The COP17 climate change conference in Durban finally finished on Sunday a day and a half late. According to the final press release it:

Delivered a breakthrough on the future of the international community's response to climate change, whilst recognizing the urgent need to raise their collective level of ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep the average global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius.

The press release itemises the "breakthrough" decisions as follows:

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Regular readers will know that the  17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change  begin in Durban, South Africa in less than a week. At the same time and place the 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP7) to the Kyoto Protocol will also take place.  The question now is what if anything all these discussions will achieve apart from a modicum of global warming from all the hot air that will doubtless be emitted by the attendees?

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Hurricane Bill, the first of the 2009 Atlantic season, has already got surfers in the eastern United States excited.  Over here in South West England we're eagerly watching the current predictions:

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The remnants of Hurricane Hanna arrived on the shores of South West England last weekend. Hanna still packed a bit of a punch, as you can see in this video that we shot at Woolacombe on Sunday:

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On January 4th we drove to Putsborough Beach on the Atlantic Coast of North Devon to check out what the forecasts suggested would be some excellent surf.  We also took along our Sony Handycam to see how it performed when trying to film moving targets.  You can see the results in the video below.

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