Carbon Offsets

[Nofossil]

A discussion in another thread got me thinking about the economics of wood burning. Perhaps we're all missing a bet: Every ton of wood that we burn offsets a bit more than a ton of carbon dioxide - should we all be selling carbon offsets?

Could the sale of carbon offsets help people justify the upfront costs associated with purchasing and installing these things?

By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, someone burning 4 cords a year could justifiably sell about 80 tons worth of carbon offsets, assuming only a ten year system life. At current market prices, that's about $800 - not chump change.

As far as I can tell it's a lot more legitimate than many of the things that are being done now.

 

[JohnnyBravo]

i would like to see the rebate going to good people like wood burners and farmers with eviro-freindly systems. but i don't like the idea of carbon offsets. any consevation is lost and the rights to burn are sold to big manufacturing co. that just funnel the addional cost right back to the people. everyone is happy to buy the piece of crap made in the factory that uses carbon credits.

 

[Nofossil]

i would like to see the rebate going to good people like wood burners and farmers with eviro-freindly systems. but i don't like the idea of carbon offsets. any consevation is lost and the rights to burn are sold to big manufacturing co. that just funnel the addional cost right back to the people. everyone is happy to buy the piece of crap made in the factory that uses carbon credits.

I agree completely, though more of my disdain is aimed at people who drive a Hummer, buy some carbon offsets, and declare themselves 'green'.

But, if people are going to buy them AND we could actually do something good as a result, is it a good idea anyway?

 

[JohnnyBravo]

yeah people with hummers should give me money. i have found some waterbottles that the co. purchases credits with a potion of the proceeds just to get them off the market. i saw some f the stuff on your(?) site i was impressed im looking forward to getting some solar set up on the house here, i have a small setup at my "cabin" (free trailer in the woods).

 

[MrGriz]

Carbon credits have to be the biggest scam on the planet. If someone wants to give me $800.00 per year because I burn wood to heat my home just to make themselves feel good they need to have their head checked (after they send the check).

 

[JohnnyBravo]

i thik you would see a lot of cheap stoves going into every room in every house, non of which would ever see any use. you could see a return on ivestment in 2-3 years and have some good income the following years. hell thats what i'd do. except i would use the stoves and my house would be quite warm.

 

[Corey]

Carbon credits have to be the biggest scam on the planet. If someone wants to give me $800.00 per year because I burn wood to heat my home just to make themselves feel good they need to have their head checked (after they send the check).

Amen! Although I might say carbon credits are the second biggest scam - right behind anthropogenic CO2 being the cause of global warming. Maybe time to hit ebay with some official looking certificates. Carbon credits could be the big Christmas gift this year, now that you can't get a fix from Aquadots.

 

[tw40x81]

There's no way for the little guy to get in on the carbon offset scam. The big carbon offset scamming business will argue that in order to sell carbon credits you need to have a negative carbon footprint. An individual burning wood while reducing his sequestered carbon footprint will never have a negative carbon footprint, therefore has none to sell.

 

[Nofossil]

There's no way for the little guy to get in on the carbon offset scam. The big carbon offset scamming business will argue that in order to sell carbon credits you need to have a negative carbon footprint. An individual burning wood while reducing his sequestered carbon footprint will never have a negative carbon footprint, therefore has none to sell.

I don't think there's any realistic 'rules' of engagement', but Kyoto talks about reducing carbon relative to a historical baseline. If you were heating with oil, gas, coal, or electricity and switch to wood, you're reducing carbon emissions. I think that counts. Windmills get carbon offset credit, and it's the same thing.

I'm only being slightly tongue-in-cheek here. I think the system is being gamed, and a lot of bogus things are being done or justified in the name of carbon offsets. However, if it could help people do the right thing, then it's many steps ahead of many other programs.

 

[tkirk22]

I'm not a scientist but let's have a little quiz:

What percent of CO2 is currently in dry air?

1) 38%
2) 3.8%
3) .38%
4) .038%

If you answered 4 you're correct and that 38 thousandths of one percent is certainly causing a lot of havoc in the world. If you noticed the question said dry air give yourself a gold star. We really shouldn't be talking about the massive amounts of water vapor floating around when that can't be regulated and there's too much money to be made in carbon credits.

 

[TMonter]

I don’t think there’s any realistic ‘rules’ of engagement’, but Kyoto talks about reducing carbon relative to a historical baseline.

Kyoto is a scam. The idea that CO2 actually drives climate is so far off base that it's not even worth considering.

 

[BrownianHeatingTech]

Amen! Although I might say carbon credits are the second biggest scam - right behind anthropogenic CO2 being the cause of global warming. Maybe time to hit ebay with some official looking certificates. Carbon credits could be the big Christmas gift this year, now that you can't get a fix from Aquadots.

Gotta agree with that.

Joe

 

[Nofossil]

You'll note that I never made any claims for the merits of carbon offsets. My only point is that if people are going to buy them, wood heat systems should qualify as a source of salable credits. Talk to your congressman.

I don't remember the numbers from atmospheric physics 101, but I think that something like 95% of the greehouse effect is from water vapor, and there's no credible argument that mankind has any effect on the amount of water vapor in the air. Various other gases including CO2 make up the other 5%.

CO2 is continually cycling into and out of the atmosphere. Of the CO2 that's dumped into the atmosphere, something like 90% is from decaying plants, both terrestrial and aquatic. The other 10% is man-made.

So of the greenhouse gases in that atmosphere, we're responsible for 10% of 5% - that's about 1/2 of 1%.

There's no doubt that the global climate changes. It's gone through dramatic swings long before man even existed. The American midwest was a tropical region at one time. More recently, there were farming settlements in Greenland, and don't forget multiple ice ages.

I think the bottom line is that the climate changes far more than we could tolerate for reasons that we don't understand. Instead of shrinking in fear that we might be causing it, we need to learn how to change it on purpose. We need to control the thermostat. If you want to think about a global catastrophe, another ice age would be far more devastating than even a Nobel prizewinner's fantasy of human induced environmental disasters.

I'm not afraid of human-induced climate change. I'm afraid of nature.

 

[saichele]

Without gettng into the merits of either CO2 offsets or anthropogenic climate change, I don;t think climate offsets include what you might have done or would have done. That is - if youy plant a bunch of trees, that's great, you're sequestering. And in theory most of the money limousine liberals give for carbon credits are intended for tree planting and that sort of thing. But resisting the temptation to pollute isn't necessarily rewardable, and the wood we burn is releasing CO2 (it's already in cycle, we're just accelerating a little).

Steve

 

[Nofossil]

Without gettng into the merits of either CO2 offsets or anthropogenic climate change, I don;t think climate offsets include what you might have done or would have done. That is - if youy plant a bunch of trees, that's great, you're sequestering. And in theory most of the money limousine liberals give for carbon credits are intended for tree planting and that sort of thing. But resisting the temptation to pollute isn't necessarily rewardable, and the wood we burn is releasing CO2 (it's already in cycle, we're just accelerating a little).

Steve

I was thinking specifically of installations like mine, where I was burning 750 gallons of oil per year, and I'm now burning less than 50. That's a carbon reduction by any reasonable definition, and much more significant and long-lasting than planting a tree (unless you're reforesting a desert).

Carbon offsets are routinely sold based on things like windmills, which avoid the need to burn coal just like my wood boiler avoids the need to burn oil.

I still think the idea is bogus, but woodstoves are less bogus than many of the other things being done.

 

[BrownianHeatingTech]

I was thinking specifically of installations like mine, where I was burning 750 gallons of oil per year, and I'm now burning less than 50. That's a carbon reduction by any reasonable definition, and much more significant and long-lasting than planting a tree (unless you're reforesting a desert).

Carbon offsets are routinely sold based on things like windmills, which avoid the need to burn coal just like my wood boiler avoids the need to burn oil.

I still think the idea is bogus, but woodstoves are less bogus than many of the other things being done.

Yeah, I think that's a plan.

Of course, there's also a group selling "carbon debits" by cutting down trees!

You could get money both ways - sell debits for cutting down trees, and credits for using them instead of oil!

Joe

 

[cornbread]

Carbon credits have to be the biggest scam on the planet.

Yes.