The Inexact Science of Carbon Neutrality 302
snydeq writes "Sustainable IT's Ted Samson raises questions regarding the purchasing of carbon offsets, a practice growing in popularity among tech companies such as Dell, Yahoo, and Google in an attempt to achieve 'carbon neutrality.' Essentially financial instruments, carbon offsets enable companies to invest money in sustainable endeavors in an attempt to counteract the carbon footprint they incur conducting their business. But as a recent article in the Wall Street Journal shows, measuring the value of these carbon offsets is tricky business, as some recipients of offsets say the results of their sustainable efforts would be achieved regardless of any one company's investment. 'The question of whether carbon offsets hold value just scratches the surface of the overall carbon-neutrality question,' Samson writes. 'For the time being, there isn't even a consistent approach to measuring an organization's carbon footprint in the first place. And if you don't know how much CO2 you're responsible for, how do you know how much offsetting is necessary to become neutral?'"
Re:More of a scam, not so much a fix. (Score:3, Informative)
Plants are only carbon neutral if you count the time after they have died and been broken down by bacteria or burned.
Old news (Score:4, Informative)
After reading this article [discovermagazine.com] I finally figured out it was power.
Re:Not that easy (Score:5, Informative)
So humans killed off every single dire wolf, but left the smaller but otherwise near identical North American wolf packs, and every other major predator in the area, alone?
That is bullshit, pure utter bullshit. Mastodons and mammoths died out at the same time despite being on other sides of the planet from each other. The mega fauna also went extinct at the exact same time, in places where humans had been around for 50,000 years (and had actually caused some extinctions when they showed up). This was a global event, carbon dioxide levels dropped, it got cold as hell, plants died, and anything that was too big starved.
What's old is new again. (Score:4, Informative)
How are these different from the indulgences the Catholic church used to sell?
For those unclear on the concept, the church used to sell certificates that granted time off from purgatory for your sins. To make a long story short, the unscrupulous sale of these are one of the big ticket items in the list of thesis that Martin Luther pinned up to the church door, which led eventually to the protestant reformation.
Re:Carbon neutrality is a joke anyway (Score:3, Informative)
About 200yrs ago, when we started burning coal in sufficient quantities to significantly alter the composition of Earth's atmosphere.
Define: pollutant - "A resource out of place, that causes unwanted or undesirable changes in the environment."
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Well there are people in England at the moment who are saying that global warming can't possibly be happening because it is very cold in the South of England at the current moment in time. The coldest it has been for about 20 years.
It is cold at the moment, colder than in for example Scotland, Greenland and Antarctica.
Trying to get them to understand the difference between "climate" and "weather", and the fact that it is global average temperatures that are increasing, is impossible. Instead they focus on today's temperatures in some little corner of England. The fact that today's temperatures in a little corner of Scotland are unseasonably warm doesn't matter though.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree with what TapeCutter said about you finding a reputable source that disagrees, I'll still help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change [wikipedia.org]
Yes, it's wikipedia, but it is extremely well cited, so believe it.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
There is no consensus: just plain wrong [wikipedia.org]
"So far I have not heard an expert on either side of the debate come up with convincing arguments to explain the other side's evidence." - Try here [realclimate.org] or here [nature.com]. There are very slim picking on the other side of the fence, but here is a list [wikipedia.org] of individual scientists that disagree with all or part of the consensus.
"The problem with global warming (as I understand it) is that there is conflicting evidence as to the cause." - Multiple uncertainties are catered for by the error bars in this graph of known forcings [wikipedia.org]. There is generally more uncertainty and possibly unknowns in the +ve/-ve feedbacks caused by these forcings although some such as water vapour are well known.
To cut a long story short, humans are NOT responsible for ALL the changes (eg solar flux in the graph above) but we are responsible for most of it. Most so called "skeptics" I have read over the last 25yrs or so subscribe to the "single cause" idea and build their strawmen by painting climatologists with the same brush.
Note that the list of skeptics link also defines the "the consensus" and is worth quoting...
The scientific consensus was summarized in the 2001 Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as follows:
1. The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 C per decade in the last 30 years.
2.There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities", in particular emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.
3.If greenhouse gas emissions continue the warming will also continue, with temperatures projected to increase by 1.4 C to 5.8 C between 1990 and 2100. Accompanying this temperature increase will be increases in some types of extreme weather and a projected sea level rise of 9 cm to 88 cm, excluding "uncertainty relating to ice dynamical changes in the West Antarctic ice sheet". On balance the impacts of global warming will be significantly negative, especially for larger values of warming.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Despite its relatively small concentration overall in the atmosphere, CO2 is an important component of Earth's atmosphere because it absorbs and emits infrared radiation at wavelengths of 4.26 Âm (asymmetric stretching vibrational mode) and 14.99 Âm (bending vibrational mode), thereby playing a role in the greenhouse effect.
So what if it's a small amount of gas relative to the total atmosphere? That doesn't change the fact that its properties with respect to a specific band of thermal radiation are problematic for us.
It's easy to belittle small numbers. But how big of a number representing benzene concentration would you like to be exposed to? How much does it take to give you cancer? I promise you it's a tiny number.
What is relevant is what that concentration of something does. And in the case of atmospheric carbon this is significant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png [wikipedia.org]
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
Well there are people in England at the moment who are saying that global warming can't possibly be happening because it is very cold in the South of England at the current moment in time. The coldest it has been for about 20 years.
It is cold at the moment, colder than in for example Scotland, Greenland and Antarctica.
Trying to get them to understand the difference between "climate" and "weather", and the fact that it is global average temperatures that are increasing, is impossible. Instead they focus on today's temperatures in some little corner of England. The fact that today's temperatures in a little corner of Scotland are unseasonably warm doesn't matter though.
Actually there is one theory that the UK and much of Western Europe is going to get *colder*, because the melting of ice will shut down the Atlantic currents which keep those areas abnormally warm given its latitude.
Re:The Indulgence of Global Warming Religion (Score:1, Informative)
It's true. I've seen Christianity with my own eyes; people like you who say Christians don't exist just have your head in the sand.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
And that is what the oil companies purchased when they funded research to cast doubt on climate change. They shouldn't get any credit for original thought, though; the tobacco companies did this dance for decades, casting doubt on both lung cancer causation, and nicotine's addictiveness.