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…

A new scientific report says humans are eliminating about 1 percent of all animal species each year. The census of wildlife says that more than one in four species have disappeared in the past 35 years. Pollution, the expansion of farming and cities, and over-hunting are said to have caused the most rapid decline since the extinction of the dinosaurs. WWF warns that climate change can add increasingly to the wildlife woes over the next three decades.

Extinction numbers are easy to find. Environmental organizations are more than eager to present them in order to train us into obedience. It is much more of a challenge to find how many formerly unknown species that have been discovered in the past decades. There are numerous reports on the Internet about new species being discovered all over the world, but so far I have not seen any compilation of the results.

The golden-mantled tree kangaroo was just one of dozens of species discovered in late 2005 by a team of Indonesian, Australian, and US scientists in New Guinea. In 2007, scientists find 24 new species in Surinam, including a fluorescent purple toad and 12 kinds of dung beetles. Dozens of fish, shrimp and coral species, including two new types of a shark that walks on its fins, have been discovered in waters off New Guinea in the South Pacific.

A chance discovery by a teenage spelunker has revealed the existence of eight new animal species in an underground cave in Israel, including the first terrestrial animal with no known relative found only in a cave. WWF scientists have announced the discovery of 11 new animal and plant species in a remote area in central Vietnam. More than 50 new species of animals and plants that have never been seen before have been discovered in a “Lost World” on the island of Borneo in just 18 months.

Species go extinct all the time. New species are constantly being discovered. How can we tell how many percent fall victim to human domination of the planet?

Also, in the discussion on loss of species, there is a general confusion on what happens locally and globally. If a specific species disappear on a local scene, it does not mean it is also extinct on a worldwide scale. In the Netherlands for example, many (local) species have disappeared, due to urbanization, industrialization and road building. But net, there is a gain. Due to the building of the Donau Rhine channel, over the last 10 years, some four hundred (foreign) species from the Balkan, have settled in the country (according to Dr Arthur Rorsch).

No doubt, habitats are changing under the influence of human activity. But extinction?

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 month has passed since the “Gang of Four” sent their letter to the IPCC demanding they reverse their view on global warming. Piers Corbyn, one of the four, said on May 11th: “We have as yet received no response from the IPCC which is astounding since the matter is of such great importance. I do not believe they can give an adequate response.”

Why am I not suprised?

The Guardian tells us today that world CO2 levels have reached a record high. Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 ppm, the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14 ppm – the fourth year in the past six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5 ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

But now comes the big question. With the CO2 levels soaring, why won’t the temperatures rise? There is something rotten with this global warming…

CNN reports that The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is installing a new IBM supercomputer in order to accelerate research into climate change. The supercomputer, known as a Power 575 Hydro-Cluster, is the first in a highly energy-efficient class of machines to be shipped anywhere in the world, with a peak speed of more than 76 teraflops. Does that mean you can call it a “huge flop”?

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.