How many carbon offsets will be purchased by the green brigade to counter that big trip to Bali?

Last month, I briefly referenced an article written by Rosslyn Smith at The American Thinker, in which she noted a stunning display of hypocrisy amongst global warming alarmists who are flying so many private jets into the Bali airport for this week’s big UN climate conference that most of the planes will have to be ferried to four other airports.

Well, today we find out via the AP exactly how many have been/will be jetting in to Bali for the conference:

BALI, Indonesia — Never before have so many people converged to try to save the planet from global warming, with more than 10,000 jetting into this Indonesian resort island, from government ministers to Nobel laureates to drought-stricken farmers.

This is alarming to, well, some global warming alarmists:

But critics say they are contributing to the very problem they aim to solve.

“Nobody denies this is an important event, but huge numbers of people are going, and their emissions are probably going to be greater than a small African country,” said Chris Goodall, author of the book “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.”

[…]

The U.N. estimates 47,000 tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants will be pumped into the atmosphere during the 12-day conference in Bali, mostly from plane flights but also from waste and electricity used by hotel air conditioners.

If correct, Goodall said, that is equivalent to what a Western city of 1.5 million people, such as Marseilles, France, would emit in a day.

But he believes the real figure will be twice that, more like 100,000 tons, close to what the African country of Chad churns out in a year.

Bbbbut wait! Halp, er, help is on the way:

Organizers said they are doing everything possible to offset the effects.

Host Indonesia, which has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world, averaging 300 football fields an hour, said it had planted 79 million trees across the archipelago nation in the past few weeks.

“Our aim is not just to make this a carbon neutral event, but a positive one,” Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said.

In largely symbolic gestures, 200 bright-yellow mountain bikes are being offered to participants so they can pedal around the heavily guarded conference site, and recycled paper is being used for the documents being handed out. Bins separating plastic and paper dot hallways — a rare sight in a country where formal recycling is virtually non-existent.

Yet SUVs, taxis and other cars sit in long lines at the gates to the site, spewing out exhaust as they wait to get through security checkpoints.

Jimmie at the Sundries Shack puts it all into perspective:

Let’s put that in an easy to handle perspective. In order to completely offset this conference, we could completely shut down Berkeley or Green Bay for three months or so. We could be ambitious and shut down Corpus Christi, TX or Newark, NJ, or Pittsburgh, PA for about a month instead. But if we really wanted to speed things along, we should just close down Boston, Seattle, or Washington, DC for the duration of the conference.

I’ve got a suggestion: How about they offset this conference by cancelling that Nobel Peace prize concert that is going to be held in a few days for The Goracle, in honor of his big Nobel “win” in October, a concert which promises to be, ahem, as ‘helpful’ to the environment as Live Earth was?

On a related note, the Climate Skeptic blog takes on the issue of urban vs. rural warming. Check it out.

Oh, and speaking of gw skeptics, Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters reports that the Environment & Climate News group were denied press credentials for the UN Climate Conference. Surprise, surprise.

Update: Jimmie posts a correction his write-up about the conference:

My quick calculations were off by quite a bit. That’s what I get for studying music instead of math, right?

Okay..here are the right numbers. While the average American is responsible for about 20 tons of CO2 emissions per year, the average UN Bali conference member is producing the equivalent of 143 tons of CO2/year (4.7 tons divided by 12 times 365). That’s equal to about 7 average Americans worth of carbon dioxide. In order to offset the conference for the 12 days it’s running, it would require about 71,500 Americans producing no CO2 at all or, about two-thirds of the city of Green Bay.

Still quite a chunk of CO2 from the folks who can’t stop from lecturing us about how serious the problem is and how had we are for not fixing it.