Next week, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina for an official visit, and then to Santiago, Chile to attend the Ibero-American Summit, was announced October 30, 2007 at the UN.

Then, to help the secretary-general prepare for negotiations in December on a new international deal to tackle global warming, his spokesperson, Ms. Montas, said, that Mr. Ban will visit Chile, Antarctica, Brazil seemingly for pupose of climate change tourism, and end up eventually in Valencia, Spain, where scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release a new report on Nov. 17.

As we know, the U.N. climate panel, that is the official IPCCC, shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore.

The IPCCC final report to be released in Valencia November 17, 2007, will set the stage for the annual U.N. climate conference on the Indonesian island of Bali in December that is tasked to start discussing a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCC to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which expires in 2012. Clinching a deal on new mandatory, deeper emissions reductions will likely take several years of intense and difficult negotiations and common knowledge is that if the negotiations do not get their start in Bali there will be no proposal ready for the 2009 meeting in Copenhagen - the target date for clenching an agreement that will make it possible to have actions prepared that can then kick in in 2012.

Montas said the secretary-general will visit Punta Arenas, Chile, “whose residents live with a hole in the ozone layer” and Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, where glaciers have been affected by climate change. We have been to these places and this is great tourism that will also show the UNSG interest in furthering actions to slow down global warming and to provide for further steps on the ozone hole subject - after all seeing by yourself, and hearing complaints on location, will sharpen further his views on these subjects.

He will fly to Antarctica where he will be briefed by scientists at research stations, and then to Brazil where he plans to visit an ethanol plant and meet researchers and indigenous people living in the Amazon region, she said.

The secretary-general will wrap up his Latin American trip to the ABC countries of the LA cone, with an official visit to Brazil’s capital - Brasilia - and then fly to Valencia for the release of the report by the U.N. climate scientists, Montas said.

As we expect ourselves to be in Brazil starting November 17, 2007, we will be in good position to report then what the Brazilians, and the other Latin Americans of the South American Cone region, will say of the UNSG’s visit to their area.

————

The official announcement about the Valencia November 12-17, 2007 meeting:

Ban Ki-moon to attend IPCC press conference in Valencia on 17 November.

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, will participate
in a press conference to launch the Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change in Valencia, Spain, on 17 November, the last day of the
IPCC 27th Session.

The “Synthesis Report” is the final part of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
titled “Climate Change 2007.” This report is the latest instalment in a series
of IPCC Assessments that have provided the most comprehensive scientific
evidence regarding the state of the Earth’s changing climate. This work has been
conducted by hundreds of scientists around the world since 1988, when the IPCC
was founded by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It led to the IPCC being jointly awarded
the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Al Gore for increasing knowledge on man-made
climate change and options to counteract such change.

Media opportunities for the IPCC 27th Session will be the Opening Ceremony on 12 November and the press conference on 17 November. Speakers at the Opening Ceremony will include Ms. Cristina Narbona, Spanish Minister of Environment; Mr. Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; Mr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC and representatives from WMO and UNEP.

TO THOSE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING AT THE MEDIA EVENTS - LET US WORN YOU THAT UNLESS YOU ARE BLESSED BY THE UN MEDIA ACCREDITATION OFFICE OF THE UN DPI IN NEW YORK - YOUR CHANCE TO GET IN IS ZERO - AND SOME FOLKS THERE MAKE IT THEIR BUSINESS TO WEED OUT SUCH MEDIA THAT IS SPECIFIC FOR TOPICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. SO, IF YOU ARE REALLY INTERESTED IN THE SUBJECT, AND YOU MAY HAVE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE READING YOUR WEBSITE, YOU DO NOT QUALIFY UNLESS SOME COMMERCIAL MEDIA OUTLET HAS RECOGNIZED YOUR ACTIVITIES AND ASKED FOR YOU TO BE ACCREDITED AT THE UN.

Just to make sure we are not misunderstood - we believe the Valencia conclusive meeting is important, and the material that will be released will be brought to the attention of the media outlets by the European governments. We also believe that the EU and others will continue to promote the main ideas in the report - that global warming is man-made and that we will thus have to learn to live within the frame of an emissions’ budget; this until three years from now - the incoming US Administration will bring the US back to a leadership position in matters of global warming.