I try to remind people that the U.N. has not succeeded at much of anything during its history. Mostly it just makes pronouncements and consumes cash. When it comes to doing any real work, they fall down on the job, because most of the people that make up the U.N. have never had to do any real work themselves.
So I hope this lesson on the U.N. to Seth Borenstein sinks in. He’ll hardly forget his day in the cold I’m sure.
Temperature and Weather on Dec14th in Copenhagen: Hi 33 °F Lo 31 °F Humidity average 89%, winds averaged 6 mph for a wind chill of 26°F. Overcast.
From the Climate Pool:
“You have no idea how important water and a bathroom is until you don’t have it,” he said after waiting 7 hours and 20 minutes to enter the Copenhagen climate talks.
With U.N. security letting in only those cleared last week, hundreds of accredited delegates, journalists and NGO representatives were left to stand for hours in near-freezing temperatures before being let through. “It was crazy,” AP’s Seth Borenstein said. “You couldn’t leave the line. You couldn’t go to the bathroom, you couldn’t eat. Then snowflakes started falling. One woman even said, ‘if lightning strikes me, would they take me out of line?'”
People started handing out food — one gave out tangerines, another croissants. A man screamed “I don’t need food. I need socks! I’m freezing my ass off out here.” At one point, a U.N. official announced the wait would be longer, prompting the crowd to boo and chant “Let Us In!”
An Indian TV crew member interviewing actor Rahul Bose quipped “we’ll just do our interviews out here!” to which Bose mused “when bad things happen in a first-world country, it’s really a disaster!”
Seth himself stepped into the line at 7:55 a.m. and was through at 3:15 p.m., but only after another AP reporter, John Heilprin, “saved my bacon” by persuading a U.N. security guard to go out and fetch him. “John was afraid to go out himself in case they wouldn’t let him back in … the first thing I did when I saw him was give him a big hug. I have never been so grateful to be indoors.” Seth’s neighbors in line? “Oh they’re still out there.”
And it looks like they might stay there. With 40,000 people registered and Bella Center’s capacity only 15,000, the U.N. introduced a new quota system and ordered NGOs to cut down their numbers. Police shut down the Bella Center’s subway stop in a bid to ease the congestion. The situation can only get worse as more than 100 heads of state and government, including President Obama, show up this week with their entourages.
Many among the 3,500 accredited journalists worry they may be “locked down” in the press area and kept away from the conference center’s central atrium where delegates, presidents and premiers would circulate.
UPDATE: At 5 p.m., U.N. officials told everyone still in line that accreditation would close at 6 p.m. and so they should leave until Tuesday morning. Police started pulling people out of the crowd, which shouted back “Shame on the U.N.!” The U.N. then apologized for the inconvenience — a gesture met with more booing and chanting.
Katy Daigle is based in London and covers international news for the AP
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And they want the U.N. to run our global carbon system and handle all the money? Hell they can’t even handle the press line.
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Bill Parsons (15:35:43) : “You have no idea how important water and a bathroom is until you don’t have it,”
Bjorn Lomborg has written eloquently on these very needs in the developing worlds:
Water I can understand, but a bathroom – they just use the fields. Of course in Copenhagen it wouldve been more than his toes that wouldve been cold for Borenstein.
My father-in-law worked for the UN for seven years in all the world’s hotspots. Ask him and he’ll tell you it’s the most incompetent group of people ever to grace the planet’s surface.
Delicious irony! Just delicious!
CH
Kaboom (15:11:06) :
Starting with the Briffa fiasco a few weeks ago, this is really the gift that keeps on giving and giving!
Thank you Anthony, Steve McIntyre, and all of the others who have made this human epoch so deliciously entertaining.
Merry Christmas, all!
Adding gratitude for AW and the mods at WUWT and hundreds of other bloggers, scientists, commentators proving that democracy has a home on the internet if not in the halls of public institutions. There could be no better present (aside a nice cheque) than seeing such democratic action meet and disassemble tyranny.
Sorry Seth, that is all just sceptical nonsense. It was not cold and you are being misled by “Big Oil”. If you read peerreviewedpublishedpapers you will know that according to the models it is warm in Hopenhagen this time of year due to “unprecedented warming”.
sarc off
Off Topic: Plimer – Monbiot debate
Tues 15 Dec on Australian gov TV (ABC ‘Lateline’) this long anticipated debate.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/12/15/2772906.htm
See for yourself, but it is not pleasant to watch. Plimer is set upon by two journalist with direct questions of the authority of claims in his ‘Heaven and Earth’ book, which he apparently evades.
Both journalists claim to have read the book, as I have. Dunno whether Plimer’s referencing is fraudulent, as claimed, but I do know that the repetition, the poor structure, the rambling stream of consiousness towards the end was most annoying for this sympathetic reader. Why the book was not edited properly (in a new edition?) bewilders me. This, and the evasion in the interview, undermines his creditility as a scientist and the credibility of his message.
Seth looks like a hearty eater. That’s a no-no if he wants to save the planet. He needs to do some extreme slimming down … and no meat or dairy products either!
Save the planet Seth!
Ecotretas (15:00:22) :
I agree Zimbabwe should be a study case for the CO15 maniacs. Their economy is in total collapse with hyper-inflation, widespread poverty (some of the worst in Africa), and major loss of industry resulting in overwhelming unemployment.
Given that the CO2 output models are tied to economic productivity, it makes sense that Zimbabwe is doing so well on their CO2 reductions.
Problem with your analysis Tom, is that the leaders of the US and USSR didn’t seem to think so at the time. They joined the UN and took active part.
(A question for those who think the UN achieves nothing and come from a great power. Would you be willing to see your country’s veto go? If the UN achieves nothing, how come having that veto is so important? Precisely to limit what it can achieve perhaps. So you have people who deliberately limit its scope whining about how limited its scope is!)
It is important to realise that there are two entirely separate United Nations. There is the political one, where leaders troop off to New York and decisions are made, or at least discussed. It is a tiny organisation, mostly translators and support staff.
There is an organisational UN: bodies tasked with various functions such as UNICEF and UNESCO. The actual UN has oversight, but world leaders don’t vote or make decisions in this part of the UN. Some of these bodies are bureaucratic nightmares, it has to be said. But they have basically nothing to do with the political side.
If were Seth and had to be out in the cold for that long, I think I’d show my badge for some free sex to warm me up. 😉
CAN’T COPE IN COPEN HA HA HA HA HAGEN
http://www.iceagenow.com/Blizzards_in_Copenhagen_ClimateGate_Dec15_PiersCorbyn.pdf
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/12/15/morning-bell-they-cant-even-run-a-conference-let-alone-the-global-economy/
I wonder if the temperatures will be adjusted from
“freezing my ass off”
to
“just chillin'”
“I try to remind people that the U.N. has not succeeded at much of anything during its history.”
Do you think that small pox eliminated itself off the face of the earth?
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/en/index.html
sorry for OT, but why are “we” so lucky to have Roy Spencer and John Christy guarding the satellite data? Is that just a coincidence that we have real scientists in those positions?
The video that Anthony Watts does not want you to see: The Climate Denial “Crock of the Week”
July 29, 2009
This is the video that Anthony Watts demanded YouTube take down. This is what the former TV weatherman who runs a leading anti-scientific website, WattsUpWithThat, is afraid to let the public see:
Why did Anthony Watts want to take down this video. It is not much. They call this site anti-scientific. Don’t understand that conclusion. Science is about looking into things and questioning. How can Watts Up With That be anti-scientific?
This whole issue is really bizarre on the behavior aspect. You have the RealClimate group and the WUWT group. I read the posts on both sides and there is very little open minded scientific inquiry in either camp. Mostly it sounds like Cult minded groups. I like to be in the scientific camp. I want proof and evidence on any conclusion and I have every right to question any information. On the RealClimate side Peer review is a Gospel Truth. Once an article appears in a Peer reviewed journal it is established fact, who are the peers?
Where is the humble science in this Climate Change debate? It is either you are called a “warminst” or “evil denier” that would enjoy the total destruction of all life on Earth. Why does science have to be reduced to this negative crap that politics have become? I can’t agree with either side anymore than I can agree with Right or Left belief as absolutes. All ideas have some valid input. I don’t believe all climatologists are producing phony information to get a pay check or work to create the NWO. I don’t think every article on this site is funded by an Oil Company who knowingly wants to destroy the entire planet to make a few bucks today.
Please help the insanity! Don’t let the horrid politcal forces infect scientific inquiry!!
Pamela Gray (15:12:02) :
“They could not have done this any better than an old silent cop movie!”
The only thing lacking was a foot of snow and a howling wind.
Dave (15:26:33) :
I read the temperatures, Low 31 F, wind chill 26 F. That’s shorts weather where I live. The 8 hour wait would be bothersome but it was NOT cold.
Slightly OT, but I couldn’t resist. Read the narrative, then read the comments. Made me laugh, once I’d stopped retching.
Link
Sow global warming and reap the bitter cold of winter. Sometimes, karma can be a bitch.
Arnold Schwartzneggar has flown to Copenhagen. Apparently he wants to hold another conference in “Caulifornia”, there is such a US state apparently, the state he has managed to bankrupt so effectively with his green policies.
“If we do not reach a strong agreement some will say the conference has failed, that we talked grandly but we are fooling ourselves much like the fairy tale The Emperor has no Clothes”. He doesnt have the foggiest idea what The Emperor has No clothes is all about.
Well this whole thing has given us a good laugh. And without some humour, and a good laugh occassionally, where would we be?
We would be in Austria.
So, is it snowing in Copenhagen? I know we all wish it would. WeatherAction forecasts snow for 14-16/17 and the BBC, bless their little cotton socks, is reporting heavy snow for Tuesday evening. Here’s a web cam http://www.trafikken.dk/wimpdoc.asp?page=document&objno=20580 which definately shows evidence of snow, but not a blizzard, or indeed heavy … by Canadian standards 🙂
Norman (16:18:03) : Please help the insanity
Not me Norman. I am not a supporter of insanity.
Norman (16:18:03)
Put the computer down and go to bed ..; RIGHT NOW!
Seriously do you think Anthony has more clout with Google than Al Gore, a Director of the company?
Poor people of Copenhagen, they are being made to look amateur because of the UN’s inability to organize a conference. And as a thanks for hosting, they will probably get their city smashed up by the idiots when there is no deal.
Norman, is that you? Look, the whole AGW thing never had a rock solid scientific grounding. That’s why people like Anthony Watts are important. They bring people’s attention on the sloppy and dishonest enterprise called ‘climate science’.