It's a solid jamboree, with tempers on the two sides of
the issue running hot and no final deal in sight.
But even like that, we'd better pay care to what transpires here, the outcome of action or inaction may be solid.
Starting Monday, 15,000 people
are expected in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the next couple of weeks they're supposed to be hashing out a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, the world deal regulating greenhouse gases that expires in 2012.
Among them will be more than 100 world leaders, including President Obama and half his cabinet.
Hundreds of environmentalists are also expected, some protesting outside the solid convention center. With the world's top scientists saying world warming is caused
by humans and that quick action is needed to avoid devastating effects, 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 senator of Oklahoma who has famously called man-made world warming "the greatest hoax ever played on the American people."
They will question the science behind world warming, holding up recently hacked e-mails from prominent climate scientists. The e-mails evidently show the scientists, frustrated with a small but vocal group of world warming skeptics, trying to keep dissenting persuasions out of prominent journals and attempting to hide inconsistencies in the overall data.
Most independent analysts say the hacked e-mails do not alter the nature of the debate - the e-mails, however unsuitable, do not undermine the consensus of hundreds of scientists that have been studying this issue for decades.
Still, might there be strife 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."
cnn
