As an antidote to Earth Hour, an organization that calls itself Grassfire.org, is calling on people around the globe to dramatically increase their carbon dioxide emissions and thereby the so-called Carbon Footprint on Carbon Belch Day, June 12.

“It’s time (…) to purge ourselves of the false guilt that Al Gore and the Climate Alarmists have placed on us,” says Grassfire.org President Steve Elliott. “The fact is, reducing my personal carbon output has no impact on the so-called planetary emergency. That’s why for this one special day we are encouraging every American to unleash a historic Carbon Belch that will be symbolic of our release from the absurdity of green extremism.”

On the Carbon Belch Day website, there is a 21-question calculator to help us quantify our personal carbon belch.

“There’s something for everyone in our calculator”, says Elliott. Some of the examples given are hosting a barbie, going for a long drive, taking a plane trip and drinking bottled water.

As a skeptic to AGW I did not take part in the Earth Hour. But neither did I try to exaggerate my energy use in order to counteract this initiative. A Carbon Belch Day, when everyone skeptic of man-made climate change tries to maximize his or hers energy consumption and CO2-emissions seems an exceedingly juvenile idea. I just don’t get why we should regress an adult sandpit just to make a statement. Surely, there must be better and more sound ways to change public opinion.

I am sorry, Grassfire.org, this is just plain stupid.

According to the International Herald Tribune, the EU now urges religious leaders to do more to fight climate change.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that churches, mosques and temples all have a role to play to help save the planet. “Climate change obliges all of us to take urgent action,” Barroso said.

The Archbishop of Church of Sweden, Anders Wejryd, has already made a false start by inviting a select group of internationally recognized opinion-makers from different faiths, cultures and continents to a climate summit to be held in Uppsala, Sweden, in November 2008.

Is this some desperate tactic to get us to finally succumb to the hypothesis of man-made global warming? If science doesn’t work, try faith. Faith does not need any evidence. And there truly is no evidence for AGW.

“It’s Getting Hot in Here” is an activist blog about AGW. In its latest entry, Phil Aroneanu writes:

Remember that number global warming deniers throw around — those 500 scientists that have supposedly signed onto a letter denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change? 500. It’s a number you hear on the nightly news near the end of many stories on climate change, and it’s also a number invented by the Heartland Institute, one of Washington’s most conservative thinktanks.

As it turns out, that the number is a fabrication. Our friends over at DeSmogBlog sent questionnaires to each signer, and received back some interesting quotes.

According to It’s Getting Hot in Here, a large number of the signers were shocked when told that their names were on the “deniers” list. A few scientists are quoted: Dr Ming Cai, Dr. Paul F. Schuster, Dr. David Sugden, Dr. Gregory Cutter.

Now I am sorry to say, but NONE of these names are on the list of those who signed the Manhattan Declaration. You can check for yourselves at the ICSC site.
New addition:

As stated in the 1st comment, the 500 are to be found on a list by Dennis T. Avery from September 2007. Not in the Manhattan Declaration, as I first thought. But since the latter also comprises of 500 + names and is related to Heartland Institute, I drew the wrong conclusion. I am sorry for that.

I will ask Dennis Avery about the document. Meanwhile, may I would only like to bring to your attention that there are more than 500 scientists who doubt in AGW. The Manhattan Declaration endorsers are to be found here. There is also a list by the US Senate, naming more than 400 scientists who do not agree with the AGW-hypothesis.

UK Telegraph reports: “Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged. This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.”

The UK Telegraph article by reporter Charles Clover noted the significant deficiencies in UN climate models: “The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998.”

However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model.

But if natural variations are able to offset the man-made warming, is then our contribution to climate change significant? Also, if nature now (temporarily) cools the Earth, why shouldn’t the recent warming be natural as well?

I think that Al Gore should plan for an alternative occupation.

Marc Morano, a climate skeptic from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee minority staff, says to OneNewsNow that the IPCC is scaling back on its previous dire predictions of catastrophic climate change. With each successive report, there is less cause for alarm than previously thought. Morano points out that in the recent 2007 report, man’s alleged impact on “global warming” was scaled back by 25 percent while ocean-level rise was also reduced.

At the same time on the other side of the Atlantic, Lord Nicholas Stern concludes that the situation is far worse than the assumptions that formed the basis of his Review on the Economics of Climate Change released in October 2006.

We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change. All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought a couple of years ago.

Now how’s that compatible? Don’t the AGW people talk to each other anymore? I though the IPCC and Stern were in consensus?

Do you have an account on Facebook? I had. I deactivated it today, after receiving this little email.

This Saturday we are shutting off all of our lights from 8-9pm!

Why are we doing this?
If all Where I’ve Been users turns off their lights for one hour, we can reduce this year’s carbon footprint by approximately 22,290,910 pounds. That’s equivalent to saving 400,000 trees or preventing 8.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. WOW!!!

What can you do?
Turn off your lights!

Last year 2.2 million people shut off their lights for one hour to show their awareness towards global warming. If we can help to spread the awareness, we can become a part of a great cause that will help to preserve the earth!

Join Where I’ve Been in this Earth-saving crusade by visiting our page and signing up!

Let’s help fight global warming together and keep our Earth a spectacular place to travel!

—
Where I’ve Been
“The travel industry’s leading social networking application.” - Forbes

On the website I feel Al Gore breathing down my neck.

When AGW infiltrates social networking I feel sick.