Jeff Friedrich | Blankenship: 'There are treesitters in the trees;' Plus Lame Questions From Real Reporters and Debate Wrap, Part 1

...While some watchers may have had their opinions or views changed last night, most seemed to leave redoubled to the ideological values they had arrived with.

For me, that was disheartening. It's a naive sentiment, but part of me did want to see a TKO victory for Kennedy, with Blankenship having some kind of on-stage breakdown that would permanently affect the credibility of his arguments. That desire comes from my view of the urgent nature of our climate crisis. In that sense, the argument that these debates cause more harm than good, that they just give well-spoken myth-slingers an additional soapbox, is a compelling one.

Jeff Friedrich | LIVEBLOG: RFK JR and Don Blankenship Debate Energy, Climate Change, And Mountaintop Removal

6:22PM EST If we measured solely by the applause the debaters recieved from their intros, RFK, Jr. wins this debate.

Pachauri to respond on Himalayan glaciers

...Pachauri was avoiding comment on the issue and a host of other controversies and allegations of his commercial gains as heads of many organizations as levelled in British media.

Turkey Not Sure About Copenhagen Accord

Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said Friday Turkey was not sure about whether or not to join the Copenhagen Accord.

In a statement issued on Friday, the MFA said that "in the web page of the news service Bloomberg, articles were published on January 19 and 20, 2010 stating that Turkey has notified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) that it wants to be associated with the Copenhagen Accord".

"Although Turkey welcomes that a compromise text has been formulated in Copenhagen, the above mentioned news does not reflect the truth. Turkey is still at the stage of evaluating whether or not to associate itself with the Copenhagen Accord," the MFA also said.