While I applaud the efforts of companies buying these green credits, there should be a parallel path to improve their stores energy efficiency. Right now with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT) giving $.60 / square foot tax credit for energy efficient lighting retrofits, every company should be taking a serious look at this! There is no other initiative they can do that would have the bottom line impact as this lighting retrofit AND TAX credit for one year. Unless Congress extends, this TAX credit is only good through end of 2008, so wake up corporate America and call a local energy/lighting consultant today!
David L. Doane CEM, BEP
Energy Management Consultant
Center For Industrial Services
County Technical Assistance Service
University of Tennessee
Saving energy and reducing fuel costs are completely commendable from an economic point of view and for stretching out finite natural resources. But to go through costly contortions to be "green" by reducing carbon dioxide outputs is to believe that carbon dioxide is driving climate change. As revolutionary is the following idea might sound, there is no scientific <proof> that carbon dioxide is having anything more than a miniscule effect on climate. Various solar effects quite possibly are responsible for any observed climate changes, effects including El Nino, Le Nina, and numerous other cyclical phenomena, in addition to the possible interaction of the sun's magnetosphere and cosmic rays to vary cloud cover. This information is available to anyone who spends the time to look and read. All hypotheses relating climate warming to carbon dioxide concentration is confusing association with causation. We have to remember that temperatures have varied independent of CO 2 concentration, even in the past century, and there are indications that there has been no warming since 1998. Some climate experts feel that we may be heading for a cooling phase. We just don't <know>. The idea of anthropomorphic global warming is conjecture and belief, not proven fact.
I am not receiving ANY funding from any energy or other company (oh that I were!). I am just a graduate in chemical engineering who has read much of the back story. This includes untrustworthy weather ground station installations and personnel (particularly outside Western countries) and thus untrustworthy temperature data; shenanigans within the IPCC process that screen out any views not in conformity with its predetermined message that everything is Man's fault; a similar process within some of the most influential scientific journals; the inaccuracies and outright deceptions in "An Inconvenient Truth"; the ignorance of the media in covering the question of climate causation; and the acceptance of the notion that a "scientific consensus" is equal to scientific proof. First, such a notion is bad science. And second, we have to investigate how much of the "vast scientific consensus" is real and how much merely the creation of warmist advocates who can make more noise and get the attention of the media better than quiet and sober true scientists and climatologists (and those who are concerned about their livelihoods if they speak out against the prevailing orthodoxy). Endless repetition does not equal proof or reality.
We must keep an open mind on whether any of these heroic efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions has any useful function, or if they are driven solely by herd mentality and the desire to appear to the public to be "doing something", good PR but accomplishing nothing in the real world (shades of the Emperor's new clothes). My feeling is that the entire carbon-credits business is a giant edifice erected on the sands of a flood plain. Eventually a wave of reality will hit and cause a total collapse.
Ian L. McQueen
Glenwood, NB, Canada
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