Carbon Credits reach their true value!

I can hardly let the demise of the Chicago Climate Exchange go by without a note.

Didn’t I point out that if carbon trading was a free market, nobody would pay a cent?

Well, hail the triumph of the free market.

(Yes, a couple of weeks back, when the news came out that the CCX was closing, it did make my day.)

But as Steven Milloy points out the death of the US national carbon market has barely made a mention in the news.

How did the Green press react? Denial:

“[There are] no implications for the EU and UK,” Emilie Mazzacurati, head of carbon research for North America at Point Carbon, told BusinessGreen in an email.

No implications? None? And would they have said that if new markets had blossomed in, say, Japan or Brazil?

The market opened in Nov 2000, and as Milloy notes, with a red carpet future:

The CCX was the brainchild of Northwestern University business professor Richard Sandor, who used $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation to launch the CCX. For his efforts, Time named Sandor as one of its Heroes of the Planet in 2002 and one of its Heroes of the Environment in 2007.

The CCX seemed to have a lock on success. Not only was a young Barack Obama a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX, but over the years it attracted such big name climate investors as Goldman Sachs and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management.

Who would have thought? The man who would be president (and with support on both sides of Congress) knew about the CCX from the beginning, and a former VP made a giant smashing PR documentary in 2005. He and the IPCC conglomerate won Nobels. Yet in 2010 CCX carbon credits are worthless (and so, after years of abuse, are the peacely-Nobels).

Richard Santor, who founded it, still made nearly $100 million for his trouble. Who said the man-made-global-warming-team fight against big corporations? They are big corporations.

The ECX may soon follow the CCX into oblivion, however — the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. No new international treaty is anywhere in sight.

Business Week seems to be waking up to the potential shift here…

U.S. Carbon Trading Goes Up in Smoke

Buying and selling carbon permits in the emerging market designed to control global-warming pollution is no longer a career prospect in the U.S., though California is moving ahead with its own program.

Just three years ago, George H. Stein, a managing director at New York-based recruiter Commodity Talent, was seeing a brisk volume in calls from Wall Streeters looking to make a career switch. While oil traders were getting pilloried on Capitol Hill, a new line of work promised to deliver wealth and social benefits: buying and selling carbon permits in the emerging market designed to control global warming pollution. “There was such a great deal of interest in carbon trading,” recalls Stein.U.S. states were uniting to go on low-carbon diets. Companies were stepping up their own with targets. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that under a cap-and-trade plan, the U.S. market for the permits, which companies would need in order to emit CO2, could be worth as much as $300 billion by 2020. Today, with prospects for a federal cap-and-trade program dead and prices in voluntary carbon markets in the U.S. collapsing, “Carbon traders are calling to ask me what they should do now,” says Stein.

Energy trading consultant Peter Fusaro says he recently counseled a college grad looking to get into emissions trading to find a job on an oil and gas desk and bide his time until carbon comes back. “Carbon trading in the U.S.,” says Fusaro—”there’s no there there.”

The European Union’s carbon market, which has been operating since 2005, continues to grow. Trading volumes were up 8 percent in the third quarter compared with the same period last year. In the U.S., what activity there was is withering. The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCS), once billed as a Nasdaq for CO2, saw carbon prices drop to a nickel per ton before announcing on Nov. 17 that it would cease operations at the end of the year. CCS was founded in 2003 by Richard L. Sandor, an economist who’s been called the father of financial futures. Some 450 companies, including DuPont (DD), Honeywell (HON), and several utilities, signed legally binding contracts to reduce their emissions. Those who succeeded in cutting CO2 could sell their credits to others that were having a harder time complying with CCS emission targets.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported on Oct. 1 on the “collapse” of trading in another U.S. market, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a consortium of ten Northeastern states that joined together to cap and trade greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The RGGI’s stated goal: cutting utility emissions by 10 percent by 2018.

Carbon jobs are dying, too: Last year JPMorgan Chase (JPM) acquired carbon brokerage EcoSecurities for $206 million. It has since cut staff and pulled out of projects. “There’s not enough clarity to continue to be able to invest in the market robustly,” EcoSecurities Chief Executive Officer Paul M. Kelly said at a conference in May.

It’s not all gloom and doom, says Sandor: “The message continues to be that in the absence of federal legislation, a bottom-up approach … seems to be key.” California, the world’s eighth-largest economy, is moving ahead with its own cap-and-trade program. The state’s Global Warming Solutions Act envisions a reduction in greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020. On Nov. 17, Barclays Capital (BCS) announced it completed what it said is the first trade of carbon allowances under California’s program, in conjunction with power generator NRG Energy (NRG). Says Jason Patrick, the vice-president in charge of Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Carbon Markets group: “You’ve got to be adaptable and find business where it exists.”

The bottom line: The failure of U.S. climate legislation has derailed efforts to build a robust carbon trading market stateside. All eyes are now on California.

The original story at Business Week

H/t to Climate Depot

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No comments yet to Carbon Credits reach their true value!

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    It’s a pity that California can’t learn the easy way. So now we’re going to learn the hard way.

    If I knew how I could support myself for the next few years in some other state as well as I can right here, I’d be kissing my native home good by permanently. I’d have to sell my house for less than it was once worth but that’s nothing compared to watching the place you love go literally to Hell by its own hand. There’s already a demand that his nibs our new governor create a commission to monitor sea level rise and ocean acidity. That’s my tax dollars at work and play. And he hasn’t even taken office yet.

    I find myself hoping that as many people as possible lost as much money as possible when trading hot air went bust. I hope Al Gore lost millions. But if I know him at all, he figured out how to profit even from the collapse. I shouldn’t be vindictive I know. But I want a little justice out of all this.

    At least that carbon exchange monster is slain, hopefully forever.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    PS:

    Business that can run away will also beat it to the state line in a hurry.

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  • #

    Business will run… but it won’t be running to Australia.

    The carbon trading monster sure ain’t slain here.

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  • #
    jim

    Hot air is a great business, there are still selling Co2 in Europe, it is a fabulous white collar crime to get into, most crime lords in Europe are stuck in it. Don’t forget Gore has already made his silver from the hoax. He would sell his daughters for a few sheckles. He is now available for hire again if anyone has another scam like biofuels that needs promoting. Just check on Craigs List under “Nobel Dummy for hire”.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Jim,

    I think Gore will have no trouble coming up with his own scam.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Jo,

    Have you any figures on what the cost has been to Australian business? It might be useful to put up that information if it’s available.

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  • #

    I’m going to order an extra few cords of old growth forest and have a celebratory fire.

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  • #
    Mark D.

    Since they still have a web site (they must have some money) Take a look at their “members”. Imagine who has lost $$ on the whole deal!

    http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/content.jsf?id=64

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  • #
    Adam Gallon

    “2) What are the benefits of joining?

    •Be prepared: mitigate financial, operational and reputational risks ”

    From their FAQs.
    Titter ye not missus!

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  • #

    As many can already see…many Governments including Australia’s are pushing hard for some type of Tax. One option, should one be implemented is just say NO! A carbon Tax will need to be implemented as a Act of Parliament – Acts require consent of the governed. On the ASF forum, we’ve been discussing what is the Commonwealth of Australia and what are your legal and lawful rights. The answers are surprising – Commonwealth of Australia is a company, and there are reasons for it – the same goes for the RBA, ATO and many more entities here in Australia. Here’s a link to the thread http://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21087

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  • #
    Siliggy

    Mark D.:
    November 29th, 2010 at 3:46 am
    What to do with all the inspired visionaries from each of those companies that got the companies involved? You would not want their ideas to be diluted into the rest of a successful business. So perhaps it is now operating as a “Douglas Adams Ark B corporation” for quarantine purposes. http://www.geoffwilkins.net/fragments/Adams.htm

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  • #
    Ross

    On the NZ news this morning there were a few interviews with people involved with Cancun. They are calling it a “progress” meeting with hopes of real movement in South Africa in 2011.
    With the collapse of the Chicago Exchange maybe there is a good pattern emerging here.

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    Amr

    No more trade in “indulgences”, what will the believers do now?
    Amr

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  • #
    Lawrie

    “Some good news for a change”. Apology to Dr. David Suzuki and his book by the same name.(a good read BTW with some good stories of pragmatic sustainability) He wrote it before he went bonkers.

    Getting back to the good news coming out of the Victorian elections. The Greens did not win any seats, they were expected to win three or four, and they may lose a seat in the Upper House. The Australian Greens may have reached their zenith. As one Labor MP said ” in the past two years in my phone arounds not one person has mentioned Climate Change”. Our idiotic Prime Minister on the other hand has stated her great dream for 2011 is to introduce a carbon price as quoted on 2GB news this hour.

    She seems the sort of person who would stick her hand in a wood chipper and wonder why it hurt.

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  • #
    wes george

    This morning, Radio National (the Australian state-operated propaganda service) reported that modeling shows electric rates across the nation will rise by 100% by 2015. Why? Because of “carbon uncertainty” inducing delays in power production upgrades, presumably to renewables.

    The solution to high energy prices, according to the brain-dead “expert” Radio National interviewed…. (swallow that gulp of coffee before continuing)—

    1. Pass the carbon tax quickly so that the energy-related industries can began to rake in heaps of new capital generated by carbon trading. Those who oppose Julie’s carbon tax are holding up progress on lowering electric rates.

    2. Wealth Redistribution. Use the GST to fund anyone whose power bill exceeds more than 20% of their income.

    The level of delusion at the ABC has risen to a new level of menace. As a democratic nation it’s not “sustainable” to have our national news network so disconnected from reality.

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    janama

    Sheesh – the coalition wins in Victoria so The ABC Drum leads with a story about Brumby!!

    They don’t get it do they.

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  • #
    Lawrie

    Found this in Business Spectator today:

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/satellite-farming-land-clearing-vegetation-pd20101123-BG49H?OpenDocument&src=kgb

    Farmers don’t like being spied on by city based Greens. The Greens and their Labor mates are fast alienating large sections of the community. Staunch Labor man and ex boss of the Maritime Union, John Coombes, who once prevented nuclear waste being loaded on Sydney docks is now supporting nuclear power. Why? John now owns a property soon to be adjacent the site of a wind farm. City green now farmer wants a change. Remarkable.

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  • #
    Colin Henderson

    Is AGW a terrorist plot (perhaps by Osama Bin Laden) to collapse the industrialized world? If so it has been working brilliantly! The collapse of the AGW scam is already too late for many Nations; in Canada our Senate saved the day, while in my province of Ontario our premier Dolton McGinty has destroyed (greened) our manufacturing sector, all in the name of a no brainer “snake oil ” scam.

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  • #
    Siliggy

    wes george:
    November 29th, 2010 at 7:49 am
    “2. Wealth Redistribution. Use the GST to fund anyone whose power bill exceeds more than 20% of their income.”
    More unintended consequences?
    If this ratio cannot be acheived by quiting work or negative gearing then floodlights on the roof will illuminate the neighbours solar panels.

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    John from CA

    Hi Joanne,
    I thought you’d appreciate a tip to this blog post on Climate Etc. if you haven’t seen it already:
    http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/26/skeptics-make-your-best-case/#more-1212

    Best,
    John from CA

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  • #
    David Burgess

    Lawrie@16:

    The tendency to apply ones own interests to election results should be avoided.
    . Rising water costs(no dams, desal plant)
    . Water shortages (no dams)
    . Rising electricty costs(wind)
    . dysfunctional road traffic(conversion of 30% of the road network to bicycle lanes)
    . dysfunctional public transport
    . dysfunctional hospital system

    With a bullet list like this, it hard to imagine greens or a green govt getting votes.

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    Bulldust

    It’s worth looking at a piece in The Australian which speaks of the relative costs of various power generating technologies. Needless to say wind, solarPV etc don’t get a look in, and the cheapest alternatives are mostly fossil-fuel based with the one obvious exception of nuclear:

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/emission-reductions-are-not-blowin-in-the-wind/story-fn59niix-1225962376534

    I refer back to the quote from UN IPCC secretary general Yvo de Boer:

    “I have never known a credible emissions reduction without nuclear power”

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  • #
    Grant (NZ)

    OT
    Chilly Winter

    This article seems to be deficient in that it does not attribute the record cold to global warming.

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  • #
    Siliggy

    Grant (NZ):
    November 29th, 2010 at 11:08 am
    While the UK suffers many all time November cold records being broken the BBC is quick to point out that some other place has….Almost broken a warm record….nearly…with hail…Oh and then it will snow!
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/news/newsid_9219000/9219908.stm

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  • #
    Rereke Whaakaro

    Jim # 4

    Hot air is a great business, there (sic) are still selling Co2 in Europe

    The European ETS exists within its own bubble, and is quite separate from the Kyoto protocol, in fact, it started a full year before the Kyoto Protocol was signed.

    Each nation within the European Union (EU) has a National Allocation Plan (NAP).

    These plans are mandated by Brussels. For our American friends, this is like Washington passing the Cap and Trade legislation, and then setting targets for each of the continental U.S. states.

    European Unit Allowances (EUAs) – carbon credits – are allocated to physical installations within the Member State’s NAP.

    EUAs were intended to be backed by Kyoto carbon units (known as AAU’s), but that was only to permit “currency exchange” between EU and non-EU countries – the EU can operate its ETS without the rest of the world tagging along.

    The EU maintains a separate registry that holds information in addition to the minimum required by the UNFCCC registry. The major differences are that each allocation is identifiable – the EU knows them by name – and every transaction between trading entities is recorded and checked for any irregularities. In effect, a full audit trail of all transactions is kept. (Big brother is watching you).

    I have to say that most of the financial scams associated with carbon (like the CDM scam in China, and the REDD scam in Brazil) were based on AAU’s.

    The only scam of note in the EU ETS was when companies were buying EUA’s in countries that did not have a consumption tax (GST or VAT), and then were selling them again in countries that did have a consumption tax. The trades were all set up and executed electronically, at close to the speed of light, so the traders could make off with the consumption tax money before the tax authorities were aware of what was happening. The EU fixed that by zero rating EUA’s.

    If an EUA is transferred outside of the EU, it must be converted to AAU’s (at the going rate), and the EUA dies, never to be resurrected.

    European countries that are not members of the European Union, like Iceland, can elect to trade through the European registry.

    Perhaps that is where the New Zealand and Australian ETS’s will end up if the Kyoto patient is DOA at Cancun. But I sincerely hope not – the Euro is fast becoming a basket case.

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  • #
    Ross

    I read that one of the disclosures in the latest Wikileaks “doc.release” shows the USA were “investigating” some people in the UN. I wonder if it included the IPCC ??

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    GAZ

    I bet that some Australian superannuation funds and other organisations lost money there, having invested in carbon.

    Would be a good investigative journalism story (if we still have any). It will need some resources to research it.

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  • #
    Rereke Whaakaro

    Ho hum – no drones today – all hitchhiking to Cancun …

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  • #
    Mark D.

    silligy @ 11 “B Ark”

    Good one, I hope it launches soon……

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  • #
    Bernd Felsche

    Rereke Whaakaro:
    November 29th, 2010 at 12:17 pm:

    The EU is indeed a basket case.

    4000 Million Euros vanish from the EU budget annually says UK MEP Nirj Deva in an interview with Russia Today.

    That interview follows closely on the heels of UK MEP Nigel Farage’s speech that takes a blow-torch to the seats of the EU bosses which closed with:

    It’s even more serious than economics because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.

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    wes george

    So True, Rereke. So True…

    Back in the day, it was fun being a skeptic. A post like this would have generated plenty of outrage amongst the true believers who would have issued delusional comments which we could then deconstruct to unveil their utter ignorance and irrationality in public…Really offering Jo’s readers an interesting dialectic.

    Today, not so much enthusiasm for End-Of-The-World-By-Bad-Weather left among the public. Even the true believers safely tenured in their ivory towers won’t lift their heads above the peer-reviewed parapet any more. And the climate no-hopers left in Parliament are living on borrowed time, even if they don’t know it. One day they’ll wake up in a Centerlink queue and ask, “Well, How Did I Get Here?”

    Sign of the times: Greens couldn’t even win a single seat in Victoria. The End is truly near. Our ABC and Green politicians have only mistaken who will be the real victims of the AGW catastrophe.

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  • #
    Rereke Whaakaro

    Absolutely off topic, but … It would seem that the CRU are not the only people with leakage problems.

    Somebody in the U.S. State Department has been a tad naughty: Cablegate

    I may be a little preoccupied for a while.

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  • #
    Rereke Whaakaro

    Bernd Felsche: # 31

    4000,000,000 Euros – nickels and dimes – petty cash. These people talk in terms of hundreds of trillions – and they mean European trillions, not the wimpy American ones. 🙂

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    manalive

    ….use the GST to fund anyone whose power bill exceeds more than 20% of their income….

    ‘….In the UK Fuel poverty is said to occur when in order to heat its home to an adequate standard of warmth a household needs to spend more than 10% of its income on total fuel use…..adequate warmth is generally defined to be 21°C in the main living room and 18°C in other occupied rooms during daytime hours, with lower temperatures at night, following the recommendations of the World Health Organization…’ (Wiki).

    Can’t you just see the ‘carbon cops’ prowling around private homes with clipboards and thermometers in hand checking whether people who claim to be ‘fuel poor’ are not cheating.
    This is not fantasy, some of us are old enough to remember the TV licence inspectors who would sneak around to catch non-licenced TV viewers — they seemed to enjoyed their work much like parking inspectors, but they were a plain clothes ‘Gestapo’.’

    And the ‘fuel poor’ is likely to include a far larger percentage of the population than imagined and probably will include me.

    Garnaut estimated that retail electricity prices will rise by around 40% with introduction of an ETS, while KPMG have predicted that prices will increase up to as much as 70% with emissions trading.

    Victoria, where I live, has one of the largest and best quality brown coal resources in the world which, at the current rate of use, will last at least 500 years.

    This is lunacy.

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    Bulldust

    Not only did the Greens not win a seat in Victoria, but the Libs are officially in power:

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/victorian-election-2010/ted-baillieu-to-lead-victoria-as-john-brumby-concedes/story-fn6wlyrv-1225962875286

    No doubt this is a further sign of the shifting politics in Australia. NSW will undoubtedly topple when their vote comes along in March, and you really wonder how long the Feds will last in the Rainbow Coalition, especially as Julia unveils her grand plans for the next two years.

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    cohenite

    Thank you Rereke for your exposition of EU corruption in respect of carbon trading; you are exactly right; the spivs and mafias are already up to their necks in the carbon racket. A couple of things about this racket need to be noted.

    The first is that most financial bubbles have at the very least a scintilla of actual or real asset underwriting. The financial crash based on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had some real estate at the end of the derivative line, even though it was worth much less than the debt it had generated.

    Any bubble and crash based on carbon trading will not only have no asset backing but it will already be a negative impost on any economy. The reason for this is that carbon trading is an asset based on the cessation or replacement of economically productive activity and assets. For example in Australia productive land will be turned over to sequestration and the generation of carbon credits; productive industries will be converted to carbon credits; both of these examples of a negative asset has a further negative impact in that the owners of the carbon polluting industry can use the carbon credits as seed money to resume the business in a saner economy overseas and the loss of the agriculture produce will mean the equivalent will have to be imported. All this will be based on the importation of foreign capital so our national debt will increase as well.

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  • #
    Llew Jones

    Bulldust @ 37
    November 29th, 2010

    “Not only did the Greens not win a seat in Victoria, but the Libs are officially in power:”

    Noticed a gripe from an unnamed Vic Labor MP, yesterday, in either the Age or Herald-Sun. He said, not once did one of his constituents ask him about climate change as he moved about his electorate during the pre election period. The MSM is telling us the broader electorate wants Gillard to take action on climate change. What a load of old garbage.

    Would be lovely to see the Coalition pay out Theiss and close down the Wonthaggi desalination project and build a decent sized dam in eastern Victoria. One can dream.

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    Insider

    Hey Guys, the UN-scammers are all painting Cancun as a failure. The reality is they are going to use sleight-of-hand to pull something through. So watch out. The scammers have too much invested in the carbon swindle to pull out now. EU would crash overnight.

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  • #
    Joe Lalonde

    Jo,

    Your askinging the wrong questions.
    The question should be: What vested interest does the United States have in wanted to keep science supressed and in a box? Why is it far easier to keep the global warming scam going than wanting to look for the actual scientific answers? Why is the ARGO program not willing to give raw data? With salinity changes on the surface of the oceans, this data is more vital than ever? Sea surface does not give the temperature of what is exactly happening under the oceans.
    If evidence suggests we are in a current Ice Age, what would be the reaction by other countries to the U.S.?

    Currency collapse and war!

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  • #
    David Burgess

    #40

    I have come to the conclusion that the cause of AGW is that radioactive Iodine in the milk, combined with toxins from decaffination (or is it depapitation?) that is in latte causes severe brain damage when sipped.
    Given a choice between conspiracy and stupidity, I will choose the latter.

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  • #
    Brian G Valentine

    This is sad news, because I invested my grandchildren’s college fund in Carbon Carbon Credits.

    [I continue to invest my own money in liquor, tobacco, and the promotion of gambling. Since I work for the DOE I’m prohibited from investing in petroleum, and I would gladly do so and sell short right now]

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Joe Lalonde @41,

    November 29th, 2010 at 9:25 pm

    Jo,

    Your askinging the wrong questions.
    The question should be: What vested interest does the United States have in wanted to keep science supressed and in a box?

    Joe, the answer is very simple. The current administration wants even tighter control over our lives than they’ve already achieved. The EPA is ramming through CO2 restrictions as fast as it can. A number of states are suing but Texas is being openly defiant and has asked a federal judge for an injunction against the EPA to stop implementation of their new regulations.

    None of this has anything to do with reality. They don’t care if CO2 is harmful or harmless. It’s about raw power.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Brian,

    Please don’t take this personally. But does the DOE actually do anything useful?

    They suck up one monstrous budget every year. They produce no energy. They have produced no energy alternatives. And we still depend on foreign oil.

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    Mark D.

    Rereke @ 35

    Thanks for reminding me that would be 5280,000,000 “wimpy” American dollars.

    I keep hoping to return to Europe and spend $ at par with € but I digress……..

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  • #
    pattoh

    Ahoy Roy @45

    I guess you may have seen the comments a couple of blogs back from Richard Courtney & “bill-tb” on hydrocarbons from coal.

    As it has developed , the technologies of our energy systems for mobile machinery are intrinsically bound to internal combustion engines. I am pretty sure I won’t live long enough to see a solar powered broad acre seed drill or a semi-trailer with masts & sails!!

    The fundamental framework of the global economy & therefore global politics is built on a dependence on hydrocarbon energy sources.

    If , as I believe, the anthropogenic component of atmospheric CO2 does prove to be an insignificant player in global climate, why would any country with coal resources choose to remain at the mercy of the existing global oil market? (especially considering those “who have the whip hand”)

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    Roy Hogue

    pattoh @48,

    If , as I believe, the anthropogenic component of atmospheric CO2 does prove to be an insignificant player in global climate, why would any country with coal resources choose to remain at the mercy of the existing global oil market? (especially considering those “who have the whip hand”)

    Not to just be flip about it but I give up. Why indeed would anyone do such a thing? I have no answer.

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    Brian G Valentine

    Roy #45

    I work to try to influence the DOE to produce useful basic science, I have had a little success.

    I tell the truth, I back up what I say, I’m ignored, dismissed, but generally trusted.

    There are a few like me in DOE but not as outspoken as I am. It hasn’t helped my career path but has eased my conscience

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  • #
    Mia Nony

    Speaking of plummeting value for dollar?

    The latest round of international climate talks beginning this week in Cancun will begin to formulate a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012.
    For obvious reasons, the mainstream media and IPCC don’t mention the scorecard for the Kyoto Protocol, which has been in place since February 16, 2005:

    Kyoto Protocol Scorecard

    Global Cost: $868 Billion

    Global Warming supposedly averted by 2050: 0.009°C

    CO2 Emissions Reduction: 0.3%

    Cost per 1°C of Global Warming supposedly averted by 2050:
    $96.4 Trillion

    Number of Delegates in Cancun aware of these numbers: estimated to be 0

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/11/kyoto-protocol-scorecard-cost-868.html

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    Roy Hogue

    Brian,

    Thanks for the honest assessment. It must be very frustrating.

    I suppose I should be glad that DOE is not a rule making outfit. The EPA is bad enough. But I keep hoping for something worth the huge budget they eat up every year.

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    wendy

    Osama Bin Laden Favors Kyoto Protocol, Environmentalism…….

    http://spectator.org/blog/2010/02/01/osama-bin-laden-favors-kyoto-p

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    wendy

    NOW I’VE HEARD EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!! – ‘Mass suicide now the only option left’ say Cancun scientists:-

    “…….As the latest round of UN-sponsored climate talks opened in Cancun today, ’scientists’ had a stark message on the threat posed by Man Made Global Warming. It is now so severe that only by exterminating ourselves like the vile parasite we are can we hope to leave a planet fit for habitation by generations as yet unborn, ’scientists’ say…….”

    READ MORE

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100065917/mass-suicide-now-the-only-option-left-say-cancun-scientists/#disqus_thread

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    Roy Hogue

    @62,

    It is now so severe that only by exterminating ourselves like the vile parasite we are can we hope to leave a planet fit for habitation by generations as yet unborn…

    I used to think the inmates were in charge of the asylum. But I just can’t get my mind around the kind of stupidity it would take to believe some of this stuff.

    It’s been a long time since I was a teenager and went through the boys locker-room before and after gym classes. But I remember what are known in reasonably polite terms as “short-arm contests”.

    All this escalating rhetoric has the earmarks of just such a short-arm contest. You’ve got to show up with a bigger, better problem and solution in order to be noticed. The real danger is that some of these fools (can I call them morons?) would actually do it if they could get away with it. [Jo, forgive my analogy. It fits too perfectly to ignore.]

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    Brian G Valentine

    Thank you, Roy. I can’t say whether DOE is doing a good job, because it’s not for me to say. All I can do is try to be the best I can be – to me.

    Off topic on the subject of being famous:

    Someone I work with accused me of being an AGW “contrarian.” Fair enough, sounds better than “denier” anyway.

    I asked her to name some more in the USA: She listed Lindzen, Christy, and Singer. In Canada? She named Tim Ball. In the Western Hemisphere? Could not name any more.

    In the world? The only two additional names she was aware of was Paul Riter and “that Nova woman from Australia.”

    So we conclude that Jo Anne Nova has international recognition among the US public.

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    wes george

    Dead Green Treaty Stinks Up The Room

    WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

    “What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time, the Great Green Delusion — that the United Nations process could deliver a treaty that would stop global warming dead in its tracks — was the hottest idea in town. Those who dissented were scorned and despised; the environmental movement and its army of press loyalists were the Great and the Good who knew how to solve the world’s problems. 120 country heads dropped whatever they were doing to catch a flight to Copenhagen: who could miss a historic moment like this?

    Now, a year and two high-profile international negotiating fiascoes later, the next scheduled meeting in the UN process in Cancun, Mexico isn’t getting nearly the same kind of attention. The New York Times will not even be sending a reporter for the full event; “What will there even be to cover in Cancun in terms of public policy or reader interest?” asks the chief climate reporter of the Washington Post. The BBC sent 20 reporters to Copenhagen; only one will go to Cancun.

    It is not just that the Cancun meeting isn’t expected to produce much. The whole UN treaty process is increasingly being seen as a colossal and humiliating blunder. Embarrassed environmentalists are finding it harder and harder to pretend that this particular parrot is only, as the Monty Python skit put it, ‘pining for the fjords.’ Worse, some of the smarter greens out there are realizing that the UN process is not going to disappear just because it is a dead end….”

    http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/11/28/dead-green-treaty-stinks-up-the-room/

    … you MUST read the whole article. Then read about what our brain-dead government is going for in Cancun:

    The Greens are pushing for carbon cuts of 25-40 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.

    The brawl comes as Mr Combet prepares to attend the Cancun climate change summit in Mexico… which is working on a regime to price carbon. Mr Combet and Senator Milne are co-deputy chairs of the committee, which is chaired by Julia Gillard.

    Senator Milne yesterday acknowledged that the issue of targets had been put aside because the committee was formed to make progress in thrashing out the mechanism for pricing carbon.

    “The government won’t move from 5 (per cent) and that’s why the targets are being set aside and that’s why we’re talking about looking at some sort of hybrid model or a tax which enables us to put a price on carbon but leaves the finalisation of a target to a globally negotiated binding treaty,” Senator Milne said.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/alp-greens-split-on-carbon/story-fn59niix-1225963570068

    Uh huh, that’s the ticket, “a globally negotiated binding treaty.” If Combet, Milne and Gillard weren’t so pathetically delusional the whole farce would be hilarious. Well, OK, it’s still hilarious.

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    Roy Hogue

    Brian,

    Jo seems to have had quite a bit of exposure here. And I’ve no idea how many from the U.S. follow this blog but there must be quite a few from the statistics Jo put up a couple of weeks ago.

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    Brian G Valentine

    The alarmist web sites routinely advertise for Jo Anne by mentioning the Skeptics Handbook.

    If they think it has no value, why mention it?

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    Roy Hogue

    Imitation and fear are the two most sincere forms of flattery.

    I just invented that but it’s true. Fear is a considerable complement to your enemy if you think about it.

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    Lean Mcgaffee

    Thoughtful article.

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