Has anyone evaluated Carbon Offsets to even work? I mean take the 'plant a tree' Carbon Offset. Yes the tree pulls Carbon out of the air to build itself.

But the tree won't live forever. If it dies a natural death, bacteria, insects, and other animals will release its carbon back to the atmosphere. The other alternative would be to burn in a forest fire which will return the Carbon in mostly in C02 even quicker.

Even if it dies at the hand of man, it will release its carbon back to the atmosphere eventually by fire or decay as well.

So do they plan on burying these trees in some air-proof landfill? Because that's the only way it can truely remove Carbon from the atmosphere. And how much oil, man effort, and environment impact would that require?

Great post, Noel.

As to the article, it sounds like Andrew Revkin is expressing the genuine concern by environmentalists that carbon offsets do little to reduce manmade greenhouse gases.  The analogy to medieval indulgences is very good.  How does paying money help?  You still committed the sin.

That there may be no sin to begin with because human activity may be a negligible factor in global warming has not yet occurred to them.

On another thread, RJ points out an interesting comment Al Gore made in 2006:

"Did we think Kyoto would [reduce global warming] when we signed it? . . . Hell no!"

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009804

Now, to interpret this statement in the most advantageous way, prossibly Mr. Gore meant that all other countries would have to sign on to Kyoto for it to impact AGW.   But inasmuch as China and Russia and other greenhouse gas emitting countries are nowhere near signing Kyoto and there is no guarantee that they would even if we did, why is he still advocating this course?  And why hasn't the msm more widely circulated his statement?

The combination of the article and the cartoon rings true for me. I live down the road from a friend who happens to be an ex-sheriff of the county I live in. I saw him earlier this week and he told me a story about how he and his family, along with many others, had walked out on a preacher in the middle of last Sundays service. Their Church had allowed a visiting preacher to do the service. Everyone got mad when the visiting preacher started to combine Jesus and Global Warming in his preaching. Needless to say, he won't be invited back.

The liberal MSM has become an enemy of the USA.

Move Over, Osama!

There’s a new kid on the block
By Mark Harris, NationalPoliticalDigest.com

It is very disappointing that even President Bush is tiptoeing over the line with his recent pronouncements about “global warming”, which by implication suggest a man made cause.
When you couple this with the recent ruling by the Supreme Court on co2 gas, the “ new
religion” is becoming more problematic for the nation and the world. With the majority
opinion written by the never surprising Justice Stevens, it suggests the intellectual bottle in which
five-ninths of this august group prefer to cork their minds. It cries for a mass resignation on their
part followed probably by forming their own little club to save disenfranchised whales.

Through the centuries, there have been countless wars. The untold deaths, destruction and
cruelty are marked in history. The assault on the civilized world by Osama bin Laden is the most notable of late. His followers and clones seem to enjoy the infliction of pain and death all in the name of Allah. Even though his victims are relatively small in number, the brutality of each event, especially on the innocent, will in time bring its comparative fury to the upper ranks of the wartime pantheon. As an aside, dear readers, this religious debauchery will last for decades to come. There might be a cure out there, but it is not anywhere in the near future. You smooth the feathers of 9/11 at
your very peril, and your children’s children.
On a different front, through the past number of years, another type of enemy has been rearing its ugly head. This enemy is cunning, lacking in conscience and determined. The titular mouthpiece has been self-anointed. I call him “Al Gorebal”. Sounds a little like Goebbels, doesn’t it? Joseph was the
Minister of Propaganda for the Nazi Third Reich before and during World War II. In his own way
Al is just as sinister. The “Gorebal Warning” spewed by him and his like minded minions is
gaining steam. Pardon the “cool” pun, but these feckless and unsubstantiated claims are beginning
to snowball.

The faithful are preaching that the earth’s temperature is rising. The fact you can’t actually measure
an average temp for today, one hundred years ago, even ten years ago, doesn’t seem to dissuade
the echo of the blind leading the blind. Leaving out the "Hockey Stick graph" separates the transmission from the engine in all of their models of false predictions. This omission leaves out a large and very important segment of the planet’s history. By the way, ever check next week’s weather prediction with reality.

Migration of roaches in Australia is blamed on global warming. Big deal! Ever tried renting an
apartment in New Orleans, say, in the last one hundred years or so? You’ll see how the little buggers
migrate. Unless, maybe Katrina drowned them out. And by the way, the storm was blamed on global
warming.

One of the most extremist “Gorebal Warnings” is that sea levels will rise dramatically. Actually, they
have been rising since the last ice age. But never mind that inconvenient fact. I wonder how many
coal-fired electric plants were operating in the year 100,000 B.C.? Probably not a great number of
suv’s either.

Polar bears are having a problem, too. It is being suggested that they be put on the “Endangered Species List”. Funny that of the 13 conglomerates of bears in Canada, 11 are absolutely thriving.
There is so much confusion and misinformation that it boggles the mind. It is time to introduce a new
word in today’s lexicon; libthink.

lib’-think: the perversion of the Constitution; the mockery of democracy; the combination of 1 part
socialism and 1 part communism; the controlling of the vast majority by a small elite through
destructive government policies; the manipulation and distortion of the truth; the using of half
truths to ensnare, gain sympathy and evoke guilt; to be a member of most of the Democrat
leadership; to lie for the sheer benefit of power without regard for what is best for the nation

David Geffen recently uttered his opinion of the Clinton’s veracity, but he fell short of the millions
around the world he should have been describing, including Al Gore. You know, “ole invent the
internet Al”. Some of you must remember his tear jerking story about his dying sister. He told it
at his and Bill’s first convention. His sister had died from lung cancer. He swore to spend the rest
of his life to work toward stopping smoking for us infidels. He “conveniently” left out the part
about his leasing land to tobacco growers at the same time. Just a slip. Then, of course, there’s that
pesky little zinc mine on the farm in Tennessee. It’s the one that lifts tons of polluting material
up into what used to be safe sky. Don’t really need to mention the fuel use in the mansion in
Nashville, do we? Oh, that’s right! He buys carbon offsets. Doesn’t matter that he owns the company
they come from. Nothing fishy here. They don’t make a shoe that will fit his “footprint”. But he’s got
a mouth that will take it; the foot, anyway. Al is certainly the flower of the environmentalists. Hey, he’s
got an Oscar! He’s nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize! Very simply put, folks, this is not a half
full nor a half empty crock. It’s just a crock!

Gore is not the only libthinker in this “new religion”. He is joined by the so-called mainstream media,
scientists who are paid by the environmentalist lobby, scientists and individual citizens who are afraid
of being called “deniers”, and of course, the libthinkers in the U.S. Congress. The last group can
hardly wait to get their staffs working on legislation ad infinitum.

“Global Warming” is but another example of the many other whore daughters of liberalism. The “War
on Poverty”, food stamps, the United Nations, the Publika Skool System (sounds a little socialistic
or maybe communistic, doesn’t it) , etc., are just others of the sisterhood. Remember, it is not the
program or institution that matters. The substance is inconsequential, so long as it takes from the haves
and distributes to the have nots, with the power lying in the hands of the libthinkers. This house of
prostitution is simply the rack on which to hang their “white priestly collars” while they blast sermons of
falsities to create fear, guilt and enslavement.

Try the, what I call, “Google Test”. You need to go surfing. Each time you hear or read one of the
latest, (they show up almost every moment), manmade “global warming” scares, Google it. See how far
down the page or pages you have to go to find anything that might contradict the proposition. We do
have one man who rates a five star on any Google Test. His name is Jim Inhofe, Senator, Republican,
Oklahoma. He sits as a giant next to Babbling Boxer on the Environmental Committee. He is to be
highly lauded for his unswerving commitment and tenacity in debunking every “global warming crock”
that comes along.

I warn conservative Republicans and the few Democrats, if you don’t join in lock step with the
aforementioned senator and battle this insipid libthink conspiracy at this stage, you will be fighting both Osama and the “antichrist of global warning” in true earnest before the Titanic runs into the melting iceberg!

Hey - guess what?

Now when the Democrats say they are going to "reduce CO2 emissions" - they are going to have come up with the real McCoy - regulate fuel - no games!!!

Now that this carbon-neutral thing has been "exposed" as a "fraud" - they can't play shell games any more

Mr Gore? Are you listening Mr Gore? They're saying this carbon neutral gig is a fraud! Fraud! Can you imagine that Mr Gore? Can you imagine anyone calling your "lifestyle" a FRAUD???

Now, I hope you don't take all this too personally, and assume they are calling YOU a fraud. No. They won't do that to you.

They're too kind and soft. They like you