Day 8
It’s all going worse [better? – Ed] than we thought, as a bunch of African nations lead a 5-hour boycott of working groups and Nigeria warns that the talks are on “red alert”:
Sources at the marathon talks said Africa led a five-hour boycott of working groups, with the backing of the Group of 77 developing nations, and only returned after securing guarantees that the summit would not sideline talks about the future of the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol ties rich countries – but not developing countries – that have ratified it to legally binding emissions curbs.
It also has an important mechanism enabling the transfer of clean-energy technology to poorer nations.
Yet it does not include the United States, which says the Protocol is unfair as the binding targets do not apply to developing giants that are already huge emitters of greenhouse gases.
Algeria, speaking at a press briefing on behalf of the 53-member African Union, demanded that there should be a special plenary session devoted to Kyoto.
“Otherwise we are going to lose everything,” Algeria’s chief negotiator Kemal Djemouia told reporters.
Asked about the state of negotiations, Nigeria’s pointman rang the alarm bell.
“It is ‘climate code red’ right now, we are in code red right now, we stand at the crossroads of either hope for Africa or hope dashed in ‘Hopenhagen’,” Victor Ayodeji Fodeke told AFP. (source)
And right on cue, there is the Point-Gun-At-Head-of-Cuddly-Creature moment, to add an emotional frisson to the proceedings:
Emotional blackmail
Climate change threatens the survival of dozens of animal species from the emperor penguin to Australia’s koalas, according to a report released at the UN climate summit.
Australia’s iconic koala faces malnutrition and ultimate starvation as the nutritional quality of eucalyptus leaves declines as CO2 levels increase, said the study from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an intergovernmental group.
Rising sea levels, ocean acidification and shrinking polar ice [all dodgy claims – Ed] are taking a heavy toll on species already struggling to cope with pollution and shrinking habitats, the report added.
“Humans are not the only ones whose fate is at stake here in Copenhagen – some of our favourite species are also taking the fall for our CO2 emissions,” said Wendy Foden, an IUCN researcher and co-author of the study. (source)
And there are yet more misrepresentations and spin about natural disasters. The UN grudgingly had to concede that natural disasters were the lowest for a decade, but Margareta Wahstrom, UN disaster risk wonk, quickly played the “climate change joker”:
The figures showed that weather related disasters accounts for 91.4 percent of all natural disasters recorded this year.
To be specific, out of the 245 disasters in 2009, 224 were weather related, accounting for 55 million people out of 58 million people affected, 7000 out of 8900 of those killed, and 15 billion US dollars out of the 19 billion dollars in economic damages.
Because of more effective prediction and mitigation, the death and economic loss due to natural disasters are lower than previous years. Wahlstrom said it’s a good news for people and countries.
“However extreme weather disasters remain top of the list and will continue to affect more people in the future”, said Wahlstrom when talking about the increasing trend of weather related disasters and the background of climate change behind it. (source)
As we all know, there is no demonstrated link between climate change and increased storm activity. This is “Al Gore science”, but presented as hard fact. But who cares about the facts when we have to blackmail the planet into pointless action on climate change?
Australian Climate Madness 
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