I received an interesting email last evening from reader “skullberg” about which I’d be curious to get your thoughts:
[…] I figured you might find this bit of nerditry interesting. If Gore and his energy glutton apologists are serious the “carbon offset” are as good as reducing consumption, then I say we start pushing carbon offsets as national energy policy.
Here’s how the numbers work out:
According to wikipedia, Kyoto would like us to be 7% below 1990 levels by 2010.
And according to Pew, in 1990 we had 6109 Million Metric Tons (MMT) or 10^12 grams and in 2004 we had 7075. To meet Kyoto [protocols] this year, we would have to be at 5681.
To make the difference up we need, as a country, to buy 1394 MMT of offsets.
According to TerraPass, we can buy 450,000 lbs of offsets for $1500.
Converting to metric, that means 204.1165665 Metric Tons. Assuming no more bulk discount, we would have to buy (1,394,000,000 / 204) = 6833333.333 of those passes.
Times $1500, that comes out to $10,250,000,000 or just over $10 billion.
And according to Greg Mankiw’s reading of the CBO report, (Page 345, Option 48), we can raise $49.3B a year by boosting the gas tax 50 cents.
So if that math holds, we add 15 cents to the federal gas tax, and use that $15B to buy “Carbon Offsets” each year, and bam, we’re the only Kyoto Protocol compliant nation, and with minimal tax burden.
How much do you think Gore, Pandagon, Kos or the Sierra Club will support that policy?
I’m not the person to be checking the math here—trust me—so go ahead and do some calculating on your own if you are so inclined.
Still, regardless of the exactitude of the figures, skullberg’s larger point here is one that we should take seriously—because it is clear from the response by Gore’s representative that Gore takes such carbon offsets seriously, and as we all know, his word is gospel when it comes to deciding what are the proper sacrifices one need make in order to count oneself among the defenders of Mother Earth.
And called out on his extravagent energy use, Gore responded that he used just such types of offsets to reduce his carbon footprint—and, through a spokesman, chastised environmental skeptics for not factoring that in to Gore’s overall “conservation” measures.
Which, of course, is nonsense: we factored it in—we just tend to see it for what it is, namely, a form of indulgence through which the wealthy can pretend toward environmental self-righteousness, and, in effect, purchase their way to “elect” status while maintaining the right to scold the proles for their trips to Wal-Mart in the family SUV.
Personally, if the figures pan out, I’d be willing to pay the offset in the form of a tax just to be able, in perpetuity, to point out how simple it is to buy your way into compliance with Kyoto—without having to change your carbon-emitting habits one single bit. In fact, the more gas we burn, the quicker we reach compliance!
So. Whaddya say? Who’s for a “National Drive Around Aimlessly and Just Burn a Tank of Gas for the Environment Day”?
Al Gore is! And if he’s for it, how can we not be? I mean, he has a freakin’ Oscar, for Gaia’s sake!
Iowahawk has the right idea.
I nominate skullberg for the Nobel Peace Prize. This is unbelievably brilliant environmental jiu-jitsu.
Seriously, why don’t we just pay a large section of Africa to de-industrialize and then live off our largesse? It might be the most effective foreign aid we ever produced.
Or, to keep it local, pay Americans to go off the grid. Watch the Amish become richer than Croesus.
And he’s buying the Goreway to Gaia
And just get a load of this: The web-based “Carbon Impact” calculator endorsed by Al Gore himself is not actually ‘big’ enough to calculate his own carbon impact.
The Link.
I had the same thought when I read about Sen. Feinstein buying $229 of offsets to cover a coast to coast round trip flight on a private jet.
Seemed weird.
I’m awful at math, and I don’t have the article, but:
A commercial jet uses 3X the fuel of her private Gulfstream
Commercial jet carries 300 people vs. 10 (or fewer)
It seemed to me that for about $5 on my airline ticket I could be “carbon footprint neutral”… make that $5 and I am saving the freakin planet all by myself
It doesn’t add up
I want to thank you, Steve. On behalf of all of us. On the planet.
I fight Global Warming by leaving the door to the refrigerator open all day while I’m at work.
BEAT THAT, you carbon-footprint attention whore!
SB: hair41
long, beautiful
We could also take another leaf out of the Goracle’s playbook and set up our own Department of Carbon Indulgences and ‘invest’ the money in green research and tree planting.
Seriously some enterpising Senator, Inhofe seems like the man, should propose this. If Gore can pull off the trick of using massive amounts of energy and then buying carbon credits from himself, why not the whole country?
Of course it will have zero effects64 on Glowball worming, but then neither will Kyoto.
Purchasing these offset credits reduced carbon emissions how ? Notice all this money flying around ( bad pun ) , does nothing to reduce carbon emissions ?
Why not implement a progressive rate for Kw consumption?
Set up a system with the utilities such that you have a ‘household rate’ – you then set up the rate structure along these lines:
0 – 50% of the nominal usage – half rate
benefits the poor and the ecofriendly
51-100% of the nominal usage – 3/4s rate
benefits the lower middle class and the ecofriendly
1-3x the nominal usage – full rate
benefits the middle class and the ecoresponsible
3x-5x the nominal usage – 1.5x rate
incents the actual reduction of usage, overage helps defray the cost of the subsidy for the poor
5x-10x the nominal usage – 2x the rate
10-20x the nominal rate – 3x the rate for the overage.
20-50x the nominal rate – 4x the rate on the overage
–
Say the average use is 1000KW per month and Al Gore uses 20,000KW per month and the rate is 0.08 per Kw.
His bill for this particular home would be:
500 KW at .04 $6
500 KW at .06 $22.5
2000 KW at .08 $160
2000 KW at .12 $240
5000 KW at .16 $800
10000 KW at .24 $2,400
Al’s monthly electric bill is $3,625.50 – roughly 3x what it is today. The ‘average family of four’ is paying between $75-180.
Al can lower his bill by, you know, turning off a light once in a while or coming up with creative ways to reduce his *consumption*. In the meantime, the average family of four thanks Al and others in his neighborhood for keeping their electricity affordable, up to the point where the family of four starts being extravagent, in which case they get hit with a premium.
Al can pay the premium for his choice of electrics and the take whatever tax advantage is given for choosing green power.
–
As if the Irony Meter needle weren’t already wrapped twice around the peg:
“When Al Gore was negotiating the Kyoto accords, he argued on behalf of the Clinton Administration that the treaty should include three types of carbon offsets. First, so-called “hot air” trading so that the US could buy credits from Russia, which would receive credits because of the post-communist collapse of its industrial base. This would account for about one-third of the US “reduction” in carbon emissions. Second, carbon-sink credits for the carbon absorbed in US forests and through reforesting. The Clinton Administration hoped to get another third of US reductions in this way. Third, a “Clean Development Mechanism” in which the US would get credit for funding cleaner energy generation and use in the developing world. This would account for about 15% of the US reduction. In other words, like Al Gore today, the Clinton administration hoped to satisfy about 80% of the US commitment to reduced carbon dioxide emissions without actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions at all.”
Q.E.D.
Raising a practical question at this point: if people don’t stop ordering the Chicken CARBONara at Teh Olive Garden, will it throw the whole calculation off?
Since Bush wants to cut fuel consumption by 20%, wouldn’t the obvious thing in his control be to ensure that everyone in the Executive Branch (all levels) works 4 days a week and therefore doesn’t have to commute on the 5th?
Been there, done that. Except in my day, it was called “Drive Up and Down The Boulevard in a Hopped-Up ‘68 Cougar Looking for Chicks to Impress”.
And since I only got about 12 mpg out of my high-performance 302, I figure I’ve already done my share. Pass me the foie gras and the trans-fat snacks, I’m going to take it easy from now on.
Don’t the offests presume that another country will reduce their emissions?
Oh, hell Jeff, who needs a specific day for that? That’s an everyday thing!
Tis true though, that when Cavuto has on one of those people that want to tell a particular retailer how to operate that I get extra pleasure out of minimizing my browser with a click of the mouse on my Halliburton mouse pad, heading out to fill up at Exxon/Mobil on my way to WalMart. It’s fun too to stock up on trans fats on the way back home whilst flicking ashes out the window all the way.
I think my favorite Iowahawk bumpersticker was:
“Gaia is my copilot: This vehicle powered by recycled sanctimony.”
although
“I’m saving the planet: As far as you know”
is a close second.
I have more than one complaint associated with this Kyoto crap. One is that parts of it are unconstitutional and 95 senators thought so (I assume they still care about stuff like that, he said in ignorance) when they voted against it.
Another is the idea that we somehow need to sign a piece of paper in order to pollute less. The fact is that engineers in this country are doing a great job in cleaning up emissions from new vehicles and newly built power plants.
However, there are plenty of older cars and power plants out there that pollute at a higher rate. Simple age will reduce the number of junkers that pollute (by the way, as an owner of a few old Mustangs, I don’t have any hate for old cars with properly rebuilt and tuned engines). As for power plants, forcing ridiculously high standards on ancient equipment (the lifespan of a power plant is ~30 years) could put smaller power generators out of business, and as we know power generation is already at a critical point. Again, attrition will take care of the problem.
I think pollution credits are a good idea within the industry. They have worked to reduce sulfer dioxide emissions. In this case, a company that emits less of a certain pollutant than a certain standard can sell their credits to a company that emits more than the standard. Then, you reduce the standard slowly over the years (of course, if you set the standard too low you will drive people out of the business, so you have to be careful). To me this makes more sense than the “carbon credit” thing, which as Jeff stated is just indulgences.
Of course, if you’re an alarmist who apparently cannot read and understand simple science and who thinks that mankind’s miniscule contribution to greenhouse gases (in comparison with, say, Volcanos) has us all doomed to die before that happens, I guess I cannot help you.
Offsets presume they can find willing dupes who’ll believe this nonsense.
Wow. Seems to be working.
skullberg’s figure also assumes the government would pay retail for the carbon offsets.
Who pays retail when they’re buying in bulk?!?!
TerraPass would be more than willing to discount if the US government wanted to buy that much carbon offset. TerraPass did so for Oscar recipients. And, Oscar recipients weren’t even paying for the offsets, they were receiving them as gifts so TerraPass discounted their value so no one would have to pay taxes on them.
No problem, alphie. We’ll just knock out a few power grids in some of those places brown people gather.
Then Al can keep his doors open AND the AC on.
Of course big Al doesn’t just buy his own Carbon Indulgences, he sells them to other mugs, sorry investors. Indeed he makes Oscar winning movies, jets around the world giving lectures and has conned, sorry recruited, a bunch of idealistic kids, all to guilt people into buying Honest Al Gore’s Global Warming Remedy.
So, our enterpising Department of Carbon Indulgences could sell credits to those poor countries who can’t make their Kyoto targets by promising them their money will go to alternative energy research.
And the best part about it is that sometime in the next 50 years, someone is going to come up with new ways of storing and generating energy and new materials to make better use of energy and the climate cycle will switch back to cooling and everbody will love America! Hoorah!
How about I just plant a tree and call it even? A long lived, heavy breathing tree. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was cheating.
I just hope nobody steals my Carbon Credit Identity and jacks up my Carbon Credit Score.
Hey . . . . wait a minute: Carbon Credit Identity Protection, Inc.! Who wants in on the IPO?
Jeff,
If we pay the for their carbon rights, they will reduce their emissions. A free market. No need to bomb them.
Why would anyone outside the oil and gas industries oppose such a plan?
Is it simply who is pushing it (the dirty hippies)?
Can I pay with offset credits ?
You’re a man of vision.
No, alpo, it doesn’t, it’s a scam being run by the watermelons and you are an idiot.
Do you even have a clue who cooked up the Kyoto scheme ?
Pssssssst….
Hey Alphie, wanna buy some Carbon Offsets? Got some nice ones right here.
Why indeed? Seems it’s the Environmentalists â„¢ that don’t like it, Alph.
So. Let me get this straight, alphie. You’re all for us buying our way out of environmental responsibilities by bribing developing countries to stay undeveloped?
Dude. You are hard core!
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness and carbon generation.
Is the Declaration a “living document” too?
This is all such blinkered nonsense. I know we’re having fun with this, which is all that it’s good for, but if you take a step back and think about this objectively it will make you loco.
Calling it indulgences insults the market economics on which it purports to rest.
Alden Meyer seem to be a leading proponent of the Kyoto treaty, JR. Are you saying he’s against it?
Jeff,
The countries we buy carbon credits from will use the money to develop cleaner energy technology.
Those who buy their credits will soon be the primitive tech countries.
Jeff, they get to live and they get our money, and all they ahve to do is not build stuff.
Think of it as taking our domestic agriculture acreage reduction subsidies to the international level. They could build stuff and propser, but that will hurt people who already have built stuff, so we pay them not to.
Hey, I’d pay $0.15 a gallon in tax, just to get Algore and the other hysterical intellectual elitists just to shut the fuck up.
But alphie, now, I’d only toss a quarter in his cup. He’s not the pain in the ass that Algore is.
Anybody want to hazard a guess where Al goes to get his offsets? Don’t click if you’re feeling like you’ve been drowning in the Gorebot’s sanctimonious hypocrisy of late.
Like homes, hospitals, drinking water systems, sewer systems…
I’d pay an extra 50 cents a gallon if it would shut the fanatics like Gore up.
“The countries we buy carbon credits from will use the money to develop cleaner energy technology.”
HA HA! I guess you’ve never bought a used car, have you alph? Please complete the following sentence: “A _____ and his ______ are soon _____.” No cheating!
Both of you understand the difference between an Annex 1 and Annex 2 Kyoto signatory ?
If would be an insult if it actually rested on market economics. I think the most likely outcome would be poor countries with no development remaining poor and undeveloped.
As Bill Hobbs was nice enough to point out, going green makes Gore lots of green:
But how Gore buys his “carbon offsets,” as revealed by The Tennessean raises serious questions. According to the newspaper’s report, Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management:
If we were to buy all those carbon offsets that skullberg calculated, we’d probably have to level half of the countries houses in order to plant trees.
The cool thing to do would’ve been to explain it anyway.
Hey kelly! I posted that link upthread.
Now I know nobody reads my comments.
Sulk
Bill,
The role of UNFCCC Annex sceduled contries here has nothing to do with this. I’ve not seen any real Kyoto enforced trading scheme outlined, so we have to look for non-Kyoto Carbon Emmissions Trading schemes.
If, as Gore et al. say, buying offsets from TerraPass or Gore’s Company is just as good as not emitting carbon, why doesn’t the same stand for a bulk purchase by the US government.
Berg
Nice try, alph.
Meyer is a Kyoto proponent but only without the ridiculous carbon offset shell game. Which, [try to focus for a minute] IS THE SUBJECT AT HAND.
Sorry, KB.
I did read your comment but didn’t hit the link. It was probably about the time I was getting more pissed off about this whole spectacle and went searching for where I read it today.
Apologies, but if it’s any consolation I operate under the assumption no one reads my comments either!
</blockquote>I operate under the assumption no one reads my comments either!<blockquote>
I don’t even read my own comments. And I have a ghost write them.
JR,
An attempt to assign a monetary value to carbon emissions is hardly a “shell game.”
Why don’t you go to your local store, grab a bunch of food and try to walk out without paying for it and see what happens.
Again, I can see why oil and coal company employees would resist any attempt to assign a cost to carbon emissions, but why would anyone else oppose it?
Berg ,
Scroll up on your link and read Annex I , Annex II and Developing Countries .
Berg ,
It’s in the contents section .
Alph,
OHhhhh! Dude, thanks. I was SO lost there for a minute.
Meyer opposes the end result of assigning a monetary value to carbon emissions because . . . . . wait for it . . . . HE’S an oil and coal company employee!
Crystal clear.
Besides, carbon is the basis of all life forms and I’m a bible-thumping Pro-Lifer. So, I think Gore should be paying ME for my hopped up, non-catalytic converter havin’, 92 Octane burnin [now with added Ethanol, btw] Magnaflow exhaust belchin’ noisy redneck V8 truck.
CHOOSE LIFE, Alphie!
Well, regardless of the importance of man-made carbon emissions for this sort of thing, it’s not necessarily a complete pointless waste of time. Rather, a market-based solution isn’t.
The way I would imagine something like that as being structured is that the outflows from the carbon producers go either as in-kind/no-exchange-of-funds transfer of material goods (i.e. stack scrubbers) or as cash. The material contributions pay down the offsets, and the cash balance is used administratively and for service support.
The deal is that the developed countries get to feel all good about themselves, and provide an (artifical) manufacturing stimulus, the developed countries get the lower pollution stuff without having to completely give up on growth.
At the second level – regardless of the mechanics of global warming – simply going from huge amounts of pollutants to air as clean as, let’s say Gary, Indiana, can be exploited as a tool of public diplomacy. Second, everyone gets to claim environmentalism. Third, local manufacturing sort of becomes the flip-flipside of outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. Fourth, aggressive promotion of clean coal technology globally provides a bigger and stronger market for the Saudi Arabia of coal – the US.
I suppose on the microlevel, the kinds of offsets Gore and folk speak about could be used as a sort of quasi-funding/VC mechanism for environmental technologies and maturing them to market, but even in its best case scenario, such a practice is little more than waving a magic wand about.
BRD
Overall, it’s a form of New Deal/WPA envirotech thing, that would be used to accrue soft power benefits through the migration of technologies under the guise of ecological foreign aid.
The countries we buy carbon credits from will use the money to develop cleaner energy technology.
Oh really? Why?
I have decided to just buy a third-world family and keep them in poverty to offset my extravagences.
It’s a little tricky, because I can’t actually pay them money in the exchange because then they might start buying stuff. So I just pay their government to keep them impoverished on my behalf. All for the environment.
I’m calling my plan Burma.
Bill, I get the distinction but I still don’t see its relevance to this particular discussion.
Under that scheme we can pay any number of the Soviet bloc and Eastern European countries (Belarus, Bulgaria, Russia!, Ukraine…etc are all Annex | countries) for Carbon offsets so long as they don’t increase emissions.
Berg
LOL, if only a proper newpaper would run this story, Al Gore would look even more of a hypocritical, pious chump than he already does.
This story, I guarantee you, will be the gift that keeps on giving. Iowahawk needs to get into CafePress and market those bumper stickers, he’ll make more money than Terrapass!
If I’m wrong, the Rockies win the World Series – which as we all know is not going to happen.
To extend the metaphor of indulgences a bit, it would be like institutionalizing indulgences to pay for the construction and staffing of missions and catholic schools around the world.
alphie said:
What makes you think that there is any sort of net cost associated with carbon emissions at all?
Berg ,
You forgot to mention China .
BRD:
Or funding Gambling Addiction counseling with State Lottery dollars?
JR,
Something like that, except I would like to believe that the environmental scheme wouldn’t be nearly as accidental or somehow less cynical than a global international carbon market/aid system.
I mean really, think about it, once you’ve installed a lot of the equipment (which it might be imagined that it must be produced in the country paying down it’s carbon debt), you’re getting yourself a whole raft of maintenance and upkeep revenue on the back end. And since you’ve helped the environment without hurting development and growth, is OK.
BRD
The church creating more tithing Catholics, eh?
Well, at least we know Amanda Marcotte would be against this.
Oh, wait—
BDC,
Was there point to your line of questions?
I just don’t see how Gaia gets any healthier if we pay the Belarussian governemnt to make its citizenry live in squalor and import all their manufactured goods.
Berg
Wrong .
JR –
Excuse me – I meant to say that a carbon trading scheme would be more cynical and a lot less accidental than the lottery/gambling thing you mention.
BRD
Berg ,
Who wrote Kyoto ?
Berg,
The question with the idea that you suggest, is what the hell is done with the money that we spend on buying the offsets? Well, instead of writing checks to whoever, just ship them their allotment of stack scrubbers and cleaner burning furnaces and whatnot, which really doesn’t help or hurt the whoever that much. However, we get a chance to pat ourselves on the back for being so darned nice, we don’t have to actually impose a lot of penalties on ourselves by doing anything ham-handed to reduce our emissions. Finally, we extend our economic and diplomatic reach and, among other things, start shifting power generation towards something we’ve got a near resource monopoly on.
It’s not that it makes the offset markets effective, per se, but it exploits their intent and mechanics to make them, at least, economically useful.
BRD
BDC,
See above. Is there a point, if so, explain it to me like I’m a child.
Mike
Well, Michael,
There seems to be a lot of scientific evidence that indicates carbon emissions will have huge costs for humanity in the future.
We can either do something about it now for a relativly small cost, or, like federal deficits and oil dependancy, we can just dump the problem on our children to solve at a much higher cost later.
I remember when the Republicans actually worried about “the children.”
And it still makes me less hard core than alphie.
I know we can work mile-high berms and balloon fences into this somehow…
Mike ,
Talking down to someone engaged in a discussion such as this is counter productive . Have you ever come across the name Maurice Strong in your research on Kyoto ?
Tom
What you see here is an example of the lather that Hollywood Lear Jet addicts, know-nothing “science” reporters, and academia members in search of tenure have crafted from…wait for it…nothing. Or at least nothing that we can do anything about.
The assumption (and that’s what it is) that humans are the climate change drivers on this tiny rock is just arrogance on our part. If the Sun gets frisky, we heat up. If it quiets down, we cool down. Volcanos and asteroid/comet impacts can have an effect, but until someone can explain how the Vikings and their fellow travelers failure to “offset” their carbon footprint made them name it Greenland for a reason, then I am, to put it mildy, skeptical.
Now, alphie, run along and tell the Chinese, Indians, and all those pesky Africans how they need to stop trying to get rich. And pay Al Gore’s company in the process.
So like in maybe 200 years there could be some carbon offsets by the third worlders that I paid for. So that’s cool. As long as my kid doesn’t take back my carbon offsets to get $$$ to fund his great great great grandkids mission to un-Pluto. I mean, I hope there isn’t like stock-splits or shit like that when I’m dead. I wish the Goracle could like, see that future for me.
The only viable, scalable alternative to oil/coal for electricty production is nukes. If we want to have electric cars rather than cars that run on fuel, we’ll need even more nukes.
Most of the “alternatives” (wind, solar, ethanol, bio-diesel) are neither scalable nor particularly viable. Oil from coal/shale/oil sands would work just fine, but again, we’re trying to avoid burnin’ stuff as well, right?
Nukes it is, then. Let’s get started.
“I remember when the Republicans actually worried about “the children.—
Oh, God. Since his declaration of party affiliation, is it okay to start calling alph a Rethuglican?
Dude, I know I’ll come off like a major asshole, but asking questions rather than stating some pertinent facts is damn annoying.
I know you’re one of the good guys, but still… not helpful at all.
“hysterical intellectual elitists”
“Hollywood Lear Jet addicts”
“validate the al-Qaida strategy.”
Assign the position of your opponents to some comic book bad guy to try to make your own position look better.
Propaganda 101.
While predicting the future is never a sure thing, most scientific data indicates carbon emissions may have rather large consequences in the future.
Are we a society that can meet challenges before the become a big problem, or are we just gonna Katrina this one, too?
cd,
Simple , Google Maurice Strong . The point I’m trying to make is that the information is available . All the hype , all the hyperbole we all get for free 24 / 7 thanks to the MSM . The more I read about the workings of Kyoto , the more misgivings I have on the subject .
Heyyy!!! That’s my assumption… heck, it’s been empirically proven. More than once. Of course, with alphie defending green indulgences, we’re all chump-change conversationally speaking in comparison.
The original concept of “carbon credits” was as a form of foreign aid, primarily for Russia and Eastern Europe, to a lesser extent for Germany to support amalgamation of the DDR. Those countries were coming out of the Soviet era and shutting down old, highly polluting plants, and thus would be getting payments for ending CO2 emissions which could be used to build shiny new clean ones.
The scheme was based on the highly-successful trade in sulfur emissions credits, which was done at the wholesale (=less than national) level. The nice thing about the sulfur scheme was that it was (and is) all but monetized—a factory owner can go to the bank and say, “I need to spend $X million cleaning up my factory, but my sulfur emissions will go down by XX tons, so I’ll get emissions credits that will almost pay for it,” and the banker can bank (ahem!) on that and approve the loan.
But there’s a fundamental difference between carbon and sulfur that renders “carbon offsets” useless at best, a boondoggle at worst.
Sulfur is a contaminant. The plant will run as well or better without the sulfur content, so in terms of the basic process the plant owner is no worse off if there’s no sulfur output. (He may be paying for scrubbers, etc., but his process runs as well or better.)
But there are, in realistic terms, only two fuel substances available to us: carbon and hydrogen. Carbon is available in bulk form (coal); hydrogen is only available combined with varying amounts of carbon (hydrocarbon fuels, or oil). That last is because hydrogen is an agile escaper, and can only be used conveniently if carbon atoms are attached to hold it down and keep it from floating off. Think of carbon as a ball and chain for hydrogen.
The heat content—available energy—of fuels is fixed by chemistry, varying only by the relative amount of carbon/hydrogen in the fuel. To get a certain amount of energy, you have to burn a certain amount of fuel—and therefore you will inevitably get carbon dioxide, in amounts that depend on the ratio of carbon to hydrogen. Carbon dioxide is not a dispensible contaminant; it is a fundamental output of the process, and cannot be “filtered out” or eliminated from it.
Given a certain energy output, the only way to reduce CO2 emissions is to burn more hydrogen, that is, to shift from high-carbon fuels (coal) to low-carbon ones (oil). The limit is methane or “natural gas”, which has the smallest ratio of carbon to hydrogen for a given energy output. This makes “carbon credits” nonsense. The plant owner can reduce his sulfur emissions to zero with no effect on the process, and sometimes with a net benefit. Reducing carbon dioxide means either shifting fuels or reducing energy output, no other choices, and cannot reach zero because the best fuel available contains carbon.
Forget alternative energy. There isn’t any more hydroelectric power available, and if there were it would be locked up by environmental protection. And it takes a long time and a lot of research to get there, but the fact is that neither windmills nor solar panels can pay back the energy required to build and install them within their useful lifetimes. People who tell you otherwise are either lying or ignorant—carbon-fiber turbine blades need a lot of energy, solar cells are processed at high temperature and are fragile and not long-lived, especially in North America with hailstorms and tornadoes.
The only real way to gain a true “carbon credit” is to somehow sequester carbon, remove it from the environment permanently. I still know of no one who can actually do that—most of the schemes available either go for “alternate energy” (see above) or tree-planting. The last is useless under Kyoto, especially in the United States, where increased vegetation is specifically not to be counted as “CO2 sequestration”. That treaty provision looked extremely prejudiced when made, but it’s looking more and more prescient as time goes by. Not only do trees die and decay, returning their carbon to the atmosphere, but vegetable metabolism produces more methane than previously thought, and methane is a much more powerful (>~10 times) greenhouse gas than CO2. Planting trees almost certainly has a net warming effect; the carbon is only temporarily sequestered, the methane emissions are increased, and albedo—reflectivity—goes down.
The only real way to sequester carbon is to collect it and store it somewhere. If you see somebody proposing to build nuclear power plants whose output is used to collect CO2 from the atmosphere, electrolyze it to separate out the carbon, and bury the carbon far underground, that person is proposing carbon sequestration and can earn carbon credits. Everybody else is either waving their hands, playing a shell game, or too stupid to figure anything out.
Regards,
Ric
Al Gore leavexs me sputtering at his arrogance. I think he pisses me off more than the G-1200 (my way of saying “big government cheese”)who ripped me off for four grand.
I just have a hard time believing that Gore is really that stupid. Personnally, I don’t think he realizes that Clinton got away with that crap because of his incredible charisma. Gore seems to think that lies stand on their own. “No authority” indeed!
But, on the other hand, what if instead of carbon credits, we could get booze credits? Now that I could go for in a big way…
And he falls directly in the gaping maw before him.
Yes, those CAT 5 storms are going to become the norm and we are all doomed.
My favorite quote from the link:
2006 was about as boring for the Weather Channel from June to October as it can be.
So, alphie, let’s take our Katrina hysteria and stick it in the same place as your global warming B.S.
Ric:
If you weren’t such an ovious Haliburton shill, I’d want to hug you, man.
I think it has been clearly shown what and why Goron is in this – $$$. Simple enough even for the Goracle.
What’s better? Shill or direct investor?
I have to by a new hypcrisy meter with a a MUCH higher tolerance.
Data? There’s no data indicating any such thing. Data is. Enough of it can provide a basis for a hypothesis and eventually a theory. The term “large consequences” is neither. It’s – wait for it – propaganda.
Ric,
The one carbon sequestration thing that I haven’t heard enough about was oceanic sequestration through creating plankton blooms. Some of the work seems pretty interesting.
With regards to the larger point you make about high v low hydrogen fuels and refitting, have you read Crichton’s thing about the environment? He mentions the gradual, unassisted, decarbonization of fuels. Ultimately, one can go to Hydrogen, but there are some engineering and physics reasons it’s not great.
And then there’s nuclear.
I wouldn’t mind keeping the US nuclear plant industry afloat by building light water reactors in South America to reduce the American carbon footprint.
BRD
wishbone: sorry, sarcasm meter would do you more good. I forgot to /sarc the post. my bad.
We love Teh Ric fact smackdown, yo!
There’s certainly more proof for drastic climate changes occuring due to carbon emissions than proof for the theory that we can bring democracy to Iraq, jdm.
Yet we continue to blow close to $200 billion on Iraq each year.
Why the big fuss to stop a few billion being spent to head off possible climate changes?
Special interests or hippy hate?
Keep your damned dirty hands off my offset credits …. bitch .
You can get your carbon offset credits on ebay now.
Somebody beat me to it.
One schmoe is going to ride the bus bus for a month, and send you the used up ticket.
I feel better already about my 15MPG truck.
bus bus?
Better than a plain old bus, I guess.
On March 31 I’ll be retrieving my ‘66 stang from storage. It’s original worn out 289 hipo has been replaced with a heavily modified 351W based 408 stroker motor sporting ported and polished Trick Flow twisted wedge heads, an Edlebrock Victor Jr. intake, Comp Cams 305h grind cam, and a Holley 850 double pumper. It’s a little over rich when it’s nailed to the floor, but the black cloud of unburned hydrocarbons it leaves behind is awesome. How much do those carbon credits cost, again?
Did I mention it easily passes everything except gas stations?
Alphie,
Just as a hypothetical – and I am genuinely curious to your answer, and am not looking for something to beat you with later – is what if the climate change isn’t anthropogenic and is just regular, old climate change?
Far as I can tell, a few billion would get spent, and the temperature would continue to rise, and people would get more alarmed.
And then many billion would get spent, the temperature would still rise unaffected, and people would start to panic.
And so on, and so on…
So, to turn the question around, if implementing these kinds of tools isn’t going to produce the change you assert it will, do we just keep throwing money at it indefinitely? I mean, really, how would we know when it really isn’t SUVs, and is something a lot larger in scale and more subtle than industrial development.
Respectfully,
BRD
Careful about your analogies, alphie. Because down that road lies, “We should have left Saddam alone.” Get it?
Mike ?
whoah!!! Credit card companies take note.
A new green credit card that instead of giving you frequent flyer miles gives you offset credits. Call it “The green card”.
You could purchase an SUV with said Green card and yet still save the environment because of the offset credits. Never worry about global warming again, the green card has you covered.
Whoah, another great idea. You could have Green credits. Every purchase gives you green credits (ie Pepsi Points) which you can use towards getting items like stereos or ipods or even more offset credits.
Just know that with every purchase you are helping to save the world from the scourge of as Global Warming.
Wish,
I guess my earlier post wasn’t really as pointless as I had imagined.
BRD
Kind of like that AIDS phone.