Gore Refuses to take Personal Energy Ethics Pledge

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
So buying carbon credits is like buying indulgences?

Yes, it is. I believe I made that comparison quite explicit for people. Thank you for showing me that I shouldn't assume the intelligence of my audience. MtG might be able to correct the possible misconception (if we can get him away from cute metaphors) but for now I don't see how it does anything to help the enviroment other than to make the person buying it feel better about their so-called gluttony.

You must work at Wal-Mart for a reason.

How astute of you to deduce the fact that I did in fact work for Wal-Mart for a reason! That philosophy education must serve you so well in life.

[Elok]

Come to think of it, MtG, you weren't around when I posted about High Altitude Wind Power, were you? What's your take on that: impractical, plausible-but-a-long-way-off, irrelevant, other?

[Fake Boris]

Hello, DinoDoc

You're priceless.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by kittenOFchaos
In Britain we can choose to purchase our electricity from renewable sources only, Gore should do the same.

He does. He pays extra to give energy which is "green."

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
MtG might be able to correct the possible misconception but for now I don't see how it does anything to help the enviroment other than to make the person buying it feel better about their so-called gluttony.

It's all in the trading mechanism. If you follow the same pattern as with NOx, VOC, SOx and similar offsets, the amount of offsets you need to purchase to permit your activity depends on the location of the offsets (less important with CO₂ than with pollutants) and a partial credit.

For example, to permit a use which results in 1000 tons per day of CO₂, you may have to purchase off-site offsets for 1250 tons per day. Or if you're doing a boiler plant upgrade/capacity change, you can provide your own offsets via the CO₂ sources you are taking out of service, but you only get 90 or 90% credit for them, so you have to have a more efficient overall plant, or make up the difference with additional purchased offsets.

Depending on how you set up your trading system, you can limit emissions growth, freeze it, or even force reductions. OR, alternatively, if you're a market forces type rather than a godless commie, you create revenue opportunities for activities which are net carbon absorbers.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by General Ludd
I don't know what buying a carbon off set means, but it's the stupidest concept I've heard of in a long time.

It's grim when I have to agree with Dinodoc, but church indulgences indeed.

It is kind of like indulgences though mathematically they should work. Carbon off sets mean that if you pollute then you can make up for it by doing things which remove an equal amount of pollution from the environment. For example plant a few thousand trees, pay into a fund to have a coal power plant replaced with something cleaner, etc... Care has to be taken to make sure that carbon is actually removed in order for it to be a proper offset though.

[Zkribbler]

So buying carbon credits is like buying indulgences?

Buying an indulgence means you're going to Heaven

Buying a carbon credit means you're going to Hell

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Elok
Come to think of it, MtG, you weren't around when I posted about High Altitude Wind Power, were you? What's your take on that: impractical, plausible-but-a-long-way-off, irrelevant, other?

I'm more of a "down to earth" type, no pun intended. What I'm doing now is consulting on project development and financing, which forces a somewhat dinosaurian approach.

Lenders are essentially like Roman legionnaries (whether it's project finance types or utility bond markets, the only real difference is the banner under which they impose their brand of order), and they drive the commercial marketplace.

I think a lot of HAWP promoters are scammers or misguided R&D engineering geeks with no concept of real world operations. Tthe concept is valid in certain applications, but the company promotion is much more pie-in-the-sky, with impossibly cheap projected generating costs, fallacious assumptions that R&D efforts scale up to commercial sizes, and ignorance of load balancing and infrastructure needs.

In situaitons where you have a niche need - like a small village in the boonies with no cost effective fuel/wire infrastructure, or other isolated loads, it may well become cost effective.

In a heavily industrialized, major urban setting, its virtually impossible to be a significant player.

[Victor Galis]

But, if you feel the need to buy indulgences, doesn't this necessarily disincentivize evil acts? (You're adding a real cost to acts that had only "guilt" before.)

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
I think a lot of HAWP promoters are scammers or misguided R&D engineering geeks with no concept of real world operations.

Yeah...I kinda assumed that when they could even raise the $ 3 million to set up a test generator. If this system had any potential to work, investors would be throwing money at it.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Thomas Jefferson

Frenchie loving POS.

Teh Reagan on Mt. Rushmore Instead

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Yeah...I kinda assumed that when they could even raise the $ 3 million to set up a test generator. If this system had any potential to work, investors would be throwing money at it.

Lack of investors doesn't necessarily mean the technology won't work. Getting R&D venture capital when you're at least decade or two (if everything goes right) from commercialization at a scale to give an appropriate return on the venture cap is essentially impossible. Venture capitalists are generally looking for around a five year time period to commercialization, and a very high return in that five years - hurdles that a lot of time can't be met by anyone, but the venture guys just find something else to put their money in, or they hold out for what they perceive to be a good enough deal.

There's also a culture clash - a technology may work fine, just not with a particular set of people trying to push it forward. If I've got 3 million to set up a pilot project, I know it's really going to be 6 mill and two years late by the time they finish tweaking it and ****ing around with it to get everything "just right" - and if I force them to adopt the sort of business and financial governance needed to keep them on the program, I'll run into foot dragging, attempting to go around my back, and a lot of wasted energy because the dumb bastards who don't get it insist among themselves that I don't get it.

Meanwhile, they'll be whining about all the "uncompensated time" (that's why it's called R&D, baby), claiming all sorts of costs they have into the technology (uh, "deferred compensation" to yourselves at the level of corporate officers of profitable companies 100 times your scale doesn't count, guys), and how the money people are screwing them over (hey guys, who wants to spend whose money in this deal? When I spend the money and you sign the checks from your account, then come talk to me about who's getting screwed).

In case you hadn't guessed, I've been having a few of these conversations lately.

[Dinner]

In any event so what if the guy uses a lot of electricity since all of the electricity he uses is green meaning non-GHG creating. This is just a red herring thrown about to make people like DinoDoc feel like their lost cause isn't as lost as it seems.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
So Inhofe doesn't care about climate change...he only cares about Gore caring about climate change?

He's claiming Gore is a hypocrite. DUH. You are the only person in this thread who didn't immediately perceive this obvious fact.

[MichaeltheGreat]

"Posturing" is more like it. Claiming might imply some belief in the validity of the claim, rather than crafting a meaningless "pledge" which is fallacious on its face, to most anyone except the two-digit IQ half of the electorate which provides the bulk of the red state voting bloc.