Venezuela President Hugo Chavez took the stage at COP15 and launched his own protest. He declared, “If the climate was a capitalist bank, the rich governments would have saved it.”

(Via: Huffpost.)

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1. Latest polling on climate change
2. Australians' attitude to COP15

Essential Research has come out with the latest polling on Australians’ attitudes to Copenhagen.

Unsurprisingly, it reveals that Australians, by and large, recognise the importance of the negotiations in Copenhagen. Even Coalition voters consider it important (59%), according to the cross tabs.

With the “hackergate”/”climategate” frenzy still trying to stymie a meaningful agreement in Australia, this is a message to Rudd and Wong that they should be working especially hard to get an agreement close to 25% reductions in carbon emissions (or preferably more).

Unfortunately, most Australians also believe that an agreement on a global approach to climate change won’t be reached (74%). Let’s hope our political leaders exceed expectations

(Source: Essential Media – click on Dec 14)

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2. Alan Kohler shows he doesn't know about politics
3. The economics of climate change

As Tony Abbott spreads the “global cooling” conspiracy, more evidence demonstrates that temperatures are going up and up.

A report by the World Meteorological Organization says that recent years are on track to be the hottest on record:

The decade of the 2000s is very likely the warmest decade in the modern record, dating back 150 years, according to a provisional summary of climate conditions near the end of 2009, the organization said.

The period from 2000 through 2009 has been “warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s and so on,” said Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the international weather agency, speaking at a news conference at the climate talks in Copenhagen.

Meanwhile, an opinion piece by Tim Flannery puts to bed the insulting and deliberately deceptive statement by Abbott last night that the Australian of the Year winner “accepts” the “global cooling” conspiracy.

Related posts:

1. A decade of cooling?
2. Fifteen Years of Cooling
3. Australians' attitude to COP15

Sean Kidney, convenor of the Carbon Bonds Initiative, is up in Copenhagen at the moment and is writing up some very interesting tidbits from the side-show.

I was particularly interested in this comment regarding renewables:

2. More practically, Q-Cells, one of the world’s largest photovoltaic solar companies, claims that solar cells have reached grid price parity in key markets, such as Italy and Germany. That means that solar cells are price comparable with fossil fuel energy (gas in Italy’s case) coal and gas for Germany. Big news! Why would you still build coal, let alone high-emission-potency gas?

Meanwhile, in Australia, we have a rather lacklustre 20% renewables target – slightly better than business as usual, but not by much.

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1. Most subsidies still go to dirty, polluting fossil fuels
2. 100% renewable energy in Australia by 2020
3. Germany runs out of solar panels