I wrote a few weeks ago that The only lower price than today’s closing price on a ton of carbon is ZERO. That’s true now more than ever. See the chart below from yesterday’s close of the Chicago Climate Exchange:
And it’s still crashing. Last week the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced that they were scrapping the existing carbon trading program, and focusing on a new one that deals with directly sold carbon offsets rather than open trading.
Of course, anybody with a lick of business sense could see this coming a mile away, especially after there were deep employee cuts in mid August all while the price of a ton of Carbon Dioxide continued to plummet.
According to Steve Milloy’s Green Hell Blog:
CCX was sold earlier this year for $600 million to the New York Stock Exchange-listed IntercontinentalExchange (Symbol: ICE), an electronic futures and derivatives platform based in Atlanta and London. ICE also acquired the European Climate Exchange as part of the transaction. The ECX remains open to accommodate the Kyoto Protocol-required carbon trading among EU nations. The sale of CCX to ICE allowed climateers like Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs to cash out of investments in CCX.
At its founding in November 2000, some estimated that the size of CCX’s carbon trading market could reach $500 billion.
$500 billion trading thin air? Sure, yep, you betcha. Do you think there will be any confidence in buying carbon offsets directly when the free market runs from carbon trading like they are vacating a burning house?
A bag of charcoal BBQ briquettes is worth far more than a ton of carbon dioxide right now. Stock up, you might be able to sell them to some unsuspecting dupe a briquette at a time just so long as you provide a certificate to go with each one.
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Slight correction. “Plugged nickel”. As in “shot through by a bullet”, I believe.
IanM
REPLY: Well where I come from, it had to do with metal punch out plugs used in vending machines. – Anthony
how the mighty Liars have fallen!
Kyoto has ruined Aussie farmers lives.
Worth zero, huh? Seems like a good time to corner the market. Practically anyone can afford zero, even me. 🙂
If only Jonathon Swift was alive today, this is the stuff of dreams for a great satirist.
5 cents is essentially zero since it won’t be priced at zero. The increment appears to be 5 cents.
A phrase from a brilliant book called Babi Yar, which the authors grandfather used often and so do I now.
“It’s not worth a pound of smoke”
It could almost have been invented to describe Carbon Trading.
Lousy science, lousy economics.
Reality can be very sobering.
Actually, the biggest tell is in the zero volume. This means the market is dead dead and dead. The 5 cent closing price is a fiction as there were no buyers or sellers.
Some clarification, please. Who is IntercontinentalExchange (Symbol: ICE)? Where did they get $600 million to buy up CCX? Who is it, exactly, that bailed Algore out of his bad investment? Why is ICE stock (the company, not the carbon instruments) not bankrupt? I am not an investment banker or high roller and do not run with Al’s crowd, so these things confuse me.
I nearly fell out of my chair when I read this BBC report by Susan Watts concerning the record salmon run in the Fraser River, British Columbia. Apparently a record number of salmon has been returning to their spawning grounds entirely to the puzzlement of all. It would seem that an est. 34 million are chasing their way to the headwaters compared with a paltry million last year.
The article leaves one in no doubt (given the sweeping scientific based fishing controls of the past decades ) that an explanation is needed given the dire accounts of those studying the salmon stocks.
This leads to a series of questions by Watts which reveal her own sense of unease about the reliability of the research and conclusions about fish stocks and oceans generally and, perhaps by extension, the certainties derived from scientific authority.
It may not be the ‘climb down’ moment, but feels like unease has replaced a certainty.
I cite:
“All the more vital then that scientists strive for as complete a picture as possible to explain why so many salmon returned this year, and so few last year, or they risk a loss in confidence until no-one is listening to apocalyptic warnings of threats to the wealth of our oceans.”
and,
“We cook up all manner of models and explanations and the rule in that world of research is publish now because your correlation is going to fail next year,” he says
Judge for yourself.
PS Global warming gets a single mention, but the scientist suggests this salmon run is like a cold winter ie. weather, and not climate, and should not be taken out of context given the overall picture.
PPS. There will be a lot of happy bears on the Upper Fraser this autumn.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11619320
Perhaps people like James Hansen should have 100% of their 401K invested in the “Carbon Financial Instruments” – LOL!
Yet, they don’t give up-as in the definition of insanity..
Mark Twain would’ve had a field day,with this too…
Well . . . 5 cents a ton.
Now that is an Inconvenient Truth.
Very inconvenient for the Ec0-Grifters and AGW Ponzi Schemers who had planned to fleece the gullible.
Too bad I didn’t short the market.. Oh wait. That wouldn’t have worked either since you have to short AFTER a sale.
I would rather debate Al Gore anyway. He was willing to take on Palin, I wonder if I could talk him into it one day?
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Ian L. McQueen says:
October 26, 2010 at 9:37 am
Slight correction. “Plugged nickel”. As in “shot through by a bullet”, I believe.
IanM
REPLY: Well where I come from, it had to do with metal punch out plugs used in vending machines. – Antho
The punch outs never worked for me!
http://www.garvinindustries.com/Images/TB-135.jpg
I’m waiting for it to go down to $ -0.05 a ton before I get in.
“If I had only a nickel for every ton of carbon traded, I would be a rich man.”
– Al Gore (November 2000)
“Dang it!”
– Al Gore (October 2010)
Didn’t Al Gore say he offset his carbon foot print by buying carbon rights?
I’ll bet he’s a happy camper now though. On the one hand his travels is super cheap but the company he owns that he buys his travel rights from probably isn’t faring to well. So better sit tight. :p
Fred says:
October 26, 2010 at 10:06 am
“Very inconvenient for the Ec0-Grifters and AGW Ponzi Schemers who had planned to fleece the gullible.”
Well, someone got $600 million, and someone lost $600 million.
Maybe Mr. Gore was on the receiving end? I hope not.
regarding the $600 million – I’d bet good money that if we could track it to it’s source, we’ll find that it’s ALL borrowed money, and borrowed by some European Govm’t who’s ministers have a direct financial stake in the success of the venture.
AND when it goes bad and none of the notes are paid, which of course will happen, the players will disappear and keep their profits while the losses get dumped on the unsuspecting taxpayers of the EU.
This entire business is scams wrapped in scams, riding on the back of the biggest scam of all.
Next credit card commercial!
One ton of CO2 indulgences, 5 cents.
The cost of a carbon trading exchange, $600,000,000.
Having the world watch the alarmist profiteers take a bath in the air/indulgences scheme………….priceless!
I thought burning charcoal releases carbon monoxide, not the dreaded ghg carbon dioxide. I’m confused.
My 30 second take on the board of ICE is that nobody except the chairman has a clue about the energy industry
http://ir.theice.com/directors.cfm
Clinton and Blair people in there by the looks of it.
Hey at five cents a ton, you could lkely make a profit selling it to Coca Cola.