this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Cambridge study says carbon offsets are not nearly as effective as they claim to be.

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 year ago (16 children)

All I've seen since carbon offsets became a thing is how a lot of the projects were either ineffective or outright scams. The idea itself doesn't incentivise the large carbon producers to actually reduce their emissions, but simply pay to say they are carbon neutral so they can slap it on their website for some positive pr.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Even if they worked, it's like someone breaking your arm and then paying the hospital bill and calling it a day.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No, it's nothing like that. Nature doesn't care if a given gram of co2 was recently released or not. It only cares about the sum total. If the carbon capture schemes actually did grab a gram for every gram released, and then keep it stored for at least a century,, that'd work fine.

It's just that they almost certainly don't. They're way too cheap for the best capture systems we have, and they're not necessarily sequestering that carbon to keep it out of the atmosphere for more than a few years.

We are almost certainly going to need actual carbon sequestration. We're too close to emitting too much already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

All the IPCC models assume massive amounts of sequestration, I believe

It's a necessity at this point, even if all fossil fuel use stops globally tomorrow

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