Posted by cdchase on December 16, 2009 | No Comments
They are now severely limiting access to the Conference Center itself, but climate change-related exhibits and activities are everywhere around the City center itself.
There was a climate-change-related display in every square I came across in Copenhagen – and every temporary advertising venue had something related to climate change.
Scouting had set-up a gigantic potted-plant sculpture next to Parliament Square. World Wildlife Fund had a Arctic-themed set of photos, the melting ice-polar-bear skeleton sculpture, and a large “igloo” tent with speakers and live music. I came across a huge pile of recyclable trash-as-art along with a display of green rooffing planting examples.
Seimens was at the center of the glossy corporate-sponsored “Hopenhagen” installation near Tivoli Gardens (the world’s first amusement park). At night the earth was projected from the inside onto a large white sphere.
An “Earth Fair” was set up for the Danish public to visit, called Klimaforum09. I couldn’t tell you how many hundreds of exhibits, installations and events there were, since there was no centralized calendar that I came across, but suffice it to say if you wanted to educate yourself about climate change, the causes, impacts and what to do about it, you could – from all possible angles.
The other consistent feature was a very large police presence. They were everywhere in group along with vans making the obvious statement: ‘get out of line and we will cart you away.” And they did. Next installment: what was the rally really like?
Posted by cdchase on December 15, 2009 | No Comments
Best & Worsts (week one)
Most of these are logistical observations as a first-time attendee to a truly global gathering.
Bests
Tech services – great bandwidth and power availability – bravo to all! We guesstimate that perhaps 2/3 of the delegates had laptops and the Center provided hundreds of free computers. This was the most digitally wired event on the planet ever. We can only hope that the new speed and bandwidth of communications really makes a difference in the outcomes.
Transit access – Many THANKs to the Danish Metro system for providing both free Metro and Bus access to and from the Conference Center at all useful hours and with plenty of helpers around to educate about how to use the system.
Maps at the Conference Center with big YOU ARE HERE dots and helpful attendants available to aid anyone trying to find a specific room in 77,000 square meters (that’s approx 693,000 sq feet) of Conference space. Special mention for having plenty of fine places for sitting and resting, discussing, eating, typing or chilling out.
Daily briefing meetings with the USCAN (Climate Action Network) and the Sierra Club with guest speakers including reps from the U.S. and other delegations. Really the only way to take meaning from chaos and get an insider feed from closed negotiations.
Security and credentialing – firm, yet friendly – chatty even (during off-peak hours) – though things got bad when the BigWigs arrived. As a decidedly non-BigWig – I found arriving at off-peak hours the way-to-go.
Worsts
Recycling – why oh why and when oh when will people learn to recycle? It’s really Not That Hard and yet at a Conference where just about everyone is an environmentalist, this aspect was appalling.
The bins were not in enough locations and I often saw recyclables mixed with waste.
Litterature – a subset of the first item, there was way too much litter on the Conference Center floor of all varieties, but my biggest complaint here is really about the number of trees that died for the amazing amount of literature and books and glossy stuff that will not be read in any detail by 95% of the folks who picked it up. This aspect I find quite dismal.
Acronym City – Would someone Please make a list with definitions of all the UN-related COP acronyms? The official COP15 site had a “dictionary” but the acronyms were not in it!
Who’s who? – related to the problems in Acronym City, I guess you have attend these things for years to know who the real power players are.
Meeting schedules – I couldn’t seem to find a consolidated list of Everything That was Going On. Even when I found the official calendar of events and with screens scrolling events in the Conference Center, I still found interesting things just by looking around. This is a minor worst, but I think they could have set up a system to let folks post events to one central online calendar with a set of sorting categories.
Overflowing meeting rooms – Hard to predict I suppose, but sitting on the floor for major presentations was the order of the day.
Names and Group Names on badges – Not BIG enough. Enough said.
OVERALL – it was a good venue and the Danish people were quite welcoming, even with a sometimes overwhelming police response. It seems that’s necessary for any global gathering in this day and age.
Posted by cdchase on December 14, 2009 | 1 Comment
It is Oceans Day at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change on Copenhagen, Denmark.
It has been said that if we were truly honest in our nomenclature, we would call this planet “Ocean” rather then “Earth”.
I made a point to attend a briefing held by scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography where they reported their research on ocean acidification. Ocean acidity has increased by 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This increase is 100 times faster than any change in acidity experienced by marine organisms for at least the last 20 million years. If the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase at the current rate, the ocean will become corrosive to the shells of many marine organisms by the end of this century. One recent paper shows part of the Arctic Ocean is already “corrosive” and that’s before what the models have predicted, so we’re seeing organisms that already will not be able to adapt.
Increasing acidification means that organisms either cannot produce new shells, existing shells break down, or it takes more energy than they can muster to create new shells. Literally it means dissolving of shells in an acid solution as the oceans absorb our increasing carbon dioxide emissions.
Sixty-five million years ago, ocean acidification was linked to mass extinctions of calcareous marine organisms, an integral part of the marine food web. At that time. coral reefs disappeared from the geologic record and it took millions of years for the coral reefs to recover.
I asked the SIO scientists what needs to be done. “We are already in an overshoot situation. Our emissions are going past what we regard is a safe level so the actions that are going to take place in COP15 are designed to bring us back down to a safe level as quickly as possible. We’re already past a point that any of us would regard as safe. We need to minimize the time we’re in this dangerous regime.”
Where do the oceans fit into the COP15 process? Oceans are not even addressed directly since they are not “owned” by any one nation. The oceans are a “sink” (dump) for our activities (emissions and waste) from industry, agriculture and land use. If we address those emissions, the oceans should improve.
SIO was also there to report some good news – that they have created the techniques required to improve measurement and verification of what is actually going into the atmosphere. It turns out that current raw measurements and industry reporting of emissions is off by as much as a factor of two and this is extremely significant. “To really know if the actions a community is taking are working, we will be able to put a virtual curtain around an area of the globe and measure the emissions in that area both in and out. This has not been done yet, but we think this is a tremendous trust building opportunity and we will be able to deploy detectors and have measures that can be compared. Methods to verify both from the ground and from space are improving quickly.”
See also:
http://centerforoceansolutions.org/climate/blog/
http://oceanclimate.org
Posted by cdchase on December 13, 2009 | No Comments
Despite the news reports, in the main it was a happy, peaceful scene in Copenhagen today as thousands rallied to demand substantive action from the COP15 process.
Click here to see my pix prior to the bruhaha
p.s. the weather was fantastic! Clear, sunny and beautiful though about 0 degrees Celsius (that’s 32F). My local Danish friends said it probably the best December 12 in decades for such a rally. After the rally I went for a fantastic hot chocolate Danish-style – with lots of whipped cream on top!
Posted by cdchase on December 10, 2009 | No Comments
We’re told that China, India and South Africa (and others) oppose stronger climate change emissions reductions (the lower target of 350ppm being proposed by scientists and more threatened nations) because they feel that meeting it would retard their economic development.
But ya gotta wonder – how much would serious climate change retard things? Do they not even ask that question. When you are addicted to one path, it’s hard to change to another without seeing it as a total loss. What they fail to consider is, first, it ain’t gonna happen the way they think and, second, the replacement clean-energy economy should be even better (think energy independence, new technologies and innovations).
There is no question that economic growth would simply take a different path – an even more productive path for everyone – and essentially, if you believe in chemistry – the only path open without massive economic dislocations for all involved.
It’s understandable when the OPEC countries oppose such changes, but to oppose doing the right things as a threat to economic growth is a foolish chimera. One can only conclude that these countries don’t really believe the in the consequences of what the chemistry is telling us.
Posted by cdchase on December 10, 2009 | No Comments
Little did I know that my trip to Paris Disneyland on a whim last week would turn out to be such excellent preparation for COP-15! It’s no accident that the incessantly cheery (some would say creepy) It’s a Small World venue is located in Fantasyland. With it’s happy face “audioanimatronic” dolls miming to a 1960s feel good jingle, it didn’t help that the DJs at Disney had incorporated bad xmas music into the mix and added a few Santa hats on to the robots. They never miss a chance to guild any fake lily in sight.
Much better preparation was found in “Alice’s Maze” – a relatively low-tech walk through “This Way” and “That Way” and “Go Back” with the infamous Cheshire Cat looking down on the proceedings with his sometimes nasty all-knowing-but-I’m-not-telling grin.
Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, I am in total sympathy with those who look at United Nations processes with hopelessness, or even disdain. The idea that all nations can agree on anything is impossibly hopeful. To expect them to address a global crisis like climate change seems too much to ask.
If I owned sea level property, I’d move. I can also understand those who support compromises in the name of progress. At some level, any progress is something, even if that something is out of synch with the hard chemistry of climate change and what would really be needed to address it.
Why for instance would Saudi Arabia and other oil-dependent tribes support anything that undermines their wealth and power? Science is not their strong suit. The island nations who face sinking under the seas are playing for their own survival while the usual powers-that-be seem manifestly unsympathetic. After all, they have politics-at-home to deal with.
Tiny Tuvalu (known in UN parlance as a small island state) cannot think in terms of adaptation but sees its very survival at stake. (Adaptation is the current buzz response to those who see we’re not going to make the changes needed to reduce our emissions sufficiently).
Tuvalu and the other small island nations are insisting on a deal that reflects what the science says about the situation we are in and the effort that must be made. Many of them support a 1.5 degree C global warming limit and 350 ppm of greenhouse gases, while the negotiations by the status quo would be lucky to achieve a 2 degree C warming (if everyone actually did their part). (The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 385.2 parts per million in 2008 and still rising rapidly – up 2 parts per million in one year.)
But Saudi Arabia, backed by China, India, all of OPEC and a few others opposed them. The developed countries (US, EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) remained silent. Formal proceedings have been suspended and emergency behind-the-scenes wrangling is going on in earnest.
Posted by admin on December 10, 2009 | No Comments
We arrived yesterday… unfortunately, Carolyn has caught a cold, which is slowing up down some. However, this evening we did go to the Bella Center, where the conference is taking place, and picked up our (Sierra Club/NGO) badge. We attended the daily Sierra Club briefing, and visited the exhibit area. You can see photos of the exhibits here:
Not a lot to report about the conference proceedings for the day… the proceeding were suspended for much of the day over a political dispute. Still a lot of uncertainty over whether the conference will produce great results, nothing at all, or something between.
Chris
Posted by cdchase on December 2, 2009 | 3 Comments
As I write this, I’m on my way to Copenhagen to attend the United Nations climate change treaty negotiations, otherwise known as COP15 (Conference of the Parties, 15th meeting). I have always been skeptical of global negotiations, but when I attended an event hosted by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in October, I heard the head of SIO declare that their scientists have documented a critical impact of climate change on the oceans that “could lead to the oceans having no fish.” That really stopped me. I mean think about it: no fish in the oceans.
Ocean acidification is where the ph balance of the water is begin driven to be so acid by excess carbon dioxide (due to human-based emissions) that it will dissolve the very nature of shells and bones such that they in essence, dissolve. And you’re left with a big, dead – well we don’t have a word for it – a big dead sludge of water without fish or vetebrate or coral or shell life as we know it. The ramifications of this – well it sounds like a bad science fiction plot – but it’s sadly and alarmingly – a science fact that we are being warned about (see also www.CopenhagenDiagnosis.org).
But what can a person do about this? Climate change, to begin with, is such a huge global phenomena that it’s hard to see where an individual can make a dent. But, indeed, individuals are required to deal with it. And not just by changing their personal choices at home, since that won’t indeed be enough to affect the global climate (yes, we will have to do individual things and we can start now). But most importantly, individuals must participate in their political processes and make climate change an issue for their elected representatives.
As I write this, I’m on my way to Copenhagen to attend the United Nations climate change treaty negotiations, otherwise known as COP15 (Conference of the Parties, 15th meeting). I have always been skeptical of global negotiations, but when I attended an event hosted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in October, I heard the head of SIO declare that their scientists have documented a critical impact of climate change on the oceans that “could lead to the oceans having no fish.” That really stopped me. I mean think about it: no fish in the oceans.
Ocean acidification is where the ph balance of the water is begin driven to be so acid by excess carbon dioxide (due to human-based emissions) that it will dissolve the very nature of shells and bones such that they in essence, dissolve. And you’re left with a big, dead – well we don’t have a word for it – a big dead sludge of water without fish or vetebrate or coral or shell life as we know it. The ramifications of this – well it sounds like a bad science fiction plot – but it’s sadly and alarmingly – a science fact that we are being warned about (see also www.CopenhagenDiagnosis.org).
But what can a person do about this? Climate change, to begin with, is such a huge global phenomena that it’s hard to see where an individual can make a dent. But, indeed, individuals are required to deal with it. And not just by changing their personal choices at home, since that won’t indeed be enough to affect the global climate (yes, we will have to do individual things and we can start now). But most importantly, individuals must participate in their political processes and make climate change an issue for their elected representatives.