what we’re watching:
“I Heart Global Warming.”  Do a Google search for “global warming” and — not surprisingly — this ever-more-ubiquitous term is preceded by words like “stop,” “prevent,” and “reduce.” In “I Heart Global Warming,” however, Adam Yamaguchi finds Greenlanders have now quite a different opinion than most about this climatic upheaval.

 

Join the wind energy industry at the Wind Power Works Pavilion (Hall 11) during COP 14 on 4-11 December to learn more about wind energy, visit our spectacular photo exhibition and enjoy free coffee and wifi.

We will have over 35 side events, film screenings and receptions from 4-11 December, in Hall 11, on the COP 14 campus.

Mark your calendar for some key events including:

4 December
18:30 -20:00: Grand opening of the Wind Power Works Pavilion & Photo Exhibition – reception and party

5 December
10:00-11:30: 3Tier side event: Harnessing Wind Power as a Global Climate Change Mitigation Technology (Launch of global wind map)
12:30- 14:00: Greenpeace side event: Forests for climate

6 December
10:00-11:30: Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP): Pacific Climate Change Film Festival
15:00- 17:00: Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE) side event: Access to energy and climate change: the way forward

8 December
13:30- 15:00: European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) side event: The EU’s Climate & Energy Package 20/20/20 by 2020
15:00- 17:00: Polish Wind Energy Association side event: Wind energy in Poland – a contribution to countermeasure climate change followed by a cocktail reception.
19:00 – 21:30: Greenpeace: Reception and film screening - The Age of Stupid

9 December
09:00- 10:00: European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC) side event: The possible role and contribution of geothermal energy to the mitigation of climate change
10:00- 11:30: European Renewable Energy Council (EREC): Technology Roadmap for Europe - Reaching 20% of renewable energy by 2020
14:00- 15:30: European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) side event: From Poznan to Copenhagen

10 December
9:00- 10:30: Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) side event: Global Wind Energy Outlook- Scenarios for wind energy development up to 2020
18:00- 19:30: WWF International: Launch of Earth Hour 2009
19:30 - 21:00: The Wind Power Works campaign VIP Reception

11 December
16:00- 18:00: U.S. NGOs: Reception for international delegates and the U.S. Congressional delegation                                    
The Wind Power Works campaign aims to show policy makers that wind energy already provides clean and fuel free electricity in over 70 countries of the world, and can cut 10 billion tons of CO2 by 2020. It is a proven and reliable technology that makes sense, not only for the environment, but also in economic terms.
We are looking forward to welcoming you in Poznań.

Best regards,

Angelika Pullen
Communications Director
Global Wind Energy Council

This is an excellent editorial - and we never agreed more with anything that the New York Times printed - and we brag about this because here they agree with everything our website stood for - and what great way to put it:

“A US CLIMATE POLICY WRAPPED INSIDE AN ENERGY POLICY WRAPPED INSIDE AN ECONOMIC POLICY.”

This is it in a nutshell. For the US to creep out from the years of “derivatives” and Oil we need an Economic Policy that looks at replacing oil with all sort of means - conservation, efficiency, change of lifestyles, “Gross National Happiness,” a Renewable Energy answer - this will then become automatically the needed energy security policy that answers also the environmental crises including the threatening climate change.

We are thankful for the upcoming switch from Bush to Obama and we will hold Obama’s feet to above fire.

We will analyze Obama’s VISION by the directives he gives to his policy implementers, in his hand picked cabinet, and in the intelligent expression he will be giving to the global implications of his new direction he is expected to give the US.

Yes, we understand that we will not get all answers in the first few months of his government - but we expect to hear from him expressed clearly how the necessary immediate first moves fit into a Grand Scheme of  things to come.

Yes, we know Kyoto was not the ideal plan to deal with climate change, it came about because of ideas the US suggested and then walked away from. To put back life in international agreements we agree that it is difficult to get 192 UN Sovereign delegations to sing in unison, but a few well placed US bilateral agreements could smooth the way for that needed global regime.

Yes, we know that the UN was dancing on the spot - one foot forward - one foot back - but without the cooperation from the Bush little else could be done, and procrastination is now the face of the UN time-piece. The US will have to help reorganize that institution also, and that is easy to do if that above noted terrific worded plan becomes the US methodology. Others will emulate it because they are in the same pickle as us and even worse. Poznan was never intended to be the starting point for a roadway to solution. It is just another bubbles’ exercise - but what a great place for some privately arrived US Senator to announce - look world - we are coming on board - we have plans - we want to rebuild our economy after we showed you all our nakedness - we know and we will do. Let us meet mid 2009 and we will have shown you by then that we have plans, we know what we are doing and we will work with you to save the Planet for the benefit of all humankind.

We will tell the other nations - We have erred, we have sinned, we transgressed, we started fine under President Nixon - Yes Nixon - and we hurt ourselves - and you - by diluting what he started in the area of the environment. We allowed the Oil industry, the Auto-manufacturing industry, our labor unions, our banks, our money dispersing interests, to push us as if we were rugs under their feet. Our town became Sodom and Gomorra, and we got covered asphalt and brine - but we will recover because recovering we must. Our down-payment will be made public January 20, 2009. Let’s give thanks that this is just eight weeks from now.

—*—*—*—

* — *

The Great Editorial:

 From:      hha at pointcarbon.com
Subject: Requesting side event applications for Carbon Market Insights 2009
Date:       November 28, 2008

For our annual event Carbon Market Insights 2009 on 17-19 March in Copenhagen, Point Carbon is thrilled to offer all participants the possibility to hold side-events (free of charge) in parallel to the main conference streams. These workshops will allow delegates to discuss in-depth developments of the carbon markets and constitute a unique opportunity for independent market actors to have their voice heard. In particular, we are looking for presentations and views from individuals and organisations that might provide a fresh view on climate policy in general and the carbon market in particular.

NGOs, non-profit organisations, and academics who have their workshops approved by the conference program committee will be provided free access to the 2-day conference. Side-event hosts from commercial organisations will be subject to regular conference registration fees. All applications will be carefully reviewed by the programme committee who will eventually approve (or reject) the application based on the relevancy of the workshop for the conference. Only one application per organisation will be considered, and presentations of a commercial nature (i.e. direct product demonstrations) will not be considered.

The conference will be hosted at Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark on 17-19 March 2008 with the side events scheduled on 18 March. For more information about the conference and the side event application form: http://www.pointcarbon.com/events/confer…

To submit your application, please fill in the form and send it back to Yann Andreassen at  conference at pointcarbon.com or by fax to +47 22 40 53 41.

We look forward to your participation to this important event for the global carbon markets.

Attachment: Please find attached 2008 conference’s side events

Best regards,
Henrik Hasselknippe
Director, Carbon market analysis
Point Carbon

Greenland’s future: Divorce up north? Greenland creeps towards independence from Denmark?
Nov 27th 2008 | COPENHAGEN, From The Economist print edition

THIS week’s referendum in Greenland marks a milestone in the protracted divorce proceedings between the world’s largest island and Denmark, one of its smallest colonial powers. Over 75% of Greenlanders voted to give themselves the right to loosen ties with Denmark by slowly taking control of such areas as security, justice and police affairs. The vote also promises Greenland (population: 56,000) a bigger slice of future profits from minerals, including oil, rubies, gold and diamonds.

Jupiter Images

An icy independence looms
For most Greenlanders, the referendum was as replete with a sense of the righting of historic wrongs as Barack Obama’s election in America. “I’m extremely moved, because now, like other peoples, we will be recognised as a nation,” said Hans Enoksen, the premier. Yet although Mr Enoksen wept tears of joy in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, it is premature to assume that full Inuit independence will come quickly.

Denmark has ruled Greenland since the 18th century. It conceded limited home rule only in 1979 (Greenland chose to leave the then European Community in 1985). The Danes have conceded that Greenland has a right to divorce. But independence may be a dream that the Greenlanders cannot afford. The population is tiny and the problems vast. The main export is fish and a DKr3.4 billion ($590m) annual grant from Denmark pays for public services like education and health care.

Even with the grant, the difference in living standards between Greenland and Denmark is stark. Education is bad, nutrition is poor and problems like alcoholism and child abuse abound. To tackle these problems, Greenlanders would need a bigger source of income than the Danish subsidy, which would presumably be phased out. In theory, this could come from minerals, but exploiting these requires big investment that it might be hard to finance now. Greenland’s west coast may hold more oil than the North Sea, but harsh conditions could push the cost of extraction as high as $50 a barrel.

“Expectations have been unrealistic,” says Jens Frederiksen, leader of the Democrats, the only political party in Greenland to oppose this week’s vote. Soren Espersen, a member of parliament for the Danish People’s Party, is blunter: “Greenlanders have been brainwashed by unprecedented propaganda.”

 At www.SustainabiliTank.info we keep saying this since the beginning of the year - December 2008 there will still be the Paula Dobriansky UN delegation and as such nothing will change and the meeting is a deliberate waste with UN personnel just creating travel mileage CO2 and hot air. That was the case in Bali, and this will be the case in Poznan.

The solution was easy - postpone Poznan Meeting to April 2009 so some start of a decision becomes possible and the needed input for Copenhagen in December 2009 becomes feasible.

The UN Secretary-general is touting the Copenhagen Roadway that starts with Poznan in order to come up with a Kyoto II. We heard from Danish Prime Minister that if there is no Kyoto II there will be a better Copenhagen I, but we told him that what he will get, because of the timing, rather a Poznan II. Now Yvo de Boer, head of the UNFCCC office in Bonn, plainly agrees with our estimate when he realizes in public that the US has only one President at a time - and he well knows that there is no climate change business with US President N0. 43, and before Obama takes over from Bush, there will not be any negotiations. (period.!)

Oh! yes! UNSG Ban Ki-moon will take the paper we just posted, that he somehow thought to bring to the attention of the G-20 in Washington DC at their November 14th meeting - and read it at the opening of the COP-14 of the UNFCCC on December 1 in Poznan. He will then turn around smiling and say that the world has heard how important the subject is.

AND THAT WILL BE IT - and Yvo de Boer just declared that he understands that - that will be it!

Strangely, last night at an event for the Pacific Island States, a person representing a UN body, To be fair to him I do not divulge which important UN affiliate he represents, he told me that Obama will go to Poznan not as President-elect but as Senator (you know, like Al Gore, Timothy Wirth, and Bob Kerry went to  Rio in 1992.) I just did not have the heart to tell the gentleman that next week Obama will not be a Senator anymore. He leaves the Senate so someone else can be appointed and gain in seniority - this is another right and easily predictable thing we know. This story just shows how deep the UN lives in the unreality of its comfortable cocoon.

———–

OSLO (Reuters) November 17, 2008 - President-elect Barack Obama will not attend United Nations talks in Poland next month working on a new treaty for fighting global warming, as per the the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

“There is not going to be an Obama delegation in Poznan,” Yvo de Boer, head of the Secretariat, told a news conference in Germany that was also shown on the Internet. The 190-nation talks will be held from December 1-12 in the Polish city of Poznan.

“There is one president at a time,” he said. Obama will take over from President George W. Bush on January 20, 2009.”

After Obama won the presidency last month, de Boer expressed hopes that Obama might attend the Poznan meeting, which is due to work on details of a new climate treaty.

A new pact to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol is meant to be in place by the end of 2009. De Boer said that the U.S. delegation in Poznan would liaise closely with Obama’s team.

——————

We believe that there will be an Obama observer at Poznan, but he will have a clear mandate to keep away from the negotiations. Obama does not want to become a co-owner of a sinking ship. He will in due time take the reins in his hands and wants to have free hands to do so. No last minute bail-out please! A bailout that leaves him holding an empty bag? No thanks.

If Yvo de Boer is afraid to recognize the above, and still wants to convey that he is playing in tune with Obama - this is another case of UN misleading the innocents. The Poznan party is on - the decision making process is off!

 The following is from Dr. James Hansen, known privately as Jim Hansen, The NASA Chief Scientist Who Still Has Difficulty in Distributing His Releases when Attempting To Release Them Via US Government Channels.

He Writes: The following one-pager is on my web site at

 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…
Target paper:
The final version of “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” in The Open Atmospheric Science Journal is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/18742823008020…
You can click on the main paper and supporting material individually.  The two are combined in one pdf on the GISS web site at http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2008…

BTW, I think that the Supporting Material contains some interesting stuff.

NASA decided not to make a press release for the paper, but Yale did one
 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2…

The draft press release that I wrote and “Q&A” about the paper are at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…

It is difficult to generate the attention that the topic deserves because the basic conclusions were already presented in my talk at the December 2007 AGU meeting.  Also the first draft of the paper (available in arXiv, as is the final version) appeared on several blogs and was discussed in several newspapers, which discourages media attention to the final improved version.

The long delay between first draft and final paper was my fault he writes. The principal demand of the journal referees, addition of a “caveats and uncertainties” section (section 4.5 in the main paper and section 18 in the Supplementary Material), could have been completed in a week or two, but it took me ~two months because of other obligations.  I caused another delay by not checking typesetting in the proofs carefully enough, requiring an extra iteration of proofs.

Bottom line: I think that the “Open” publication method, which includes full peer review but results in a paper freely available throughout the world, is promising and I intend to pursue it further.

***

Switzerland:
Even countries among those that we think of as the most educated and progressive in environmental matters, such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden, are condoning actions that, if consummated, make it almost impossible to avoid climate tipping points with disastrous consequences.

Letters to Swiss authorities, in English, French and German, are at:
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…

Thanks to Jacques Mirenowicz and Susana Jourdan in Switzerland and Reto Ruedy and Denis Gueyffier at GISS for help with translation into French and German.

***

Jim Hansen’s conclusion is:

The simple fact of the matter is that the only hope for keeping a planet that resembles the one of the Holocene, the past 10,000 years, is to halt any new CO2 emissions from coal and to phase-out existing coal emissions promptly.  I suppose it is possible that some people honestly do not understand that no goal for future CO2 emissions allowing construction of new coal plants will solve the problem and that “capture-ready” is a subterfuge. 

Fortunately, young people are beginning to catch on to what is happening, and I do not think they will allow the shenanigans to continue much longer.

 The Original November 07, 2008 posting that we cancell now:

 =============

UNFCCC Tries To Wedge In Unto The G-20 Washington DC (the last Bush Summit) With Results From a Virtual Press Briefing November 14, 2008 - The Problem That They Allow Only Questions From The Akasaka/Fawzi/Fowley UN Sanctioned Journalists - A Sure Path To Irrelevance. Yvo de Boer Does Not Include Factors Critical Of UN Caused Inaction, And Thus Will Not Be Able To Lead When Finally There Will Be An Active USA Presidency. We Think Now That A Post-Kyoto I Regime Will Be Established Through Negotiations Outside The UN.

INVITATION:  UN Climate Change Secretariat virtual press briefing on the investment and financial flows required to finance the global response to climate change

Date and time:     Friday, 14 November 2008, 11:00 a.m. (Central European Time)

One day before the high-level meeting in Washington, DC on designing a post-Bretton Woods financial architecture, the UN Climate Secretariat in Bonn will hold a virtual press briefing on what is required to finance the global response to climate change.

This year’s update of the UNFCCC’s Investment and Financial Flows project will look at what kind of financial architecture must be agreed so that all 192 Parties to the UNFCCC are able to strike a deal on strengthened international action on climate change in Copenhagen next year, to follow on the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer will speak to the long-term challenge of climate change, which must be addressed with a set of financial tools that are embedded as a part of any new global architecture, and present an opportunity to re-engineer future investment and business along sustainable paths of growth. He will also speak to the economic opportunities that acting on climate change can present.

The press briefing will be webcast from the <unfccc.int> web site, and journalists will have the opportunity to pose questions via a phone-in facility and to send in questions via e-mail in advance.

For further information, please contact:
Mr. Eric Hall, Spokesperson, tel.: (+49-228) 815-1398, mobile: (+49-172) 259-0443

To accredit and/or address interview requests, please contact:
Ms. Carrie Assheuer, Public Information and Media Assistant
Tel.: (+49-228) 815-1005 E-mail:  press at unfccc.int

<http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/press_releases_and_advisories/application/pdf/invitation_to_briefing_14_nov_financial_flows.pdf>

Postpone UN climate summit, suggests former Irish president.
Former Irish president Mary Robinson has said that a crucial UN climate change summit du