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Dec 24, 2007

Offset your carbon output

So I saw an ad to reduce "Global Warming". I clicked on it to see what it had to say. I personally do not believe in global warming. I believe in emissions , and I believe in smog , but I don't believe that us , as humans has any real impact on the cycles that occur on earth. The natural shifts of what happens. The weather guessers (weathermen) can't even get it right a week out. There were times recently within human memory when they had "global cooling", and mini ice ages.

Right now being "green" is trendy, and people are trendy. If it weren't trendy, you wouldn't see so many Prius out there on the roads. The Prius is only popular because people think , that buy driving it they are helping, or giving the outward appearance of helping the environment. Hybrid cars are not the answer. Neither are electric cars, if we are talking on a purely emissions basis. Most of the electricity produced in the US is made by burning coal. If the electricity came though solar or wind power, then I could see it being on the right path, however, burning coal is cheap, making and setting up solar plants or wind power is expensive , so the dollar wins again. Even for the sake of the Prius , lots of people drive them because gasoline prices have risen fairly dramatically over the last few years. Thats another whole post though , the cost of gasoline.

So I went to the site - Neutralize your pollution.

So , they are saying , I can offset the carbon I put into the atmosphere by giving them money. Shit , they don't even want much money. These guys - Carbonfund.org say that if I pay them $25 a year I offset what my car puts out (5 tons). For Zero carbon a year , they say $90 (18 tons). Can I use this like a "Get out of Jail Free" card. One of the other sites - e-Bluehorizons gives you a certificate that they print out


So , how much money do I have to pay these people , to keep the CARB in California off my back. Leave my car alone. $25 a year ? $90 a year? I like this idea. I pay them $90 a year, they don't need to smog my car. I bring my little certificate , and the cops have better things to do than pull me over, and argue whether what is under the hood is stock or not.

1 comment:

Happy Chandler said...

A) Smog isn't carbon offsets. Carbon offsets is to combat global CO2 emissions that produce a greenhouse effect (CO2 levels in the atmosphere have skyrocketed since the Industrial Revolution). CO2 isn't one of the tests on the smog check, those are NOx, HC, and CO. Unrelated. Please keep smog legal, that's why California's air is cleaner than it was 30 years ago, and why SF Bay won't catch on fire.

B) Your assertion that humans can't affect global cycles is wishful thinking. Look at sattelite photos of inhabited places on earth, the most obvious thing you see is human changes to the environment. Look at the LA Basin -- smog is so prevalent there, I'm not going to mention Riverside, San Bernadino and the rest of the inland empire. This is because human activity has overwhelmed the natural cycles.