Real Talk!

This past Thursday, our local newspaper reported that Canada has been leading the way in participants for the worldwide effort to reduce consumption of electricity. There has been a call to register at www.earthhour.org to pledge your support and agree to shut off your lights between 8 and 9 p.m. of your own local time on March 29, 2008.

Earth Hour was first conceived by the World Wildlife Fund, last year, in Sydney, Australia and in this year has grown to include over 200 cities around the globe.

Everyone is invited to join in the celebration; meant as a demonstration of how much you care about the planet and are willing to work towards change.

If you sign up at the website, you are to receive useful tools and tips on how to reduce consumption of our valuable resources.

When I visited the site this morning, 288468 people had registered.

I realize that there is still some contention about “climate change” and “global warming” and the role that human beings play in these issues. Some believe it is a natural process and others feel that people and their industries have had a disastrous impact on our planet.

Last year, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported that 4 out of 5 Canadians have experienced the effects of the change, first hand. Warnings about global consequences have become increasingly dramatic.

Some scientists, skeptical that humans have had a major role in the shift, met in New York, earlier this month. The conference, called the “Nongovernmental International Panel of Climate Change (NIPCC)”, presented science from some of world's leading climatologists and scientists in related fields, along with world renowned economists, and policy analysts. The report of their findings was titled “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate.”

The gist of the NIPCC’s climate findings: (1) natural forces cause most of climate change. (2) The human contribution is not significant. (3) Solar-activity changes are the main cause of climate change.

I read one comment from a military meteorologist (Elmer Corby) who has been in the industry some 23 years. He called Al Gore and his ilk “corrupt, pathological liars” and suggested they were like “ants looking at a raindrop and screaming flood.”

Whatever your take on the whole thing, I figure it can't hurt to turn out the lights for an hour!