Wisely, Steven Harper heads for the bathroom*.
And because it’s not fair to beat up on the left during their darkest hour…. a pity link.
Hopenchangen!
With time for an agreement running short, His Eloquency brings all his prodigious diplomatic skills to bear…
UK diplomatic sources confirmed there had been a major setback after China took huge offence at remarks by President Obama over the need to independently monitor every country carbon emissions.
In his speech President Obama said: “Without any accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page” – remarks the Chinese interpreted as an attempt to humiliate them, prompting Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to return to his hotel.
It looks like they’ve finally settled on who best to blame –
“We’ve done what we can here,” a senior White House official in Copenhagen, Denmark, tells ABC News. “The Chinese are dug in on transparency and are refusing to let people know they’re living up to their end of the agreement.”
Andy Revkin is there on the ground and finally placing the word “Copenhagen” in its proper context;
Copenhagen insanity: Floods of reporters sprinting in opposite directions chasing rumors of Obama or UNFCCC press conference.
Whoops, maybe no presser after all…
1935 First bit of excitement here for a few hours. A rumour swept through the media centre that Mr Obama was going to give a press conference and almost immediately hundreds of journalists rushed through the Bella Centre into the main auditorium used for such events. Some 400 reporters and TV crews packed into the room but after about ten minutes two harassed Danish officals managed to get into the room to explain that no Obama press conference had been scheduled. Dozens of journalists left the room. Most stayed, just in case.
Oh dear.
Meanwhile, when you’ve lost Castro…. (link fixed)
(Follow Daniel Foster for continuing updates)
UPDATE: Turns out the threat of a no-show was just a tease. Obama leave Hopenchangen without a press conference? Surely, you jest!
UPDATE 2; Looks like someone’s gittin outa Dodge …“Obama leaving before final vote but feels “confident that we are moving in the direction of a significant accord.” Besides, he has to hussle back to DC before the blizzard hits.
And the money quote: “U.S. will not be legally bound by anything that occurred here today.”
Afterthought – As the One jets home to Washington, it’s ironic that Europe’s best hope for a weakened America turned out too weak to get the job done.
I Can See Penn State From My House
Michael Mann’s Climategate defense – featuring Sarah Palin.
h/t Duncan
Finally
An issue Carolyn Bennett can really chip her teeth into.
CBC Opens Up Saskatchewan’s Tar Sands
Check out this masterpiece of editorial drive-by;
Note that our taxpayer funded broadcaster chose (at the 1:38 mark) to grace the interview with Saskatchewan Environment Minister Nancy Heppner with split screen film of oil sands mining and melting arctic ice, neither of which are located in Saskatchewan.
If they’re going to editorialize, would not lines of unemployed potash and oil field workers, stalled projects, and capped wells be more relevant to the interview?
Where are the real estate signs in communities hit by a regulatory induced downturn in the western Canadian economy? The farms forced into bankruptcy by skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer costs?
You can address your complaints to Vince Carlin here: ombudsman@cbc.ca
h/t Derek
Who Is This “John Galt”?
Royal Dutch Shell has publicly announced it will slash 5,000 jobs by year end–including “hundreds” in Houston–as part of a sweeping reorganization new CEO Peter Voser said is needed to make the company more competitive.
But under a separate program, the European oil giant has been quietly transferring additional office jobs from Houston and elsewhere to India and the Philippines to reduce costs, according to internal Shell documents obtained by the Chronicle and a person familiar with the plan.
The “migration” programs affect employees in finance and other support functions, which are being consolidated in what the oil company calls “shared service centers” in low-cost countries to fit the new company structure.
Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
h/t Adrian
Langry’s Carbon Footprint
… is so frickin’ large, it would make Al Gore green with envy. Did you know that the taxpayer’s of Canada pay all of his travel and accommodation expenses for him to travel from his home in Manitoba to Ottawa, on a weekly basis, so that he can “conduct regular business at Commission headquarters? Uh?
We Don’t Need No Stinking Earthquake Generators
Wait until the bat huggers hear about this…
On paper, the Basel project looked fairly straightforward: drill down, shoot cold water into the shaft and bring it up again. The superheated water would be capable of generating enough power through a steam turbine to meet the electricity needs of 10,000 households and heat 2,700 homes.
But located on top of a fault line and in the middle of a city, it proved too dangerous to continue, Basel’s environmental and economic department said last week.
Mr Haering could face up to five years in prison if a judge rules that he intentionally damaged Basel properties. A verdict is expected next week.
The glasses of schadenfreude are raised high tonight!
Reader Tips
| Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Paco de Lucía, Al Di Meola, and John McLaughlin, performing Mediterranean Sun Dance ¤ (6:51). |
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
“But then, Europe is no longer a free society.”
Lord Monckton – manhandled;
Outside, in the real world, it was snowing, and a foretaste of the Brave New World being cooked up by “world leaders” in their fantasy-land was already evident. Some 20,000 observers from non-governmental organizations – nearly all of them true-believing Green groups funded by taxpayers – had been accredited to the conference.
However, without warning the UN had capriciously decided that all but 300 of them were to be excluded from the conference today, and all but 90 would be excluded on the final day.
Of course, this being the inept UN, no one had bothered to notify those of the NGOs that were not true-believers in the UN’s camp. So Senator Steve Fielding of Australia and I turned up with a few dozen other delegates, to be left standing in the cold for a couple of hours while the UN laboriously worked out what to do with us.
In the end, they decided to turn us away, which they did with an ill grace and in a bad-tempered manner. As soon as the decision was final, the Danish police moved in. One of them began the now familiar technique of manhandling me, in the same fashion as one of his colleagues had done the previous day.
Once again, conscious that a police helicopter with a high-resolution camera was hovering overhead, I thrust my hands into my pockets in accordance with the St. John Ambulance crowd-control training, looked my assailant in the eye and told him, quietly but firmly, to take his hands off me.
He complied, but then decided to have another go. I told him a second time, and he let go a second time. I turned to go and, after I had turned my back, he gave me a mighty shove that flung me to the ground and knocked me out.
I came to some time later (not sure exactly how long), to find my head being cradled by my friends, some of whom were doing their best to keep the police thugs at bay while the volunteer ambulance-men attended to me.
[…]
It is exactly this species of tyranny that the UN would like to impose upon the entire planet, in the name of saving us from ourselves – or, as Ugo Chavez would put it, saving us from Western capitalist democracy.
Hopenchangen: Not Bizarre Enough!
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
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Y2Kyoto: Brad Pitt’s Big Fat Aluminum Footprint
Mock all you want, silly deniers – it’s working!
First They Came For The Show Dogs
“The state that has no business in the bedrooms of the nation seeks to insert itself into the fallopian tubes of its poodles.”
My op-ed in today’s National Post.
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
Over in Copenhagen…
… we have Robert Mugabe, perhaps the most brutal and corrupt despot in Africa, whose life’s work has been to destroy the once-prosperous country of Zimbabwe, lecturing the West on the “hypocrisy” of its position on climate change.
Read the link for the rest. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the concept of using “oil” as an insult.
Today’s Commentary On The Returning Health Of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi
Lord Fraser said that there was “a growing suspicion about what the Libyans are up to with [Libyan Lockerbie bomber] al-Megrahi.” He said: “I and others understood that he was released on the grounds of compassion and that he was going to die.”
Previous – “Doesn’t it make you proud to be Scottish?”
h/t tim
Green Party Of Canada: Not Red Enough!
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
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Reader Tips
Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) edition of Late Nite Radio. Tonight’s musical selection has a personal historic significance: when I first heard it, at the Edmonton Folk Festival, it was the only time in my life I’ve ever danced non-volitionally – as in, I didn’t even notice I was dancing until I was three feet in the air for the tenth time.
The twelve performers onstage in The Idan Raichel Project had been selected from a much larger group of seventy musicians, including Yemenis and Ethiopian Jews, brought together several years earlier by a brilliant young Israeli keyboardist named Idan Raichel for an ambitious recording project.
The brilliant contrapuntal energy – rhythmic and tonal – in the lower frequencies doesn’t come through in an online video, but hopefully the remarkable, electrifying spirit of the music will. Here then, without further ado, The Idan Raichel Project performs Back to Jerusalem.
The thread is open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
The Sound Of All Hell Breaking Loose, Comrades
Multiple sources are drawing attention to this English language version of a news item published by the Kommersant, in Russia;
Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
More context at WUWT – Russian IEA claims CRU tampered with climate data – cherrypicked warmest stations
Steve McIntyre – “Climategate emails show that Phil Jones of CRU, acting as a reviewer of the CRU data used in the HadCRU gridded temperature, “went to town” to block the publication of criticisms of his handling of Russian data.”
There’s also a request for help in translating this Russian language document. http://www.iea.ru/article/kioto_order/15.12.2009.pdf
So stay tuned, and remember that when dealing with foreign newspaper reports, it’s best to remain agnostic until there’s independent confirmation.
Hey Skipper, There’s A Timbits Behind You
U.S. National Debt Tops Debt Limit
Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?