The once-a-year, feel-fuzzy-in-your-tummy Happy Hour is coming up again. Yes, let everyone in the world join hands and do our part in saving the world in this annual, all-out love-fest: Earth Hour is here! Turning off some lights for 60 minutes once a year is going to save our planet. Mayors of major cities across the world are happily jumping onto the bandwagon and turning off all city lights for an hour on March 28 (and leave all the lights on all night for the other 364.96 days a year).

So what are “we” doing all this for? “To Save The Earth”. To save the Earth? From what? Too much light? Turning off your lights for one hour really doesn’t do anything, except to highlight (or: lowlight)  the level of stupidity of people across the globe. Hey everybody, look at the 1 billion idiots! No, apparently, this hour long sit-in-the-dark thing is nothing more than a symbolic gesture. Whoop-de-do. That’ll teach all them energy wasters: we’ll sit here in the dark, while they are basking in the wasteful light. And that somehow convinces the energy-wasters to better their ways. This endeavor must be the worst idea since someone said ‘yeah, let’s take this suspiciously large wooden horse into Troy, statues are all the rage this season’. h/t

I’ve got news for you: I paid for the energy I use, it belongs to me, and I can do with it as I please: I can use it running my vacuum, I can waste it, throw it out the window, whatever. It’s mine. You’re gonna tell me how to wisely use my energy? Get lost! Go punch holes into walls with David Suzuki: I gotta say, I’ll tell you where I’d like to stick that caulking gun…

If it’s just a gesture, then don’t bother: gestures don’t do anything. Actions do. You can gesture all you want, until you actually do something nothing will change. First off, I don’t understand what exactly you’re even trying to change. We’re supposed to use less energy? Why? Einstein said there’s an infinite amount of energy in the universe, so there hardly seems to be a reason to conserve it. That’s almost, like, trying to conserve water, one of the most common elements on this planet. Why are we not conserving dirt? Or grass? There’s lots of that… And the best thing is, we’ll probably get a nice satellite picture showing us how many people participated in this nonsense, with nobody realizing that manufacturing and shooting up this satellite and taking pictures and sending them back to earth probably used up more energy than this whole stupidity is trying to save.

Here’s a thought for all you participants:

If you are so concerned about saving the planet, why would you wait until a once a year gimmick and turn off the lights for one hour, and not turn off your lights right now and leave them off? Oh, I see, you’re willing to give up something to save the Earth, but only for one hour. Not for any longer than that. After the hour, the lights go back on. We’ve got to be comfortable, after all. Oh, and we want to watch Survivor.

YOU’RE ALL HYPOCRITES! ALL OF YOU!

How does buying ‘offsets’ save the environment?

The press is complaining that the Conservatives are the only national party that didn’t buy any offsets for the flying around they are going to do during this election campaign. That makes them an environmentally unfriendly party.

I am concerned that ‘buying offsets’ is now seen as being “environmentally friendly”, and if you don’t buy them, you’re some sort of bastard who doesn’t care this planet is going to waste. Nobody has of yet been able to explain to me how buying offsets is cleaning up the environment. You’re still flying around the country. You’re still driving that car. You just feel better about it. I have written before in my blog, the majority of these carbon credit offset selling companies will plant a vague number of trees for this money. And that is only found out after prying: go visit any number of Carbon Credit companies, and you’ll be hard pressed to find what they are actually going to do with the money. They use vague terms like “We need to put back the trees that have been cut down” and “Change human behaviour” or “Offset: what you can’t reduce today with certified offsets “. After prying, for some companies it comes out to be about 20,000 trees per $1,000,000 worth of credits. It may sound like a large number of trees, but 20,000 trees is what one good tree planter can plant in about 10 days. And those trees would have been planted anyway (there are about 600,000,000 trees planted in Canada every year by the logging industry), but these 20,000 have found a sponsor other than the logging business: you. The cost of planting 20,000 trees is about $10,000. That makes a profit of $990,000. For the OFFSET SELLER. So now we have 20,000 trees planted, $990,000 profit for the offset seller, and a certificate in your hand that you may now fly across the country guilt-free. Where in this story did the air get cleaned up? Oh, people will say, the planted trees will absorb the CO2 and thereby offsetting your pollution. Well, 1) Those trees would have been planted anyway, and 2) When that tree dies, it’ll burn, or rot, releasing all its CO2 right back into the atmosphere. You haven’t eliminated your CO2, you paid to have it stored in a tree for about 80 years after which it’ll go right back where it came from.

And all this is assuming CO2 is a bad polluting gas. Which it isn’t.

There is no science behind these offsets: it is the brain child of Mr. Kyoto himself, Maurice Strong, in a scheme to funnel large bundles of cash to China, a country he and Jean Chretien (who signed on so eagerly to the Kyoto protocol) had heavily invested in just before all this started. All this influx of cash made the Chinese economy boom, instantly making all their investors filthy rich. Small town cheap became nouveau riche pretty quick, on the backs of us all.

I am happy the Conservatives aren’t falling for this offsetting carbon credit crap. Good for you. Don’t let anybody tell you different.

Still No Sun Spots: The Ice Age Cometh.

Jackie today was big on platitudes, small on substance. That seems to be the NDP’s matra. He’s going to “take on” big oil, and “watch your backs”. He’s also going to “oversee” gas prices. As usual, no talk on exactly HOW he’s going to bring down gas prices, HOW he’s going to stop big oil. Oh, but he’s going to MONITOR them. Thanks. That’ll save us. You know, Jackie, just wishing something doesn’t make it so. You gotta have a plan.

Dion, in the mean time, wants to reverse the new immigration rules he so readily abstained from defeating just this spring. It seems he now disagrees with the fact we’re fast tracking more skilled immigrants that can actually do some good work in this country. I guess he would rather see doctors drive taxi cabs than perform operations. He also said he would apologize in the House of Commons for some other thing our government did over a century ago. Don’t you think we’ve apologized enough already? We weren’t even alive when those things happened. We’re not responsible for them, so why must we apologize? Let’s just say this: we appologize for anything and everything we did up until now. Now, let’s go on with running the country.

As usual, Danny Williams of Newfoundland has to tell his constituents how to vote, as if they they don’t have a mind of their own. For some reason, he doesn’t like the Conservatives, even though the Conservatives plan is clearly the best for his province. How does he think a Liberal Carbon tax would work in his oil rich economy? The Green carbon tax is even worse, and Layton’s Cap and Trade scheme can’t be good news for oil money either. The Conservatives are the only national party that wouldn’t tax his oil income. Sure, you miss out on some equalization payments, but you get to keep all that big fat oil money! Maybe it’s time Newfoundland starts to give something back to this country.

Gilles was, once again, in Quebec, so who cares.

Where is Elizabeth May? Has anyone seen her? Elizabeth May has not been seen or heard from for two days. This is her big thank you to the people who voiced their opinions so loudly that two party leaders and a consortium of old men changed their minds. “Thanks for getting me in, folks! Now I’m going to disappear. See ya later!”

You know, I went to the CBC.ca website to pick up on some election news bits. I couldn’t find any. I wondered why that mouthpiece of the Liberal party has NOTHING on the election on its front page. Then it dawned on me: there is nothing good to report about the Liberal campaign. They’re way down in the polls. They are not coming out with new policies, although the Green Shaft plan is changing so much every day, you may call it a new plan every time it is mentioned. In order to get to the ‘election subsite’ you have to click on “Federal Election” in the “Recent Searches” box! I thought the election is the biggest story in this country, but the CBC website lists “Blue Jay Baseball” as its main headliner, followed closely by “Saturday Afternoon at the Opera”. Nice to see our tax dollars at work over there.

News flash for Jack: CO2 is plant food. It is good for the environment

Layton, once again followed in Harper’s footsteps by visiting cities where Harper had just been the day before. He criticized Harper and Dion’s environmental plans, saying they would not clean up the air, while offering his own “Cap and Trade” scheme, which, of course, will not clean up the air either, because 1) a trade scheme will just move the emissions from one company to another, and 2) Carbon Dioxide is NOT A POLLUTANT.

Dion vowed, when elected. he would ban all “military assault weapons” and “take them off our streets”. Someone ought to tell him there are no military assault weapons on our streets because they are banned outside the military. They’ve been banned since, like, forever. Day 4 and still no points for Dion.

Once again, the Conservatives’ campaign got overshadowed by stupidity. An aide has been suspended for making insensitive remarks about the father of a fallen soldier who criticized Harper’s fixed withdrawal date for the Afghan mission. Harper dealt with it swiftly and justly. However, these mistakes have got to stop! I know we’re still in the early days here, but geez, can we get some focus on policy?

Liz White, of the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party, yes, that one, said May’s inclusion in the debate is great news for the fringe parties. She said all of her 72 supporters would like to see her up on the debate podium as well. And why stop there? Let’s invite all party leaders, including a dozen or so independents. Let’s see if we can have a debate with 30 something people up there.

I am happy Hypocrisy 1 is up and flying, so Dion can leave the province. It was starting to feel like house arrest. Like he was being punished by the other leaders. Yay, five days in and the Liberal campaign is off!

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 would have to remortgage our house to pay them off. All watched by and listened to by a reported 2 billion people. Most of them genuinely believe that the human race is putting out too much CO2 and is destroying our climate. Eventhough ice-core records show that CO2 levels rise AFTER the temperature on earth goes up, it is, therefore, a RESULT of temperature change, not a cause. And the sad thing is, when temperatures beging to cool down soon (and they will, for the Sun has ended its current high activity cycle, and will head towards a cooler cycle), all Global Warming proponants will say “See? We started to curb our emissions and now we’re getting cooler!”. If the cooling will take a bit longer to set on, they will say “See? We were right, we’re warming up!” So whatever happens to the climate in the future, the Global Warming Fear Mongers will always be right: they have found the perfect climate loophole. It is the perfect business opportunity: you make money regardless of which of the two possible scenarios happen. Al Gore has clued in. I take it back: Al’s not the idiot, we are. For following him.

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 stick” graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature increase for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.

FACT:  Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17^th Century the “average global temperature” has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.

The “hockey stick”, a poster boy of both the UN’s IPCC and Canada’s Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.

MYTH 3:  Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

FACT:  Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO₂ content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO₂ is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO₂ levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth’s oceans expel more CO₂ as a result.

MYTH 4:  CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.

FACT:  Greenhouse gases form about 3 % of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO₂, CH₄, Ozone and N₂O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO₂ constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as “greenhouse agents” than water vapour and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and – in the end – are thought to be responsible for 60% of the “Greenhouse effect”.

Those attributing climate change to CO₂ rarely mention this important fact.
MYTH 5:  Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.

FACT:  Computer models can be made to “verify” anything by changing some of the 5 million input parameters or any of a multitude of negative and positive feedbacks in the program used.. They do not “prove” anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover.

MYTH 6:  The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.

FACT:  In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1)     “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute  the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2)     “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”

To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 causes significant global warming. 

MYTH 7:  CO2 is a pollutant.

FACT:  This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is.  CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included  CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means to politically control it.

MYTH 8: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.

FACT:   There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale.  Regional variations may occur. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting.

MYTH 9:  Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.

FACT:  Glaciers have been  receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier’s health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature.

MYTH 10:  The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.

FACT:  The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica. 

Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.

> better than > ???

Why environmentalists insist dumping ton after ton of potentially toxic materials into a big hole in the ground is somehow better for the environment than using plasma gasification to produce heat and electricity is beyond me. You would think, since it reduces CO2 output due to less reliance on coal-burning plants, the environmentalists would welcome such a plan. The City of Ottawa, in partnership with the Plasco Energy Group (http://www.plascoenergygroup.com) are about two weeks away from starting up their new Plasma Gasification plant to convert MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) into Plasma gas to drive turbines to generate electricity. Their unique process has NO EMISSIONS.

For every tonne of solid waste they generate 150 kg of slag which can be used for paving, 1400 KwH of electricity, and 5 kg of saleable sulfur. Nothing else.

It is this, versus a 10 story deep hole in the ground with God knows how many tons of toxic waste just eating through the liner every day seeping into groundwater, and polluting the air with bad odours and methane. What seems less polluting to you?

I am in a conundrum: I loathe hypocrisy, yet I may have to do something that is so hypocritical it makes me sick. I am ecstatic that my favourite band, Genesis, is going to tour again, not for the money, but for the fun (yeah, right). Got my ticket for Ottawa, dished out my 200 dollars (where’s the fun?), everything is honky-dory. However, now I learn Genesis is going to open, with a 20 minute set, the London Live Earth concert in July. If you know me at all, you’ll know that puts me in a very difficult position: I would like to watch it on TV, record it, and play it over and over again, but since it is organized by Al Gore, Cameron Diaz, and whoever else wants to jump on the bandwagon, and concerns the notion that humans are responsible for the incredibly minute 0.6 degree warming of the earth in the past 125 years, I’ll have to boycot. But I don’t know if I can.

Live Eath is billed as: The concerts for a climate in crisis, 7 Concerts across 7 countries in 1 day. First of all, I didn’t know the climate is really in crisis. I mean, a rise in temperature of 0.6 degrees in 125 years is not exactly what I would call a ‘crisis’. Apparently, forests will be on fire within the next 20 years. How hot does it have to be for a tree to spontaneously combust? 3000 degrees? At the current rate of temperature rise, that makes…. 3000 divided by 0.6 times 125… 625,000 years. Whoop-de-doo. I’d better run and turn off a light or two.

And last but not least: 7 concerts, with about 20 bands each, about 80,000 people each watching it live. Recording it, transmitting it. Billions of TV’s displaying it. How much are these concerts contributing in CO2? 140 bands flying in private jets, 560,000 people driving and idling to the venues. High power consumption for the music, recording, beaming up to satellite, beaming down, running cable stations, TV’s etc. etc. I think the combined CO2 emission number will closely resemble Al Gore’s energy consumption at his four mansions, it may even eclipse it. Oh, but that’s all right: he’ll plant some trees, and send some money to China. Thanks, that’ll save us.

You know what? I will boycot it. There. And I am extremely disappointed my favourite band fell into the Global Warming scare trap. Shame on you.

The fact that most people in the world today believe that air pollution causes Global Warming drives me absolutely crazy. The fact that these people embrace the Kyoto accord to deal with these problems makes even less sense: Kyoto deals almost exclusively with the reduction of CO2 gas in the atmosphere.  CO2 is neither a pollutant, nor the cause of Global Warming. CO2 is a colourless, ordourless gas that is the ‘oxygen’ to all the plants and trees in the world. Remember your grade 9 biology class? Photosynthesis? It is the lifeblood of the tropical rainforests we all tried so hard to save during the late seventies and early eighties.

Let’s play with some numbers shall we?

CO2 (a greenhouse gas) makes up about 3% of the world’s greenhouse gases. About 95% is water vapour, the other 2% a mixture of various gases. Of this 3%, humans are responsible for generating about 6%. Through agriculture, and reforestation, humans are also responsible for REDUCING CO2 by about 3%, making the net human contribution 3%. That makes human source CO2 3% of 3% of all greenhouse gases. Canada is responsible for less than 3% of all human generated CO2, making our share less than 3% of 3% of 3%, or 0.000027%. Kyoto requires us to scale back our emissions by 6%, or 6% of less than 3% of 3% of 3%, or 0.00000167%. We are going to spend billions of dollars to reduce the total concentration of CO2 in the global greenhouse gas concentrations by less than 0.00000167%.

Even if we all stopped driving our cars, stopped heating our houses, and stopped breathing, since exhaling puts CO2 in our atmosphere, and we achieved a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions, we’d only reduce the global CO2 levels in the total greenhouse gases by less than 0.000027%.

Hardly seems worth it, does it?

More reading:
http://www.friendsofscience.org
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/