Want Carbon Credits? OK, Just Chop Down Your Forests

The rush to be eco-friendly and revel in carbon credits has taken a bizarre turn, and mass confusion is sure to reign in the environmental wacko community.

Carbon market encourages chopping forests - study

The current carbon market actually encourages cutting down some of the world's biggest forests, which would unleash tonnes of climate-warming carbon into the atmosphere, a new study reported on Monday.

Under the Kyoto Protocol aimed at stemming climate change, there is no profitable reason for the 10 countries and one French territory with 20 percent of Earth's intact tropical forest to maintain this resource, according to a study in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.

Fire up those gas-powered chainsaws, boys.

The Kyoto treaty and other talks on global warming focus on so-called carbon credits for countries and companies that plant new trees where forests have been destroyed. Trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas emitted by petroleum-fueled vehicles, coal-fired power plants and humans.

At this point, there is no credit for countries that keep the forests they have, the study said.

"The countries that haven't really been the target of deforestation have nothing to sell because they haven't deforested anything," said Gustavo Fonseca, one of the study's authors.

"So that creates a perverse incentive for them to actually start deforesting, so that in the future, they might be allowed to actually cap-and-trade, as they call it: you put a cap on your deforestation and you trade that piece that hasn't been deforested," Fonseca said in a telephone interview.

The countries most at risk for this kind of deforestation, because they all have more than half their original forests intact, are Panama, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Belize, Gabon, Guyana, Suriname, Bhutan and Zambia, along with the French territory of French Guiana.

Quite a quandary, especially in these developing nations. Do they get in on this carbon-credit scam, or keep their forests?

All this confusion, brought to you by junk science.

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G8 Leaders Agree To Climate Deal

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G8 would negotiate within a UN framework to seek a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009.

No mandatory target was set for the cuts, but Mrs Merkel's preference for a 50% emissions cut by the year 2050 was included in the agreed statement.

UPDATE: Bush agrees to CO2 cut, with strings attached

· US will consider deal to cut emissions by 50%
· China and India must be included, says president

George Bush last night pledged the United States to a "substantial" cut in greenhouse gas as the west's leading industrial nations agreed to negotiate a new climate change deal within the next two years.

After strong lobbying from EU leaders, Mr Bush agreed to "seriously consider" a proposal that would result in a 50% cut in carbon emissions by 2050 but made it clear that US involvement depended on India and China being included in any agreement.

Long forgotten is the fact that William Jefferson Clinton never submitted the Kyoto Accord to the Senate for ratification. Never, the Goracle notwithstanding.

World Warms, Poor Hardest Hit

More gibberish, hysteria, and outright falsehoods from the New York Times.

Industrialized countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol, the climate pact rejected by the Bush administration, project that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon flow via that treaty into a climate adaptation fund.

Just a friendly reminder that Kyoto was rejected by the United States Senate 95-0 on July 25, 1997. George W. Bush was the Governor of Texas at the time.