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Sunday, January 12, 2014

I'm King of the Carbon!

Please enjoy Mark Steyn's take on the Saga of MV Akademik Shokalskiy that got stuck in the ice in Antarctica while on a global warming tourism jaunt.

Let me get you started:

Yes, yes, just to get the obligatory ‘of courses’ out of the way up front: of course ‘weather’ is not the same as ‘climate’; and of course the thickest iciest ice on record could well be evidence of ‘global warming’, just as 40-and-sunny and a 35-below blizzard and 12 degrees and partly cloudy with occasional showers are all apparently manifestations of ‘climate change’; and of course the global warm-mongers are entirely sincere in their belief that the massive carbon footprint of their rescue operation can be offset by the planting of wall-to-wall trees the length and breadth of Australia, Britain, America and continental Europe.

But still: you’d have to have a heart as cold and unmovable as Commonwealth Bay ice not to be howling with laughter at the exquisite symbolic perfection of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition ‘stuck in our own experiment’, as they put it.

The humor value in going to the coldest place on Earth in the midst of a decade-and-a-half "hiatus" in global warming is high, all alone, you must admit. Then they get stuck in the ice.

The carbon offset stuff is what really gets me.

These rich bastard one percenters think the poor need to shiver in their tiny eco-friendly homes commuting to their recycling jobs on eco-friendly electric buses. One must reduce one's footprint even if it hurts. A whole planet is at stake, remember.

But the rich Greens get to do anything they want, anywhere they want, by any means they want, as long as they pay for a "carbon offset" somewhere in the world. "No harm, no foul," they think. And they can afford it.

Hey, I've an idea to "save the planet!" Those rich Green types should use their wealth to really reduce the carbon polluting the air by shivering in (one) tiny eco-friendly home, travel by bus (or by sail boat if they must travel abroad), and buy all those carbon offsets!

I mean, if we're really going to get into that "from each according to their ability (to pay)" shtick, why not ask the rich Greens to contribute a little more than the poor schleps who already have so little?

After all, these rich guys don't expect the "developing" world to reduce carbon emissions--just the rich West. Heck, they don't even count America's better record on reducing carbon emissions because we did it with natural gas fracking and not by signing an international agreement, thus really showing we care.

The Green hypocrites can all just go take a long walk off a short ice shelf, as far as I'm concerned.

UPDATE: Jack Kelly has an interesting detail about the man leading the expedition:

Aboard the vessel were 22 scientists headed by Chris Turney, a professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales, four journalists and 26 tourists. ...

Prof. Turney is a founder of Carbonscape, a company whose profitability depends on the willingness of people to pay enormous sums to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

So Turley profits from oil company money Green suckers buying carbon indulgences?

Ship of fools? No. Well not exclusively, anyway. Ship of tools works, also.