why not use teleconference?

Copenhagen climate change summit to produce as much CO2 as an African country

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233771/Climate-change-summit-produce-CO2-African-country.html#ixzz0YzWNVzs7

It is being hyped as the summit that will save the planet. But, according to critics, next week's climate change talks in Copenhagen are more likely to cost the earth.

Researchers yesterday estimated that the bill for the 12-day jamboree will top £130million – and will generate as much greenhouse gas as an entire African country.

More than 15,000 delegates and 45,000 green activists are due to descend on the Danish capital over the next two weeks in a meeting described by British economist Lord Stern as 'the most important since the Second World War'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233771/Climate-change-summit-produce-CO2-African-country.html#ixzz0YzWRgZOm

They will be joined by at least 5,000 journalists – including 35 from the BBC alone – and 100 world leaders, including Gordon Brown and Barack Obama.

The UN has confirmed flights, rail and bus travel, food and energy from the conference will generate at least 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233771/Climate-change-summit-produce-CO2-African-country.html#ixzz0YzWVEgWe

That's more greenhouse gas than produced by Malawi, Afghanistan or Sierra Leone over the same period.

The Danish government says it will offset emissions by planting trees or investing in green projects.

The conference aims to set targets for cutting global greenhouse gas emissions from farming, industry and transport.

The aim is to keep the rise in world temperatures to within 2c by the end of the century.

Climate scientists believe a 40 per cent cut on 1990 levels of emissions is needed by 2020 – rising to an 80 per cent cut by 2050.
Enlarge Heat at Copenhagen

Western nations will also be asked to pay into a fund worth £100billion a year to help developing countries protect against rising sea levels, droughts and floods.

President Obama and the Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen have conceded the conference will not produce a legally binding treaty.

But British ministers say a political deal could pave the way for a full treaty within months.

Climate change minister Ed Miliband said: 'Sticking your head in the sand is not an answer.'

Yesterday Mr Miliband clashed with former chancellor Lord Lawson over global warming.

They appeared on the BBC's Politics Show where Lord Lawson, chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, repeated his long-held doubts.

Mr Miliband accused Lord Lawson of being 'profoundly irresponsible'.

He said Lord Lawson was 'spreading doubt' despite a scientific consensus.

* Almost half of us remain unconvinced by claims that global warming is man’s fault. In a survey for ICM, 39 per cent said climate change had not been proved to be man-made, while a further 7 per cent said they did not think it was happening at all. Fewer than one in four agreed climate change was ‘the most serious problem posed by man’. One in six said it was ‘not a very serious problem’.


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/07/media-complicity-in-climategate/

EDITORIAL: Media complicity in Climategate

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A tale of destroyed documents, fraud, conspiracy and the misuse of millions of government dollars would seem to have all the juicy ingredients of a scandal that journalists would kill to cover. However, the mainstream media apparently doesn't think that Climategate is news. ABC News hasn't deemed the story newsworthy. Neither has CBS nor NBC. If Americans only got their news from the networks, they would not know about the global-warming fraud or would merely think there was a simple misunderstanding about what scientists meant in some vague e-mails

Never mind that two major universities have at least temporarily removed prominent academics from heading major climate research facilities. Never mind that there are real questions raised about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) controversial assessment report that the Obama administration and global-warming advocates have continually hyped in order to advance their case for new global regulations to curtail purported global warming.

Liberal news agencies might be casting a blind eye at this controversy, but even left-wing comedians such as "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart take these events seriously enough to make fun of the defenses being offered by the scientists caught in the scandal. Take one of Mr. Stewart's jokes regarding the now infamous e-mail about the "trick of adding in the real temps to each series ... to hide the decline [in temperature]." A Tuesday repartee follows:

Mr. Stewart: "It's nothing. He was just using a trick to hide the decline. It is just scientist speak for using a standard statistical technique recalibrating data in order to trick you into not knowing about the decline. But here is what is great about science in disagreement. We go back and look at the raw data."

Announcer: "University scientists say raw data from the 1980s was thrown out."

Jon Stewart: "Why would you go and throw out data from the 1980s? I still have Penthouses from the 1970s."

Despite cracks on late-night TV, the scandal is not considered newsworthy by the major television networks. The Media Research Center reported that through Tuesday, "none of the broadcast network weekday morning and evening news shows addressed Climategate or the incriminating [East Anglia climate scientist Phil] Jones development. ... This marked 12 days since the information was first uncovered that they have ignored this global scandal."

The networks found plenty of airtime to cover rumored family problems plaguing professional golfer Tiger Woods. Yet, even though there is climate-regulation legislation pending in Congress that could cost Americans trillions of dollars, network producers don't see anything newsworthy in a scandal exposing fraud in global-warming research. Such omissions make mainstream news complicit in the cover-up.