The recent incident of stealing the emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some [people] would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC."

The emails, some written as long as 13 years ago, were stolen by unknown hackers and spread rapidly across the Internet. Sceptics say that the emails showed that scientists had manipulated evidence.

In one email, confirmed by the University of East Anglia as genuine, the head of its Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones, said he wanted to ensure a specific paper which doubted climate science was excluded from the IPCC's 2007 report.

That paper did in fact appear in the final 2007 report, the university says. Mr. Pachauri on Monday defended scientists named in the "climategate" row.

"The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges," Mr. Pachauri told the 192-nation conference.

"Given the wide-ranging nature of [economic] change that is likely be taken in hand, some naturally find it inconvenient to accept its inevitability."

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, told conference delegates that the row would impact the Copenhagen talks and belief in climate science.

"The level of confidence is certainly shaken. We believe this scandal is definitely going to affect the nature of what can be fostered [in Copenhagen]. The size of [economic] sacrifices must be built on a secure foundation of information which we found now is not true," a Saudi delegate said.

Another British climate research centre, the MetOffice Hadley Centre, plans to publish this week data from more than 1,000 locations around the world to boost transparency and underpin evidence that the world is warming.

"We are confident [it] will show that global average temperatures have risen over the last 150 years," it said in a statement, adding that the move had the support of the University of East Anglia.

"As soon as we have all permissions in place we will release the remaining station records."

© Thomson Reuters 2009

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/most-popular/story.html?id=2312246#ixzz0Z3X9ZSKf
The National Post is now on Facebook. Join our fan community today.

[pecan]

1,200 limos
140 extra private jets during the peak period alone
The top hotels — all fully booked at $1,130 a night
Climate Convention menus of scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges

So much for doing what you preach.  Steups


COPENHAGEN • On a normal day, Majken Friis Joergensen, the managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says that her firm has 12 vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world,” which opens here today, 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 somebody last week looked at the weather report.”

Ms. Joergensen reckons that between her and her rivals, the total number of limos in Copenhagen has already broken the 1,200 barrier.

The French alone ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms. Joergensen. “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, which is so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports — or to Sweden — to park, returning to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well as 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Prince of Wales. A Republican U.S. senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climatechange “Truth Squad.”

The top hotels — all fully booked at $1,130 a night — are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges. At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen’s clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less wellscrubbed protesters.

In the city’s famous anarchist commune of Christiania, among the hashish dealers and heavily graffitied walls, they are starting their two-week “Climate Bottom Meeting,” complete with a “storytelling yurt” and a “funeral of the day” for various corrupt, “heatist” concepts such as “economic growth.”

The Sunday Telegraph