Showing posts with label Climate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Climate. Show all posts

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Fred Thompson on Global Warming


Macsmind offers an outstanding quote from Fred Thompson, who is substituting for Paul Harvey:

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto.

This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus.

Ask Galileo...

Heh.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Al Gore's Testimony before Congress



Let me get this straight.


You want me to give up my private jet?


And sell two of my three homes?


Turn off my heated pool and the pool-house?


Sell my Lexus SUV and drive a Mitsubishi Galant, which emits less CO2?


Heh.


Dude, it's not just the Earth that has a fever.


You've been breathing too many Hummer emissions.


It may be a 'planetary emergency', but that sure as hell doesn't apply to jet-setting Oscar winners, like me and Tim Robbins.


Remember, I live a carbon neutral lifestyle!


The Earth may have a fever, but Carbon Offsets™ are the cure.


See, the theory behind Carbon Offsets™ is that you pay us to plant some trees, and flowers, and what-not, and it makes up for all of the pollution.


No, I'm serious! Stop laughing!


As I was saying, you pay us and we "offset" all of your pollution.


Don't forget: it's the end of the month! That's the best time to deal on carbon offsets!


And, remember, at Crazy Al's Carbon Offset Sale, we're slashing prices on carbon neutrality!


Thank you for your attention during this planetary emergency.


Do not drink alcohol while using carbon offsets. Together, alcohol and carbon offsets can be damaging to the liver. If you drink more than three alcoholic beverages a day, talk to your doctor before using carbon offsets.


Postscript on Carbon Offsets: a wide range of respected scientists, environmentalists, researchers, agriculturalists, and activists believe that carbon offsets are a "scam", "fantasy", "fiction", "nonsense", "fraudulent" and worse. And they've been saying so since 2000, though to read the newspaper you wouldn't know it. Read 'Is Al Gore's Inconvenient Fiction a $250 Billion Scam?' for more details and make up your own mind.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Al Gore's 2nd Annual Carbon-Offset Going-out-of-Business Sale!



Ha. Mah name is Al Gore. You've heard me talk before about the dangers of global warming.


Put simply, humans have destroyed the Earth. While some blame cow poots and others point to solar storms, I know for a fact that the Chevy Impala behind me -- and millions of vehicles like it -- are solely, completely responsible for warming the Earth.


Scientists tell us that over the next five years, sea levels will rise by as much as three hundred feet.


When that happens, millions of folks like you and me will have to leave their Malibu beach homes and migrate to the Midwest. Yes. They'll have to immigrate to... ... ... Red states. No tofu. No pet spas. And lots of pickup trucks. Oh, the humanity.


And look at the glaciers behind me. Never, in the history of the world, have glaciers melted before. Never! Not even after the last ice age!


And, within the next five years, the entire world will be a barren desert reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's Rose Law files. Uhm, except for the parts that are completely underwater. Which will also be... a lot.


And anyone who says otherwise is an unscientific crackpot that should be... slaughtered like a baby seal --er-- I mean like a money-grubbing, American capitalist.


Scientists have also proven that humans caused Hurricane Katrina to explode out of the gulf with a fury never seen before, not even in Galveston, Texas.


But there's a way you can make a difference.


We've found a way that you can pollute all you want.


Yep, you heard me right. Pollute all you want.


With our amazing new product, Carbon Offsets™, you can pollute guilt-free!


How do they work? Say you fly cross-country. Just buy $66 worth of Carbon Offsets™ to make up for your flight!


We'll plant some trees and bushes and s***. So don't worry about it! We'll make up for all of that awful carbon dioxide you're expelling.


Wipe that skeptical look off your face!


What's it gonna take to get you into some Carbon Offsets™ today?


Just call 1-800-CARBON or surf to www.carb0wnt.com now!


Remember, pollute all you want, just so long as you make amends with Carbon Offsets™! It's the feel-good way to spew emissions!


If carbon offsets result in an erection lasting more than four hours, please contact Generation Investment Management.


Oven-baked good readin', just like Mama used to make:
Anchoress, BizzyBlog, Dan Riehl, Ecotality, Hang Right Politics, OTB, Rick Moran
Bullwinkle Blog, Captain's Quarters, Carbon Neutral Journal, Maggie's Notebook, Nuke Gingrich, Random Ruminations, Tax Man Blog

Sunday, March 11, 2007

UK Channel 4: The Great Global Warming Swindle


From UK's Channel 4, a fascinating -- if politically incorrect -- documentary of monumental importance. You must watch this video. And be sure and pass it on to your friends.


Some of the highlights:


Careful analysis of solar activity for the past 100 years...


...and the past 400 years link Earth's temperatures with solar activity.


Over 500 million years, cosmic ray activities -- emanating from the sun -- can be tied directly to Earth's temperatures.


"We're inside the atmosphere of the sun... The sun is driving climate change. CO2 is... irrelevant."


Dr. Frederick Seitz: "...In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report..."


"...the rich countries can afford to engage in luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy, but for us we are at the stage of survival..."


"...I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry..."


Patrick Moore, co-founder Greenpeace: "I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is the romanticization of peasant life. And the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world. The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries. I think it's legitimate for me to call them anti-human."

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Is Al Gore's Inconvenient Fiction a $250 Billion Scam?


A quick recap: Records show that Al and Tipper Gore paid a monthly gas-and-electric bill of $2,400 for their 20-room mansion and related outbuildings. That includes $500 a month for their poolhouse. Gore claimed that he bought "carbon offsets" to make up for his $30K annual energy tab. Where did he buy offsets? From Generation Investment Management (GIM), a firm which lists Gore as Chairman.


Wanton profiteering appears to be at the very heart of "carbon offsets." Put simply, a wide range of respected scientists, environmentalists, researchers, agriculturalists, and activists believe that carbon offsets are a "scam", "fantasy", "fiction", "nonsense", "fraudulent" and worse. And they've been saying so since 2000, though to read the newspaper you wouldn't know it.

Gore, GIM and Carbon Neutral



Al Gore's GIM works "with two offset providers (The Chicago Climate Exchange and the Carbon Neutral Company) to ensure our London and Washington D.C. offices are fully carbon neutral."

Carbon Neutral -- once called Future Forests -- has come under fire from various environmental organizations and activists. These groups say that carbon offseting "is a scam."

In June of 2000, the World Rainforest Movement Bulletin noted that the UN's Climate Panel had disappointed environmentalists by tacitly approving a "carbon market" that would generate profits for certain companies while allowing carbon emissions to continue unabated.


The panel -- the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- issued a Special Report on Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF). In May of 2000, the report claimed that an accounting system for trading trees or soil for industrial emissions was feasible. Among the authors of the report were numerous parties that would benefit directly from such an accounting system.

This report was roundly denounced by environmentalists:

...How was it possible for the IPCC to produce such a report? ...one of the reason's for the report's failure is, sadly, surely quite simple: some of the authors (and the companies they work for) will benefit financially from having drawn the conclusions they drew...

Future Forests and other carbon offset companies have an intriguing history that is directly tied to the UN, the IPCC, and its recommendations.

The Carbon-Offset 'Fantasy'


A UK-based environmentalist group called The Corner House, in a 2001 report, describes the carbon-offseting scheme and labels it a "fantasy":

...The following "carbon equations", for instance, which represent the current market approach in microcosm, are cited in recent promotional material by the British tree-planting firm Future Forests [Ed: now Carbon Neutral]:


* 7 trees = 5 London-New York single air tickets
* 5 trees = 1 year's driving of an ordinary car
* 2 trees = 4 pots of tea a day for 6 years
* 40 trees = 1 average home's CO2 emissions over 5 years

These calculations are part of Future Forests' invitation to individuals and corporations to become "carbon-neutral®". It doesn't matter how much fossil fuel you use, or what you use it for. Simply write out a cheque and the carbon professionals will punch numbers into their computers representing your carbon-dioxide emissions, plant the requisite number of trees, and watch over them for you...

Further, Corner House derides the idea that conservation steps can be traded for emissions to make pollution "climate neutral", calling it "nonsense."

How much for that Carbon Offset?


New Internationalist illustrates just how nonsensical the carbon-offset trade is:

If the science of offsets were as well established as the companies selling them insist they are, then there should be little disparity between their estimates of, for example, a flight’s climate impacts and the remedy.

* According to Climate Care, an Oxford-based offset company that has a partnership with British Airways and funds projects in the South, a globe-spanning trip flying from London to visit NI offices in Toronto, Christchurch and Adelaide and then returning to London would emit approximately 6 tonnes of CO2 and would cost $85 to offset.
* Another British company, the Carbon Neutral Company (favoured by rock stars), says the same trip would produce only 4.3 tonnes of CO2 and would cost just $60, which apparently buys 4 trees in Durham.
* An Australian company, Climate Friendly, asserts that the journey emits 11.63 tonnes of CO2 and would cost $195 (US) to offset by financing wind projects.
* Finally, Dutch offsetter, Green Seat, has determined that the flight will emit 8.68 tonnes of CO2, and would cost $180 to offset, which apparently buys the required 434 trees in Africa.


Thus, to offset a flight, the carbon-offset accounting geniuses have arrived at prices of $60, $85, $180, $195 or a maximum discrepency ratio of 3.25 to 1.

Now, that's science!

Carbon Offsets: a "fictitious" new market


Even earlier, in May of 2000, a presentation at the Agrarian Studies 2000 Conference at Yale University denounced the carbon offset market in extremely stark terms.


...This [carbon-offset] market is being put together not so much by states as by a burgeoning international web of technocrats, multilateral agencies, corporate alliances, brokers, lobbyists, consultants, financiers, think tanks, lawyers, forestry companies and non-government organizations...

...the [biological climate-change equivalents, or carbon sequestration credits] commodity to be traded in this new market is fictitious...

That's right. Fictitious. Further, the Yale presentation offers a series of stunning rebukes to the carbon offset trade:

It's a striking sociological fact that the impossibility of constructing a non-fraudulent, standardized technical commodity of biological climate-change equivalents through plantation forestry has so far proved no obstacle to attempts to create a market which would make rights to that commodity privately ownable, transferrable, and accumulable...

A fraudulent market?

The presentation went on to describe the interests of additional parties positioned to profit from this "fictitious" trade, naming the following "web of actors":

* Corporate Networks tied to mining and fossil fuels
* Industry-friendly think tanks and NGOs who act as facilitators of the carbon trade
* Consultants set to profit from brokering, managing and certifying carbon offsets
* Professionals such as genetic engineering researchers who might optimize trees for carbon absorption
* Plantation owners and their state backers who stand to financially benefit
* Forestry companies who have announced expansion plans to address the carbon offset market

The National Institute of Health defines a conflict of interest as "employees, consultants or members of the government bodies using their positions for purposes that are, or give the appearance of being, motivated by a desire for private financial gain for themselves or others such as those with whom they have funding or business or other ties."

The vested interests of the UN's IPCC Panel


Solar energy portal Ecotopia reports that members of the IPCC "...had vested interests in reaching unrealistically and unjustifiably optimistic conclusions about the possibility of compensating for emissions with trees... [and] should have been automatically disqualified from serving on an intergovernmental panel charged with investigating impartially the feasibility and benefits of such 'offset' projects."


The IPCC panel consisted of:

* Richard Tipper of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management (ECCM), a consulting company deriving revenue from carbon-absorption forestry projects. According to Ecotopia, "ECCM works closely with Future Forests... Tipper helped form ECCM some months after being appointed to the LULUCF panel."


* Mark Trexler, a founder of Trexler & Associates, a pioneering firm "poised to make millions of dollars by promoting and monitoring carbon sequestration and other 'climate mitigation' projects."

* Pedro Moura-Costa, an executive of Ecosecurities Ltd., a consulting firm specializing in the "generation of Emission Reduction Credits" from carbon-offseting activities. Ecosecurities has offices in the US, the UK, Brazil, Australia and The Netherlands.

* Gareth Philips of SGS Forestry, a division of the Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS) of Geneva, the world's largest inspection, auditing and testing company. SGS Forestry derives revenue from its carbon forestry projects. SGS certifies Costa Rica's carbon offsets and "hopes to expand its work."

* Sandra Brown of Winrock International, an Arkansas-based organization which accepts contracts from "public and private" sources. Winrock "provides forest carbon monitoring technical services to U.S. government agencies and a wide range of private sector and non-governmental organizations. "

* Peter Hill of Monsanto Corporation, which has a "large stake in genetically modified organisms, including, potentially, organisms modified to take up or store carbon more efficiently."

The World Rainforest Movement investigated these bizarre financial ties and concluded that the IPCC report "must now be shelved due to their clear conflict of interest and a new report instigated which will be free of the taint of intellectual corruption."

A $10 to $250 Billion Fiction


Just how big a market is the "certified tradeable offset" business set to commence in 2008? The World Bank estimates a $10 to $20 billion market. That may be a pittance compared to the real value of carbon trading.


In 2005, Grist Magazine went further, offering that "carbon could become one of the largest markets in the world, with a trading volume of $60 billion to $250 billion by 2008."

Sadly, the entire "fiction" has few backers among serious scientists and researchers. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), based in Laxenburg, Austria, evaluated Kyoto-style accounting systems and stated, "We cannot compare the effectiveness of fossil fuel with land-use change and forestry activities with respect to reduced emissions."

This finding -- confirmed by both the Royal Society, the UK's independent national academy of science, and Canada's David Suzuki Foundation, as well as many eminent individual scientists -- is devastating for the Kyoto Protocol.

It means that it's impossible to trade surface-level carbon -- in trees and soils -- for CO2 emissions from cars, industries and homes. The commodity which would be traded in such a market doesn't exist.

Of course, pieces of paper can be and are being exchanged claiming that some patch of wooded land "compensates for" some set of industrial emissions.

But in atmospheric terms, these documents are worthless. Buying and selling them can only further destabilize climate. With the Bonn agreement of July 2001, the Kyoto Protocol has lost "all environmental integrity". Any "confidence in the emissions trading system" is misplaced.

In other words, the whole carbon offset boondoggle appears to be a "fraudulent market" of epic proportions. It has been denounced by scientists, environmentalists, academics, and researchers almost continuously since May of 2000.


But it goes without saying that when you're talking tens of billions of dollars, you can be certain that Al Gore, Michael Milken, Tony Coelho and the mainstream media will be anything but disinterested observers.


Also see:
Anchoress: 17,000 scientists dissent-no consensus on global warming
Bill Hobbs
BizzyBlog: Globaloney and Globalarmism: Consensus, Conschmensus
BlameBush and IowaHawk
Blue Crab Boulevard: More Polar Bears than Ever
Carbon Trade Watch
Corner House: Democracy or Carbocracy - Intellectual Corruption and the Future of Climate Debate
Corner House: Shopping for Carbon - A New Plantation Economy
Dan Riehl
Don Surber
Google Video: The Great Global Warming Swindle
Hang Right Politics
Hot Air
Jules Crittenden
New Internationalist - Carbon Offset Facts
Newsbusters