This online climate calculator from UC Berkeley provides a much more comprehensive picture of your total greenhouse gas emissions than most online calculators.

They also provide links to six carbon offset sellers (though two of the links are currently bad) should you decide to go carbon neutral. I am not endorsing any of those, although I will say that the CEOs from two of the offset companies on the list, Native Energy and Terrapass, were at the Markey hearing and made a very good case for their companies.

I confess I often just don’t understand what Planet Gore is trying to say. Here is the opening of a new post titled “Shocked, Shocked“:

This morning, the Washington Post joins House Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman in being nonplussed over a Bush Administration task force having met with industry representatives when formulating policy.

“Waxman said he was not surprised to see the prevalence of energy industry groups on the list of meetings.”

But “nonplussed” means “surprised”–though it is often used incorrectly. Like Waxman, no one is surprised that Cheney is a tool of the energy industry — or is that vice versa?

The “shocked, shocked” reference to Casablanca is equally strange, since it is normally used when people say they are surprised at something that they themselves are well aware of (if not doing themselves). But again, “Waxman said he was not surprised.”

A number of people have told me they are nonplussed (but definitely not “shocked, shocked”) that I can stomach reading PG at all, but I view them as the best (unintentionally) humorous diversion in the climate blogosphere. Let’s call these errors PG Disinfotainment Watch #39 and #40.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund is launching Clean My Ride, a campaign featuring webisodes of actors and activists urging the adoption of legislation “increasing gas mileage requirements and mandating the availability of e85 for flexible-fuel cars that can use either gasoline or ethanol.”

If you liked the dramatic chipmunk, you’ll love the first webisode.

Apparently the Vatican doesn’t read Climate Progress or even Gristmill. They just bought themselves a bunch of trees to offset their entire greenhouse gas emissions.

Okay, some don’t like the papal indulgence analogy, though others do. And to be fair, the press release notes the Vatican is “steadily reducing its carbon footprint with energy efficiency and solar power”–and the new trees in Hungary apparently satisfy the relatively tough criteria for “EU JI Track 1 approval.”

But 100% new trees is just not a good offset strategy as I and others have repeatedly argued — and especially trees as far north as Hungary. Also the company they are buying from, Planktos/KlimaFa, is part of the same company that is hoping to sell dubious geo-engineering as offsets (more on that in a later post).

We just can’t indulge ourselves in the false hope that cheap trees are a viable solution to the climate crisis.

Yes, I know, you can’t get enough of offsets. I’ll post a link to the testimony when it is up — and I’ll post my hearing notes at that time.

Chairman Markey (D-MA) sent a letter to the FTC and others urging them to look at the carbon offset market and develop guidelines to protect consumers. More from the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warminge here.

E&E Daily (subs. req’d) ran a long story this morning on the letter and the hearing, which I reprint below:

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