Where to start...

I know a guy who installs biomass heating systems for medium to large buildings- schools, office buildings, etc. These systems burn a mix of grass and wood pellets. The energy balance on pelletized fuel is great; you skip right past the energy-intensive conversion steps that ethanol currently requires. And you can grow native grasses on marginal lands with minimal inputs.

But of course such systems have some extra upfront capital costs (e.g. you need a large area for fuel storage). My acquaintance sells carbon credits for his projects through Native Energy; they can make the difference between a system being cost-effective or not. So in this case at least, carbon offsets have a strong additionality component.

I personally buy offsets as a complement to other steps that I take (CFLs, B20 heating fuel, major reinsulation work, etc.). For me to go much further, it's going to get expensive. If I installed a PV system on my house, I think the cost of avoided emissions is something in the range of $300/ton CO2 avoided. If the carbon offsets I bought truly had additionality (contrary to the cartoon, and consistent with my example above, offsets actually can cause, well, offsets), that money could have a much bigger impact, say, financing wind turbines in China, where all you have to do is bridge the cost gap between wind and coal. And that's huge- any clean energy capacity that gets built in India or China is pretty clearly in place of increased coal capacity, either now or in the near future.

And frankly, I don't have a huge problem with people buying offsets in lieu of reducing their carbon footprint, or even with offset projects that are not truly additional. That's because I take a long view on this, and the fact is, offsets are a (voluntary) mechanism to start to internalize the external costs of energy use. And they provide a real funding mechanism and market signal for current and future projects that are truly additional.

Finally, let's remember that CO2 emissions are really fungible. The cartoon's @$#-hole credits are a good foil- they guy who you are an @$#-hole to does not benefit if you pay another a-hole to be nice. But if I fund a reduction in emissions (that's truly additional), it is the same as if I directly reduced my energy usage.

So please, join me in financing wind, etc., esp. in developing countries. They need (and have a right to have) the energy, and we have an interest in minimizing the extent to which these economies (esp India and China, who have huge coal reserves) rely on fossil fuels. Building a windmill in China will help reduce the rate of increase of CO2 emissions, and frankly, that's where we are right now as a society- reducing the rate of growth.

I found the article largely reflective of my household. My wife definitely was not a big fan of CFLs at first, though she didn't go so far as to change any back, and I didn't try to force the issue with places like her bedside lamp.

I did redo the our whole bathroom with CFLs, and frankly my wife didn't notice. She has since come around to accept CFLs as a good thing. But it's taken 1-2 years of easing her into it.

So while I would hardly blame women for global warming (it's usually the men buying the Hummers, etc.), I really don't think this article is that outrageous. Do all women have problems with CFLs? Are all men pro-CFL? Certainly not, but, again, I don't think the article is completely wrong in its characterizations.

It doesn't change the story much, but the numbers don't quite tie.

First of all, it's important not to confuse CO2 with all GHGs. When I've seen the 20 ton/head and 3.2/head numbers for US and China, it's been CO2 only. It also doesn't make any sense to add CO2 and methane emissions together on a mass basis, because methane is a much stronger GHG per unit mass.

That said, the math still doesn't work. Let's say the day has arrived where US and Chinese human CO2 emissions are equal. 20 vs. 3.2 is a ratio of 6.25. The ratio of Chinese pop (1.318B at present- pulled from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population) to US pop (302M, same source) is 4.4. The ratios would need to be equal. Which suggests that Chinese per capita emissions have to be more like 4.6 tons/head/year, which is a huge increase in a short period of time.

Again, it doesn't change the basic story (US has been the CO2 leader for a long time, but we have company, but we're richer, China's not nice, what to do?), but let's be careful with the numbers.

BTW to the previous poster- river diversion to address sea level rise? Are you serious? I don't know even where to start. How about you compute annual river influx and divide by the surface area of the ocean? Wikipedia and Google are your friends. I would be willing to bet that the reason this 'solution' is not actively considered is because it would be really ineffectual, be really expensive vs. other options, and have so many side-effects that would be much worse than sea level increase that I don't even know where to begin...

Here is a pretty good summary of the solar energy payback question:

http://www.energybulletin.net/17219.html

In short, the energy payback time is surprisingly hard to nail down, but it's 2-8 years (mean 4), conservatively, and dropping fast. Mean life of a panel is much longer than that.

So, while PV energy balance is an issue, it is misinformed to argue that they don't have a positive energy balance.

The word 'Frontline' was mispelled:

http://online.wsj.com/google_login.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Frontline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB117461620851146360.html%3Fmod%3Dgooglenews_wsj