Your life is at steak.

Remember Mr Pachauri? He wanted us to stop eating red meat to save the earth. Meat comes from cows that burp methane. Methane is making the world bake. So meat is bad for the climate.

But now, a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests another solution to the global warming problem. According to the study results, high intakes of red meat may increase the risk of mortality. Thus, red meat can cause early death. And remember, one human less is one human carbon footprint less.

So now, we just need to do some math. What’s better for the planet? To eat methane-burping cows and die prematurely, or to live long enough to make up for all that lost methane by higher CO2-emissions? Any volunteers?

According to a just released poll from the Gallup Organization, 41 percent of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated. That is the highest percentage of “skeptics” since 1998. The exaggerated statistic has been steadily rising since 2005 after a drop from 2004 to 2005.

At the conference in New York, almost everybody was a skeptic. It felt bizarre to hear that the claims of global warming are grossly exaggerated, while at the same time, media frolic on future catastrophes.

The Swedish government has just issued a climate proposition to reduce Sweden’s CO2-emissions by 40 percent. The already high CO2-tax will be raised even further. In 2030, all cars in Sweden are supposed to run on other than gasoline or diesel. Worth knowing is that Sweden’s CO2-emissions make up for 0.2 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, the Swedish government is out there to save the world.

Parallelly with the Heartland conference, there was a big AGW-meeting in Copenhagen. AGW-people signalize that we are facing an even greater disaster than previously anticipated. Greenland is melting fast. The CO2 will stay in the atmosphere forever. The world as we know it is about to end. At the same time, the sun remains quiet, and the temperatures refuse to rise. And no matter how hard I try, I still cannot see the emperor being other than stark naked.

The Goracle and The Skeptical Environmentalist (the Dane Björn Lomborg) just happened to attend the same conference - WSJ’s Eco:nomics. The former Vice President declined as usually to take any questions from reporters, but he was challenged by Lomborg, who thinks the world would be better off spending more money on health and education issues than curbing carbon emissions.

“I don’t mean to corner you, or maybe I do mean to corner you, but would you be willing to have a debate with me on that point?” asked Lomborg.

“I want to be polite to you,” Gore responded. “But, no. The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue,” he said. “It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake,” he added.

There you go. It’s over and done with. Now, get back to work.

James Hansen has promised to join the greatest US civil disobedience ever that will take place at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington D.C on March 2d. The event, known as the Capitol Climate Action (CCA), is said to be the largest mass mobilization on global warming in the country’s history.

“The Capitol Climate Action comes not a moment too soon. For more than thirty years, scientists, environmentalists and people from all walks of life have urged our leaders to take action to stop global warming; and that action has yet to come,” said James Hansen. “The world is waiting for the Obama administration and Congress to lead the way forward on this defining issue of our time. They need to start by getting coal out of Congress.”

The question is, what does NASA say about James Hansen’s deep engagement in climate action?

The snowcapped Mount Asama, northwest of Tokyo, erupted early this morning, sending up a huge plume of smoke and ash. I guess that’s gonna ruin Japan’s emission targets.

According to an article in The Guardian, personal CO2-quotas could soon be introduced in Britain. If the warmists get their way, that is. These personal carbon allowances would set a limit on every individual’s emissions, thus “stimulating” switching to greener products and services.

“Last year, a report by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) effectively dismissed personal carbon trading after consultants estimated it would cost £700m-2bn to set up and £1bn-2bn a year to run, therefore “outweighing by many times” any benefits in changing public behaviour.”

However, this has not stopped the activists from promoting the scheme.

“Some people will adopt greener living because they think it’s the right thing to do, but the bulk of the population need to feel that they are part of a movement,” said Matt Prescott, project director for the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

Last year, the environmental audit committee of MPs said carbon trading “might be the kind of radical measure needed to bring about behaviour change”.

Now, the question is, would everyone be given the same emission limit, or would some animals be more equal than the others?

According to a new study published in Nature Geoscience, the warming observed in Europe during the last 30 years can be explained by less fog, and thus more sunshine reaching the earth.

“Clearer skies due to changing weather patterns and less air pollution have contributed on average to about 5 to 10 percent of the region’s warmer temperatures during this period”, said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. (…) The warming trend due to less fog will ease, however, in the future because when it comes to air pollution governments can only make the skies so clean, he added.

“Climate is not simple and this is a new factor,” Van Oldenborgh said.

So, perhaps it is not the carbon dioxide alone?

Here’s an article about the same study from AFP.

Only a few days left till the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. But while he and his team say reducing the carbon dioxide emissions will be first priority, the inauguration itself will leave a huge carbon footprint on the presidential red carpet.

Using data from the EPA, environmentalist organizations, and various news accounts, the Institute for Liberty estimates more than 500 million pounds of carbon dioxide will be released during the four-day festivities.

The 600 private jets expected to fly visitors to and from the event will produce 25,320,000 pounds of CO2.

Personal vehicles could account for 262,483,200 pounds of CO2.

The horses in the parade will produce more than 400 pounds of CO2.

It would take the average household 57,598 years to produce as much CO2 as Obama’s inauguration. If Barack Obama’s administration is going after small business for its carbon footprint, then maybe they should look at themselves first.

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When Britain is experiencing “arctic cold”, and a great part of Europe is shivering, one can wonder what happened to the global warming. But, don’t despair. According to WMO’s meteorologists, the warming trend is still there, buried deep under all natural variations. Once they are gone, swish!, the heat will explode right in front of our eyes.

What’s funny is that scientists now say that weather extremes are to be expected and “neither phenomenon can be used as a case for or against global warming”.

Still, media indulge in drawing conclusions and predicting the future. Everything can be and is explained by global warming. Climate change everyone’s favorite scapegoat. Hence, humans are made responsible for practically everything. That’s bordering divinity, isn’t it?

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.