“The CO2 world tour”, By Irina Slav
“The idea is already familiar from smaller carbon credit markets. Large CO2 emitters buy credits from small emitters to keep their forests big or their oceans clean or however they want to spin it…
The CO2 world tour
DEC 02, 2024
∙ PAID
Note: A reader recently asked that I include a hot beverage warning at the start of my posts to avoid spillage due to laughter although why anything I write could be seen as funny is beyond me. Anyway, here it is: hot beverage warning.
The latest edition of the event poetically, though elliptically, called Conference of the Parties gifted us a lame climate finance deal that almost everyone hated as soon as it was closed but it also gifted us a global carbon market. Starting, according to hopes and dreams, next year, countries around the world would be able to buy and sell carbon credits between themselves or, if they so wish, on a centralised, UN-managed platform and keep your chuckles about the managerial skills of the UN to yourselves, okay?
The idea is already familiar from the smaller carbon credit markets. Large CO2 emitters buy credits from small emitters to keep their forests big or their oceans clean or however they want to spin it, while they, the former emitters, get a cleaner conscience and a lower carbon footprint because carbon footprint obsession is the new anorexia.
In a gesture of extra generosity, the European Union took it upon itself to provide registry services for carbon market participants that “can't afford to set up their own ledgers for issuing and tracking credits,” because the EU is all about giving, even if what it gives is the political equivalent of syphilis with a side of rabies. The U.S., meanwhile, “ensured that a transaction merely being recorded on such a registry does not qualify as a U.N. endorsement of the credits,” as Reuters would have us all know.
That latter part appears to mean that the EU will simply record credits but will not judge their quality, which task, I expect, would be the prerogative of the UN, just to make it all straightforward, easy to use, and, last but not least at all, transparent because that’s a powerful magic word.
So far, so good and countries are already trading carbon credits directly between themselves, possibly because some countries, such as Switzerland, have nothing better to do with their time and money, but if anyone dares think the carbon market is totally unproblematic they are deeply mistaken. The carbon market agreed at COP29 is very problematic indeed — countries can use it to… cheat.
That’s right. As The Guardian of Climate Dogma informed us, while COP29ers were discussing the global carbon market, “Relying on natural carbon sinks such as forests and oceans to offset continued fossil fuel emissions will not stop global heating,” citing “the scientists who developed net zero.”
Not only that but, according to other scientists, and unless otherwise specified I use the term in the loosest way conceivable, carbon sinks are not even working properly any more — because of climate change. I feel this might be a good time to take a moment to appreciate the work of The Guardian’s climate reporters and those scientists.
So, based on the The Guardian’s reports, the carbon market deal would do more harm than good — but it’s expected to become a $250 billion-per-year market by 2030. The internal rot within the climate cult is accelerating, probably because of the acceleration in global boiling. I’d speculate the climate cult is warming twice as fast as every other cult.
First, let’s look at the carbon sink illusion paper, awaiting final publication in Nature because Nature has become the pig trough of scientific research. According to its authors, including what they call ““passive” CO2 uptake, such as enhanced vegetation growth due to CO2 fertilisation” into carbon accounting systems, as they put it, is very bad because it won’t stop climate change.
In their own words, “land management categories should be disaggregated in emissions reporting and targets to better separate the role of passive CO2 uptake; where possible, claimed removals should be additional to passive uptake; and targets should acknowledge the need for Geological Net Zero, meaning one tonne of CO2 permanently restored to the solid Earth for every tonne still generated from fossil sources.”
Could they have put it in an even more needlessly complicated way? Probably, but they must have been in a hurry to make their contribution to global carbon market efforts, as in, subvert these efforts by arguing one side of the carbon trading equation is actually a trick and it should not be included in said equation until we make it a lot more complicated because it is clearly nowhere near complicated enough. We all know what sort of people like to make things complicated, don’t we? That’s right — the smart, confident erudites who work to make the world a better place for all of us with no thought of personal gain.
“We have to protect passive carbon sinks. We have to protect our forests and oceans because we need them to provide that carbon sink service in order for net zero emissions to actually do what we promise people it will do, which is to halt global warming. But we can’t pretend that those passive sinks are somehow compensating for ongoing use of fossil fuels,” the lead author of the study told The Guardian and I would understand if you need to take another moment because this quote is confusing.
Based on the quote, it appears the authors of the study are fine with carbon sinks and their “service” but strongly believe that this service is being abused or can be abused by governments wrongly assuming they can pass nature’s achievements in emission removal as their own. Which is bad. It must be like taking credit for water running downhill. Unacceptable. But there is, of course, a solution: more emission removal and — you’d never guess — an end to oil and gas use.
So, what else is new in Guardianland, you might ask with a bored sigh. Well, what’s new is that on top of the climate collapse we appear to be experiencingwithout noticing, there was also a carbon sink collapse last year, because The Guardian really likes the word collapse.
“In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon,” the thing that calls itself a factual reporting publication wrote.
How, one might wonder if one has nothing better to do, did the scientists come to this alarming conclusion? Well, as they report, “We used dynamic global vegetation models, satellites fire emissions, an atmospheric inversion based on OCO-2 measurements, and emulators of ocean biogeochemical and data driven models to deliver a fast-track carbon budget in 2023.”
I have no idea what the phrase “satellites fire emissions” means but I’m sure it’s all factual and impervious to criticism or questioning. What I’m not so sure about is how we all survived 2023 with that carbon sink collapse and how we still have any vegetation if said vegetation was basically not absorbing any CO2 for a full year.
So, to recap the latest in climate science perversion, carbon sinks are great but they shouldn’t be used in the place of active emission reduction because that’s cheating. Also, there’s double cheating because last year carbon sinks were clogged and didn’t drain a lot of carbon dioxide. Now, how does this square with the brand new global carbon market mechanism agreed at COP29? Well, it doesn’t. And it couldn’t. What we have here are two groups of people competing for the same trough, and there is not enough swill for all of them. It must be that carbon sink collapse.
It’s quite likely that the competition is yet to heat up in the coming months. As the new global carbon market begins operation, I see more scientists writing papers warning about the dangers of using rainforests, the taiga, and the jungle as cheat sheets instead of being diligent about cutting oil and gas consumption, and shame on them.
There is also a possibility that the carbon sink collapse will repeat or extend, or however they want to phrase it, although in fairness the authors of that study mention that it might be a one-off occurrence — maybe they are wary of the possibility that someone has retained that middle school lesson about CO2 and plants and why the latter depend on the former. But there will be more papers coming out on the benefits of energy shortages and subsistence-level consumption, and maybe even a renewed push for climate lockdowns. Everyone’s got to earn a living, after all.
Meanwhile, governments will be too busy trading carbon credits and making sure they are the right kind of carbon credits to watch their populations and there will be a massive shock when these populations become louder about their priorities, which do not align at all with the governments’, at all. Just look at Romania. That was one narrative boil puncture that’s not going to heal soon.
P.S. Money really is tight.