ICECAP

Dec 14, 2009

Hide the Decline

By David Lungren, EPW Policy Beat

It is the iconic email of Climategate. Phil Jones, one of the world’s top climate scientists, discussed a “trick” he used to “hide the decline.” It has sparked hermeneutical warfare, with some, including President Obama’s Science Adviser, Dr. John Holdren, claiming the “trick” merely means “a clever way to tackle a problem.” Others think it’s “a crafty or underhanded device.” Below, in our review of the emails released as part of Climategate, the Holdren interpretation becomes more difficult to justify.

Our friends in the majority on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming are siding with Dr. Holdren. Though we are not taking sides - the EPW minority is conducting an investigation into Climategate - we question whether the trick, as the majority staff wrote in a recent report, was simply a straightforward “technique” to “combine direct thermometer readings with non-thermometer data, in this case from tree rings, to complete a full picture of temperature history.”

The problem with this interpretation is that it overlooks the context in which the “trick-to-hide-the-decline” statement was made. The context was this. In 1999, several scientists preparing for the third climate report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - including Phil Jones, former head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and author of the infamous email - were concerned about a proxy temperature reconstruction of the Northern Hemisphere showing declining temperatures in the late 20th century. They were concerned, because the decline threatened to “dilute” the message that 20th Century temperatures were unprecedented in the last 1,000 years.

Authored by Keith Briffa of the CRU, the decline began after 1960. How did Briffa come up with a decline? Reliable thermometer data go back only to 1880, so scientists use ‘proxy data’ (tree rings, ice cores, boreholes, etc.) to reconstruct annual temperatures over long periods (i.e., 1000 years). In this case, Briffa relied on tree rings, which showed a sharp and steady decline in temperature after 1960. This seemed to conflict with actual temperature readings that showed a steep rise. This discrepancy, according to one scientist, was “awkward.”

Indeed it was. According to Steve McIntyre, the Canadian mathematician who debunked Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” temperature graph, several IPCC lead authors met in Arusha, Tanzania from September 1-3, 1999. There they discussed the Briffa decline. Briffa’s graph was, according to Michael Mann’s email, a “problem”:

“Keith’s series differs in large part in exactly the opposite direction that Phil’s does from ours. This is the problem we all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably consensus viewpoint we’d like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series (Mann email, 9-22-99).”

After it was determined that the IPCC would include a proxy diagram in its Third Assessment Report, IPCC author Chris Folland wrote in an email that Briffa’s decline “somewhat contradicts the multi-proxy curve and dilutes the message rather significantly. This is probably the most important issue to resolve in Chapter 2 at present (Folland, 9-22-99).”

The message apparently was very clearly delivered, as Briffa himself recounted. “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data,’” he wrote (Briffa 9-22-99). Here is the email from Briffa in full:

“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. We don’t have a lot of proxies that come right up to date and those that do (at least a significant number of tree proxies) some unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter. For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of years as Mike appears to and I contend that that there is strong evidence for major changes in climate over the Holocene (not Milankovich) that require explanation and that could represent part of the current or future background variability of our climate.”

Mann was nervous that skeptics would have a “field day” with the Briffa decline and that “he’d hate to be the one” to give them “fodder.” As Mann wrote:

“We would need to put in a few words in this regard. Otherwise, the skeptics have a field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. The best approach here is for us to circulate a paper addressing all the above points. I’ll do this as soon as possible. I don’t think that doubt is scientifically justified, and I’d hate to be the one to have to give it fodder! (Mann, 9-22-99)”

Yet, fodder was exactly what they got. But what, exactly, was the “trick”? As the Daily Mail reports, “All [Jones] had to do was cut off Briffa’s inconvenient data at the point where the decline started, in 1961, and replace it with actual temperature readings, which showed an increase.” Below is the graph that was eventually included in the IPCC’s 2001 science assessment. And it shows that Jones’s trick was successful: Briffa’s line in green is cutoff and obscured by the other lines. (Courtesy of McIntyre at http://climateaudit.org/)

This “trick” is, to say the least, somewhat controversial. According to Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at London’s Oriental and African Studies, “Any scientist ought to know that you just can’t mix and match proxy and actual data. They’re apples and oranges. Yet, that’s exactly what [Jones] did.”

More investigation of Climategate is needed. The context surrounding the “trick” to “hide the decline” does, however, present a convincing challenge to those who believe it to be without guile. It appears to show several scientists eager to present a particular viewpoint-that anthropogenic emissions are largely responsible for global warming-even when the data showed something different. Read more here.

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Quick! Copenhagen Needs Greenhouse Gas-X

The hypocritical, inefficient anti-Greens at the United Nations, who will be responsible for the deaths of millions if they don’t change their behavior, have now far surpassed the simple wastefulness of selling out Copenhagen’s fuel-slurping limos instead of riding mass transit. As the National Center for Public Policy Research reported today, the U.N. has denied entrance to two-thirds of the NGO representatives they credentialed for the climate summit:

The restriction was announced today outside the Copenhagen conference center after several thousand accredited NGO conference delegates, including three from the National Center for Public Policy Research, waited outside for eight hours or longer in 32-degree F temperatures for admission.

NGOs apparently are being banned because the United Nations accredited 45,000 people for a building with a capacity of 15,000, although the stated reason was “security concerns.” The “security concerns” may be related to the fact that, after waiting several hours in the cold, delegations began to chant, “Let us in! Let us in!”

“To be an “accredited” or “admitted” NGO to a COP conference, NGOs must apply months in advance, and typically only make travel plans to attend after receiving complete credentials from the United Nations,” said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an accredited COP-15 NGO organization that is as of now banned from the conference. “To give credentials to 45,000 people while choosing a building that holds 15,000 people is insane, though the United Nations, to be fair, has never been known for competence.”

As Ridenour noted, about 30,000 humans-worth of greenhouse gases were blasted into the atmosphere for no good reason. Remember, these are the people who want you to trust them with tracking carbon emissions and carbon offset coupons, not to mention enforcement of such.

Read more here.

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The Impossible Dream
By Dr. Vincent Gray, NZ Climate Truth Newsletter

Modern science began when Galileo and Newton showed that it was possible to provide a mathematical model for the motion of solid objects. As a result we are able to predict the motions of the planets,provide tables of the tides and predict forthcoming eclipses . We can send vehicles to the moon and to the planets. Einstein was able to modify the model to make it even more successful.

All this despite the fact that the motion of individual atoms in every solid is currently unpredictable. Yet the public still believe that everything else can be predicted by means of mathematical models. Unfortunately, this is not so. There is no mathematical model which can predict the behaviour of fluids; gases and liquids. This is why it is not possible to model the climate.

There is also no mathematical model which can predict the behaviour of irregular events or of irregular surfaces. I was surprised recently that “Consumer” magazine stated that there was no way that we can measure the sharpness of a knife, because of this difficulty. I encountered it in my past professional life from the impossibility of defining or measuring the roughness of a surface.

Although the general public is ignorant of these facts scientists know they are true. They can only cope with these problems by using various levels of guesswork called “parameterization” where levels of reliability are unknown without rigorous testing for success of prediction.

When the Rio “Earth Summit” conference of 1992 decided that they must seek evidence that the earth was warming the scientists knew that this was an impossible dream. There is no way that one could provide an average quantity for the temperature of the earth’s surface with an estimate for its accuracy. .

Let me illustrate the problem. My last Newsletter (No 231) provided you with two spreadsheets showing the hourly temperatures measured at 24 New Zealand weather stations I wonder whether any of you have tried plotting them out. I attach what happens if you plot the hourly figures for single stations (Wellington, Mt Cook,) and for averages for all the stations (NZ winter, NZ Summer). The question is what is the “average” of any of these plots? There is no answer you can give. You cannot find a mathematical model which can give you any acceptable average in such a way that you can estimate the variability. If you use the measurements taken every minute, it would be worse.

Meteorologist know that an overall daily average, however obtained, is meaningless and useless. We do have a day and a night, all of us, and it is not very interesting to know what happens in between these. We would like to know how warm it will be in daytime and how cold at night. The easiest way the meteorologists can guide us is to measure the maximum and minimum temperature every day. They have a very convenient instrument that does this; a double thermometer with an indicator that stays put for the maximum on one side and at the minimum on the other side. This need only be measured once a day, when a magnet will restore the indicator for the next time, and the rest of the day is free..

The “raw temperature data” from meteorological stations thus consists of daily records of maximum and minimum temperature. Often the maximum refers to a day previous to the minimum, and the time the measurement is made varies from one place and one time to another. It is good enough for a rough guide. It is useless as a means of measuring global temperature to any level of accuracy.

All meteorologists know this, and so did the people at Rio. The only way to persuade the world that it was warming was to fake it. Jim Hansen volunteered for the job. I keep pointing out that he has told us all that it is a fake in this statement on his website

But nobody believes it. Nobody wants to believe it. Recently, the climategate scandal has shown how it is done. They even say the computer programme is “fudged”. They have the arrogance to continue to dominate our TV news with tales how the “globe is warming” based on this fraudulent system. But the fraud is necessary. The end justifies the means. The “precautionary principle” applies even more strongly when there is no genuine evidence. See PDF.

Dec 13, 2009

AP Analysis Overlooks Scientific Implications of Climategate

By William DiPuccio

The Associated Press has published an independent investigation into the scientific implications of the recent emails hacked from East Anglia University in England. In, “AP IMPACT: Science not faked, but not pretty”, AP writers Seth Borenstein, Raphael Satter, and Malcolm Ritter concluded that “the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked.”

The Scientific Consensus

But the article misses two very important points and stumbles in its logic. First, regarding the scientific consensus, the reporters conclude: “However, the [email] exchanges don’t undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.”

The emails, as the article admits, reveal that “skeptical” scientists were stonewalled, blacklisted, and repeatedly denied access to data under the FOI. If the views of these scientists had been welcomed as a check and balance on the work of others, if they had been made partners at the table, if they had been given full access to the same data, if their research was published, and if those who opposed their findings had been forced to respond to their conclusions in peer reviewed literature, then the consensus would probably look much different than it does now.

At the very least, the pretense of utter certainty which proponents of the IPCC hypothesis maintain, would have been substantially diminished and they would have been forced to acknowledge that their position was not fully supported by the peer reviewed literature.

It is circular reasoning to appeal to a consensus that was shaped by scientists conspiring to eliminate all opposition. These scientists, though relatively few in number, wielded a disproportionate influence on the scientific community. Moreover, from the private emails it is evident that they were less confident about their own conclusions than they appeared to be in public discourse.

The Significance of Errors in Past Temperature Reconstructions

Second, the writers of the AP study are totally oblivious to the implications of the attempt by Phil Jones and others to “hide the decline” in a graph that was later published in the 2001 IPCC report. The decline refers to an unmistakable deviation in proxy temperatures derived from tree ring studies. The cause of the deviation has never been resolved. Tree ring proxies are used to reconstruct temperature data for the last 1000 years (instrumental data did not start until around 1850).

Though actual temperatures were rising after 1960, the tree ring data in one major study, by Keith Briffa, indicated that temperatures were falling precipitously. It is clear from the emails that this deviation in proxy temperatures (the “divergence problem") was not disclosed to the public or policy makers because it would raise questions and uncertainties about the overall reliability of past climate reconstructions.

Historical temperature reconstructions are a crucial plank in the IPCC’s hypothesis which claims that our current warming trend is the result of CO2 emissions. If it can be shown that today’s warming is unprecedented, then it is more likely (though not certain) that CO2 emissions are interfering with nature and skewing temperatures upward.

But over the last 1000 years, average temperature has varied by only one degree according to the reconstructions. The case for today’s extraordinary temperatures rides on only four or five tenths of a degree. The large shaded area in the attached graph (from IPCC TAR), which delineates the margin of error, clearly shows the imprecise nature these reconstructions. Briffa’s reconstruction (green line) was truncated at 1960 to “hide the decline.”

2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (Figure 2.21) comparing different Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions from 1000 A.D. to 2000 A.D. The recent instrumental Northern Hemisphere temperature record to 1999 is shown for comparison. Two standard error limits (shaded region) for the smoothed Mann et al. (1999) series are shown. The horizontal zero line denotes the 1961 to 1990 reference period mean temperature. Enlarged here.

Questions raised about the reliability of temperature reconstructions using tree ring data can effectively undermine the claim that our current warming is unprecedented. For example if temperatures in the medieval period were actually closer to the upper portion of the shaded area, as most paleoclimate histories have shown, then there would be no cause for alarm.

The AP investigation was misleading on this particular. The authors tell us that the so-called “hockey stick” reconstruction (shown on the graph) which asserted the 1990s were the hottest years in a millennium, was “upheld as valid” by a National Academy of Sciences study.

But, in fact, there were two studies. The second, conducted by a team of statisticians led by Edward Wegman, chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, was highly critical of the hockey-stick reconstruction.

A pre-publication draft version of the same graph showing the deviation in Briffa’s reconstruction after 1960 (yellow line). Overall, Briffa’s reconstruction shows a significant departure from the other series. This was apparently adjusted in the final version. Image courtesty of Steve McIntyre, climateaudit.org. Enlarged here.

The AP article never mentioned this investigation. Nor did it mention that in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment, the hockey stick temperature profile was barely discernable. Temperatures in the middle ages were noticeably elevated over those in the 2001 assessment, though still not as high as the current instrumental record.

Contrary to the conclusions drawn by the AP investigation, there are serious scientific implications surrounding the Climategate emails. Though defenders continue to beat the drums in favor of the scientific consensus, it is becoming clear not only that this consensus was partially manufactured through manipulation, but also that the science it represents does not rise to the level of certainty it has auspiciously claimed.

Over the last couple of years, numerous studies have challenged various aspects of the IPCC’s science, including the dominance of CO2. Natural variability - ocean oscillations, solar cycles, etc. - plays a larger role in climate change than once thought. A spate of recent research has shown that aerosol pollution (e.g., soot, sulfur, nitrogen, dust) and changes in land use changes (e.g., deforestation, agriculture, urbanization) have a greater impact on climate than CO2.

Before we pull the trigger and spend billions of dollars on controlling carbon emissions, we need to consider the entire range of scientific research and reassess our policies in light of these findings.

Bill DiPuccio was a weather forecaster for the U.S. Navy, and a Meteorological/Radiosonde Technician for the National Weather Service. More recently, he served as head of the science department for Orthodox Christian Schools of Northeast Ohio. He continues to write science curriculum, publish articles, and conduct science camps.

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See Joe Bastardi on Imus talk about the Triple Crown of Cooling.

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See Lord Monckton interview a rather open minded Greenpeace activist here.

Dec 11, 2009

Reports from Copenhagen

Climate Depot TV Debate in Copenhagen: Warming Professor falsely claims ‘5000 leading climate scientists’ are in UN IPCC
By Marc Morano, Climate Depot

Watch Video of Sky News TV Debate here.

A contentious live global warming debate took place in Copenhagen on UK’s Sky News TV on December 12 between Professor Mark Maslin of the University College London and Climate Depot’s Marc Morano. During the debate, Professor Maslin erroneously asserted there are “5000 leading climate scientists” with the UN IPCC to support the claims of man-made climate fears. “None of the science has been actually changed. If you look at the [UN] IPCC report, 5000 leading climate scientists put together all the leading science together,” Maslin stated. [Professor’s Maslin’s email is: m.maslin@geog.ucl.ac.uk ]

Climate Depot’s Morano countered: “Your idea that [there are] 5000 UN scientists [ you need to apologize and retract that immediately. The biggest number you can come up with if you include [UN bureaucrats] and delegates is 2800.”

Professor Maslin, of the Department of Geography, interjected “Oh, absolute rubbish.” [Editor’s Note: Maslin also recently debated MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen and Maslin claimed in this video clip that “There are very few (skeptics) and none are actually credible."]

A frustrated Maslin also claimed that “every single intelligent person” listens to UN scientists and accepts that man-made global warming is a serious problem. “I have been having this debate for the last 20 years, the key is that every single intelligent person, every key politician in the world, listens to the key scientists, they actually look at the data,” Maslin said. [Editor’s Note: Perhaps Professor Maslin is guilty of this: MIT Climate Scientist: ‘Ordinary people see through man-made climate fears—but educated people are very vulnerable’ - July 6, 2009]

Morano responded: Matt [anchor of Sky News TV], check out the claim of 5000 UN scientists—that is a bald face—error. The professor needs to retract it. There is no 5000 [UN IPCC climate scientists]. And interestingly a few days ago [Professor Maslin] said 4000 [UN scientists]. Why not just say 100,000? You gave it away sir when you said ‘key scientists’. It is a small cadre, only 52 UN scientists signed (a reference to the only 52 scientists who authored the media hyped 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers). Peer-reviewed studies are showing the [man-made climate] scare is ending.

[Editor’s Note: UN IPCC Chair Pachauri Only Claims HUNDREDS of UN IPCC Scientists?: ‘The body of evidence is the result of the careful and painstaking work of hundreds of scientists worldwide’ - December 8, 2009

Reality Check: Only 60 UN experts ‘explicitly supported the claim made by the IPCC that global warming represents a threat to the planet’ Numbers racket: ‘Remove the duplications and the total number of UN authors plus reviewers drops from 3,750 to 2,890’ [ Nov. 16, 2009 - National Post. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Claims 2500 scientists

Don’t Miss this Report about UN IPCC Scientists Attacking IPCC’s Credibility and Ethics]. Professor Maslin did not respond to Morano’s call for an immediate withdrawal and apology. Maslin then lashed out at Morano. “Your ideas on the science are wrong, are completely false. You are actually spinning,” Maslin said.

Morano countered: “There are two appeals Professor Maslin has: Appeal to authority—the UN—which Climategate thankfully has exposed. And climate model ‘scares’ of what ‘could,’ ‘might, ‘may’ happen, based on speculative models which again violate the basic principles of forecasting, according to top forecasting experts.”

Professor Maslin also claimed “the science is very strong.” “If you’re Bangladesh and you are faced within the next 50 years of losing 20 percent of your country—imagine losing 20% of the whole of the US due to climate change,” Maslin asserted. Morano countered, offering a head on rebuttal to Maslin’s claims. “What professor Maslin is arguing is that these climate models should scare everyone. The climate models - which violate 71 (actually 72) out of 89 principles of forecasting according to the experts. Climate models that the UN says are not ‘predictions’, but merely ‘emission scenarios’. Climate models that are used to fulfill a political narrative when real world data is failing,” Morano said. (See: Ivy League forecasting pioneer Dr. Scott Armstrong “Of 89 principles [of forecasting], the UN IPCC violated 72.” - January 28, 2009)

“Sea Level is not showing the acceleration. The Royal Netherlands Meteorology Institute said this. One scientist said if sea level is rising due to global warming, no one has bothered to tell sea level,” Morano explained. Maslin claimed that evidence for man-made climate fears was easy to find.

“You could actually take a supertanker from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific for the first time in human history. Why do you not believe the science? Why suddenly are scientists lying to you?” Maslin asked Morano. Morano responded: “Let’s go one at a time. The [Arctic] sea ice tanker—they used satellite monitoring [to aid direct its path], and they had Russian ice breakers breaking up the ice. [Editor’s note: See: Arctic ships themselves were “ice-hardened” to deal with ice...accompanied for most of the trip so far by one or two Russian nuclear icebreakers...possible because satellite observation of ice cover’] Morano continued: “[Since] 2007, we have now gained the size of one and a half Texas’s in the Arctic in the summer. Antarctic sea ice is at or near record sea ice extent. They had their record summer of sea ice extent [in 2009]. Why isn’t the professor not talking about that?”

Morano added: “Yes, temps have been rising since the end of the Little Ice Age. That proves nothing. [A study in] the peer-reviewed journal Science had said the 20th century was not anomalously warm. You can’t get away with this professor, Climategate has shown it.”

When asked what he hopes comes out of Copenhagen, Morano responded: “I agree with NASA scientist James Hansen, a friend of Al Gore and one of the loudest promoters of global warming fears. Hansen hopes Copenhagen fails.” Morano added the UN climate “solutions” were dangerous to the developing world’s poor because it meant that the economies of the poorer nations would essentially be managed by the UN and the Western world. “This is a form of neo-colonialism,” Morano said. “The developing world needs carbon based energy,” he added.

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Climate science Q&A: Has 40% of all Arctic ice melted?
By Lord Christopher Monckton

Q. The great truth-monger Al Gore claimed yesterday that 40% of the Artic Ice Cap has already disappered, and that the other 60% will be gone in 5, 10, or 15 years. If almost half of the Artic ice has already melted, then why aren’t London, New York, Miami, Venice, Houston, Singapore, etc., under water?

Is this the same type of over-exaggeration that Gore was guilty of practicing when he claimed that the Earth’s core temperature is several millions of degrees? I cannot wait for your debate with the great truth-monger!

A. Even if the entire Arctic ice cap were to disappear altogether, as it did during the summer in the medieval warm period and throughout the year 850,000 years ago, sea level would not rise by as much as a millionth of an inch, because the Arctic polar ice cap is floating. You can demonstrate this for yourself by taking a large glass, placing a big ice-cube in it, then carefully filling up the glass with water until the water is exactly level with the rim. Now let the ice melt. Even when all the ice is gone, the water level remains exactly the same, and not a drop spills over. I recently demonstrated this experiment at lunch after a talk at Lloyds of London. The brokers and underwriters were fascinated.

For a few weeks only, in September 2007 only, the Arctic ice cap lost just over a quarter of the ice extent that it would normally have at its summer minimum, so that there was less ice than there had been in the 28 years since satellites had been able to give us a reasonably reliable measure of it. By September 2008, almost half of the missing ice had returned. By September 2009, nearly all of it had returned. We know that the temporary loss of late-summer sea ice at the minimum in September 2007 was not caused by “global warming” for three reasons. First, the climate of the Arctic is known to be highly volatile: it was actually warmer in the 1930s than it is today. Secondly, a paper by NASA in 2008 attributed the disappearance of the sea ice the previous summer to unusually strong northbound currents and winds from the Tropics that had very little to do with “global warming”. Thirdly, just three weeks after the 28-year Arctic sea-ice minimum, the Antarctic sea ice - which had been growing steadily - reached a 28-year maximum.

Much more here.

Hitler Youth in Denmark - again
By Lord Christopher Monckton

A thoughtful, quietly-spoken German was almost in tears. “I never thought I would see this in my lifetime,” he said, sadness and anger competing on his face. “The last time young people politicized and indoctrinated by the State broke up a meeting of their opponents here in Copenhagen by chanting mindless, repetitive slogans was during the Nazi occupation of Denmark during the Second World War.”

Americans for Prosperity had booked a meeting-room in a canal-side hotel, with a live satellite link-up to well-attended chapter meetings all over the United States. As their President was speaking, the Hitler-Jugend, part of a very large, lavishly-funded delegation of jack-trainered, eco-Fascist goons probably paid for by taxpayers somewhere, leapt up to the podium and began a zombie-like, keening chant.

I used the old crowd-control trick of standing behind the Hitler Youth and talking quietly. The microphones were right where I wanted them, so I began reporting on that day’s progress in negotiating the world-government agreement that, if it is passed at Copenhagen, will shut down the economies and democracies of the West without affecting the climate in any measurable way.

One of the Fascists, distracted as I had intended, began trying to offer a commentary on what I was saying. Using my elbow, I kept her away from the microphones and continued talking. Eventually, the squad marched out of the room and rapidly dispersed before the police could round them up.

Another German in the audience said this was the saddest day of his life. He, too, had hoped that mindless, compulsory agreement with the State and disruption of discussions by anyone who disagreed had been swept away from Europe forever at the end of the Second World War. Both of our distinguished German colleagues left the meeting with their heads bowed low and their shoulders stooped. Their distress and concern for the future of Europe and the world was evident. Read more here. Read all the blog posts here.

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Copenhagen’s Climate Change Titanic Heading for An Iceberg
By Patrick Henningsen

In the wake of COP15’s infamous Danish Text Leak this week, politicians are now showing their true dictatorial colours. The leak detailed a backroom deal between officials including the US, UK and Denmark sought to reverse the original Kyoto agreement where the first world nations had to pick up the bill for alleged climate reparations, and instead raising their own emissions restrictions and make the developing countries cap theirs. A classic bait-and-switch at the eleventh hour.

Yet many international delegates here appear to be under no illusions that any meaningful long-term agreement draft next week will be of little consequence if the US cannot sell it back to their constituents at home. US Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) administrator Lisa Jackson appeared yesterday at the UN Climate Change Summit to assure the international community that the EPA will not let democracy get in the way of regulating the deadly toxic gas known as carbon dioxide at home. Her “endangerment” declaration means that CO2 will still be subject to intense regulation under the Clean Air Act, giving the White House executive power to limit CO2 emissions- even if Congress does not pass a definitive climate bill in 2010.

EPA’s Jackson received applause from the audience, but critics and opponents of carbon emissions trading schemes, see it as just the latest episode in what has become a systematic failure of the World’s Developed economies to convince the Third World that a Copenhagen agreement will be in their long term interests.

Barun Mitra, Director of The Liberty Institute in New Delhi, India explains, “Developing countries are naturally sceptical about how much will really come out of this conference. Many people characterise this political divide as one of ‘rich countries vs poor countries’, but in reality what we have is a section of the elite in rich countries colluding with a section of the elite in poor countries making policy decisions that have a negative effect on the average person.”