Divinest Sense

So, I saw An Inconvenient Truth on Friday night and I highly recommend it. Not that anyone who’s not already into that sort of thing is going to even think about seeing it, but what the heck, ask your skeptical acquaintances to go check it out if they want to argue with you about global warming.

Though it doesn’t have quite the thrills of the usual summer movie offerings (Al Gore gives slide show! Aaaaaaaaaggghhhh!) this movie will crush you with its relentless barrage of facts and drive you cr-aaaaaazy with its common sense solutions. Hot damn!

I. love. Al. Gore.

Update:  Whoops, sorry about those line breaks.

Have you heard of “carbon credits” or “carbon offset”? This is where you invest in renewable energy production and research at the amount of your personal “carbon footprint”, or how much fossil fuel you and your vehicle burn up every year. It’s a great way to do something to compensate for the amount of energy you use. Anyway, the Hinkle Foundation has agreed to donate $100 to carbonfund.org and other carbon offset organizations for every person who reads their 6 emails about global warming. It takes about 10 minutes and it’s very interesting reading!

One of the climate change reports referenced in the Hinkle Foundation’s emails is the recent summary report from the National Academy of Sciences, Understanding and Responding to Climate Change. It’s a succinct and fact-laden report from a host of studies that you can wave at any skeptic and say, “see?!?” Anyway, here is the info about getting the $100 donated:

*************************
Dear Carbonfund.org Friends,

We were about to send out our first newsletter in the next week or so, but an opportunity to do some significant offsets came up, and we couldn’t resist sending you this e-mail first.

Recently, the Hinkle Charitable Foundation made a sizable donation to Carbonfund.org for which we are very grateful.

They are now generously offering to donate $100 to Carbonfund.org for every person (up to $100,000) that reads their Global Warming e-mail series. This is a huge opportunity for Carbonfund.org. There is no cost to you and no catch but we are on a very short timetable.

Please take just a few minutes and follow the directions below and then forward this to as many people as you can so we can maximize this generous contribution.

1) Go to www.thehcf.org
2) Read the six e-mails on Global Warming (takes 5-10 minutes)
3) Go to the Challenge (http://www.thehcf.org/challenge.html) and send an e-mail to Renewable@thehcf.org with your name, address and email
4) Lastly, please send us an email to thehcf@carbonfund.org so that we can track our progress.

As we understand, a $100 offset contribution to Carbonfund.org will be made in your name by the Hinkle Charitable Foundation.

Many thanks,

Lesley Carlson
President, Carbonfund.org

This is pretty interesting. Apparently there is a 70-year-old method of converting coal into gasoline and diesel fuel that, if implemented with America’s vast coal supply, could power us for the next 40 years. The cost to start it with a plant in Montana, where 1/3 of the nation’s coal is located? About 1.5 billion dollars. A whole lot cheaper than the Iraq war.

Of course, I have mixed feelings about this, after having seen the horrors that coal mining inflicts upon the land in the Appalachians. And the coal-fired electrical power plants we have now are in serious need of overhaul and cleanup. Bush’s energy bill “grandfathered” older coal plants so that they would not be subject to the same environmental standards as new plants.

Coal is dirty. It’s sooty and gross, and you have to blow up mountains to get to it. And we’re going to run out of it. But… we don’t have the perfect solution to the oil problem yet, and this method, on its surface, seems to do a lot less harm than oil does, ecomonically and envioronmentally. And it could save us from having to deal with the middle east for our energy needs.

I dunno…. maybe for 1.5 billion it’s worth a try.