The climate talks in Cancun outpaced the meager hopes of environmentalists reported John Broder on Saturday: "Negotiators at Global Climate Talks Continue Past the Deadline for an Agreement [1]."
"Climate change is a long-term problem that won't be addressed in one meeting or one agreement," said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University and a longtime observer of the United Nations process. "Countries are already taking actions on their own and moving toward international cooperation on these issues. That may be a more productive course than a single, stand-alone, top-down agreement."
Broder personalized the weather as a sinister force, cherry-picking some of the more alarming weather events of the past year to demonstrate something or other:
The climate itself was not waiting for the outcome of the talks. An analysis of average global temperatures released Friday by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies shows that 2010 has so far been the warmest year in its 130-year climate record. The record-breaking temperatures appeared due to a combination of man-made climate change and a natural warming pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean earlier this year caused by El Niño, according to Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
The year was marked by extreme weather events, from a record-breaking heat wave in Russia in July to the dramatic floods in Pakistan. High sea temperatures were also blamed for a global bleaching of coral reefs.
Broder's idea of a wrap-up? A quote from the original global warming alarmist James Hansen, who in June 2008 called for oil executives to be tried for "high crimes against humanity and nature [2]."
A cold snap under way in Britain and northern Europe was unusual, but would do little to alter global average temperatures for the year, said James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute. "This regional cold spell has caused widespread commentary that global warming has ended," Dr. Hansen said. "That is hardly the case."
Broder has a history of taking the alarmist global warming position as resolved fact [3]. In a February 2010 podcast Broder called those who don't believe man is causing the planet to dangerously overheat "deniers" and suggested some making the argument were "relatively uninformed."
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