Dallas/Ft. Worth Libertarian Examiner: Offsets revisited: voluntary vs. mandatory

Climate Change nee Global Warming and all its political claptrappery is just another way to force-fit the square peg of socialism into the round hole of America without the embarrassing necessity of calling it socialism.

Manatee succumbs to lack of local warming

Over the weekend an adult manatee washed up north of the Dog River Bridge on the west side of Mobile Bay.
Scientists performed a necropsy Sunday on the animal. Preliminary results for the cause of death point to cold shock.

Dr. Ruth Carmichael is a Senior Marine Scientist with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.
She says, "It does look like the animal probably just died from cold shock. For whatever reason, we're not entirely sure. Some animals seem to just miss that cue to leave, and instead they stay around for a little too long, and it may be what happened to this animal, it got too cold and died."

The Daily Weekly - Will Voters Just Say Snow to Mayor Nickels? - Seattle Weekly

If you're going to get upset at Mayor Nickels, why not focus on why he has spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on fighting "Global Warming".

New Year’s Ball in Times Square to Stay Bright, All Year Round - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com

Of course, conservation-minded readers might wonder if the organizers ought to be using so many more bulbs at all – even if they are taking advantage of energy efficiency breakthroughs. And it remains unclear whether keeping the ball illuminated year-round will cancel out the energy savings from using L.E.D. lights.

An Allegedly Eco-Friendly Billboard for Times Square - NYTimes.com

The first eco-friendly billboard is coming to Times Square, entirely powered by the sun and the wind — but there is one small catch.

The billboard, seen in a rendering, will have four 45-foot stacks of wind turbines to power it.

When there’s no sun, and no wind? The $3 million billboard goes dark: there is no backup generator.

“We think if that happens, it’s just fine,” said Ron Potesky, a senior marketing vice president for Ricoh Americas Corporation, the office equipment and document-storage supplier that owns the sign.

The billboard — traditionally called a “spectacular” on the Great White Way — weighs in at 35,000 pounds. It will be 55 feet off the ground at 3 Times Square, wrapping around the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.

Fitted with 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels, the sign will be “a first for Times Square,” said Barry E. Winston, a Times Square billboard consultant not involved in the Ricoh project, who has been a sign expert for more than 50 years.

Wind turbines for the vast sign, which is 126 feet wide and 47 feet high, have arrived in a warehouse in Deer Park, N.Y., where preliminary testing is being done. Construction will begin this month, for a lighting ceremony on Dec. 4.

Ricoh would not say how much it was paying for its three-year lease, but based on recent deals, the lease would most likely cost in the low six figures, as much as $200,000 a month, according to sign rental experts who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are contractually forbidden to make public statements.

Such a cost would not be unusual for a sign across the avenue from 1 Times Square, where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

By generating its own electricity — enough to light six homes for a year — the sign could save as much as $12,000 to $15,000 per month, according to Ricoh, which estimated that the sign would prevent 18 tons of carbon from being spewed into the air yearly.

Why not just put up a traditional sign and spend maybe $54 annually for bogus carbon offsets?