Carbon Credits, Sinks and Hidden Agendas
some suggestions for discussion(c) 1999 by Stefan Thiesen, Ph.D., thiesen@uni-muenster.de The most recent COPs (conference of the parties of the Kyoto Protocol)have been dominated by discussions related to carbon sinks, carboncredits and trades in credits and certificates related to both. Being anindependent scientific observer, this strikes me as the mere attempt tocreate a new market - an effort that has little to do with climate protectionand sutainable development.Here I do not intend to get into the details of the COP discussions butinstead focus on the question whether or not the inclusion of carbon sinksis a legitimate approach at all. The first and possibly most obvious argument against the inclusion of sinks is simple scientific uncertainty. There is at this time no way to assessglobal and local carbon sinks quantitatively with the nessecary accuracy. The Carbon cycle is not yet fully understood. Apparent carbon sinks mayfor example turn out to merely be temporary pools for Greenhouse gasseswith delayed release, adding a buffer time to the system instead of long-term carbon storage.A second argument is equally simple and striking. What actually arecarbon sinks? Carbon sinks are long-term storages of carbon, whichincludes physical and biological examples, among them the ocean, oceanorganisms (plankton, fish, coral reefs), and the worlds forests.A typical question at hand is "Should a country be allowed to be creditedwith emission rights because it has a certain amount of forest cover?We should step back here for a moment and look at the Macroscale - theEarth as a whole - from an outside observers point of view. Mankind hascaused immense environmental changes to the Earth over the past 3000years. Massive deforestation (and therefore reduction of carbon sinks on aglobal scale!) has occurred for millenia, reducing formerly fertile regions to
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