Our first hate mail of the year is in.
Every so often we are contacted by people, mostly well meaning, but sometimes a little cranky. This question from someone identifying themselves as Paul is typical:
On 6 February 2007 5:10:03 PM Paul wrote
Seems to me you’re taking advantage of an ever increasingly popular THEORY in order to make a few bucks. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml? xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html WHilst i realise there are people out there stupid enough to be taken in by your fancy website and obscured “beliefs” not everyone is THAT stupid.Just know that I am not alone and I have discovered you are trying to influence ordinary businesses to part with their hard earned money and get nothing in return. You WILL be exposed for what your oganization really is….criminal.
What surprised me at first was that the UK’s Telegraph would run an article like this, but then I saw the publication date, July 2004! No wonder poor Paul is so angry, he can’t be alone either. But even the article Paul cites is inconclusive on the matter.
Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming.
He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth’s temperature had continued to increase.
This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate “the natural factors involved in climate change”, he said.
Indeed the recently released 2007 IPCC report went into the question of sun spots and the effect of solar activity on our climate and concluded that it is 90% likely that it is human activity that is causing the Earth to warm up, with consequent destabilising effects on the climate. The IPCC report is one of the most heavily scrutinised scientific reports ever published, with input from a global community of scientists. It reinforced the findings of the previous 2001 IPCC report with new data, new facts and tonnes of new research that all ultimately pointed at the same culprit, us. Sure there may be some external influences also affecting our planet’s temperature, but these are way down the scale.
The sun spot data goes back just over 1000 years, but the CO2 and temperature data now goes back almost a million years. I’m no scientist, (but we employ a whole team of them to work out ways you and your business can reduce your emissions naturally,) however it does seem to me that the IPCC people know what they are talking about.
Many people get confused by the terms ‘global warming’ vs ‘climate change’ so I’ll just explain it now before I get further into Paul’s letter.
Global warming describes the observed heating of the average planetary temperature. The climate, long terms weather patterns, is changing because we are heating the planet. Climate change is a consequence of global warming. They are not the same thing; one causes the other.
Now to Paul’s letter. Yes Paul, human-induced climate change is a theory, just like evolution is a theory, and curved space-time is a theory. It’s a theory that explains the observed facts, the planet is heating up, the climate is changing, the sea levels are rising, species are dying off, storms are becoming more violent and are appearing in places previously not known for such storms. In light of these observed facts the scientists of the world have been charged with the task of explaining why we are seeing such heating.
After over 30 years of research, and despite the best efforts of various industry groups, corrupt shills and misguided politicians, the scientific conclusion is that human beings have become a force of nature. We are causing billions of tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), as well as lesser amounts of other, more potent, greenhouse gases, to pour into the atmosphere and this is trapping more and more of the sun’s heat, raising the temperature.
Clearly our “fancy” website is not clear enough in explaining this, as if we’d done our job properly, Paul would see that it is common sense that supports our beliefs.
Pop Quiz time: If it comes down to a credibility death-match, who are you going to believe,
- ExxonMobil,
- a politician, or
- a network of some of the world’s foremost scientific authorities.
I don’t think you’d be considered “stupid” to go with option 3 there.
Now Paul’s got time away from running his busy pizza shop to be a detective too. He’s “discovered” that we’ve been talking to businesses about what they can do in the fight against global warming. Great work Paul, and we’ve been so sneaky about it too, working with trading groups like the Semaphore Mainstreet Association to work out a deal whereby all SMA members are eligible for a flat-rate carbon emissions audit at a fraction of the retail cost.
Understanding where your firm’s carbon emissions come from, and getting sensible, practical advice on how to reduce those emissions is something many businesses, large and small, come to us for. Our emissions audits comply with the international standards and are a key part of our Measure, Reduce, then Offset strategy. First you need to know how you cause carbon emissions, then you need to know how to modify your behaviour to reduce those emissions (and often save money in the process), and finally you need to know that money spent on carbon offsets, in the form of carbon credits, is not going to be money wasted on some dodgy scheme. Yes Paul, we do charge money for this service, but to say businesses get nothing in return is just wrong.
The Semaphore Vet Surgery, just down the road from your own shop, is already seeing the benefits, both in terms of an improved public profile, but also in terms of staff retention and other less tangible benefits, of having made a commitment to going CO2 free™.
I can see you are angry about what we do, and feel for you. Its a perfectly natural human reaction for your own impotence, in the face of such incomprehensible danger, to make you this angry. And believe me, I know you are not alone.
There is a rage building, born from the decades of lies we’ve been fed by our elected leaders. But your rage is being directed at us, and that’s wrong. Focus your rage on those who have truly deceived you, and who are, right now, mortgaging your children’s future to line their own pockets.
Even if we, and the international scientific community, turn out to have been wrong all along; investing in greener power, emissions reduction strategies, pollution controls and re-localised living can only be a good thing for you, your health and your community.
Buying into the lies of Exxon and their ilk benefits them and no-one else. We are trying very hard to do what’s best for you, and for the planet we all share. It hurts be be tagged as criminals when we’ve gone to such lengths to qualify every statement we make in our website, and be open and honest about how we use the money people pay us. — DS
Technorati Tags: business, Carbon Planet, climate change, disrupted nature, education, emissions reduction, ExxonMobil, global warming, politics, protest
