The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation.
Complicated plans for the economy don’t work. Hunh, if only there were an area of scientific study which discussed such things.
But it’s working marvellously, Tim. Verra has already made a fortune.
That’s the same area of scientific study advanced, espoused and trafficked by the Treasury, the Bank of England and that pernicious George Osborne creation the OBR and look how well that works.
Does Holy Mother Gaia approve of the sale of indulgences? I doubt it.
Does it make the suckers think, ‘Good, I can fly off to Barbados for a holiday without shitting on poor old Gaia?’ Well, yes it does.
You would think… but we are dealing with nitwits.
If you increase the numbers of consumers for something, you decrease the amount available for consumption by each. Six people each get less wine from a bottle, than four would. Giving four people two bottles means the wine gets drunk – without another two ‘helping’ – each drink more.
All current plant life (not just trees) on Earth consumes carbon dioxide. Planting more trees reduces the amount available for existing plant stock, which grow less, and makes no overall difference to atmospheric carbon dioxide.
96% of carbon dioxide is dissolved in the oceans and there is episodic exchange – outgassing/increased absorption – between oceans and atmosphere, controlled by water temperatures which change cyclically independently from globbal wombling, due to processes unknown and not understood. (Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation )
Therefore this will will regulate the atmospheric concentration with rapport to the concentration in the oceans.
In the last 30 years according to NASA satellite imagery, an area the size of North America has been ‘greened’ by vegetation new growth, particularly at the margins of deserts thanks to increased CO2, with no help from the Eco-lunatics.
If naughty Man is significantly increasing CO2, we should therefore be burning more fossil fuels to help green the Planet and provide more habitat for wild plants and animals – and crops – as well as fixing top soil and water.
Boganboy
Perhaps it could be like air miles but with trees. A monthly statement that says
“Your flights have planted 0.673 trees this month.”
Fly more for more trees !
John B @ 10.48.
Joe Bastardi (Weatherbell Analytics) has taken on board the scientific research which appears to show that volcanic activity in the so called ‘Ring of Fire’ has increased dramatically since the mid eighties, causing the rise in ocean temperature in the Pacific and contributing to the outgassing you mention of CO2 into the atmosphere. Makes more sense that the ocean is warming from below as the atmosphere won’t warm more than the first few microns of the sea surface. We don’t boil a pot of water using a heat source from above for a reason…..
And all the evidence show temperature rises first, followed by CO2, demonstrating it cannot be CO2 doing the driving. That won’t get in the way of the true believers though.
@Ottokring.
The app for the telemetry on my solar PV does that. Apparently the electricity I’ve generated since I had it put in is the equivalent of 120 trees. They don’t say what sort of tree though. Could be plastic LED Christmas trees for all I know.
AtC
Does it really ? How wonderful ! I am genuinely impressed.
Fly more to help fight Ash die-back !
John B
I’d love a link to that NASA data – it sounds fantastic.
Genuine question…the idea that “planting new trees doesn’t help because it restricts other plantlife” can only be valid if the atmospheric CO2 is being completely used. If there is excess capacity in the atmosphere then it’s moot. N’est pas?
I am not being snarky and I may have completely misunderstood, so please take the question in the spirit it’s offered.
I was reading something recently on the survival of these carbon offset trees, rather than their planting. Predictably, not good. Not much attention is given to watering etc during their first seasons so a remarkable number don’t survive. Nobody particularly wants the cost of doing it. The money’s in trees planted not trees grown to maturity.
– Makes more sense that the ocean is warming from below . . .
Absolutely, Addolff. I’ve always been amazed at the dismissal of geothermal impact on surface climate. We sit on a thin crust of what is otherwise a ball of molten rock in space*. We know relatively little of what goes on at the bottom of the oceans (at any depth), and even less about what goes on below that (we now know the water (and life) goes way down below the “bottom”).
* If the sun stopped shining altogether the Earth’s surface would freeze out, but for the bulk of the planet it would make fuck all difference.