Why they no tackle an Olympic torch bearer?

Tibetan protesters aren’t the only ones who ought to be dogging the Olympic torch relay. When Al Gore received his Nobel Peace prize he said that global warming is a "moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

Ted Turner recently told PBS’ Charlie Rose that if steps aren’t taken to control global warming, "in 30 or 40 years … most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable."

And the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights says, "Global warming and extreme weather conditions may have calamitous consequences for the human rights of millions of people."

But despite their melodramatic rhetoric — and the just-reported news that the Olympic torch relay will release more than 11 million pounds of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 550 SUVs — you won’t see Al, Ted or anyone from the U.N. trying to - even though China easily — and unapologetically — wins the gold medal for carbon dioxide emissions and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency last year reported that China became the No. 1 CO2-emitting country in 2006, blowing past the U.S. emissions level by a whopping 8 percent. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had projected that China wouldn’t surpass the U.S. in CO2 emissions until 2020.

Now a new study from researchers at the University of California-Berkeley not only has verified the NEAA report but says that China’s emissions are growing at a rate of 11 percent — two to four times the rate projected by the IPCC.

It seems that the IPCC is as bad at forecasting CO2 emissions growth as it is at forecasting global temperature change.

The Berkeley researchers attribute the IPCC’s shortcomings to reliance on obsolete data that are almost a decade old. Since then, they say, "China’s economic and technological growth has accelerated beyond anticipation."

Adding insult to injury, the Berkeley researchers point out that while the emissions from countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol will be a cumulative 116 million metric tons lower by 2010 than they would have been without any agreement, China’s emissions will have increased by 600 million metric tons over that same period.

Now that’s what I call a carbon offset.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,349730,00.html