Ouch. Day 19 hurt. From the moment we stepped out of the tent to the moment we set it up 10 hours later, we spent skiing in white out. A white out you ask? Imagine being in a room when the lights go out and waiting for your eyes to adjust except its light instead of dark and your eyes never adjust.

Try putting a blank sheet of paper a few inches in front of your face and walking down the street and you'll begin to understand a little about what we experienced today.

Of course the sun came out as soon as the tent was set up and we were treated to the beautiful snowscapes we missed.

So what new in the climate world?

Well, the conference in Copenhagen starts on Monday. Here is a little backgrounder put together by the Guardian

Copenhagen climate change summit: The issues

What is the Copenhagen climate change summit?

The UN meeting is the deadline for thrashing out a successor to the Kyoto protocol, with the aim of preventing dangerous global warming. It will run for two weeks from 7 December and is the latest in a series that trace their origins to the 1992 Earth summit in Rio.

What's the bottom line?

Climate scientists are convinced the world must stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and start making them fall very soon. To have a chance of keeping warming under the dangerous 2C mark, cuts of 25%-40% relative to 1990 levels are needed, rising to 80%-95% by 2050.

So far, the offers on the table are way below these targets.

Who should make the cuts?

That is a crunch issue. The industrialised nations such as the US, UK, Japan and others have emitted by far the most carbon and still emit vast amounts per person, so have a responsibility to make the deep cuts scientists demand. But emissions from emerging economies such as China and India are surging, and any global limit on emissions needs curbs on those nations, too. Yet, per person, those nations have small carbon footprints and millions of people in deep poverty - 400 million Indians live without electricity, for example. So China, India and others can argue they need to be allowed to continue to pollute for a while as they improve their citizens' lives. Balancing the responsibilities for cuts is a key part of the negotiations.

Who is going to pay?

The other crunch issue. There is an argument that, in the long term, a low-carbon economy will be cheaper than a fossil-fuelled one, and represents a fantastic investment. But time is short and there will be costs in the near term. All agree that the poorest nations need urgent help. Citizens in places from Haiti to Sudan to Bangladesh have done virtually nothing to pollute the atmosphere, but are bearing the worst impacts of floods and droughts. Richer nations will need to pay billions from now - some call it reparations for damage to the Earth's climate. It will also cost a lot to build the global clean energy infrastructure essential to staunch the carbon from coal and gas power stations, responsible for a large part of global emissions. For the fast emerging economies, such as India, the ideal is to skip the high-carbon growth phase entirely and go straight to renewables and perhaps nuclear power. Again, rich nations will be expected to pick up the tab.

If they don't, there is little incentive to stop building coal-fired plants Gordon Brown and the EU have suggested $100bn a year from 2020 would cover the global climate change bill. But estimates from development groups reach up to four times that amount. Finding a figure that all nations accept is the second key part of the negotiations.

What about carbon trading?

In theory, buying permits to pollute from those who can cut their emissions most cheaply is attractive - maximum bang per buck and a flow of cash to pay for investments. However, from one perspective, this kind of offsetting simply looks like paying poorer people to clear up the mess left by the rich, who can then continue to pollute. Also, if carbon trading is to cut real emissions, the cap set on the market has to be tight and, to date, political imperatives have overridden those of the planet. Nonetheless, carbon trading will remain at the heart of any treaty sealed in Copenhagen, as it was in the Kyoto treaty.

Is stopping deforestation an easier way to cut emission?

About 40% of all the carbon emitted by human activity has come from razing forests. Stopping deforestation is, in principle, cheap and simple: do not cut them down. But paying people - via carbon credits - not to fell trees soon becomes complex. Who really owns the trees? Were they going to be chopped down anyway? And how do you verify what actually happens? Finding a solution to these issues is one of the strongest hopes for the Copenhagen summit.

What are the prospects for a Copenhagen deal?

Negotiations held in September in Barcelona were grim: all now acknowledge that no legal deal is possible in Copenhagen. A miracle is needed for a triumph. President Barack Obama is the one who could deliver it, but it is very unlikely. Most likely is a hopeful fudge in which all parties remain on speaking terms and seal the deal in 2010. A total collapse would leave 20 years' of negotiations in tatters and the world unprotected against the ravages of global warming. It is also unlikely, but not as unlikely as a miracle.

Image: Eric during a break.

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