Global warming strikes again...

[MrCynical]

They're very different from indulgences. There are vast tracts of wild lands that are suitable for being set aside and protected, and expecting people to do it for free (or to avoid sanctions) is the height of conceit. Carbon credits are a very hard institution to set up, they're across international borders and full of experts whose projects and credentials are impossible to vet.

The motive for companies spending money on these kind of schemes is unfortunately the same as that for indulgences. It's a way of spending a little bit of cash to be able to proclaim themselves as not responsible for their (carbon) sins. Perhaps some of them even kid themselves that's true - but I doubt it.

I'll agree that setting up a carbon credit scheme to work in the way they are supposed to has huge practical barriers. So it's much cheaper and simpler for schemes to put out glossy PR that claim they're doing (conveniently difficult to verify) things that benefit the environment rather than actually doing anything that helps, and hence these will outcompete any schemes that attempt to do something legitimate.

Nevermind that greenwashing is also a thing, but these companies paid real money and got ripped off.

I'll admit to laughing at the idea of that companies buying these offsets were victims of a scam. The companies got exactly what they paid for. Something to point to in order to claim that their carbon emissions "don't count". Or in more brazen cases are even negative. I don't think I'm even being particularly cynical in thinking that actual environmental protection is somewhere between very low and nowhere on these companies' priority lists.

 

[El_Machinae]

They likely weren't qualified to do due diligence. I think it's nearly impossible. But I think I'd distinguish it from actual greenwashing, because the intent was to offset emissions. Obviously, they were overly optimistic. There's a lot of squinting between 'getting scammed' and 'being overly optimistic' and being cynical is probably not wrong. Big Money constantly lies to itself about how smart it is.

It's the fundamental idea of paying to offset that I defend as acceptable, even if is practically impossible.

 

[Arwon]

At the very least the "offsets" market needs to be constrained to actually decreased emissions, not just "avoided" emissions.

If you're paying to actively replant a carbon sink or decommission an economically viable emitting facility somewhere else, then at least in the ideal form you're genuinely reducing ongoing emissions, to offset your own.

But the concept of "avoided" emissions even in its ideal form doesn't reduce them. If you're just paying to theoretically protect some patch of forest, your own emissions are still happening, the too-high baseline of global emissions remains unaltered, and you've done nothing to actually reduce the global stock of atmospheric CO2e and its climate heating effects.

But I think the problem is if they genuinely had to remove carbon emissions immediately and demonstrably, they'd be more expensive than just ceasing the original activity.

 

[Samson]

The status quo, the one we all implicitly support

Just to be clear, I am implicitly supporting the status quo by not becoming an eco terrorist or living off the land in the wildernesses of the UK, right?

 

[MrCynical]

There is a set amount remaining in the global carbon buffer. The planet doesn't care who emits it. The poor people of the planet definitely do. Right now, we're (collectively) releasing emissions for a combination of longterm capital and temporary human welfare. A portion of this is just outright fungible. If you're raising their Quality of Life more by getting them to not emit, then those 'non-emissions' count against the current budget.

The concept of carbon offsetting allowing a company to claim to be "carbon neutral" relies on a sort of imaginary particle-esque notion that carbon that might have been emitted, but wasn't, is a negation of very real carbon that has been emitted. I'm not at all convinced this works even at the basic mathematical level. The hypothetical "carbon neutral" company has still emitted X amount of carbon - they've just paid someone else not to add another X amount of carbon on top of it, which isn't the same thing. They've still burnt through a chunk of the carbon budget, while claiming they're just a zero on the account.

By this rather dubious logic, all that is required to make the entire world to claim to be "carbon neutral" is for each person to find someone else to claim they're going to emit twice as much carbon as them, but will only emit half for <insert whatever payment>. This is obviously a complete accounting fiction, and the world would still be going through as much of its carbon budget as before, but I'm not seeing a clear distinction between this and how carbon offsetting schemes function in reality.

Whether anyone's quality of life is raised is a completely different issue, and is not a determinant of whether these alleged non-emissions amount to a real reduction in carbon emitted.

There's just so many holes in the idea that these payments reduce the amount of carbon people will actually emit. There is no practical system for determining how much carbon they would have emitted in the hypothetical universe where they weren't paid, so it's easy to play accounting games claiming to have reduced emissions that were never going to happen in the first place. And with no verification or policing, there's nothing to stop them just taking the money and carrying on without making any carbon affecting changes at all.

It's the fundamental idea of paying to offset that I defend as acceptable, even if is practically impossible.

I feel this is drifting off into the silly side of philosophical discussion if we're examining the hypothetical morality of something that's impossible in reality . I will make the point that if you're aware something is in practice impossible, it's not acceptable to say you'll do it in exchange for payment. Or to claim you've done it by paying someone else to claim to have done the impossible on your behalf.

 

[Joij21]

If you're paying to actively replant a carbon sink or decommission an economically viable emitting facility somewhere else

To bad most trees don't absorb carbon faster than these companies release each year!

Just to be clear, I am implicitly supporting the status quo by not becoming an eco terrorist or living off the land in the wildernesses of the UK, right?

To any radical extremist, yes.

Personally I hope they find a technological solution, invent a time machine to go along with it as well. Then send me back in time to the 1990s to distribute the tech before current climatic damage happens, and also warn everyone about 9/11 and tell them where Bin Ladin is.

 

[Arwon]

To bad most trees don't absorb carbon faster than these companies release each year!

Yeah I mean the limited supply of opportunities to do genuine emissions reductions as offsets would apply additional pressure on firms to reduce or cease their own emissions activities too. It would turn them into a temporary and increasingly scarce and expensive bridge activity. Which is another reason why they don't do that and are designed not to do that.

 

[Joij21]

Yeah I mean the limited supply of opportunities to do genuine emissions reductions as offsets would apply additional pressure on firms to reduce or cease their own emissions activities too. It would turn them into a temporary and increasingly scarce and expensive bridge activity. Which is another reason why they don't do that and are designed not to do that.

Maybe if we cut the trees down after they reached their full height and then locked up the wood in a basement so it can't rot and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. Then replant more saplings, rinse and repeat, and expand the size of the wood storage basement....

Perhaps maybe we could sequester enough carbon into enough basements to make these companies truly carbon neutral, or negative even!

 

[Hygro]

They're very different from indulgences. There are vast tracts of wild lands that are suitable for being set aside and protected, and expecting people to do it for free (or to avoid sanctions) is the height of conceit. Carbon credits are a very hard institution to set up, they're across international borders and full of experts whose projects and credentials are impossible to vet. But carbon is fungible, which means that using money to shift who gets to spend carbon is reasonable. It's just nearly impossible to do well. Nevermind that greenwashing is also a thing, but these companies paid real money and got ripped off.



I pivoted to politically preferring a carbon tax to carbon credits because the credit system is impossible, functionally. But a carbon tax system is way, way worse for the poorer regions of the world who've yet to emit at the scales that we do, because it eventually becomes a tariff.

Progressive carbon tax

 

[Lexicus]

Progressive carbon tax

The serious proposals I've heard for the carbon tax would essentially give much, if not all of the revenue back as a transfer payment that would phase out as income rises. So the poor would come out ahead.

Not sure how to implement something like that internationally, but it strikes me that developing countries are dodging some bullets by skipping fossil fuels, as it were, and going straight to renewables.

(Edit: also strikes me that the real problem with carbon offsets is that we can't all just offset our emissions onto each other, we need to actually reduce them)

 

[Gorbles]

Paying people to do these things is an overall good idea.

It seems in practise to be creating a perverse incentive, is the thing. Not to mention "people" and "corporation as a person" have vastly different connotations when discussion payment (and taxation, and so on).

 

[stfoskey12]

Maybe if we cut the trees down after they reached their full height and then locked up the wood in a basement so it can't rot and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. Then replant more saplings, rinse and repeat, and expand the size of the wood storage basement....

Perhaps maybe we could sequester enough carbon into enough basements to make these companies truly carbon neutral, or negative even!

I mean that's basically what happened in the Carboniferous, and it led to an ice age.

 

[Joij21]

I mean that's basically what happened in the Carboniferous, and it led to an ice age.

Yes but let's do in in a much quicker timeframe!

Give every man, woman, and child a shovel and start digging out some basements!

Send out the lumberjacks, the chainsaws, the wood chippers!

Force legions of hipsters to go out and plant fast growing coniferous saplings. Crack the whip! Get them planting double! No! Triple time!!!

And while we're at it ensure these saplings are genetically modified and can grow to full height not just in fifty but TWENTY YEARS!!!!

 

[Samson]

TIL that the greenhouse effect is nothing really like a greenhouse, more like a jumper but at very specific altitudes and wavelengths.

Spoiler 20 minute youtube video that explains it :

 

[Broken_Erika]

Big Oil walks back climate pledges as earnings show 2022 was their most profitable year ever​

World's five biggest oil majors likely took in $200B in profit last year​

Financial results from the biggest energy companies in the world this week show that last year was their most profitable year ever, prompting many of them to scale back previous commitments to pivot more toward renewable energy.

U.S. oil company Exxon revealed last week that it earned a profit of $56 billion US last year, the highest figure on record for any publicly traded oil company, ever. The eye-popping figure means that even after it paid all of its costs, from exploration, development, salaries, taxes and legal and regulatory costs, the Texas-based company earned a profit of more than $6 million per hour last year.

They weren't the only ones who profited from the sudden spike in oil prices, which languished for most of the pandemic before jumping to over $120 a barrel after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. rival Chevron said its profit topped $35 billion last year, more than doubling the $15 billion from the year before, while Anglo-Dutch giant Shell earned $40 billion. British oil major BP wasn't far behind, raking in just shy of $28 billion last year, the highest annual total in the company's 114-year history.

• Analysis
  The day oil was worth less than $0 — and nobody wanted it
• U.K. introduces temporary 'windfall tax' of 25% on oil and gas profits

French oil giant Total will post its financial results on Wednesday, and the trend is expected to continue. All in all, profits at those five major oil conglomerates likely topped $200 billion last year, according to data analytics firm Refinitiv.

That's quite the departure from the first two years of the pandemic, when energy demand cratered due to lockdowns and travel restrictions, and capital-intensive oil companies were losing money on every pumpjack.

Red ink had a silver lining​

For environmentalists, the sea of red ink all over the books of Big Oil had a silver lining: it forced them to increase their commitment to go green, as they pondered their future in the world of clean, carbon-free energy.

Major oil companies like BP even committed to be carbon-neutral by 2050, while some smaller ones went even further — using carbon capture technology to take more carbon out of the atmosphere than they emit, even as they pump out more oil.

Chevron and Shell are partners in one such project in Alberta and more are in the works.

In 2020, BP went as far as predicting that demand for fossil fuels may have already peaked, and as part of its carbon-neutral plan said it was planning to slash its oil and gas output by 40 per cent by the end of this decade. But so far things haven't quite worked out that way.

BP laid out its 2023 spending plans this week, forecasting that it plans to spend an extra $8 billion on clean energy investments by 2030, but it has also increased its spending plans on oil and gas projects by the same amount.

"We are providing the oil and gas the world needs today — while at the same time investing to accelerate the energy transition," CEO Bernard Looney said.

Shell's spending plans show a similar gap, with the company reporting it spent $3.5 billion on green energy initiatives last year, about one-sixth of its total spending of $25 billion. The company has so far resisted making any major promises on reducing emissions, but shareholder activist group Follow This has led a successful pitch to get shareholders to vote on a plan to adopt one at its upcoming annual general meeting.

"Shell can't claim to be in transition as long as investments in fossil fuels dwarf investments in renewables," the group's founder, Mark van Baal, said in a press release.

Chevron booked a profit of about $35 billion last year, and it plans to spend about half that on its various projects around the world. Within that, only about $2 billion is earmarked for finding and developing projects that either produce renewable energy or reduce carbon emissions.

In addition to upping its spending plans on oil and gas, BP also downgraded its pledge to cut its output by 40 per cent to just 25 per cent by 2030, news that came as no surprise to critics of the company.

"This should be the last nail in the coffin of the oil industry's green claims," Keith Stewart, with Greenpeace Canada, told CBC News. "Even as Big Oil rakes in record profits, they are delaying action on the climate crisis to make a few extra bucks while people and ecosystems pay the costs in ever more extreme weather, wildfires, drought and flooding."

Windfall taxes proposed​

"Governments should be taxing back those excess profits to invest directly in climate solutions, because the oil companies won't," he said.

Windfall taxes on excessive profits are a popular idea among environmental circles, but others say they do little to decarbonize the world's energy systems while making short-term problems worse.

Rafi Tahmazian, a portfolio manager with Canoe Financial, says talk of slapping windfall taxes is short-sighted. "That doesn't get rid of your problem," he told CBC News in an interview. "It shows you how myopic everybody is in their thinking. You tax these companies, they're going to reduce their production."

The incentive to pump more oil, not less, is especially great for the three European-based oil majors, since they are currently tasked with keeping Europe's power needs met in the face of Russian oil sanctions.

"They're in Europe where it's all hands on deck right now for any power that you can muster up," he said. "BP is shifting gears to add oil because Europe needs it."

Tahmazian says BP's about-face on reducing oil output makes sense since the company's shares have been relative laggards due to their green initiatives in the first place. "They were penalized in the market for it because they're materially at a disadvantage from a profit perspective."

• Analysis
  Canada's oilpatch is flush with cash — so what are they going to do with it?
• Oilsands execs say they can't invest in decarbonization any faster, despite profits

Dennis McConaghy, a former executive at pipeline company Trans Canada, says record profits at oil giants illustrate "the fundamental dilemma between climate targets and a world that can't do without hydrocarbons."

While he says he expects major oil companies in Canada and around the world will continue to invest in renewables, "it is clear they're going to reinvest a substantial amount in conventional hydrocarbon development."

"Because the reality is ... oil demand is robust and will probably increase over the short term notwithstanding climate objectives."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/big-oil-profits-climate-1.6739808

 

[Samson]

Maddest geoengineering yet?

Proponents of a “moonshot” idea to deal with global heating have been handed a new, very literal, interpretation by researchers who have proposed firing plumes of moon dust from a gun into space in order to deflect the sun’s rays away from Earth.

The seemingly outlandish concept, outlined in a new research paper, would involve creating a “solar shield” in space by mining the moon of millions of tons of its dust and then “ballistically eject[ing]” it to a point in space about 1m miles from Earth, where the floating grains would partially block incoming sunlight.

Abstract

We revisit dust placed near the Earth–Sun L1 Lagrange point as a possible climate-change mitigation measure. Our calculations include variations in grain properties and orbit solutions with lunar and planetary perturbations. To achieve sunlight attenuation of 1.8%, equivalent to about 6 days per year of an obscured Sun, the mass of dust in the scenarios we consider must exceed 10^10 kg. The more promising approaches include using high-porosity, fluffy grains to increase the extinction efficiency per unit mass, and launching this material in directed jets from a platform orbiting at L1. A simpler approach is to ballistically eject dust grains from the Moon’s surface on a free trajectory toward L1, providing sun shade for several days or more. Advantages compared to an Earth launch include a ready reservoir of dust on the lunar surface and less kinetic energy required to achieve a sun-shielding orbit.

Paper Writeup

 

[Birdjaguar]

^^^ Finally some folks catching up to the quickest (and somewhat risky) solution. Getting the dust from the moon though just delays it. We have lots of available "dust" right here on earth.

 

[Samson]

^^^ Finally some folks catching up to the quickest (and somewhat risky) solution. Getting the dust from the moon though just delays it. We have lots of available "dust" right here on earth.

The dust on the earth is in a much deeper gravity well, so is much harder to get to space.

 

[El_Machinae]

This is where the Moon Space Elevator would be super useful!

 

[Lexicus]

The dust on the earth is in a much deeper gravity well, so is much harder to get to space.

Plus has to deal with an atmosphere making it even harder.