The founders still blame "woke" scientists for outing their scheme and doubting their "science." Of course, neither founders have any prior scientific or engineering experience. It's maddening talking them. I've met never anyone who is both anti-science but calls themselves scientists. Huh?
EDIT: I should add that they have pivoted to AI, as you of course expected.
Without a truly adversarial process (like, say, the US IRS), where there's a party that is actively incentivized to _find_ problems rather than to _not get caught overlooking_ problems, it is never going to drive quality beyond the bare minimum plausible deniability level.
Companies can keep doing what they do and pay off someone else on the other side of the world for the promise that this third party will do something to compensate for what the company is doing. This is never truly auditable and enforceable, and it doesn't need to be, the point is to have a compliance tick-box that you did your best to clean up your act.
They're just saddling someone else with that "debt", and much like with actual debt, usually it all ends up in a bankruptcy where none of that is ever recovered. Except it's worse with carbon credits where creative accounting is allowed from the start.
Just like the oil car that goes back and forth between the USA and Canada and somehow makes an investor money (duty drawback or “shuttle trade”).
Havoc•1h ago