Styky's sticky on Carbon Trading

[fourhorses]

The case against carbon trading


THE LARGEST RESOURCE GRAB IN HISTORY
You can't trade in something unless you own it. When governments and companies "trade" in carbon, they establish de facto property rights over the atmosphere; a commonly held global commons. At no point have these atmospheric property rights been discussed or negotiated - their ownership is established by stealth with every carbon trade.


THE CARBON TRADE WILL STRENGTHEN EXISTING INEQUALITIES
Market shares in the new carbon market will be allocated on the basis of who is already the largest polluter and who is fastest to exploit the market. The new "carbocrats" will therefore be the global oil, chemical, and car corporations, and the richest nations; the very groups that created the problem of climate change in the first place. What is more, with the current absence of "supplementarity", the richest nations and corporations will be able to further increase their global share of emissions by outbidding poorer interests for carbon credits.


THE CLEAN DEVELOPMENT MECHANISM POSES A DIRECT THREAT TO VULNERABLE PEOPLES
Many of the projects proposed within the CDM, in particular tree planting and dams, are subject to the same criticisms as other large scale development projects- they assert foreign ownership of local resources, they consolidate the power of undemocratic elites, they oust people from their land, they undermine local self sufficient economies and low carbon cultures.



MANY OF THE SOURCES OF CARBON CREDITS ARE SCAMS

TREE PLANTING IS NOT A SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Carbon absorbed by forests is only removed from the carbon cycle for as long as the tree is standing and alive. Industrial forestry will not sequester carbon. Permanent reforestation is a once only removal of carbon from the cycle and cannot offset sustained overproduction.


CARBON TRADING ENCOURAGES COMPANIES TO PROFIT FROM EFFICIENCIES THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED ANYWAY
Because we cannot know the future, we can have no certainty that any project selling carbon credits has really reduced its emissions further than it would have done without the intervention. Profit competition and technical innovation ensures that industry consistently reduces its energy costs. A carbon market can provide an automatic cash subsidy for any investment in low energy technology. If such incentives exist they should be explicit, targeted and accountable.


"HOT AIR" TRADING IS AN ACCOUNTING FRAUD
Russia's economic collapse since 1990 has reduced its emissions by 30%. Russia is intending to sell this incidental windfall (often call "hot air") as international carbon credits- potentially swamping the market. If countries subsidise their emissions with these Russian credits, the final global emissions will end up being exactly the same as they would have been without a carbon market or a Kyoto protocol.


HUGE INCENTIVES FOR CHEATING
There are strong incentives for cheating and creating bogus credits that do not represent any real reduction in emissions. The vendor gets the cash without having to change anything and the buyer gets cheap credits. There are similar incentives for misdeclaration, and "leakage"- transferring polluting activities to areas that are not accounted.




CARBON TRADING CANNOT WORK

THE CARBON MARKET CANNOT BE MONITORED OR CONTROLLED
The temptation for all parties to cheat requires that every transaction to be scrutinised and every sale to be certified. There is no global institution or accounting system that can manage the complexity of this market.


THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK WILL NEVER BE STRONG ENOUGH
nternational legal frameworks are usually very weak. Countries that want to use carbon credits to subsidise their emissions are already arguing for penalties so weak that they will not discourage cheating. Many of the Annex 1 (Russia, Turkey, Ukraine), Romania- these are some of the most corrupt and lawless countries are corrupt or desperate for foreign currency and will happily endorse doctored carbon credits.


CO2 IS NOT SO2
The main model for carbon trading is Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) emissions trading under the US 1990 Clean Air Act. This programme faced none of the problems listed above- it was small (a few hundred companies), easy to monitor (one pollutant from one source-power generation), had permanent targets, and, above all, was conducted within one country with strong enforcement mechanisms.


CO2 IS NOT CFC
The only international emissions trading has been in CFCs under the Montreal Protocol. Once again, the programme was small (only 17 producer companies), easy to monitor (one pollutant from one industrial process), and within a strong legal framework.


CARBON CREDITS FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES ARE NOT EQUIVALENT
The market assumes that carbon credits from different sources will be fully interchangeable ("fungible" in carbospeak). However, carbon sequestered in sinks is a completely different product from the carbon "saved" by a technical innovation, which is different again from the carbon "saved" by a social or lifestyle change. Add to this the complexity of trading in different greenhouse gases. Each source requires different monitoring rules, different criteria and different agencies. Forcing them to be interchangeable in one market is a recipe for corruption and fraud.


THE REAL REASONS FOR CARBON TRADING
Supporters of carbon trading will argue that these are not problems- they are challenges. "Just because it is hard, does not mean that we should not take action", they say. Let's be clear that carbon trading is not being supported because it will solve climate change. In fact it will undermine even the pathetic emissions reductions already proposed. The real reasons for carbon trading are:

1. Governments want to be assured of a cheap way to buy off their failure to meet their Kyoto targets which will keep public and corporations quiescent.
2. Brokers, accountants, and financial institutions are extremely excited at the thought of the size of their cut in a new $2.3 trillion speculative market.
3. Corporations and other major polluters want pliant governments who don't punish them for their emissions and hand over public money to pay for any emissions they are forced to make.
4. Oil companies support carbon trading as a way to avoid making any cuts in oil production.
5. Academics and financial consultants see rich pickings from becoming "experts" in the new market.




CARBON TRADING WILL NOT SOLVE CLIMATE CHANGE

THE KYOTO PROTOCOL HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY CARBON TRADERS
Corporations, the finance industry, and their government supporters demanded the insertion of carbon trading throughout the Kyoto Protocol as a condition for their continued support for the process. The intergovernmental negotiations are now concerned almost entirely with the structure and management of this vast international carbon trading regime.


CARBON TRADING IS AN EXCUSE TO AVOID REAL EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS
The hopelessly compromised Kyoto Protocol now allows countries to meet all their emissions reductions with carbon credits bought through three forms of carbon trading; Joint Implementation, Clean Development Mechanism, International Emissions Trade. Some countries will certainly choose to buy credits rather than make any serious attempt to reduce their underlying dependency on fossil fuels.


THE REAL SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATE CHANGE ARE UNDERMINED BY CARBON TRADING
· Educate the public on the urgency of climate change and the need for dramatic solutions
Carbon trading is a false solution and undermines individual responsibility

· Set a schedule for cutting global fossil fuel consumption by up to 60%.
Carbon Trading is an excuse for avoiding any significant net cuts

· Recognise the moral (and political) imperative for fairness and social justice by allocating targets to every country on the basis of equal per capita emissions
Carbon Trading institutionalises existing inequalities and rewards the largest polluters

· Reduce the supply of fossil fuels with an international ban on all new oil, gas and coal development. As a first step, cut the $200 billion per year global subsidies for coal and oil power.
Carbon trading is not concerned with the supply of fossil fuels, which is why oil companies support it. As a result, government subsidies are increasing, reducing the price of energy and swamping any attempts at demand management.

· Invest heavily in renewable energy to replace all fossil fuel supplies
Although Carbon Trading promotes itself as funding renewables, this is far more expensive per ton of carbon than credits from bogus "hot air", tree planting, or outright fraud. These cheap carbon credits will set the market price and soak up the capital.

· Involve people at all levels of society in solutions
Carbon trading is an inherently elitist, corporatist, technocratic solution. It provides no role for civil society, and fails to deal with the 50% of emissions from houses and personal transport.




.Styky's sticky.

[styky]

I made it a sticky for you.

This is the sheet I have made copies of and keep in my jacket pocket for conversations. I print it off and hand it out to everyone and anyone. I also urge them to do their own research and make cost a big part of that research.

[fourhorses]

This is an excellent summary document.

I can make this into a pdf file. Is there somewhere this could be posted/loaded at FD, so everyone / anyone could access it, download and attach it for their own email circulations , rather than trying to send a HTML or php page ?

[styky]

This is an excellent summary document.

I can make this into a pdf file. Is there somewhere this could be posted/loaded at FD, so everyone / anyone could access it, download and attach it for their own email circulations , rather than trying to send a HTML or php page ?

Send a PM to connie and she can help you with that,

I have it compressed in smaller print so that it is on one sheet two sides. It's easier to care and hand out that way.

[conscience]

Fantastic crib sheet. Thanks!

[styky]

I did not write this is just use it. You'll find it at this link http://risingtide.org.uk/book/print/101

[styky]

Interest in global warming puts renewed focus on carbon trading
STEVE MERTL



VANCOUVER (CP) - There's something counter intuitive about creating what amounts to a stock market for the thing we all exhale when we breathe, the thing that comes out of our car's tail pipe.

But that's what carbon trading is, putting a value on the emission of greenhouse gases - mainly carbon dioxide - that scientists finger as the driving force behind man-made climate change.

Carbon trading is likely to figure in the B.C. government's ambitious, still fuzzy, plan to reduce the province's current greenhouse gas emissions by a third by 2020.

The Conservative government in Ottawa balks at meeting Canada's commitment under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol but its proposed Clean Air Act leaves room for carbon trading, a practice spawned by Kyoto.

Detractors dismiss carbon trading as nothing but a shell game that allows industries and even countries to avoid making real reductions in their own carbon emissions by buying someone else's.

But supporters say the practice leads to real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and that people, not just industries or countries, could ultimately play the market.

One thing is certain; a booming carbon-trading market has been created literally out of thin air in the last three years.

"What we're seeing is absolutely fascinating," says one government official, who did not want to be named. "It's the development of a new market for something that people just completely ignored previously."

The latest World Bank carbon market report last October found transactions in the first nine months of 2006 totalled more than $21.4 billion US, almost double what they were in all of 2005.

The lion's share - $18.8 billion US - took place in the European Union's emission's trading scheme. The EU market opened in January 2005 as the organization implemented its Kyoto caps on carbon emissions.

But the concept is not well understood in Canada.

Carbon trading in simple terms aims to spread the pain of steadily ratcheting down the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Emissions trading is always a transitional tool to help you take responsibility for emissions now while you prepare to make actual emission reductions in your own operations, hopefully as soon as possible," says Matthew Bramley, Ottawa-based climate change director for the Pembina Institute.

It can take several forms.

The European market is largely in so-called allowances. The EU's 11,000 registered emitting facilities face statutory caps on greenhouse gas production.

Those who better their targets can put their unused allowances on the market where companies that missed their goals can buy them.

These are different from carbon credits, also known as offsets, which accrue to companies not under the caps but which still demonstrate they've achieved net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

For instance, replacing a logged tree wouldn't qualify. Planting an additional tree probably would.

Those credits - each equalling a tonne of CO2 emissions - can be traded on the open market and are available to operators who need to offset excessive emissions.

Kyoto is in limbo in Canada and the United States but there's a small, growing private market in voluntary emission reductions, mainly via the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Its 225 members - including Canadian firms such as Manitoba Hydro and forest company Abitibi-Consolidated - commit to a consensus level of annual reductions and trade credits.

The upsurge of interest in climate change has boosted volumes on the exchange, an official says. Trading in the first six weeks of this year equalled a third of last year's total volume.

But the real action - and for some the preferred model for North America - is in the more regulated EU market.

It's governed by the United Nations Framework for the Convention on Climate Change, which sets the standard for what counts as a creditable emission reduction.

Pembina's Bramley agrees carbon trading in itself doesn't reduce emissions. It simply moves them from one place to another.

"Why would you want to do that?" he asks. "Because by moving them around you might be able to have lower cost opportunities to reduce."

Just like outsourcing manufacturing, the cost of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions might be cheaper in the developing world than in Europe, Japan or North America.

The Kyoto Protocol has three trading systems, the most popular of which is the Clean Development Mechanism that covers projects in developing countries.

The World Bank reported $2.26 billion US in CDM transactions in the first three quarters of 2006 covering 500 projects - a tenfold increase from all of 2005.

Kyoto also allows countries to buy carbon credits under the International Emissions Trading system.

In the controversy over Canada's ambivalence towards Kyoto, there was speculation the country would purchase Russia's unused allowance, a figure set before its industrial production sank with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Bramley says there's no interest, here or elsewhere, in buying what's dubbed Russia's "hot air."

"What people are buying instead are other kinds of tradeable units available under Kyoto," he says. "These ones (such as CDMs) are actual credits that come from specific emission-reduction projects that have to be identifiable and verified."

So far, most of the attention has been on carbon trading among businesses and nations but individuals are slowly being drawn in.

People can already buy carbon offsets for things like jet travel through web sites such as www.my-climate.com.

Dave Mowat, head of Vancity, Canada's largest credit union, boasts on the institution's web site that he became the first carbon neutral CEO in 2005 by reducing his CO2 emissions by 25 per cent and offsetting the rest by investing in a wind-energy project.

The practice has detractors who suggest it's a way for the affluent to assuage their guilt over the heavy imprint they leave on the environment.

But experts like the approach as long as it's accompanied by an earnest effort to cut one's own carbon emissions.

"Clearly, if you are using offsets to compensate for having bought a gas-guzzling SUV, well you're really missing the point here and that is counter productive," says Bramley.

The day may come when people can accumulate carbon credits, like a company, and sell them on the open market.

Britain is mulling the idea of a "carbon credit card" in which everyone would have a set limit and would have to buy additional credits if they go into "overdraft."

Likewise, those who haven't maxed out their carbon credit card could sell the unused portion.

<a href=http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/070217/n021715A.html>source</a>

[styky]

Canadian firms are joining the carbon trading system

By Steve Mertl
The Canadian Press
<a href=http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1171839010961&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1112101662670>source</a>
VANCOUVER (Feb 19, 2007)
There's something counterintuitive about creating what amounts to a stock market for the thing we all exhale when we breathe, the thing that comes out of our car's tail pipe.

But that's what carbon trading is, putting a value on the emission of greenhouse gases -- mainly carbon dioxide -- that scientists finger as the driving force behind man-made climate change.

Carbon trading is likely to figure in the B.C. government's ambitious, but still fuzzy plan to reduce the province's current greenhouse gas emissions by a third by 2020.

The Conservative government in Ottawa balks at meeting Canada's commitment under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol but its proposed Clean Air Act leaves room for carbon trading, a practice spawned by Kyoto.

Detractors dismiss carbon trading as nothing but a shell game that allows industries and even countries to avoid making real reductions in their own carbon emissions by buying someone else's.

But supporters say the practice leads to real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and that people, not just industries or countries, could ultimately play the market.

It is certain that a booming carbon-trading market has been created literally out of thin air in the last three years.

"What we're seeing is absolutely fascinating," said one government official, who did not want to be named. "It's the development of a new market for something that people just completely ignored previously."

The latest World Bank carbon market report last October found transactions in the first nine months of 2006 totalled more than $21.4 billion US, almost double what they were in all of 2005.

The lion's share -- $18.8 billion US -- took place in the European Union's emissions trading scheme. The EU market opened in January 2005 as the organization implemented its Kyoto caps on carbon emissions.

However, the concept is not well understood in Canada.

Carbon trading in simple terms aims to spread the pain of steadily ratcheting down the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Emissions trading is always a transitional tool to help you take responsibility for emissions now while you prepare to make actual emission reductions in your own operations, hopefully as soon as possible," said Matthew Bramley, Ottawa-based climate change director for the Pembina Institute.

It can take several forms.

The European market is largely in so-called allowances. The EU's 11,000 registered emitting facilities face statutory caps on greenhouse gas production.

Those who improve their targets can put their unused allowances on the market where companies that missed their goals can buy them.

These are different from carbon credits, also known as offsets, that accrue to companies not under the caps but which still demonstrate they've achieved net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

For instance, replacing a logged tree wouldn't qualify. Planting an additional tree probably would.

Those credits -- each equalling a tonne of CO2 emissions -- can be traded on the open market and are available to operators who need to offset excessive emissions.

Kyoto is in limbo in Canada and the United States, but there's a small, growing private market in voluntary emission reductions, mainly via the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Its 225 members -- including Canadian firms such as Manitoba Hydro and forest company Abitibi-Consolidated -- commit to a consensus level of annual reductions and trade credits.

The upsurge of interest in climate change has boosted volumes on the exchange, an official says. Trading in the first six weeks of this year equalled a third of last year's total volume.

But the real action -- and for some the preferred model for North America -- is in the more regulated EU market.

It's governed by the United Nations Framework for the Convention on Climate Change, which sets the standard for what counts as a creditable emission reduction.

Pembina's Bramley agrees carbon trading in itself doesn't reduce emissions. It simply moves them from one place to another.

"Why would you want to do that?" he asks.

"Because by moving them around you might be able to have lower cost opportunities to reduce."

Just like outsourcing manufacturing, the cost of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions might be cheaper in the developing world than in Europe, Japan or North America.

The Kyoto Protocol has three trading systems, the most popular of which is the Clean Development Mechanism that covers projects in developing countries. The World Bank reported $2.26 billion US in CDM transactions in the first three quarters of 2006 covering 500 projects -- a tenfold increase from all of 2005. Kyoto also allows countries to buy carbon credits under the International Emissions Trading system.

In the controversy over Canada's ambivalence toward Kyoto, there was speculation the country would purchase Russia's unused allowance, but Bramley says there's no interest, here or elsewhere, in buying what's dubbed Russia's "hot air."

"What people are buying instead are other kinds of tradable units available under Kyoto," he said. "These ones (such as CDMs) are actual credits that come from specific emission-reduction projects that have to be identifiable and verified."

So far, most of the attention has been on carbon trading among businesses and nations, but individuals are slowly being drawn in. People can already buy carbon offsets for things such as jet travel through websites such as my-climate.com.

The day may come when people can accumulate carbon credits, like a company, and sell them on the open market.

Britain is mulling the idea of a "carbon credit card" in which everyone would have a set limit and would have to buy additional credits if they go into "overdraft."

Likewise, those who haven't maxed out their carbon credit card could sell the unused portion.

[Grig]

Someone needs to make 'carbon footprint' shoes. I'll take a pair if they come in size 13.

[styky]

Someone needs to make 'carbon footprint' shoes. I'll take a pair if they come in size 13.

I believe those would becalled "Air"soles

We should market a Kyoto Kit......a roll of tin foil with hat patterns and an empty box said to contain carbon credit shoes.

[Ipberg2]

I have carbon credits for sale 50% OFF! Hurry! Quick! This is a Limited Time Only Offer! Just send me your name, phone number, credit card number and credit card number expiration date!

[Blue Canadian]

Here's another easy list of 10 points that will have a Global Warming(TM) acolyte grasping for a response:

Top 10 'Global-Warming' Myths
Posted: 02/20/2007

Compiled by Christopher Horner, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism" (Regnery -- a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

10. The U.S. is going it alone on Kyoto and global warming.

Nonsense. The U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol’s energy-rationing scheme, along with 155 other countries, representing most of the world’s population, economic activity and projected future growth. Kyoto is a European treaty with one dozen others, none of whom is in fact presently reducing its emissions. Similarly, claims that Bush refused to sign Kyoto, and/or he withdrew, not only are mutually exclusive but also false. We signed it, Nov. 11, 1998. The Senate won’t vote on it. Ergo, the (Democratic) Senate is blocking Kyoto. Gosh.

Don’t demand they behave otherwise, however. Since Kyoto was agreed, Europe’s CO2 emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the climate-criminal United States, a gap that is widening in more recent years. So we should jump on a sinking ship?

Given Al Gore’s proclivity for invoking Winston Churchill in this drama, it is only appropriate to summarize his claims as such: Never in the field of political conflict has so much been asked by so few of so many ... for so little.

9. Global-warming proposals are about the environment.

Only if this means that they would make things worse, given that “wealthier is healthier and cleaner.” Even accepting every underlying economic and alarmist environmentalist assumption, no one dares say that the expensive Kyoto Protocol would detectably affect climate. Imagine how expensive a pact must be -- in both financial and human costs -- to so severely ration energy use as the greens demand. Instead, proponents candidly admit desires to control others’ lifestyles, and supportive industries all hope to make millions off the deal. Europe’s former environment commissioner admitted that Kyoto is “about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide” (in other words, bailing them out).

8. Climate change is the greatest threat to the world's poor.

Climate -- or more accurately, weather -- remains one of the greatest challenges facing the poor. Climate change adds nothing to that calculus, however. Climate and weather patterns have always changed, as they always will. Man has always best dealt with this through wealth creation and technological advance -- a.k.a. adaptation -- and most poorly through superstitious casting of blame, such as burning “witches.” The wealthiest societies have always adapted best. One would prefer to face a similar storm in Florida than Bangladesh. Institutions, infrastructure and affordable energy are key to dealing with an ever-changing climate, not rationing energy.

7. Global warming means more frequent, more severe storms.

Here again the alarmists cannot even turn to the wildly distorted and politicized “Summary for Policy Makers” of the UN’s IPCC to support this favorite chestnut of the press.

6. Global warming has doomed the polar bears!

For some reason, Al Gore’s computerized polar bear can’t swim, unlike the real kind, as one might expect of an animal named Ursa Maritimus. On the whole, these bears are thriving, if a little less well in those areas of the Arctic that are cooling (yes, cooling). Their biggest threat seems to be computer models that air-brush them from the future, the same models that tell us it is much warmer now than it is. As usual in this context, you must answer the question: Who are you going to believe -- me or your lying eyes?

5. Climate change is raising the sea levels.

Sea levels rise during interglacial periods such as that in which we (happily) find ourselves. Even the distorted United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports refute the hysteria, finding no statistically significant change in the rate of increase over the past century of man’s greatest influence, despite green claims of massive melting already occurring. Small island nations seeking welfare and asylum for their citizens such as in socially generous New Zealand and Australia have no sea-level rise at all and in some cases see instead a drop. These societies’ real problem is typically that they have made a mess of their own situation. One archipelago nation is even spending lavishly to lobby the European Union for development money to build beachfront hotel resorts, at the same time it shrieks about a watery and imminent grave. So, which time are they lying?

4. The glaciers are melting!

As good fortune has it, frozen things do in fact melt or at least recede after cooling periods mercifully end. The glacial retreat we read about is selective, however. Glaciers are also advancing all over, including lonely glaciers nearby their more popular retreating neighbors. If retreating glaciers were proof of global warming, then advancing glaciers are evidence of global cooling. They cannot both be true, and in fact, neither is. Also, retreat often seems to be unrelated to warming. For example, the snow cap on Mount Kilimanjaro is receding -- despite decades of cooling in Kenya -- due to regional land use and atmospheric moisture.

3. Climate was stable until man came along.

Swallowing this whopper requires burning every basic history and science text, just as “witches” were burned in retaliation for changing climates in ages (we had thought) long past. The “hockey stick” chart -- poster child for this concept -- has been disgraced and airbrushed from the UN’s alarmist repertoire.

2. The science is settled -- CO2 causes global warming.

Al Gore shows his audience a slide of CO2 concentrations, and a slide of historical temperatures. But for very good reason he does not combine them in one overlaid slide: Historically, atmospheric CO2, as often as not, increases after warming. This is typical in the campaign of claiming “consensus” to avoid debate (consensus about what being left unspoken or distorted).

What scientists do agree on is little and says nothing about man-made global warming, to wit: (1) that global average temperature is probably about 0.6 degree Celsius -- or 1 degree Fahrenheit -- higher than a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen by about 30% over the past 200 years; and (3) that CO2 is one greenhouse gas, some level of an increase of which presumably would warm the Earth’s atmosphere were all else equal, which it demonstrably is not.

Until scientists are willing to save the U.S. taxpayer more than $5 billion per year thrown at researching climate, it is fair to presume the science is not settled.

1. It’s hot in here!

In fact, “It’s the baseline, stupid.” Claiming that present temperatures are warm requires a starting point at, say, the 1970s, or around the Little Ice Age (approximately 1200 A.D to the end of the 19th Century), or thousands of years ago. Select many other baselines, for example, compared o the 1930s, or 1000 A.D. -- or 1998 -- and it is presently cool. Cooling does paint a far more frightening picture, given that another ice age would be truly catastrophic, while throughout history, warming periods have always ushered in prosperity. Maybe that’s why the greens tried “global cooling” first.

The claim that the 1990s were the hottest decade on record specifically targets the intellectually lazy and easily frightened, ignoring numerous obvious factors. “On record” obviously means a very short period, typically the past 100+ years, or since the end of the Little Ice Age. The National Academies of Science debunked this claim in 2006. Previously rural measuring stations register warmer temps after decades of “sprawl” (growth), cement being warmer than a pasture.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19468

[styky]

Thanks Blue Canadian...that's going right to the printer.

[styky]

Emission trading suffers as carbon prices plummet

http://green.itweek.co.uk/2007/02/emission_tradin.html
A leading economist this week warned that the world's two leading carbon trading schemes are failing to deliver the expected benefits due to a collapse in the price of carbon credits - and the situation is likely to get far worse before it gets better.

Many politicians have identified carbon emissions trading schemes as the best means of tackling climate change, arguing that by putting a price on carbon emissions firms have a financial incentive to reduce their carbon footprint.

However, speaking to an audience of academics and business leaders at this week's <a href=http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/index.shtml>Tyndall Centre </a>conference on investments in low carbon technologies, Professor Catrinus Jepma of the University of Amsterdam warned that both the EU's <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Trading_Scheme>Emissions Trading Scheme</a> and the UN's <a href=http://cdm.unfccc.int/index.html>Clean Development Mechanism </a>were in danger of failing with prices for the carbon credits used under both schemes predicted to reach just a few cents.

"The Stern Report suggests we need a price for a tonne of carbon emissions of $20, rising to $30, $40 or even $50 to stabilise [the level of CO2 in the atmosphere] at manageable levels," he said. "But there is a good chance that the carbon credits that are meant to provide incentives for reducing emissions will be available for next to nothing."

The problems with the European Trading Scheme are <a href=http://green.itweek.co.uk/2006/12/carbon_trading_.html>well documented</a> with the collapse in the price of a tonne of carbon dating back to May last year when it emerged that most countries in the scheme had set their carbon caps far too high, resulting in fewer firms than expected having to buy credits and causing the price of a tonne of carbon to plummet from over €30 to less than €10.

As one delegate observed "with some firms having carbon emissions capped at 110 percent of what they actually required it was always going to fail".

The EU is seeking to rectify the problem ahead of the second phase of the scheme, which starts next year, and recently rejected many member countries proposed emission allowances for the next phase as too high, ordering them to go away and come back with lower caps that will force more firms to cut emissions or buy credits.

However, Jepma argued that with no link existing between the first and second phase of the scheme the cost of carbon credits will drop to almost nothing by the end of the year. Currently the price is already below one euro meaning there is little incentive for firms to cut emissions as it is cheaper to just buy in credits to offset their pollution.

He also warned that something similar was in danger of happening with the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is designed to allow signatories to the agreement to meet their carbon emission reduction targets by buying in Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) or carbon credits from CDM-approved carbon reduction projects in the developing world.

Jepma said the scheme was in danger of becoming a victim of its own success with over 500 projects already approved by CDM and a further 1,000 projects in the pipeline awaiting approval. He predicted that as a result over 2.4bn CERs will be available by 2012.

Meanwhile, Jepma warned that Russia and many of the Central European States are on track to be well below their Kyoto emission targets for 2012 meaning they will generate 2.8bn credits or <a href=http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/mechanisms/emissions_trading/items/2731.php>Assigned Amount </a>Units that they can sell to those countries unable to meet their Kyoto obligations.

This means that there will be a supply of 5.2bn tonnes worth of assorted carbon credits available under the various Kyoto carbon trading mechanisms by 2012, but the biggest polluters in the scheme – the EU, Canada and Japan – are expected to exceed their targets by just 3.6bn tonnes.

"Under the Kyoto targets the supply of credits will outstrip the demand," said Jepma. "We are going to see the same scenario as with the ETS whereby the price for a tonne of carbon starts high and then collapses to close to zero by the end of the scheme… which is precisely the wrong message."

He added that such a scenario would not only remove the financial incentive for countries to invest in clean technologies that help them stick to their emissions targets - as it would be cheaper to continue polluting and just buy credits - but it would also discourage investment in carbon reduction projects in developing countries as they would have to pay for CDM approval only to find they could not get a good price for the carbon credits they generate.

Jepma said the only hope for keeping the price of the various carbon credits high enough to act as an incentive for countries to hit their Kyoto targets lay with convincing the Russians to retire the bulk of their credits.

"We need to convince the Russians that if they put all the credits they have into the market they are going to undermine their own returns from the system," he said. "We need to implore them to be sensible and help push the price [of carbon] up to a workable level."

As one delegate observed what we need is a "CDM version of OPEC" to control the flow of credits onto the market. But until such an organisation emerges the success of the scheme up until 2012 rests entirely upon the goodwill of the Russian government.

[fourhorses]

Ask the libertarians on board what it means to artificially set carbon credits at $20, 30 or 40 Euros, when the free market says at best 7-10.