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Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

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Re: Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

#101

Post by breezeTrowel »

narrator wrote: post #25

The Permian Basin in Texas, which has provided most of the oil supply growth for the last decade, is starting to slowly decline from its peak. Let's say that climate change is a nice way to tell people that we're running out of oil. Why would you want to do that? You'd want to say that energy demand is the problem, not energy supply. Thus, we need to get people to cut back on their usage and come together in a global…

Not sure I follow this narrative regarding China building a ton of coal plants being a signal for oil shortage. Can you elaborate? There aren't any power plants that run on oil there and the whole thing seems like a move away from hydroelectric power which has been severely weakened due to drought.

Re: Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

#102

Post by joshvm »

pfisch wrote: post #81
moralestapia wrote: post #14

Three years ago I entered this business as I saw some opportunity. After about a year I got out because everything there was fraud. F R A U D. >most of them exaggerate climate benefits and underestimate the potential harm [...] >projects were categorised as “likely junk or worthless” due to one or more “fundamental failing” that undermines its alleged emissions offsetting power [...] Stop trying to disguise these ope…

Seems like planting trees is easy enough? What is wrong with projects like that?

It's complicated, but John Oliver did a good segment on it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0

Planting trees is not an easy solution. https://e360.yale.edu/features/phantom-forests-tree-planting...

A major problem is that monitoring and verification is patchy. A carbon credit is in theory something like X ton-years, but there is no guarantee that what you pay for will be around in X years and policing us extremely difficult. X is traditionally 100 years. If I sell you a carbon credit and then cut all my trees down, what happens?

Another is fraudulent sites - people selling credits for sites that already exist, we're already planned for protection, etc.

Re: Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

#104

Post by marginalia_nu »

londons_explore wrote: post #30
akho wrote: post #6

Are the other 22 % certain junk? The effects fundamentally do not seem offsetable. The offset industry is based on an idea that you can remove greenhouse impacts from your process without a significant impact on prices, and a corporation is somehow better positioned to donate to a fund than a consumer is. That's bullshit.

In principle, offsetting CO2 production seems like a sensible idea to me. Someone willing to extract CO2 from the air and store it in some rock forever can indeed offset some carbon you emitted. The reality is that nobody is doing that - instead the fraudulent offsetting companies are getting paid to do something they wanted to do anyway - for example planting trees for papermaking, or just plain-old lying about what…

> Someone willing to extract CO2 from the air and store it in some rock forever can indeed offset some carbon you emitted.

This isn't what carbon offsets typically are though.

More like this: I promise not to slash and burn this forest if you give me $1000. There, you've now removed however many CO2 from being emitted, meanwhile I sell the forest to someone else who either makes the same deal with some other guy or just cuts it down because whatever they aren't under any obligations to not slash and burn the forest.

Re: Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

#106

Post by black_puppydog »

Maken wrote: post #23
akho wrote: post #6

Are the other 22 % certain junk? The effects fundamentally do not seem offsetable. The offset industry is based on an idea that you can remove greenhouse impacts from your process without a significant impact on prices, and a corporation is somehow better positioned to donate to a fund than a consumer is. That's bullshit.

From the report: 16% were problematic, AKA they could not determine with enough precision if they were junk. The remaining 6% didn't publish enough information to even assess them. So yes, they are also junk.

I came here to confirm that I hadn't missed something in the article. Thanks for confirming.

This is so fucked up...

Re: Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

#108

Post by tppiotrowski »

munk-a wrote: post #34

It is my firm belief that anyone who wants to solve climate change through "carbon sequestration" either doesn't actually understand the technological requirements involved or is just trying to kick the can down the road. We need to reduce - that is the solution.

Carbon sequestration doesn't require deep understanding of chemistry or physics. It can be understood by politicians, CEOs, economists and the general public.

If we could effectively communicate the science we could support/fund more scientific solutions. However, money rots science too.

Re: Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

#110

Post by zpeti »

moralestapia wrote: post #14

Three years ago I entered this business as I saw some opportunity. After about a year I got out because everything there was fraud. F R A U D. >most of them exaggerate climate benefits and underestimate the potential harm [...] >projects were categorised as “likely junk or worthless” due to one or more “fundamental failing” that undermines its alleged emissions offsetting power [...] Stop trying to disguise these ope…

I'm just suprised most intelligent people never ever question all the research coming out of the climate science area.

There is literally zero, zero, zero incentive to research or publish anything that might remotely suggest we aren't heading for some climate catastrophe. In fact you are likely to get banished from science if you ever question anything.

In fact it's worse, the best way to get publicity and further funding is to be as dramatic as possible about what the future holds.

That isn't reliable science. That's speculation at best, and fraud at worst.

Many many other areas of this entire climate industry needs to be questioned.

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