Carbon Offset Payments

[Greta]

Is it time those of us that rack up some high mileages in our Classic Cars begin making voluntary Carbon Offset payments?

Very roughly a medium sized petrol car contributes about 0.5 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere every 1000 miles we drive - at current rates of offset that equates to about £7.50 - £10 ... or very approximately 1 pence / mile. Given the other costs we happily incur indulging our driving pleasures, fuel, oil, insurance, parts, labour, polish even ... this doesn't seem too onerous a "tax" !

What do forum members think? Given the recently announced "Climate Emergency" should we begin to voluntarily make payments ( before they are imposed upon us ) ... or just carry on regardless?

There are several schemes already running should you have a urgent need to salve your conscience - but I wonder whether it would be fun to pair with a UK charity to contribute towards our own initiative. Canlet Forest Park anyone?

Everyones six penno'thworth welcome.

Nuala

[RogerH]

I like your idea but sadly paying a tax does not remove the carbon.

 When the likes of China, India,Russia and USA start to improve then perhaps there may be hope.

Also the stupid South Americans slashing and Burning their way to death. 

 

All this palaver was being looked at in the early 60's. As a young teenager I wold be seen most week-ends sticking flyers to cars wipers warning of the impending disaster.

I wonder what happened to David and Brian Liddiard

 

If our carbon tax was sent to SA pr Madagascar for the locals to improve their farming methods then that would be something.

 

Roger

[DeTRacted]

CO2 is plant food - the small increase in atmospheric level (.0003% to .0004%) seems to be one factor responsible for increased 'greening' and higher crop yields.  I see no problem in feeding some trees as I drive around.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of-rising-atmospheric-concentrations-of-carbon-13254108

 

[richy_rich]

Didn't Club Triumph do this for one (or maybe all?) of their 10CRs?  I'm pretty sure there was something about it when I went on one years ago..

[zetecspit]

2 hours ago, richy_rich said:

Didn't Club Triumph do this for one (or maybe all?) of their 10CRs?  I'm pretty sure there was something about it when I went on one years ago..

RBRR 2008 I believe. Wasn't repeated (unless I missed something)

 

Back then the payment went towards a few projects in Africa, more efficient stoves, human powered water pumps and suchlike. Not sure how that offset the 100 cars each doing 2000 miles...(probably 150 tones of CO2 at a rough guess)

[RedRooster]

Go have a nice cup of tea and lie down then worry about something else when you wake up.

Driving your Triumph will make no difference at all to the climate but i am happy to take your mileage contribution via a bit coin site i have just set up, perhaps you can get your friends to contribute as well.

http:letsgetsgetrichfromtreehuggers.org

RR

[PeterC]

Nuala, My advice would be forget offsetting, but save the cash towards an e-car and solar panels. Peter

 

Old cars with their carbon-rich consumption and noxious exhausts are low-hanging fruit for polticians under pressure to "do something about climate change". A ban is possibe by politicians coming under pressure by for example Extinction Rebellion. ER wont go away, because they know they are right....and so do we if we are honest. ER promote local lifestyles: agriculture, manufacturing, and end to global trade and most certainly flights. When their extreme action becomes widely accepted as necessary we dont know. But the science of cc shows accelerating icecap melting, more confidence that floods, droughts and hurricanes are casued by cc, and a huge concern about the trigger point ofr runaway global heating driven by subarctic and subsea methane deposits. ER are right, cc is an existentail threat like we have never had to address before, acting decades ahead to head off disaster.  I have enjoyed the TR for 40 years but the time is nigh when it will have to go.....before its driven off the road by public opprobium.

Peter

 

[Hamish]

I thought our classics were pretty good when looked at whole life. ?

my 1959 tr3a should have been about 3 or 4 cars by now.  it must take considerable energy to melt it down each time and we have saved on that ?!

[Nick Jones]

5 minutes ago, Hamish said:

I thought our classics were pretty good when looked at whole life. ?

my 1959 tr3a should have been about 3 or 4 cars by now.  it must take considerable energy to melt it down each time and we have saved on that ?!

This. And they don’t do many miles in the grand scheme of things.

Also, I have a deep distrust of carbon trading schemes. Many are thinly disguised wizard-wheezes to help the stinking rich get richer whilst pretending to save the planet.

Plant trees.... nature’s own solar-powered carbon-capture devices, but slow, so many are needed.

[PeterC]

Planting trees ....but where?  Globally, fertile land is being degraded by irrigation ( salt build up), ploughing ( sediment wash-off), and contstruction. So the growing human population has less and ever less land for crops. If we all become veggies then that land area could just about support this century's population growth, but it leaves no room for trees. More likely trees will be cut down to grow crops. 

Peter

 

[PeterC]

On 5/5/2019 at 8:27 AM, Hamish said:

I thought our classics were pretty good when looked at whole life. ?

my 1959 tr3a should have been about 3 or 4 cars by now.  it must take considerable energy to melt it down each time and we have saved on that ?!

Yes I agree. But it is a sophisticated argument for poltiicians faced with demands to do something about aerial pollution and cc. It may be they choose to ban the sake or bequeathal of any vehicle over say 20 years old...........the car dies with its owner. Who knows. But cc-driven weather events are increasing and business as usual will not be acceptable to a young population exerting its vote.

Peter

[2.5piman]

Hello Greta,

I wish No was a much longer word so it would have more impression.

There is no climate emergency, even the IPCC do not claim that.

Alec

 

 

 

[PeterC]

1 hour ago, 2.5piman said:

 

There is no climate emergency, even the IPCC do not claim that.

Alec

 

 

 

12 years looks like an emergency to me:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report

Peter

 

[zetecspit]

Sadly teh "experts" have got form with these sorts of warnings. When I started teaching science 30 years ago (ouch) "global warming" was all the rage, and we were expected to teach how coastal towns would soon be under water and other such stuff. And the timescale was 15-20 years. ANd it hasn't happened. 

In fact it all went quiet as I suspect the scientists, and worse, pseudo scientists, had to come up with something more realistic. Now we have a CC superstar from Sweden, and it has rallied the troops, and given the CC people another chance to make a case. But it will be foolish to put timescales or be too unrealistic. All it does in encourage trump and those who deny CC at all. Very counter-productive. 

I guess the big problem is all the models/theories etc are just that, and they are completely untested. Hopefully accuracy of the models is improving, but I wouldn't bet a dime on their predictions.

[PaulAA]

2 hours ago, 2.5piman said:

Hello Greta,

I wish No was a much longer word so it would have more impression.

There is no climate emergency, even the IPCC do not claim that.

Alec

Best just to wait and whistle, then.  By the time it is a 'real' emergency, CC will be somebody else's problem.  Do you have children or grandchildren, Alec?  It is, after all, their future.

I share Nick's cynicism of carbon trading schemes - they do look like a simple conscience appeaser that clever whizzes can make a packet from.  However, whether it's an emergency or not, the question is what this generation is doing to prevent it worsening.  Trump-style head-in-the-sand denial would be shameful, no?

Paul

[PeterC]

6 minutes ago, zetecspit said:

Sadly teh "experts" have got form with these sorts of warnings. When I started teaching science 30 years ago (ouch) "global warming" was all the rage, and we were expected to teach how coastal towns would soon be under water and other such stuff. And the timescale was 15-20 years. ANd it hasn't happened. 

In fact it all went quiet as I suspect the scientists, and worse, pseudo scientists, had to come up with something more realistic. Now we have a CC superstar from Sweden, and it has rallied the troops, and given the CC people another chance to make a case. But it will be foolish to put timescales or be too unrealistic. All it does in encourage trump and those who deny CC at all. Very counter-productive. 

I guess the big problem is all the models/theories etc are just that, and they are completely untested. Hopefully accuracy of the models is improving, but I wouldn't bet a dime on their predictions.

How do you propose to do the test? wait for 2Cwarming and see if hundereds of millions starve/drown/succumb to disease?  I'm all for experiemental tests of theory but never with our climate.

The basic theory is sound. The Tyndall effect has been known for 200 years, the CO2 rise in atmosphere measured to high precision, and the heat budget between atmos and sea is now known. The oceans will keep expanding for hundreds of years even with the ca1 C warming we have at present. Further CO2 means the rate of expansion will accelerate. And to thermal  expansion we must add water run-off form melting icecaps, also known to be accelerating.

If you have science degree you should know that science is not about certainty its always about probabilties. And those predicted probabilties pointing to accelerating sea level rise, increasing frequency of fllod, drought, hurricane are all being substantiated by real data.  30 years  ago the time course was uncertain and you quote an outlier rate of sea level rise. With 30 years more data, and better data and analyses, the time scale is now much better defined, unless runway cc from methane deposit release happnes , and that is a huge unknown and a huge risk. No scientist should ever suggest we should run the risk because science is imperfect.

Peter

 

[Nick Jones]

I suggest that there has in fact been a climate emergency for about 30 years now.  I also suggest that nothing significant will be done until the shit is already in the fan.  Mind you, that might be quite soon (years to decades max).  We are already close to the point where parts of the world (just a few at present) gets perilously close to a wet-bulb temperature of 35ºC (that is a combination of temperature and humidity - for example 46ºC @ 50%, but lower temperatures are just as deadly if the humidity is higher), which is too hot for even a healthy human to survive as the body temperature cannot be controlled.

https://robertscribbler.com/tag/wet-bulb-temperatures-35-c/

The scary thing though, as Peter has already mentioned, is the degree of momentum in the system, now very considerable.

The elephant in the room now, as ever, is population.  Mother earth is gearing up for a good old scratch at her "fleas" though......

[RedRooster]

Time for a good old fashioned war/ epidemic then to thin the populous?

RR

[PeterC]

35% rise in human population in the 25 years since 1992

http://www.scientistswarning.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Scientists-Warning-abstract.pdf

water resource down 25%.

Our grandchildren will spit on our graves.

Peter ( mine are borrowed )

 

[zetecspit]

5 hours ago, PeterC said:

How do you propose to do the test? wait for 2Cwarming and see if hundereds of millions starve/drown/succumb to disease?  I'm all for experiemental tests of theory but never with our climate.

The basic theory is sound. The Tyndall effect has been known for 200 years, the CO2 rise in atmosphere measured to high precision, and the heat budget between atmos and sea is now known. The oceans will keep expanding for hundreds of years even with the ca1 C warming we have at present. Further CO2 means the rate of expansion will accelerate. And to thermal  expansion we must add water run-off form melting icecaps, also known to be accelerating.

If you have science degree you should know that science is not about certainty its always about probabilties. And those predicted probabilties pointing to accelerating sea level rise, increasing frequency of fllod, drought, hurricane are all being substantiated by real data.  30 years  ago the time course was uncertain and you quote an outlier rate of sea level rise. With 30 years more data, and better data and analyses, the time scale is now much better defined, unless runway cc from methane deposit release happnes , and that is a huge unknown and a huge risk. No scientist should ever suggest we should run the risk because science is imperfect.

Peter

 

I am afraid I need to explain what my point was.

Too many people were promoting scare stories that have proved to be untrue. That means many many people will be saying that CC is nonsense, or at least do not take it seriously. So I would suggest those who made those outlandish predictions have made the situation worse. After all, if those men in white coats got it so wrong then, why should be believe them now?

It needed a less headline grabbing, but more honest approach 30 years ago. Then people would be more inclined to do something now...

[DeTRacted]

This:

https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/05/02/extinction-rebellion-and-climate-science/

[richy_rich]

How about something like this ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240

Quote

 We’re removing CO2 from the air and turning it gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Since we use zero-carbon electricity from sources like solar and wind to make our fuel, there are no net CO2 emissions when you use it.

 

[PaulAA]

10 hours ago, DeTRacted said:

This:

https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/05/02/extinction-rebellion-and-climate-science/

What about "this"?  Do you honestly consider the Fabius Maximus website to be a source of reliable scientific information?  Looks to me like another CCD comfort blanket.

[DeTRacted]

Perhaps you didn't read the article fully Paul?  They are pointing out that vigorous hand waving and ratcheting up the hype is contrary to the actual science as published by the IPCC and is doing the 'cause' a disservice. Do you then consider the IPCC not to be a reliable source?

[PaulAA]

Rob

I read it.  I am not qualified to question the reliability of reports the IPCC, but have in mind that it has long carried the stigma of being susceptible to political lobbying.

I question the message that Fabius Maximus carries because of its reputation for spinning an alt right viewpoint into whatever it reports.  But there again, we increasingly rely on sources that reflect and reinforce our individual viewpoints, so truly independent and untainted probably doesn't exist any more.

Back to your point.  As people more learned than me have pointed out, there is little exactitude in the interpretation and prediction of the actual process of CC and the effect on the planet.  But I'm happy to accept educated pessimistic supposition.  We've been through this with the farce of B--x-t and the accusation that the reason for believing the optimistic version is that the other side overstated the future risks.

The CCD lobby is powerful, comprising a large section of self-interested big business, minimal-govt supporters, 'populists' and other short-term visionaries, who are more than willing to dismiss active intervention as being 'leftist', fringe, baseless scaremongering.  A pliable and easily-led electorate is very much to their benefit... just look at the reporting of recent demonstrations in the Daily Telegraph and the dog-whistling that goes for reader comment below the article.

It is possible that CC predictions are overstated - I am not qualified to comment - but to dismiss them as exaggerations risks bequeathing a cavalier and wholly unforgivable legacy to our children and grandchildren.

Paul