please empty your brain below
Brilliant!

NLW | 12.02.12 - 7:01 a.m. | #

Myself and my 29 Australian friends have just offset 343590kg of our carbon-based guilt.

Tom | 12.02.12 - 10:56 a.m. | #

so, there's no need to prove you're going to the Olympics? Hmmmmmmmm

disgruntled | Homepage | 12.02.12 - 11:29 a.m. | #

I couldn't help wondering if the reference to women's basketball was tongue in cheek......

NLW | 12.02.12 - 12:02 p.m. | #

It's all about making the right kind of noises, isn't it?
I'll never forget driving back from Weston-super-Mare, one night a few years ago, and pulling into a petrol station on the A30 or A303 for a wee.
It was a BP petrol station. They actually had taped birdsong playing in the toilets. Yes, really. The nerve of some people!!!

RogerW | 12.02.12 - 1:33 p.m. | #

One needs to look carefully (and suspiciously) at (any of) these carbon offseting schemes - in many cases they are just destroying 3rd world habitat and making it into a unsustainable monoculture.

Blue Witch | Homepage | 12.02.12 - 1:40 p.m. | #

Well, that's all lovely, then. Thank you, BP, for lifting the veil of cynicism from my eyes and making me realise that some companies really do deeply care about the world they live in, and can see beyond their PR department and bottom line.

swirlythingy | Homepage | 12.02.12 - 3:27 p.m. | #

Very well put, this is corporate greenwash at its finest.

BP made US$386.46billion in 2011, and spent only US$2billion on renewables, mostly on biofuels which are anything but renewable and have a higher lifetime CO2 footprint than fossil fuel oil.

a.g. | 12.02.12 - 6:06 p.m. | #

It's all pointless tail-chasing, isn't it. We know it's a pathetic PR ploy; they know that we know; we know that they know that we know, etc etc.

Great Aunt Annie | 13.02.12 - 3:28 a.m. | #

I wonder , if you don't need to prove you have tickets, if we could get it go viral. That video of the Texan guy who shot the kids PC with a colt 45 because of what she said about her Dad on Facebook got 14million hits in few days.

Imagine if we could get the same number of people to sign it ..

Hey BP would break the record in a big way!

Jon Allen | 13.02.12 - 5:19 a.m. | #

It would be funny if it went viral and they ended up wondering how 8 million spectators turned in to 20 million.

I do wonder why when they make so much profit they don't just annonce that they will pay to offset all of the carbon emissions.

Barry | 13.02.12 - 7:44 a.m. | #

DG, I normally find you're bang on the mark about this kind of thing, but here I think you've missed the point somewhat and are making something out of nothing. It doesn't matter whether your individual allocation is the same as your emissions, but that the total offset is the same as the total emitted. This is what averaging is all about.

The point is that they need:

1) A large enough number of users from each country, and
2) The distribution of users within and between countries to be similar to that of their weighted average.

If these are satisfied (and with 8000 already signed up, I'm sure 1 will be, 2 is another matter...) then they will offset the correct amount of CO2 for all the people who sign up.

Having said all that, I completely agree with the other point you make - I'm sure £1m could be spent elsewhere in BP to reduce emissions far more (and is a triflingly small sum for them anyway), but then that wouldn't look as good on a poster...

Please don't take this the wrong way, I am a massive fan of your blog, and if anything I'm doing this to boost the Count!

statistics grumbler | 13.02.12 - 11:32 a.m. | #

I don't believe any data that suggests a coach emits less CO2 per passenger than a train. Whats the betting this is based on average loadings (with a lot of off peak trains being empty). But, of course, for the Olympics the trains will be heaving. The coaches cannot get any more than 100% full, so they will aly on more coaches.

Ian Brooker | 13.02.12 - 12:53 p.m. | #

Dear statistics grumbler,

If the pre-calculated average were accurate, then there shouldn't be a problem. However BP's average is solely the result of informed guesswork, and won't be accurate.

It could be accurate, if they asked a few simple questions about location, events and transport, but BP don't seem to be interested in any form of precision.

As for the number of users, it's taken five months to get 8000 signatories, so I wouldn't hold out much hope of the final sample being either representative or balanced.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 13.02.12 - 7:22 p.m. | #

The biggest problem is that you can't compensate co2 from fossile fuel by planting trees or anything similar because the planted trees will burn or rot (and thus emit all co2 they have taken up) many times faster than the 100 000 years it takes nature to produce petrolium.

The only climate neutral way is to compensate in a way that lasts equally long to the time it took to produce the co2 emitting fuel you use. For example growing trees and using wood as fuel is climate neutral.

As there is no known ways to for example grow trees that will live for 100 000 years there is no way to compensate for petroleum usage. Tough luck BP.

MiaM | 14.02.12 - 4:52 p.m. | #











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