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You had to be in Westminster early this on Tuesday morning to catch the latest thinking on the chances of a deal on climate change at December's Copenhagen Conference.

One key message is emerging - that the most likely outcome is a "framework", but with much of the all-important detail to be fleshed out in the first six months of 2010.

Tuesday's breakfast briefing was hosted by GLOBE International, one of a number of organisations working outside the mainstream political process to coerce the Copenhagen process into shape.

GLOBE was formed 20 years ago, after the Kyoto Protocol was rejected by the US Senate.

The idea was to get parliamentarians talking early by providing a place where policies can be tested, without using up the precious few formal negotiating days of such international summits.

Lord Michael Jay is vice-chair of GLOBE's Commission on Climate Change and Energy Security. He is well qualified to assess how pre-Copenhagen talks are developing as a former head of the Foreign Office, and G8 Sherpa for Tony Blair in 2005/6.

This morning he said that despite the fact that there is no agreement yet on any of Copenhagen's central themes, he does at least see no one country preparing to scupper a deal:

"I do get the sense that everybody wants there to be a deal. That's a pretty fundamental point... there's nobody sitting outside saying we don't care if there isn't an agreement."

Nevertheless, he'd like to see pressure on politicians mount in the next few weeks: "Heads of government focus when they know they have to be in the limelight."

The US-Chinese conversation is seen as crucial to a meaningful global agreement. It's an exaggeration to describe this as a G2 situation, but there's some expectation that President Barack Obama's trip to China next month could seal what is essentially a trade deal between the two countries.

If that goes well, Europe may feel that it has missed a chance to seal such a deal with China itself, and lost a chance to take the lead at Copenhagen.

Better communication with China - now the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter - is seen as vital.

Yet China is something of a conundrum.

In the summer it agreed significant new measures on climate change, but didn't go out of its way to tell the world about it. On the other hand, it seems the rest of the world may have over-interpreted China's position on the so-called 2 degree issue.

Leaders of the world's largest economies have accepted scientific advice that global temperature rises above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2C, to avoid dangerous climate change.

But the Chinese position apparently got garbled in translation. They agreed only that this is what scientists say we should avoid. That's subtly different. And I'm told the reason for this is that the Chinese doubt it's possible for warming to stay below that figure.

Aside from the Chinese, there are other enigmatic players.

Russia is considered a real unknown. It stands to make some gains from climate change - with the possibility of melting permafrost releasing oil and gas reserves, and increasing agricultural productivity in Siberia.

It may not therefore look favourably at a global deal. Japan and India have both made recent, positive shifts, but the ability of the US to go to Copenhagen with a positive proposal still looks unlikely, given its bogged-down state of climate legislation.

And there is still the tricky business of tying down a financial promise by developed countries to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

Those close to the negotiating process concede that money on the scale that's being talked about - some $100bn a year - is not easy to come by these days.

But they describe this as "miniscule" when compared with banking bail outs, and crucial to making Copenhagen a success.