The long, long road to climate deal

Just last week, scientists reported that one of recorded history's greatest losses of Arctic sea ice to summer melt occurred this year, surpassed only by 2007 and 2008. Scientific forecasts are growing ever more bleak.

1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: Leaders converging on the Brazilian city signed on to something unprecedented, a treaty committing them to work "to protect the climate system for present and future generations."

Scientists had produced persuasive evidence the carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases that industry, transport and farming were pouring into the atmosphere were trapping heat and raising global temperatures, with potentially damaging effects — droughts, floods, rising sea levels — from a changing climate.

Then-President George H.W. Bush called on fellow summiteers to "join in a prompt start on the convention's implementation."

Not promptly, but five years later the world's nations agreed to add the Kyoto Protocol to the treaty, with its first, modest reductions in emissions by industrialized countries.

The U.S. Senate repudiated the pact, however, and the process entered an eight-year slowdown as a second Bush administration, of President George W., resisted global pressure for deeper concerted action.

The U.S. opponents complained emissions reductions would crimp the American economy, and objected to Kyoto's excusing of China, India and other poorer countries from having to reduce their energy use.

As the diplomacy decelerated, climate change accelerated.

Average global temperatures had risen 0.74 degrees C (1 degree F) over the past century. Sea-level rise, from heat expansion and melting land ice, increased in the late 20th century.

SHOOT: I'm appalled that the WWF has less than 5 million members. The WWF? The World Wildlife Fund? Citizens need to get active and involved in this issue, the most critical issue. Blog about it, tweet about it, talk about it, change your habits - the next climate summit is in December this year in Copenhaagen. We need to see sea changes to save our climate now!

clipped from news.yahoo.com UNITED NATIONS – It happened in Rio, in 1992: The world officially woke up to the fact it was getting warmer outside. Seventeen years later in New York, the U.N. gathered presidents and premiers to talk about serious steps to turn down the heat. But the political climate may still be too cool for conclusive action. In inviting President Barack Obama and other world leaders to Tuesday's summit on climate change, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged them to "act as global leaders rather than national leaders," to push climate negotiations forward. With a mere 76 days to go before a pivotal diplomatic conference, it appeared an interim agreement might be the most that can be expected this December, leaving difficult details for later talks. Ban's bid to build momentum for a new climate accord was the latest effort in a long, cumbersome process dating back to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.