NYT's Climate Change Reporter Dismisses 'Skeptical Skunks,' Assumes Problem 'Growing Worse'

New York Times climate reporter John Broder went all the way to Doha, Qatar to reveal that the United Nation's climate talks went nowhere, in Sunday's "Climate Talks Yield Commitment to Ambitious, but Unclear, Actions." Online Broder showed his respect for dissenting opinions: "Few would compare a United Nations climate change conference to a garden party, but a pair of skeptical skunks showed up on Thursday in the persons of Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, and Christopher Monckton, the Viscount Monckton of Benchley."

Broder, whose climate reporting is full of liberal assumptions that "global warming" or "climate change" is caused by man and endangers the planet, in his Sunday print story again quoted scientists who assumed the worst, with rising temperatures inevitable.

The annual United Nations climate change negotiations concluded here late Saturday after the customary all-night negotiating session and recriminations over who must bear the costs and burdens of a warming planet.

Delegates from more than 190 nations agreed to extend the increasingly ineffective Kyoto Protocol a few years and to commit to more ambitious -- but unspecified -- actions to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases.

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The participants noted with “grave concern” the widening gap between what countries have promised to do to reduce emissions and the growing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They declared it unlikely that on the current path the world would be able to keep global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial times, a central goal of the United Nations process.

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The convention addressed the concept of loss and damage, recognizing the increasing frequency of extreme weather events as well as slower-acting threats like drought and sea level rise. The body adopted language urging more financial and technical support for the most vulnerable countries. But it did not create a mechanism to handle such aid, angering some delegates.

Kieren Keke, foreign minister of the Pacific nation of Nauru and chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, called the package adopted Saturday “deeply deficient.”

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Other countries, including South Korea, Australia and most of Europe, started earlier and have gone much further. It is those kinds of efforts that hold the most promise, at least in the short term, for controlling a problem that scientists say is growing worse faster than any of them predicted even a few years ago.

Broder wrote from Doha on the paper's Green blog December 6 calling two climate change skeptics who dared to crash the party "skeptical skunks."

Few would compare a United Nations climate change conference to a garden party, but a pair of skeptical skunks showed up on Thursday in the persons of Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, and Christopher Monckton, the Viscount Monckton of Benchley. The two make a habit of descending on climate summits and trying to debunk both the science and the politics of global warming. Mostly they generate eye-rolling and wry blog posts.