The Answer to Al Gore

Very funny. I expect outrage expressed soon by some sensitive soul.

Awww…

It's a counterfeit carbon debit. How crappy… and very, very disappointing.

It isn't a real carbon debit if it is from carbon which is already in the carbon cycle. To a real de-environmentalist, that's like making out with your sister.

Even if you decide to be a serious bastard and burn your tree to generate some awesome, climate-destroying atmospheric carbon dioxide, well, damn… it just becomes a little tree again next spring… locking up all your hard-earned, greenhouse gas-generating efforts back into a tree's worth of lignocellulose over the next decade or two… or, worse, it quickly turns your twenty bucks worth of carbon into completely environmentally inert and unenjoyable chrysolaminarin in some fast-growing, slimy-assed photosynthetic heterokont.

Ho-hum… back where you started… less twenty bucks.

I would feel, like, totally ripped off if that happened to me.

…maybe it would be more satisfying if it came as a package deal with some kind of of global herbicide program… at least it would keep my own, Personally Purchased Carbon up in the atmosphere where it can do the least good.

…although, technically, my Personally Purchased Carbon could be used to generate necessary nonstructural carbohydrate or even DNA in some third world baby who will live long enough to produce more atmospheric carbon dioxide than an entire grove of burnt trees.

What a great return on an environment-destroying investment…

…really making it a better choice to donate 20 bucks to Oxfam or UNICEF so they can keep a little carbon-producer kicking (and exhaling toxic gas)… all in your name… how touching.

Funny, Al Gore never mentioned the touchy-feely, warm and fuzzy synergy between saving our beautiful planet and large-scale genocide.

See, we can have our sport utility vehicles AND an icecap if we pull this off right.

None-the-less, it is all a fake carbon debit.

For a snazzy, genuine carbon debit with the look and feel of real global warming, you have to introduce new, ADDITIONAL carbon to the carbon cycle.

How, you ask?

Collecting some carbonaceous chondrites from space would work. Crushing some extra diamonds back into elemental carbon would be cool, too. Both of those methods would produce a real carbon debit from outside the existing carbon cycle… and certainly make me feel like I got my money's worth.

But, for those of you who want a REAL carbon debit, on a budget, just send 20 bucks to my PayPal account and I will give you one.

First, I'll take a sack full of high-carbon anthracite coal and pour a couple gallons of asphalt and other long-chain hydrocarbon sludge from the drip pan of the refinery. Then, I'll ring it with PETE bottles filled with TEL (carbon/lead molecules… bonus, eh?)… ooooh, and maybe some uranium dicarbonyl with a documented chain showing all used carbon came from underground, non-cycle petroleum. I'll cover it all with a couple sheets of polystyrene soaked in benzene… and sprinkle on some PVC shavings.

Then I'll set the motherfucker on fire… just for you.

Whatever god-awful, non-degradable toxic char is left over, I'll grind up and sprinkle on some farmland… or maybe a daycare center playground.

Now, THAT is a carbon debit you can be proud of… straight from deep underground and outside the existing carbon cycle. Hell, I'll even throw on a container of pork lard (petroleum-based hydrocarbon feed additives, of course) and let it burn for no extra charge…

…but only for the smell.

J!