According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the SFO airport has now installed carbon offset purchase kiosks so that you can remove the guilt from your flight. Only one problem. The carbon offsets sold by kiosk sell at a rate that is about 60 times what carbon credits are actually selling for on the market now. There’s no frequent flyer polluter discount either.
Here’s what the kiosk start screen looks like according to the company website:
You can run the kiosk interactively yourself here. Let’s say you chose the “Use Typical Flight Distances” option. This is the screen you’d get:
If I chose the medium range flight at 2000 miles, the cost would be 11.44 for 1869 pounds of CO2 that is estimated to be emitted on my behalf. That works out to about $12.24 per ton of CO2.
Here’s the rub, you can buy a ton of carbon offset on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) for 20 cents. That’s about 60 times less than what you would pay at the SFO kiosk!
Here’s the closing numbers from CCX yesterday:
From CCX: Price and volume reported in metric tons CO2. Change based on previous day’s closing price.
P.T. Barnum would be proud.
UPDATE: Maybe they set the price last year during early planning when carbon was at $7 per ton?
It appears there was a big selloff last Friday, when investors got wind of a major suspension by the UN before it hit the press. On Sept 11th, there were 292,500 transactions (largest in over a month) and the price fell from the previous day closing price of 25 cents:
The Sunday Times has the story:
The legitimacy of the $100 billion (£60 billion) carbon-trading market has been called into question after the world’s largest auditor of clean-energy projects was suspended by United Nations inspectors.
No wonder carbon offsets are falling to 20 cents a ton. Coal is still much more valuable at 40-50 dollars a ton.
An even bigger scam than we previously thought.
This concept has inspired me!
I am going to invent a kiosk that you put $20 into.
A panel on the top will open and a mechanical arm will extend out, placing $1 in a mail box to be sent towards saving the planet.
A panel near the bottom will open and a mechanical foot will extend out, then kick you swiftly in the groin.
A receipt will then be printed for tax purposes with a disclaimer that you got what you deserved.
I hope all the environmentalist and Democrat wackos line up out the door to put money into that machine.
All those people wrestling with their guilt complex about polluting the World’s atmosphere with CO2! Buying carbon credits so they can look into the mirror again the next day!
Wake up dudes, there is nothing wrong with putting CO2 up there.
More CO2 equals more plant life, more plant life equals more food and more food is needed to support our growing populations.
CO2 is not a toxic gas, it’s the gas of life.
So, the next time you board a jetliner, just think “spreading the wealth”.
So stop buying those carbon credits because in realty they should be paying you!
Global Warming is a natural cycle, enjoy it as long as it lasts.
http://globalwarmingnatural.blogspot.com/2009/09/carbon-dioxe-cycle.html
I wonder how much money they’ll make from that scheme there, and will it turn out to have the same popularity as the AGW exhibit at San Fran’s new science museum?
Also, a little off topic, but if the prediction made here comes true people in the Eastern US would be wishing the Farmer’s almanac would’ve been more accurate and no one would be thinking about carbon credits
http://truthbehindthescience.blogspot.com/2009/09/09-10-brut-force-predictions-suns.html
The gem is his predicted big chill in D.C. I wonder what would happen to the Cap&Trade bill if the heater in the Capital and White-house broke down?
Michael (12:35:48) :
I hope all the environmentalist and Democrat wackos line up out the door to put money into that machine.
——————————–
Don’t go there Michael. It would be OUR money they would be putting in the machine.
Ok boys and girls. Don’t forget to donate to the Anthony Watts Safe the Sunspot Fund,
All donations will be used to give the baby ice a fighting chance.
>> Mark said: Papal indulgences relived!
Wrong! A Papal indulgence actually does something.
Dr Max – where did the much greater CO2 concentrations of eons ago finish up? Mostly in limestone and dolomite. And where did the limestone and dolomite come from? From atmospheric CO2 combined with calcium. Where did the calcium come from? Molluscs.
I’m with N Ash (10:37:04), and I will look into buying a few 100 tonnes for the next so many years … Sarkozy of France has just introduced some carbon taxes, and since every Government in the Old World runs a HUGE deficit, one can be sure that the others will follow with taxes “to save the planet” … 100$ now might prove a good investment …
I forgot to mention that the link I posted came via Climate Depot.
Just promoting traffic.
A small portion of the donation may be used to supplement the fix Martins Dyslexia fund.
D’oh! I wish I had thought of this. Nothing like a redistribution of wealth from you to me. Or maybe I can set up a kiosk in some other airport … be right back.
If one really believes that human emissions of CO2 will cause climate catastrophe, one would immediately and sacrificially cease as many CO2 producing activities as possible. Air travel should be at the top of the list.
With the AGW faithful, this is not the case – especially the Hollywood and D.C. crowd. The notion of carbon offsets along with other forms of eco-fluff allows them to avoid any truly inconvenient lifestyle changes and therefore reveals their true beliefs.
If I were found by our State’s Department of Environmental Quality to be dumping raw sewage in the creek that runs by my house, I would be forced to stop. I would not be allowed to continue by paying a few bucks to someone else.
I despise the hipocrisy.
I think a great marketing addition to this scheme would be having skin-head incense-selling Hari Krishnas at each kiosk. For an additional $10/ton, they’d leave you alone.
Who cares? Anyone stupid enough to pay carbon credits for their flight deserves to get ripped off.
tallbloke (10:03:21) :
I understand everything except: where did the fool get the money in the first place?
This is incredibly funny – almost Pythonesque!
The only problem, and it’s a big one, is that according to buinessgreen.com, “global revenue at firms providing climate change-related products and services grew by a record 75 per cent during 2008 to $530bn (£324bn), making the fast-growing sector larger than the aerospace and defence industries. ”
Now call me old-fashioned if you like, but even if AGW were real, that’s degree of growth in any sector shouts out the word “Bubble”…and we all know what happens to them!
Once again, just as in the sub-prime mortgage market, banks are heavily involved. Only difference is that this time it’s much, much bigger.
Dear me, won’t they ever learn?
Sorry, forgot the businessgreen link:
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2249742/climate-related-revenues-soar
Laugh now. Wait until SFO or some other green wannabe makes Carbon Credits a mandatory surcharge on your airplane ticket.
Hydrogen and stupidity. Perhaps not in that order.
TonyB (09:35:35) :
Amazing! This is just like buying an indulgence in the Middle Ages. In this case we seem to have changed one religion for another.
Luther’s Thesis 86 asks…
“Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?”
Why does not Albert Gore buy these credits and distribute them free to guilty greens at the gate?
In 2004, the 23,780-acre Garcia River Forest became California’s first large nonprofit-owned working forest, and in February 2008 became one of the first forests – and the largest – to receive verification of its carbon offsets by the California Climate Action Registry.
http://www.conservationfund.org/west/california/garcia
This is beyond stupid. Just throw your money in the street people. Guilt tax , only there is nothing to feel guilty about, you’re just giving fertilizer to plants and trees with more CO2 so they can grow bigger and quicker. This reminds me of one big Ponzi scheme.
Brent in Calgary
This kiosk is the “legal” equivalent of fake ATM machines that con artists install at various congregation points, such as airports, conventions, and malls, to steal money and credit card information from unwitting users. If you ever use one, the next thing you know, you would be bombarded with junk carbon offset offers asking you to buy carbon indulgence certificates for everything from turning on your microwave to flushing your toilet at your home. This is just the tip of the giant, Antarctica ice-shelf size scam known as carbon cap-and-trade.
Meanwhile, back in the land of dollars and sense:
Spare capacity of 5.2 million bpd will be wiped out by 2012, Australian bank says
David Sheppard
LONDON — Reuters Last updated on Wednesday, Sep. 16, 2009 01:23PM EDT
Peak oil supply will be hit this year after the economic crisis and low prices in the first quarter of 2009 slashed much needed investment, a senior executive at Australian investment bank Macquarie said.
“This is our view – capacity has pretty much peaked in the sense that declines equal new resources,” Iain Reid, head of European oil and gas research at Macquarie, told Reuters.
The peak oil theory that oil supply is at or near its peak was long considered marginal.
It gained currency when prices zoomed towards their record of nearly $150 (U.S.) hit in July last year, with leading exponents suggesting various dates for the supply peak to be reached.
Some oil majors have acknowledged the prospect of dwindling production, but others have argued better extraction techniques and other technological advances will offset any decline.
Mr. Reid’s latest research report – The Big Oil Picture: We’re not running out, but that doesn’t mean we’ll have enough – sees global oil production capacity topping out at 89.6 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, a far more pessimistic view than most other banks or traditional forecasters.
Underinvestment in mature fields, rising resource nationalism, and the cost and difficulty of retrieving oil from discoveries in ultra-deep water could see global production capacity fall to 87.3 million bpd by 2015, according to Mr. Reid.