Tuesday, May 1, 2007

EasyJet slams 'snake oil sellers' in offset market and goes it alone

"EasyJet has warned that the carbon offsetting market is riddled with "snake oil salesmen" determined to make excessive profits from green-minded air passengers."

That's not the least of it. The New York Times this morning devoted over 1500 words to a story about seeding the oceans with iron to grow plankton. While the story raised some of the objections:

"Mr. Buesseler has organized a conference for the fall to bring together the experts in ocean fertilization to assess the years of research in the field and see what might be done to further it. He also wants to explore the policy issues; one unresolved question is whether regulatory bodies will even endorse iron fertilization as a valid means of carbon sequestration that would be allowed under any so-called cap-and-trade system to limit global warming gases." it was definitely lacking in basic research.

I saw no mention of this headline from the Journal Nature: " Only mother nature knows how to fertilize the ocean" which came out last week. The story is now behind a paywall but here are a few comments on Nature's blog.