Panel silent on CO2 goals
Group has touted efforts to make gathering green
By Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News
Published May 21, 2008 at 9 p.m.
which for months has touted its work to make the August event the greenest in history - won't release estimates of how much carbon dioxide the gathering will produce or its goals for shrinking those numbers.
CO2 is among the greenhouse gases widely blamed for global warming.
Such estimates are standard practice in the environmental world because they help guide the complicated work of measuring carbon emissions and determining how effective different techniques are at reducing emissions and what they will cost.
Colorado released its own Climate Action Plan in November. The plan is based on detailed calculations of how much CO2 the state generates and how much it can expect to reduce carbon levels by using fuel efficient cars and taking other steps - helping reduce global warming in the process.
But Democratic convention planners declined a request by the Rocky Mountain News for the information, saying the calculation of a carbon footprint for a political convention is too new and too complicated to be made public.
"One of the complexities of this is that we're doing this for the first time. There is a ton of estimation in there," DNCC spokesman Damon Jones said. "We don't want to put out any numbers that are misleading. To put out numbers that have no context would not be meaningful."
The convention has taken a high-profile stance on the issue, vowing to keep the event as "carbon neutral" as possible. It has invited state delegations to compete to see which can generate the least CO2. It also has pledged to reduce the waste generated by 85 percent and to use energy-saving laptops instead of desktop computers.
Determining the impact such efforts will have is not easy because measuring carbon emissions and reductions is a fairly new field. But experts say the math behind these greening efforts is as important as the activities themselves.
"If you're going to do carbon accounting, you have to have a baseline," said Pat Keegan, a former staffer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who leads the non-partisan Smart Energy Living Alliance. "You need a number. And if you really want to get credit - whether it's a credit you can sell, or whether it's credit for good publicity - you need to be willing to have some transparency."
Jones said that the committee will release a report after the convention.
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May 22, 2008
3:14 a.m.
Suggest removal
happymike44 writes:
I have been around a few people who have emitted a few ozone destroying gases.Maybe we can stop that too.
May 22, 2008
8:49 a.m.
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Scott writes:
Let see, my fellow dumocrats aren't going to release their carbon footprint report for the Denver lovefest because, "... too new and too complicated to be made public." Translation, "Man, are we ever burning up tons of carbon!"
You had better believe that if this "too new and too complicated" report had returned opposite results the Eco-Terror branch of the dumocrat party would be pasting it on every lamppost and publishing it every where.
Scott
May 22, 2008
9:43 a.m.
Suggest removal
drcoles writes:
Over 400 World Wide Prominent Scientists Dispute Man-Made Global Warming. See http://tinyurl.com/2dv6nz
May 22, 2008
9:51 a.m.
Suggest removal
Konyok writes:
Cub reporter Jerd Smith inadvertently underscores one of the greatest uncertainties in the climate change debate.
"Carbon footprints" are, at best, a point estimate. CO2 is quite stable and lacks a strong electromagnetic signature, so it's not really easy to actually measure CO2 emissions. In the simplest of cases it is possible to make a calculation. If you have an engine, you know how much fuel it burns doing a given amount of work and you can measure how much carbon is in the fuel then you can calculate how much CO2 is produced in the exhaust with a reasonable margin of error. However, with complicated input and output loops the error cascade becomes unmanageable.
The DNC committee is wisely withholding their estimates because it is extremely unlikely that they can do so with a margin of error less than, say, 50%. In other words, they can only wave their arms and say, hypothetically, we will emit somewhere between 50 and 150 tons of CO2. Jerd Smith and others will demand more "precise" numbers which nobody can honestly give.
May 22, 2008
10:26 a.m.
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Scott writes:
I still stand by my previous statement that if the numbers had come in really low (even with a ±50% margin of error) my fellow dumocrats would be trumpeting the news. Therefore, from the condescending statement "too complicated to be made public" and the SWAG statement "There is a ton of estimation in there" the only conclusion that I can come to is that the number is darn big and the Eco-Terror branch is to embarrassed to let the number out. A ±50% margin of error in a big number is still a big number.
Scott
p.s. SWAG: Scientific Wild A$$ed Guess
May 22, 2008
12:02 p.m.
Suggest removal
Konyok writes:
I think that you're right, Scott. They don't want to embarass themselves.
This also proves a good opportunity to start thinking about what those carbon footprint numbers really mean and how they could be used to implement either carbon tax or cap & trade scenarios.
May 22, 2008
3:41 p.m.
Suggest removal
Scott writes:
This one has been really quiet. I would have expected all of the granola eaters to be jumping in here "educating" us unwashed ones about the evils of carbon dioxide, global warming, how the DNC is justified in withholding the report, etc..
They must not be able to come up with a good line of B.S. What a pity ... NOT!
Scott