greenboyblog.com

All kinds of bits and pieces of news are floating around my brain. I’ve been zipping around the net picking up green thoughts.

Like billions go up in smoke every year - 40 billion dollars worth - as gas is burned off by oil producers in oil fields.

Nigerian kids watch gas flares at Shell oilfield - Elaine Gilligan Climate Justice

Abid Aslam reports on a World Bank study:

The practice, known as flaring, also hastens climate change by spewing some 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, says the study, billed as the first global survey supported by photos taken from satellites in space …

The report, commissioned by the World Bank and conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates that last year, 5.5 percent of global gas production, or 27 percent of U.S. consumption, was lost to flaring.

There was disagreement and disputes at the recent August 27 - 31 United Nations talks on climate change. Alister Doyle notes:

About 1,000 delegates at the Aug 27-31 U.N. talks set greenhouse gas emissions cuts of between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels as a non-binding starting point for rich nations’ work on a new pact to extend the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

“These conclusions…indicate what industrialized countries must do to show leadership,” said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, welcoming a compromise deal on the range of needed cuts.

“But more needs to be done by the global community,” he told a news conference at the end of the 158-nation talks. Many countries want to broaden Kyoto to include targets for outsiders such as the United States and developing nations.

Delegates agreed that the 25-40 percent range “provides useful initial parameters for the overall level of ambition of further emissions reductions.”

It fell short of calls by the European Union and developing nations for the range to be called a stronger “guide” for future work. Pacific Island states said that even stiffer cuts may be needed to avert rising seas that could wash them off the map.

Nations including Russia, Japan and Canada had objected to the idea of a “guide,” reckoning it might end up binding them to make sweeping economic shifts away from fossil fuels, widely seen as a main cause of global warming.

Politics is a pretty weird sport. Suppose you need a 80% reductive and you get 25 - 40%. Well I guess you could say 25 - 40% is a heck of a lot better than nada, nothing, zip, zero. So what’s a victory? And what’s a defeat?

The story continues:

Environmentalists also hailed the conclusions as a step in the right direction. “The road to Bali is clear but it’s time to switch gears,” said Red Constantino of Greenpeace.

“We have a clear message from most governments that they will take seriously” scientists’ calls for deep cuts, said Hans Verolme, climate expert of the WWF.

Kyoto binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a first bid to contain warming.

The United States has not ratified Kyoto, rating it too costly and unfair for excluding 2012 goals for developing states, and thus was not involved in Friday’s session.

Would the decision have been different if the polar bears had a vote?

Iceberg in Ilulissat fjord in Greenland - Michael Kappeler/Pool/Reuters

There’s a lot of questions about carbon offsets - doing something positive to account for all the fossil fuel energy you’re burning. You fly to the French Riviera and you pay somebody to buy some trees. There are questions about how accurately you can figure out the energy you’re using - the carbon calculator. There are questions about whether the companies are investing money in really efficient ways to fight the climate crisis. Where are the trees being planted?

The title of Alan Zarembo’s story for the L.A. Times is entitled: “Can you buy a greener conscience?“

He analyzes the attempts of the producers of Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” to offset the energy they burned making the film:

Co-producer Lesley Chilcott used an online calculator to estimate that shooting the film used 41.4 tons of carbon dioxide and paid a middleman, a company called Native Energy, $12 a ton, or $496.80, to broker a deal to cut greenhouse gases elsewhere. The film’s distributors later made a similar payment to neutralize carbon dioxide from the marketing of the movie.

It was a ridiculously good deal with one problem: So far, it has not led to any additional emissions reductions.

Beneath the feel-good simplicity of buying your way to carbon neutrality is a growing concern that the idea is more hype than solution.

According to Native Energy, money from “An Inconvenient Truth,” along with payments from others trying to neutralize their emissions, went to the developers of a methane collector on a Pennsylvanian farm and three wind turbines in an Alaskan village.

As it turned out, both projects had already been designed and financed, and the contributions from Native Energy covered only a minor fraction of their costs. “If you really believe you’re carbon neutral, you’re kidding yourself,” said Gregg Marland, a fossil-fuel pollution expert at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee who has been watching the evolution of the new carbon markets. “You can’t get out of it that easily.”

Uh-oh!

Speaking of inconvenient truths, check out the penguins on War, Iraq, and Global Warming.

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