Business Spectator - And the Carbon Cup begins...

...Stuart Eizenstat, Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of the Treasury and Al Gore’s lead official at the Kyoto negotiations, has told a conference in Brussels that (1) it is unlikely that the new administration can pass emissions trading legislation before 2010, (2) this will make it difficult for the new president to negotiate a new treaty in Copenhagen and (3) the feelings evident in the US Senate 95-0 vote against the concept of a Kyoto agreement that ensured Clinton never sought official approval of the treaty “have not dissipated.”

“When it comes to drawing up (US) domestic laws on capping emissions, the issue will be cost, cost, cost,” adds the veteran bureaucrat, “and emerging economies will need to agree to reduce their emissions.”

Baby, It's Cold Outside

...The reason I mention Al's co-religionists at the Hadley Centre is that they have come to realize that computer projections of global warming have been wrong. Carbon dioxide levels have indeed increased, but not temperatures. So bundle up, Al. Last year, in many parts of the world, snowfalls reached levels not seen in decades. The Associated Press recently shrieked that global warming "is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid," but the facts are otherwise. The computer models that have predicted global warming have failed, just as the computer models that predicted very few financial losses for the insurance industry from credit default swaps failed.

Alaska: Past cold spells have proven worse in Interior

While this has been the coldest start to the month of January since 2000, it is only the eighth coldest start to the month of January in the last 100 years.

Extreme cold slams Alaska

Johnson lives in Stevens Village, where residents have endured close to two weeks of temperatures pushing 60 below zero.

The cold has kept planes grounded, Johnson said. Food and fuel aren't coming in and they're starting to run low in the village, about 90 miles northwest of Fairbanks.

Johnson, whose home has no heater or running water, said he ventures outside only to get more logs for burning and to fetch water from a community facility. He's been saving the wood to build a cabin as a second home, but that will have to wait a few years now because the heat takes precedence.

"I've never seen it this cold for this long," he said. "I remember it 70 below one time, but not for a week and a half."
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Coman said locals are keeping things in perspective. Last year, temperatures dropped to 69 below for 10 straight days.