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.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming. He has just presented the English version of his new book, “Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms.

“I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him, and he’s not too much willing to make such a conversation,” Klaus said. “So I’m ready to do it.”

Vaclav Klaus has long opposed climate alarmism, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

“In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet.”

Read more…

It’s been long argued that environmentalism, and especially climate alarmism, is based more on faith that facts. According to the Greens, Man is a destroyer by nature, and his actions should be strictly controlled. It is often said that the Earth would in fact benefit if mankind was eradicated once and for all. On our quest to transform the nature so that it best suits our dirty needs, we pervert and pollute what’s pure and innocent.

Jonah Goldberg has written an interesting article about the difference between environmentalism and conservationism.

At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. (…) Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past.

Read the entire article on Townhall.com.

The US has Al Gore. UK has James Lovelock. And Australia has Tim Flannery, the author of “The Weather Makers”. Tim Flannery, an expert on global warming, has now revised updated his climate forecast for the world, and it’s much worse than he thought just three years ago.

According to Professor Flannery, climate change is happening so quickly that mankind might need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive. The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth’s stratosphere to keep out the sun’s rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.

“It would change the colour of the sky,” Professor Flannery says in Melbourne’s The Age. “It’s the last resort that we have, it’s the last barrier to a climate collapse.”

Regardless of what happens to future emissions, there is already far too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Simply cutting emissions is not enough. Mankind now had to take greenhouse gases out of the air. “The current burden of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is in fact more than sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change,” Professor Flannery says.

Appropriately enough, next to the article in The Age is a Google ad linking to a free book on prophecy from www.the-end.com. The title is “2008 - God’s Final Witness”. I couldn’t possibly imagine a better product placement.

Our self-declared savior and climate oracle, Albert Gore, continues his quest for planetary salvation at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

On Sunday, he told graduates of Carnegie Mellon University they could become part of the next “hero generation” in American history by solving environmental problems. There had already been two “special generations” of Americans, he said, the one that founded the country and the one that defeated fascism during World War II.

“You, I hope and expect, will be called upon to be part of the third hero generation in American history, by countering the threat of global warming.”

Americans have always loved their heroes, so I guess many attention seeking adolescents will buy into Gore’s arguments. But the truth is - there is no planetary emergency. We don’t need more heroes. At least not in the sense of self-sacrificing environmental defenders.

A great little woman has passed away. A true hero. Irena Sendler, who smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto in World War II, died on Monday in Warsaw. She was 98.

Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city’s welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and all the Jews in Warsaw were forced into a walled-off ghetto. Seeking to save the children, Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. She and her assistants smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory,” Sendler said in 2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.

For her efforts, Irena Sendler was nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Her nomination was supported by the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It might have been the first time a Nobel Prize would be awarded in connection to the Holocaust. However, that didn’t happen.

Instead, the Peace Prize for 2007 went to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“For their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

The following is a statement by IFSW.

“IFSW sends congratulations to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on winning the Nobel Peace Prize 2007. The issue of climate change is affecting all individuals and societies and it is a more than worthy cause to help begin the change in our lifestyle to prevent destruction of our planet. Social workers know from daily experience that this is an immediate and pressing social and personal issue.

‘However IFSW is deeply saddened that the life work of Nobel nominee Irena Sendler, social worker, did not receive formal recognition’, said David N Jones, IFSW President. ‘Irena Sendler and her helpers took personal risks day after day to prevent the destruction of individual lives — the lives of the children of the Warsaw ghetto. This work was done very quietly, without many words and at the risk of their lives. This is so typical of social work, an activity which changes and saves lives but is done out of the glare of publicity and often at personal risk. IFSW recognizes her again and at the same time celebrates the commitment and dedication of thousands of social workers around the world who also bring hope and care to people often living on the edge of despair,’ David N Jones concluded.”

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

So, here we have a woman who put her life on the line every day to save people with whom some might say she had only a country and a God in common, and she was passed over for a prestigious award in favor of a man who invented the Internet and whose goal will make billions miserable for the sake of bad science.

“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference,” said Boerge Brende, former Norwegian Minister of Trade, when congratulating Al Gore on winning the Peace Prize.

Irena Sendler insisted she did nothing special. In an interview she said: “I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality. The term ‘hero’ irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.”

Here’s to you, Irena. I hope you will be remembered by many.

While the death count in Myanmar is still rising, Al Gore takes the opportunity to score.

“We’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”

It was just a matter of time before someone tied the Myanmar tragedy to global warming. And who else could be more appropriate for the job than the Goracle?

Gore claims global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify. Disastrous cyclones have of course been around long before global warming. If Gore bothered to open a history book before his mouth he might have found this list:

Deadliest tropical cyclones in history

Rank. Name / Areas of Largest Loss, Year, Ocean Area, Deaths:
1. Great Bhola Cyclone, Bangladesh 1970 Bay of Bengal 550,000
2. Hooghly River Cyclone, India and Bangladesh 1737 Bay of Bengal 350,000
3. Haiphong Typhoon, Vietnam 1881 West Pacific 300,000
3. Coringa, India 1839 Bay of Bengal 300,000
5. Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh 1584 Bay of Bengal 200,000
6. Great Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh 1876 Bay of Bengal 200,000
7. Chittagong, Bangladesh 1897 Bay of Bengal 175,000
8. Super Typhoon Nina, China 1975 West Pacific 171,000
9. Cyclone 02B, Bangladesh 1991 Bay of Bengal 140,000
10. Great Bombay Cyclone, India 1882 Arabian Sea 100,000
11. Hakata Bay Typhoon, Japan 1281 West Pacific 65,000
12. Calcutta, India 1864 Bay of Bengal 60,000
13. Swatlow, China 1922 West Pacific 60,000
14. Barisal, Bangladesh 1822 Bay of Bengal 50,000
15. Sunderbans coast, Bangladesh 1699 Bay of Bengal 50,000
16. Bengal Cyclone, Calcutta, India 1942 Bay of Bengal 40,000
17. Canton, China 1862 West Pacific 37,000
18. Backerganj (Barisal), Bangladesh 1767 Bay of Bengal 30,000
19. Barisal, Bangladesh 1831 Bay of Bengal 22,000
20. Great Hurricane, Lesser Antilles Islands 1780 Atlantic 22,000

Nota bene: Almost all of these happened before our CO2-emissions skyrocketed.

Moreover, less than a month ago, the hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled that hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries. His novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.

Monsieur Gore should freshen up his knowledge. And if he really cares about the Burmese people, he could go there to help instead of exploiting their tragedy to sell more copies of his new book.

Many environmentalists seem to long back to the times long gone, when nature ruled and humans lived in awe of everything. They argue that nature has an intrinsic value and that all created things are equal and should be equally respected.

But the truth is that over 99 percent of all species that have ever existed on Earth have perished because of nonhuman factors. Nature doesn’t care about biodiversity. It us, humans, who value biodiversity because it reflects the state of the world we currently live in. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Without us, the beauty of nature would not exist.

Our environment includes all of our surroundings. We arrange these surroundings to improve the environment and thus make it more useful to ourselves. Our resources expand over time as a result of our increasing knowledge.

Human life has never been easy. In the Middle Ages, we lived in constant fear. Starved, filthy and wearing the same clothes day in and day out, we dwelled in dirt plagued by insects. Using cow dung as cooking fuel could hardly be considered healthy.

The modern 18th century man lived in cold, overcrowded houses and threw garbage out on the street to rotten. Rats were spreading diseases. The plague and cholera were killing thousands. At the end of the 18th century, as agriculture became more efficient, feeding the family got easier. But the diet was still meager and unhealthy. Due to lack of good storage facilities, food often turned sour or rotten.

The 19th century was a dream in comparison. But still, food options were limited and fruits only available in summer time. Food poisoning was common. Children died or became invalids following illnesses now preventable by vaccination. We didn’t know what was going on in the world. In order to listen to some music, we had to go to a concert – if we could afford it.

In the rich modern world, we have eradicated extreme poverty and hunger. Everyone has access to a rich and varied diet thanks to mechanized agriculture, fertilizers, pesticides, genetic engineering, better storage facilities and advanced logistics.

We have plumbing and garbage trucks. Home appliances help save valuable time and allow us more leisure. Material richness does not necessarily create happiness, but if we are to be happy at all, we need a longer and healthier life with plenty of choices. We don’t serve nature, nature serves us.

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.