Global warming will be a hot topic for the delegates gathered this week in Bangkok, writes FRANK McDONALD

WITH WORLD attention grabbed by a succession of natural disasters in New Zealand and Japan as well as popular revolts in north Africa and the Middle East, the United Nations will be seeking this week to put climate change back on the international agenda.

Nearly four months after last year’s moderately successful climate summit in the Mexican resort of Cancún, delegates from 193 countries have gathered in Bangkok for a preliminary round of talks aimed at paving the way for progress at next December’s summit in Durban.

They’re conscious that global warming “hasn’t gone away, you know”, as Gerry Adams TD once said of the Provisional IRA.

Indeed, 2010 was officially one of the hottest years on record, with heatwaves, floods, landslides, forest fires and other “extreme weather events”.

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