NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's a massive jamboree, with tempers on both sides of the issue running hot and no final deal in sight.
But even so, we'd better pay attention to what transpires here, the consequences of action or inaction may be massive.
Starting Monday, 15,000 people are expected in Copenhagen, Denmark. Over the next two weeks they're supposed to be hashing out a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, the global deal regulating greenhouse gases that expires in 2012.
Among them will be over 100 world leaders, including President Obama and half his cabinet.
Hundreds of environmentalists are also expected, some protesting outside the massive convention center. With the world's top scientists saying global warming is caused by humans and that quick action is needed to avoid devastating consequences, the environmentalists will be pushing for cuts in greenhouse gases that go far beyond what most nations are proposing.
On the other side will be a handful of U.S. senators opposed to any deal at all. The ring leader of this group is James Inhofe, the Oklahoma senator who has famously called man-made global warming "the greatest hoax ever played on the American people."
They'll question the science behind global warming, holding up recently hacked emails from prominent climate scientists. The emails apparently show the scientists, frustrated with a small but vocal group of global warming skeptics, trying to keep dissenting opinions out of prominent journals and attempting to hide inconsistencies in the overall data.
Most independent analysts say the hacked emails do not change the nature of the debate - the emails, however inappropriate, don't undermine the consensus of hundreds of scientists that have been studying this issue for decades.
Still, might there be conflict between the believers and skeptics at the convention? "It's a good question," said Kyle Ash, a legislative representative for Greenpeace who's already in the city. "I'm excited to see what happens."
While a new Kyoto treaty isn't expected, thanks in large part to the U.S. Senate's inability to move climate legislation already approved in the House, experts expect the framework for an eventual deal will take shape.
What that deal looks like will ultimately affect how much Americans pay in their gas and electric bills, and how quickly the world cuts greenhouse gas emissions.
"It will set the stage for what's to come," said Divya Reddy, an energy policy analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. "And that will translate into changes in lifestyle and energy costs."
What's on the table
Conference organizers at the United Nations are pushing for three main objectives:
-Numbers from each nation as to how much they can reduce greenhouse gases.
-How those reductions might be achieved.
-And how much money the developed world is willing to give developing nations as they attempt to cut pollution.
President Obama recently pledged that the United States can reduce emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020. Others nations measure cuts from 1990 levels. Using this standard, the U.S. cut is roughly 4%.
The European Union has already pledged to cut emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020, and has said it might even go for a 30% cut if others nations promise big reductions.
China says it can't cut overall emissions, but is instead promising a 40-45 percent cut in carbon intensity -- the amount of emissions created in relation to the growth of its economy -- from 2005 levels. India, Brazil and a host of other nations have pledged similar reductions.
Obama's proposal is roughly in line with legislation passed in the House, and slightly less aggressive than a bill in the Senate. The Congressional Budget office estimates the House version will cost the average American household $175 a year by 2020.
Too little?
Scientists have two deadlines for when reductions must be made. Obama's reductions are far below the 25% to 40% cuts scientists say are needed by 2020 to head off the worst effects of climate change. But U.S. lawmakers say their plan will ultimately achieve the reduction scientists say must be made by 2050.
Conference organizers originally hoped to make these commitments binding law in Copenhagen, but experts say Obama won't move on any deal until he's sure the Senate will pass a climate bill similar to the one that passed the House this summer.
"It is unlikely that the United States will sign up to a commitment on which it does not think it can deliver," Deloitte analysts Nick Main and Joseph Stanislaw wrote in a recent research note. "The passage of that [Senate] bill and any eventual passing of legislation will be a fundamental prerequisite to any agreement."
The Senate was expected to take up a climate change bill early in 2010, but with health care reform still unfinished and financial regulation reform slated next, passing a climate bill anytime in 2010 now looks optimistic.
As for money to help developing nations tackle emissions and deal with climate related problems like rising sea levels, Greenpeace is calling for $140 billion a year to be transferred from rich nations to poorer ones.
It's a number broadly in line with what other analysts expect will eventually be passed, although the breakdown of who pays for what is uncertain. Europe has agreed to contribute $22 to $40 billion a year. In the U.S., the House climate change bill allocates at least $8 billion a year, a figure that's already baked into the estimated $175 yearly household cost.
Ultimately, most analysts expect Copenhagen will result in a statement of broad principles and agreed upon goals, but little in the way of action.
"The room for surprises is pretty limited," said Paul McConnell, a carbon analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy.
The next major global meeting on climate change is set for next December in Mexico, and will likely be the next opportunity for supporters of mandatory cuts to get a binding agreement.
Ask Barack Obama for American citizen TORTURED in Denmark. Wow!!! What embarrassing question in the Climate Summit in Denmark, doesn't it? Barack Obama was warned about my case in letter to The White House June 12, 2009. Obama was here two months ago, October 2, 2009, for the famous Olympic failure. Now CNN please, asks USA president Barack Obama, How to protect world about climate, when he is incapable to protect his own citizen, right here in Denmark? www.norightsforyou.com
Copenhagen is about to heat up.
Let the circus begin!!
Climate change will not be the topic of discussion.(Increased) global warming due to human influences will be debated & then agreed to by all in attendance.
A treaty will be signed giving those signatories universal powers to act by themselves as a separate & non-accountable governing body-answerable to nobody or individual government other than themselves.
They will be the new "world order" & their rulings will be final & binding with no outside questions & no debates. They are the "inner sanctum"-the "untouchables".
In other words, attendees at Copenhagen have all but given themselves the jurisdiction to govern the world through the guise of global warming.
I would hope that on this one that I've got the general format/policy/intentions of this meeting totally wrong & that I will be proven wrong by ALL transcripts being made available for public scrutiny.
This may be the most expensive exercise in futility ever known to man.
Flowers don't produce CO2, Fiona. They on the other hand convert CO2 to O2, which is a very good thing.
Facebook UserDec 5
fake data or not...
any temp we raise is nothing compares to a
big rock hitting the earth or big vocanno explosion that will send dust through the air
and going to another early ice age. yet the earth had endured that many times and get back into it's hot and cold cycles again and again.
Don't tax me on a Naturally occuring gas (CO2), which is also required for the survival of our Forests and all Trees and Plants. Thinking back to my science days at school, I recall that Flowers produce CO2, so maybe we should be looking at those wicked creatures...NOT! Why aren't we being given the full truth about this ETF. It is just an excuse to Tax the hell out of us...and send us back to CAVE living.
rich@charts.orgDec 5
Why most of us don't consider climate change significant. Higher temperatues: yes please for anyone North of the Mason-Dixon line. Higher water levels: again yes please. More co2?: good for reforestation. Glaciers melting: we can visit Greenland again. Snow melt: Siberia and Canada can become farmlands. Polar ice melt: the northern passage that Hudson died for will reopen.
1. The earth has gone thru cycles of warming and cooling on the same basis as what we've seen in the past 100 years. Between 900 and 1200 AD, scientist proved the same warming occurred. Where were the cars then? The author above made a statement that is the crux of the whole issue - socialism when he said transfer of wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries. In the end, the only result will be that everyone will be poor, and the economies will be destroyed to to the stupidity of Obama, Pelosi, Gore, and all the others who themselves don't reduce. You notice it's only us that has to reduce. Jerks anyway.
Ed Schlosser 5:53 pm: "... it appears from what remains of the fudged data that the second most hot year is 1934."
Data was not fudged. More important you are trying to fool the reading audience by commenting on the US contiguous 48 and pretending that it represents the entire earth. The 10 warmest years for the globe (hence the G in AGW) occur within the 12-year period 1997-2008.
You have posted a common error (lie?) among non-scientists and/or people who are simply trying to skirt the real issues.
Again, the 10 warmest years for the globe occur within the 12-year period 1997-2008. All of this with sunspots currently at a minimum.
