CARBON TRADING: NOT WHAT YOU THOUGHT

In April, when the states and Territories announced they had set up a carbon-trading scheme, proponents took to the airwaves regurgitating their deceitful vomit.

Carbon credit trading is hailed as a means of reducing the threat of global warming. Carr claims the system could help cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 60 per cent.

Carbon credit trading allows industries to continue to emit greenhouse gases at whatever level they desire provided such emissions are offset by the industry funding the planting of the number of trees required to absorb the amount of greenhouse gases emitted. Carbon trading is an environmental political wankadoodle on a grand scale. Everyone is jumping on board: media, environmentalists, industrialists, scientists, politicians, and farmers.

Carbon trading does absolutely nothing to reduce the impact of global warming on human civilization.

There are solid reasons to plant billions of trees. One is the ability of a growing tree to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. It uses the carbon to build its woody structure and releases the remnant oxygen back into the air. This process is called sequestration.

The value of sequestration is it allows us to delay the effects of our folly by releasing the CO2 created today at a later date. This later date though is only a few generations of humans down the time line. When the wood burns or decays the process is reversed.

It buys time while we make real reductions in global greenhouse gas outputs.

The biosphere has for aeons produced more CO2 than is healthy for bio-diversity. In order to avoid a deadly build up of this gas that would prohibit Earth's incredible life forms, Gaia developed methods of permanently removing excess CO2. Growing trees was not one of these.

The main vehicle is protists, uni-cellular organisms, existing in huge numbers in oceans. Taking CO2 from the air and combining it with calcium ions from the water, they create a calcium carbonate (CaCO3) shell. When these critters die, their CaCO3 collects in deposits of limestone.

There is lots of limestone. However, when limestone reaches the Earth's surface, the action of weather breaks it back down into calcium for the soil and carbon dioxide for the air.

Limestone is not the final solution. When limestone is metamorphosed it becomes marble. Marble is resistant to decay for millions of years. Now that is an effective system for removing excess CO2.

But it does not solve the added burden of the human contribution.

The propaganda has been skewered to promote the falsehood that farming trees is a significant strategy in putting the brakes on global warming. This nonsense needs to be addressed by all frontline people.

The continuous disingenuous dissemination of this crapola is self-serving. Politicians get good enviro-press. Consultants, entrepreneurs, landowners, and myriad others get in on the cash cow. Global Corporate gets to keep on polluting. Consumers can still fly in jets and buy cement even though these two activities account for over 20% of human produced greenhouse gases.

The malfeasant idiots selling this scam and the delinquent media not questioning it need to wake up to themselves and get into True Speak. Namely, carbon trading allows us to ameliorate the effects of global warming through the lens of time allowing us more time to adapt while we make significant and genuine reductions in emissions.

-Paul Recher, Doroughby