More of our man-made carbon emissions to date have come from land mismanagement and the resulting loss of soil carbon than from burning fossil fuels.

I'd be interested in some numbers to back up this assertion. The usual numbers have the biosphere as a net carbon sink, e.g. these IPCC numbers:

This obviously doesn't cover major land-use change events of the past, nor does it invalidate the concept of managing land and agriculture for carbon absorption...

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Past and future carbon fluxes from land use change, shifting cultivation and wood harvest Benjamin D. Stocker, Fabian Feissli, Kuno M. Strassmann, Renato Spahni, Fortunat Joos

... which looks promising, I haven't read it yet.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Ethiopia's pledge to restore a further 15m hectares of degraded land was the largest of many made at the end of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon's New York climate summit last month, where governments, companies and civil society groups together agreed to try to restore 350m hectares of deforested landscapes - an area the size of India - by 2030.

Commitments have now come from Uganda (2.5m hectares), Democratic Republic of the Congo (8m hectares), Colombia (1m hectares), Guatemala (1.2m hectares), and Chile (100,000 hectares). Many others are expected to follow in the run-up to the Paris climate talks in December 2015 because the restoration of degraded land is expected to qualify for carbon credits.

The UN is listening. A lot hinges on the Paris conference.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Rich Countries Subsidising Oil, Gas And Coal Companies By $88 Billion A Year

Rich countries are subsidising oil, gas and coal companies by about $88bn (£55.4bn) a year to explore for new reserves, despite evidence that most fossil fuels must be left in the ground if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change.

The most detailed breakdown yet of global fossil fuel subsidies has found that the US government provided companies with $5.2bn for fossil fuel exploration in 2013, Australia spent $3.5bn, Russia $2.4bn and the UK $1.2bn. Most of the support was in the form of tax breaks for exploration in deep offshore fields.

If we can't start even here...

Looks like the governments are desperate to keep cheap energy flowing, to keep up the living standards for the worthy and the middle class - damn the consequences 5 years down the road. Is There No Alternative Indeed?

H.R. 1422, which passed 229-191, would shake up the EPA's Scientific Advisory Board, placing restrictions on those pesky scientists and creating room for experts with overt financial ties to the industries affected by EPA regulations.

The bill is being framed as a play for transparency: Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, argued that the board's current structure is problematic because it  "excludes industry experts, but not officials for environmental advocacy groups." The inclusion of industry experts, he said, would right this injustice.

But the White House, which threatened to veto the bill, said it would "negatively affect the appointment of experts and would weaken the scientific independence and integrity of the SAB."

In what might be the most ridiculous aspect of the whole thing, the bill forbids scientific experts from participating in "advisory activities" that either directly or indirectly involve their own work. In case that wasn't clear: experts would be forbidden from sharing their expertise in their own research -- the bizarre assumption, apparently, being that having conducted peer-reviewed studies on a topic would constitute a conflict of interest.