Copenhagen Summit Protest: Violent Clashes as Hundreds Arrested

by Amy Judd | December 12, 2009 at 10:55 am

769 views | 58 Recommendations | 11 comments

As the Copenhagen Summit continues, a protest took place in the city today that resulted in violent clashes and what is now being reported as hundreds of people arrested. It was originally reported that about 21 people were detained, but now that number has risen to over 900, and police are being criticized for over-reacting to the protest .

Henri Purje, who was in Copenhagen with Attac, a group opposed to international free trade, was standing in front of the group that was penned in and taken away by police. "I was in the last line of people before the police suddenly moved in for no obvious reason. It seemed as if they just wanted to take out a bunch of random people. No one was being violent, I didn't see anyone doing anything apart from singing and chanting and marching. Everything had been really peaceful," Purje said

About 30,000 people showed up to protest the results of the summit so far.

About 300 youths went through the streets wearing masks threatening violent action, causing some 50 riot police to be called out and most of the arrests were made at this point. The rest of the march was mostly peaceful, but the rest of the 30,000 people want to draw attention to what is hapening at the summit and to keep up the public interest.

"We put their number at around 30,000 but this is just an estimate," a police official said. Danish television news put the crowd strength higher, at up to 100,000.

Saturday December 12th is also the Global Day of Action, so this protest, coupled with events around the world is a bid to world leaders to secure a strong deal to cut country's emissions and help poor countries fight global warming as well.

There appears to still be a very pronounced split at the Copenhagen Summit, with the wealthier countries on one side and the poorer countries on the other.

Demonstrators are saying that this split needs to be dealt with, or a deal will not be able to be reached at Copenhagen.

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stejeb

at 12:31 on December 12th, 2009

And if they do make a deal it would be nice to see any of them stick to it and actually make a difference, though I suspect we will end up with a watered down version of what we really need, and then my wonderful government will use whatever is said as an excuse to impose another tax on me, which I wouldn't mind, if they actually used it to help.

J2B (not verified)

at 16:25 on December 12th, 2009

It has been reported by AP, that 968 have been detained?

Amy Judd

at 16:52 on December 12th, 2009

Woah, that is a lot, will have a look.

snuffysmith

at 23:37 on December 12th, 2009

Copenhagen police detain 968 in climate change rally

snuffysmith

at 23:38 on December 12th, 2009

Almost 1000 arrested at Copenhagen climate rally

Uwe Paschen

at 00:03 on December 13th, 2009

So far most people I talked to are not to happy with the lack of good will the delegates and governments are showing.

John OSullivan

at 12:17 on December 14th, 2009

What a lot of hype at Copenhagen! It all seems rather pointless to a coastal dweller like me. You see, I live on the picturesque east coast of England where house prices go through the roof. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about so I started reading up on what Al Gore and the United Nations’ IPCC had to say. The ice caps and glaciers are melting so fast that in the next 50 years sea levels may rise up to 30 feet. Wow! But hold on a minute, I have never seen any evidence for it in my back yard. Oh dear! It seems Al Gore has a name for people like me who are sceptics. He calls us ‘flat earth deniers.’

Not being one to like being called names I did some reading what oceanographers – not climatologists or Al Gore – had to say about sea level rises.

Here is what I found. Apparently, the most reliable data on sea levels comes from a set of the world’s tidal gauges. There is a very good web site on this by the University of Colorado where they present two graphs, Jason-1 Calibration and TOPEX Calibration. That’s funny, I thought, when I looked at it. Because those measurements say very similar things to what I read on other web site. It seems a lot of oceanographers agree with the Colorado numbers. They include peer-reviewed papers by Antonov et al. (2005); Ishii et al. (2005) and Willis et al. (2005) who all report rises equal to seven inches per century.

I then looked closer to home and found that here in England we have Simon Holgate from the U.K.’s Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory. Holgate in 2007 produced a history of global sea levels rise from 1904 to 2003 based upon a set of reliable, long-term observations from 9 tide gauge stations scattered around the world. He also finds that the levels are rising by about 7 inches per century.

Strangely, this is exactly the rate of sea level rise we’d expect to see naturally since the last ice age 11,000 years ago. Phew! Seems like the realtors in my area got their numbers right and Al Gore got his wrong. Maybe we won’t be paying all those climate taxes after all?

joyce s (not verified)

at 13:19 on December 18th, 2009

Al Gore is a total ass. Yours is one of the saner voices about this global warmig hype. Gore needs to clean up his dirty little act first before he can talk global. Thanks for looking into it.

Trexman90

at 16:04 on December 14th, 2009

@john

the land based ice on the antartic shelf hasn't really melted yet, so those predicted changes in sea level won't be seen until the land ice actually melts......or the land ice on greenland

americanfridge

at 22:47 on December 14th, 2009

Sad news. I hope they can do something about this matter as soon as possible.

John OSullivan

at 11:39 on December 15th, 2009

@Trexman.

I live in England most of the year. There has been no global warming in Britain for 351 years. That’s according to the Central England Temperature (CET) record, which was started recording ground temperatures here in 1659 and is maintained by the UK Met Office.

http://carbon-sense.com/2009/10/01/british-record/

What is proves is that the average UK summer temperature in the 18th century was 15.46 degC while that for the 20th century was 15.35 degC – which is cooler! Some people need to check their facts first. I suspect the rest of the world isn’t warming either going by the email leaked since climategate.

Trexman, I suggest you go read the Climategate emails where those discredited scientists admit in private global temps haven’t increased in 11 years. Its all a con by tax hungry politicians who want to create one world government.

What disturbs me even more is that these alarmist scientists have destroyed much of the world's raw climate data. What independent observers are finding who have looked at the existing raw data from New Zealand and Australia have discovered that Climategate scientists unethically and fraudulently added 4 degrees to all those temperatures - with no explanation. This thus falsely gives a warming effect that would not otherwise exist.