Networking day

Amazing entries from Max, Przemek, Joel and Juan - really thoughtful and hard to match tired and late at night. Arrived at conference centre this morning to shouts of many young people in their underwear protesting at the metro station (and it was colder today). I agree with a previous comment about the very large number of young people here...with lots to say and well informed. Today I mostly met with my Oxford students who are here to discuss their dissertations (since they have not been able to see much of me) and also bumped into other people including Peter Newell (James Martin fellow now at UEA working on the CDM), Ian Burton from Canada (adding to my encounters with former professors of mine - I worked with him as a Masters student at Toronto when global warming was only just starting to be discussed), Bruce Hewitson from Cape Town (climate modeler from Cape Town with strong links to Oxford - I was on his PhD committee at Penn State), and a whole bunch of different ECI alumnae. Participated in the Research NGO closed session and have offered with Benito Muller and others from around the world to help draft a brief RINGO statement for the high level segment....we get 2 mins to represent all the RINGOs. Whatever we write will be delivered by a local scientist but we will have to figure out what to say. Traditionally the RINGOs are very neutral but we may feel the need to defend some of the recent attacks on scientific integrity.

I was also delighted to visit the Mexican delegation to catch up with some of the people I know - and happened to be in their offices when the US negotiating team of Todd Stern and Jonathan Pershing turned up to discuss some key issues with Mexico. I was on a more modest mission to discuss how we (Arizona, Oxford) might support some events in Mexico running up to their COP/MOP a year from now. Feeling a bit too tired to review all the complexities of the negotiations tonight. Will try to get a better sense of where things are tomorrow.

Diana