GREENIES NOW ATTACKING CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS

If the green campaigners manage to change the habits of the nation, it will be popcorn and fruit, not glittering baubles, dangling from the branches of Christmas trees this year. Traditional tree decorations are all under fire from environmental campaigners attempting to change the colour of Christmas from white to green. Even the fairy will be missing, as she has been condemned as an eco-hazard. Campaigners want the fairies, stars, tinsel and baubles that usually adorn the tree to be replaced with edible decorations that can be given to the birds when Christmas is over. And forget about the annual trip to see grandma. For a really green Christmas the car should be left in the garage and "kith and kin" wished seasons greetings over the internet.

Tree lights, cards and wrapping paper are also targeted as wasteful in the guidance on how to have a green Christmas. Advice contained in the Green Guide to Christmas urges the public to use fewer lights, turn off those that remain during the day and to recycle Christmas cards. Wrapping paper could, the guide suggests, be replaced with tin foil that can be used later in the kitchen, or with old newspapers, magazines or brown paper. Artificial trees ought to be eschewed in favour of the real thing. "Our favourite option is to buy a new fir tree with its roots still attached from an ecologically sustainable source and plant it in your garden after Christmas," says the report issued by Green Guide. "Do this every year until you have a mini forest in your backyard." They recognised that planting rows of trees over the years was not feasible for all householders but said that unwanted firs could be composted in the new year.

Of tree and other decorations, they say: "Many of the decorations available in high street stores have been treated chemically to colour the paper or are made out of nonbiodegradable substances. "Avoid anything which cannot be recycled or has not been made from recycled materials. Use edible tree decorations that can be given to garden birds afterwards, like popcorn and cranberry strings."

Amid growing concerns about global warming being caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the guide urges restraint on energy consumption. "Increasingly there are options for you to both reduce the amount of energy you use and to seek out more sustainable sources," it says. "What really lies at the heart of the issue is the need for us to make a cultural change. We need to stop assuming that we can go on as we are indefinitely."

Muslim leaders joined their Christian counterparts yesterday in criticising politicians and town hall leaders who want to play down Christmas. The Christian Muslim Forum said that right-wing extremism was being fuelled by attempts to remove religion from the festival, such as Birmingham's decision to rename its celebrations Winterval. The forum said: "The desire to secularise religious festivals is offensive to both of our communities. Those who use the fact of religious pluralism as an excuse to de-Christianise British society unthinkingly become recuiting agents for the extreme Right."

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World's forests making a comeback

MANY of the world's forests appear to be making a comeback, and some are more thickly forested now than they were nearly 200 years ago, according to a new study published today. The United States and China had the greatest gain in forests over the last 15 years, while Brazil and Indonesia lost the most, according to the study published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research by an international team took a new look at what makes a forest. Rather than defining it simply as the area covered with trees, the scientists also considered how big the trees were - how many of them were large enough to be considered timber, also known as growing stock - how thickly they grew and how much atmospheric carbon was tied up in them.

Releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere spurs global warming. Trees absorb carbon dioxide. As well, the scientists took into account the amount of organic material, known as biomass, present in the forest. By this standard, the researchers found that despite widespread concerns about deforestation, the number of timber-size trees increased from 1990 to 2005 in 22 of the 50 countries with the most forest.

The reasons to care about healthy forests are legion: forests foster biodiversity, anchor soil, slow erosion, and, when trees are allowed to grow to timber size, contribute to the economy in the form of lumber and paper. In the United States, the transition from deforestation to reforestation took place first in the northeastern state of Connecticut in the early 1900s. Some states, including Texas, made the change only in 2002. "The United States is doing quite well, but we've done quite well for a period of time," said co-author Roger Sedjo of the Washington-based group Resources for the Future. "Our forests have been more or less stable for the last 100 years." Other countries made the transition much earlier: Denmark's shift came in 1810, France in the 1830s, Switzerland in the 1860s, Portugal by 1870, Scotland in the 1920s and European Russia in the 1930s.

Mr Sedjo said the transition often came when countries began to prosper, and were better able to put policies in place that preserved forested land. Almost every country with a per capita gross domestic product over $US4600 has moved to reforestation, the study found.

Why are the forests returning? Co-author Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station noted a set of events that seem to feed on each other. When countries protected forests, they could grow. At the same time, when farmland was preserved, farmers were less likely to encroach on forests, Mr Waggoner said. In Europe, timber imports, energy technology, and economic development that sent country people to the cities also played a role, Mr Waggoner said. As farm technologies improved, farming concentrated on fertile lands and left marginally fertile forests alone, even as urban migration depleted rural populations.

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POMBO DEFEAT IN CALIFORNIA NOT A GREENIE VICTORY

There's a line between political spin and outright deception. Environmental organizations crossed over that line in their post-election analysis of House Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Pombo's re-election defeat. Defenders of Wildlife and the League of Conservation Voters, among other environmental groups, want people to believe that Mr. Pombo's defeat was a referendum on his environmental record. As a Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen noted in a press statement, "Pombo's defeat... serves as notice that extreme anti-environmental positions can be an extreme liability on the campaign trail."

But Mr. Pombo's environmental record wasn't discussed much on the campaign trail. Although Green groups committed millions to defeating Congressman Pombo, they gave environmental policy the metaphoric equivalent of the Heisman (named after the famous Heisman Trophy pose). While Pombo's efforts to fix the Endangered Species Act, overhaul the National Environmental Policy Act, and promote U.S. energy independence by opening part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf to environmentally-responsible oil exploration came up during the campaign, they were largely incidental to the Greens' efforts.

Instead of focusing on these issues, the Greens' commercials and other campaign material focused -- largely unfairly -- on Pombo's ethics. Those fed up with Washington scandals found in Pombo a convenient target and took their frustrations out on him. Other incumbents -- including those who have been staunch allies of the Greens -- were swept out of office for the same reason. Rep. Jim Leach, who received a mere 27 percent rating from the League of Private Property Voters (LPPV) -- kind of the antithesis of the League of Conservation Voters -- lost re-election. So too did Lincoln Chafee (LPPV rating: 33), Nancy Johnson (LPPV rating: 36), Sue Kelly (LPPV rating: 18) and Michael Fitzpatrick (LPPV rating: 36). Are we to believe this was a referendum on their environmental positions, too?

No. Richard Pombo and these other members did not lose on environmental issues. As for the power of environmentalists and their message... The only way environmentalists can win is through issues other than their own. As long as that's true, they're not winners. They're losers.

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Global warming may kill most birds: WWF

We heard recently that most fish were going to die out. Now it's birds. Shades of Paul Ehrlich. That birds are highly mobile and can just shift latitude without trouble seems to be ignored. Birds that are "missing" from a given area will most likely just have moved elsewhere

Unchecked climate change could drive up to 72 per cent of the world's bird species into extinction but the world still has a chance to limit the losses, a new report says. From migratory insect-eaters to tropical honeycreepers and cold water penguins, birds are highly sensitive to changing weather conditions and many are already being affected badly by global warming, the WWF study said. "Birds are the quintessential 'canaries in the coal mine' and are already responding to current levels of climate change," said the report, launched at a United Nations conference in Kenya on ways to slow warming.

"Birds now indicate that global warming has set in motion a powerful chain of effects in ecosystems worldwide," WWF said. "Robust evidence demonstrates that climate change is affecting birds' behaviour - with some migratory birds even failing to migrate at all." In the future, it said, unchecked warming could put large numbers of species at risk, with estimates of extinction rates as high as 72 per cent, "depending on the region, climate scenario and potential for birds to shift to new habitats". It said the "more extreme scenarios" of extinctions could be prevented if tough climate protection targets were enforced and greenhouse gas emissions cut to keep global warming increases to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Already in decline in Europe and the United States, many migratory birds were now missing out on vital food stocks that are appearing earlier and earlier due to global warming, widely blamed by scientists on emissions from burning fossil fuels. In Canada's northern Hudson Bay, the report said, mosquitoes were hatching and reaching peak numbers earlier in the spring, but seabirds breeding there had not adjusted their behaviour. In the Netherlands, it added, a similar mismatch had led to the decline of up to 90 per cent in some populations of pied flycatchers over the last two decades.

Predicted rising temperatures could see Europe's Mediterranean coastal wetlands - critical habitats for migratory birds - completely destroyed by the 2080s, it said. Rising temperatures were also seen having disastrous impacts on non-migratory species, as their habitat ranges shifted. "Many centres of species richness for birds are currently located in protected areas, from which birds may be forced by climatic changes into unprotected zones," the report said. "Island and mountain birds may simply have nowhere to go."

In the US, unabated warming was seen cutting bird species by nearly a third in the eastern Midwest and Great Lakes, while almost three-quarters of rainforest birds in Australia's northeastern Wet Tropics were at risk of being wiped out. "In Europe, the endangered Spanish imperial eagle, currently found mainly in natural reserves and parks, is expected to lose its entire current range," WWF's report said.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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