Devil in the Details (and a plea for assistance)

I hope you all had a pleasant festive season. Frank spent the whole time in his shed, complaining about packaging. I tried to tempt him out with some organic roast potatoes, but he was having none of it.

This cartoon originally appeared in Nature Reports Climate Change, and belongs to them - so no reproducing it without their permission. It's an illustration for a review of the year' science, by Kurt Kleiner. With thanks to Olive Heffernan.




On a more LOCAL level - HEEEEELP!
The arrival of the long-heralded new website draws nearer. It's taken WAAAAY longer than it should. Graeme Sherif has built me a lovely new architecture with idiot-proof input systems but I'm still lagging badly. This is largely because I tend to go into brain-freeze when faced with data inputting tasks. I start shouting at things and lose all control of vital cognitive functions. I don't know why - I seem to be caught in a pincer between artistic temperament and technical idiocy. I am reduced to staring gormlessly at the screen and endlessly repeating "what?...where?..how?" like a neandethal in Curry's.
If anyone in the Greater Manchester area actually enjoys data input (and sorting out minor labelling glitches, wading through oddly ordered records etc) and would like to volunteer some HELP in this matter I would be hugely grateful. This blog is based from a soon-to-be-defunct address and is badly in need of a replacement structure before it dissappears into the ether.

Informacion Detallada del Fiasco Climatico

Here's the Spanish translation of SlamDown LetDown, courtesy of Cristian Abud. Th English language version is the previous post.

Gort and Klaatu's Climate Let-Down

Well, what can I say?

More Baubles, Bangles and Beads

The song remains the same, it seems. I've tinkered with this strip from last Christmas as a tribute to Copenhagen brinkmanship.
I'm assuming that anyone (anyone?) following Throbgoblins is also engaged at some level with the news from Denmark, which is why I'm not posting many links. It's all moving too quickly (ie - not at all, but with soundbites) anyway

Festive Greetings from Throbgoblins International

We here at Throbgoblins International feel that we ought to take a small step back from sniping at our betters at Copenhagen in order to find time to snipe at the festive season in general. Feel free to spread it around like festive compost. Be of good cheer.

Day 11 update

Hmm, this morning the BBC's Richard Black is reporting thus:

A deal appears to be in sight for the final day of the UN climate change talks but there are fears it may not prevent a 3C (5.4F) temperature rise.

Denmark's prime minister spoke of "very fruitful" talks as Copenhagen prepared to receive US President Barack Obama and 118 other world leaders.

Both the US and China, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, have indicated they may make concessions.

It is hoped these may help overcome sharp divisions at the two-week talks.

China signalled concessions on the monitoring of emission curbs while the US said it would commit money for developing countries.

Denmark's Lars Lokke Rasmussen called late-night talks with a group of 26 influential world leaders on how to unblock negotiations.

"We discussed how we can make progress and we had a very fruitful, constructive dialogue... for almost two hours," he told reporters.

After the leaders left, their aides continued working on a political agreement for them to inspect later.

Which reminds modest-ol'-us of something we wrote in June or so 2008:

But there is almost certainly going to be a Deal. Even with a new American President, a new UK government (mebbe) and a new EU president, a deal Will Be Made. There'll be too many eyes on the game for anyone to want to be labelled as the wrecker. But in those circumstances the deal will probably be weak. LCD won't just stand for lowest common denominator, it'll also stand for Lousy Climate Deal.
No matter what, it will become harder to push the kind of radical emissions reductions-sink protections on climate change because the deal will be the only show in town with anything approaching democratic legitimacy. The world's denialists, coal lobbies, knuckle-draggers, knuckle-heads, volcano-nutters and China-baiters will all be trying to stop their own countries' legislatures signing it. Greens will be wanting to criticise the deal as too weak but still wanting it to be ratified. That's where the NGO energy will go, because it offers the best chance of lobbying ministers and appearing important to NGOs core constituency (guilt-ridden, ignorant, middle-class-people). Kyoto the Sequel, anyone?

But enough with the digressions already- here is the latest update as a pdf. And then as a jpg, with plain text underneath...

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