Climate change can be a gloomy topic – sometimes you need a laugh! So I thought I’d share a funny item that caught my eye this week.

Carbon offsets have been in the news a lot lately because Al Gore said he used them, much to the derision of some misinformed people (see my post on carbon offsets). The funniest of these potshots came from the Web site cheatneutral.com, which says:

What is Cheat Offsetting?

When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere.

Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.

Can I offset all my cheating?

First you should look at ways of reducing your cheating. Once you’ve done this you can use Cheatneutral to offset the remaining, unavoidable cheating.

This is certainly good for a laugh, but its relevance to carbon offsets is purely illusory. Carbon offsets work because the atmosphere doesn’t care where the carbon comes from – it only cares about the total burden. Now I’m just guessing, but I suspect that your partner does care who cheats!