16th November 2007

Carbon Offsetting : Antarctica Cruise, Airfare

Carbon Offsetting: Antarctica Cruise

The purpose of the Antarctica cruise is to observe environmental and climate changes firsthand.  I’ve heard about, read and seen pictures of the icecaps melting, penguins dying, and ice shelfs dissolving.  If an entire ecosystem thrives on the ice, what happens when the ice is gone?  Does our curiosity to travel there and visualize the changes make things worse?I say it depends on how you get there, and what you do to impact climate change awareness?  Isn’t that an offset in itself? Perhaps not.  I am pulling together some research on this topic and will continue to add data as I collect it. Carbon offsets are often referred to when discussing air travel.  Airplane jet travel creates those white “trails” in the atmosphere and contributes to additional gas emissions.   Some people like to pay their carbon offsetting tax by contributing money to organizations that offer to plant trees.  However, it appears based on some recent surface research that this is somewhat criticized.  I need to read about this more before I pontificate further on the reforestation concept. 

As I mentioned in my carbon offsetting post this week, my air travel should create nearly 5 tons of carbon dioxide, which will get released into the atmosphere.  Five tons seems like a lot - what does five tons look like?   I wonder how accurate those emission calculators are.

The cruise line, Abercrombie & Kent, has a medium sized ship for this trip, which should lower the emissions I would imagine, however, cruises in general are notorious for contributing to water pollution and much more.  However, our ship while some may be tourists, has many research scientists, naturalists, ornithologists and lecturers aboard, one of whom is taking a digital camera to Palmer Research Station. 

I plan to blog, and videoblog the passage, landing, and much more to tell colleagues, businesses and press what’s occurring from the non-scientist’s perspective, the non-press perspective.  And, I plan to post to YouTube and our site. 

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