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A bit here on carbon offsets and trees:
Here's some examples.
"Green" celebrities often claim to reduce their carbon imprint to zero when flying around the world by buying "carbon offsets". One popular way of doing this is by planting trees.
Let's do the math. It takes 15 trees 40 to 50 years to absorb five tons of carbon.
A return flight from Toronto to Vancouver injects 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per passenger. Carbon dioxide takes 50 to 200 years to dissipate naturally.
Therefore, to absorb most of the carbon dioxide caused by one passenger taking one domestic round-trip flight across Canada in 2007, requires planting 15 trees today that won't complete the job until 2047-2057, assuming none is destroyed by fire, disease or insects. If they are, they'll release their carbon back into the atmosphere.
As Guy Dauncy and Patrick Mazza write in Stormy Weather, 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change, from which I took these figures: "(I)f we imagine that tree planting can be the solution to the world's climate problems, we may be making a massive miscalculation."
Flying is also just about the worst way to emit greenhouse gases. Taking one long flight can easily exceed a year's worth of car emissions. Plus, it injects the gas into the atmosphere at high altitude, heightening the greenhouse effect. The only way to be "carbon neutral" when flying is to get off the plane before it takes off.
Then there's Kyoto's "clean development mechanism" allowing developed countries to obtain "carbon credits" to emit more greenhouse gases by bankrolling projects to reduce them in developing nations. But we can't even be sure our foreign aid is reaching the people who most need it now. How can we possibly know these projects will ever happen, or do what we're told they'll do, particularly in corrupt dictatorships? Remember the widespread fraud in the UN's oil-for-food program in Iraq? Wait until Kyoto, a UN treaty, is fully operational.
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When it comes to 'greenies' I get upset because of the genocide they allowed to happen after Rachel Carson's 1961 book Silent Spring.
The genocide is they convincing the head person at the USA EPA to make a ban on DDT conditional on aid to African countries. That was in 1969 at the same time malaria was almost eradicated. Since then millions have died. So where are the 'greenies'? Hanging their collective heads in shame? No way.
They are out and about getting ready to destroy our atmosphere by silly schemes like injecting dust into the upper atmosphere to deflect life giving heat from the Sun or having mirrors erected in space to shut out the Sun.
They sit back content knowing their early work caused the 'murder' of millions (the DDT matter). I suppose to them the death of billions by screwing with our atmosphere is OK as long as they got their way.
Explain please the reason any sane person keeps allowing this to go on.
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