On one hand while they say “Failure is not an option in Copenhagen” it appears that some things aren’t going so well internally. Perhaps a bit too much wining and dining?
As WUWT commenter “par5” points out: “Becker has left office with immediate effect after not presenting sufficient documentation for expensive restaurant bills, according to reports in the Danish media. One bill for 39 people allegedly included 37 bottles of red wine, and Becker was given a formal warning in March over travel expenses.”
http://www.rechargenews.com/business_area/politics/article195681.ece
From the COP15 website:
Denmark’s chief climate negotiator resigns
Thomas Becker, right hand of incoming COP15 president Connie Hedegaard, has been relieved of duty with immediate notice.
With less than two months to go to the UN climate conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, Denmark’s chief climate negotiator Thomas Becker has resigned from his position as deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry for Climate and Energy.
According to Danish news agency Ritzau, Becker confirms his resignation but declines to comment or give any reason for his resignation.
“Of course it’s sad that a key person in the climate negotiations has chosen to resign his position. However, it is a purely administrative matter which I therefore do not have any comments to,” says Connie Hedegaard, Minister for Climate and Energy and incoming COP15 president, according to Danish public service broadcasting network DR.
DR on Friday quoted the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Thomas Egebo as saying that “Thomas Becker has been relieved from duty with immediate notice after disagreements of a non-professional nature, matters that the ministry and Becker look differently upon”.
Becker has been instrumental in Hedegaard’s international climate diplomacy, and according to Ritzau he conceived the idea of bringing COP15 to Denmark. From 2004-2006 he was chairman of the Subsidiary Body of Implementation under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
As of Monday, Becker will be replaced by Steffen Smidt, deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Smidt is an experienced diplomat and has participated in international climate negotiations for a number of years.
h/t to WUWT reader John Ratcliffe
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Thought I would just add, & at risk of boring repetition, this new piece of kit does something like 2 billion calcs a second or some such. However, even if it did 2 trillion calcs a second, it would just mean that they arrive at the wrong answer faster! I would rather rely on Piers Corbyn & his £55 Casio Scientific calculator.
37 bottles of wine? Check out the king of corruption, Congressman Charlie Rangel. And why is he still in office?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574300013592601036.html
David Suzuki wins
Alternative Nobel Prize
From the German Die Welt paper 13 Oct 2009
http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article4827935/Klimaschuetzer-erhaelt-alternativen-Nobelpreis.html
It was a scientific experiment. They were testing various vintages back a hundred years as a temp proxy based on how they taste.
What’s the carbon footprint on 37 bottles of wine vs. 37 bottles of tap water?
I can’t really blame Becker at all for this. If I was to talk to anyone in charge of the Copenhagen Climate Negotiations, my only advice would be to Start Drinking Heavily.
And I recommend that to anyone involved. It won’t solve anything, of course, but at least they’ll feel better about it.
The list of the 38 guests would be interesting, as would followups with each to see if they attended.
I remember one night where the majority of experts in one niche of distributed file systems were taken by another to a Japanese restaurant better known for its sake selection. Fortunately, he had the forethought to rent us a limo and appoint his wife as chaperone and restaurant liason. A lot of empty sake bottles that night….
“…One bill for 39 people allegedly included 37 bottles of red wine…”
One wonders what they were celebrating.
This wanton abuse of public funds (especially in today’s economy) is nauseating but, alas in the AGW scientific world, not surprising…
Now that’s what I would call Climate Justice.
They should have kept this guy as a negotiator…. get everyone drunk enough, and they’ll sign anything! Maybe that was his strategy…
From the beginning, this issue of global warming, has left a long trail of CO2 from champange bottles…, a constant party held in several tropical islands, far away from the silly and common believers.
Barry Foster – According to the BBC, the Met Office’s long range forecast for winter 2009/10 was for mild, wet weather. Pretty similar to last year’s predicition and we all know how badly they got that (and the barbecue summer) wrong. On the strength of this year’s prediction I’ve made sure that I have an adequate supply of wood and coal for my stove.
Alan the Brit – I’m also a fully paid up member of the Grumpy Old Cynical Barsteward(ess) club which might explain why many of the views we share are so similar. We are the last generation to enjoy a state education (grammar school girl here) that wasn’t destroyed or dumbed down by “progressive”, social engineering morons 😀
If the climate is really threatened by CO2 and other (harmless) greenhouse gas emissions, shouldn’t they have a teleconference instead?
I suspect the reason they chose Copenhagen in the winter instead of Bali or Rio is the vaunted Danish green power experiment.
True, Denmark does produce a lot of electricity from wind. However, Denmark is connected to the western European grid and can feed excess into the grid when the windmills produce excess electricity. Denmark also pulls power from the grid when the windmills don’t produce enough to power the country’s needs.
It is all possible because there are other power plants in the grid that can produce power on demand and can also be taken offline on demand. Those other power plants include nuclear, hydro-electric and coal. Denmark could not get by on green power alone if it was not connected to the grid.
Petty bureaucrat
taken down by petty bureaucrats;
poetic justice.
I’m up. I’m up.
Let me get this straight. Those of you on the other side of the pond consider us to be Victorian and repressed. Yet some European entity sends a man packing for buying several rounds of wine at a conference for his fellow conference attendees. Drinking at a conference. Now that is just entirely out of line. Why over here in the American wilderness and frontier lands we NEVER drink at conferences. I know I haven’t. I did not have wine with that dinner. My decorum is entirely above board and my comportment is unimpeachable. Wait. Scratch that word. Above reproach. It all depends on what wine IT was. Doncha know.
There is some interesting reading in The Independent today:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-heres-another-phoney-war-the-one-on-climate-change-1801798.html
It’s a review on the new book “Freakonomics”
“…This might help to explain why the recorded temperature of the planet has not increased at all over the past 11 years. As the BBC’s climate correspondent, Paul Hudson, reported with thinly disguised amazement three days ago, “Our climate models did not forecast this.” Hudson then spoke to Professor Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University, who explained that global temperatures were correlated much more with cyclical oceanic oscillations of warming and cooling than anything man does. Easterbrook argued that the global cooling from 1945 to 1977 was linked to one of these cold Pacific cycles, and that “the Pacific decadal oscillation cool mode has replaced the warm mode [of 1978 to 1998], virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling”.
What with the BBC posting a page yesterday and The Independent printing reviews of an anti-global warming propaganda book today, it looks like we might be starting a rational debate in Britain about the Earth’s climate, and with real climate scientists for a change.
According to the Danish article, a restaurant bill in BANGKOK could not be produced. Methinks there is more to the story than bar tabs and man-made global warming!
John Nicklin (22:19:45) :
“Maybe he saw the light for what it is, an oncoming train in the tunnel. Or maybe he was a little free with expense accounts. Either way, it doesn’t look good. Like Hamlet said, something’s rotten in Denmark.”
May be he saw the light? Like, yesterday, the BBC. Today, The San Francisco Chronicle???
One can only hope…
October 13, 2009
What Happened to Global Warming?
By Debra Saunders
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/13/what_happened_to_global_warming_98687.html
Oops. Hope the link comes through
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/13/what_happened_to_global_warming_98687.html
Nope. Sorry. Found on today’s Real Clear Politics.com website.
I wonder if they invited Al Gore. I’m trying to imagine the Gore Affect in Copenhagen in December. Mix LIBERALly with alcohol add a bunch of warmies and stir…
You guys are all missing the point. He wasn’t fired for ordering 37 bottles of wine, or 41 Gin and tonics, he was fired for not offsetting the carbon emissions used to bring those drinks to the party.
Hic.. Let us sing… 37 bottles of wine on the wall, 37bottles of wine.
Take one down and pass it around, 36 bottles of wine on the wall.
shirty shix bottles of wine on the wall, shirty shix bottles of wine.
Take one down and parsh it ’round, 35 bottles of wine on the wall.
Shir.. shirty five… bottles…. huh… waddaya mean I’ve losht my job???
I just knew we could rely on somebody in the US to out do our home grown (UK) parasites. At least in the US they sometimes get looked at.
Could be interesting to look (via long fights using the FOI laws of course) at what Copenhagen actually costs .. (prep, attendance, and post) x 10,000 (20,?40? 60?. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that even the most moderate total would (spent otherwise) have built an entire “western city” somewhere that needs one. (clean water, sewerage, power grid … the usual stuff).
Please keep in mind that a handful of Yamal tree ring chronologies is “robust” but 39 bottles of red wine among 37 diners is statistically insignificant.