Penn & Teller on "eco guilt"...anyone seen this?

Last night I was sitting at home with my boyfriend flipping through all the stuff we can get On Demand.  Showtime had several episodes available of Penn & Teller's show (whose name I'll leave out here given that it's profane...).  One of the first episodes on the list was about being green.  So naturally...we took a look. 

To cut a long (and painful) story short, it was mostly about climate change and how there's "considerable reason to believe it might be just part of the natural process"....but Penn & Teller concluded that we just don't know!  According to their episode (which originally aired just one year ago), there's just not enough proof to say a) if it's happening b) if we're causing it c) if we can do anything about it.  Of course, this conclusion comes at the end of an episode primarily making fun of environmentalism.

Now, to be fair, their editing team made their interviewees look pretty ridiculous.  For example, they end the episode with a clip of Sid Embree of AtmosClear, an organization that formerly retailed carbon offsets.  I think the interviewer asked the question, "Why is this work important?"  Sid laughs and pauses for a while...  Then they cut the clip.  Now, who knows.  Maybe she went on to give a very eloquent answer about the need to protect the environment.  I mean...the question of "Why is this work important" is not exactly a small one.  But!  The clever editors make her look pretty foolish to say the least.

In any case, I felt pretty irritated at the end of the whole show.  A lot of the show was dedicated to saying that carbon offsets are a scam and global warming is (probably) a scam....and it's all about money.  And not to be horribly pessimistic...but anyone can be a scammer!  Even cute middle schoolers who ask you to buy magazines to support their school (and hopefully win them some sweet sweet prizes) could be scammers.  The whole thing just seemed to black ball anyone who feels some responsibility to be a good steward.  Plus, I'm just not keen on broad, sweeping statments about any subset of people.  Just generally speaking.

So!  I thought I'd post some of my reactions and see if any of you guys have seen it.  Here's some of the recap of the episode and a few youtube videos from their blog.

I haven't seen it, but I've seen people talk about it.  My reaction is that I don't care what Penn and Teller think about global warming any more than I care what my dentist thinks about it.

As for carbon credits, sure some of them are just a sham, and sure some people probably just use them to alleviate guilt for unnecessary excess, but that doesn't mean all carbon credits are bad, or that they don't serve a useful purpose.

Penn and Teller are just entertainers who thought a show mocking carbon credits would be funny.

My question is the same as when a public personality such as a movie star endorses a political candidate - what does this fool really know that I don't? Most of this type people are to caught up with themselves to bother thinking about life and the world.

Normally they know nothing additional, they are just chattering (like two monkeys on a branch) and people listen for some strange reason that I am unable to figure out - probably it is easier than thinking for ones self.

I think that's exactly right, Russ.  I think the reason people listen to them is that they're on TV, and the TV is never wrong!  Reminds me of a show, I think it was the Simpsons where one of the kids said "the TV said" something, and Homer said something along the lines of "The TV said that?!  Then it must be true."

Another factor is that most people have spent little to no time researching the subject.  Frankly, I'm sure neither have Penn and Teller.  They probably spent a few hours surfing the internet in order to make that show.  But by going on TV and taking the position as experts, people assume they've done they're homework.  More than the people watching have, at least.  They sure seem to know what they're talking about!  So people will tend to listen to them, even though Penn and Teller clearly did next to no research.  It's unfortunate, but that's how a lot of people operate.

What a pleasant surprise to see that some people actually "think" critically about some of the issues that Penn & Teller talk about in their shows.  I was totally blindsided by what they did with my interview.  I couldn't believe it, especially after they claimed they were going to talk about scams in the carbon offset business and that my interview was intended to show that there are credible organizations in the business.  Several years ago, the Boston Globe contacted me and said they had researched various organizations and projects and found AtmosClear to be working on the most credible emission reduction projects around... How could Penn & Teller come to such a different conclusion?

Some people have sent critical emails to me, including someone who claimed to be working for Penn & Teller, who cheered "ha, ha, jokes on you!" (P&T's staff deny that person works for them).  I take solace in the fact that Penn & Teller also poked fun at Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, joint Peace Prize winners, who are committed to informing the public and decision makers about the unprecedented levels of emissions we humans have been spewing into the atmosphere. My work since 1992-1993 has been focused on establishing rules for credible offset systems and then working within the rules that not only I but thousands of others around the world, including in the USA, have worked on.  I can't do any more than that! 

Penn and Teller use clever editing and one sided reporting to get a large amount of people to believe what P & T want them to believe.  It sounds very similar to the scams/hoaxes they talk about on their show.  I've agreed and disagreed with points made on the show, but they have never actually changed my opinion on anything.  You can't take a non-credible resource as fact without further research.