The world economic crisis is providing a wake up call for climate realism. As registration for COP 17, December's UN conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, opens on Tuesday, support for the UN climate agenda continues to deteriorate. Take the UK example. Reuters reports that with half of major energy suppliers in the UK announcing double digit price increases for electricity and gas the British public has had enough. 75 percent now favor abandoning Britain's green agenda if it means higher prices.

The problem of course is after you thwart efficient nuclear, coal and gas generation and lock in guarantees, subsidies and high prices for alternative energy profiteers it is almost impossible to go back.

Developed nations like the UK already price their labor out of the marketplace with the high costs of their social welfare states. Affordable energy is one area in which developed nations should have the edge, yet they toss that advantage

COP16 has come and gone. Every COP drags through two weeks of impotent spectacle while the real activity takes place behind closed doors. COP16 was no exception. Deals are struck and then rushed before the plenary session at the 11th hour. In Cancun the real action started 7 PM Friday night and lasted until 3 AM.

On Thursday, the metaphor of the day was the climate talks zombie - an animated corpse which staggers along producing nothing, yet feasts upon the flesh of anyone constructive who blunders into its path. This was a terrifying moment for the global warming brigades. If Cancun collapsed like Copenhagen, this could have been their end - nothing left but zombie apocalypse.

By Saturday morning things had changed. Following the all night session we now heard talk of bridges built, forward steps and faith. Christiana Figueres, e

This was a big day for CFACT at COP16. We held our press conference in the Cancunmesse. The last few days have been jam packed.

Yesterday my colleague David Rothbard reported on the tour CFACT conducted of a Mexican village minutes from the conference where people live without electricity. While we heard tales of how hard it is to cook when you can't afford fuel, Marc Morano, founder of CFACT's award winning Climate Depot web site released a major new report which turns the idea of consensus science on its head.

By CFACT's president David Rothbard

On one side of this tropical strip, UN delegates, media, and observers shuttle between luxurious hotels, posh restaurants, a white sandy beach with turquoise water, and a modern convention center where they spend their time bemoaning man-made climate change and planning the energy future for the rest of the globe.

One the other side of the Cancun "Hotel Zoneria," just 10 or 15 kilometers from downtown, live countless numbers of Mexican families without electricity, running water, or any of the other modern conveniences we in t

Here we go again. The wheels keep falling off the global warming bandwagon, as public support continues to decline.

Developed countries, deep in debt, are no longer chomping at the bit to pay $100 billion a year in climate reparation and adaptation penalties. Fast-growing nations like China and India refuse to curb the hydrocarbon use that is fueling their development, thereby ensuring that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to rise.

Wikileaks reveal that U.S. diplomacy under President Obama has been geared towards bribing and bullying countries to support climate deals. These countries are not buying the global warming scare on the merits (or lack thereof). It takes cash and arm twisting to keep them in line.

Just when you think you've heard everything, we're told that impoverished Mexicans are fleeing north to escape global warming.Despite the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), vast natural resources and bright, hard-working people, the host country for the Cancun climate summit remains impoverished. Wealth and power are still concentrated in relatively few powerful Mexican families. Employment and economic opportunities are few. The government is plagued with corruption. The state-owned oil company Pemex cannot keep even its best fields operating efficiently. Remittances from the US remain a major part of Mexico's economy. Impoverished millions are deprived of access to energy and forced to eke out a bare living through backbreaking subsistence farming.

Far worse, the drug cartels are kidnapping, torturing and murdering with impunity. Sheriffs, soldiers and entire families are b

Kyoto was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Japan announced it. And Japan's pronouncements are good for anything they choose to put voice to.

Old Kyoto was dead as Jacob Marley, which is to say, as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the freedom our ancestor's fought for is done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Kyoto was as dead as a door-nail.

What the Dickens? With Japan formally jumping ship, it does indeed appear the Kyoto Protocol is well and truly dead.

At last year's COP-15 meeting in Copenhagen delegates were greeted with snow and frigid temperatures. This year Europe is already in the grip of an early freeze that closed London, Gatwick. The UN did well in choosing the more inviting Cancun as a venue to discuss global warming. This year's conference is basking in temperatures already reaching 80 degrees on its third day. The sunshine that usually marks this beautiful resort getaway has been missing during the first few days of the conference. Perhaps symbolically, looming storm clouds and occasional rain have created a glum and sober setting. Of course we know that today's weather does not predict the climate, but we can't resist, having seen too many hot summer days proclaimed in the media as proof of warming.

Things have likewise not been very bright for proponents of a new climate treaty. A w