ACCEPTING REALITY - AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  There may, stress may, be some rationality coming to the climate-change issue, as nations begin to take a second look at the fast hustle that's been imposed on them by the Gore Groupies.  From the Times of London:

President Obama and other world leaders at a trade summit in Singapore have accepted that next month's Copenhagen summit is now unlikely to produce a legally binding deal on emissions, with agreement on climate change set to be deferred until the middle of 2010.

A meeting of 19 leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum, which included Mr Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao, agreed that the forthcoming United Nations summit in Copenhagen should merely aim to make progress on cutting emissions.

Instead they backed a face-saving proposal from Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, who jetted in at short notice after climate change was belatedly inserted into the agenda for Singapore, aimed at forging a political statement of intent at the December meeting.

Complex negotiations towards a legally enforceable successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012, would then continue to work out differences between rich nations and developing countries including China, with agreement delayed until a meeting in either Germany or Mexico in mid 2010.

COMMENT:  There are times when delay is good.  It allows the debate to blossom. 

As time slips, we get closer to America's 2010 midterms, when Obama will be reluctant to agree to anything that will threaten the American economy.  In the meantime, more and more people are questioning the "scientific consensus" about global warming, a consensus that often seems more contrived than real. 

Science, of course, isn't about consensus.  There is no show of hands.  Science is about observation and proof.  Much of the "proof" is coming under increased scrutiny.

And there is more and more observation, indicating that some of the effects of "warming" may well be greatly exaggerated and distorted.  Or, as the observing songwriter once wrote, "Baby, it's cold outside."

November 15,  2009