Are "Carbon Offsets" the 21st century's newest Ponzi scheme?

i really couldn't care less whether he's a "hypocrite" or not. as i stated before, carbon offsets and the like for individuals are pretty silly and, frankly, likely quite useless. i thought i was engaging in a serious debate about emissions trading, not another right-wing screed against al gore. sorry for intruding.

chuck d wrote:

kindly look up the definition of a ponzi scheme.

it's pure fantasy until governments or businesses create them. and they have. the companies that are involved in the chicago trading group i cited are bound to reduce emissions to certain benchmarks (i.e., 5% below 2000 emissions by 2010 and such). at any rate, i'm not sure what al gore has to do with this.

Don't need to, a Ponzi scheme is a phony investment scheme where investors is led to believe they've purchased an asset, when in reality, their money is all gone.

Carbon offsets are just as phony. It does nothing that the perpetrators say it does. Al Gore is the prime example here.

The way companies reduce emissions is to reduce emissions and consumption. They cannot "trade" emissions. Thats a pipe dream that's literally up in smoke.

DuPont buys carbon credits from the Chicago Climate Exchange(CCX).CCS pays farmers to no-till their land releasing less carbon in to the atmosphere.

sigh. yes, they can trade emissions. and they do. i'm sorry you can't wrap your head around this fact but whatever. and, again, i'm sorry i got in the way of your rant.

this will never happen. carbon trading in europe fell through. carbon trading is all about redistribution of wealth and taxation, it will have little to no effect on "pollution" (the same stuff we breathe out every day).

Check out the latest studies that show that Mars is experiencing global warming and polar ice cap melting. It all has to do with the sun, not some tenth of a tenth of a percent of the atmosphere's constituents.

losing post-college pounds wrote:

this will never happen. carbon trading in europe fell through. carbon trading is all about redistribution of wealth and taxation, it will have little to no effect on "pollution" (the same stuff we breathe out every day).

Check out the latest studies that show that Mars is experiencing global warming and polar ice cap melting. It all has to do with the sun, not some tenth of a tenth of a percent of the atmosphere's constituents.

Will you be rotating the tin foil in your hat this weekend? I think it's a little tight.

chuck d wrote:

sigh. yes, they can trade emissions. and they do. i'm sorry you can't wrap your head around this fact but whatever. and, again, i'm sorry i got in the way of your rant.

They don't trade anything. Purchasing "carbon credits" does nothing to bring back the massive amounts of energy used, nor does it reverse carbon emissions. All it does is gives major polluters, like the film industry a "green label," a paid for green label. The sellers of those contracts get to built gargantuan compost piles with the revenues. Big deal.

It does NOTHING to bring back energy consumption, it does NOTHING to reverse carbon emissions.

Eligible Offset Projects are recorded in the CCX Registry and are issued Exchange Offsets on the basis of mitigation tonnage realized. Exchange Emission Offsets are issued after mitigation occurs and required documentation is presented to CCX. Project eligibility, project baselines, quantification, and monitoring and verification protocols are specified in the CCX Rulebook.

The initial categories of eligible Offset Project categories are:

Methane destruction

Agricultural practices

Forestry practices

Other GHG emission mitigation in Brazil

Renewable energy

Clean Development Mechanism Eligible Projects

you're a bit unclear on the concept. yes, one way to comply is by the purchase of exchange offsets - which are limited. the other way is by reducing emissions (and, then, of course, you can make money by selling your allocated offsets). i'll certainly concede that programs such as this - which are voluntary - lack a bit of teeth. but they do cause these companies to decrease emissions, albeit neither quite as quickly nor as sharply as one would like. getting the federal government to institute a program such as this would help a great deal (assuming they avoid the EU debacle); some states, like illinois, have had some limited success in instituting programs.

I'm glad you figured this thing out and that you now agree with Chuck D and myself that there is such a thing and they are traded.

chuck d wrote:

as i stated before, carbon offsets and the like for individuals are pretty silly and, frankly, likely quite useless. i thought i was engaging in a serious debate about emissions trading, not another right-wing screed against al gore. sorry for intruding.

On this we agree. We just don't like how Al Gore and the Hollywood liberals get off the hook by the mere mention of carbon trading.

Regarding the wider topic of emmissions trading, I am skeptical of income distribution mechanisms from wealthy "emitting" companies/countries to "green" companies/underdeveloped countries. We hear very little about who will be on the receiving end of these distributions and how and to what extent will they actually impact emissions/carbon levels. For example, I've read recently that tree planting is actually not very effective reducing CO2.

not sure which hook you're talking about. al gore and the like are for the masses who watch entertainment tonight and read people magazine. i've never quite gotten my head around why people care what such people think, say, or do. i suppose gore may have a bit more "credibility" (for lack of a better term) because he was VP but this all seems to be about having a red herring debate about whether he's a hypocrite, instead of discussing what his movie argues and whatnot. tempest in a teapot.

the reason you don't hear about who will be on the receiving end of these things or what impact there will be is because no such scheme is even close to coming on line (the EU version simply collapsed). there are a thousand differing schemes out there with just as much variety. some will have a big effect, others less so. at first blush, one thinks the best idea is to just have a national scheme that sets emissions cap at a factory to a level based on the average emissions of 2001-2003 or something. however, you get into all sorts of problems with what you do with new factories, expansions of old ones, and whatnot. i'm sure one day we'll see something appear because the idea makes a good deal of sense; i just hope we do a better job of it than the EU did.

From

www.opinionjournal.com

March 2, 2007

4:57pm EST

Nationwide attack on affirmative action: Michigan loss leaves proponents retooling their strategy for future battles

Black Enterprise | Feb 1, 2007

Permission Slip

Accounting Technology | Jan 1, 2007

Rumors of War

Newsweek | Feb 19, 2007

Black churches missing out on federal aid: only 2.6% received funding for programs

Black Enterprise | Jan 1, 2007

Drug Trial

Forbes | Mar 12, 2007

Study: 'Tipping point' for climate is near

USA TODAY | Feb 28, 2007

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BY JAMES TARANTO

Friday, March 2, 2007 12:40 p.m. EST

Getting Wasted

John McCain said a stupid and offensive thing about Iraq the other night, as the Associated Press reports:

On Wednesday night, McCain said on CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman": "Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be. We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives."

McCain quickly apologized:

"I should have used the word, sacrificed, as I have in the past," the Arizona senator said after Democrats demanded he apologize as Sen. Barack Obama did when the White House hopeful recently made the same observation.

"No one appreciates and honors more than I do the selfless patriotism of American servicemen and women in the Iraq War," McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, said in a statement.

What's odd about this is that waste and sacrifice are opposites. To sacrifice is to give up something of value to oneself for the sake of something more valuable that transcends the self. To waste is to give up something of value for the sake of something of lesser or no value. A sacrifice is an unselfish act; a waste is an act of misdirected selfishness.

If a young man goes out, gets drunk, gets behind the wheel of his car, crashes and dies, it is fair to say he has wasted his life. That's quite different from a young man who loses his life in the course of doing dangerous work in the service of his country.

Liberal blogger Greg Sargent complains of a double standard:

A number of bloggers today have pointed out that the conservative outrage machine has been silent about this--even as it went into overdrive in response to Obama.

But here's another thing to look at. How many stand-alone stories by the big news orgs will we see about McCain's screw-up? How many times do you suppose mainstream media commentators will refer to McCain's fumble as a "mistake," a "gaffe," or any similar such term?

But there is a difference. Here is what Obama said:

We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.

Here is how he explained it:

What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.

Obama's initial statement was crystal clear; his "explanation" was a cloud of smoke. Obviously he meant what he said in the first place. He also belongs to a party that has adopted a policy of near-total cynicism when it comes to matters of war, as evidenced by this comment from a colleague of his in today's New York Times:

"It's still George Bush's war," said Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, "but we run the risk of gaining some ownership of it if we don't make it absolutely clear that we are the party that wants to get out of there."

McCain's choice of words may reflect a reckless streak, and it certainly gives us pause at the thought of his becoming president. But here is the difference: McCain's statement tells us something worrying about his personal character; Obama's tells us something terrifying about his ideological character.

That Was Fast

* "Democrats May Cut Bush Military Budget"--headline, Associated Press, March 1, 2:32 p.m. EST

* "Democrats Nix Idea of Military Budget Cuts"--headline, Associated Press, March 1, 3:07 p.m. EST

ABC: Anything but Careful

Michael S. Malone, who writes a column called "Silicon Insider" for ABC News's Web site, blames Matt Drudge for this week's stock-market decline:

It seems that former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan gave a speech in Hong Kong on Sunday in which he said, reasonably, that this being one of the longest economic expansions in recent years inevitably certain countervailing forces were growing that would inevitably lead us into the next recession. In particular, said Greenspan, U.S. profit margins were beginning to stabilize, and that was a classic indicator of an economy that had peaked--suggesting the beginning of a recession in late 2007, perhaps 2008.

Not exactly earth-shattering. A lot of people are saying the same thing--heck, you read the same thing here a couple weeks ago. Greenspan wasn't saying anything shocking; on the contrary, he was being his typical prudent and opaque self. You can turn on any cable financial show right now and hear a lot more apocalyptic predictions.

Indeed, the story was so unthrilling that it appears only AP covered it--and, contrary to its current reputation, actually managed to write a balanced and objective story. And, as you might expect, it produced little more than a shrug from the financial markets.

But that's when Drudge stepped in. For no obvious reason, he decided to link to the two day old AP story. He then attached one of his classic scare headlines: "Greenspan warns of likely U.S. recession." Personally, I love stuff like that--it harkens back to the good old days of newspapering and the vastly underrated age of yellow journalism--and if the viewer chose to read the term 'imminent' into Drudge's words, and then link through to the AP story . . . well, bully for Matt. That's his job, and he does it better than anybody.

Just one problem, there, Mike: the "classic scare headline" was the AP's!

What's Arabic for 'Chutzpah'?

"[Abu] Abir [spokesman for a 'Palestinian militant group'] blamed the Jewish state for the desecration of the Gaza synagogues by Palestinian Arabs, claiming the decision to leave the structures intact was part of an Israeli conspiracy. Israel 'left the synagogues behind so the world would see the Palestinians destroying them,' Mr. Abir said."--New York Sun, Feb. 27

There Goes the Neighborhood

In the Castro street neighborhood of San Francisco, "heterosexuals are moving in," and some homosexuals are alarmed, reports the San Francisco Chronicle:

Some gay and lesbian residents of the Castro are worried that the culture and history of their world-famous neighborhood could be lost in the process, and they have started a campaign to preserve its character. The city, meanwhile, is spending $100,000 on a plan aimed at keeping the area's gay identity intact.

Heterosexuals "are welcome as long as they understand this is our community," said Adam Light, a leader in the Castro Coalition, a group formed eight months ago to address the shifts in the neighborhood in recent years.

Imagine replacing "heterosexuals" in that latter paragraph with "blacks," "gays" or "Muslims." Yet there is no indication in the Chronicle story that Light's comment is in any way invidious. It's another example of the point we made yesterday that political correctness entails intolerance for some prejudices but impunity for others.

We also got a chuckle out of this quote:

"We need to find and attract new businesses to the neighborhood," said Paul Moffett, president of the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro. "They may not be gay-owned, but the bottom line is we want a vibrant, successful and healthy business community. Whether gay, Chinese, African American or owned by women, it doesn't matter."

We're not gay, Chinese, African-American or female. We feel excluded!

Maybe Al Gore Should Try This

"Snails Save Energy by Re-Using Mucus Trails"--headline, LiveScience.com, March 1

Say What?

"Hepatitis Scare Dogs Puck"--headline, Boston Herald, March 1

That Sounds Painful!

"Inspector General Says School That Uses Shock Therapy Overcharged"--headline, Associated Press, March 1

Unless You're Really Tall, in Which Case Stand Behind Them

"Robinson Urges Episcopalians to Stand by Gays"--headline, Washington Times, Feb. 28

And an 'F' for Editorial Effectiveness

"Del. Earns 'C' for Educational Effectivness [sic]"--headline, News Journal (Wilmington), Feb. 28

News You Can Use

* "Lack of Sleep May Impact Upon Moral Judgement"--headline, NewScientist.com, March 1

* "Slippery Roads Lead to Crashes"--headline, Wausau (Wis.) Daily Herald, March 2

Bottom Stories of the Day

* "Humane Society's Dog Wash Event Hailed as Successful"--headline, Cayman Net News, March 2

* "Canada Vies to Host 2011 Women's World Cup"--headline, CBC.ca, March 2

* "North Side Neighborhood Gets New Mail Carriers"--headline, Chicago Tribune, March 1

* "Liechtenstein: No Retaliation for Swiss 'Invasion' "--headline, Guardian (London), March 2

* "Even Ignoring Paris Hilton Makes News"--headline, Associated Press, March 1

Cool Business Ideas

Our item yesterday on Al Gore's "carbon offset" scheme leads reader Tom Tyson to make the former vice president an offer:

I've recently been car shopping. My wife really likes the Toyota Prius, and it sure is a very nice car. I certainly don't object to getting better gas mileage. The only problem is that we can get a Matrix--another very nice car of similar size--for $5,000 less. If Al is interested, I'd be happy to sell him some carbon offsets for $5,000 and then go and buy the Prius!

Feel free to send Al my email address.

Mr. Gore, the ball is in your court. Reader Dan Carter takes the idea a step further:

With all of the concern about carbon "footprint" these days, I've decided to start my own carbon offset business to help the wealthy feel less guilty about their extravagance. Perhaps you would be kind enough to publicize my venture.

My business model is to don the hair shirt of self-denial in exchange for cash payment so that my clients can lead fuller, more enriching lives without worrying about carbon dioxide. And, just so there's no question about the validity of the offset, I'm not building wind farms or giving away fluorescent light bulbs. No, I'm offering to forgo real pleasures so that others may enjoy them.

A few examples from my brochure:

Want to fly to Paris in your Gulfstream? Hey, who doesn't--but the kind of CO2 emissions from a trip like that will come back to haunt you when global warming hits. But what if you persuaded someone else to cancel a similar trip? That's where I come in: For a modest fee of $10,000, I won't fly to Paris on a Gulfstream this spring, so your trip will be carbon-neutral, and you can stroll guilt-free along the Champs Elysées.

Though it's getting tougher and tougher to impress the ladies with a car these days, they still swoon for something really exclusive, like the $1.4 million Bugatti Veyron. But how can you sell your commitment to the Earth when you're behind the wheel of a 1,000-horsepower machine that, at its top speed of 230 mph, sucks up 26 gallons of gas in just 12 minutes? Easy. Let me do the conserving in a three-year-old Camry while you get busy in the Bugatti. For $70,000--just a 5% premium over sticker price--I won't buy a Veyron at any time in the next five years.

Household electrical usage is in the news this week after we learned that a prominent Democrat spends 10 times the U.S. average on his electric bill. Of course, more electricity means more fuel burned in a power plant and more CO2 spewed into the air, and that's just the kind of attention you don't need. So what are you going to do about that fabulous 2,500-square-foot addition you just got back from the architects? Quit fretting and tell the builder to get started! Your added carbon footprint will be neutralized because, for $25,000, I'll scratch my add-on plans for 10 years.

With some cooperation and ingenuity, we can be back in the Little Ice Age in no time!

Top Cat wrote:

I'm glad you figured this thing out and that you now agree with Chuck D and myself that there is such a thing and they are traded.

Nothing is traded! Stock and commodity markets are fungible and transparent. When you buy stock you purchase an asset. When purchase a commodity, you have the right to take delivery on a specified quantity on that asset. You can buy 112,000 pounds of sugar if you want, or you can hedge the price of you future sugar prices is you are a farmer or a buyer, or you can specualate from the side if you wish. Price discovery is made by buyers and sellers, both trying to profit from their exchange or hedge another asset.

None of this exists in "carbon trading." If you are a manufacturer who emits 900 million pounds of carbon in the air per month today, and you need to use a trillion pounds for next months production, you can simply purchase "carbon offsets" the amount of the purchase goes to the counter-party in the trade who is "supposed" to be investing in technologies that "reduce" that 100 million tons of carbon you purchased. This is pure hogwash. You cannot recover what energy you've already used, there is no technology that can undo the additional 100 million tons of carbon you've put in the air. Then there's still the matter of the original 900 million tons that you're spewing into the air.

If you are like Al Gore and spend $20,000 a month on energy consumption, even if you spent another $20,000 a month on "carbon offsets" you wouldn't lower your carbon footprint at all. You're still the poster boy for conspicuous consumption. You still emit 20 times the national average in personal carbon emissions.

The same thing with Ford or GM. You cannot reduce your energy consumption and emissions by purchasing credits in an asset that redirects your cash to projects that don't, and cannot do what they say it does.

With "carbon trading" there is no transparency, and contracts are not "carbon fungible." The only way that carbon can be "offset" is if an Army of former Enron accountants start setting up offshore shell businesses, much like the schemes that Al Gore is involved in now.

When you consume energy it's gone. In order to make that energy carbon is emitted into the atmosphere. That cannot be reversed by trading with a firm that manufactures solar panels and windmills.

Carbon offsets are one big Ponzi scheme, pure and simple.

[quote]Top Cat wrote:

If you are like Al Gore and spend $20,000 a month on energy consumption, even if you spent another $20,000 a month on "carbon offsets" you wouldn't lower your carbon footprint at all. You're still the poster boy for conspicuous consumption. You still emit 20 times the national average in personal carbon emissions.

If you are going to criticize him, fine, but at least get your facts from somewhere other than Fox news, the Drudge report or Michelle Malkin.

Do you know why he pays 20k per month? Because he is paying a premium to get his energy from RENEWABLE sources. You know, like wind power etc. Sources like that cost more money. Don't make it sound like he has a coal furnace in his backyard.

Go do some research after you watch O'Rielly tonight.

qoayr wrote:

If you are going to criticize him, fine, but at least get your facts from somewhere other than Fox news, the Drudge report or Michelle Malkin.

Do you know why he pays 20k per month? Because he is paying a premium to get his energy from RENEWABLE sources. You know, like wind power etc. Sources like that cost more money. Don't make it sound like he has a coal furnace in his backyard.

Actually that's not true. USA Today confirmed on Wednesday with Gore's office that even though those options were available at both of his extravagant mansions, the Gores were not participating and were "looking in to it."

All of Gores electric consumption comes from the cheapest and most polluting source available - burning of coal. His $20,000 per month bills are the lowest they can ever be. Remember, that 20k bill is only for his Tennesse mansion. He pays about 1/2 of that again for his Washington DC mansion.

He and his wife are consumption hogs. All "carbon-neutral" consumption hogs, by the way.

:

[quote]Top Cat wrote:

Nothing is traded! Stock and commodity markets are fungible and transparent. When you buy stock you purchase an asset. When purchase a commodity, you have the right to take delivery on a specified quantity on that asset. You can buy 112,000 pounds of sugar if you want, or you can hedge the price of you future sugar prices is you are a farmer or a buyer, or you can specualate from the side if you wish. Price discovery is made by buyers and sellers, both trying to profit from their exchange or hedge another asset.

Are you always this hysterical?

Your ignorance of the financial markets, exchange traded and OTC, is mind boggling.

?????????? wrote:

Are you always this hysterical?

Your ignorance of the financial markets, exchange traded and OTC, is mind boggling.

You cannot buy carbon, any more than a windmill manufacturer can sell it. Carbon trading is a method for the transfer of money from one company to another, to wash the corporate conscience of the purchasing party. Trading a 100 million ton contract is not a neutral transaction. The sellers cannot make 100 million tons of carbon vanish. There are no accounting methods that can prove such a scheme. At the end of the day, 100 million tons of carbon are spewed into the air.

So all of this would be like Michael Moore paying 2 people not to eat tomorrow in an effort to end world hunger?

He could buy "food offsets" so as to be "food neutral" and still feel good about himself.

Close. If the model was like "carbon trading" there is no oversight over the 2 who claim not to be eating. In other words, Moore is still getting fat and so are his 2 friends.

Moore on Moore,

# I don't own a single share of stock," Michael Moore declares. No, his tax returns show he has owned hundreds of thousands -- profiting from some of the very companies (like Halliburton and Boeing) he viciously denounces

# How Moore's working-class, "regular guy" pose is contradicted by his lavish lifestyle and prima donna behavior -- such as traveling the country in a private jet accompanied by a fleet of private SUVs and bodyguards

# Moore also relentlessly exposes those who fail to meet his standards of racial fairness and equality. So, of the 134 producers, editors, cinematographers, composers, and production coordinators Moore he hired to work on his many movies, how many do you think were black?