Michael Szabo Copenhagen, Dec 20 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)—The enormous white globe that hung in Copenhagen's Bella Centre, the site of the world's largest ever summit on climate change, could be an unintended yet chilling sign of things to come. An observant attendee made it clear by scribbling on the giant model of the earth that its designers forgot to paint on small, low-lying Pacific island nations like Tuvalu and the Cook Islands. Antarctica was also missing from the colossal sphere. Scientists say rising global temperatures are melting the world's polar icecaps and this will lead to higher sea levels by the end of the century. Still, as island nations pleaded for major economies like China and the United States to agree a new climate agreement over the 12-day talks, was this an embarrassing mistake on the part of the organisers? The UN climate talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement on Saturday when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that falls so short of the conference's original goals that many observers have termed the talks a failure. A long road lies ahead. The accord -- weaker than a legally binding treaty and weaker even than the 'political' deal many had foreseen -- left much to the imagination. It set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times -- seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas. But it failed to say how this would be achieved. It held out the prospect of $100 billion (62 billion pounds) in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations but did not specify precisely where this money would come from. And it pushed key decisions such as emissions cuts into the future. Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November 2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what they failed to achieve in Copenhagen -- a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. But there are no guarantees.