More Than Half of Carbon Credit Auditors Have Signed Off on 'Overclaimed' Benefits (science.org) 21
Can carbon-reducing projects "offset" a company's emissions? "The reality has been less encouraging," according to a Science magazine editorial by Cary Coglianese, a law/political science professor at University of Pennsylvania, and Cynthia Giles, a former senior advisor at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In a new paper published Wednesday, they found that more than half of all currently-certified carbon auditors signed off on projects later found to be "overclaiming" carbon benefits.
Their conclusion? "Criticism should be directed not at individual auditors as much as the structure of the system that fosters these outcomes." Most carbon offset projects that have been closely scrutinized — including projects for forest protection, renewable energy, and methane-reducing methods of rice cultivation — have greatly exaggerated their climate benefits. More than 80% of issued credits might not reflect real emission reductions. This has alarmed potential offset purchasers and stalled carbon offset markets.
Efforts to resuscitate the beleaguered offset market tout third-party auditing as "essential" to ensuring credit integrity. That reliance is misplaced... [E]xtensive research from many contexts shows that auditors selected and paid by audited organizations often produce results skewed toward those entities' interests. A field experiment in India, for example, found that air and water pollution auditors who were randomly assigned and paid from a central fund reported emissions at levels 50 to 70% higher than auditors selected and paid by audited firms. Auditors — like all people — are subject to a well-established and largely unconscious cognitive phenomenon of self-serving bias, causing them to interpret evidence in favor of their clients...
[A]uditors have been required all along and have failed to prevent substantial credit overclaiming. It is rarely acknowledged that all of the credit overclaiming projects that have stirred so much controversy were ratified by third-party auditors under the same auditor selection and payment system that offset advocates rely on today... Auditors are unlikely to stay in business if they disapprove credits at the high rates that research suggests would be appropriate today...
Given the high planetary stakes in carbon policy choices being made now, it is past time to recognize that third-party auditors selected and paid by the audited organizations are not the bulwark for credit integrity they are claimed to be.
Their conclusion? "Criticism should be directed not at individual auditors as much as the structure of the system that fosters these outcomes." Most carbon offset projects that have been closely scrutinized — including projects for forest protection, renewable energy, and methane-reducing methods of rice cultivation — have greatly exaggerated their climate benefits. More than 80% of issued credits might not reflect real emission reductions. This has alarmed potential offset purchasers and stalled carbon offset markets.
Efforts to resuscitate the beleaguered offset market tout third-party auditing as "essential" to ensuring credit integrity. That reliance is misplaced... [E]xtensive research from many contexts shows that auditors selected and paid by audited organizations often produce results skewed toward those entities' interests. A field experiment in India, for example, found that air and water pollution auditors who were randomly assigned and paid from a central fund reported emissions at levels 50 to 70% higher than auditors selected and paid by audited firms. Auditors — like all people — are subject to a well-established and largely unconscious cognitive phenomenon of self-serving bias, causing them to interpret evidence in favor of their clients...
[A]uditors have been required all along and have failed to prevent substantial credit overclaiming. It is rarely acknowledged that all of the credit overclaiming projects that have stirred so much controversy were ratified by third-party auditors under the same auditor selection and payment system that offset advocates rely on today... Auditors are unlikely to stay in business if they disapprove credits at the high rates that research suggests would be appropriate today...
Given the high planetary stakes in carbon policy choices being made now, it is past time to recognize that third-party auditors selected and paid by the audited organizations are not the bulwark for credit integrity they are claimed to be.
I mean no shit Sherlock (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the things that frustrates me is an adult is how we have all these bizarre fucked up scams that make up our civilization and society that we all just kind of shrug our shoulders at and allow.
It's the old boiling of frog trick. If you took a kid and you told them how dishonest adults are they'd be pretty fucking pissed but you grow up learning one scam after another.
The one that got me first as a kid was Christ
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that make up our civilization and society that we all just kind of shrug our shoulders at and allow.
I am surprised you have yet to understand that personal freedom and small government is about countering exactly this. The more you expand the government and regulation, the more room you create for someone connected to run these scams.
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If you have personal freedom and small government, then anybody can just connect with their friends and run scams without others interfering.
Re: I mean no shit Sherlock (Score:2)
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That wouldn't be enough, you'd also have have to reinstate punishment by ostracism and mob rule.
But where would you ostracize people to? And how would you mark such people? Australia is no longer an option.
The way to do this is to get as many people involved as possible, so that cheating/conspiring would have a high probability of getting blown.
https://journals.plos.org/plos... [plos.org]
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The one that got me first as a kid was Christopher Columbus and finding out he was an absolute monster. Like Adolf Hitler grade son of a bitch. There are plenty of others though.
I doubt Christopher Columbus was a saint as all people have flaws but he did have a mission and he wasn't above taking advantage of natives in the Americas to get done what he set out to do. That hardly makes him a "Hitler grade" SOB. Columbus wasn't about the genocide of the native Americans. There's little doubt that the spread of disease from Europe to the Americas lead to many deaths, but with germ theory being something like 400 years in the future there can be little blame placed on Columbus for thi
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I doubt Christopher Columbus was a saint as all people have flaws but he did have a mission and he wasn't above taking advantage of natives in the Americas to get done what he set out to do. That hardly makes him a "Hitler grade" SOB
True, he was more of a Captain Cook, as he was a slaver and a rapist.
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Christopher Columbus was a product of his times. As for how he and his successors treated the natives they met, well, have you heard of "conversion by the sword"? The catholic priests coming to the battlefield, shouting to natives a chance to become Christian (in Spanish or Portugeuse, of course), then blessing the slaughter when the natives failed to do so. For that matter, do you have any idea how sailors - on literally all ships of the time - were treated?
It doesn't make a lot of sense to judge histori
Unicornia is the land of Net Zero (Score:2)
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None of the Net Zero plans I have seen survive any kind of rigorous scrutiny. It is either green-washed via highly dubious offset credits or green-washed via outsourcing emissions.
I have little doubt now that carbon credits are just "green washing", an effort to allow maintaining the status quo on CO2 emissions by paying someone to pretend they are doing something that would not otherwise be done to make the status quo a net zero effort.
Where the scam begins in this is often a claim that because the carbon emitter is paying money there were some trees, or something, saved from destruction. This is a scam because either the trees were not threatened to begin with, or by paying this m
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Lets go back to the basics, is CO2 bad for the environment? Even beginner pot growers know if you want your plants to grow fast, supplement with CO2. Its needed by plants as much as we need oxygen.
It's arguments like this that keep me from trying to debate anything about global warming than what to do for solutions. If I'm to assume that CO2 is a problem then in the debate over solutions we can remove fossil fuels as an option then look to metrics like EROEI, safety, costs, or whatever else people would be concerned about in reaching some optimal solution.
If we don't care about CO2 emissions then fossil fuels remove themselves from the debate on energy supply options because of having lower EROEI, l
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Absolutely this: pure greenwashing.
I've looked into several carbon-capture scheme from an engineering POV. Once you account for all the ancillary costs, every single one of them was a net generator of CO2. Just as an example, I remember one that wanted to gather straw from fields, compact it into blocks, and bury it. Their numbers didn't account for the farm machinery needed to gather the straw, the trucks to transport it to the block-making factory, or the fact that farmers would need to add some other bi
Fuck their conclusion (Score:2)
Their conclusion? "Criticism should be directed not at individual auditors as much as the structure of the system that fosters these outcomes."
There is plenty of room to criticize both. You also can't arrest the system, but you can arrest frauds. Fuck their conclusion.
Yes you Can (Score:5, Informative)
You also can't arrest the system,
In this case you can. You simply have to eliminate the system of carbon credits. The whole idea of carbon emissions as property is absurd and obvious when pasted onto a system of selling credits for reducing emissions.
Example: I own a small woodlot and sell wood to the local paper mill. You agree to paying me for not cutting my trees. The local paper mill buys logs from someone else. You go the the paper mill and it agrees to reduce the logs it buys so it has to reduce the paper it produces. The customer for the paper still needs paper so they buy it from some other paper company that cuts down more trees to meet the new customer's needs. So then you talk to the customer about not using paper and they agree to send emails instead of printing on paper. Of course they have to turn their computer on and send it which creates emissions. And then you hope that the person at the other end doesn't print it.
Oh and did I mention. I flew off on vacation with the extra money you paid me.
The entire idea is ridiculous. There are no carbon offsets. Its just people greenwashing their emissions.
Nooooooooo (Score:1)
Be legally liable (Score:2)
If they're not legally liable for the testimonial, they'll say whatever they're paid to say. As the article suggests, make it an 'insurance' scheme they all contribute to, the incentive to whitewash the facts will reduce, greatly.
Trump is gutting the FAA, NTSB, NASA, NWS, NOAA, EPA, FDA, DoAg., FCC to eliminate legal responsibility: Billionaires can do whatever. Then eliminate the DoEd. so those jobs never come back.
Carbon Credits = #Greenwash (Score:2)
Offsetting this way just moves the problem somewhere else - it doesnt go away.
Are most carbon offset project just Bullshit ??? (Score:2)