Well, they didn’t do it. The EU is sticking to its 20% by 2020 figure. They could do 30%, but only will if others take more action. So much for being a leader.
UN climate chief Yvo de Boer held his first press conference since Copenhagen this week. It can’t be easy to keep going in the face of the Copenhagen fiasco. Of course he has to try to stay optimistic about the process continuing in Bonn this summer and Mexico towards the end of the year. But bearing in mind the US administration is in a even more difficult position after losing the Senate majority it will need to pass a climate bill, it’s hard to see where the impetus is going to come from.

Happy New Year Ice Blog readers. I have been on holiday enjoying the winter weather in Germany and the UK. A lot of people are complaining about the cold and the bad road conditions and delays on planes and trains – but I for one am happy to have a real winter. What else would you expect from the ice-blogger? Some colleagues reckon this will save me an Arctic trip…
There is a lot of talking and joking as usual about whether the extreme winter conditions will undermine the acceptance that humankind is affecting the climate.
I was interested to read in the British press today that some British newspapers have even been taking the name of Professor Mojib Latif in vain, a respected climate expert at the Leibniz Institute of Kiel University Germany – whom I have interviewed several times. Two conservative papers apparently misinterpreted his research as signalling a switch from global warming to cooling. Fortunately (i.e. in the interests of the truth and no misrepresentation) today’s edition of The Guardian puts his research into context and quotes him as affirming his strong belief in man-made global warming.Prof Latif says the cold spell is short-term “weather” and not a cooling related to ocean cooling which he describes in his work. He also compares the complexity of the climate problem to Einstein’s theory of relativity and stresses the difficulty of presenting it accurately in the media. I’ll second that, but keep doing my best.

Before I stop for today I’d like to draw your attention to a comment posted by David Scrimgeour under the last entry.
He draws attention to the question of how clean technologies are going to be trasferred across borders, and what incentives there will be for example to German companies to invest in projects in potentially risky locations. Good question, David.
I personally think companies will only go into this if they know there is a market, and a market with a future. We need clear signals from governments – which we didn’t really get in Copenhagen – but we also need to draw companies’ attention to the finance experts who say it will ultimately be cheaper to work against global warming, and to all the studies which indicate the future lies with clean technology which does not put a burden on the climate. And of course companies are ultimately interested in making a profit. Look how some energy companies have realised fossil fuels are finite and are getting into alternative renewables – to secure their future.
Any other views on this?

Well, the “last round” of official pre-talks to the Copenhagen extravaganza have also come to an end.
“Copenhagen can and must be the turning point in the international fight against climate change – nothing has changed my confidence in that,” says UN climate chief Yvo de Boer. Although there’s still no major progress on mid-term emissions targets and financing measures in the developing world, environmentalists like WWF are also trying to stay optimistic, saying a deal in Copenhagen could still be possible.
I talked to German climate expert Prof. Mojib Latif on his view of the current situation recently.
He says it would be “disastrous” if we didn’t get a good binding agreement at the December conference. In spite of all the negative stuff we’re hearing, he still hopes the industrialised countries will get their act together. He’s particularly critical of the USA. He’s one of this country’s leading experts on the subject – and one of the few who say things in a way the average person on the street can understand.You can read the rest here.
Interview with Mojib Latif

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre in Washington of 1,500 people shows the percentage of US-Americans who believe in global warming has dropped drastically from 77% to 57% in just two years.
Only 57% believe there is real scientific evidence that the atmosphere is getting hotter.Only 36% believe human activity is the cause.
The Guardian’s US correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg quotes Michael Dimock, associate director of the Pew centre as saying the economic crisis and the health care debate in the USA have squeezed the environment and climange issues out of people’s focus. But others, including James Hoggan, the author of “Climate Cover-Up” say there’s a a clever lobbying campaign going on to mislead people about climate science.
One way or other, this is bad news at a time when the US Senate is debating climate change laws this week. With a lot of media attention being devoted to the 1st anniversary of President Obama’s election, it would be great to be able to say public awareness of the urgency of the climate issue in the USA has risen. The fact that the opposite seems to be the case does not bode well for Copenhagen.
The Guardian’s report on the Pew survey
Pew Centre homepage

Apologies for “blog-silence”, I’ve been on an autumn break, enjoying the “golden October” weather we’ve been having here in Germany. Not that you ever really have a break from the climate change issue these days. For one reason and another, it seems to have become an everyday issue, from people wondering whether the thick frost we’ve been having in our area is “normal” to the nature documentaries on tv and the media in general either stressing the importance of a climate deal or telling us Copenhagen won’t work anyway, given governments’s preoccupation with the financial situation.
Some of the conservation groups are suggesting the world’s politicians and influential lobby groups are actively preparing us for a failure in Copenhagen to soften the blow if no legally binding agreement is achieved.
The latest EU discussions on Copenhagen don’t exactly make me optimistic.Ultimately, it comes down to the political will to cut emissions drastically and fund adaptation programmes in the developing world. The lack of a firm commitment to figures bodes ill.
In my efforts to balance my natural optimism with observations of political reality, I find myself struggling to believe we can reduce emissions to the necessary extent. I wish somebody could give me reason to be more positive?
The UN climate secretariat has just published the official emissions figures for 2007. (There’s that frustrating time lag when it comes to publishing data). “The continuing growth of emissions from industrialised countries remains worrying, despite the expectation of a momentary dip brought about by the global recession”, says climate chief Yvo de Boer. He says (he has to, really) this underscores the need for a “comprehensive, fair and effective climate change deal in Copenhagen in December”. Too true. I wish our decision-makers would come up with the decisive action (and funding) to make it happen.