Review of the DVD Apocalypse? No! The Scientific Reasons Why 'Global Warming' is NOT a Global Crisis

Christopher Monckton's 2007 presentation to the Cambridge (University) Union

Monckton begins by saying that he is going to present a perspective on climate change science that the audience will have not seen in the media, from politicians or in reports on the science. Like Al Gore, Monckton is not a scientist and he has as much right as Al Gore to talk about climate change. His scientific approach is one of enquiry rather than advocacy. He talks about correct scientific method and quotes T. H. Huxley on scepticism being the improver of knowledge: "The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."

He then explains that the debate is not about whether we can freely pollute the planet without care for our fellow creatures, or their or our future, or whether we are adding greenhouse gases to atmosphere, because we are, or that adding greenhouse gases doesn't enhance temperature - because it does.

Monckton turns his attention to climate alarmism about what might happen if the planet becomes a little warmer, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Monckton points out that Sir John Houghton, the first IPCC chairman, said, "unless we announce disasters no one will listen." Al Gore is quoted as saying "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is." The science is being exaggerated to make people listen and there is political bias regardless of scientific truth. Hurricane expert Chris Landsea, resigned from the IPCC in 2005, saying, "I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized."

Monckton shows the error that he found in the supposedly highly scrutinised 2007 IPCC report on the melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, where there are four wrong decimal points causing the figures to be in error by a factor of 10. See more here on page 14.

The IPCC is a `corporation' that puts itself first. It therefore has an interest in maintaining its existence and status. In order to demonstrate IPCC political bias, Monckton showa 3 statements that were in the 1995 IPCC draft report:

1. None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gasses.

2. No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of observed of observed climate change] to anthropogenic causes.

3. Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.

Politicians 'got at it' and took out the above from the final report which stated: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."

The Consensus is questioned. Monckton suggests that the BBC has abandoned objectivity and then quotes a literature study of 539 papers published between 2004 and 2007, using the search term' global climate change,' where only one paper claimed catastrophe, but offered no evidence.

Hansen's 1988 temperature predictions are examined. Scenario `C' was based on CO2 in the atmosphere being stabilised, but the actual temperature trend has tracked this despite the non-stabilisation of CO2.

So are today's temperatures unprecedented? Monckton talks about the Medieval Warm Period. The UN IPCC report of 1990 showed a clear Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and a Little Ice Age (LIA), but the IPCC 2001 report showed the `Hockey Stick' graph 6 times in colour with no MWP. So how was this achieved? Data showing a hockey stick shape from Sheep Mountain in California was given 390 times the weighting of the data Mayberry Slough in Arizona, which had a MWP.

The tree ring data set that included MWP was left out, despite the researchers saying that it was included in the publications of 1998 and 1999. It was actually in a computer file marked `censored data.' Monckton asserted that researchers should make both data and methods available to be checked by other scientists. The US National Academy of Sciences panel described the hockey stick as plausible at best, and the `validation skill' not significantly different from zero.

Monckton then provides some of the evidence for a warm MWP: Data from 6000 bore holes give a rough idea that there was a warm MWP, Stalagmites from the Austria Alps and Southern Africa, Sediments from Sombre lake, Signy Island in Maritime Antarctica, and Lake Huguangyan, Leechow, South China. Formanifera from the NorthWestern Arabian Sea, Oman. The Sargasso sea, North Island NZ, sediment core from Spanish Pyrenees, pollen profile from Northern Fennoscandia, 3 examples of glacial variations from Swiss Alps. Canada, British Columbia, Azores, two from coastal Peru, the summit of Greenland ice sheet. He then shows a graphic of a timescale sensitive reconstructed Northern Hemisphere temperature showing the MWP and the LIA. Next he shows a Sediment-based treeline for the species `Zelkova Carpinifolia' demonstrating the Holocene Climate Optimum, the Roman Warm Period, and the MWP. He presents a slide of a 1340AD tree stump in California, well above today's tree-line.

Monckton points out that warmer is better - most species live in the tropics and hardly any at the poles. He concludes that, because there was a MWP up to 3C warmer than today:

1. Today's temperatures are not exceptional

2. Nature caused medieval climate warming

3. There was no medieval climate cataclysm

4. Nature may be causing most warming today

5. Climate catastrophe is not looming or likely

He then moves on to talk about natural causes of climate change where his attention inevitably turns to the sun. First he mentions William Herschel who in 1801 noticed an inverse correlation between the number of sunspots in the 11-year cycle and the price of grain. He then quotes Solanki (2004) who claimed that the past 70 years of solar activity exceptional and similar to 8000 years ago. During the past 11400 years the sun has spent only 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all earlier higher periods of activity were shorter than the current episode. The Sun has been more active than at any time since the last ice age

Monckton then shows a graph for 1880 - 1990 of CO2 and temperature mismatch, pointing out that there is not a good correlation. A graph of solar cycle length plotted against temperature is a better match - Solanki/Fligg (1999), as is the Central England Temperature (CET) series plotted against sunspot number, for1750 to 2000.

The next slide is from Neff et al (2001), showing Monsoon activity tracking solar activity, followed by a graph of solar activity versus temperature for the Arctic (Soon, 2004).

So, how much influence can the sun have? A slide of the CET, the world's longest instrumental temperature series, shows a 2.2C rise in just 35 years, 1700 to 1735, suggesting that the sun was the cause of the recovery from the Maunder Minimum. Monckton concedes that this is evidence from one place and one temperature series, but it is evidence nevertheless. He then shows a slide of the rising trend in solar activity from 1715 attributed to NASA's David Hathaway, followed by conclusions from the International Astronomical Union Symposium in 2004:

1. Solar changes cause most climate change

2. Solar cycles are 11, 80, and 200 years long

3. The Sun caused today's global warming

4. Today's warming is normal, not unusual

5. Today's global warming will end soon

So how do we distinguish natural from anthropogenic warming? CO2 and temperature is not a good match as we have already seen.

A good match is temperature anomalies for 1979 to 2001 and tropical outgoing long wave radiation. Why? The sun is incident on the tropics - the azimuth angle is 90 degrees - so most heating is in the tropics - the atmospheric transport engine takes heat away from tropics to northern latitudes and to a lesser extent southern latitudes. So, the tropics are the place to look for a `hot spot' of anthropogenic warming. Monckton shows the IPCC 2007 modelled climate forcings for anthropogenic greenhouse gasses, aerosols, ozone, plus solar and volcanic. If they are combined into a single graph, there should be an anthropogenic fingerprint or hot spot in the tropics. However, the fingerprint is absent from the actual troposphere data, or shows only a small signal at best, suggesting a small effect of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Monckton then discusses some of reasons why computer models are wrong and can't provide proof of anthropogenic global warming, whereas a mathematical model of the pythagorous theorem can provide absolute proof. Physical sciences with inadequate data cannot provide proof. He quotes Syun-Ichi Akasofu as saying, "No supercomputer, no matter how powerful, is able to prove definitively a simplistic hypothesis that says the greenhouse effect is responsible for warming."

Next, Monckton discusses the Stefan-Boltzmann equation and the huge range of temperature changes published in the literature for a doubling of CO2. Monckton's own calculation, based on IPCC 2007, is 1.6C for a doubling of CO2, but the IPCC says 3C. He points out that Svante Arrhenius calculated a 4C to 8C temperature change for a doubling of CO2 in 1896, but in 1906, he had the Stefan-Boltzmann equation available to him and re-calculated everything to give 1.6C.

With the wide range of temperature predictions in mind, Monckton looks at the constraints on CO2, which mean that it is not a major factor in climate: In 1750, CO2 was 0.03% by volume in the atmosphere; in 2007 it is about 0.04%, a change of +0.01%. The IPCC has reduced CO2 forcing by one-fifth in 12 years (1995 to 2007), yet it has kept climate sensitivity at 3C.

Monckton shows a graph of CO2 v temperature over 600,000 years where CO2 and temperature often go in opposite directions, suggesting CO2 is not the main driver of global temperature. The IPCC admits that CO2 went up to about 6000 ppmv in the Cambrian period and the global average temperature was 22C. He claims CO2 residency time is about 5 to 10 years from various publications. The IPCC claim 50 to 200 years based on "the time required for the atmosphere to adjust to a future equilibrium state if emissions change abruptly," (IPCC 1990). Monckton considers that the IPCC definition has nothing to do with a genuine residency time.

Monckton's conclusions on the constraints on CO2 as a cause of global temperature change are:

1. There is very little additional CO2 in the air

2. CO2 has few principal absorption bands

3. At the surface, water vapour dominates CO2

4. CO2's effect diminishes logarithmically

5. CO2 is not potent, only 1/23 the effect of CH4

6. There's no tropical mid-troposphere hot spot

7. CO2's atmospheric residency time is short

8. CO2 correlates very poorly with temperature

He then moves on to some of the '35 errors' in Al Gore's `An Inconvenient Truth,' which I won't dwell on as they are explained in detail here. Monckton then discusses CO2 emissions saying that China is the one to watch; if the UK reduced emissions to zero, then they would be made up by just the increase in Chinese emissions in less than 2 years. Apply that to Europe, US and Canada, and then China plus India would make up the difference in their own emissions growth in 10 to 15 years. Shutting down the western economy will therefore not make any difference.

He presents a graphic of child mortality up to the age of 5 per thousand born, against CO2 emissions demonstrates that the higher the CO2 emissions per capita, the lower the child mortality. Population increase is faster in developing countries - denying developing CO2 emissions will likely increase their populations.

Monckton then attacks what he calls the murderous `Precautionary Principle' as an expedience used by environmentalist lobby to push policies that would otherwise be unacceptable. He looks at two previous global scares: one real, and one bogus where the policies were wrong because of the effect of pressure groups.

The first is HIV, where he says the correct policy would have been to isolate cases in order to prevent spread of the disease, but this was regarded as totally unacceptable. The result: 25 million died, with 40 million infected worldwide. 0.7% infected in the US, 1% is the epidemic threshold. 7.5% infected south of the Sahara. The second is Malaria, where the 3 letters `DDT' are absent from IPCC ramblings in its latest report. Before DDT was `banned,' there were 50,000 deaths per year from Malaria. After the ban, there were 1,000,000 deaths per year. As a result, excess deaths are put at between 30 and 50 million. On 15th September 2006, the DDT ban was lifted by WHO. Dr Arata Kochi or WHO said, "Quite often in this field politics comes first and science second. We must take a position based on the science and the data."

Monckton then addresses the claim by Gore and others that there are `moral issues' in the climate change debate. He agrees that there are - exaggeration, alarmism, false claims, false claims of consensus, to allow insertion of false claims or data into reports by politicians, to exalt computer models over data, lack of objectivity, inflicting energy starvation, false denial of past temperatures higher than today's, claiming extreme weather events are caused by humans, and so on, are all moral issues. He concludes with reference to the human race, "We must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. We have failed them and failed them before. We must not fail again."

After the applause dies down, there is time for a number of good questions, which Monckton handles well. In my view the presentation was well prepared, well referenced and eloquently delivered, with emotional pleas over the genuine moral issues. Christopher Monckton comes across as a sincere man who is persuaded by objective science. The cause of climate realists has been enhanced by his involvement in the climate change debate, and this DVD is recommended viewing for those seeking an antidote to the daily dose of climate alarmism in the media, or an alternative scientific perspective.

The DVD is available here.

Source




IPCC Avoids Scientific Method And Should Be Disbanded

Dr Vincent Gray, a member of the UN IPCC Expert Reviewers Panel since its inception, has written to Professor David Henderson, to support the latter's call for a review of the IPCC and its procedures. Dr Gray wrote:

Thank you for your latest article containing your analysis of the limitations of the IPCC and your belief that it is possible for it to be reformed. I have been an "Expert Reviewer" for the IPCC right from the start and I have submitted a very large number of comments on their drafts. It has recently been revealed that I submitted 1,898 comments on the Final Draft of the current Report.

Over the period I have made an intensive study of the data and procedures used by IPCC contributors throughout their whole study range. I have a large library of reprints, books and comments and have published many comments of my own in published papers, a book, and in my occasional newsletter, the current number being 157.

I began with a belief in scientific ethics, that scientists would answer queries honestly, that scientific argument would take place purely on the basis of facts, logic and established scientific and mathematical principles. Right from the beginning I have had difficulty with this procedure. Penetrating questions often ended without any answer. Comments on the IPCC drafts were rejected without explanation, and attempts to pursue the matter were frustrated indefinitely.

Over the years, as I have learned more about the data and procedures of the IPCC I have found increasing opposition by them to providing explanations, until I have been forced to the conclusion that for significant parts of the work of the IPCC, the data collection and scientific methods employed are unsound. Resistance to all efforts to try and discuss or rectify these problems has convinced me that normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but that this practice is endemic, and was part of the organisation from the very beginning. I therefore consider that the IPCC is fundamentally corrupt. The only "reform" I could envisage, would be its abolition.

I wonder whether I could summarize briefly some of the reasons why the scientific procedures followed by the IPCC are fundamentally unsound. Some of you may have received more detail if you received my recent NZClimate Truth Newsletters (see under "Links" on this website).

The two main "scientific" claims of the IPCC are the claim that "the globe is warming" and "Increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible". Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed. To start with the "global warming" claim. It is based on a graph showing that "mean annual global temperature" has been increasing. This claim fails from two fundamental facts

1. No average temperature of any part of the earth's surface, over any period, has ever been made. How can you derive a "global average" when you do not even have a single "local" average? What they actually use is the procedure used from 1850, which is to make one measurement a day at the weather station from a maximum/minimum thermometer. The mean of these two is taken to be the average. No statistician could agree that a plausible average can be obtained this way. The potential bias is more than the claimed "global warming.

2. The sample is grossly unrepresentative of the earth's surface, mostly near to towns. No statistician could accept an "average" based on such a poor sample. It cannot possibly be "corrected" It is of interest that frantic efforts to "correct" for these uncorrectable errors have produced mean temperature records for the USA and China which show no overall "warming" at all. If they were able to "correct" the rest, the same result is likely

And, then after all, there has been no "global warming", however measured, for eight years, and this year is all set to be cooling. As a result it is now politically incorrect to speak of "global warming". The buzzword is "Climate Change" which is still blamed on the non-existent "warming"

The other flagship set of data promoted by the IPCC are the figures showing the increase in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. They have manipulated the data in such a way to persuade us (including most scientists) that this concentration is constant throughout the atmosphere. In order to do this, they refrain from publishing any results which they do not like, and they have suppressed no less than 90,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide made in the last 150 years. Some of these were made by Nobel Prizewinners and all were published in the best scientific journals. Ernst Beck has published on the net all the actual papers.

My main complaint with the IPCC is in the methods used to "evaluate" computer models. Proper "validation" of models should involve proved evidence that they are capable of future prediction within the range required, and to a satisfactory level of accuracy. Without this procedure, no self-respecting computer engineer would dare to make use of a model for prediction. No computer climate model has ever been tested in this way, so none should be used for prediction.

They sort of accept this by never permitting the use of the term "prediction", only "projection". But they then go ahead predicting anyway. There is a basic logical principle that a correlation, however convincing, is not proof of causation. Most scientists pay at least lip service to this principle, but its widespread lack of acceptance by the general public have led to IPCC to explore it as one of their methods of "evaluating" models.

The models are so full of inaccurately known parameters and equations that it is comparatively easy to "fudge" an approximate fit to the few climate sequences that might respond. This sort of evidence is the main feature of most of the current promotional lectures.

The most elaborate of all their "evaluation" techniques is far more dubious. Since they have failed to show that any models are actually capable of prediction, they have decided to "evaluate" them by asking the opinions of those who originate them, people with a financial interest in their success. This has become so complex that many have failed to notice that it has no scientific basis, but is just an assembly of the "gut feelings" of self-styled "experts". It has been developed to a complex web of "likelihoods", all of which are assigned fake "probability" levels.

By drawing attention to these obvious facts I have now found myself persona non grata with most of my local professional associations, Surely, I am questioning the integrity of these award-winning scientific leaders of the local science establishment. When you get down to it, that is what is involved.

I somehow understood that the threshold had been passed when I viewed "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Yes, we have to face it. The whole process is a swindle, The IPCC from the beginning was given the licence to use whatever methods would be necessary to provide "evidence" that carbon dioxide increases are harming the climate, even if this involves manipulation of dubious data and using peoples' opinions instead of science to "prove" their case.

The disappearance of the IPCC in disgrace is not only desirable but inevitable. The reason is, that the world will slowly realise that the "predictions" emanating from the IPCC will not happen. The absence of any "global warming" for the past eight years is just the beginning. Sooner or later all of us will come to realise that this organisation, and the thinking behind it, is phony. Unfortunately severe economic damage is likely to be done by its influence before that happens. --

Source





Another Global Temp Index Dives in Jan08

The global surface temperature anomaly data from the UK Hadley Climate Research Unit has just been released, and it shows a significant drop in the global temperature anomaly in January 2008, to just 0.034øC, just slightly above zero. This caps a full year of temperature drop from HadCRUT's January 2007 value of 0.632øC



The deltaT for the year then is 0.595øC which is in line with other respected global temperature metrics that I have reported on in the past two weeks. RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year.

We are in an extended solar minimum, we have a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to a cold state, and we are seeing arctic ice extents setting new records and rebounding from the summer melt.While weather is defined as such variability, the fact that so many things are in agreement on a global scale in such a short time span of one year should give us pause.

Source




Stay poor

It's bad enough when European and American politicians desperate to "do something" about global warming appear willing to sacrifice economic growth in their own countries. Now they are ready forsake the world's poorest citizens, too.

For 15 years, developing countries like China and India have refused to join the crusade against climate change because the solution to global warming -- reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- hurts their number one priority, economic growth. That is, poor countries chose the fight against poverty over the fight against climate change.

Until a few months ago, developed countries formally respected developing nations' "right to develop," as it's known in diplomat-speak. The first major international treaty to address global warming, the Kyoto Protocol, exempted developing countries altogether from binding emissions reductions.

This arrangement worked as long as rich countries ignored their promises to fix the climate. Developed countries first agreed to undertake emissions reductions at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. They haven't, and global emissions have continued to rise. The Kyoto Protocol has been another failure, which is why Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says that it "divided the world into two groups, those that would have no targets, and those that would meet no targets."

RECENTLY, HOWEVER, politicians in Europe and America have indicated that they intend to get serious about climate change. Now that costly emissions reductions are at hand, leaders in developed countries have decided that they want to orchestrate a global response to global warming, irrespective of the human consequences -- whether developing nations like it or not.

To force developing countries to reduce their carbon footprint, politicians in developed countries have embraced a novel, if sinister, solution: global warming tariffs. By taxing the carbon footprint of imports, the United States and the European Union's member states would export emissions regulations to developing countries.

Support for a carbon tariff is said to be strong among EU bureaucrats in Brussels. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised to "defend the principle of a carbon compensation mechanism (i.e., a carbon tariff) at the EU's borders with regard to countries that don't put in place rules for reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

In the U.S., import duties are a part of the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill now making its way through the Senate. The Bush administration has given mixed signals. A month ago, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters that the administration had "been dismayed at a variety of suggestions where we see climate or the environment being used as an excuse to close markets."

A week later, however, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, C. Boyden Gray, gave European journalists a different perspective. According to the Bureau of National Affairs, Ambassador Gray said that the EU and America would "have no choice" but to enact carbon tariffs if developing countries did not voluntarily commit to emissions reductions.

Clearly, carbon tariff policies are gaining political traction in rich countries. That should worry advocates for the world's poorest citizens, because free trade is the surest ticket out of poverty.

By facilitating the unfettered flow of finance, goods and services across national boundaries, trade liberalization allows developing countries to use their comparative advantage -- abundant, inexpensive labor -- to produce goods and services for the global marketplace at competitive prices. According to the World Bank, free trade policies enacted in the 1980s caused a shift in manufacturing and service activities from rich to poor countries that delivered more than 100 million people out of poverty during the 1990s.

Carbon tariffs are designed to mitigate climate change, but they would also mitigate wealth creation. Rich-country politicians need to acknowledge the profound human toll of global warming protectionism before they try to force developing countries into an international scheme to fight climate change.

Source




Taking the ash out of Ash Wednesday

An Australian writer flagellates the green-leaning C of E bishops who want to turn Lent into 40 days and 40 nights of conserving energy.

Ash Wednesday was something special when I was a child. You exited church with a huge carbon smut on your forehead. Woe betide the coward who furtively wiped it off. Our nun teacher, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the Penguin of The Blues Brothers fame, told us that those ashes were a poke in the eye of a godless world.

So when I read that the Church of England (CofE) bishops of London and Liverpool, Dr Richard Chartres and James Jones, have declared a carbon-free Lent, I could just imagine the Penguin unsheathing her wooden yardstick to xylophone their knuckles. `How dare those brazen things take the ash out of Ash Wednesday?' she would be muttering.

Amen to that. Just how will a carbon-free Lent make Britain more Christian? Even to an unbeliever, the bishops' initiative seems just a bit daft. As the non plus ultra of Lenten self-denial, participants in the Carbon Fast are to remove one prominent light bulb and live without it for 40 excruciating days. On Easter, they will screw in a low-energy bulb, thus saving 60kg of carbon (1).

The symbolism of this is perfect, if inadvertent. Why the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead should be symbolised by Easter Bunnies and chocolate Easter eggs has never been clear to me. But replacing high-energy light bulbs with dimmer low-energy ones seems a perfect image of the slow extinction of Christianity in England.

Instead of fasting for Lent, the bishops are urging their faithful to reduce their carbon footprint a fraction each day. Instead of giving up snacking on chocolates, they are told to avoid using plastic bags. Instead of giving up lolly-gobbling, they are told to unplug their mobile phone charger. Instead of giving up alcohol, they are told to check the house for draughts (2).

Along with God, the bishops seem to have lost their common sense. Obesity has been linked to global warming (3). Chocoholic lolly-gobblers walk less, consume more McDonald's and use more electric appliances. Have they calculated how much the carbon footprint of their flock would shrink if they gave up sweets for Lent? And the idea that reusing old envelopes is superior to teetotalling as a way of reducing carbon emissions is risible. The conversion of the legions of Britain's alleged binge drinkers would be a great environmental, as well as spiritual, achievement.

As the bishops rightly point out, however, Lent is not only about penitential practices like fasting, going temporarily vegan and taking cold showers. It is also about concern for one's neighbour. The sample sermon in the promotions kit for their Carbon Fast includes the touching story of Andrew Maglasey's young family. Their life has apparently been ruined by climate change.

But bishops in Britain should be concerned about the global impact of a warmer world - and the fact that it might potentially be a good thing. Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg claims that deaths attributable to excessively hot weather are typically an order of magnitude lower than that for excessively cold weather. In Europe, the figures are 1.5million cold deaths versus 200,000 heat deaths. Overall, claims Lomborg, by 2050 a warmer planet might actually save 1.4million lives a year.

I realise that in the eyes of environmentally aware bishops, Lomborg is a heretic - not just a scientific heretic, but a stack-the-faggots-dry-and-high sort of heretic. The theologian du jour is Al Gore, whose documentary An Inconvenient Truth is a recommended resource for the Carbon Fast campaign. Perhaps they are thinking of adding it to the Bible as a multimedia appendix to the Book of the Apocalypse.

Nonetheless, their eco-friendly Lenten resolutions would benefit from Lomborg's rigorous scrutiny of the impact on developing countries. If less petrol is consumed, won't that put Nigerians out of work? If you use low-energy lightbulbs made in Holland, will that put out of work Indonesians who make the high-energy ones? Are Bishop Chartres and Bishop Jones willing to take responsibility for the deaths that a cooler world may cause?

Chesterton is reported to have said that those who stop believing in Christianity don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. This is not an epigram which the readers of spiked, a generally godless publication, are likely to assent to. But it does seem to apply to certain clerics. Having abandoned traditional practices of Christian piety in a desperate search for relevance and fuller pews, the bishops have resorted to touting an activities list which treats the environment with the respect they once paid to God.

The problem with sprinkling holy water over 40 sensible ways of being thrifty is that they don't express an interior conversion to anything, much less God. You don't need to be a Christian to want to save money by using less electricity. The old ways of living Lent were senseless, in a way. But they symbolised a sturdy desire to amend one's life, which was hopefully reflected in more upright behaviour and greater devotion to religious practice. The new Carbon-free Lent is nothing of the sort: it lacks any sense of transcendence whatsoever.

Above all, the privations of Lent were supposed to be an imitation of the 40 days Christ spent in the desert fasting before beginning his ministry. Fasting and penance are essential to Christianity because its founder commanded them: `If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.' It is a strange sales pitch in the Penguin's godless world, but at least it is a distinctive one - unlike the bishops' commonsense message of thrift, which appears to have been cribbed from a list of handy household hints by Tesco's public relations department.

However, one of the bishops' suggestions is more demanding than anything the Penguin would ever have recommended to us. On the thirty-ninth day of Lent, Good Friday, the day when Christendom contemplates the betrayal, the scourging, the crucifixion and agonising death of Christ, they want their flock to talk to church leaders about making their churches greener. Only a saint could possibly do that. Give me a hairshirt any day.

Source

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