Chicago Climate Exchange is closed

It was not going to work without coercion in the form of cap-and-trade. If Al Gore and the rest have let it go, then it looks like the lame-duck session of Congress will not be trying for cap-and-trade.

What Ed Barnes has to say. Here's another take from the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute. CCX's parent company runs carbon exchanges in other countries, which are not closing. So is this a victory for American exceptionalism? Wouldn't that be nice.

Evil mutant rises from the dead ...

… to threaten industry and prosperity. First, it was Waxman-Markey; then it was Boxer-Kerry; now it's Kerry-Lieberman; but it's all cap 'n' trade.



Left to right, Kerry, Obama, Lieberman. Al Gore is out of the frame.

If it passes, it will be the American economy that's the zombie. But the Chicago Carbon Exchange will be doing fine.

Climategate, still growing

Lots of Real Life^TM to deal with, lately, so I am just trying to follow developments, not doing much blogging. As you might have noticed.

Watts Up With That is staying on top of it, with a big accumulator page, and plenty of regular posting.

Such as: Lord Monckton’s summary of Climategate and its issues: "The Whistle Blows for Truth." Most recently: Now it’s serious, Daily Show’s Jon Stewart mocks Gore and Global Warming. As I said quite a while ago, more jokes, please!

Al Gore: pretty good with some numbers

Numbers with dollar signs attached.

With other numbers, not so good.



Millions of degrees at the Earth's core, indeed. John Derbyshire checks the numbers. He's a climate con artist, that's all. It would make sense to follow his lead on investments … just as it would to invest along with George Soros, they are the same, after all … provided that you took the Louis XV attitude towards the future: "Après moi, le déluge." Does he imagine that the millions that he is amassing from his climate con game will protect his grandchildren from the apocalypse that he predicts?

It's a good thing to be rich. It's not a good thing to get rich by scaring people about the ManBearPig that's coming to get you!

Let's take a closer look at that book …

… that Obama's science advisor John Holdren wrote with Paul Ehrlich. Zombie has the story: John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet. Good grief.

This stuff about the Planetary Regime fits nicely with Al Gore's recent call for "global governance," and what that regime would do sounds a lot like the prescriptions of Herman Daly in Steady-State Economics, cited here earlier in Obama's chief energy regulator tells us to prepare to freeze in the dark.

Anyone for a New World Order?

Thanks to Blake for the Zombietime link.

Update: David Harsanyi should have linked to Zombie.

Another update: Follow-up post at Zomblog, as Holdren and and the White House attempt to deny that what was written was what was meant, or something like that.

Krugman out of his mind and over the line

Another link to Neo-neocon. Good bunch of comments over there, too.

"Traitors to the planet?" Good grief. Put down that Kool-Aid, Dr. Krugman. You're way outside your academic field here. Let no one say after this that warming is a scientific issue any more. The politicians have got their teeth into it now.

I'd be more inclined to call people voting for Waxman-Markey traitors, in the old fashioned sense of working for the destruction of their country, if I were going to sling that word around, which, of course, I'm not.

I wouldn't use apophasis on those guys. No I wouldn't.

---------------------
More from Tom Maguire.

Update: Lomborg on Krugman, et Al.: Al Gore and friends create climate of McCarthyism. Via Planet Gore.

Lomborg on Climate-Industrial Complex

Bjørn Lomborg had a piece in the WSJ last week that made some important points.

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the "military-industrial complex," cautioning that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He worried that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

This is certainly true of climate change. We are told that very expensive carbon regulations are the only way to respond to global warming, despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost-benefit test. We must ask whether a "climate-industrial complex" is emerging, pressing taxpayers to fork over money to please those who stand to gain.

This phenomenon will be on display at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen this weekend. The organizers -- the Copenhagen Climate Council -- hope to push political leaders into more drastic promises when they negotiate the Kyoto Protocol's replacement in December.

The opening keynote address is to be delivered by Al Gore, who actually represents all three groups: He is a politician, a campaigner and the chair of a green private-equity firm invested in products that a climate-scared world would buy.

Naturally, many CEOs are genuinely concerned about global warming. But many of the most vocal stand to profit from carbon regulations. The term used by economists for their behavior is "rent-seeking." …

The partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners truly is an unholy alliance. The climate-industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everybody. We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act. Spending a fortune on global carbon regulations will benefit a few, but dearly cost everybody else.

Several pages of comments at Opinion Journal Forum.

This by way of Jerry Pournelle, who says:

The Climate Industrial Complex is the most dangerous organization in the world, and in my judgment is up there with Fascism and Marxism as dangers to Western Civilization. Those latter two are still around and still a danger -- indeed, some Greens use tactics they could well have learned from the Brown, Black, and Red terrors; and note that most of the Climate Industrial Complex program (which will transfer a trillion dollars and more to the Greens without any noticeable benefit to the civilization) is also the agenda of powerful factions of the US Congress and the Administration. It is hard to discern what Obama really believes, but he appears to be a convert to the "consensus".

Nature isn't cooperating and it's getting harder and harder to support parts of the "Climate Change" belief system, but the movement is so far advanced that it may not matter. When Roosevelt tried to end The Great Depression, one of his tools was TVA and the generation of energy. Without lower energy costs we will not climb out of our depression. It is important to make it clear that the debate is not over, there is no real scientific consensus on man-caused global warming, and destroying the economy in order to reduce CO2 output in the United States is all cost with almost no benefit. That debate must continue; and you may be certain, absolutely certain, that those who try to keep this a debate will be labeled "deniers" and denigrated as fools.

Typical of the effluent from Copenhagen is this from China:

China tells rich nations to cut emissions by 40 percent

BEIJING (Reuters) - Rich nations should cut their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels as part of a new global climate change pact, China said on Thursday, spelling out its stance ahead of negotiations.

The pact must ensure wealthy nations "take on quantified targets to drastically reduce emissions," said the statement, issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (www.ndrc.gov.cn), which steers Chinese climate change policy.

Developed countries should also give 0.5 to 1.0 percent of their annual economic worth to help other nations cope with global warming and curtail greenhouse gas emissions, China said in the document, laying down demands for a conference in Copenhagen in December meant to seal a new climate change pact.

Might as well ask for the moon even if all they want is a little piece of the green cheese. But with the watermelons currently in the government, they are likely to get all that and more. Somebody said, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." But a treaty demanding a 40% reduction in carbon output, that is a suicide pact.

Al Gore is there, of course, sounding a Billy Mays-like note of urgency. "Buy now! Supplies are limited!" Actual quote:

“We have to do it this year. Not next year. This year,” Mr. Gore said. “The clock is ticking, because Mother Nature does not do bailouts.”

See what I mean? They want to ram this through before cooler heads (Hah! Cooler!) have a chance to get into the discussion.

Monckton not permitted to appear with Gore

The debate that never was. What a pity. It would have been a wonderful thing to hear, and a good thing for the world. But embarass a Democrat? Can't be allowed to happen, though the heavens fall.

At Climate Depot:

UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

“The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”

And at Watts Up With That, more story, and a lot of comments.

Monckton's comments on Gore's testimony.

Monckton did testify, a little, at another time. His written testimony (PDF) is brief and breezy. This letter (PDF) to Markey and Barton, expanding on the written testimony, is neither. For laughs, here's a look at that day at the hearing from an alarmist point of view.

That high profile hearing was on the subject of the Markey Waxman climate bill, or ACES (American Clean Energy and Security) Act. A four-part series on it at the WSJ's Environmental Capital blog begins here. Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-TX), ranking Republican member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, says in the Washington Times:

Nobody understands exactly what the legislation means in dollars and cents - more on this later - but to experience how it would feel to lower your personal carbon footprint to the size this bill proposes, set the flux capacitor to 1875. That's the last time Americans' carbon emissions matched the goals set by the Waxman-Markey legislation.

What, the old DeLorean is up on cinder blocks in the front yard again? In that case you can test drive Waxman-Markey by sailing down to Haiti, because current CO2 emissions are where Waxman-Markey wants America's to be in 2050. Radical environmentalists think such a CO2 level will be heaven on Earth, but the place that has actually achieved it is a nation swimming in bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, typhoid fever, dengue fever and malaria, with 47 percent illiteracy and a life expectancy of 49 years. So excuse me if I remain unconvinced.

Iain Murray asks, "Just What Is Waxman-Markey For?" And Kenneth Green points to analysis by Chip Knappenberger showing that even if the whole industrialized world, not just the US, were to go along with Waxman-Markey, "it would, at most, avoid only a bit more than one-half of a °C of projected global warming (out of 4.5°C—or only about 10%). And this is under worst-case emissions assumptions; middle-of-the-road scenarios and less sensitive climate models produce even less overall impact." To sum up: very expensive, entirely useless.

The Democrats are moving fast on their agenda, in the hope of getting it all enacted before the general public catches on.

I don't think the apology has been offered

"Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted." In the Huffington Post! Lots of comments. As a HuffPo commenter says, the multitude of comments proves the debate is not over. Via Jerry Pournelle, who says, "The astonishing part is that it is in the Huffington Post."

Over in the Chaos Manor mail, a couple of articles from the Independent saying that some of the alarmists are calling for geoengineering schemes to supplement ineffective CO2 reduction schemes. "Climate scientists: it's time for 'Plan B'." The survey on which the first piece is based: "What can we do to save our planet?" This approach could get seriously dangerous. None of these scientists exhibits any concern about the possibility of triggering another Ice Age.

Update: and then there's this: Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979 (via Vodkapundit).

Another update: Arianna Huffington is now all ticked off about the piece linked above. See Huff-Po reverts to form at Dr. Pournelle's place.

Al Gore's new boat

My word, I'm getting tired of this "Al Gore and the Global Warming" nonsense. It's pretty clear that even Gore does not take his gospel at all seriously, but is just putting one over on the rubes who will bite on his hook. I dare say he'll be trolling for a few fish in the new boat.

B.-S. One. I doubt it will ever leave Center Hill Lake.

It's smaller than David Geffen's yacht, that's true, but for a lake boat, it's pretty darn big. The Mayflower was smaller, and used no diesel fuel, bio- or otherwise.

Catsup, ketsiap, ketchup

Catch up. The real stuff has anchovies. Fancy that!

Nothing here lately, there's been lots of Real Life to be attended to.

Al Gore makes a bid for the title of looniest (wanna-be) leader in a while. Demolish and rebuild the nation's entire electrical power generating system in 10 years? Yeah, right. Some people are just innumerate. Not Gore so much as his followers. If Gore had trouble with math, he wouldn't have been able to make all that money out of these here carbon credits. Grumble, grumble …

Obama goes abroad, loses Teleprompter, speaks to worshipful crowds everywhere, with foot still firmly planted in mouth. No need to link this, it' s all over. But, what the heck, might as well link a few.

David Evans hammers another nail in the coffin of the global warming scam.

If you are having trouble seeing the "We Are Building a Religion" Obama music video, try it here. It was working fine the last time I checked it, about a minute ago.

I'm a big fan of the HBO TV series The Wire. As a former Baltimore resident, I kind of like seeing the bits of scenery around the Inner Harbor. Here's a true crime story Too Weird for The Wire. (via)

C level rising

You loved the book, you raved about the movie, now you can hear the opera! TigerHawk notes that La Scala has commissioned composer Giorgio Battistelli to produce an opera based on An Inconvenient Truth. With judicious use of the forklift, Al Gore might be able to demonstrate that high C level that he likes to talk about.

I have no intention of going to Milan to see this. (Wouldn't it make more sense to stage it in Venice? Scratch that. Make sense of opera? Make sense of An Inconvenient Truth? Unlikelihood squared.) But I do hope it will turn up on YouTube.

Update: Victoria has more, and funnier.

Another update: Battistelli speaks.

And another update: Russell Seitz has more, including video, apparently from a rehearsal.

Yet another update: Roger L. Simon has discovered that William Friedkin will be directing the production.

Messed up climate numbers

Patrick Michaels in the WSJ:

Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess

President George W. Bush has just announced his goal to stabilize greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025. To get there, he proposes new fuel-economy standards for autos, and lower emissions from power plants built in the next 10 to 15 years.

Pending legislation in the Senate from Joe Lieberman and John Warner would cut emissions even further – by 66% by 2050. No one has a clue how to do this. Because there is no substitute technology to achieve these massive reductions, we'll just have to get by with less energy.

We'll get along somehow? Maybe the US can just stop using autos altogether. Everyone on the bus! How communal, uh, communitarian, uh, community-oriented.

There's a lot more politics than there is science in this global-warming business. Now that's it is becoming the unquestioned, assumed background to more legislation that will damage the economy and hence the country, it must be fought. We are overdue for another ice age, if you look at the cycles. So a whole lot more data should be gathered and integrated before major coercive action is taken. The proposed legislation is not going to benefit the country. It's well-intentioned foolishness.

Michaels concludes this article with

the ultimate question: Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there's little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you're liable to be pilloried by your colleagues. If global warming isn't such a threat, who needs all that funding? Who needs the army of policy wonks crawling around the world with bold plans to stop climate change?

But as we face the threat of massive energy taxes – raised by perceptions of increasing rates of warming and the sudden loss of Greenland's ice – we should be talking about reality.

Read the whole thing to see why the perceptions that raise the threat of the taxes are questionable. It's politics and self-interested rent-seeking all the way down.

Here earlier: Energy.

Apocalypse? No!

That's the title of a new movie that you will not be seeing at the local Multiplex. The DVD is available from GreatSwindle.com. It's Lord Monckton's contra Al Gore slideshow, filmed live at the Cambridge Union Society, Oct. 8, 2007. I am strongly tempted to transcribe a whole lot of it. But I'll refrain, for now.

I think I'll donate a copy to my local library, if they will promise me that it will go into the collection. Highly recommended.

More Monckton here and here.

In other news from the AGW propaganda front, Morgan Freeberg and Gerard Van der Leun have played a round of blog ping-pong. The serve: The Climate Thugs and the No Balls BBC: Visual Aids. The return: I Made a New Word XV. The volley: Word o' the Day: bo•lus•te•mol•o•gy. All worth reading. The return post by Freeberg incorporates a General Theory of Everything that's wrong with journalism and media. I was just chatting with a reporter/columnist for the local daily who was saying that it's hard times for print media. "The New York Times has just laid off 200 people," he said. I said, "If they weren't a propaganda outlet for the Democratic Party, they might not be on such hard times." At which point, he went into moonbat mode, asking if the Washington Times or Fox News could be taken seriously. Which shows that even in a small town, the journalist swims in liberalism like the fish in the sea, taking it for granted as the normal environment.

Paul Krugman agrees with Rolling Stone and me, and we're fast-tracking

Now there's an odd triple. In today's Grains Gone Wild, Krugman says that "We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turn out to have been a terrible mistake." Click the "biofuel" label for more on this here.

Krugman waits only until his next sentence to make one of those non-predicting predictions, the kind where he's right either way: "But it’s not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past." Or, of course, maybe something can be done. It's not clear. Is anything clear? It's clear that using food as fuel is a mistake. Bio-diesel from stuff that would otherwise be garbage is one thing, but turning cropland over to raising fuel is another matter. So where can the pushback come from? The leftist environmentalist Democrats are in the bag on this. Congressmen of either party from corn-raising states are in the bag. Will these people ever admit to making a mistake, and sponsor repeal of their own legislation? Damn, it would be refreshing to see. Krugman is a Democrat, though, so he can see no way out, and is left with a conclusion based on a begged question. There's a hidden assumption in the last sentence, that "cheap oil, may be a thing of the past." Assuming nothing changes. And why would anything change? Surely all the oil fields have been discovered [Falklands? Brazil? Bakken? Anyone?], surely Iraq will never get their oil on line, surely things can only get worse.


All because of the war, of course. You gotta blame Bush. Whatever will the BDS sufferers do next year? And the global warming. Another quote: "[B]ad weather, especially the Australian drought, is probably related to climate change. So politicians and governments that have stood in the way of action on greenhouse gases bear some responsibility for food shortages." Note the weasel logic: "probably related"; but "politicians and goverments … [no "probably," not even a "might"] … bear some responsibility for food shortages."

The food shortages would be why we must get out of the way of giving the next president power for Fast-tracking climate policies. You knew this was coming. As the first commenter says,

Now that highly regarded scientists are getting the word out (although the press won't report it - any of it here at the D.C.?) these laws MUST be fast tracked before people realize what a fraud Global Warming is. It's about government control of people's lives, not "saving the planet." It's about becoming wealthy, as Al Gore has, on the issue. Data show that Earth has been in a cooling trend for the past ten years.

The increasing urgency of the warmingists reminds me of those offers you get in the junk mail: "Limited time only! Buy NOW before it's TOO LATE!"

There are comments on the Krugman column at Althouse.

Update: More on the Krugman column from Tom Maguire: The Eerily Prescient Professor Krugman, and Paul Krugman, Lying To Protect The Democrats.

Everybody's against green fuel this week: here's Ron Bailey, with a good quote from Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, "Biofuels are purely and simply the biggest Green mistake we've ever made and we're still making it."

Gleanings

About time to release these into the wild.

John Derbyshire reviews American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau.

Annie Dillard goes furthest into the dark territory: "Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me … we are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world. The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die—does not care if it itself grinds to a halt … space is a beauty married to a blind man. The blind man is Freedom, or Time, and he does not go anywhere without his great dog Death.”

[…] to the degree that ordinary folk disengage from nature, we shall be less able to evaluate what we are told by the Al Gores of the world, nature’s self-appointed custodians, and their legions of tax-eating experts.

I just love Annie Dillard's writing. I don't know if I agree with her, or even understand her, a fair amount of the time, but my word, that woman can write.

Radley Balko: Standing Near Children Now a Crime.

Rand Simberg coins a word: ambit, v., from ambition. Like "aspire," only not so nice. "Her ambition is to…" = "She ambits to…"

Generations on welfare. "Six million Britons are living in homes where no one has a job and 'benefits are a way of life', according to a report by MPs." (via)

Youth crime in Britain. Johnathan Pearce, at Samizdata, links to Clive Barker and Time magazine. It's just getting worse. Parts of Britain are losing the status of civilization, and it's not the booze, either, it's the attitudes of invulnerability and entitlement among those with a ton of self-esteem and no self-respect. (via)

Ace says Want To Be Happy All of Your Life? Make an Ugly Woman Your Wife Dude Your Husband.

Striped icebergs.

LauraW, at Ace's place, calls this a Nifty Mashup. I don't disagree. Jim Morrison meets Debbie Harry for "Riders on the Rapture."

Gore stealth campaign building a contributor database

"Join Al Gore in supporting solutions to the climate crisis." That's the Alliance for Climate Protection. Otherwise known as wecansolveit.org. 914,339 already enrolled as of 4 pm EDT March 25. 915,969 at 12:15 am the same night. I wonder if they'll all buy Al's carbon credits.

So they want to protect the climate, eh? Morgan Freeberg says everybody is linking to this:

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued…

I don't want to be left out, so now I have linked to it, too. And a few people are linking to this:

Researcher: Basic Greenhouse Equations "Totally Wrong"

Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center.

After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis, and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other climatologists. The data fit extremely well. "I fell in love," he stated at the International Climate Change Conference this week.

"Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations," Miskolczi states. Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain amount.
How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution.

So Gore is building a movement based on protecting a couple of degrees of temperature that seem on closer examination to be able to take care of themselves. What do you do with a movement that's as wrongheaded as that? Just send them home?

A little more Gore

Let's start with this:

The founder of The Weather Channel either wants to sue, or thinks someone should sue, Al Gore for fraud over his peddling of carbon credits. Who has standing? Sooner would be better than later. Thanks to Morgan Freeberg at the blog nobody reads for the video.

And move on to this: A year ago, I said "I still think he'll announce, possibly at the last minute, after all the other candidates have shredded each other to bits. He could then step in as the (choke) non-political candidate, the Man With a Mission." Now, the stealth campaign seems to be simmering a little more warmly. There are petitions, no end of CafePress goodies and an "Official Gore Store" for those official campaign buttons (ever so much better than the knock-offs), and more websites than you want to visit. The convenient GoreHub site lists quite a few of them. And Roger L. Simon has this: "You Know Me Al."

On the other hand: Gore is busy with his CurrenTV IPO, and the millions at stake there might look more interesting than the Presidency. Still, if the IPO can be done by the middle of August, he could have both!

Offsets, I got yer offsets right here

Carbon offsets: FTC Carbon Offset Investigation Previews Cap and Trade’s Imminent Failure.

Al Gore gets his carbon credits here. He owns the company. You or I would have to shop for ours. But why bother, when we can get all the free offsets we want.

Offsets for cheaters.

Horse offsets.

Business Week [bold is mine]:

A growing number of organizations, corporations, cities, and individuals are seeking to protect the climate—or at least claim bragging rights for protecting the climate. Rather than take the arduous step of significantly cutting their own emissions of carbon dioxide, many in the ranks of the environmentally concerned are paying to have someone else curtail air pollution or develop "renewable" energy sources (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/1/07, "Ethanol: Too Much Hype—and Corn "). Carbon offsets, as the most common variety of these deals is known, have become one of the most widely promoted products marketed to checkbook environmentalists.

Done carefully, offsets can have a positive effect and raise ecological awareness. But a close look at several transactions—including those involving the Oscar presenters, Vail Resorts, and the Seattle power company—reveals that some deals amount to little more than feel-good hype. When traced to their source, these dubious offsets often encourage climate protection that would have happened regardless of the buying and selling of paper certificates. One danger of largely symbolic deals is that they may divert attention and resources from more expensive and effective measures.

Remember the Pet Rock™? Some people will buy anything.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

Update: More on this from Morgan Freeberg at the House of Eratosthenes. Do read the comments!

Another update: Michelle Malkin has the story on offsets for the jet-set environmentalists at Davos: Enviro-nitwits fly to Davos, seek absolution from Al Gore.

Speaking of farce, here's Tim Slagle

I have been hoping to see more in the line of mockery of this whole Global Warming business, and Gerard Van der Leun comes through with this. I hope he is right when he says, "Once the comics get onto you with this kind of granulation, you are history." Thanks!

Not safe for work.

Update: And another! Country Joe meets Big Warm Al: Gore to Earthlings: The Memo.