Hate mail of the week.
Geo-Location of the IP of the sender of the email.
We get a lot of email from the general public here at Carbon Planet and some of it even makes sense. This email is fairly typical and I’d reprint it in full but for the sailor-talk. I am not prude, and find swearing as funny as the next man when used properly, but lots of readers sit behind corporate firewalls that block sites with certain four letter combinations, so I’ll resort to the old ‘!@$%’ trick if you don’t mind. Kids beware - there’s some grown-up concepts here.
from: ########## <*************t>
Subject: Carbon Credits
I read your website.
What a bunch of###### #######.
I take a plane flight and pay you ########## for my portion of the CO2 the plane produces.
Man….what a scam!!!
When the myth of global warming is FINALLY put to rest, I hope we, as a planet, can
bend you ########## over a cane-back chair like a double barreled shotgun, and #################### large horse.
Yep, the sender wants the global population to ############## large horse! Without getting into the mechanics of that, it’s pretty darn weird don’t you think, and bespeaks a rather disturbed mind.
So let’s look at the email rationally. I’ll not bother replying in person but I usually find than when you scratch away the abuse, under the anger there is sometimes a nugget worth clarifying. In this case it boils down to the sender not really believing that the mean temperature of the Earth is increasing, and as a consequence he regards the retail interface we developed to allow ordinary people to purchase certified carbon credits to offset their air-travel as a scam. He seems to take it quite personally too. Carbon Planet’s Flight Emissions Calculator is respected as one of the most accurate and easy to use flight emissions calculators on the internet.
To his first point I’d like to quote an author that I deeply respect, Mr George Monbiot, when he says in his article Junk Science:
It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals.
Monbiot is not even talking about global warming here, which is the cause of climate change. The evidence for a warming world abounds; last year a man swam at the North Pole for the first time in human history. Back in Adelaide, South Australia, they are sweating through of the longest heat-wave in living memory. The global mean temperature has observably risen, as have sea levels.
To his credit, the sender accepts that planes emit greenhouse gasses when they fly, but he refuses to accept that he should have to accept some of the responsibility for that. It’s this disconnect that afflicts even some of the greenest of travelers who insist that because they have a Toyota Prius they have already done their bit for the planet. — DS
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