Nature Features

Bali high drama - then the warming conference finds its cool

Dec 15, 2007, 14:50 GMT

Bali Island, Indonesia - When the doors of the conference hall finally opened after dramatic scenes rarely seen at a major international event, the air that wafted out was refreshingly cool. The organisers had clearly made sure that the air conditioning had been going at full blast - perhaps not sending quite the right message about energy reduction, but urgently needed to cool tempers. These had been brought to boiling point by several developments, including the Chinese demanding an apology from the conference secretariat, then the head of that secretariat Yvo de Boer walking off the stage in tears of frustration, then emotional cheering for a series of constructive calls from the conference floor - like that from the European Union - then a chorus of booing that greeted blocking actions like that of the United States. The final minutes of this conference were of a kind rarely witnessed even by the most seasoned of participants at climate conferences, where things regularly get heated. 'It was one of the most dramatic rounds in the 15-year history of environment protection history,' said climate expert Christoph Bals of the Germanwatch group, a man who has seen all the big conferences. In two sessions separated by only a few hours to grab some precious sleep, the compromises which had been so arduously hammered out threatened to collapse like a house of cards at the last moment. It came when the forceful head of the US delegation, Paula Dobriansky, played a high-risk hand that was designed to out-trump a new Indian initiative. In the end, she was out-trumped herself. No one went along with her initiative, with even the Japanese maintaining a vague stance. The United States was left completely isolated. Then Dobriansky requested to speak again. The entire hall fell silent. The United States, she said, would not stand in the way of an overall agreement - and the cheering broke out. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon had earlier flown in specially to add his weight towards an agreement. When he entered the hall, delegates stood up and applauded - emotions beginning to rise. 'The world looks to us today,' said Ban. He appealed to the global community's sense of responsibility towards the fate of the planet and the generations to come, and demanded a workable compromise. 'No delegation can get everything it wants,' he said. The scene was set for a conference finale which it would be hard to beat for drama. The nitty-gritty of negotiations had been turbulent to the last, with rumours of threats and even blackmail. The Europeans threatened to torpedo US President George W Bush's initiative for a separate conference of the main industrial nations should the Bali conference fail to produce a meaningful result. That had an effect - the obstinate US delegation finally began to show flexibility. 'Well - these are tactical games, but if we Europeans hadn't decided to turn on the pressure, we wouldn't have got this far,' said one European Union delegate. For the Europeans, who emerged with much credit in their role as leading environment protectionists, the result was satisfactory, even if they would have liked more, such as a clear indication that the industrial states would reduce their carbon emissions by a further 15 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020. But the Americans were not playing along with this - so to get them on board, the Europeans agreed to the 40 per cent figure getting relegated to an obscure footnote in the final agreement. After all, everyone knew that after next year's US presidential election, there was a general hope that things would change on the climate front among Americans. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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NoharnessDec 15th, 2007 - 15:40:36

I do not trust the reporting on this event. Truth to tell, I seldom trust the reporting on anything, but the writing about this one is so muddled that it is almost laughable. It is too bad C-Span was not invited along to cover this event. At least that way we would have had a good view of what happened publicly.

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Billie from BelgiumDec 15th, 2007 - 23:31:11

Why did they hold in a warm area?

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NoharnessDec 17th, 2007 - 18:43:31

What has come out of Bali is a 'Plan A' that is going to take forever to work out that very likely prove unworkable in real terms. Whatever comes out in the end will prove costly in the extreme and an utter failure in the end.

Where's your Plan B? If the IPCC is right, and the majority on these boards insist that it is, the consequences of failure will be fatal. Where is your Plan B? Plan A ain't gonna fly.

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More idiocyDec 18th, 2007 - 18:16:49

Climate change is normal and will occur again. Many have been mislead by the false god al gore and the drive by media. The impending ice age will be worse than any warming. How about plan c?...Global warming is a hoax, now what?

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Belgium is a hoaxDec 18th, 2007 - 18:18:24

10 Dec 07 - As much of the U.S. is being blasted by vicious ice storms, a blockbuster report published in a prestigious scientific journal insists that climate warming is both natural and unstoppable and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant.

Writing in the International Journal of Climatology of a publication of Britain's Royal Meteorological Society, professor David H. Douglass (of the University of Rochester), professor John R. Christy (of the University of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson and professor S. Fred Singer (of the University of Virginia) report that observed patterns of temperature changes over the last 30 years disagree with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability.

The conclusion is that climate change is 'unstoppable' and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

According to Dr. Douglass: 'The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.'

According to Dr. John Christy, 'satellite data and independent balloon data agree that the atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface,' while greenhouse models 'demand that atmospheric trend values be two to three times greater.'

Dr. S. Fred Singer said: 'The current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep-sea sediments, stalagmites ... and published in hundreds of papers in peer-reviewed journals.

How these cyclical climate take place is still unknown, but they 'are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on cloudiness, and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface and thus the climate.'

Singer said at a recent National Press Club meeting in Washington that there is still no definite proof that humans can produce climate change.

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Fool on the hillDec 24th, 2007 - 11:45:45

It's a very well known and well used ploy to keep forewarding more and more outlandish theories about global warming and then defy anybody to prove them wrong.
What was that 'natural cycles' 'solar wind' etc, have you got any more?

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Where's Fake Tonni?Dec 28th, 2007 - 02:52:11

Soon we will here that Global warming will cause more snow at ski areas.

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