What are the terms and conditions of this purchase?

What are the terms and conditions of this purchase? (cont.)

What are the terms and conditions of this purchase? (cont.)

What are the terms and conditions of this purchase? (cont.)

This is a Verified Emission Reduction (VER, aka carbon offset) product. Each VER represents the capture and destruction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide (mtCO2) produced by the Garcia River Forest Project. The purchase of VERs supports the voluntary reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which helps reduce the risks of climate change and was not required under regulation for this forest. The product is sold in blocks of one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (mtCO2e). The product will be sourced from the following projects.

¹The figures represented are prospective. Actual figures may vary. For more information on how much they can vary see Price, Terms & Conditions.

How do we calculate the carbon emissions from your flight?

Entering specific flights

We calculate the distance between two airports based on their latitude and longitude coordinates. The formula we use approximates the earth as a sphere, with radius 3,956.09 miles. If the earth's radius is re and the airports of origin and destination have coordinates lat1, lon1, and lat2, lon2 respectively, then the shortest path following a great circle between the two airports is given by:

distance = re*acos[sin(lat1)*sin(lat2)+cos(lat1)*cos(lat2)*cos(lon1-lon2)]

The CO2e emissions from the calculated distance are determined by multiplying the specified miles traveled by one of the CO2e figures below, which are the estimated pounds of CO2e emissions per passenger mile, based on flight distance.

How do we calculate the carbon emissions from your flight? (cont)

Why do we use the CO2e number instead of just CO2?

We include a Radiative Forcing Index (RFI) factor of approximately two to account for the other effects flying has on climate change outside of just releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. In 1999, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated the total radiative forcing of air travel to be one to five times larger in the stratosphere than in the troposphere and has calculated the average for full radiative forcing to be a factor of approximately 2.7 (IPCC, Aviation and the Global Atmosphere: 6.2.3, 1999). The more recent IPCC TRADEOFF project published by Sausen, Robert, et al (2005) notes an RFI average of 1.9, which is what we use in this calculator.

Using pre-determined flight distances

If you choose to enter the number of pre-determined flight distances you take in one year, we first add up all the flight miles traveled based on the flight types you’ve entered (i.e., Short, Medium, Long, Extended). The amount of CO2e is determined by multiplying the total miles traveled by the average CO2e released per passenger mile traveled (0.9347).

How do we calculate the carbon emissions from your flight? (cont)

Acres of pine or fir forests storing carbon for one year

Growing forests store carbon. Through the process of photosynthesis, trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as cellulose, lignin, and other compounds. The rate of accumulation is equal to growth minus removals (i.e., harvest for the production of paper and wood) minus decomposition. In most US forests, growth exceeds removals and decomposition, so there has been an overall increase in the amount of carbon stored nationally.

The estimate of the annual average rate of carbon accumulation is based on two studies, one on Douglas fir in the Pacific Northwest (Nabuurs and Mohren, 1995), and the other on slash pine in Florida (Shan et al., 2001). These two studies represent commercially important species from different regions and with different rotation periods (i.e., time between planting and harvesting). The calculation addresses only aboveground carbon; although carbon accumulates in roots, leaf litter, and soils, these belowground carbon pools are not included.

How do we calculate the carbon emissions from your flight? (cont)

For each of the two studies, the average annual rate accumulation is calculated as (a) the total carbon production (per acre) at the end of the rotation period divided by (b) the number of years in the period, as shown in the table below. Shan et al. (2001) reported total biomass production, rather than carbon production; the calculation assumes that carbon comprises 50 percent of biomass.

The calculator uses the average of the two values from the studies, i.e., an annual rate of 1.2 metric tons of carbon per acre, which translates to 4.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

How do we calculate the carbon emissions from your flight? (cont)

Sources for Calculator Methodology

· World Resources Institute – World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WRI-WBCSD) GHG Protocol, Mobile Combustion CO2 Emissions Calculation Tool, Version 1.2., June 2003 (www.ghgprotocol.org/templates/GHG5/layout.asp?type=p&MenuId=OTAx).

· U.S. EPA, Fuel Economy Datafile, 2006 (www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/download.shtml).

How do we calculate the carbon emissions from your flight? (cont)

Sources for Calculator Methodology (cont)

· WRI-WBCSD GHG Protocol, Mobile Combustion CO2 Emissions Calculation Tool, June 2003, Version 1.2 (www.ghgprotocol.org/templates/GHG5/layout.asp?type=p&MenuId=OTAx).

· Sausen, Robert, et al. (2005). “Aviation radiative forcing in 2000: An update on IPCC (1999)”

· Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) TRADEOFF Project. Sausen, Robert, et al., 2005.

· Nabuurs, G.J., and G.M.J. Mohren. Modeling analysis of potential carbon sequestration in selected forest types. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 25(7):1157-1172, 1995.

· Shan, J.P., L.A. Morris, and R.L. Hendrick. The effects of management on soil and plant carbon sequestration in slash pine plantations. Journal of Applied Ecology 38(5):932-941, 2001.

· United Nations Millennium Development Goals, “Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), metric tons of CO2 per capita (UNFCCC)”, August 2007 (http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=752).

How do we keep your information secure?

You can make purchases with us online with confidence. 3Degrees has partnered with Authorize.Net, a leading payment gateway since 1996, to offer safe and secure credit card and electronic check transactions for our customers. Authorize.Net manages the complex routing of sensitive customer information through the credit card and electronic check processing networks (see an online payments diagram). The company adheres to strict industry standards for payment processing, including:

For additional information regarding the privacy of your sensitive cardholder data, please read the Authorize.Net Privacy Policy.

www.3DegreesInc.com is registered with the Authorize.Net Verified Merchant Seal program.

How do we keep your information secure? (cont)

Privacy

3Degrees Group, Inc. is committed to protecting your privacy, and, as such, we take all reasonable steps to protect the information you share with us. We will never share personally identifiable information given to us with third parties. We are absolutely committed to personal privacy.

Through our website, 3Degrees collects data from Internet users including non-personally identifiable information from site visitors, IP address of their server, zip/postal code and what pages they visited. We use this information to continuously improve our site's functionality. 3Degrees also collects personally identifiable information, including e-mail addresses, from those visitors who opt-in to receive some information from us, make inquiries or comments. We use this information to directly respond to visitors' communications.

3Degrees employs permission-based marketing principles: we will communicate only to users who affirmatively express an interest in receiving e-mails relevant to their interests. Permission to receive e-mails may be granted and taken away; in other words customers may "opt-in" and "opt-out". If a customer chooses to opt-out, 3Degrees is required to stop sending messages to that customer. 3Degrees puts a high value on a customers' ability to discontinue receiving unwanted e-mail.

How do we keep your information secure? (cont)

Privacy (cont)

MailBuild, our e-newsletter provider, tracks click and open behavior in the e-mails it sends out. This data is used to update specific user-profile information, ascertain the areas of most interest to opt-in e-mail recipients, and to personalize e-mail messages to them. MailBuild utilizes the industry's leading data security solutions and has implemented policies and procedures to ensure the physical and electronic security of data stored by MailBuild.

3Degrees does not sell, rent, loan, trade, or lease any personal information whether gathered by 3Degrees itself or received from MailBuild. When MailBuild, on behalf of 3Degrees, collects personally identifiable information from opt-in participants in our marketing programs, such information belongs to us and is subject to our policies on sharing of the end user information.

If you have received unwanted, unsolicited email sent via our system or purporting to be sent via this system, please contact us with your comments at the following site: http://www.3degreesinc.com/about/contact/.

We reserve the right to modify this policy at any time.

This policy was last updated: March 31, 2009.