DOHA, Qatar -- It wasn't supposed to be that kind of a U.N. climate conference.

The kind in which diplomats and ministers blow past their Friday evening deal-closing deadline, squabble into the wee hours of the morning and then stumble into the next afternoon, continuing to haggle as the clock swings perilously close to evening again.

Come 2 a.m. Saturday, activists lingered by a set of couches, unsure of whether to pack it in. At 3 a.m., a group of Mexican delegates debated whether climate change or arms control treaty talks were uglier and decided it was too narrow to call.

Just before 4 a.m., European Commissioner for Climate Change Connie Hedegaard, looking incongruously chipper, shrugged off the hour.

"This is how it goes," the veteran climate change negotiator said. More than 16 hours later, after closing a deal with Poland and other Eastern European states on carbon credits and winning a protracted standoff with Russia, Hedegaard would call the process a "nightmare."

Double overtime has become the new normal for participants in the annual U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) conferences. But to what end? As diplomats and activists streamed out of the Qatar National Convention Center late Saturday, many wondered whether the maddening process would ever accomplish its stated goal of averting catastrophic global warming.

"We came here, talked a lot, we made promises again and said we would talk again. We did not take any substantive steps. We see very little action yet," said Harjeet Singh of ActionAid in New Delhi.

Relatively few came for the 'circus'

Often described as a circus, this year's climate change convention was practically a run-of-the-mill convention. In the weeks leading up to Doha, environmental groups tried to generate excitement, but many of the events attracted just one or two journalists. The United Nations accredited about 17,000 people -- compared with more than 40,000 in Copenhagen, Denmark -- but less than half reportedly showed up.

Meanwhile, Qatar's strict laws against nonsanctioned protests put the kibosh on the activists dressed up as polar bears and melting ice sculptures. Even the ubiquitous Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association activists with their free vegan sandwiches were nowhere to be found.

More ominously, a group of Arab youth activists who unfurled a banner urging the Qatari hosts to show more leadership in the talks were rounded up by police and deported.

By the second Friday of the two-week talks, the posturing and arguing had boiled down to a few core issues. Developed countries wanted to close out as quickly as possible an old track of negotiations that was embedded in policies calling for industrialized countries to take the lead in cutting emissions and pay developing countries to take action.

They were eager to move toward the new promised land of 2020 in which all countries take legal obligations and money is provided to help vulnerable nations -- but not as a quid pro quo.

Developing countries, meanwhile, saw Doha as their last chance to make the countries that caused climate change and, they say, increasing weather-related damage to their nations pay up and ratchet up their emissions targets now. Waiting until 2020, they argued, was as good as a death knell for vulnerable nations.

"Nobody's getting out of here tonight," said Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, as diplomats lined up at the convention center's airline counter Friday night to change flights.

Throughout the conference, diplomats had grumbled about weak Qatari conference leadership. Conference of the Parties President Abdullah Bin Hamad al-Attiyah, many said, tended to veer off on tangents about his years studying in the United States or his cooking skills when asked to discuss his strategy. Friday afternoon, ministers took things into their own hands, calling one another into a series of discussions.

We conclude at dawn, or do we?

Just before 4 a.m., Al-Attiyah called a break in the talks and scheduled a plenary session at 7:30 that morning. As dejected diplomats dragged themselves back to hotels for a quick shower and perhaps an hour of sleep, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern and Deputy Envoy Jonathan Pershing continued in deep discussion with the U.S. delegation.

When dawn broke, the fault lines remained. There was new text but few new deals.

"The time has come for the final push," Al-Attiyah said. "As much as I would like to keep you here in Doha, we do not have additional time at our disposal."

Shortly thereafter, word leaked out that the Europeans had managed to come to an internal agreement with Poland limiting surplus carbon credits from the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol.

Cheering could be heard from the E.U. delegation office, only to be overshadowed by worry as Russia -- which is sitting on billions of dollars' worth of unused credits it hopes to offload -- announced it was unhappy with the deal.

"We have a Russia problem," Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said. "This is the moment we have to wait. It's like a chess game."

'Please help me'

By 3 p.m. Saturday, Al-Attiyah was practically begging for resolution.

"Please help me," he said. "I'd love to stay with you. We've become a big family. Even my children and grandchildren I forget how they look." But, he said, "I don't want to open the Pandora box."

Another full three hours passed as European countries rushed to file absent documentation and Russia threatened to blow up the talks.

"This is one of the challenges of the climate change conferences," Hedegaard said later. "The process has become so complex. It's very difficult for even big delegations to have the full sense of what's going on."

When the deal finally went through at 6:45 p.m., it went like lightning. Al-Attiyah returned to the podium and gaveled in each section of a lengthy package, recognizing no objections despite the fact that Russian negotiator Oleg Shamanov was calling for attention, banging his nameplate on his desk.

Shamanov complained, Al-Attiyah promised to note the objections, and then it was over.

He was hardly the only one to leave disappointed. But in the end, as the attendees filed out, a meandering process had once again won out over ensuring the safety of the planet.

"This is my day job, and I'm running out of abilities to defend this process," said Nick Mabey, founding director of the U.K. environmental think tank E3G.

Reporter Jean Chemnick contributed.