Quote of the Day; Bloomberg Notes The Hypocrisy

"It certainly isn't where we need to be in order to prevent islands from going under and other unimaginable impacts."-- AP, Doha, Qatar.

Unimaginable.

The quote was from the Doha-ha-ha Climate Change Conference, agreeing to extend the Kyoto Protocol which was due to expire this year. We were this close to going over the DohaCliff.

Seeking to control global warming, nearly 200 countries agreed Saturday to extend the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that limits the greenhouse gas output of some rich countries, but will only cover about 15 percent of global emissions. 

By the way, hundreds of new islands have been "discovered" over the past few years. At the same time, the oceans have been rising at a rate of 3 mm/year since 1992. Repeat: 3 mm/year. Those islands going under were pretty low to begin with, I guess.

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Meanwhile, Bloomberg noted the hypocrisy also:

When 17,600 representatives from 194 nations criss-cross the globe to fight climate change, they make themselves vulnerable to certain charges of hypocrisy: How much fuel did they burn to get there? What about the carbon pollution from all the hotel air conditioners? How big, really, is the anti-global-warming footprint? 

There’s one barb that’s lost its edge this year: paper consumption. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is on a mission to make the global body paperless by 2015. The efforts are saving hundreds of trees at this year’s climate treaty talks in Doha, Qatar, while creating headaches for many of the envoys.

For context, a common feature of COPs (as the annual meetings are called: it stands for Conference of the Parties) are the hundreds of harassed-looking negotiators carting around wheelie suitcases filled with documents covering the progress of discussions on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, finance, technology and -- yes -- reducing greenhouse gases by saving trees.

I'll start taking climate change talking heads seriously when they start taking their claims seriously.