Monckton's Done What Now?!

Today during the President's stock-taking plenary at the COP18/CMP8 member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), British Peer and former adviser to Margret Thatcher Christopher Lord Monckton sneaked into the seats belonging to the delegation from Myanmar/Burma and started spouting his thoroughly debunked nonsense about there being no such thing as global warming/climate change. He was swiftly ejected from the summit venue and stripped of his accreditation as an observer.

Although Monckton has always been something of an odd duck and an outrageous attention seeker this latest stunt appears to be the latest round in tensions between the UK and the European Union (EU) over voluntary cuts to greenhouse gas emissions to fill the gap between the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol at the end of 2012 and a possible replacement scheduled to be agreed by 2015 and come into force by 2020. Obviously the UK is very opposed to this but as a member of the EU it is legally obligated to go along with it. The timing of today's announcement that the Euro2020 football finals will be played across a range of European nations rather then in a single host nation is another way to discuss this issue. The first round of Britain's battle with the EU though took place at the end of the recent EU Budget Summit where Britain ran a story about children being taken away from their foster parents because those parents were members of UKIP which social workers considered to be a racist party. Then with UKIP's rather good performance in by-elections on November 29th (29/11/12) this became a discussion about whether the foster children story was actually a Crown led publicity stunt designed to help UKIP win support. This obviously leads into a discussion about the fascist British National Party's (BNP) success in the 2009 European Elections. Basically Britain is trying to find out if the world views the 2010 General Election which led to current coalition government as a legitimate democratic election or a sort of coup.

Elsewhere at the summit organisers have really been pushing the does Rihanna control the weather/quantum field theory angle with participants, observers and press been asked to take part in the Chant for Change (http://www.globalchant.com) project. This involves groups of people chanting a single musical note together. These notes are then gathered up and knitted together into an original musical piece. Although it claims to be raising money to combat climate change it's primary purpose is to promote discussion about that eternal question over whether if everybody in the world hummed the Rihanna hit "Umbrella" at the same time would it make it rain?

So yes there's one day to go and already things have descended firmly into farce.

20:00 on 6/12/12.