'Carousel' frauds plague European carbon trading markets

Just a few weeks ago, Europol, the cross-border police force, said that carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90pc of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland pocketing an estimated €5bn (£4.5bn).

"It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90pc of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities," Europol said.

Figures from New Energy Finance show the value of the global market falling from $38bn (£23bn) in the second quarter to $30bn in the three months to the end of September after several countries cracked down.

Read the full article by Rowena Mason at the Daily Telegraph here.

The Idiocy of Carbon Trading

Excerpt from Christopher Booker's Daily Telegraph column.

Just how surreal the business of "carbon trading" has become is illustrated by another project, which has no direct connection with Dr Pachauri but which involves the plan by a Tata subsidiary to build one of the world's largest coal-fired power stations in the state of Gujarat. Nearly $1 billion needed to build the 4 gigawatt Mundra plant is being supplied in cheap "green loans" by the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank (to both of which Dr Pachauri acts as an adviser), because the plant will emit CO2 at a "lower intensity" than older power stations in India. For the same reason, the plant will also qualify for a potential $560 million in "carbon credits" under the UN's CDM scheme, which can then be sold on the world market.

If our own Government allows E.on to build a similar but much smaller coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent, however, we shall have to pay out millions of pounds through our electricity bills to buy those same "credits" which in India the UN hands out free – to help Tata build a plant which will be responsible for emitting 26 million tonnes a year of CO2, well over twice as much as Kingsnorth.

Similarly it is Tata which next month is to close down its Corus steel works at Redcar, to make a potential £600 million in "credits" from the carbon emissions this will save, while in India it will earn a similar amount in UN CDM "credits" by building a plant of similar capacity in Orissa. It will thus make a potential gain of £1.2 billion, at the expense of 1,700 jobs on Teesside, for no overall reduction in the amount of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere.

Read the rest of the article here.

Sustainable Sex

They claim it's the Worlds (sic) First Green Technology Sex Toy.

"Charges in minutes - Intense Vibrations". But what about all that extra CO2 that will be exhaled? Have they thought this thing through?

New Earth Solutions Raises £20 million

The fundraising allows New Earth to begin work on its fourth operational site in Leicestershire. The waste treatment site, which will begin to accept municipal rubbish from Autumn 2010, will extract recyclables and convert biodegradable material to a compost-like substance.

New Earth Solutions will use part of the money for the refinancing of its waste treatment facility in Gloucestershire, which it acquired in February this year.

Each site will have a capacity of around 50,000 tonnes of waste a year.

Man-made Climate Change - A Clown Speaks

A statement from the Union of Concerned Climate Scientists and Street Performers
on Man-made Climate Change.

The scientific evidence is everywhere we look -- in our vanishing polar ice caps, in our melting greasepaint, in the way our lapel flowers struggle to squirt. Man-made climate change is upon us, and if we do not act at once Earth itself faces an immediate catastrophic ecological pie in the face.

As provost of the University of East Anglia's cutting edge Centre for Climate Pantomimology, I work closely with multidisciplinary climate scientists, both within the University and in the clown science community at large. There can be no disputing the peer reviewed models that show the Earth's temperature curving ever upwards, like the expanding tail of a tube balloon, propelled by mankind's relentless exhalation of carbon dioxide. If we are to avoid the coming explosion, we must tie off the end of the balloon as soon as possible. Then we must carefully shepherd and shape the balloon as nature intended, perhaps as one of nature's majestic balloon poodles.

Continues...

Hat Tip - Obo

Greenpeace Greenpeaced

LOL.

Lord Monckton on Climategate

Lord Monckton on Climategate at the 2nd International Climate Conference from CFACT on Vimeo.

A New Scientific Discovery

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 – 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each re-organization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

Conflicts of Interest

A quite remarkable breakdown of the business interests of part-time chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri from EUReferendum.

Clearly, he has learnt well as padawan to Obi-Wan AlGore. Preach sustainability but don't actually do it yourself.

It's the poor who will pay for Copenhagen's circus

Tim Wilson, director of the climate and trade unit at the Institute of Public Affairs, writing in The Australian.

The tragedy of Copenhagen is that the impact of any agreement on the world's poor has largely been lost among the self-indulgent circus caused by rich country green activists who'd rather see themselves on television back home.

Tomorrow Belongs To Us

US Youth delegates to the Copenhagen Climate Negotiations crash Lord Christopher Monckton live webcast.

Scientists Behaving Badly

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article by Daniel Henninger critical of scientists who allowed the culture of Climategate to develop in their professions.

Christopher Essex, a leading Canadian applied mathematician and award-winning author, has written to Henninger.

Climategate is no surprise at all to us. Evidence for this is in my book with Ross McKitrick from 2002, Taken by Storm. It won a $10,000 prize, and is now in a second edition. But few were listening. If my book had a title like 'Oh, my God, we are all going to die', I am sure that it would have been on the NYT bestseller list at once.

Christopher Essex is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario.

Follow The Money

This site is about green business. Here's some people doing very well out of their green businesses. (from James Delingpole at the Daily Telegraph)

"Who is it that sponsors the Guardian's Environment pages and eco conferences? Why, only that famous non-fossil-fuel company Shell.

And which company has one of the largest carbon trading desks in London, cashing in on industry currently worth around $120 billion – an industry which could not possibly exist without pan-global governmental CO2 emissions laws ? BP.

And how much has Indian steel king Lakshmi Mittal made from carbon credits thanks to Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme? £1 billion.

And which companies were the CRU scientists revealed cosying up to as early as 2000 in the Climategate emails? There’s a clue in this line here: “Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday.”

And how much was Phil Jones, director of the discredited CRU, found to have collected in grants since 1990? £13.7 million ($22.7 million)

(And) which a German Green party MP is revealed being given hefty donations by a solar power company?

Or how about this tiny $7o million donation to the climate change industry from the Rockefeller Foundation?"

No wonder they need more limousines at Copenhagen.

COP15 Copenhagen Limo Frenzy

Your tax money being well spent - on limousines.

Green Business the Professor Phil Jones Way

From the DT: Professor at centre of Climategate affair has successfully received more than £13 million in research funding.

Now that's what we call a profitable green business.

The figure is disclosed in a leaked, internal document posted on the internet by climate change sceptics who have seized upon it as evidence of a funding "gravy train" for scientists conducting research into the area.

That's some serious gravy.

The spreadsheet listing all successful grant applications made by Professor Jones was part of the batch of leaked documents. It shows Professor Jones, along with other academics at the university, received more than 50 separate grants with a value of £13.7 million from a number of funding bodies including the European Union, Nato, and the US department of energy.

Several British bodies also gave substantial sums including the Met Office, the Environment Agency, the National Rivers Authority and the Department for the Environment.

All these different bodies chucking money at CRU. They're going to be mighty disappointed if there is no global warming to show for all that wonga.

The Climate Science Isn't Settled

by MIT Professor Richard S. Lindzen in the Wall Street Journal.

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.

UK Businesses Forced to Reduce Environmental Expenditure

From the Growth Business News section:

Some 16 per cent of SMEs say they have spent less on environmental measures this year as many need to concentrate on cash flow. Ten per cent said they could not make changes due to restrictions on their premises and 4 per cent were unaware of what changes to make, according to research from Abbey and Alliance & Leicester.

Al Gore's Green Business

We know of at least one person who is intent on doing a little side business in the up coming Copenhagen boondoggle.

From the Danish Tourism Commission (via Washington Times)

“Have you ever shaken hands with an American vice president? If not, now is your chance. Meet Al Gore in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Change Conference.”

Cost: DK5,900 = US$1,200.
Oh, and you get a copy of Al's latest version of the new communist manifesto book as well. Bargain.

UPDATE 03/12/09: Event cancelled. Tens of people left distraught.

Australia’s Senate rejects Emissions Trading Scheme

Following the election of Tony Abbott as new leader for the opposition Liberal party in Australia, the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme has been postponed after rejection by the upper of the two houses of the Parliament.

This is a $120-billion tax on the Australian public and that is just for starters. We have heard from the Independent Pricing Regulator in NSW just yesterday that this ETS would add 30 per cent to the people of NSW’s power bills… I am not frightened of an election on this issue, because as far as many, many millions of Australians are concerned, what the Rudd Government’s ETS looks like is a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicised hand outs by a giant bureaucracy. - Tony Abbott