– Overview – The Met Office in the UK reports that 2010 is on track to be the warmest or second-warmest year in the instrumental record. Other science, based on massive data, supports that view. (See graphic above and NOAA’s annual State of the Climate report.) Meanwhile, the Post-Copenhagen international climate negotiations continued and culminated […]
I wrote about how a number of participants in Cancún felt that some sense of faith had been restored in the UN process. The reviews are still coming in, but it appears that progress was indeed made, that some highly useful, indeed critical mechanisms have been advanced, and that ongoing negotiations are going to take […]
Christina Figueres and Ban Ki-moon (Reuters) COP 16 winds up at the end of this week. It is not the blockbuster that Copenhagen was last year – and that’s no surprise. All the foofaraw from last year has been replaced by a bit more focus and many fewer expectations. There are far fewer people as […]
“Fact: The only sustainable path to growth is a low-carbon path.” Felipe Calderón, President of Mexico The last newsletter of the year from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has useful information on a number of subjects including adaptation, finance and technology. Here is President Calderón in a clear, succinct message before the […]
If you know me or have been reading this blog with any regularity, you know I’m a skeptic. Not about climate change but about China. I made an analysis several years back that, in retrospect, seems mistaken. I perceived that the economic and political pressures of the liberal democracies would push and pull China toward […]
I read a really good book by Steve Schlesinger a few years back called Act of Creation. It’s about the San Francisco conference at which the United Nations was born. There was a lot of intrigue and high drama, with plenty at stake. There are stories of heroes, too, like Edward Stettinius, the unsung Secretary […]
The past week of events – from a U.S. Senate hearing, to remarks by China’s State Council, to high-level talks in Beijing – have scattered a layer of rich soil from which robust US-China cooperation on climate change might spring forth. However, that soil is not uniform in content. The issue of quantifiable emissions reductions, […]