Nothing is agreed until everything else is agreed

By Dr Stephen Peake Over the past week or so, a great deal of routine housekeeping work has been achieved on various agenda items under the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol. The texts of most of this work are now, as is customary, bracketed (this is how Governments signal discontent with the texts) and being [...]

COP 15: The hum of expectation

Dr Stephen Peake writes about the atmosphere of COP15 in its first few days, from a bride and groom honeymooning there, to the various demonstrators and media gathering at the conference…   The atmospheric pull of COP 15 begins the instant I leave home. The taxi driver thinks it’s all too late (only a population [...]

How do we know climate change is real?

Users of Platform, the OU’s community website, were asked to submit their own questions around climate change ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen this month. Six questions were chosen and answers will be supplied by the OU’s academic experts. Here’s the response to the first question… How do we know [...]

French COP15 analysis tool developed with Open University expertise

The Open University has taken a role in helping French officials assess climate negotiations and decisions at the COP-15 climate change conference.   The SynsCop15 programme, which was initiated by the French Ministry of Environment through the GICC programme (managing climate change impacts), brings together three modelling systems which analyse climate policy, technology and energy [...]