I totally agree with this assessment; carbon offsetting is largely a scam or a delusion. Firstly trees are not reliable carbon sinks given rainfall uncertainty, how the land was prepared and the subsequent vigilance over fire and insect infestation. Note that one guilt-free-flying outfit has been caught selling the same trees to multiple customers. Note also the Toronto Blue Jays offset via nuclear power, which I'd guess doesn't sit well with deep greens.

Similarly the Clean Development Mechanism seems to be a vehicle for assuaging middle class guilt but ends up being economic blackmail. The correct approach to the Chinese CFCs would be to impound any fridges containing it at Customs. Much cheaper than a half billion dollar bribe. Imagine if someone in a crowded lift said 'give me money or I'll fart'. As far as I'm aware neither Turnbull nor Garrett see anything wrong with offsetting. Looks like continued carte blanche for the coal industry but more pork barrelling for tree farmers.

This news doesn't justify the claim that market mechanisms cannot capable of reducing emissions. Unmonitored "offsets" may be questionable (not always fraudulent), but that's not what Kyoto-covered CDM investments or emisison permit trading is -- they require strict emissions accounting.

The first year of monitoring at the CDM project at Jiangsu Meilan Chemical Co. shows that more stringent quality-control is still required, but the project has mainly been successful.

The growth of Chinese industry has been so spectacular it's almost cancerous -- quality control is very haphazard; a few factories have world-class monitoring, cleanly and efficiently producing a world-class product, while many are toxic sweatshops and firetraps.

This aging freon factory has simply vented waste trifluoromethane to the atmosphere for many years. Now its emissions are negligible: this is a CDM *success*, not a failure. Any escape of trifluoromethane due to "incompetence" costs it money.

For crass, unnecessary pollution to go unabated in China (and Australia) is simply absurd when businesses elsewhere must pay good euros for permits on the emissions from finely-tuned fuel consumption. The discrepancy that the nominal cost of the incinerator was just $5m but the abatement is worth $500m under the CDM is a simple consequence of different rates of development -- the same arbitrage that has driven international investment since "Jeremiah's nutmeg". Much of the money has gone on monitoring and accounting and World Bank consultants.

Manufacture and import of CFCs under the Montreal Protocol was banned in developed countries by 1996. China does not export CFCs or CFC-containing equipment and only produces them for domestic use (so there's no point stopping Chinese-made fridges at customs, Taswegian). It was envisaged at the start of this CDM project that domestic use freon would increase for a few more years, but China announced in July a ban effective 2010 (largely as a result of CDM money making it profitable to do so) so Jiangsu Meilan will now have to spend its "bribe" on a refit to make ozone-friendly HFC refrigerants.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSPEK24608020070627

I agree with Xoddam - the destruction of HFC23 under the Clean Development Scheme does represent a success - a point I acknowledged. However, is he sure that the Chinese ban he cites in the Reuters reference doesn't cover only Class I ozone depleting CFCs (i.e. EXCLUDING HCFC22, the substance whose by-product is the subject of the World Bank scheme at Jiangsu Meilan)? Even if HCFC22 IS covered in the ban, and it would be great news if it is, it was always an option for the Chinese to control or prevent HFC23 emissions relatively inexpensively, and they didn't. I'm not persuaded that the CDM brought about or hastened this ban. It certainly didn't reduce HCFC-22 production!

The broader point, of course, is that it is only through clearly quantifiable abatement, and strict, timely and objective verification that trading schemes can work. My greatest concern is that Australia will devise a scheme that is too loose, one that is hard or impossible to monitor adequately, and rife with opportunity for activities closer to pyramid schemes than greenhouse gas abatement. Market mechanisms should and will have a role, but so should straight-forward, direct regulation.

Here are two predictions.

1. That no carbon trading scheme will actually reduce emissions in real terms.

2. The place to make money - real money, obscene money - over the next fifteen years will be to be a carbon trader.

I'd love to be proved wrong, but I've been on this planet too long to believe this type of scheme will actually deliver results to anyone except the middle man.

Sorry all, I got mixed up, dropped an H and spouted nonsense. CFC, HCFC and HFC are three different things, and I think everyone here has typed one of them wrong at some point :-)

When we say developed countries banned CFCs in 1995, we're referring to Class 1 ozone-depleting substances: chloroflourocarbons (*without* hydrogen) and all halons (bromofluorocarbons). Class 2 ODSes (HCFCs) are still in use worldwide.

China's ban this year was indeed a ban on Class 1 ODSes. China agreed when it acceded to the Montreal Protocol phase out Class 1 substances by 2010 and Class 2 by 2040. One report says 550 tons per annum of CFCs will still be made in China, strictly for asthma puffer propellant:

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=514&ArticleID=5624&l=en

Now that's a lot of puffers. Dudes, clean your AIR!

Most spray cans now use flammable and toxic hydrocarbon (propane, butane, dimethyl ether) propellants. CFCs held out for medicinal use until recently. Puffers use HFCs here now, so I suppose China will follow.

HCFC-22 (aka "Freon 22", not to be confused as I did with the original Freon, CFC-12) is a Class 2 ODS. It's the preferred substitute for CFC-12, with a twentieth of the ozone depletion potential. It's still in common use, still manufactured in developed countries, and imported fridges do contain it. I apologise for my error.

The Montreal-mandated phaseout of Class 2 ODSes is not until 2030 for developed countries and 2050 globally. Almost all new designs prefer HFC refrigerants which are not ozone-depleting at all. The USA will *start* its phaseout of HCFC-22 in 2010, banning new products using it, but does not intend to ban manufacture altogether until the 2030 mandate. Australia doesn't make HCFCs and intends to restrict imports only from 2020, banning them in 2030.

Pericles, emissions trading with a hard cap will find the cheapest ways to reach the targets. CDM arguably hasn't achieved anything regulation couldn't have done alone, but it's made people rich along the way. Is there something wrong with that?

Here's a clue to the veracity of the carbon trading market; after much thought Stern thought $US85 was about the right price for a tonne of CO2. Yet some travel offset providers charge as little as $5 a tonne and apparently still make a tidy profit. When you see snake oil salesmen in cowboy movies now you know how they were reincarnated.

There are many things we (humanity) can do to adapt to the consequences of anthropogenic global warming (Bush Administration prefers the term 'climate change') and carbon trading will play a part.

However, it is intrinsically more important to mitigate GHG emissions - this will be crucial.

Taswegian, nuclear is an option, particularly for countries like France and Japan - please don't write it off for all countries. China wants this energy option, can Oz deny them?

We in Australia definitely don't need nuclear power, yet - but maybe one day?

Xoddam, thanks for your contribution - just be aware that explaining technicalities can sometimes have the opposite effect to what you had intended. This is precisely why climate change scientists don't get embroiled with public fora like OLO.

Regards

There seems to be two sets of posters for this article. One side can deliver the dead-eyed facts and seem very knowlegeable about them and their point of view is extremely valid, researched and believeable. The other mob are pragmatists and I agree with them entirely.
Pericles, you hit the nail right on the head. Carbon trading will make a lot of shonks very rich but, apart from that, will achieve nothing. The dollar cost per kilo of CO2 is arbitrary and evolved as the result of a committee meeting.
Everyone knows what must be done, but noone knows how to do it. Ask one of "them" when they say "we gotta stop (pick a chemical) emissions." Ask them how, then stand back and watch either the blank stare or listen to the stammering response."
I don't have a definitive global answer either, but I'm looking for one to believe in and so far nothing's come up. All I can do is what I'm doing personally.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with you Pericles and enkew... carbon trading is likely to end up a huge money making exercise for some leaving others properly screwed - with no reduction in greenhouse gas. For example, DuPont has invited ‘green consumers’ to pay $4 to eliminate a tonne of carbon dioxide from its plant in Kentucky that produces a potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23 - the equipment required to reduce such gases is relatively cheap. DuPont refused to comment and declined to specify its earnings from the project, saying it was at too early a stage to discuss (Hmmm...I wonder why?).

Here’s another example, Blue Source, a US offsetting company, invites consumers to offset carbon emissions by investing in enhanced oil recovery, which pumps carbon dioxide into depleted oil wells to bring up the remaining oil. However, Blue Source said that because of the high price of oil, this process was often profitable in itself, meaning operators were making extra revenues from selling “carbon credits” for burying the carbon.

On top of all of this, most of the developed countries are net importers of energy and we are one of the few net exporters, we stand a much greater risk of being screwed by the decision to ignore the emissions of the developing countries (China overtook the US as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide earlier this year). The UN does not currently propose any mandatory emission targets for developing countries (as if they were able to enforce them anyway).

Yes, for reasons so far unproven, we face climate change. Thrashing around like we are, however, puts us in a far worse predicament in order to face the inevitable.

No “scheme that lacks cast-iron verification [should] see the light of day – ever” and neither should one lacking fairness or credibility.

Just to add something: Let's start discriminating. From now on I'm going to qualify myself by using the term "Human Induced Climate Change" because that's something that can be affected, whereas ordinary old "Climate Change" is inevitable.

enkew,

I don't want to be *too* hubristic, but I think we've established pretty firmly that human activity is of a sufficient scale to affect the climate.

If there were a *natural* climate change that threatened devastation to our economy and the ecology on which it depends, would we not be equally justified in seeking to avert it by changing our behaviour, as we are in attempting to reverse the climate change we have inadvertently caused?

Suppose an asteroid were detected on a collision course with Earth, promising a large crater somewhere or other, a grand tsunami and a few years' "global dimming" with an effect like a dozen Pinatubos or a nuclear winter. Would anyone (except milleniarist nutcases) object to human effort to prevent this entirely natural Act of God?