Tales from the Trail

 If Sarah Palin had her way, President Barack Obama would be staying away from this month’s global climate change talks in Copenhagen and “sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices.”

The summit will hear from scientists like those from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, where recently revealed e-mails showed information that raised questions about climate change was suppressed, writes Palin.

“Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen,” she wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

“He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a ‘deal.’ Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people,” said the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate.

The biggest U.N. climate talks in history are aimed at working out a new pact to curb global warming, replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.  Obama said last week the United States will aim to reduce its carbon emissions by around 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels.

If you watched U.S. morning television or went online early today, you already know the answer to this media riddle. Top stories — a deadly car-bombing in Baghdad, a massive winter storm rolling across the United States and an unannounced flight to Afghanistan by Defense Secretary Robert Gates – took a back seat to a new development in the tabloid tale of Tiger Woods.

The latest turn in the super-golfer’s travails occurred overnight, when a Florida television station reported an unidentified woman was taken by ambulance from Woods’ home to a nearby hospital.

WESH-TV showed footage of a blond woman on a stretcher.

UPDATE: The woman wheeled out of  Woods’ home was identified as his mother-in-law, who was suffering from stomach pains.

Maybe it was just a case of cosmic karma…

Climate skeptics around Washington wondered whether it was really a coincidence that the EPA announced its long-awaited “endangerment finding” — which clears the way for the agency to regulate greenhouse gases as a harmful pollutant –  on the same day that a big international climate change meeting opened in Copenhagen.

It looked like suspicious timing to some in Congress, and in the media. Why now? Could it be that the Obama team wanted to curry favor with the climate crowd a week before the president heads for the big conference in Denmark? Or was it really just one of those things?

At the daily White House press briefing spokesman Robert Gibbs was peppered with questions about the strangely timely timing of the EPA ruling ahead of President Barack Obama’s trip to the climate conference next week.

OK, so President Barack Obama’s lightning jaunt to Copenhagen last week was less than successful. Even with Oprah along, the Cheerleader-in-Chief couldn’t clinch the deal for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics. It happens.

But now that he knows the way to Denmark, might the American president consider arguing the U.S. case at international climate meetings in Copenhagen in December? The White House said he might, if other heads of state showed up.

“Right now you’ve got a meeting that’s set up for a level not at the head of state level,” presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Air Force One last week. “If it got switched, we would certainly look at coming.”