Permafrost’s future: Where's the runaway melting?

With data going back as far as 50 years or more, researchers have seen mixed thawing patterns since the state emerged from a cold snap in the 1960s and 1970s.

Alaska saw a dramatic increase in permafrost thawing in the 1990s, but the trend has slowed in the past decade, particularly in inland areas.

In the Interior, the picture is muddled. Many permafrost sites have been largely unchanged this decade. A few permafrost areas have even seen cooling trends in the past three years.

Climate Feedback: Barcelona climate: Momentum builds for a "political agreement" in Copenhagen

Conventional wisdom posits that the bill needs to be finished in the first half of next year, because once lawmakers start campaigning for the 2010 elections in the fall they won't want to touch the issue. That pushes things off until 2011.

Lord Monckton, Ambassador Bolton, and the Copenhagen Treaty: Reflections on a Conversation | Energy & Environment

The debunking of bad science-along with the actual, non-environmental motives of the U.N., its various member states, and Mr. Gore-should create a clear body of evidence that Copenhagen has nothing whatsoever to do with actually saving the planet.

Barcelona diary: Russia keeps everyone in dark and Pershing scores direct hit | Environment | guardian.co.uk

At the end of every negotiating day, the massed ranks of the non-government groups award "fossils" to the country they think has done the most to set the talks back. Yesterday the US and Britain were joint winners of the prestigious but dishonourable award for their statements that a legally binding agreement could be delayed by very many months.

We're doomed without a green religion | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

There is a further twist to the argument. Compulsion will be needed but compulsion alone won't do it. People aren't made like that. They need to believe in what they are forced to do. They need idealism, and that will also mean its dark side: the pressure of conformism, the force of self-righteousness, huge moral weight attached to practically useless gestures like unplugging phone chargers. They need, in fact, something that does look a lot like religion. But we can't engineer it. It can only arise spontaneously. Should that happen, the denialists, who claim that it is all a religion, will for once be telling the truth, and when they do that, they'll have lost. I just hope it doesn't happen too late.