Whaddya mean the Indulgences don’t live up to their hype?
The world of carbon credits has long been presented as a major tool for supposed climate woes. Advocates of this system have been quick to sing its praises, positioning it as the ultimate solution for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. But skeptics, like yours truly, have long pointed out the inherent flaws in such a system. Now, even The Guardian, a publication that has been a staunch advocate of climate alarmism, seems to be having second thoughts. It’s almost as if they’re saying, “Oops, maybe the skeptics had a point.”
The Guardian’s Late Awakening
The article from The Guardian delves deep into the world of carbon credits, questioning their actual impact on reducing emissions. It’s almost amusing to see them now asking:
“Carbon credits are supposed to offset the emissions caused by companies and individuals. But do they really reduce greenhouse gases?”
A question that should have been asked and critically examined long before jumping on the carbon credit bandwagon.
The Mirage of Offsetting
The Guardian highlights a significant concern: the illusion of offsetting. Purchasing carbon credits doesn’t necessarily equate to genuine offsetting of emissions. Many of these credits are tied to projects that would have been executed regardless, meaning no real reduction in emissions.
“Many of the projects supported by carbon credits, such as the construction of windfarms and solar parks, would have been built anyway.”
In essence, it’s a system that allows companies to parade their “green” credentials without making any tangible changes to their carbon footprint.
The Inconsistencies of Carbon Credit Accounting
The article also sheds light on the convoluted and inconsistent world of carbon credit accounting. With no unified standard and a lack of rigorous oversight, it’s a system rife with potential for manipulation.
“There is no single standard for carbon credits, and critics argue that this has allowed projects that do not deliver real-world emissions reductions to flourish.”
It’s a system that skeptics have long warned about, and it seems these concerns were not unfounded.
A Misguided Approach
The Guardian’s article suggests that carbon credits, while potentially playing a role in the transition to a low-carbon economy, cannot replace genuine efforts to reduce emissions.
“While carbon credits can play a role in the transition to a low-carbon economy, they cannot replace genuine efforts to reduce emissions.”
But let’s be clear: the very premise of transitioning to a “low-carbon economy” based on the current climate narrative is questionable. The entire carbon credit system is built on a foundation of misguided intentions and collective alarmist groupthink.
Conclusion
The Guardian’s newfound skepticism towards carbon credits is a telling sign of the system’s inherent flaws. While it’s somewhat satisfying to see them finally question a system that skeptics have long criticized, one can’t help but wonder about the time, resources, and efforts wasted on such a flawed approach.
Genuine progress doesn’t come from blindly following trends or from virtue signaling. It requires a grounded, pragmatic approach. The carbon credit saga serves as a reminder that it’s high time we move beyond the current climate narrative’s fads.
H/T Alan B
The minor little problem that the Grauniad cannot accept is that the likely Social Cost of Carbon is a negative number, i.e. a benefit.
A HUGE benefit.
Tom, you have touched tangentially on the real idiocy of carbon credits of the tree-planting kind. Forest cover globally has expanded now over 35% naturally, from the increase CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 40yrs. Do these activist clones and their pseudo scientific supporters not understand that all they are doing is reducing the availability of carbon dioxide that feeds the nnatural system?
This is a perfect zero sum game. Had we not planted the trees, the natural system would have used up this very same amount of carbon.
Whaddya mean the Indulgences don’t live up to their hype?
I don’t know about that..
I find the indulgence of a drink or two of a nice bourbon, e.g. Booker Noe‘s, 126.6proof lives up to its hype, (and cost), very nicely.
Story Tip:
‘Devastating’ cost of EV industry takes center stage in two news stories this week
Two stories out this week highlighted the growing concern over the “reckless” transition to the globalists’ vision of the energy industry: the first questioned whether or not public services were “equipped” to handle the unique “challenges and risks” posed when electric vehicle batteries catch fire, while the second covered a brand-new study published yesterday by Science Magazine, one of the world’s most prestigious, longstanding, and recognized academic journals (it first entered circulation almost 150 years ago).
Amid the rapid acceptance of and transition to rechargeable vehicles, Roselyne Min at Euronews posed this query: “are we prepared to tackle the fire risks of battery vehicles?”
Roselyne Min, Euronews
Sales of EVs are booming in Europe but are we equipped to tackle blazes caused by batteries?
While EV fires happen less frequently than in traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, they pose very different challenges for first responders.
Electric vehicles (EVs) have emerged as a promising solution to replace traditional fossil fuel-powered cars.
Yet, amid this transition, one question remains largely unanswered: are we prepared to tackle the fire risks of battery vehicles?
London Fire Brigade this summer named e-bikes as the city’s fastest-growing fire trend with 123 fires associated with e-bikes and e-scooters, a record-high number.
Science Magazine
Impacts of metal mining on river systems: a global assessment
Abstract
An estimated 23 million people live on floodplains affected by potentially dangerous concentrations of toxic waste derived from past and present metal mining activity. We analyzed the global dimensions of this hazard, particularly in regard to lead, zinc, copper, and arsenic, using a georeferenced global database detailing all known metal mining sites and intact and failed tailings storage facilities. We then used process-based and empirically tested modeling to produce a global assessment of metal mining contamination in river systems and the numbers of human populations and livestock exposed. Worldwide, metal mines affect 479,200 kilometers of river channels and 164,000 square kilometers of floodplains. The number of people exposed to contamination sourced from long-term discharge of mining waste into rivers is almost 50 times greater than the number directly affected by tailings dam failures.
Roselyne Min is such an obvious purveyor of BS.
“Electric vehicles (EVs) have emerged as a promising solution to replace traditional fossil fuel-powered cars. Yet, amid this transition, one question remains largely unanswered: are we prepared to tackle the fire risks of battery vehicles?”
Really? In Europe? With a vastly greater proportion of people living in apartments? However do they power them, Roselyne, you lying tramp? Please explain where the EV hookups are in apartment buildings.
And in case you hadn’t noticed, LI battery fires cannot be extinguished. So there is no answer to your problem.
The claim that EVs are less likely to burn than ICE cars is based on deliberately fraudulent statistics.
Much like the rest of the climate warming fiasco.
Oh, no, they are perfectly valid statistics. Carefully selected ones.
“Frequency” is how often something happens in a specified period of time. And, indeed, there have been, over say the period of the last year, far fewer EV fires than ICE fires. So, they have caught fire much less frequently than ICE vehicles.
You select THAT statistic, which is correct, but deceiving. In terms of number of fires to number of vehicles, EVs have proportionately more fires.
Actually, the proper statistic would be fires per passenger mile, or tonnage mile. THAT statistic is even worse, of course.
less frequently? really – i don”t recall ever hearing aboit ICE car catchng fire and destroying entire ships – and wait until EV enthusiasts find out about the destruction EVs cause to the body thru EMF
EV’s don’t put out any more EMF than do ICE cars. The motors and cables are shielded.
Not that it much matters. There is no documented evidence that EMF has any detectible adverse effect. The original study by Wertheimer and Leiper in 1979 has long been shown to be seriously wrong in its methodology. None of the subsequent research claiming a biological adverse effect of EMF has been shown to be much better.
Carbon credits “markets” were like dumping a pile of fresh poo in front of a blow-flies convention.
Just consider the “product” –
an invisible, odorless, naturally-occurring, omnipresent, un-sourceable, un-costable gas.
Surely, only the most principled investors would participate as traders in such a “market”?
What could go wrong?
Al Gore has done very nicely out of Carbon Credits. Now, wasn’t he the guy who proposed them? Follow the money.
but… It’s great for the virtue-seeking quota !!
especially if you have a private jet and a huge yacht and live in a mansion
Not just the weather-people adjusting the data….
quote (my emphasis):The ONS compiled its figures based on information from the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis and created a new method to understand how temperature affects risk of death.
BBC
In reality – they are trying/continuing to brainwash themselves. We are witnessing the process of Magical Thinking as it occurs in other people.
They are clearly chronically depressed because there is never A Good Thing happens within ‘Climate’ and that is what depressives do – they ‘think magically’ or = self-brainwash
Individually and intrinsically they all know this thing is total garbage, hence what we see on weather maps and in ‘new ways’ of doing statistics
We need more CO2….800 ppm would mean a very green earth….at the rate CO2 is increasing…..it will take centuries to reach 800ppm. A way to decrease CO2 would be to plant more trees….but no one is really interested in decrease…the CO2 climate scam is about money and power and playing political games.
If there were a genuine market for carbon credits there would also be a futures market for them and daily statistics in the dead tree and digital media. But there isn’t.
Then there is all that carbon the=at might or might not be in the soil.
I learned from CSIRO’s soil nitrogen guru of old that they had to take about 600 ssmples per acre for reliable measures.
I doubt the requirements for soil carbon will be much different – unless there is a “Modern Magic Mickey Method” – that has passed field tests.
Of course there is a “Modern Magic Mickey Method” that means the pampered “climate scientists” never have to leave their air conditioned offices – they model it on super-duper computers using all the latest imaginary factors they can dream up!
When I recently debated with a local climate nutter- he said his side has proof- awesome models! I almost puked.
So what. Reducing CO2 emissions is a totally feckless idea. Plants want more fertilizer. Warmer is better. Let them waste their money on Carbon Credits.
It can’t succeed since they are against Carbon C2 only thus it was dead before it left.
CO2 IS NOT A POLLUTANT!
Stop pretending that it is. It gently warms the planet to increase habitability and provides the food for our food (or our food’s food).
We love CO2!
“”The love of money is the root of all evil””
And in this case, The ‘Evil’ will be the total destruction of all life on this Earth.
Enjoy those ‘never better‘ and bumper yields of wheat/corn/rice while you can – all those lands they grew on are gonna disappear into a heat dome and never come back out..
e.g. Australia was sent into one 30,000 years ago and the rainforest that existed there still shows No Sign Whatsoever of re-appearing. Despite CO₂ fertilation and Global haha Greening..
The latter only happens inside computer models – when will people start reading their own links?
In fact, strenuous efforts to this day are made to ensure Australia’s forest never re-appears.
burn burn burn baby burn
Global greening only happens in computers, never in the real world?
Australia was a rain forest 30,000 years ago?
Are you still pushing the claim that deserts are caused by forest fires, not a lack of rain and that once destroyed by fire, deserts can never turn green again?
Sounds like your neurons are suffering from a lack of sucrose.
Even the 5 great mass extinction events that I am aware of never resulted in the “total destruction of all life on this Earth”, Life always finds a way, Quit the hyperbole.
from that Guardian article: “The 50 most popular global projects include forestry schemes…”
As a forester for 50 years I can assure all of you that forestry is full of schemes of all sorts- to justify bad logging (still the most common type), to justify the jobs of forestry agencies (mostly worthless), now to justify carbon credits (totally worthless). Instead of focusing on improving all forestry work so we can all have better, lower cost wood products while actually improving the forests for countless ecological benefits – it’s all about the schemes. I’ve spent that half century fighting these forestry scumbags.
The use of carbon credits as a “deterrent” resembles my success when posting a sign on my front lawn – “No Leprechauns allowed”.
In the above article:
“With no unified standard and a lack of rigorous oversight, it’s a system rife with potential for
manipulationcorruption.“There . . . fixed it for you.
Chicago carbon exchange? Totally failed despite support from Obama and Gore.
Carbon credits were never anything more than a scheme under which the elite get to continue their same lifestyle, without having to feel bad about themselves.
Or having to share it with the unworthy and unwashed hoi-polloi.This has always been about class warfare by the elite..
When I first read about the concept of credits/offsetting, the first thoughts that came to mind were;
‘Oh yeah, and what if the sapling/tree dies after a few years?’
And, what about the CO2, produced by the cottage industry processing your credit/offset, is that offset?