Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Many innocent people?
There was a full page story in The Star last week about a South African man who got conned by a young, pretty Russian girl over the internet. He parted with a good deal of cash and only realised his mistake when, after having sent her money for a ticket to SA (with two nights stopover in Paris as a special extra) she failed to emerge from the plane at Durban airport. She seemed so sincere, he said. He professes to regret his broken heart more than he regrets the lost cash. He said he was well aware that such scams exist; but that she did not grab any bait that he dangled (?), and was sweet enough (?) to have him “supersede my own set of rules and boundaries.”
Unbelievably, this credulous man is a 60-something attorney from Durban (ie, not a kindly old cabbage farmer driving a donkey cart in a remote village on the Isle of mists in the Land that time forgot... although… Durban… never mind) who had been “playing around on the internet” and visiting dating sites for some time, and who has “other internet girlfriends” too. He says, “I firmly believe that this is hurting many innocent people…” and wants the government to investigate and prosecute such scammers.
Come now, Sir. I might be hard and cruel for saying this, but you can’t have my sympathy.
Two Questions:
- Does anyone know what happened to Rolbos?
- Can anyone explain Carbon Trading to me in words I can understand?
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1 comment:
Ok, Carbon Trading is something I know a little about... my brother-in-law was looking into going into the bio-diesel business a while back, so he had to become familiar with all sorts of eco-things.
My understanding of it is this: Any given country has, within their borders, a certain number of trees (an estimate based on average number of trees per square kilometer). Each tree is theoretically capable of converting an average amount of carbon dioxide to oxygen per day.
This is then converted into a sort of virtual currency called Carbon Credits, which reflects the estimated amount of carbon dioxide a country is able to convert to oxygen.
Those carbon credits can then be purchased by other countries, based on the amount of carbon dioxide that country's industry produces.
So, let's say the USA has 1500 carbon credits of their own, but their industry is so large that it requires 2000 carbon credits in order to convert all that carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen.
However South Africa posesses 1000 Carbon Credits, but our industry only needs 500. We therefore have 500 carbon credits to spare, so we can sell the to the USA.
And there you have it.
I'm not certain if my understanding of it is correct, or exactly who it is that enforces and administers the trading of carbon credits, but I reckon if I got it right it's a pretty nifty idea.
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