Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Nations responsible for nearly 80 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions have submitted emissions-reduction plans under the Copenhagen Accord, meeting the January 31st deadline. "This represents an important invigoration of the UN climate change talks," said Yvo de Boer, head of the climate treaty secretariat. "The commitment to confront climate change at the highest level is beyond doubt," he added. Welcoming endorsement of the Copenhagen Accord call to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, Alden Meyer from the Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Washington DC, noted that "this is the first time that countries have ever committed to this goal." That's the good news, he continued, "the bad news, of course, is that the pledges that have been put on the table to date don't put us on track to meet that goal, and would make it very difficult - both economically and politically - after 2020 to catch up."

There is concern that little progress has been made in arranging the financial support for developing nations covered by the Accord. "It remains far from clear where the funding will come from, if it is genuinely new and additional, and how it will be allocated," said Saleemul Huq at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. "Looking at past experience of overseas development aid and climate funding, it may take several years to disburse even the 'fast-start' finance promised for 2010 to 2012," he warned. "All the mechanisms have yet to be invented," commented French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo. "Simple bilateral aid is out of the question. We have to invent a new partnership and establish the fast-start modalities."

Global surface air temperature has increased by about 0.2 Celsius a decade over the past 30 years and by a total of around 0.8 Celsius since 1880, according to the latest analysis by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the United States. "There's a contradiction between the results shown here and popular perceptions about climate trends," GISS head James Hansen commented. "In the last decade, global warming has not stopped."

2009 tied for the place of second warmest year world-wide in the modern global temperature record. "There’s always an interest in the annual temperature numbers and on a given year’s ranking, but usually that misses the point," Hansen said. "There's substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Niño-La Niña cycle. But when we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find that global warming is continuing unabated." The GISS analysis is based on weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world, satellite data for the world oceans and data from Antarctic research stations. The analysis program is available for public download.

On-line fraudsters had targeted international carbon markets, stealing emissions permits from companies to sell illegally. In a phishing scam, fake emails were sent to users asking them to log on to a website and give user codes and passwords. Seven German companies responded to the request, which was sent world-wide. Six of the companies were then subject to theft, according to the German emissions trading authority DEHSt. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat reported nine fraudulent transactions, but said that the software of national registries operated by Kyoto Protocol members did not appear to have been compromised.

"We have to be careful not to blow this out of proportion," said European Union environment spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich. "This happens to banks, Visa, Mastercard about once or twice a month. And this is the same sort of thing. It's not something intrinsic to the ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme]. This could happen to anyone." The UNFCCC Secretariat said that it was collaborating closely with the remaining national registries to ensure that access to their systems was secured. The European Commission will review the security measures applicable to ETS registries and prepare revised security guidelines for registries and an action plan aiming at a harmonized approach in case of future incidents.