US president Obama's presence in climate change conference - any difference?  

In all honesty, being 100% sincere, I'm not sure what type of "impact" people want it to have.

If the idea is to discuss ways in which we can all start to find a few alternatives to fossil fuels and slowly begin downgrading our emissions by a collective effort of ingenuity that's both practical and affordable, then I think all people--even those thinking man-cause climate change is a scam--would gladly jump aboard. We all want a cleaner planet.

But if the idea is for these 100-some-odd elitists (whose contribution to the climate is to emit 1000x the carbon of any average person) to tell the rest of us what to do and to pay trillions while they sit back in their jets and smugly grin at the "change" they're brining forth, then I truly hope it has 0 impact.

The line between genuine concern and scam is about 1 degree less than the doom-and-gloom scenario we're bashed over the head with constantly.

What scares me the most is any measure being rushed through solely for "impact." I am very thankful that they didn't waste trillions of dollars in the 70s when they were predicting a new ice age. It's hard to tell what they would have done to keep ice from overwhelming the land!

Not for nothing, but whatever happened to slow and steady winning the race, or even baby steps to get started?

These days it's 1,000,000,000,000-plus or bust!

i am very hopeful that something positive will come out of the summit. i am not expecting a binding agreement anymore, but at least, something that can be pursued for next year and coming years for the world to tackle climate change is welcome.

obama's winning the nobel has put on him more weight than any other world's leaders. but i don't think that the world wants what in his pocket, for there is not much in the pocket. it is china that has a lot in the pocket, and even america is looking after the pocket of china. the US is important in the sense that there must be a regulatory in the country for its carbon emissions, not because of its money. the US needs the world more than the world needs the US. without china's bailout, where will the US be?

"without china's bailout, where will the US be?"

Forced to practice personal responsibility from the top down; forced to drastically shrink the size of government, because only government could get us in such a mess that we'd need China's money in the first place. The US would need more hard work from its citizenry and less reliance on a nanny-like government. There would be no room for special interest to grow, because most--on both a business level and a government level--would be fiscally conservative without having any means to receive another bailout package.

To me, most of these things are true blessings.