Gore repeatedly labels carbon dioxide (CO2) as “global warming pollution” when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen.  CO2 is plant food, an ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a lifeless, frozen ice ball.  The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a major contributor to global warming is just that – an unproven hypothesis, against which evidence is increasingly mounting. 

In fact, the supposedly convincing cause and effect relationship between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales.  University of Ottawa climate researcher, Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the two are not linked at all.  Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don’t precede, and therefore don’t cause, warming.  Rather they follow temperature rise - by as much as 800 years.  Even in the past century, the correlation is poor – the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980 when human emissions of CO2 were rising at the fastest rate in our history.

Similarly, the fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore.  While humanity’s 3 billions tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the atmosphere’s CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually less than half of 1% of the atmosphere’s total CO2 content (750-830 GT).  The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth’s oceans and land. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT – making 3 GT seem hardly worth mentioning. 

But Gore persists, labeling future CO2 rise as “deeply unethical” and lectures the audience that “Each one of us is a cause of global warming.”  Not satisfied with simply warning of human-induced killer heat waves - events in Europe this past year were “like a nature hike through the Book of Revelations”, he says – he then uses high tech special effects to show how human-caused climate changes are causing more hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, infectious diseases, insect plagues, glacial retreats, coral die-outs, and the flooding of small island nations due to sea level rise caused by the melting of the polar caps.  One is left wondering if Gore thinks nature is responsible for anything.

Scientists who actually work in these fields flatly contradict Gore.  Take his allegations that extreme weather (EW) events will increase in frequency and severity as the world warms and that this is already happening.  Former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg (Canada) and now Chairman of the newly launched Natural Resources Stewardship Project, Dr. Timothy Ball, notes, “The theories that Gore supports indicate the greatest warming will be in Polar Regions.  Therefore the temperature contrast with warmer regions - the driver of extreme weather - will lessen and, with it, storm potential will lessen.”

This is exactly what Former Environment Canada research scientist and EW specialist Dr. Madhav Khandekar found.  His studies show that there has been no increase in EW events in Canada in the last 25 years. Furthermore, he sees no indication that such events will increase over the next 25 years. “In fact some EW events such as winter blizzards have definitely declined”, say Khandekar.  “Prairie droughts have been occurring for hundreds of years.  The 13th and 16th century saw some of the severest and longest droughts ever on Canadian/American Prairies.” Like many other researchers, Khandekar is convinced that EW is not increasing globally either.  

On hurricanes, Gore implies that new records are being set as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions.  Besides clumsy errors in the presentation of the facts (Katrina did not get “stronger and stronger and stronger” as it came over the Gulf of Mexico; rather, it was category 5 over the ocean and was downgraded to category 3 when it made a landfall), Gore fails to note that the only region to show an increase in hurricanes in recent years is the North Atlantic.  Hurricane specialist Dr. Tad Murty, former senior research scientist, Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and now adjunct professor of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, points out, “In all other six ocean basins, where tropical cyclones occur, there is either a flat or a downward trend.” Murty lists 1900, 1926 and 1935 as the years in which the most intense hurricanes were recorded in the US.  In fact, Dr. Max Mayfield, Director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami has stated that global warming has nothing to do with the recent increase in hurricane frequency in the North Atlantic. Murty concludes, “The feeling among many meteorologists is that it has to do with the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is now in the positive phase and will continue for another decade or so.”

In their open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister in April, 61 of the world’s leading experts modestly expressed their understanding of the science: “The study of global climate change is an "emerging science," one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system.” It seems that liberal arts graduate Al Gore, political champion of the Kyoto Protocol, thinks he knows better.

Institut Pasteur (Paris) Professor Paul Reiter seemed to sum up the sentiments of many experts when he labeled the film “pure, mind-bending propag

Gore repeatedly labels carbon dioxide (CO2) as “global warming pollution” when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen.  CO2 is plant food, an ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a lifeless, frozen ice ball.  The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a major contributor to global warming is just that – an unproven hypothesis, against which evidence is increasingly mounting. 

In fact, the supposedly convincing cause and effect relationship between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales.  University of Ottawa climate researcher, Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the two are not linked at all.  Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don’t precede, and therefore don’t cause, warming.  Rather they follow temperature rise - by as much as 800 years.  Even in the past century, the correlation is poor – the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980 when human emissions of CO2 were rising at the fastest rate in our history.

Similarly, the fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore.  While humanity’s 3 billions tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the atmosphere’s CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually less than half of 1% of the atmosphere’s total CO2 content (750-830 GT).  The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth’s oceans and land. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT – making 3 GT seem hardly worth mentioning. 

But Gore persists, labeling future CO2 rise as “deeply unethical” and lectures the audience that “Each one of us is a cause of global warming.”  Not satisfied with simply warning of human-induced killer heat waves - events in Europe this past year were “like a nature hike through the Book of Revelations”, he says – he then uses high tech special effects to show how human-caused climate changes are causing more hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, infectious diseases, insect plagues, glacial retreats, coral die-outs, and the flooding of small island nations due to sea level rise caused by the melting of the polar caps.  One is left wondering if Gore thinks nature is responsible for anything.

Scientists who actually work in these fields flatly contradict Gore.  Take his allegations that extreme weather (EW) events will increase in frequency and severity as the world warms and that this is already happening.  Former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg (Canada) and now Chairman of the newly launched Natural Resources Stewardship Project, Dr. Timothy Ball, notes, “The theories that Gore supports indicate the greatest warming will be in Polar Regions.  Therefore the temperature contrast with warmer regions - the driver of extreme weather - will lessen and, with it, storm potential will lessen.”

This is exactly what Former Environment Canada research scientist and EW specialist Dr. Madhav Khandekar found.  His studies show that there has been no increase in EW events in Canada in the last 25 years. Furthermore, he sees no indication that such events will increase over the next 25 years. “In fact some EW events such as winter blizzards have definitely declined”, say Khandekar.  “Prairie droughts have been occurring for hundreds of years.  The 13th and 16th century saw some of the severest and longest droughts ever on Canadian/American Prairies.” Like many other researchers, Khandekar is convinced that EW is not increasing globally either.  

On hurricanes, Gore implies that new records are being set as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions.  Besides clumsy errors in the presentation of the facts (Katrina did not get “stronger and stronger and stronger” as it came over the Gulf of Mexico; rather, it was category 5 over the ocean and was downgraded to category 3 when it made a landfall), Gore fails to note that the only region to show an increase in hurricanes in recent years is the North Atlantic.  Hurricane specialist Dr. Tad Murty, former senior research scientist, Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and now adjunct professor of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, points out, “In all other six ocean basins, where tropical cyclones occur, there is either a flat or a downward trend.” Murty lists 1900, 1926 and 1935 as the years in which the most intense hurricanes were recorded in the US.  In fact, Dr. Max Mayfield, Director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami has stated that global warming has nothing to do with the recent increase in hurricane frequency in the North Atlantic. Murty concludes, “The feeling among many meteorologists is that it has to do with the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is now in the positive phase and will continue for another decade or so.”

In their open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister in April, 61 of the world’s leading experts modestly expressed their understanding of the science: “The study of global climate change is an "emerging science," one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system.” It seems that liberal arts graduate Al Gore, political champion of the Kyoto Protocol, thinks he knows better.

Institut Pasteur (Paris) Professor Paul Reiter seemed to sum up the sentiments of many experts when he labeled the film “pure, mind-bending propag

Dear friends,

It is not that often that we get a chance to make a real difference, with no monetary cost to ourselves and at very little effort.

Petitions are an excellent way of achieving a difference, they need very little effort to sign, usually around 20 seconds. Yet the sad fact is they usually attract a small amount of the people contacted to take the time to sign them.

We have a petition, it involves hundreds of animals being butchered alive every day.

Hundreds of turtles suffer every day while they are cut up alive, yet only a small percentage of the people that are aware of this take the effort to try and change it.

Please take the time to help ensure that these animals meet a humane ending to their lives, it will only take 20 seconds of your life, it is the end of theirs.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I wish you all a relaxing weekend.

Here is the Petition link:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/518761759

Kind regards, Paul.

More People + More Polution = Less Health

seems pretty clear to me ...no matter how people try to justify our dilemma, we have one and unless we start treating the earth as it was meant to be treated, we won't have a planet to sustain our life. 

I would like to see people take on the responsibility of their own actions. I would also like to take a trip out to Lake Erie and not see massive smog clouds above my city. It would also be nice to see babies born without cancer( animal or human). Regardless of what humans decide to do, our planet will be fine after we are all extinct. 

Think of it as a chemo therapy treatment for earth. She will rid herself of us before we have sucked the life out of her. Then she will be healthy again.       

...you can too!

President Bush is embarrassing you and your country in front of the entire planet.

In preparation for next week's G8 summit in Germany, conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed a responsible declaration regarding global warming: prevent an increase in global temperature of more than 2 degrees Celsius.

All participants agreed - except President George W. Bush.

I sent an apology to the leaders of the other nations on behalf of the United States. I thought you might want to do the same thing. If so, check out the link below:

http://action.foe.org/dia/organizationsORG/foe/content.jsp?content_KEY=2748

• Tell Congress to Repower America
• Make Your Power Company Carbon-Free!
• Take Action to Repower America
• We Can’t Afford to Wait for a Clean Energy Economy
• Tell 5 Friends: Climate change likely to bring more severe weather
• Sign the petition for a global treaty on climate change

View all Actions »

Hi all!!

The University of California, San Diego student organization: VEG (Vegetarian Environmentalist Group) is happy to present an online petition which aims to reduce the livestock industry via means of removal of governmental subsidies for livestock farmers as well as implementation of tax for livestock products for their detrimental external social burden on the environment. If you are still unfamiliar with the relationship between livestock production and the environment, I have listed the key facts below. Here is our petition link:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/livestock-production-reduction-for-the-environment


Please support us and help us spread the word! This is definitely an attempt at a baby toward in the right direction!
Thank you!

---UCSD VEG
http://ucsdveg.blogspot.com/

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: SUMMARY OF LIVESTOCK'S IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT

(SOURCE: 2006 UNITED NATIONS FAO REPORT, LIVESTOCK'S LONG SHADOW)
Our current livestock industry is responsible for emitting 37% of all human-induced Methane, 65% of all human-induced Nitrous Oxide, 9% of all human-induced Carbon Dioxide, and 64% of human-induced Ammonia. The Carbon Dioxide equivalent of livestock industry emissions is 18%, which is greater than all transportation combined (transportation CO2 equivalent is 12%). So, we need to decrease the livestock industry along with turning to alternative transportation systems (like biking!!). We cannot just pin global warming on one single source and go from there, all aspects need to adapt to the current climate crisis.

In addition to the greenhouse gas emissions, livestock current needs 36% of the world grain and 74% of the world soy to sustain its industry. If you think about it, this is not sustainable at all in the long run. It is definitely not an efficient usage of world crop supplies.

Now let’s talk water. Water is essential for survival. Did you know that California currently imports 100% of its clean water supply? Yes... and we are not increasing our world water supply. Yes, there are technologies being researched to desaltize the ocean waters, but think about the cost of that. It’s not a quick and easy solution. The best solution would be for everyone to be frugal. While major medias are telling us to conserve water during showers and toothbrushing, they are leaving out a major part of water usage.

According to the Stockholm International Water Institute, 20% of all world water supply goes to industries, 10% of all water goes to households, and 70% of all water goes to producing food. These statistics awaken a lot of people because if you think about how much water we use in industries and households (it’s A LOT), many folds more is going to agriculture. Now get this: within the agricultural business (which uses 70% of all our clean water), 1 POUND OF LETTUCE takes 23 gallons of water to produce, 1 POUND OF WHEAT takes 25 gallons of water, 1 POUND OF APPLES take 49 gallons of water, 1 POUND OF CHICKEN takes 815 gallons of water, 1 POUND OF PORK takes 1,630 gallons of water, and 1 POUND OF BEEF takes 5,214 gallons of water. (You can do some research online to see how to have defined these water usage values according to pounds) So now the question is, one plate of dinner will fill most of us up (some go for seconds, thirds, but anyways..). If you fill that one plate with meat, that’s 6000 gallons of water or more. If you fill that one plate up with rice and veggies (this can be tasty faux meat too!), it takes less than 100 gallons of water. Please, be frugal and responsible. Imagine a planet with no more water.

Here are just some additional costs of livestock production. Did you know that livestock farming land takes up 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of world's ice-free terrestrial surface? Yup. And for the forest lovers (we should all love forests, they are the lungs of our planet), 70% of the Amazon rainforest is currently being occupied by pastures; feedcrops occupy a large sector of the remaining 30%.

Everyone talks about saving energy now with new bulbs, solar power, etc. Well why not talk about food, too. The livestock sector requires 16 times more fossil fuel energy than other sectors of agriculture. Moreover, livestock is increasingly being fed with grains and cereals that could have been consumed by humans, converting only up to 33% of its nutrients for our consumption.

Lastly (for my purposes), the U.S. livestock sector alone produces 900 million tons of manure annually. Immense lagoons used to store waste are known to heavily degrade the surrounding air and water, creating dead zones within our clean bodies of water. Besides harming our precious marine life, it’s nice to know that we are surrounded by 80% of water of this planet. So if our ocean dies, we probably don’t have much of a chance for survival either.

All in all, it’s good that we are more aware of global warming and finally (most people) recognize it as partially (if not mostly) human caused. Now, besides being frugal, using a reusable bag, riding a bike or taking the bus, changing lightbulbs, and saving shower time, please also change your diet. It really makes a huge impact, even though it seems like you’re just intaking a piece of meat, that piece of meat came from loads of environmental damage (as well as suffering!). Inaction is inexcusable. If you’re a non-vegetarian, go vegetarian. If you’re already a vegetarian, go vegan. If you’re already a vegan... go organic Of course, if you can go straight to organic vegan that is the best for the environment in terms of personal contribution. Be Veg, Be Green, Save the Planet. (doubtful? do research!)