More Than Half of Carbon Credit Auditors Have Signed Off on 'Overclaimed' Benefits (science.org) 25
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
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]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I mean no shit Sherlock (Score:4, Insightful)
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 this, they just didn't know.
Much of the criticism of Columbus comes from a single source, a rival that was perhaps envious of the fame Columbus reached and so he wrote plenty of accounts of his brutality that was either grossly exaggerated or simply made up. With records of this time being limited to what was written, and those accounts likely colored by some bias of the authors on either side, there's no telling what is true. Regardless it is difficult to believe that Columbus was on the level of Hitler in brutality against any Americans if only because he'd have limited resources and manpower to do much, he'd be outnumbered most anywhere he went. Perhaps he took advantage of European diseases to aid in his brutality but then, again, germ theory wasn't really a thing until centuries later and so that leaves a lot to interpretation even if we can believe written accounts by anyone.
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.
While growing up there is the realization at some point that the "adults in the room" are often as ignorant on what is going on as the children. What the adults have though is enough confidence and built up trust to convey some semblance that they have control of the situation and the knowledge to respond for the best outcome.
I've seen this in the military, both firsthand and from secondhand accounts, there's always an expectation that the officers and NCOs have things under control but in fact they are as scared, ignorant, and therefore "winging it" like anyone else. What differs from having each Specialist and Private doing their own thing is that by having everyone working in the same direction there's often a beneficial, if perhaps less than optimal, outcome.
The "scam" of carbon credits might be thought of in the same manner. Rather than have all these varied efforts to reduce CO2 emission there could be some coordination towards a goal to get a beneficial, if perhaps less than optimal, outcome for everyone involved. The problem is revealed in time though, and with that is a revelation on how carbon credits is mostly a scam. There's likely some honest players but that is ruined by those that scam the system.
Carbon credits to me appears to be mostly a distraction from solutions that offer the most benefit with the least cost. We'd be much better off with finding ways to keep the monetary costs low on low CO2 solutions than trying to tax carbon emissions then shuffle that money over to people that learned how to game the system.
If people want lower CO2 emissions then they should be looking to what energy sources produce the least CO2 while also having the best EROEI. Those are hydro, onshore wind, geothermal, and nuclear fission. Solar PV and solar thermal power often sees EROEI in the single digits, while in comparison hydro and nuclear fission shows EROEI in the double or even triple digits. For comparison fossil fuels appear to be fairly consistent in having an EROEI somewhere between 20 and 30. In time that EROEI for fossil fuels is almost certainly to continue to drop. As the EROEI of fossil fuels drops that makes alternatives look better.
We don't need carbon credits to steer people into alternative energy. We have options that have proven to be profitable without the nonsense of cap, tax, and spend. We need only remove the political barriers to these alternatives and we'd see lower CO2 emissions simply because the low CO2 options are cheaper than fossil fuels. This has become apparent by being the "adult in the room" long enough to have the scams get exposed.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
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:3)
Re: (Score:1)
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
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Who And Why? (Score:2)
Who came up with this carbon credit market?
Why the fuck would anyone ever put money into it?
carbon credits (Score:1)
... Are the modern equivalent of medieval indulgences "pay me money and you can go ahead and keep sinning".
And just as likely to be effective in a) stopping sinning an/or b) making you innocent.