[ResearchAtPlay]

Fantastic! This site provides an intuitive overview of carbon dioxide removal purchases sourced from six different market places and two registries. Metrics include carbon credit sales and deliveries, prices, names of suppliers and purchasers, and the method of carbon dioxide removal (e.g. direct air capture or biochar production).

I find this site useful to get an overview of the development of voluntary carbon markets and their recent rapid expansion. Voluntary carbon markets are fractured into several market places and registries, so getting an aggregate overview over all markets was somewhat difficult prior to discovering this site. Thank you for the submission!

[arcticbull]

I'm very surprised if they're able to actually get really good quality data on what constitutes removed carbon. Most carbon offsets for example are a scam, in the sense that one of the most common 'offsets' is for example paying people to not cut down trees - that they may or may not have been planning to cut down in the first place. There's no international standard or monitoring bodies, and the registries are generally incentivized to make the people paying them (industry) look good.

The whole concept is silly, we don't offset crime for instance. I can't just pay someone in advance to not punch someone so that I can do it.

Offsetting is just a way of propping up existing unsustainable business models in the eyes of ESG investors. It's greenwashing.

I'm not saying none of this is real, but I'm sure it varies dramatically and the data is probably epically unreliable.

Here's some write-ups from Greenpeace [1], NRDC [2] to the Center for American Progress [3].

[1] https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/50689/carbon-...

[2] https://www.nrdc.org/stories/should-you-buy-carbon-offsets

[3] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-cftc-should-rai...

[lumost]

As I recall, there are a variety of economical methods to remove carbon. In particular, olivine coating of beaches promises to be both cheap and effective.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90510254/ever-been-to-a-green-sa....

I do not see a world in which all carbon emissions are eliminated, but a net zero world seems to be close. An efficient means of offsetting individual carbon expenditures is necessary for this task.

[dools]

The the reason you can’t offset violent crime in the same way is that no amount of violence is acceptable but some amount of carbon emissions is acceptable.

Also in some cases damages are used to offset wrongdoing, especially in civil litigation which is a better comparison.

[gruez]

>Most carbon offsets for example are a scam, in the sense that one of the most common 'offsets' is for example paying people to not cut down trees - that they may or may not have been planning to cut down in the first place. [...]

>The whole concept is silly, we don't offset crime for instance. I can't just pay someone in advance to not punch someone so that I can do it.

Governments do something similar though: gun buyback schemes are basically the same thing. Sure, maybe that gun that the government bought would have been used to commit a crime, or it was held by a responsible gun owner who wouldn't have committed any crimes to begin with.

[hedora]

I thought the same thing, but none of the carbon sinks listed in the database are offset companies. They are all actually producing biologically stable physical chunks of fixed carbon.

Incidentally: We own some trees that we will not cut down, but that would not have been cut down by others.

There is a scam carbon offset site that will pay us for each year we don’t cut down an existing tree (if I remember right, it’s the biggest carbon offset market; can’t remember the name, but that’s not important, if you care, I’m guessing one of the articles in the comment I am replying to names and shames them).

Is there a tax efficient way for me to sell scam carbon offsets, then funnel the money into actual carbon capture businesses? How much would the brokers take?

(Or, better, is there a set of criteria that could be encoded into law to shut down the offset scam industry?)

[loeg]

Taking the site at face value, the claim is removal (not offsets). However, even at face value, the amount of carbon removed is far less than what has been sold.

(I agree that offsets seem unhelpful at best, just not sure it's worth deep diving on that when this isn't obviously about offsets.)

[conradev]

Is your critique of the current system or the idea in general?

Would you feel the same way if the voluntary markets became less voluntary with a true carbon tax?

The companies on that list capture carbon dioxide from the air as a service for money, and they would not exist or be scaling their operations without demand.

[version_five]

See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36190299

[gyudin]

So they are not even removing carbon from atmosphere? Huh

[n2parko]

appreciate the feedback! we built CDR.fyi to answer a very simple question:

how big is the CDR market today and are we on scaling at the pace necessary to achieve global climate targets?