Daylight Savings Time. That incredibly inconvenient occurrence each spring and fall (do we go back, or forward?) where suddenly, for a few weeks, everybody in the world is out of sync and mass confusion ensues because not every country, or even every province, changes time on the same date. Computers are off. VCR’s are off (yes, I am of that generation). And the most depressing: that nasty event where all of a sudden you leave your place of work at the end of your day and it’s pitch dark out.

And for what? To save money?

In this cooling climate, it has now been shown that Daylight Savings Time actually COSTS money, since the power consumption is shifted from lights to heating. (I suddenly read more

CTV has an ‘interesting story’ on how 2 greenhouse gases on the rise worry scientists.

The story talks about two greenhouse gases (GHG): methane and nitrogen trifluoride and how they are on the rise. Methane is coming from landfills, natural gas burning, coal mining, etc. and nitrogen trifluoride is used as a cleaning agent during the manufacture of liquid crystal display television and computer monitors and for thin-film solar panels.

The story, as usual for this subject in the media, is riddled with misinformation, omissions and non-information:

Methane is by far the bigger worry. It is considered the No. 2 greenhouse gas based on the amount of warming it causes and the amount in the atmosphere.

1) methane for the amount of greenhouse gas read more

These misconceptions about our climate have got to stop. The Earth’s climate is of such an enormous complexity that we can’t even begin to understand it. Sure, we have some notion of how things work in general, but there are an infinite number of variables that weigh in on the climate and on the weather pattern at any given location. Human activity, if it is a factor, is just ONE out of that infinite number.

And yet, every time a species dies, an ice floe breaks off, or on a windy day, inevitably the Climate Change (formerly: Global Warming) people come out of the woodwork and blame this one particular variable: humans.

Yes, Canadian Tire has been running a new series of ads: buy a blue planet CFL light bulb and “save the world”.

From every sale of these $6 light bulbs, CT donates $2 “towards planting a tree” (only for the first 125000 sold). As I’ve said before, it costs about 7 cts to plant a tree in Ontario (the program is in collaboration with Trees Ontario), so someone either at blue planet, TreeCanada or Trees Ontario is making a profit of $1.93 somewhere (I’m guessing the only commercial one of the bunch: blue planet. I guess the name “green planet” was already taken. What “blue” has to do with “trees”, I don’t know).

I made a button for you to put on your blogs/websites to link to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation nocarbontaxes.com website.

Just copy and paste the following code:

<a href='http://www.nocarbontaxes.com'><img src='http://www.erwingerrits.com/nocarbontaxes.png' border=0></a>

From Lowell Green’s blog comes this story:

On May 12 of this year, one of the world’s great heroes died with little if any notice-let alone fanfare. Only now is this story coming to light.

Irena Sendler is this hero’s name.

She is credited with saving the lives of at least 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto at unbelievable risk to herself. As early as 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland she began providing food and shelter to Jews. Then, as it became apparent the Nazis intended to kill all Jews, she and some helpers created more than 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families escape. Keep in mind that, if caught, not only would she be put to death, but all read more

So I did it. I boycotted the so called “Live Earth” concert extravaganza. I doubt it made a difference. I doubt it made a dent in the huge profit mr. Gore stands to make from this whole endeavor, but at least I can sleep at night. I hope Al can, too. Quick calculations peg the profit of this feast to be in excess of 100 million dollars, excluding CD / DVD sales which will undoubtedly follow shortly. A number of hypocritical artists flying in on private jets, telling us to use less energy, and putting out music of questionable morality and quality, all organized by a man who owns four mansion-style houses with power bills so high, you and I read more

From www.friendsofscience.org comes this section:

MYTH 1:  Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT:  Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (“heat islands”), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (“land use effects”).

There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.

MYTH 2:  The “hockey read more

Thanks to a team of US scientists we have now learned that “dark surfaces absorb sunlight while bright surfaces reflect heat”. (“Clean up your snow to fight global warming, Canada urged”, The Ottawa Citizen, June 11). We found that out the hard way back in the seventies upon returning to the vehicle after a hot day at the beach but I suppose none of these scientists ever owned a VW Rabbit with chocolate brown vinyl seats. They now want us to clean up our snow so it is a little less dark and a bit more white so it’ll help the fight against global warming. Good plan! But why stop there? There are tons of things around us that could read more

I don’t care what my carbon footprint is. I really don’t. And I don’t care about yours, or anybody else’s. “Carbon Footprint” represents nothing more than tons of money for a select group of people. Last year over $30 BILLION dollars of Carbon Credit Trading went to China, and for it, their emissions are going up, and up, and up… There are now numerous “companies” selling Carbon Credits. For $50, $100 or $200 you can buy “Carbon Credits”. Most of these “companies” don’t even suggest to try to let you know how this DONATION will shrink your “carbon footprint”. Most of them have vague terms, like “This purchase will offset your carbon”. Whatever that means. From www.zerofootprint.net when purchasing something called read more