Posted by
Jason on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 12:43:37 PM
Disclaimer: I'm just an average guy...
Here's what I think anyway... Recently, it has been more and more common to hear comparisons made between "Climate Change" adherents and religious zealotry. The list of commonalities is actually quite long (prescribed diet, cataclysmic predictions, etc.). But nothing better demonstrates the similarities to me better than "carbon off-sets."
It's a complicated system (as are any fraudulent schemes which seek to profit from misinformed people), but basically you can buy forgiveness for your carbon "sins" by purchasing offsets. The last time I can remember people having to buy their own forgiveness was when Catholics sold indulgences, back around the Medieval era!
But now we hear new that while making his Oscar-winning (what a joke) documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," the film's producers claimed that they did just that and, "offset 100% of the carbon dioxide emissions from air and ground transportation and hotels for production and promotional activities associated with the documentary 'AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH' making the film the first carbon-neutral documentary ever."
I'm sure they didn't think they'd get caught, but that statement is what you might call a "convenient lie." The company that sold the carbon offsets, Native Energy, said that the film makers paid $480 (ooo, big spenders!) which bought offsets for about 40 tons of carbon dioxide, or roughly the amount of CO2 generated in the production of a 30-second T.V. commercial.
Articles to Reference:
1. "More Al Gore Hypocrisy: 'An Inconvenient Truth' Wasn't Carbon Neutral"
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/07/23/more-al-gore-hypocrisy-inconvenient-truth-wasn-t-carbon-neutral
2. "Junk Science: Carbon Offsets- Buyers Beware"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290066,00.html
3. "An Inconvenient Truth is the First Carbon-Neutral Documentary"
http://nativeenergy.blogspot.com/2006/06/inconvenient-truth-is-first-carbon.html