No, I haven’t been on a trip down to the Antarctic. This little scene is in the foyer of the Alfred Wegener Institute for polar and marine research in the northern German town of Bremerhaven.
Germany might not be the first place you think of when you think of the Antarctic and Arctic, but the country has an impressive track record when it comes to polar research.

This is Greenland journalist Nuno Isbosethsen,currently visiting Bonn and photographed here on Greenland’s “national day”. She was taking part in a panel at the “Global Media Forum” on “Indigenous peoples and the race for resources”. She was telling us how difficult it is for indigenous people to have their say when it comes to exploiting the natural resources becoming increasingly accessible in a warming climate.

You can’t get much higher-profile than this. The International Executive Director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, has scaled the controversial Arctic oil rig currently 120 km off the coast of Greenland. He is breaching a court injunction against his organisation imposed by a Dutch court a week ago at the request of Cairn Energy, the company operating the oil platform. The court order, sought by the company a week ago after 20 Greenpeace activists were arrested for stopping the rig operating, means a 50,000 Euros a day fine and the risk of jail for the Greenpeace chief.

Covered glacier in Swiss Alps.

Most of what I’ve been hearing recently doesn’t make me optimistic that we can really limit global warming to 2 degrees. So I was all the more interested to read a press release distributed today at the climate talks in Bonn.A UNEP/WMO study says while reducing CO2 emissions continue to be a key factor, there are other measures which might help us keep below 2 degrees and benefit human health at the same time.

(Climate change video shoot Alaska 2008)

The 2°C limit for global temperature rise seems to have slipped a bit further into the realm of impossibility. Figures published by the International Energy Agency indicate that CO2 emissions from energy reached a record high during 2010. This probably reflects the economic recovery.