Questioning Carbon Accounting For Lakes And Rivers

People are willing to set up a two trillion dollar global market to read carbon, but their carbon models are so primitive that giant 'oops' moments are now happening on a regular basis reports Joanne Nova. ¹ A Yale-led study in 2015 estimated that there are more than 3 trillion trees on Earth, about seven and a half times more than some previous estimates. Previously, the only global estimate was just over 400 billion trees worldwide, or about 61 trees for every person on Earth. The Yale study used a combination of appaoiches to reveal that there are 3 trillion trees—roughly 422 trees per person. ²

Then recently researchers reported that dryland biomass is 40 to 47% higher than previous estimates

Then recently researchers reported that dryland biomass is 40 to 47% higher than previous estimates, corresponding to 467 million hectares of forest that have never been reported before. This increases current estimates of global forest by at least 9%. ³ Trees are even growing on farms capturing 0.75 gigatons of carbon that no one noticed until last year. In 2014, Indian accountants discovered they'd missed nearly half the carbon given off from their lakes and rivers. ⁴ In 2015 an accounting error reduced China's emissions by twice Australia's output. ⁵ Welcome to carbon accounting games. Which other global 'free market' is based on a ubiquitous molecule made by life on Earth, produced in massive quantities in places where it's almost impossible to even measure accurately? Massive quantities go missing from the accounts of some large countries while smaller countries are expected to turn their economies upside down to cut one-tenth as much. ⁴

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Some things were never suitable for a 'free market' and CO2 is one of them

Humans are putting out less than 4% of total natural emissions of CO2, but obviously we don't even know what the natural emissions are—it's likely plus or minus forty percent. Carbon accounting is a guessing game. Joanne Nova sums this up well,”Scientists apparently can't predict where forests are right now, but weather patterns one hundred years from now, no problem. Some things were never suitable for a 'free market' and CO2 is one of them.” ¹ References

Joanne Nova, “Scientists discover an extra 5 million square kilometers of forest just like that,” joannenova.com, May 13, 2017

Kevin Dennehy, “Seeing the forest and the trees, all 3 trillion of them,” news.yale.edu, September 2, 2015

Jean Francois-Bastin et al., “The extent of forest in dryland biomass,” Science, May 12, 2017

Joanne Nova, “Oops, Indian carbon accounting adds lakes, rivers and changes tally by 42%. Who's bet billions of dollars on fudgy numbers?”, joannenova.com, May 6, 2014

Zhu Liu et al., “Reduced carbon emissions estimates from fossil fuel combustion and cement production in China,” Nature, 524, 335, August 2015