Like Earth Day, the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour is not primarily about protecting the environment. Both have been hijacked by the climate movement. They should be renamed “Climate Day” and “Climate Hour” and then roundly ignored.
Earth Hour is being celebrated on Saturday, March 23rd, at 8:30 pm local time around the world. The organizers claim on their website that, since being founded in 2007, Earth Hour has “been known for the ‘lights off’ moment, with individuals from around the globe switching off their lights to show symbolic support for the planet and to raise awareness of the environmental issues affecting it.”
But read a little further, and you realize that the environmental issue that is first and foremost in their minds is the unscientific idea that we can somehow stop climate change by reducing energy demand. For example, on their The Biggest Hour for Earth | Earth Hour webpage in their “About” section, they claim:
“We are now at a tipping point with our climate and nature crises, putting at risk the fate of our one home and all our futures. We are on course to breach by 2030 the 1.5°C global temperature increase limit set by the Paris Climate Agreement…”
Continuing to bang the climate drum, they then immediately repeat themselves,
“The next 7 years are therefore crucial to all our futures – we have to stay under the 1.5°C climate threshold to avoid irreversible damage to our planet…”
But this is dumb. Even if there were such a thing as a “global temperature” (there isn’t), there is no super-being straddling the planet to experience it. All that matters is what is happening in regions where plants, humans, and other animals are found. And, generally speaking, there is nothing unusual going on in these regions that cannot be attributed to natural variability in a constantly changing dynamic atmosphere that is reality on planet Earth.
So, when your relatives and friends encourage you to turn off your lights this Saturday to “save the climate,” you will need some quick facts at your fingertips to explain why Earth Hour is based on entirely false premises. And there is no better source for this information than “Climate at a Glance,” a product of the Arlington Heights, Illinois-based free market think tank, The Heartland Institute. Heartland describes the product well:
“Climate At A Glance puts frequently argued climate issues into short, concise summaries that provide the most important, accurate, powerful information. The summaries are designed to provide a library of solid yet simple rebuttals so that legislators, teachers, students, and laymen can easily refute the exaggerations of the so-called ‘climate crisis.’”
So, go to the Google Play Store or Apple App Store and quickly download the “Climate at a Glance” app to your cell phone. Or go to the webpage climateataglance.com and click on any one of dozens of topics, everything from sea level to extreme weather to ice cover, to give you bite-sized reliable, clearly referenced information to fight back against the propaganda we will be swamped with as Earth Hour approaches.
For example, concerning the “1.5 to stay alive” nonsense, a common refrain from climate activists, Climate at a Glance says the following:
“Europe possesses the best, longest-running temperature records on the planet, and those temperature records show warming has already exceeded 1.5°C. Nevertheless, alarmists’ catastrophic predictions are not coming true.
“Below is the Berkeley Earth average surface temperature record for Europe. Europe is a good location to analyze, because some of the longest continuous temperature records are from Europe. It shows a warming of 1.5°C has already occurred there. Yet catastrophic tipping points have not occurred.”
Berkeley Earth average European temperature.
Climate at a Glance’s page on US temperature is also revealing:
“The United States has experienced no significant warming since at least 2005.The lack of warming is documented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s U.S. Climate Reference Network, an extremely accurate network of temperature stations located throughout the United States. Unlike other temperature data, Climate Reference Network data does not require corrective adjustments to account for environmental factors that alter the accuracy of recorded temperatures.
“Figure 1[below] illustrates there has been no significant increase in the number of temperature anomalies since the start of 2005. Thus, when climate activists have claimed in recent years that warming has caused various U.S. environmental problems, it’s not possible their assessments are accurate, unless it can be shown the U.S. Climate Reference Network data is wrong, and as far as we’re aware, no credible scientific agency has attempted to make that claim.
Figure 1. Contiguous U.S. Average Temperature Anomalies
Figure 1. Average surface temperature anomalies in the United States, January 2005 to February 2022. Source: U.S. Climate Reference Network, “Average Surface Temperature, January 2005 to February 2022,” ncdc.noaa.gov, National Climatic Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Further, long-term warming in the United States has been modest, at worst. Thermometer readings report current temperatures are no higher today than they were 80 years ago, a reality that has been masked in large part by government agencies that have chosen to adjust temperatures from past decades downward, making it appear as though recent temperatures are comparably much higher than the unadjusted data suggest…
“The raw, unadjusted data clearly illustrates recent temperatures are likely the same or nearly the same as they were in the 1930s, and perhaps even lower.
Earth Hour activists do not stop their scare-mongering at global and regional temperature fears, of course. On their “learn about the issues” webpage, they link to none other than WWF UK, which is a treasure trove of global warming propaganda. Here again, “Climate at a Glance” debunks the WWF scares completely.
For example, WWF complains:
“Parts of the west Antarctic Peninsula are among the fastest-warming places on earth. Even small-scale melting is likely to have significant effects on global sea level rise.”
“Climate at a Glance” puts this melt in perspective:
“When recent ice loss measurements are compared to the full Antarctic ice cap, the loss is so small that it is barely detectable.”
To illustrate this, they then show the following graphs:
“Climate at a Glance” also puts the global sea level rise issue to rest:
“Sea-level measurements contradict claims that Antarctic ice loss threatens coastal flooding. NASA satellite instruments, with readings dating back to 1993, show global sea level rising at a pace of merely 1.2 inches per decade, which is not significantly different than sea-level rise since the mid-1800s.”
WWF next blows the extreme weather horn loudly:
“Extreme and unpredictable weather will become more common across the world as climate patterns change, with some places being hotter, some places being wetter, and some places being drier. These changes can have (and are already having) drastic impacts on all life on Earth.”
That is nonsense too. “Climate at a Glance” demonstrates that, whether it is heatwaves, droughts, cold spells, tornadoes, hurricanes, you name it, virtually everything the enviros are saying about extreme weather is wrong.
But don’t take my word for it — check out “Climate at a Glance” for yourself. Download the app to your cell phone so all this great information is at your fingertips when you want to put that annoying neighbor, co-worker, or family member in their place.
In the meantime, let’s rename Earth Hour to Energy Hour and follow the suggestion prescribed by Joseph Ben-Ami, Canadian conservative writer, commentator, and organizer/activist, who showed in his March 17, 2024, commentary the immense contribution electricity, and the light bulb, has made to protecting the environment:
“So, this year, when Earth Hour arrives, rather than turning my lights off, I and other thinking people will be turning them on in recognition and celebration of the immense contribution that electricity has made to the protection of our environment, a contribution symbolized by the simple electric light bulb.”
Yes, we should show our “symbolic support for the planet and to raise awareness of the environmental issues affecting it,” as recommended by Earth Day organizers. But sensible people will do this by using as much electricity as possible.
Tom Harris is executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition
