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Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges
Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

By Andrew Gilligan
Published: 10:55PM GMT 05 Dec 2009

Visitors watch a visual display about the environment before the opening of the summit in Copenhagen Photo: REUTERS
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."


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Climate Express sets off for Copenhagen Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen's clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city's famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week "Climate Bottom Meeting," complete with a "storytelling yurt" and a "funeral of the day" for various corrupt, "heatist" concepts such as "economic growth".

The Danish government is cunningly spending a million kroner (£120,000) to give the protesters KlimaForum, a "parallel conference" in the magnificent DGI-byen sports centre. The hope, officials admit, is that they will work off their youthful energies on the climbing wall, state-of-the-art swimming pools and bowling alley, Just in case, however, Denmark has taken delivery of its first-ever water-cannon – one of the newspapers is running a competition to suggest names for it – plus sweeping new police powers. The authorities have been proudly showing us their new temporary prison, 360 cages in a disused brewery, housing 4,000 detainees.

And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning.

At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants' travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of "carbon dioxide equivalent", equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.

The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from "saving the world," the world's leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.

Instead of swift and modest reductions in carbon – say, two per cent a year, starting next year – for which they could possibly be held accountable, the politicians will bandy around grandiose targets of 80-per-cent-plus by 2050, by which time few of the leaders at Copenhagen will even be alive, let alone still in office.

Even if they had agreed anything binding, past experience suggests that the participants would not, in fact, feel bound by it. Most countries – Britain excepted – are on course to break the modest pledges they made at the last major climate summit, in Kyoto.

And as the delegates meet, they do so under a shadow. For the first time, not just the methods but the entire purpose of the climate change agenda is being questioned. Leaked emails showing key scientists conspiring to fix data that undermined their case have boosted the sceptic lobby. Australia has voted down climate change laws. Last week's unusually strident attack by the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, on climate change "saboteurs" reflected real fear in government that momentum is slipping away from the cause.

In Copenhagen there was a humbler note among some delegates. "If we fail, one reason could be our overconfidence," said Simron Jit Singh, of the Institute of Social Ecology. "Because we are here, talking in a group of people who probably agree with each other, we can be blinded to the challenges of the other side. We feel that we are the good guys, the selfless saviours, and they are the bad guys."

As Mr Singh suggests, the interesting question is perhaps not whether the climate changers have got the science right – they probably have – but whether they have got the pitch right. Some campaigners' apocalyptic predictions and religious righteousness – funeral ceremonies for economic growth and the like – can be alienating, and may help explain why the wider public does not seem to share the urgency felt by those in Copenhagen this week.

In a rather perceptive recent comment, Mr Miliband said it was vital to give people a positive vision of a low-carbon future. "If Martin Luther King had come along and said 'I have a nightmare,' people would not have followed him," he said.

Over the next two weeks, that positive vision may come not from the overheated rhetoric in the conference centre, but from Copenhagen itself. Limos apart, it is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilised pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism so beloved of British greens.

And inside the hall, not everything is looking bad. Even the sudden rush for limos may be a good sign. It means that more top people are coming, which means they scent something could be going right here.

The US, which rejected Kyoto, is on board now, albeit too tentatively for most delegates. President Obama's decision to stay later in Copenhagen may signal some sort of agreement between America and China: a necessity for any real global action, and something that could be presented as a "victory" for the talks.

The hot air this week will be massive, the whole proceedings eminently mockable, but it would be far too early to write off this conference as a failure.

Coool...free hookers for the delegates, bless the prostitute's union! "Carbon dating", indeeed!!

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DBF

I was wondering how to weave the free hookers from the sex union into the "Do Not give your' trade or skills for free" thread, but decided against it...

How many C-17s does Chairman Obama send over with things like limos and helicopters on board before he goes over himself with two 747s? As was also pointed out to me, that doesn't include the KC-135 tankers that will be airborne in case "something comes up". Quite the optics for someone who wants to change the world.

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real airplanes have round engines

Ahh Climate Change, the new renamed version of communism. The idea of climate change is a proven hoax. Only 0.3% of the atmosphere is CO2, not enough to cause a greenhouse effect. 4% of the atmosphere is water vapor which is a far greater heat trapping gas than CO2. Water vapor is not manmade. With 0.3 % CO2 and 4% Water vapor there is no way that CO2 is causing a greenhouse effect. The earth cools off at night, and a true greenhouse planet like Venus does not. If the earth did not cool off at night then global warming would be a reality, since it does cool off at night global warming is an impossibility.

As for Europe spearheading and ramrodding a false theory, one has got to question the motive. THe motive is quite obvious, world domination. History repeats itself, tyrants haven't suddenly gone away, they reappear under new names with the same old purpose, power, and control just like Hitler and Stalin.

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"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!" R.R.

Welcome to the USSA! One Nanny State Under the Messiah, Indivisible with Tyranny, Higher Taxes, Socialism, Radical Environmentalism and a Loss of Income for all. Boy I'm proud to be a part of the USSA, what can I do to raise taxes, oh boy oh boy!

A2C: for you the melting of the ice cap in north and south poles is also a fiction ?
We could discuss very long about the real fact about the climate change, one thing is sure: the temperature of the earth change and it's a problem for various place in the world.

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Sorry for my bad English:-(

Both polar caps are increasing in size and thickness, but whatever...

Oh, and yes, the Earth's climate does change - the thing is we have nothing to do with it and all we can do is destroy our economies and put everyone in poverty by thinking we can.

First it was the coming ice age, then it was the coming burn-out, now it's the "change we have to control". They change their "end of the world" to fit whatever the data says because they know they can't "win" with the truth. Just remember, until the late 1980's, everyone was talking about how we were about to enter an ice age because the Earth was cooling and overdue for one. Then all of a sudden, that cooling that'd been going on was now somehow changed into warming over the same period and we're now about to die because we're going to get to hot.

But wait - we've had some of the coldest average winters in the last 40 years. In fact, the NE US just went through the worst blizzard in that period this year, beating the previous record set last year. Copenhagen, which rarely gets snow due to its proximity to the water had a blizzard.

Not to mention that we just discovered that the "data" that is being used is rigged and was kept from peer review becuase they would've seen it.

Face it- Human-caused "Climate Change" is, has been, and will be a myth and nothing more than a cry for socialism to the detriment of everyone.

Very funny to read...
Sincerly, I think we probably have to avoid a deep debate on this subject.

But reading that "Both polar caps are increasing in size and thickness, but whatever..."" is similar to read that the humans never went to the moon.
The sat imagery clearly shows that the area of packs is dramatically decrease and 30 years ago it was very difficult to cross from north atlantic to pacific by the north-west way, now is simple...

The earth climat is a instable balance and yes a light increase 0,3% of C02 can create a durable change.

For the "winter in north US": we speak about a "Global" change on the scale of the earth, the average temperatur in the world continues to increase every years and that's it's simply the facts.
Than the Bush administration more interested in selling gas than protect the climate try to convince everybody that reduction the gas consumtion is not necessary, is one thing, waiting that the rest of the world will believe in that, is an other thing....

Regards

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Sorry for my bad English:-(

Iclo,

Believe what ever you want, but most of the people in the US do not believe in global warming being man-made.

Why is it now called climate change, and not global warming for the past few years? Maybe because the earth has been cooling off since the warmest year of 1998.

If it is all about global warming, why is the leader of the UN commision on climate change an Economist and not a climate scientist? Because it is all about taking money from the western rich countries and giving it to the third world countries.

Why is it the prophet Al Gore will not have an open debate about climate change? Because he cannot support his theory.

You need to follow the money. Who is going to profit from these taxes our goverment wants to take from us?

With all the respect I have for the US citizen, their opinion don't made the world opinion.
The fact is that Bush was an "gas provider" and limiting the use of fossil energy, was against its own interest.


No, the average temperatur on the surface of the earth is in increase.
Just ask to the Australians if the temperatur is decreasing...
Looks the data, they are available on internet...


I suppose that for you the crisis in Darfour is also fictious and has the only goal to take money from your rich county to the "bad poor countries".
The limitation of the global warming is mainly a question of compromise with economical earnings.


The debat about the climate change took place long time ago, and the huge majority of countries and citizen agreed on its existence. It's not a agressive fact but the two countries that sunk the Copenhagen sommit were USA and China, the two top polution makers...

Yes and the current position of USA and China are only on based on money: It's cheaper to give a bit of money to. And I didn't understand the link between the limitation of the use of fossil energy and the increase of the tax.

Regards

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Sorry for my bad English:-(

You say "world" and then you say "Australians"... contradictory.

The fact is that the WORLD temperature is not going up. It is going down and has since 1998. When you look at the "models" it says it's going up, but they disregard data that is contrary to their belief. This is what the whole "Climate Gate" scandal is over and how the data is being rigged to show a predetermined outcome and not the facts.

In addition, they changed the word to "Climate Change" after the past 4 winters have been among the coldest on record for much of the world and real scientists started demanding how the "climatologists" could account for that if the globe was really warming.

As it is, we have no real proof as to what the world's temperature was before the late 1980s. Ice cores have proven to be unreliable, soil samples can only give a general idea, and the models never come up with the same result. So how do we know how warm it really is or isn't? How do we know if the world was really warming during the "Dark Ages" but it was doing so in areas that were uninhabited or had no records and thus our belief that it was part of a "Little Ice Age" is wrong?

This is the problem. The dataset isn't there and isn't big enough to prove anything. Thus, to state that we have the information in the face of all the missing information is part of the problem.


I suppose that for you the crisis in Darfour is also fictious and has the only goal to take money from your rich county to the "bad poor countries".
The limitation of the global warming is mainly a question of compromise with economical earnings.[/quote]

You may believe that global warming is a compromise with earnings, but those in charge do not. They believe that those whom have good economies should suffer while those really doing the polluting don't. This is why the US didn't ratify Kyoto.



Read the following about "Cap and Trade" and how it's really - "Cap and Tax" and has nothing to do with "improving the environment" -

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124588837560750781.html
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/04/30/cap ... rt-series/ (read all 10 parts)

All Cap and Trade does is make everything cost more, not slow the production of it. As it is, the US has greatly decreased the emissions of "greenhouse gasses" in the last 2 decades not through regulation, but through the demand of the end user for it. Cap and Trade forces changes on industry that they either accept (i.e. reduce production) or spend a lot of money to reduce while still producing at the same level. When this happens, prices to the end user goes up. If you thought the fuel price spike after Katrina was big, watch what happens when Cap & Tax gets enacted.

Then again - we can do what's right and be responsible instead of reactive and watch as the world does what it always does - keeps going where it wants to, not where we think it should.

Here is a headline quote from yesterdays "UK Guadian" which is considered a left wing newspaper.



We have had record lows accross the US, Australia has had snow in one part of their country during the summer.

Why are the scientists trying to hide the real-time data?

If Darfur is so important to you, why doesn't the EU do something about it instead of come begging to the rest of the world?

As of now, we in the US are not a socialist country. Most of us do not believe the goverments have any right to intrude into our lives. The goverment, according to our constitution, shall not intrude into our lives. What Climate Change is all about is to turn us into a "One World Goverment", with someone like Obama as the world leader, he more or less stated that during his campaign speech in Berlin. I will not stand for that. I believe we will have a revolution here in the US before that happens. lclo may want that, but most of us in the US don't.

I also believe we should get out of the UN as it has turned into a retirement home for unwanted diplomats.

I also recall reading that the reporting of temperatures around the world are averaged to come up with a number. This is not a mean temperature over the earth, but only an average of the reporting stations. When the Soviet Union broke up, a number of those reporting stations were taken off line due to cost. Thus the average temperature has increased since the decommissioned stations were in very cold remote locations of the former USSR like in Siberia.

The average temperatur in the world are computed from satellie images, so don't depend of ground station.

The fact to have more snow or more freeze a few days per year don't have effect on the average temperatur of the whole year. Australia knows a catastrofic dryness:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080604150228.htm
and in Europe, we have a week of froose only per year, and less and less snow that 10 years ago.

I'm suprised that you lets off the discussions about the melt of the icecap...
Just one comparaison map about Greenland:

I will not coming in the political debat in the US: you choose your president and your representatives. it's ok for me as long he does'nt start to think he's "the boss of the world"

The fact is that an US citizen is the most polution maker in the world. If you think that's "your right to do what you want", I will reply that when the consequence of the action of one population has effects on the rest of the world population, It's a major trouble. You are free to polute the USA mainland if it's ok for you but understand that the rest of world will not agree you to destroy the rest of the earth.

Regards, and by the way of our difference of oppinion, a merry christmas from the other side of the pond

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Sorry for my bad English:-(

Iclo,
I believe the earth warmed a little during the 1990s but it peaked during 1998 and it is starting to cool off again. I do not believe it was caused by man. I think it was very arogant to think man caused it. Yes, we are having major political problems here in the US. I would like to drink a beer with you some day. Merry Christmas to you and your family. By the way, yesterday it was about 20 degrees C here, today it will be about 5 degrees C and we may get some snow. That is Texas for you, wait ten minutes and the weather will change.