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.
They should have checked with Piers Corbyn first. They would have dressed in appropriate clothing then.
The most important “sensor” for the AGW priesthood to manage is the currently sympathetic press. Overbooking and then rationing access by leaving the people they need most standing outside in the freezing cold for 8+ hours is a real screw-up. The least they could have done is moved off of a first come, first served model when they identified the crisis.
Wish I had been there handing out Climate Audit and WUWT cups of hot coffee. I suspect the “journalists” are going to go Green Zone on them and report circulating rumors from the hotel bar.
Ecotretas (15:00:22) :
Zimbabwe is the best example for those CO15 maniacs.
They have effectively reduced CO2 emissions!
Please check it out at http://rainforests.mongabay.com/carbon-emissions/zimbabwe.html
Mugabe is in Copenhagen (with a large contingent) and it appears that he have the honor of being seated next to Denmark’s Queen Margrethe at a dinner on Thursday for heads of state and government attending the climate conference.
Mugabe to join climate talks under UN loophole
Seth Borenstein’s position in the new world order seems
rather insignificant.
Wade (18:34:16) :
“Questions for TheGoodLocust. Which sites censors comments which run contrary to the opinion of the authors, this one or realclimate.org? The obvious answer is not this site, because your post was posted. If Anthony Watts does not censor his blog which is under his direct control, why would he try to censor YouTube? ”
I never said Anthony was censoring anything. I plainly said that I didn’t know anything about the alleged censorship that I was responding to. I think you misunderstood what I was saying and I suggest you reread what I said.
How many embarrassadors… sorry, ambassadors are there?
*****FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST*****
[In Danish, of course]
The Danish National Weather (Not Climate) Service the “DNWNCS” has issued a Gore Effect Snow Advisory for the broadcast area for the remainder of the Conference.
Light snow is forecast in the capital city on Wednesday. On Wednesday evening, a polar front will sweep through and temperatures will plunge to hard freeze levels at night and fail to reach freezing during the day….for the remainder of the entire week….and into next week.
Residents are advised to take steps to protect life and property during this prolonged winter event….including pets and any brainwashed youth protesters [and brainwashed journalists] who might be stranded out in the freeze.
*****End broadcast*****
Chris Norfolk, VA, USA
Walk it off, wuss. Here in Wyoming, 26F is shorts and t-shirt weather. 🙂
Janet Raloff reports things went much more smoothly today:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/50791/title/U.N_effectively_locks_out_reporters%2C_others_in_Copenhagen
Good news for those left out in the cold yesterday. The UN was as efficient in its logistics this morning as it was chaotic yesterday. They segregated registrants by category–and kept all in tight single-file lines)–and I was moving through security en route to badging within 15 minutes of the line opening at 8 a.m.
She doesn’t say how a venue designed for 15,000 is handling 45,000, well maybe, she says “The UN planned to register 1,000 today. And then stop.”
Tomorrow may be another day (well, it will be another day, it may not be like today):
Meanwhile, we learned yesterday afternoon that entrance to the center is going to be increasingly restricted from today onward to NGOs–people representing nongovernmental organizations. Many if not most were going to have to leave 75 percent of their delegates outside the entrance gates beginning today.
Ray (15:14:35) : (<- said most of what I was going to say)
Except smokeless powder is nitrocellulose and usually one or more of about 8 or 9 other propellants based on nitrogen compounds (mostly), plus various additives and stabilizers.
It makes a great fertilizer, BTW. As long as you don't light it. Powder that's too old to use is often used as fertilizer, actually.
The big take-away I saw from that report was that they were REQUIRED to stay in line and not go for food or the bathroom. Would you put up with that?
It seems evident both that the UN are arrogant thugs and climate conference visitors are lemmings. They should sue the organizers, seriously. And they should have told them to slag off and just all gone home when they were told to "hold it" for hours, "or else."
“Claims by Seth Borenstein that he was waiting for hours in freezing conditions for his accreditation show the UN stonewalled even warmists under snow — but the whole affair doesn’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.”
What goes around comes around…
D. King (19:10:57) :
Actually, I would think this is a very small taste of the consequences of his ideas. No way he’ll figure that out, though.
I went to the protest against the World Trade Organization in Seattle ten years ago (I was still an anti-West radical). One thing I noticed was how well organized the protesters were compared to the WTO. They organized squatted warehouses to stay in, places to check your backpack, etc..
Problems in Copenhagen?
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of schmucks.
Most of the third world showed up for their share of loot, being goaded along by the Chinese. The Indians will make out even better, as their guy is helping to make sure the fix is in.
Everyone else is literally standing around in the cold watching one of the largest collective suicide attempts in human history, facilitated by anti-capitalism Socialists who’ll never admit in mixed company that they believe the over 250 million people killed over the last 100 or so years by ideas they hold dear is probably just a good running start.
That wouldn’t be a decline, that would be shrinkage. Yowie!!
You’d think they would have their conference in El Azizia, Libya where the temperature reached a scorching 136 degrees F oe else Daeth Valley, California, where it reached 134F just to make it look convincing.
Trouble is, these record world temperatures were in 1922 and 1913 respectively.
Even the hot drought summer of ’76 was over 30 years ago
The rest of this story is about after they get inside and begin the mental churn to individually convince themselves the experience was worth the long wait and suffering.
I can imagine most of them feeling a silent cult murmur as the cult euphoria prods them to release all resistance to full conformity and bliss.
And afterwards the feelings of chosen and inclusion spur a memory of a wonderful experience that never happened.
Everybody seems to have missed the real point of this story. In the first days of the conference a couple of guys who wanted to ask real questions managed to slip in. The screening level had to be raised substantially to ensure nothing like that happens again, thus the endless lines to gain admission.
david m brooks (19:05:49) :
Born-again colonialism indeed!
Merovign (19:48:13) :
No way he’ll figure that out, though.
Yep, it was just an oversight. They didn’t realize it was me.
How pathetic.
40,000 registered believers wait for hours outdoors in freezing temperatures to get in to a Global Warming conference. But there is room for only 15,000 spectators and the majority of them are finally shooed away by the police.
This story makes me believe that there is a God who loves us and wants us to be happy.
Steve Oregon (20:09:15) :
And afterwards the feelings of chosen and inclusion spur a memory of a wonderful experience that never happened.
Copenstock!
I’ve read some of Mr. Borenstein’s articles. He obviously fits the type of person this gathering prefers. Personally, I wish they had left Seth out in the cold.
“For most of its history it has been used as a tool of communist expansion and propaganda.”
If you do not think the UN was used by the US during the cold war to further its aims then i would like to get some of what you are smoking.
Gail Combs (18:44:59) : Where is Piers Corbyn’s blizzard when we needed it. Seven to eight hours of standing in blizzard conditions would be a real life demo of why COLD is worse than heat. Might even penetrate a journalists brains.
And you know where they are located