Lost the plot or?

Start of week 2 and reports indicate the waiting times at Bella centre have been getting longer. Late afternoon indications are that they have closed registration and will reduce NGO’s to 7000 individual max tomorrow, so the queues should be interesting…as of Thursday only about 100 NGO individuals will get in. Add to that the rumour that they are anticipating the high level segment will last until Sunday! So we continue to see pressure (both G77 and Annex I countries walked out of different meetings today but they have all reconvened behind closed doors) and focus but also an increasing sense of frustrating and confusion.

A little less or more Hopenhagen!

When I reported yesterday that the Chinese, UK and US delegations were publicly criticising each others proposals, Xie Zhenhua, the head of China's delegation and deputy chairman of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) had not given his Reuters interview. It seems that my comments yesterday were somewhat understated. 

Three Blogs for Day 3

On day three of the COP 15, Madlen King, LRQA's Global Climate Change Manager, joined Sean Cuthbert and Dr Anne-Marie Warris at the conference. So today there are three blogs, one from each of our on-site experts:

Hopenhagen

Madlen King

On arrival in Copenhagen it’s very clear that the locals remain hopeful. It appears that for the duration of COP 15, Copenhagen has been renamed ‘Hopenhagen’, and rightly so.

Day Two - CDM Discussions

Please read Andrew's pre-CDM DOE meeting post here

Today, the 10th DOE/AIE Forum took place in Copenhagen and, as expected, there was much debate and discussion on a number of key issues affecting the DOE community.

Siddharth Yadav (SGS), Chair of the DOE Forum, reminded those gathered of the issues which the Forum had discussed with the EB over the last year, including validation and verification timelines, post registration changes to project design, retroactive application of guidance, materiality, Programme of Activities liability, the definition of a ‘technical area’, and the implications of recent rules relating to conflict of interest.

Materiality and the Clean Development Mechanism

Today is the 10th meeting of the DOE/AIE Forum here in Copenhagen. The DOE/AIE Forum (Designated Operational Entities/Accredited Independent Entities) was originally established by the Executive Board as a means of enhancing the channels of communication between the Board and the DOE's and to provide guidance on decisions.

Day One at COP 15 - first impressions and our blogs of the day

An outdoor three hour wait in line to register in near freezing temperatures was not what I expected my first impressions of COP 15 in Copenhagen to be!

OK, lets get past that. I am here with two of the Lloyd's Register Group's leading climate change experts, Sean Cuthbert and Dr Anne-Marie Warris. Sean is here representing our energy business stream, and as fate would have it, we stood in line with Paul Genoa, Director of Policy Development for the Nuclear Energy Institute out of Washington D.C. Sean commented on their conversation:

COP 15 Day One - The Great Divide - America and Climate Change

As we approach COP15, the United States remains a polarized and split society on climate change. The factions are still strongly divided in their views on whether climate change is real, and if they accept that it is, many do not agree that the cause could possibly be anthropogenic. The impacts are so far away, both in time and space – even though they are getting closer by the day!
We have made progress in the House, but the Senate has many members that are still plagued with insecurities about making decisions related to climate change mitigation, when the changes will undoubtedly affect our society.

CCS and the Crystal Ball

As with Dr. Warris, the one question that is asked most frequently as the world watches the developments leading up to the COP 15 negotiations is, “What do I think will happen in Copenhagen?”

Both the mainstream media and alternative media outlets provide a plethora of different views and prognostications on the outcome of the latest round of climate change negotiations. But the main question for me is not “What will be the outcome?” but “Is our global climate changing?”.

I am a strong believer in fundamentals. Many sceptics push the view that our biosphere has natural warming and cooling cycles, and that currently we are entering a warming trend.