|
|
There is still billions invested in research, billions circling in carbon markets, and billions tossed as government subsidies. But there are a few less billion available now than there was before Christmas. Reality bites and Green Energy is left to face the music.
Austerity pulling plug on Europe’s green subsidies
by ERIC REGULY , Globe and Mail
The Spanish and Germans are doing it. So are the French. The British might have to do it. Austerity-whacked Europe is rolling back subsidies for renewable energy as economic sanity makes a tentative comeback. Green energy is becoming unaffordable and may cost as many jobs as it creates. But the real victims are the investors who bought into the dream of endless, clean energy financed by the taxpayer. They forgot that governments often change their minds.
When the Spanish economy went into the toilet in 2008 and 2009, austerity measures were put into place. At first, it appeared the solar industry would be spared the worst of the cutbacks. That changed a bit, but only a bit, in November, when a royal decree reduced tariffs by up to 45 per cent on new PV plants; existing plants would remain untouched. Then – whammo! […]
Carbon credits: Just another excuse to "print money"
… If this was Exxon pushing a PDF promoting skeptical views, it would be on the front page tomorrow. Where are the front page headlines?
“Bankers feed scare-mongering report”
Instead it’s just Deutsche Bank try to save the world their profit line.
Just in case you are missing your daily dose of being spoon fed propaganda by Bankers who want your money, see Climate Spectator Balancing reason and risk, where Deutsche Bank is helping the skeptics by giving us yet another example of just how desperate they are to get carbon trading running.
Q: When will the bankers worry about whales?
(Ans: When they can trade Humpback Credits.)
The good news is we are getting to them, and we are marking the lines they need to jump over. They now admit it looks bad when they denigrate scientists (they finally “get” that they shouldn’t call scientists deniers):
Although the scientific community has already addressed the sceptic arguments in some detail, there is still a public perception that scientists have been dismissive of the sceptic viewpoint,
Watch how they pretend to care about the science (science-schmaltz), […]
I feel like I keep stating the obvious. A carbon tax is bad because it’s unnecessary and nobody wastes money better than big government, but a carbon trading scheme is worse. The latter is a fake market that feeds corruption and creates it’s own vested industry of financial brokers who profit no matter what the price and no matter who buys or sells (they just need a government mandated scheme that forces businesses to buy and sell), and no matter whether anything useful happens to the environment. Once the financial houses are set (and they are already well advanced) how could this policy ever be unwound?
Carbon Tax = bad
Carbon Trade = sew raw steaks to your shirt and swim with sharks
…
…
So everyone has a handy pocket list as a reference:
Carbon trading is NOT a free market. (In a free market, no one would pay for an atmospheric nullity they can’t use. A carbon trading market is one where the government compels some parties to buy, so it is not free.) It feeds the financial sharks. (Think “ENRON” x 100). Its a magnet […]
Since time immemorial people have been inventing or exaggerating scares to gain power. I used to think carbon dioxide posed a real threat, and I even used to be an active member of the Australian Greens. Then I discovered all the things we weren’t being told (like this and this), and how much money was involved and I was shocked.
There are many good people among the Greens who will be outraged when they realize how they have been used.
The most selfish aims are always cloaked in “good intentions”
Some Greens really believe a market based trading system is the best way to deal with pollution. But this pollution is not a pollutant, and this “free market” is not free. Last year the carbon market reached $130 billion dollars. It’s projected to reach $2 Trillion, and you can be sure that “sub-prime” carbon is coming too. The market depends wholly on government mandate; it’s “fixed” from beginning to end. Who would buy a carbon credit if they weren’t forced to? In a free market, no one.
Worse, funneling money through fake markets is like inviting corruption to a three course meal.
7.5 out […]
Good news… In news just in, there’s another important sign that the momentum is shifting as Money goes in search of better prospects.
ICE cuts 50% of staff at Chicago Climate Exchange
The 1st round of layoffs began July 23, with more to come. U.S. climate inaction is being blamed as main reason for cuts. Things are so bad, that ICE is collecting feedback on what to do with climate bourse
ICE just came in one day and started hacking away … We were told the company was restructuring,” said one source, who declined to be named.
Another said ICE cut around 20 roles at the CCX late last month, and at least another six high-level layoffs would come before next spring.
7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
The Australian Department of Climate Change
People have asked me if the Rudd Government’s postponement of the ETS means we’ve won, as in game over, time for that beach holiday in Broome? But the end of the game is nowhere in sight while our government still has a Department of Climate Change stacked with high paid executives that soak up $90 million a year. The gullible guys who leapt in with both feet are still top-dogs. The end is not even close while two of our largest daily papers don’t realize they are the real Deniers they disparage, or when the second in charge of our opposition still thinks we need to trade carbon. Joe Hockey (our shadow treasurer) said this week that “a carbon price is inevitable”. He used the same old line: “scientists say blah”, as if a consensus of “scientists” is either (a) faultless and incorruptible, or (b) in control of the weather.
Carbon trading, “inevitable“? How about “inane”? Even better: perilous, fraud-prone, and serpentine. It boils down to forced markets trading fake goods that nobody would willingly buy. It’s not a “carbon” market, it’s a Permit Market. And a permit (especially to something unmeasurable) is […]
Thanks to Glenn Beck, we get bit more insight into the tangled web that The House of Global Warming was built on.
Who would have thought? Goldman Sachs has been working hard to save the environment for years.
Generation Investment Management (GIM) was founded by Al Gore, and a few friends, which included David Blood (former Goldman executive), Mark Ferguson (Goldman) and Peter Harris (Goldman). They are the fifth largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Then in 2006, when the CCX needed some extra funding, who should step up to buy 10% of the company – Goldman Sachs.
CCX is an exchange that won’t be doing a heck of a lot if carbon trading doesn’t become mandatory. All of these players have a vested interest in Cap N Trade legislation.
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
Richard North has picked up the ABC Drum article “The Money Trail”, and wonders about the total value of financial contributions towards carbon related research or PR from the UK and EU. I’ve wondered the same thing. Indeed, I tried to find answers for other nations and to add to the USA figures I put into Climate Money, but rapidly discovered, as he has, that it’s a hideously complex task. It’s a Ph.D size project, and there are no grants available to fund this kind of Ph.D.
Five times the cost of the Manhattan Project
Spending is hugely fragmented, between several departments of state, including DEFRA and DECC, with contributions from government agencies and quangos, including the Carbon Trust.
Then there are the devolved governments, the regional development agencies and local authorities, plus a very considerable input from the European Union, through the Framework research programme and also via direct contacts issued by the various Commission DGs.
Among the big spenders, though, are the seven UK research councils, which collectively dispense billions into the research community each year. You might think that each of these would be able to pinpoint the amount dispensed on climate research, but that it very […]
This is the copy of the file I sent the ABC Drum Unleashed. I’m grateful they are allowing both sides of the story to get some airtime (though Bob Carter’s , and Marc Hendrickx’s posts were both rejected. Hat-tip to Louis and Marc). Unfortunately the updated version I sent late yesterday which included some empirical references near the end was not posted until 4.30pm EST. (NB: The Australian spelling of skeptic is “sceptic”)
Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the “deniers”, the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed. Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil’s supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking.
The big-money side of this debate has fostered a myth that sceptics write what they write because they are funded by oil profits. They say, follow the money? So I did and it’s chilling. Greens and environmentalists need to be aware each time they […]
For the last five years the carbon market has been doubling year after year. But in 2009, the exponential growth trajectory paused. Point Carbon issued a report this week estimating that the world wide market in carbon trading in 2009 totalled around $136 billion dollars, which is not much higher than the 2008 figure. After years of living in a rapacious bubble, prices are about 60% below the peaks of 2008, carbon traders are starting to peel out into other commodities, and the sails are looking decidedly flat on the Maxi Yacht known as Carbon-Credits Inc.
The size of the market in gigatons of carbon grew nearly 70% over 2008, but the falling prices meant the same amount of money churned through the system and the total dollars were very similar year on year.
How times have changed. Back in May 2009, emissions traders were feeling confident that a US market for emissions would be approved. Not surprisingly, the low carbon prices and the non-event of Copenhagen mean that carbon traders are becoming frustrated. Some are even expanding into… markets that are based on real commodities like oil, gas, gold and steel. [Reuters]
10 out […]
Behind the scenes, large financial houses are moving in stealthily. In 2008, carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion and is projected to grow to become a $2-$10 trillion dollar market, or “The largest commodity traded world wide”. The largest. That’s bigger than oil, coal, gas, or iron.
Banks want us to trade carbon
9.5 out of 10 based on 6 ratings […]
Since 1989 the US government has given nearly $80 billion dollars to the climate change industry. 9.3 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]
Finally, Part II in the Skeptics Handbook series – the bluster and bluff, the deceit, and the money. Enjoy & Share.
It’s unthinkable. Big Government has spent $79 billion on the climate industry, 3000 times more than Big Oil. Leading climate scientists won’t debate in public and won’t provide their data. What do they hide? When faced with freedom-of-information requests they say they’ve “lost” the original global temperature records. Thousands of scientists are rising in protest against the scare campaign. Meanwhile $126 billion turned over in carbon markets in 2008 and bankers get set to make billions.
7.6 out of 10 based on 8 ratings […]
Hopes for carbon hub in jeopardy
The Australian – Full story here. Note who is protesting at the slow delivery of an ETS….
AUSTRALIA’S ambitions to establish itself as an Asian carbon trading hub risk being dashed because of delays in the emissions trading scheme….
This was the assessment of bankers, lawyers and investors yesterday at the second Carbon Markets Expo on the Gold Coast. The expo has experienced a sharp decline in delegates this year, with numbers down from 1200 in its inaugural year to 750…
“As much as people talk about Australia creating a new carbon finance hub, I don’t think it will happen,” said Optim Legal’s Cameron Kelly, a lawyer specialising in carbon markets and credits. “If the CPRS does not get up, we’ll miss the boat.”
So a lawyer is afraid we’ll miss the boat. Which boat? That would be the boat-full of money from Australian workers that’s headed for major international banks, right?
(Isn’t that the kind of boat we would want to catch, but with a tactical nuclear sub and an armed SWAT team?)
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
After two years of distilling this down, it’s come to me that it only takes six words:
Banks want us to trade carbon
…
Banks want us to trade carbon.
Years from now historians will write about gullible leaders who go down in history as the ones who sold their nations to Goldman Sachs. Fools who thought they might look important trying to save the planet, but who instead were negligent, ignoring the science and slavishly committing their productive workers to pay tribute to a parasitic layer of financial houses.
Just as Woodrow Wilson came to bitterly regret setting up the US Federal Reserve. Josiah Stamp (1880-1941, Director of the Bank of England) warned us.
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
There are people out there who manufacture money from nothing. Literally. The rest of the world has to earn it, but some are in it from the start–where money is created from the ether.
Banking is not a secret but no one tells you how it works… it’s hard to get your head around it, but if everyone understood, some aspects would be outlawed tomorrow (just like they used to be).
Greens and bankers make strange bedfellows. The bankers know where the Greens are coming from, but the Greens need to find out why bankers, “the paper aristocracy”, are so keen to save the planet. It’s an unholy alliance.
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
Climate Money is poised to rocket—creating even larger pools of vested interests. Once it starts, how could we unwind trillions of trading rights?
Say hello to the real new force in climate science—banks.
The Shadow of Stratospheric Climate Money. Far north South Australia, Aug 2009.
First Up. Governments Up the Ante.
In the 2008-2009 financial year, Bush threw billions on the table with financial rescues and tax credits, only to be wildly outdone by Obama.
The new funding provisions made since the financial emergency of Sept 2008 are not included in the previous table of climate funds that amounted to $79 billion (so far). It’s difficult to assign the rescue package figures into strict financial years—yet the new numbers are titanic, and step right out of the scales drawn on the past funding graphs.
10 out of 10 based on 8 ratings […]
The Exxon “Blame-Game” is a Distracting Side Show
Much media attention has relentlessly focused on the influence of “Big Oil”—but the numbers don’t add up. Exxon Mobil is still vilified1 for giving around 23 million dollars, spread over roughly ten years, to skeptics of the enhanced greenhouse effect. It amounts to about $2 million a year, compared to the US government input of well over $2 billion a year. The entire total funds supplied from Exxon amounts to less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
Apparently Exxon was heavily “distorting the debate” with a mere 0.8% of what the US government spent on the climate industry each year at the time. (If so, it’s just another devastating admission of how effective government funding really is.)
As an example for comparison, nearly three times the amount Exxon has put in was awarded to the Big Sky sequestration project2 to store just 0.1% of the annual carbon-dioxide output3 of the United States of America in a hole in the ground. The Australian government matched five years of Exxon funding with just one feel-good advertising campaign4 , “Think Climate. Think Change.” (but […]
The scientific process has become distorted. One side of a theory receives billions, but the other side is so poorly funded that auditing of that research is left as a community service project for people with expert skills, a thick skin and a passionate interest. A kind of “Adopt an Error” approach.
Can science survive the vice-like grip of politics and finance?
Despite the billions of dollars in funding, outrageous mistakes have been made. One howler in particular, rewrote history and then persisted for years before one dedicated fact checker, working for free, exposed the fraud about the Hockey Stick Graph. Meanwhile agencies like the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, can’t afford to install temperature sensors to meet its own guidelines, because the workers are poorly trained and equipped to dig trenches only with garden trowels and shovels. NOAA “adjust” the data after the fact—apparently to compensate for sensors which are too close to air conditioners or car parks, yet it begs the question: If the climate is the biggest problem we face; if billions of dollars are needed, why can’t we install thermometers properly?
10 out of 10 based on 7 […]
Billions for “the climate” but nothing left for audits?
It’s the most “important crisis” on Earth today, and we must rely on the science, yet it’s not quite important enough for anyone to independently double check those results. And just in case you think that the peer review process does that double checking, think again. Most papers are reviewed by only two or three colleagues who may be hoping to prove the same “theory” as the authors (so not especially keen to find holes in it), and who are unpaid and anonymous. (The saying “you get what you pay for” comes to mind. We pay to find a crisis, and we don’t pay to check the results.)
The best examples of unpaid auditing are the work of independent scientists Steve McIntyre, and Anthony Watts. The irony is that skilled workers are providing a pro bono service, normally a service to help those who can’t afford it, but in this case, to assist the largest single financial entity on the planet.
Steve McIntyre and the misleading “Hockey Stick” graph
Steve McIntyre was trained in mathematics and worked in mineral exploration for 30 years (and despite claims to the contrary has never […]
|
JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets To report "lost" comments or defamatory and offensive remarks, email the moderators at: support.jonova AT proton.me
Statistics
The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
|
Recent Comments