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It's amazing how fast things can move when the big guns are rolled out.

The most powerful gun of all here today appeared to be Hillary Clinton.

I use the word "appeared" deliberately. The substance of isn't very different from what we've heard before - establishing a fund of $100bn per year by 2020, which the US would help work towards.

She didn't even say how much the US was prepared to put in itself.

But her mere appearance here seemed to infuse the summit with... what? Optimism? Purpose? Yes-we-can? I'm not sure what the right term is, but here - after eight years of American non-engagement on the international climate policy scene - was a senior US politician putting forward what other countries wanted to hear on the issue.

The issue of transparency - essentially, letting other countries see that you're curbing emissions as you say you are - has been a big bone of contention between the two countries. I gave it eight out of 10 on the potential deal-breaker scale in my last post.

But here, following Mrs Clinton's announcement, it showed signs of melting away, China's minister He Yafei signalling that Beijing was willing to "engage" on the issue.

How did this emerge? How many times have the two presidents talked about this by phone over the last weeks?

These are a couple of the questions that lie in the murky hinterland of what the Danish hosts have repeatedly insisted is an "open, transparent process".

There are many others. Leaders and their environment ministers and their trusted aides have been hurrying here, scurrying there, Blackberries at the ready, always in a rush, always slightly late - a snowstorm of political leverage.

Heads of state are here, they need to walk away with a piece of paper; so let's do what we need to get one they can sign.

And - barring the chance that one or more countries will stand on principle and decline to join the consensus - .

How many of them will actually understand what it says and what it implies is another matter. What will be in front of them in the morning will probably, we understand, be a tidied-up version of texts that negotiators have been discussing and refining during this fortnight and on and off for the nine preceding months.

Much of it is just a mite technical. And the infamous "square brackets" are likely to be very much in evidence in some important places.

But after this most chaotic of days, it looks very much as though a deal will be done; what a turnaround a few hours' concentrated lobbying can make.

, though, is another matter.

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