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?'"
Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't anyone watch Penn and Teller? They already covered it [wattsupwiththat.com].
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
No more than I think that the ones paid by governments and environmental cultists will be.
So to evaluate the arguments one must go further than looking at the fact that research takes money and the provenance of a researchers budget tends to correlate with their opinion on the issue. You have to take a look at the actual scientific merits of the work done.
One doesnt need any particular knowledge of a given field to check whether or not fundamentals of scientific method are being applied and whether arguments are logical and supported or not.
The endless repetition of fallacious arguments such as those referencing 'scientific consensus' (which, even if it did exist on this issue which it clearly does not, is still an entity with precisely ZERO place in the scientific method) by those on one side in particular stands out like a sore thumb. So does the way that political control of funding is exploited to silence skeptical scientists. It is certainly true that most funding for skeptical scientific research on the subject comes from organisations that have a clear vested interest in minimising the issue - but equally clear this is a natural consequence when public funding is provisioned only to those researchers who play ball with the envirocultists. A real scientist in such a situation has no option but to go to the private corporations for funding or retire from the field entirely.
This doesnt mean either side is wrong. If you have multiple funding sources with multiple agendas, each is naturally going to tend to fund researchers that tend to support their agenda. The researchers themselves, if they are good scientists, will simply do the research properly and if it displeases their funding source they'll go to a different source who DID like their results for their next grant - this is much easier said than done, it's inconvenient at best, and runs the risk of failing and leaving the scientist and her family in deep difficulty, but still, if you want to be a scientist that's what you have to do.
If they're NOT good scientists, they'll just play ball and make sure that their reports favour the right side to avoid the issue. To see which one is happening in any individual case, there's no substitute for a critical review of the work itself. Simply correlating results with funding sources doesnt mean anything.
Frankly I dont doubt that human pollution is having and will continue to have consequences on the climate of the planet - I cant think of anyone that does. But that fact tells us nothing about whether the affect is large or small, beneficial or damaging, let alone what, if any, actions would actually moderate or reverse the affects (assuming that doing so is desirable.) Despite that global warming enthusiasts are constantly making policy prescriptions which, just coincidentally, always wind up being that we should do what environmental cultists have always wanted to do for their own religious reasons.
The logical conclusion is that these people are full of %*!&, particularly when they claim to be scientists (to be a scientist is to understand and implement the scientific method, not to wear a lab coat and have a 'sciencey' job title,) and if they happen to be getting anything right in their predictions at all, it's an accident.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
One doesnt need any particular knowledge of a given field to check whether or not fundamentals of scientific method are being applied and whether arguments are logical and supported or not.
Oh really? Are you competent to evaluate controversial issues in high-energy physics? Synthetic organic chemistry? Structural bioinformatics? Or is it only in regards to climatology where you think you have some magical insight which people who have worked and studied in the field for years lack?
'scientific consensus' (which, even if it did exist on this issue which it clearly does not,
A vast majority of the world's working climatologists isn't a consensus? I'm curious as to what you would consider constituting a consensus. 99%? 99.9%? Would you insist that there is no consensus so long as there is one dissenting voice, no matter how much of a crank that dissenter might be?
is still an entity with precisely ZERO place in the scientific method)
With regard to the methods of science, you're partly right -- obviously it's true that science isn't done by consensus, else no new science would ever be done at all. (I say "partly" because all scientists in the modern world build on the knowledge gained by their predecessors, and that knowledge is passed on by, yes, consensus in the field.) But with regard to the body of knowledge we call "science," you're dead wrong. Politicians aren't scientists. Lobbyists aren't scientists. Activists, as a rule, aren't scientists. Hell, when it comes to dealing with fields outside their expertise, scientists aren't scientists; my opinion as a bioinformatician is of absolutely no more import to the climatological debate than any other reasonably well-informed layman's, which is to say, not much. Which means that when it comes to setting policy based on science, it is the responsibility of those who do not work in the field to shut up and listen to those who do -- and when scientists in a particular field overwhelmingly agree, those outside the field have absolutely no credibility arguing with them.
So does the way that political control of funding is exploited to silence skeptical scientists. It is certainly true that most funding for skeptical scientific research on the subject comes from organisations that have a clear vested interest in minimising the issue - but equally clear this is a natural consequence when public funding is provisioned only to those researchers who play ball with the envirocultists.
Do you have any evidence for these statements? At all?
to be a scientist is to understand and implement the scientific method, not to wear a lab coat and have a 'sciencey' job title
To refer to "the scientific method" as though it were a single thing is to show that one's understanding of science is limited to half-remembered lessons from high-school "science class." And to imply, as you strongly do, that working scientists aren't really scientists because their results disagree with your politics is to show that you are an ideologue with no interest in science beyond how it can serve your agenda.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you competent to evaluate controversial issues in high-energy physics?
Well yes, I am but that is not really the point. The point is are scientific methods being applied? Although I am high energy physicist and not a climatologist, it should be possible for a climatologist to provide convincing and conclusive evidence that humans are unambiguously the cause of the recent global warming. You have to be an expert to come up with the data and its interpretation but if you cannot explain the resulting evidence to a fellow scientist, even one outside your field, there is something wrong.
The problem with global warming (as I understand it) is that there is conflicting evidence as to the cause. 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. The conclusion I am therefore forced to reach is that we do not understand why the Earth is warming at the moment. Having had a chance to talk with an expert in a climate related field a couple of weeks ago this was his conclusion too.
So, I would disagree strongly with your '99%' concensus number and, while we should certainly respect and listen to the experts in the field, that does not mean that we cannot question them, especially when there is no concensus.
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:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people continue to link to the IPCC? When the scientists themselves continue to leave because data is being rubber stamped instead of being peer reviewed. My personal favorite is when scientists from different fields do research on non-specific areas and it's rubber stamped. Well I suppose it makes for good money, well that and it's lovely circus effect. We all love a good circus.
Lets not forget that global warming is an industry now, don't support it? You're not going to get tenure, funding and you're just going to be a broke sucker working out of your garage if you're lucky.
You want sources do your own research. It's out there, stop looking for the rubber stamps.
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There is no consensus: just plain wrong
An interesting link but your second link contains a substantial list of names who do not agree with the majority opinion. I would make a clear distinction between majority and consensus. As a non-expert it concerns me that there is such a long list of apparent experts who disagree with the majority opinion. Looking at my own field you would certainly not be able to find such a list of people who disagreed with the existence of, say, quarks. Perhaps a concensus is forming but it seems premature to say that
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Only to the extent of being able to spot certain grosser errors. I'm sure there would be many errors that could be made in the more obscure corners of the field that would fly right by me. So this means that if I see a clear logical error that is NOT over my head, I'm supposed to just trust the supposed expert that made it? I dont think so. Quite the opposite. If he makes a mistake I can catch that's just more reason to think he's making plenty of others I can't.
I didnt claim any such 'magical insight' and you know it.
Are you really claiming that only someone with specialised experience in physics is qualified to point out errors in the arithmetic in a physics paper? So if A is a physicist and B is a mathematician, and B says A's paper makes an error in a given calculation, you're going to stick your fingers in your ears and ignore him until a qualified physicist makes the same observation? That's the modus operandi of a priesthood or a beaureacracy, not of a scientist.
A fundamental characteristic of science is that it relies on logic. Logical errors in ANY field can be fatal to claims which rely on them.
If the body of 'knowledge' you call science is characterised by testing propositions for truth by polling workers in a certain field on their opinion, rather than by rigorously testing the logical consequences of those propositions against empirical data, it is neither scientific nor is it knowledge.
Not just a very unscientific statement, but in fact an actively anti-scientific statement. Just because you get paid to work in a field clearly does not ensure that you do that work in a scientifically valid and meaningful way. In fact, if anything, the opposite argument can be made, and clearly applies in some cases. Funding sources may not, quite often do not, understand, or care, about scientific rigor.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this issue is that a great number of people fundamentally misunderstand the methodology of Science. The fact that so many have referenced "The Scientific Method" as if it is some sort of hard-and-fast rule that applies to the daily lives and work of research scientists in any field is quite telling. That notion is naive and absurd. The Scientific Method is merely a grade school-level thinking exercise meant to exemplify a systematic approach to understanding the world. Saying you can't trust the work of a scientist who doesn't follow the Scientific Method would be like saying "You can't run a football without an I formation." Neither of those statements makes any sense. The only difference is that most Americans know a thing or two about football and would laugh off the latter as sheer ignorance but, when it comes to the former, because they themselves are ignorant, they silently nod their heads in agreement.
This is the essence of the problem, the modern form of anti-intellectualism at its most narcissistic. To the poster, the "Scientific Body of Knowledge" is just an informal opinion poll of eggheads, so where should his opinion come in? And what do eggheads know anyway? Why, the problem is probably in their arithmetic somewhere... If only someone with commonsense, such as himself, were to look at it, they would spot error immediately, but he has better things to do. Climatologists should just go back to chasing butterflies in fields or whatever is they do and leave him and his way of life the hell alone.
-Grym
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FYI: Science is the act of applying the scientific method. A scientist is a person who applies that method to research. Anything else is not science, so it is not very wise to regard it as such. Do not acknowledge pseudoscience as science; it is not. I know that you know this, but it is best not to even use the term, as people who you communicate with may not correctly understand what is truly science (we have a lot of ignorant people on this planet).
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.
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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:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
I can easily ignore the global warming is caused by man fanatics by looking at average temperature charts by simply going back a thousand years. I can also ignore them for the last ten or so years as average temperatures have gone down. Yet if I bring it up I am bound to get shouted down or told I am ignorant of some previously not mentioned study that has a bullshit agency behind it with an official sounding name.
The fact is, temperatures do matter regardless of how isolated the locale is. Why? Because it goes to show that any measurement that does not take into fact changes which fall outside the accepted model are invalid themselves. Sorry, but we cannot ignore data about temperature spikes on either side. It just doesn't work that way.
It really comes down to one thing, whom does it benefit if one side is right versus the other? Who is making the real money on this? I will answer that, the environmentalist have been essentially taken over by big money. It wasn't too long ago when most corporations ignored "green" or offsets or whatever, but once they found how to make money on it they were more willing to play ball. Go look at the majority of people pontificating we are the cause then look to where they make their money, either direct or indirect, I am quite sure you will find out that their view is what it is because it supports their lifestyle, which usually expends so much resources to be contrary to everything they preach but damn if they don't have one thousand exceptions as to why "they" are allowed such. (then throw in the thousands of supporters who don't know the difference between Celsius an Fahrenheit and you get cult like followings and logic)
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.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
No it isnt.
Which is why that phrase is one which only tends to come out of the mouths of people who can't distinguish between 'scientific' and 'sciencey.'
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.
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Don't feed the trolls and they will get bored and move on. Your post fed them for another 2 weeks.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
We put up solar panels (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure about carbon neutral, but we've seen a our power bill go down by 90%. Still, it will take about 4 - 5 years to recoup the investment, but if you view it as a sunk cost, it's freed up a lot of cash flow.
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I am curious, is there a way to calculate the carbon emissions created by the manufacturing, transportation and installation of the panels or have you only done the financial cost/benefit analysis for the project? And if there is a way to calculate it, what are the benefits, if any?
This is a serious question btw.
Re:We put up solar panels (Score:5, Interesting)
We didn't even bother to consider it because we didn't do it to be "Green". We did it because we had the cash on hand, the tax write off for the investment expired in December, and by switching to solar we freed up enough money to pay for another developers salary.
Get fat and sequester carbon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now THAT is how the real world works. Congratulations on making a sound investment. Carbon trading is so obviously a useless bullshit scam. The real damage done is in the fact that people think it actually works and hence ignore other actually beneficial measures.
I'd love to do a parody website about the environmental benefits of obesity. After all, human fat is a fairly dense hydrocarbon. The fatter you become, the more carbon is sequestered. Imagine the environmental benefits if everyone in the US gained 30 lbs! A billion pounds of carbon sequestered! Woo-hoo!
Re:Get fat and sequester carbon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that in the "real world" of which you speak, the reason it was economical for GPP to put up solar panels was because of the tax writeoff -- i.e., governments setting environmental policy. Imagine that.
Re:Get fat and sequester carbon... (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, human fat is a fairly dense hydrocarbon.
I got the creeps when I ran across the section of the CRC regarding the composition of various fats. One was labeled 'Depot Fat', and gave the fractions of its various constituents. Depot Fat is people!!! Ewwww!
Being what could be generously called 'Portly', I've always wondered how long I'd burn if you stuck a wick in my tummy and lit it.
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The benefits are still huge unless some group of villains deliberately vandalizes solar panels and thus shorten the expected life of the panel.
google.
Carbon neutrality is a joke anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole concept is junk science. It's basically saying that you can urinate in someone's swimming pool if you filter an equal amount of salt out of the ocean.
The real world doesn't work that way. In the real world, local effects are just as bad as global effects, and there's no guarantee that opposite local effects in two places will ever actually cancel each other out. It's a nice way to help people feel good about themselves, but in the grand scheme of things, it is naive to think that carbon offsets, no matter how large, can undo the damage of the carbon you shouldn't have emitted in the first place....
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Well it's more like saying that if a thousand people take a leak in the Indian Ocean and you filter out a roughly equivilant amount of piss from the Atlantic that you're neutral.
You're right in the sense that you're not purely neutral, and you're right in the sense that it may never be truly neutral, but a swimming pool is disconnected from the ocean, whereas all the air is connected.
In the end it's not perfect, and it'd be better not to piss in the ocean at all, but if you have to metaphorically piss in th
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Noone mentions it though. Why? Because the Gas which is four to eight times more efficient at reflecting sunlight out into space is O2.
Oxygen
Here's an idea - Let's ban the release of Oxygen into the atmosphere! Maybe get some of the green-peacers out of there
Re:Carbon neutrality is a joke anyway (Score:5, Funny)
Get the fuck out of here with your logic and science. These have no place in a discussion about the environment!
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If he'd shown any logic or science in his post at all, maybe you'd have a point.
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Re:Carbon neutrality is a joke anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
From wikipedia:
Although contributing to many other physical and chemical reactions, the major atmospheric constituents, nitrogen (N2), oxygen (O2), and argon (Ar), are not greenhouse gases. This is because homonuclear diatomic molecules such as N2 and O2 and monatomic molecules such as Ar have no net change in their dipole moment when they vibrate and hence are almost totally unaffected by infrared light.
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Same reason that phrenology is not mentioned, ie: it's utter bullshit.
"Here's an idea - Let's ban the release of Oxygen into the atmosphere!"
Here's a different idea, get a clue [realclimate.org].
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Do you know what a greenhouse is?
Do you know what greenhouse gases are, and why they are called that?
Did you read your own post?
Seriously. Go back and read what you wrote. Ponder the part about "reflecting sunlight out into space."
Ponder some more. Maybe, eventually, you will realize how incredibly ignorant you just made yourself out to be.
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> You're right in the sense that you're not purely neutral, and you're right in the sense that it may never be truly neutral, but a swimming pool is disconnected from the ocean, whereas all the air is connected.
Well, not really. For instance, Ozone up really high, good. Ozone down really low, not good.
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Really? Then what do the trees breathe?
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You can't be serious. Yes, plants remove CO2 from the air (they also add it in lesser amounts). That doesn't mean they absorb all the CO2 that goes by them, or that all the atmosphere passes by plants (hint: the atmosphere is taller than trees). Yes, the presence of plants and finite diffusion rates means that local emissions create a local bubble. However, localized emissions will also impact CO2 levels around the globe. OTOH, localized ozone sources (or sinks) have *no* effect on the ozone layer -- o
Re:Carbon neutrality is a joke anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, what is ridiculous is that we are seriously considering further trashing the already near ruined world economy over the scare-junk-unproven-science that is anthropogenic global warming.
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It's much, much, simpler to quantify (and control through taxes/regulation) the main sources, ie: fossil fuels a
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Perhaps, but it depends on the pollutants. Lead emissions are a local problem (although there is archaeological evidence of airborne lead pollution in Northern Europe from Roman industry, hundreds of miles away). CO2 is a pollutant that has little local impact, even in comparison to the water emissions from combustion. Except in special circumstances, it has no local significance whatsoever. CO2 is a global pollutant. It makes perfe
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Re:Carbon neutrality is a joke anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
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Over at NASAs Earth Observatory site, they have some interesting viewpoints and research together with images. There is a study (published 2006) that has been tracking the re-growth of forests after fires. Part of this work takes place in the far north of Canada, and Alaska.
Since the 1990s, scientists have known that increasing global temperatures have lengthened the growing season in the Arctic. With carbon dioxide, one of the key ingredients in photosynthesis, also on the rise, the forest should have been thriving. But it wasn't. The forest was getting browner, not greener.
They go on to discover that because of a warming climate, there are droughts occurring which deprive the forests of water, and so gradually they die. And although other trees can move in, they will suffer the same limitations. Overal
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Do we consider Oxygen a pollutant as well?
Try living in a 100% oxygen atmosphere at sea level pressure and let us know.
Anything can be a pollutant when the levels get too high. In some cases, the levels have to get very high to have a pollutant effect. In others ... they don't.
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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."
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And that's assuming your carbon offset money is actually going towards real carbon offsets.
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It's even worse than that. It becomes a PR tool in the hands of people who have tremendously more interest in looking good, than actually doing the right thing, and what you end up with is Chevron giving you 60 second bites of "What fine stewards of the environment they are", when in fact their litany of environmental abuse is nothing less than shocking.
Also don't let all the talk by Oil companies about alternative energy fool you, no oil or coal producer spends anywhere near 1% of their net profit research
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Well said, Good Citizen dgatwood, well said.
Frankly, I don't think the coming Ice Age (methane + global warming) will give a frozen rat's ass in Hell about carbon offsets. Just me speaking.....
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Ever is an awfully strong statement. There is a lot of uncertainty in both measuring carbon impact and any offsets. What you can say is that you are neutral within the margin of error of both measurements.
Do you see how less stupid that sounds?
And did you see how many less capitalized letters I used in words?
Feel free to imitate my style of communication, to improve other people's opinion of your thoughts. (
Not that easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry to piss on someone's cult of the hunter-gatherer utopia parrade, but it didn't work that way.
Pre-historic hunter-gatherers caused the extinction of thousands of species and, for example, all the mega-fauna in the Americas. There are whole species, e.g., the mammoth, for which you can trace its shrinking habitat historically and it looks damn suspiciously like the opposite of the pattern of human spread. Yes, there were environment factors too, which probably were already making it harder for them to t
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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.
Modern day Indulgences (Score:4, Insightful)
And nothing more.
Spend the money by planing some trees.
Cheat Neutral (Score:5, Funny)
My favorite commentary on carbon offsetting is Cheat Neutral [cheatneutral.com]
Brilliant way to make a statement. Yes, it is real. No, the creators don't keep the money. No, I'm not involved with the company/website.
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Bwahaha - That is a brilliant idea! I think the site would have been funnier though if their descriptions were worded the way an actual company with more subtle references to carbon offsets. Ie just tell the joke, don't explain it :)
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Or buy renewable energy credits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Energy_Certificates [wikipedia.org]
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), also known as Green tags, Renewable Energy Credits, or Tradable Renewable Certificates (TRCs), are tradable environmental commodities in the United States which represent proof that 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity was generated from an eligible renewable energy resource.
Much less ambiguous then a "carbon credit".
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Offsets are typically generated from emissions-reducing projects. The most common project type is renewable energy, such as wind farms, biomass energy, or hydroelectric dams. Other common project types include energy efficiency projects, the destruction of industrial pollutants or agricultural byproducts, destruction of landfill methane, and forestry projects.
Wikipedia: Carbon Offset [wikipedia.org]
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Why destroy landfill methane when you can use it to provide power and heating.
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Recycle air
Plant a tree!
The only thing that actually works is the simplest and cheapest.
Planting trees? (Score:2)
Spend the money by planing some trees.
You see, this is part of the scam of carbon offsets. Planting trees is the biggest traditional offset.
However, what do you do with the trapped carbon after you've planted trees? If they burn (either as trees or as wood), then you've done nothing. If they die and rot, then you've done next to nothing. Planting trees is just sweeping the dust under the rug so that no one will notice. It's still "in the system" as it were.
Unless we take those trees and bury them right back in the ground where we got the c
Offsets are marketing tools (Score:5, Insightful)
Bought by companies who want a good image. That's about all they are good for.
Not a fix (Score:2, Insightful)
Buying "carbon credits" is ridiculous. It's a bit like a company using all the water in one river in the U.S. then paying other companies to drill wells for villages in Africa (i.e., being "water neutral"). It's great for the Africans but doesn't solve the problem of destroying a whole river ecosystem in the U.S.
I'm all for reducing noxious emissions and conserving energy but buying carbon credits does not solve the problem.
More of a scam, not so much a fix. (Score:4, Insightful)
If it were just a volunteer program, that might be one thing. Giving money is another thing. I have heard that they like building rainforests with the money, too, which I have also heard are NOT the best thing for producing oxygen and eating CO2...
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Hehe...
Joking aside, I assume (this isn't even based on wikipedia, talk about [citation needed] that rainforests also have a lot of rotting material. I actually know THAT part for a fact, even that Earth series that recently came out (BBC, I think? Forgot hte name of it now, heh) had that in there. Rotting stuff produces lots of CO2.
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Plants are carbon neutral perhaps, but rotting plants aren't, hence the whole rain forest thing not being a good idea...
Don't matches consume massive amounts of methane? ;)
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Amazonian soil is notoriously bad, but there are areas filled with what the locals call terra preta; soil with an unusually high carbon content. ( >= 20% ) This soil is jet black and is extremely fertile. (remaining so with repeated growing seasons) The areas where this soil is located is filled with pottery fragments, so the soil was obviously manmade either deliberately or as a byproduct of human habitation over a long period of tim
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Uh not exactly, some of the CO2 is released, but much of it is converted into hydrocarbons via photosynthesis and used for various things like the plant's structure. There's a hell of a lot of carbon sequestered in the trunk of a large tree. When the plant life dies (or partly so, like when trees drop leaves in winter) that CO2 gets released, but should get sucked up in the next growth cycle, meaning that while it follows a cyclical pattern there's less carbon on average in the atmosphere and it isn't inc
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FTA: (Score:3, Insightful)
as some recipients of offsets say the results of their sustainable efforts would be achieved regardless of any one company's investment.
That's not true, those recipients wouldn't get filthy rich without company investments!
The Solution (Score:5, Funny)
The government just needs to enact two laws to solve global warming:
1) Ban all e-commerce
2) Mandate a one thousand year document retention period
All government and commercial transactions will be done on paper drastically increasing demand. Paper companies will chop down trees to make paper and then plant new ones that will pull carbon dioxide out of the air. The carbon in the form of paper will be sequestered by the document retention requirement. Problem solved.
Oh yeah, and to speed commerce we can build a network of pneumatic tubes.
Something similar for unfaithful boyfriends... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh yes, the old Catholic model. (Score:3, Insightful)
Subsidies (Score:2, Interesting)
See Ethanol, various agricultural subsidies, tax breaks for wealthy and profitable corporations, subsidies to erect cable lines and the monopolies that has created, etc.
I can think of very few subsidies that have worked out well. A much better idea is to incorporate the cost of "dirty" industry into the services and goods produced. Then consumers can compare on co
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When you start handing out subsidies, people start chasing the subsidies rather than the goals that the subsidies are trying to jump-start.
So true. Subsidies is the exact opposite of what you should do. There is only one decently efficent way of dealing with externalties, and that is to tax the hell out of it.
Of course, politicians will never do something like that. Instead of taxing the release of CO2 into the atmosphere they will just tax using energy which punishes all types of energy uses independent of how it is produced. Then they will create random subsidies on various non-externalty based energy production methods on a pseudo random ba
Some Credits are More Equal than Others (Score:4, Interesting)
There are some projects that generate real reductions. For example, capture or methane from manure lagoons or landfills where it is not required by regulation and is not less expensive than carbon treatment or the planting and preservation of trees in an area that would otherwise be harvested. These credits are real reductions.
The problem is the layman has no idea where their credits are coming from. I'm in the industry, and I can't always tell you the value of a credit.
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> The problem is the layman has no idea where their credits are coming from.
Exactly. How possibly could they? We're talking people with real lives, not (and I sincerely mean this in the most positive sense) eco-geeks. When you ask even intelligent, well-educated people to make decisions out of their area of expertise, you often get pandemonium. And that's what we're getting here.
The Indulgence of Global Warming Religion (Score:4, Interesting)
Global Warming has all the elements of caricatures of religion.
Sin? Carbon.
Original Sin? Capitalism/Industry.
Which leads us to carbon offset. Yes, just like Roman Catholic indulgences. Except they produced something useful. The Sistine Chapel.
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Right, because "sin" is "all the elements of religion". On that logic you could pretty much call scientists proclaiming the dangers of lung cancer as a religious cult.
Equating decades of scientific research to a story tale about a Jewish carpenter and his drinking buddies is ridiculous.
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Christianity has eyewitness testimony
Oh, really? Do tell.
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Overthinking anything (Score:3, Insightful)
Is what will cause the over intelligent person to fail. No matter how much time you spend analyzing some decision, there will be even more to consider. You will never know for sure what the best option is.
It comes down to "stupid" and seemingly "irrational" reasons that make us finally decide.
This:
These Corn Pops are cheaper... but I get more Oz. per Dollar if I buy the more expensive ones... but I may not finish the bigger box... but if I get the small box, I might have a surplus of milk. Oh.. I could buy the smaller milk. Oh wow. The value of the quart-sized milk drops dramatically from that of the Gallon size. Ok. I will rule out milk as a deciding factor...
Or this:
These corn pops look good. Big box or small? I'm not that hungry now, which has nothing to do with anything... but small box it is.
I guess it's a matter of choosing your battles. In general, I believe that if we mean well and make honest decisions, on average we will do better. Not always, but it will tend towards better. Do try.. but do not kill yourself. The returns on worrying will likely diminish as you sit there.
If everyone TRIED to be conscious of energy waste, I feel pretty confident that the net payoff would be worth it. Again, only go as far as is reasonable. Yes. That's a subjective thing. That's one thing "Humans" are skilled at. Subjectivity. It's an important part of what makes us intelligence. Call it your heart or your gut. It's smarter than the credit we give it.
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Wasting energy isn't the problem. It's energy production that is. More research needs to be pumped into stuff like Bussard Fusion reactors and then once finished the whole debate is over.
The inexact science of everything (Score:4, Insightful)
(Kind of an off-topic rant, mostly because I'm seeing a lot of responses saying "See?!? Global warming is clearly crap because it has holes, now leave my diesel-powered hummer alone")
When did people start thinking science was easy and could ever provide a simple answer to anything? At best you get vague general theories, and usually know at least a few big exceptions prior to the theory being written down. And that's when the theory applies to something that is entirely academic. When it has serious economic implications, how clear a picture do you think is going to develop?
Maybe we do need to start adding "just a theory" to evolution taught in high school, and add it to everything else taught in science as well.
It's important to point out the holes in any theory, to critique buisness practices and government regulations, and avoid the harms that global warming could bring about, but resist the temptation to think in terms of black and white on such complex issues.
Carbon-Credits are not all a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Old news (Score:4, Informative)
After reading this article [discovermagazine.com] I finally figured out it was power.
PT Barnum would be proud (Score:2)
Anyone who thinks that buying 'Carbon Credits' is anything other than a scam is a sucker...and as the man said one is born every minute.
What Was It For? (Score:2)
The idea was never meant to be accurate, science, or anything similar. It was meant to be a PR balloon sent up to distract people in the very least, and if it was successfully pushed past the sheeple, a way for companies to make it look like they cared and/or were trying to do something. "Companies" should be the hint. Those animals don't do anything that doesn't make them money unless forced to, and the administration that floated the idea has done everything it could at every turn to make sure the only th
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.
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Problem is it's ok to do that in the west however it's not so easy to grow your own food when you don't have a garden, tools or seeds to do it.
Again with the bike, great in theory unless you can't afford a bike and have to take a bus into a city from the slum you live in.
These ideas are always presented by western idealists as simple solutions without much thought taken into the actual practicalities.
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]