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.

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.

A group of four scientists has sent a letter to the UN’s IPCC asking them to “admit that there is no observational evidence in measured data going back 22,000 years or even millions of years that CO2 levels (whether from man or nature) have driven or are driving world temperatures.”

This is reprint of the letter sent to the IPCC on Monday, April 14

14 April 2008

Dear Dr. Pachauri and others associated with IPCC

We are writing to you and others associated with the IPCC position – that man’s CO2 is a driver of global warming and climate change – to ask that you now in view of the evidence retract support from the current IPCC position [as in footnote 1] and admit that there is no observational evidence in measured data going back 22,000 years or even millions of years that CO2 levels (whether from man or nature) have driven or are driving world temperatures or climate change.

If you believe there is evidence of the CO2 driver theory in the available data please present a graph of it.

We draw your attention to three observational refutations of the IPCC position (and note there are more). Ice-core data from the ACIA (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment) shows that temperatures have fallen since around 4,000 years ago (the Bronze Age Climate Optimum) while CO2 levels have risen, yet this graphical data was not included in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (Fig. SPM1 Feb07) which graphed the CO2 rise.

More recent data shows that in the opposite sense to IPCC predictions world temperatures have not risen and indeed have fallen over the past 10 years while CO2 levels have risen dramatically.
The up-dated temperature measurements have been released by the NASA’s Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) [1] as well as by the UK’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (Temperature v. 3, variance adjusted - Hadley CRUT3v) [2]. In parallel, readings of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have been released by the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii [3]. They have been combined in graphical form by Joe D’Aleo [4], and are shown below.

These latest temperature readings represent averages of records obtained from standardized meteorological stations from around the planet, located in both urban as well as rural settings. They are augmented by satellite data, now generally accepted as ultimately authoritative, since they have a global footprint and are not easily vulnerable to manipulation nor observer error. What is also clear from the graphs is that average global temperatures have been in stasis for almost a decade, and may now even be falling.

A third important observation is that contrary to the CO2 driver theory, temperatures in the upper troposphere (where most jets fly) have fallen over the past two decades. [Footnote 2]

IPCC policy is already leading to economic and unintended environmental damage. Specifically the policy of burning food - maize as biofuel - has contributed to sharp rises in food prices which are causing great hardship in many countries and is also now leading to increased deforestation in Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Togo, Cambodia, Nigeria, Burundi, Sri Lanka, Benin and Uganda for cultivation of crops [5].

Given the economic devastation that is already happening and which is now widely recognised will continue to flow from this policy, what possible justification can there be for its retention?

We ask you and all those whose names are associated with IPCC policy to accept the scientific observations and renounce current IPCC policy.

Yours sincerely,

Hans Schreuder, Analytical Chemist, mMensa, hans@tech-know.eu

Piers Corbyn, Astrophysicist UK, Dir. WeatherAction.com, piers@weatheraction.com

Dr Don Parkes, Prof. Em. Human Ecology, Australia, dnp@networksmm.com.au

Svend Hendriksen, Nobel Peace Prize 1988 (shared), Greenland, hendriksen@greennet.gl

Cc: IPCC’s yu.izrael@g23.relcom.ru christy@nsstc.uah.edu spencer@nsstc.uah.edu dy.pitman@gmail.com

Tim Yeo MP (Chairman Environmental Audit Committee) Lord Martin Rees (President Royal Society)

Gordon Brown MP David Cameron MP Nick Glegg MP

Footnote 1: Two heavily publicised quotations which emerged from your organisation, respectively in February and December last year, are:

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica) (Figure SPM.4).{2.4} [6] and

The 2007 IPCC report, compiled by several hundred climate scientists, has unequivocally concluded that our climate is warming rapidly, and that we are now at least 90% certain that this is mostly due to human activities. The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now far exceeds the natural range of the past 650,000 years, and it is rising very quickly due to human activity. If this trend is not halted soon, many millions of people will be at risk from extreme events such as heat waves, drought, floods and storms, our coasts and cities will be threatened by rising sea levels, and many ecosystems, plants and animal species will be in serious danger of extinction. (Summary statement, Bali Conference.) [7].

Footnote 2: “Data over the past two decades indicates that temperatures have actually declined in the upper troposphere, even though there has been some minor upward trends in temperature at sea level and lower altitudes. This completely contradicts conventional global warming models. Before we radically rearrange the political economy of the world because some scientists claim anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of climate change, it might be worthwhile for anyone taking a position on the topic to consider whether or not this is indeed “well settled science.” Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT, March 2008.

References:

1. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/msu.html

2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature

3. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

4. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/experts Joseph D’Aleo, Certified Consultant Meteorologist,

Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), Executive Director Icecap.us

5. http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0801.htm

6. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf

7. http://www.climate.unsw.edu.au/bali/

Reuters UK tells us today that, according to a new report, climate change did not cause the devastating floods that hit northern England last August. They were an exceptional event that statistically might occur every 100 to 200 years and not part of any discernible trend, said Terry Marsh and Jamie Hannaford of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

“Long historical flood records show no compelling long term increase in flood magnitude,” Terry Marsh added.

One by one, they fall…

If you follow the climate debate you have probably noticed a slight change. What was formerly referred to as “global warming” is now called “climate change”. Perhaps to safeguard the case against a sudden 180-degree swing. This year’s record cold winter has paralyzed many parts of the world despite the ever-growing amount of greenhouse gases billowing out from India and China.

Even though there is some uneasiness among the alarmists, they can’t just put down arms and acknowledge defeat. Too much money has already been invested. Too many jobs and reputations are on the line. So they add some wrinkles to the story and hope nobody will react. It’s like the story about the boiling frog. By making small gradual adjustments the alarmists hope change will be imperceptible.

Take for example John Tierney in The New York Times. It looks like someone at the NYT has finally caught on to the hoax but won’t admit it. So instead they try to gently slip in the truth.

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead.

All the faithful are of course a little worried. How can this super-cold winter happen? What is wrong with the climate change? Around the world, the modeling teams are sweating to adjust their calculations. At the same time other scientists, such as Ferenc Miskolczi, discover that “greenhouse warming” may be mathematically impossible. In short, the warming models assume that the atmosphere is infinitely thick. If on the other hand, you assume the atmosphere is about 100 km thick (about 65 miles) - which has the big advantage of being true - the greenhouse effect disappears! Oops, no more global warming.

What happens once this farce is finally exposed? Whose heads will roll?