...

Putting off any global deal until 2020 commits the world to continued growth of emissions up until that point. It's also essential to understand that those annual emissions don’t disappear from the atmosphere year-on-year.

Even though we burn coal, gas and oil annually, the greenhouse gases that process emits remain in the atmosphere for many decades (for example, the oil which Elvis Presley burned in the 1950s to run his Cadillacs are still up there warming the planet today).

Political rhetoric won’t cut carbon emissions to the kind of levels that scientists say are needed. The longer that world leaders put-off making meaningful decisions, the harder it becomes to actually achieve what their own rhetoric calls for.

Only actual decisions, and the political will to make them, deserve recognition in the effort to slow climate change. Durban saw neither.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3726764.html?WT.svl=theDrum

...

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.

Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html

The past year has been the second warmest on record, the Met Office said today, despite the summer being disappointingly cool.

It said provisional figures show that only 2006, with an average temperature of 9.73C (49.5F) was warmer than 2011's average temperature of 9.62C  (49.3F).

Unusually warm autumn and spring temperatures meant that apart from January, which endured the knock on from the cold December in 2010, the only other months that had below-average temperatures were June, July and August.

2011 was also one of the driest - or the wettest, depending on where you live - with Scotland suffering its dampest ever year but some English regions seeing some of their driest ever months and a drought order granted in the South East earlier this month.

Stephen Davenport, senior meteorologist at MeteoGroup, the Press Association's weather division, corroborated the statistics and said 2011 had been a "peculiar" year, including the second warmest November on record.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/2011-second-warmest-on-record-in-uk-6283160.html

After the hottest US summer, comes the winter:

At the National Arboretum, the white petals of snowdrops — normally an early spring flower — have unfurled. In Maine’s Acadia National Park, lakes still have patches of open water instead of being frozen solid. And in Donna Izlar’s back yard in downtown Atlanta, the apricot tree has started blooming.

It’s not in your imagination. The unusually mild temperatures across several regions of the country in the past few months are disrupting the natural cycles that define the winter landscape.

What began as elevated temperatures at the start of fall in parts of the United States have become “dramatically” warmer around the Great Lakes and New England, according to Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. And in the Washington area, the region is on track for its fourth-warmest year on record, along with its seventh-warmest December.

That, in turn, has created conditions where plants are blooming earlier and some birds are lingering before moving south.

“It’s a weird kind of fall blending right into spring,” said Scott Aker, head of horticulture at National Arboretum.

The pattern is most pronounced in eastern Montana, northeastern Minnesota and parts of North Dakota, Arndt said, where December temperatures so far have averaged 10 degrees above normal. But the mild weather extends to other Great Lakes states along with New England and the mid-Atlantic, with temperatures this month averaging between six and eight degrees above normal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/mild-weather-redefines-winter-landscape/2011/12/29/gIQAPV8vQP_print.html

As winter approached, retailers ordered clothes for cold weather, arranged their stores for cold weather and then just started hoping for cold weather.

Winter is here, but the cold weather by and large is not. Nationally, last month was one of the warmest Decembers on record, and so far January temperatures are above average, according to Planalytics, a research firm that tracks weather’s effect on businesses.

The relatively warm weather is erasing a lot of demand for winter hats, coats, and gloves — and making some retailers sweat the bottom line.

On Saturday, the outdoors store REI took the unusual step of making artificial snow in a Manhattan park, hoping to encourage people to buy snowshoes and winter jackets. Home Depot has cut down on items like salt for de-icing, and many of its stores have replaced snow removal equipment with storage products in storefront displays.

Even drugstores are being affected because flu infections are down. The higher temperatures have “helped slow the incidents of flu compared to last year,” Deborah Weinswig, an analyst for Citigroup, wrote in a note to clients. Walgreen’s, for instance, has given 5.3 million flu shots this season, it said this month, compared with six million a year ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/business/warm-winter-is-bad-news-for-retailers.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print