After Copenhagen - now what?

Comments: not done yet
The climate meeting in Copenhagen ended, as feared, without the big breakthrough. The result was a sort of declaration to continue work, and at least that is something.

The U.S. and other rich countries were blamed for the failure in Copenhagen. I think the toughest COP15 critics oversimplyfy what in reality is very difficult political questions.

1) It was an error to put a lid on the scientific debate about climate change: instead, one should be much more open about the uncertainty, but also remind people that the uncertainty could mean that things are worse than the models indicate. We should view the measures to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases as an insurance. (Insurance is something we pay for even if we do not know for sure that something goes wrong.)

2) It will be expensive: One can compare the cost to the entire world's GDP, and say that it is not going to cost us much. The burden, however, will not be evenly distributed and it will definitely change the lives of many people. Are these efforts going to result in major transfer of resources from developed- to developing countries?

3) The distinction between the "rich nations" and the rest is also too easy. It was also one of the major problems with the Kyoto Protocol (in addition to the United States never ratified it): no restrictions were imposed on most countries in the world, also relatively rich countries, such as South Korea. The same was true for rapidly growing economies such as China, which in the meantime has become the world's largest emission source.

(Thanks to Are Slettan for input)

Progress:
As mentioned in my previous blog post, the ventilation aggregate stopped working around noon on Saturday. Later on that same day, the outside temperature increased to -7C (from -12C) and I decided to start the aggregate again. This time it worked - and I told the ventilation team that it seems like the aggregate has problems below -10C. This is of course not an acceptable limitation in a country like ours where we can expect -10C in December, January, February and occationally even in March. It is now 4 pm on Monday and they have not responded or showed up to finish the work...

In my email I also asked for an update on when the electrician is planning to connect the new fans - to get the flow of heated air into the ventilation system. He didn't come on Friday, but the projectleader responded per email on Sunday saying "The electrician is coming tomorrow!".

Around noon today I received a phonecall directly from the electrician - and he said he could not make it today. I told him what the project leader had promised me, but he insisted that he could not come today.

I sent a frustrated mail back to the project leader: "Did just hear that Morten is not coming today (so now we see how much your promises, with exclamation points, are worth) ..."

He responded very quickly: "I spoke with Runar now, he promised to call Morten and tell him to stop by today! He will call you back. " (Runar is the manager). Does anyone believe that the electrician called me back or showed up?