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
==========
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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
joshua corning (15:27:43) :
It succeeded in stopping the US and the USSR from ending the world in a nuclear war.
I served a part of my time in the Dutch Army at an undisclosed location somewhere in Germany looking over some “Big Cigars”, on the other side of the iron curtain(1) where our Warsaw-pacts adversaries looking over their “Big Cigars”. The UN could have not prevented anything when the sh*t would hit the fans.
When it comes to armed conflicts the UN has a very bad track-record.
(1) And it was their curtain, they told everyone that is was to keep us out, but it was to keep their people in. communism/socialism is al about waiting in line for about almost everything.
So that brings us back at Høkenhagen(2) and their are those familiar lines again of people waiting in the cold to obtain something that is short in supply. The UN breaks the first rule of conventions, the waiting lines should not exceed a certain amount of time, people will remember that, oh yes.
(1) Høken is something from a Dutch dialect, it usually involves warmth, beer and woman, and it is much more fun than waiting a good (and bitter cold) workingday in a line for some drivel about global warming.
One can only imagine the headlines, “AGW Conference delegates freeze in Copenhagen” while awaiting entry into the Global Warming Conference. Oh no wait, the mass media hardly noticed those expiring seemingly pre-occupied with certifying Gore’s latest hypothesis that the temperature of the Earth’s interior was “millions of degrees”.
I hereby dedicate “Violet Hill” by coldplay to those stuck out in the cold in Copenhagen as well as the rest of us who don’t want any part of the sinking AGW ship.
Lyrics:
It was a long and dark December
From the rooftops I remember
There was snow, white snow
Clearly I remember
From the windows they were watching
While we froze down below
When the future’s architectured
By a carnival of idiots on show
You’d better lie low
If you love me, won’t you let me know?
Was a long and dark December
When the banks became cathedrals
And a fox became God
Priests clutched onto bibles
Hollowed out to fit their rifles
And the cross was held aloft
Bury me in armour
When I’m dead and hit the ground
My nerves are poles that unfroze
And if you love me, won’t you let me know?
I don’t want to be a soldier
Who the captain of some sinking ship
Would stow, far below.
So if you love me, why d’you let me go?
I took my love down to violet hill
There we sat in snow
All that time she was silent still
Said if you love me, won’t you let me know?
If you love me, won’t you let me know?
“I don’t need food. I need socks! I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
Schadenfroid (n): Enjoying the vision of an AGW alarmist attempting to adjust to seasonal reality.
Denmark is not Spain.
In Spain, in a similar situation (yes, we can have cold days too), a good number of chinesse inmigrants would be moving around the queue offering thick, woolen socks to the people at the modest price of 10 euros or so. And people would buy.
Nothing against those inmigrants. They really do a good job in detecting needs and offering solutions they can benefit from. I actually like the guys.
joshua corning (21:38:08) :
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.
Name one Cold War era US aim which was successfully accomplished through the UN.
And you can get what I smoke at any tobacconist’s shop.
Let’s not pick on the UN too much. Remember, it was UN peace-keepers who stopped the genocide in Rwanda.
Oh yeah, that’s right, they didn’t.
Never mind.
Lol, couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of zombies.
A man screamed “I don’t need food. I need socks! I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
Odd anatomy. No wonder he’s cold.
.
I’ve heard lots of opinions on what kept the US and the USSR from ending the world in a nuclear war.
<educate>
First, overawe of nukes and under-appreciation of how big this darn planet is fostered the impression that we could destroy the world. Despite the Commodore64-level model used in the TTAPS ’83 nuke winter paper, it isn’t in the cards even for a total launch. Spanish would likely become the official language over here, though.
Second, the US wasn’t inclined to start one. The only person here who was willing to have a war was Curtis LeMay.
Third, the Soviets weren’t inclined to start one, either. Mainly because we had Curtis LeMay.
</educate>
The UN never amounted to more than a pretty face, until they started metastasizing bureaucracies into everything.
coaldust (22:48:52) :
What’s the secret to staying awake while listening to Coldplay?
I don’t think this is entirely UN fault. Before the conference there was talk about 15 000 participants altogether (and even this number seemed to me a bit too high). However, already in the first week there were more people than the capacity could accomodate so that the various NGOs had to be allowed in the conference centre in shifts.
Apparently the climate subject is much more popular than the organizers dreamed. I doubt that the 40 thousands were invited.
Maybe the eco-aware public feels that there is one last chance to get their polar bear costumes the last airing?
Ask any Bosnian male in Srebrenica over the age of fifteen what he thinks of the UN.
Oh, wait. There aren’t any…
Its snowing in copenhagen at the conference he he he he he.
people are wrapped up covered.
the pm of ethiopia, has travelled back and forth to the uk and france, to get as much money from other sources.. to get TAX. tax this, tax that.. (watching this on tv).
snow flurries, and bitterly cold.. talk of direct action by protestors.
Poor Seth, he forgot all he had to do to warm up is call the conference an Airport and set up a stevenson screen….
“Bill Tuttle (00:14:36) :
Ask any Bosnian male in Srebrenica over the age of fifteen what he thinks of the UN.
Oh, wait. There aren’t any…”
Indeed and soldiers, UN or otherwise, had to standby and do nothing but watch in many cases.
“Mercurior (00:38:38) :
the pm of ethiopia, has travelled back and forth to the uk and france, to get as much money from other sources.. to get TAX. tax this, tax that.. (watching this on tv).
snow flurries, and bitterly cold.. talk of direct action by protestors.”
In his own country, he’d be at serious risk of death, so not surprised he’s tacked a “BRB” notice on his official residence. It’s remarkable that not only do the African Union seem incapable of “doing something” about him (And other despots like Mugabe), neither does the UN. No oil (Found yet) I guess.
WHO ELSE IS IN COPENHAGEN, AND WHY
Main propaganda site?
http://en.cop15.dk/
The Tuvaluans, or is that “Tuvalooons?”, with their 2 cents worth, are there:
http://archidemo.blogspot.com/?expref=next-blog
http://tv.mapping.jp/
http://10000.tv/
I guess they didn’t read this:
http://gwswindle.blogspot.com/2009/02/no-sea-level-rise.html
But I guess its more fun being the stars of the show, or at least thinking they are?
“I don’t need food. I need socks! I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
Reminds me of Hadow’s Catlin Arctic Project last year. They went expecting to don speedos and frolic with dolphins and tropical fish at the “ice-free” Arctic, and instead nearly froze to death.
That was the scientific joke of 2008, and this is the scientific joke of 2009.
Especially for you, Seth:
In Copenhagen, snow and bitterly cold temperatures have arrived. The Dutch Meteorological Institute’s forecast for today is heavy snowfalls with high temperatures of only 2ºC (35ºF). Temperatures will continue to drop tomorrow and there will be icy winds. Friday is forecast to stay below freezing, with overnight lows of -12ºC.
Hokumhagen
As someone who spontaneously laughed for months about the global warming protest in a snowstorm in DC, this is at least a three week giggler.
With the big press lead-up to this, it might be hard to keep quiet that they had a huge cold wave just in time for the big Carbonhoaxen conference.
This time it wasn’t a bunch of dumb kids, but the major press itself. The pain is real! It might actually make the paper! Another crack appears in the dam. I miss Sam Kinneson at times like this.
As far as the oceans cooling if all of the ice melted? None, they would probably warm in the face of the 30-40F temp rise that it would take to melt all of those glaciers. Not only would the melt water warm on the way there, the oceans themselves would warm. Novel distraction tho..
“… the U.N. introduced a new quota system and ordered NGOs to cut down their numbers.”
One line, thick with so many ironies, that says it all about the WHOLE THING!
Patrick Davis (01:01:34) :
Indeed and soldiers, UN or otherwise, had to standby and do nothing but watch in many cases.
And in other instances, they were also killed. In the Rwanda “Peacekeeping” debacle, the ROE prohibited the blue helmets from even *carrying* ammunition.
I recommend anyone to read P. J. O’Rourke’s account of the Rio climate bash in – I think – his book ‘All the Troubles of the World’. Very illuminating and excruciatingly funny.
There was the same total shambles at the accreditation center. No snow, but no queuing either, it seems. Rather a seething mass of frustrated people all trying to shove their way forward. O’Rourke heard one woman call out dramatically “This is what it would be like living in an overpopulated world!”, to which his silent rejoinder was “No dear, this is what it would be like living in a world run by the U.N.”.
Establishing such a world is, of course, the whole point of Copenhagen. Think about it.