The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting live from the international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

Right-wing opponents of climate action such as Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Koch Industries’ Americans For Prosperity have attempted to demonize climate scientists as part of a corrupt, conspiratorial United Nations bureaucracy trying to accumulate money and power. In an interview on Friday with the Wonk Room, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), explained the reality of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization. Since its founding in 1988, it has functioned as a grassroots, volunteer organization of the world’s top climate scientists, working gratis to synthesize their research for the public interest:

The beauty of the organization is that all the scientists the best scientists all over the world volunteer their time, without a single penny being paid by the IPCC.

Watch it:

“We are a very lean organization,” Pachauri explained. The entire annual budget is on the order of five to six million dollars a year. He grinned as he described that the “bureaucracy” of the IPCC Secretariat — the paid staff of the organization — has ballooned, after 17 years of having only five people, to ten people. The thousands of scientists who volunteer their time and effort have committed their lives to research, he said, and they want to be part of the “great mission” of the IPCC to make the science of climate change clear to the world.

In remarks delivered earlier in the day at the Climate Change Communication Forum, Pachauri said that one of the tasks the IPCC needs to take on in the future is to be able to effectively counter disinformation spread by hostile interests. “There is clearly an attempt in some cases to spread information that is far from the truth, which is inaccurate,” he said. “It is the responsibility of the IPCC — as a body serving the larger interests of society — to be able to take care of that reality. So I think that our challenge is cut out for us.”

The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting live from the international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

The impacts of climate change are here and now, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri warned yesterday at a forum on communicating climate science. Pachauri, the chair of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that scientists need to do a better job explaining that global warming is not a distant threat, but a present reality:

It is important for us to emphasize the fact that climate change and its impacts are not something in the future. They are here and now. And I am afraid the scientific community has not been very effective in communicating this message, and I hope that we can do something about it.

Watch it:

Pachauri made his remarks at the Climate Change Communication Forum held in association with the ongoing international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. In his speech, he also argued it is important for people to understand the successes already achieved in tackling global warming pollution, particularly the “win-win” solutions such as energy efficiency that improve both environmental and economic health.

Our guest blogger is Andrew Light, a Senior Fellow and Coordinator of International Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress. The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from the U.N. climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico.

Representatives from 194 countries gather this week in Cancun, Mexico, for the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC. This is the body that succeeded in Copenhagen last year in crafting a nonbinding political agreement, the Copenhagen Accord, that could serve as the foundation for creating a new binding climate treaty to either replace or complement the Kyoto Protocol. Chances for a big success, such as final ratification of the Copenhagen Accord or a new legally binding treaty, approach zero.

What could emerge from Cancun if we cannot expect a comprehensive agreement this time around? The consensus view for some time has been that the best chance is on a series of smaller though not insignificant agreements on deforestation, technology transfer, and the architecture for a global climate fund.

Throughout the year, however, the United States has insisted that it would not allow smaller pieces of an agreement to go forward, or, as Jonathan Pershing put it earlier in the week in Cancun:

Moving ahead on a few issues—deemed by some to be easy—while holding off on others—deemed by some to be difficult—is not a path for success.

China and other developing countries have expressed strong reservations in the past that they should be bound by a system of international verification of their emissions reductions, especially for voluntary reductions in emissions that they take on themselves without financial or technical assistance from developed countries. The question that many are asking now is whether the United States will use lack of progress in this area (“measurement, reporting, and verification,” or MRV) to stop movement on smaller agreements on forestry and other areas.

Early reports from Cancun suggest that the United States and China are showing signs of more agreement on the issue of measuring, reporting, and verifying emission reductions. If India’s proposed “International Consultation and Analysis” system for MRV — or something else that could take that good will and turn it into an agreement — survives the meeting, it could ensure substantive agreements in other areas like forestry or technology transfer. If it does not, the meeting may end in a showdown between those who want to move forward on individual parts of a climate treaty and those who do not.

As with last year’s climate summit, however, I’ll be ready to blame the process rather than particular parties in the event that nothing emerges from this meeting other than an agreement to meet again next year. The UNFCCC’s consensus rule among 194 parties makes the U.S. Senate’s 60-vote threshold for action enviable. Failure to make any gains this year will only increase calls for more climate action in smaller forums like the G-20 or the U.S.-led Major Economies Forum, which now brings together the 17 largest emitters in a series of regular discussions on proposals for clean technology cooperation.

These smaller venues might offer a better chance at coming to an agreement. But in doing so we will inherit an equally difficult problem: how to adequately represent the interests of the entire world into a process that won’t have all parties around the table. Let’s hope that the negotiators act in good faith to avoid such a predicament.

Read the full, original version of Andrew Light’s post, “So Close, Yet So Far.”

What is the Call to Action on Climate?

The topic for this weekend’s open thread comes from Climate Hawk Auden Schendler, Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company.  He wrote on Grist:

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Prokaryotes and others can post links here to interesting weekend news/links.

Rise in flood claims tied to climate change

Canadian insurance companies are facing unprecedented growth in claims and payouts for water-related home damage, and industry experts lay the blame squarely on climate change.

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The head of the Cancun climate talks fought back tears in a meeting with youth activists on Wednesday, as she frankly admitted the insufficient ambition of global leaders to protect the future.  Brad Johnson, blogging onsite, has the story.

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Its early December, which means the holiday shopping season is upon us. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone but many of us still have more gifts to get for the holidays.

This CAP cross-post has seven gift ideas — and 7 green apps — that are sure to make your family and friends happy while still helping out the environment:

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