Heh: SF Airport Now Selling Carbon Credit Offsets

Well, they picked the perfect place to pull off a scam like this. Where else could you find a bunch of guilty liberals who think because they're flying they're somehow destroying the planet? I wouldn't be surprised to find out Al Gore is getting a cut.

Travelers flying out of San Francisco International Airport can be the first in the nation to wipe away some of the damage their flights wreak on the planet by swiping their credit cards.

On Thursday, the Bay Area's largest airport unveiled three Climate Passport kiosks with touch screens that determine how many pounds of carbon dioxide a trip will produce, calculate the sum an environmentally conscious traveler should contribute to projects in San Francisco and California that help reduce greenhouse gases, then allow fliers to purchase certified carbon offsets.

"We realize people are going to fly," said Steve McDougal, executive vice president of 3Degrees, a San Francisco company that helped SFO develop the program. "This gives them something they can do to reduce their impact. This is just one of many small things people need to do."

The kiosks are located near the entrances to Terminal 3 and international terminals A and G - behind security checkpoints and perched in front of large signs reading, "Keep our skies blue. Purchase your air travel carbon offset here."

Setting up the Climate Passport program cost $190,000 in airport funds, said Kandace Bender, deputy airport director.

Judging from the reaction of the first two travelers to take a test spin of the touch screens, it's not clear whether the program will fly.

Soon after a press conference to unveil the kiosk in Terminal 3 concluded, Shane Johnson, 39, a traveling salesman from Vancouver, B.C., strolled up to take a look.

"What is it?" he asked.

Johnson punched in his starting airport and his destination - Vancouver to SFO and back - entered the number of passengers in his party - one - and hit the "add flight" button and the "calculate my flights" button.

His round trip would produce 1,186 pounds of carbon dioxide, which could be offset with a contribution of $7.26, the computer said. Johnson chose not to tap the "purchase now" button and slide his credit card into the kiosk.

"I don't live here, so I prefer to make my donations at home," he said.

A few minutes later, Bostonian Ari Peskoe, catching a flight home after a job interview, stopped by the machine and became the first person to purchase a carbon offset at SFO.

"My flight was free, so I thought buying some greenhouse gas reduction was the least I could do," he said.

His one-way trip home, the computer concluded, would produce 1,999 pounds of carbon dioxide, which could be offset for $12.24.

Despite his purchase, Peskoe said he's a bit skeptical about the concept of carbon offsets.

He's skeptical, yet still forks over some cash. Geez, these liberals are such easy marks.

Maybe I can set up a kiosk there and call it Stupidity Credits and make some money off these gullible morons.

Děkuji vám, al-Gore!

Czech Rep makes billions by selling its clean air
On Tuesday, Environment Minister Martin Bursík signed a memorandum of understanding with Hideaki Kumazawou, Japanese Ambassador to the Czech Republic. That enables the Czech Republic to start trading with its "clean air" and earn dozens of billions of crowns [CZK16.6719 = US$1.00 Ed.].

How is that possible? The Czech Republic does not have any difficulties to fulfill the Kyoto Protocol in which developed countries committed to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions.

The Czech Republic even exceeds its commitment. Countries that have a similar reserve can sell their saved exhaustion to countries that have been unable to fulfill their commitment.

One of those countries is Japan that now wants to buy the saved carbon dioxide in the Czech Republic.

"This memorandum was a basic requirement of the Japanese side for their future purchase of emission units," Jakub Kašpar, spokesperson for the Environment Ministry said.

5 billion worth of clean environment

How many emission units the Japanese state actually buys is up to further discussions. The Czech Republic has 150 million units available while Japan needs more than one billion units.

Besides Japan, the Czech government has held talks with Spain, Austria and New Zealand. Another option would be that the Czech Republic sells its units in an auction.

Uh-oh. Apply free market principles? How eeeevil. Chimpy McHilterBurton must be involved.

Environment Ministry plans to sell two thirds of its free units and keep the rest as a reserve.

"In general, we would like to sell most of our emission units in an auction because their price might be higher due to competition," said Environment Minister Martin Bursík. His Ministry hopes to sign the first agreements this year.

The profit might reach CZK 25 billion [US$1.51 bil Ed.] depending on the market price. Environment Ministry plans to invest the money in building insulation and clean heating.

"We are currently drafting a grant program that would support energy savings, usage of renewable natural resources for heating and hot water in apartments and family houses," Jakub Kašpar said.

Czech Republic among the worst

Based on the recent report by European Commission, the Czech Republic is the fourth worst of 27 European countries. Only Finland, Ireland and Luxembourg are doing worse, while Luxembourg is the European greenhouse record breaker if compared with the number of inhabitants.

In Kyoto, the Czech Republic committed together with the entire European Union to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by eight percent between 2012 and 1990. But due to the decrease of industry production, that was a piece of cake. Today, the emissions are 24 percent lower than in 1990.

"The Czech Republic has been fulfilling its commitments set by the Kyoto protocol with a cushion," the Report on the environment conditions informed about 1997. The Czech government will soon have the report available.

Cars and airplanes cause troubles

The same report points out that the emission has been growing slowly in the last couple of years. The main problem is transportation - both automobile and air transportation.

"The emissions stopped decreasing in 2005 when a slow increase started. This negative trend is caused mainly by growing emissions caused by the transportation," the report states.

Paradoxically, the Czech Republic is one of the worst polluters in Europe when counted per capita.

While the share of emissions caused by transportation reached four percent of the entire amount of emission in 1990, today it accounts for almost 13 percent.

Just the air transportation by itself has a four times larger performance that in 1989.

Hmm. Economic prosperity since transformation from a Soviet slave-state to captialist democracy. Rise in transportation-related emissions since making that transformation.

Eureka! Proof-positive that capitalism is eeeeevil.


Via Aktuálně.cz


Photo credit: Ludvík Hradilek

Damn Capitalists

Lithuania joins carbon challenge roster
Lithuania has confirmed that it will join its Baltic neighbors in taking the European Commission to court over the level of its carbon dioxide emission allowance.

It is the seventh eastern European nation to take legal action, creating a serious headache for EC regulators.

Heh. Wait until New Europe floats the idea that in all matters EU, it should be one nation, one vote. That will cause some real headaches.

Lithuania has asked for a CO2 allowance of 11.2 million tonnes a year for the period 2008-2012, after the European Commission has halved its original allocation of 16.6 million tonnes to 8.8 million tonnes.

"Lithuania's government is going to appeal to the European Court of Justice over emission allowances," said Nemira Pumprickaite, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas August 10.

In Brussels, a spokeswoman for Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the Commission was confident that its decision would be upheld in court.

Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia as well as larger eastern European peers Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia have also decided to appeal to the EU court over the CO2 quotas as too restrictive for their growing economies.

Lithuania has said it will have to produce more electricity from fossil fuel plants, a major source of pollution, after the closure of its remaining Soviet-built nuclear reactor to fill the gap until a new nuclear plant comes on stream.

Leading presidential contender Ron Paul is trying figure out how to link this to Bush foreign policy blowback.

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.

Read the rest...

The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

More junk science from the Church Cult of Environmental Extremism.

Global warming: Met Office predicts plateau then record temperatures

British scientists are predicting a succession of record-breaking high temperatures in the most detailed forecast of global warming's impact on weather around the world.

Powerful computer simulations used to create the world's first global warming forecast suggests temperature rises will stall in the next two years, before rising sharply at the end of the decade.

Powerful computer simulations predicted 2006 would be a record hurricane year for the Southeast. And how many tore through Florida and the Gulf Coast? Yep, you got it.

From 2010, they warn, every year has at least a 50% chance of exceeding the record year of 1998 when average global temperatures reached 14.54C.

Which means that every year has at least a 50% chance of not exceeding 1998's average temps.

Junk science.

al-Goracle was too busy counting his carbon credit profits, thus making him unavailable for comment.

There's more.

A Tax By Any Other Name . . . .

This will surely be music to Progressive ears.

Thousands of motorists with large cars will soon have to pay hundreds of pounds to park outside their house.

Councils across London are pressing ahead with a sliding scale of charges for residential parking permits that penalises owners of fuel-hungry vehicles.

Horse crap. It's a tax except for electric cars.

Richmond was the first to push through a swingeing £300 levy on gas-guzzlers and 4x4s earlier this year.

Now other authorities are planning to do the same as the green lobby piles on the pressure for tougher measures against motorists.

From the beginning of next month, Hackney residents with cars that have engines bigger than four litres (producing around 350g/km of carbon dioxide emissions) will have to pay £207.50 a year - compared with £80 now.

Yes!! 'Global warming'. Be sure to get your carbon credits.

These include the BMW 745 and Hummer.

Cars with engines over three litres, including the BMW 735 and some models of the Land Rover Discovery and Isuzu Trooper, will attract an annual charge of £166, while anyone who wants to park a Mercedes E-Class or Porsche Boxster, at over two litres, in a controlled parking zone (CPZ) will get a bill for £124.50.

Owners of smaller cars under 1200cc - such as some models of Volkswagen Polo, Ford Focus and Nissan Micra - and hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, much loved by environmentally conscious MPs, will be charged only £41.50.

And permits will be free for electric vehicles such as the Mega City and Piaggio Porter van.

Islington, meanwhile, is carrying out a borough-wide referendum on a proposed increase from £95 to £200 for cars over 2500cc.

It claims about a third of motorists would pay more, and two-thirds would either pay less or see no change in the cost of a parking permit.

In a message to residents, the council's Lib Dem leader James Kempton said: "Cars dirty our air. They emit carbon dioxide, along with other pollutants, so reducing their emissions will be a step in the right direction."

Similar charging structures are being considered by Lambeth, Tower Hamlets, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea, Barking & Dagenham, Haringey, Southwark and Brent.

Well, they do have to cover the spiraling costs of providing council estates and social benefits for the easily offended portion of their populace.

------ ker-snip ------"But this policy is not just window-dressing. . . . "There is clear evidence that it will have a significant impact on air quality and climate change."

And I'm the high rabbi of the Magic Kingdom.

Note: At current exchange rates, £1 equals US$1.97.

Freedom, Not Climate, Is At Risk

Just as we had the panic of global freezing in the '70s, global warming is the hue and cry of the alarmists now.

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.

The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

[....]

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

Read it all. You will not be disappointed.

The Goracle; newly-minted environmental expert Jean-Pierre Kerry; and leading presidential candidate Ron Paul were unavailable for comment.


Note: Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus will be answering your questions.

President Klaus spoke before the CATO Institute March 9, 2007.

G-8 Decision On Emissions Is Appealing

At the G-8 summit in Germany, a decision was made to put forth an effort to reduce 'greenhouse gases' to combat 'global warming'.

The G8 group's decision to considerably decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is "seemingly courageous and in any case very appealing for those who cannot imagine its consequences," Czech President Vaclav Klaus said in an article published in the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) today.

Klaus, in his article, asks the leaders of the seven most advanced countries and Russia, why they made the decision, whether they know the method to secure the goal and whether they have the right to interfere in billions of people's lives half a century after their mandate expires.

Klaus writes that there are no convincing scientific pieces of evidence proving that the earth faces a massive global warming and that human activities, mainly greenhouse gas emissions are the cause of the "slight warming".

It is mainly said in the "commitment" of the world leading politicians that they express "immense historical pessimism", Klaus says.

"They have demonstrated that they do not believe in positive results of unregulated creative spontaneity of human society and that they primarily believe in the duty to plan and organise it from the above," Klaus writes.

He added that the "green" movement, "which - unlike the climate - has become the real global danger of the present," is pushing politicians into this position.

Neither the Goracle nor newly-minted environmental expert Jean-Pierre Kerry were available for pontificating comment.

The Goracle May Be Offended

On Monday, insisting that there be a fair playing field, the Czech Republic filed a lawsuit against the European Commission over cuts in CO2 permits.

In an analysis worked out for the ministry, the way the Commission proceeded when setting the amount of carbon credits for the Czech Republic was interpreted as discriminatory against Czech energy and industrial companies, he added.

The Czech Republic asked for permissions to emit 102 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, but the Commission only approved 86.8 million tonnes a year. The lawsuit was proposed by Industry and Trade Minister Martin Riman.

The lawsuit has been sent to a first-instance court in Luxembourg where the Czech Republic will be represented by Tomas Bocek, government commissioner for the European Court of Justice and procedures with the European Commission.

By means of emission allowances, the European Union tries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to cause global warming.

Not known to cause global warming, merely believed.

Within the emissions trading scheme, companies that want to emit more greenhouse gases than the set ceiling can buy extra carbon credits on the European market. In contrast, firms producing less emissions can sell their excess allowances.

The collapse of carbon credit prices in the middle of last year, which was caused by a surplus of allowances, was another reason for the Commission to resort to a reduction of carbon credits allocated to individual countries.

Why would someone be concerned about the price of carbon credits?

Budding Expert Goes Carbon Neutral

Seeking to avoid the hypocrite label that has attached to the Goracle, 'global-warming' expert-in-training Nancy Pelosi is offsetting the particulate matter generated during her recent trip to Europe.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi jetted off last Saturday to Europe for a climate change fact-finding trip, she probably expected questions on how much greenhouse gas her trip would generate.

But Pelosi was one step ahead of the criticism, announcing as she left that she plans to “offset” her carbon dioxide emissions by contributing to the Pacific Forest Trust.

“She felt it was important to show how you can make your emissions neutral,” said Laurie Wayburn, president of the trust.

Pelosi will be covering the carbon cost of the entire eight-member delegation out of her own pocket, rather than through campaign funds or her office allowance.

So, how much does it cost to assuage Progressive guilt?

It’s not clear how much she’ll pay because the figures on Pelosi’s trip are still being calculated. But a passenger flying from San Francisco to New York causes about one ton of carbon to be emitted, and it costs $10 a ton for the forest trust to offset that amount, according to Wayburn.

The Goracle was unavailable for comment.

Goracle? Line 1, please

Another heretic from the scientific community has weighed in on 'global warming'.

Czech-born U.S. climatologist George Kukla, 77, today bore Czech President Vaclav Klaus out in his opinions about climate changes as he said that people are only marginally to blame for global warming. . . .

What the hell does some old coot know about something the Goracle is such an alarmist expert about?

Kukla, who left the former communist Czechoslovakia in 1971, said that the accelerating warming of the Earth is not caused by man but by the regularities of the planets' circulation around the Sun.

Kukla, an expert from the University of Columbia, has defended his opinions about climate changes in the U.S. Congress several times. In 1982, he confronted his views with later U.S. vice-president Al Gore. . . .

Heh. A real expert.

Abuse and Incompetence Reign Supreme

This comes as no great surprise.

A Guardian investigation has found evidence of serious irregularities at the heart of the process the world is relying on to control global warming.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world, according to UN paperwork, an unpublished expert report and alarming feedback from projects on the ground.

However, there's an inconvenient truth that the al-Guardian doesn't mention: which Americans are profiting from the carbon credit scheme.