Once upon a time, carbon trading was supposed to be the salvation for Earth’s climate problems. But as time went on, people started realizing that something was wrong. As usual, financial markets anticipated the move. Late last year, US carbon trading crashed. Two weeks later, it closed.
In Europe, the price of CO2 emissions even flourished earlier this year. The European Union pushed for stronger policies towards renewables. And Fukushima pressed German’s chancellor Angela Merkel to abandon nuclear, with some imagining that renewables would fill in the gap.
Last week, Greece started auctioning their EUAs (European Union Allowances). They need the money, and probably other countries will follow, including Portugal. But they were not that lucky! Of the 1 million permits, only 6000 EUA were sold. The reason: nobody is buying…
In the meantime, Poland has blocked an EU deal on CO2 emissions. They are the largest producer of hard coal in the EU, and the share of coal in electricity generation (92% in 2004) is the highest among the EU Member States. They are also pushing for shale gas. The result for them: the biggest GDP growth in 2009 and the third in 2010, amongst the 27 European member states.
Finally, Yvo de Boer has confirmed what everyone knows: the Kyoto Protocol is dead!
The result: This week, Bluenext‘s EUA phase 2 2008-2012, went tumbling down. It closed at 12.21 €, down from 15.41 € a week before, a 20% drop in a week! And after all, carbon markets are not actually helping to combat global warming and climate change, and are open to the kind of speculation and fraud that led to the global financial crisis of 2008…
It fascinates me that the news items that come up here (WUWT and others) seem to be on a different planet to the items on the MSM. I regularly watch BBC and CNN and have come to realise that they are highly selective in particular areas. They don’t screen out news that it negative about themselves, but news like this never sees the light of day. It seems more important for them to protect this scam than it does to protect their own image. It is so unfortunate that so many people have no idea that such news exists.
From what I’ve seen in the news recently , it seems that the EU may be in a financial ” death spiral “. I wonder how much their climate policies contributed to this . How long will it be before the so-called progressives in the US realize that the ” European model ” is a failure ?
You don’t mean to say people are not putting their money where the green mouth is?
You mean the latte greens might have to drink black coffee?
That their hobby horse has run out of motorised wheels and that they have to use a stick between their legs. Ugh! No!,
Sweat like other people? No way.
LOL!
CC’s are fiat currencies of the worst kind, because the total amount to be “printed” is always governed by some sort of compromise. Also, they aren’t fully convertible.
No wonder when the moment of truth comes, it’s looks pretty much like graphs of Soviet bloc currencies in early nineties.
The Carbon trading rot is like the back alley of a fish store, the garbage bins are full of rotten stinking fish parts and body’s they couldn’t sell or even give away. This is the state and future for all carbon tradings or CO2 taxes. It never passed the bad deal, stink test.
On top of an potential collapse of of the western worlds financial system the future for all of us is looking very bad, especially the green dreams of endless tax and grant money is starting to look very bleak.
We are running out of real money!
Carbon credits not selling? They better have a lot of bourbon credits saved up – they’re gonna need ’em.
Hey – they can make bourbon dioxide: one atom of bourbon, two atoms of oxy-gin (they can substitute shots for atoms). Their bourbon footprints may be a tad unsteady after a few of those however.
Yasou!
They should cut their losses, and convert the shares to something useful & practical, like tissue paper or kindling. Used as directed, it will recycle just fine ending up as fertilizer for some starving plant.
The predictable result will be that politicians as well as journalists will blame the inevitable failure of the impending climate talks and negotiations squarely on the markets, not on the usual collapse of all such trading bubbles eventually bursting (from Tulipomania (1630s) and the South Sea Bubble (1720s) to the crises of 1998 and 2008), The fact that most people in Europe are not even aware that carbon trading has been installed for some time “to combat AGW” will not help in the matter.
While these carbon credit trading schemes are failing all over the place, California’s Carbon Credit trading scheme is just getting started. Certainly the state will see the light and forget about their CC trading scheme before too long, won’t they? Nah.
Interesting point by Ulrich. “The fact that most people are not even aware….”
I hadn’t thought of that. Really successful bubbles require LARGE numbers of easily fooled ordinary people to sustain the pyramid. South Sea, stocks in the ’20s and ’80s and ’90s, housing in the 2000’s … all supported by ordinary people who thought they were getting into the Big Time.
The Carbon Bubble has always been limited to the cognoscenti. It’s done an amazingly good job of spreading scientific ignorance among the cognoscenti, but it has failed to fool them on a raw economic level. Insiders know when the deal’s gone flat.
All scams eventually are found out and die the death.. AGW/Climate Change/CAGW, camel shooting in the Aussie desert, C02 sequestration, carbon credits in the US (Chicago Climate Exchange) and now the EU equivalent is also crashing and will be dead soon. Good riddance.
What do our politicians need to see all this and wake up from their state of drunken stupor?The Czech and Polish politicians seem to be realising this. Whose next?
Yep, nobody I know realises that there is a carbon tax / trading market / charge in the EU – yet.
Once they do…
Maybe we should pay for carbon credits with bitcoins.
;->
For too long the UN and EU have conspired to try and force the world’s nations to comply with their idiotic schemes of carbon taxes which were purely driven by political agendas focused on wealth transfer and never had anything to do with climate change reality. Yesterday China called off an expected announcement at the Paris Air Show for a $3.8 billion euro deal for the A380 airbus in protest over the EU’s plans to impose carbon taxes on all airlines flying in Europe starting next year. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has called this EU threat illegal and many countries have challenged this ridiculous EU scheme and threatened to take economic counter measures to punish the EU airlines if it does not back down.
EU airlines are now starting to buckle under the pressure and asking the EU ETS to reconsider their entire approach to this issue for fear of having these massive tax provisions undercut their global competitiveness.
Its high time that the entire concept of global carbon taxes be thrown out and acknowledged as being one of the most fraudulently devised schemes ever conceived by deceitful and dishonest climate fear alarmist scientists.
Please don’t make a habit of using graphs that don’t have zero at the origin. 20% drop is big, but it looked like 100% ( I think oil dropped about 20% recently as well). Leave the massaged graphs to the warmists.
J
Another job for Booker and/or Delingpole – spread the word, lads….
P Walker,
I can tell you that the ‘financial ” death spiral “’ was a reality in Portugal. Please check it out at:
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2011/04/dark-economy-inside-perspective.html
Fortunately, the IMF bailout we’re experiencing has several conditions, involving alternative energy rationalization measures that have to be met…
Ecotretas
BargHumer says:
June 25, 2011 at 12:31 pm
“I regularly watch BBC and CNN and have come to realise that they are highly selective in particular areas. They don’t screen out news that it negative about themselves, but news like this never sees the light of day. ”
I disagree. The Daily Mail has things to say about the BBC that the BBC doesn’t report; the ridiculous perks they pay for staff moving to the North. Similar with German public TV; they get paid by an enforced license and would never report about the bureaucratic colossus (5,000 busybodies AFAIK) associated with that.
Over at numberwatch.co.uk, John Brignell has been forecasting the greenflationary-inspired death spiral of the EU’s carbon obsession for at least 10 years now.
The EU’s carbonostra must have known the day of reckoning was coming but the problem they have now is that Europe’s leaders are dealing with a real problem and don’t have time (or money) to deal with a pretend one.
One can only hope that last week’s concerted action to drive down the price of oil is a long overdue dawning of reality for those in power that the demonisation can’t continue any more.
Just as Gillard and her goons takes Australia ever closer to the edge the rest of the world is pulling back. It is heartening to see that some grown ups are starting to take control again. The experiment with the warm and fuzzies has failed spectacularly. All we need now is for Angela Merkel to be displaced and Europe will return to the real world.
Much as it hurt many people, the Global Financial Crisis may have saved the world from the ecoloons. It will take them a while to finally die but they are in the throes.
European utilities can always buy UN CDM credits which are “produced” in a cheaper way… basically by inventing them. One example from India, where forests generate CC’s:
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/article2120072.ece
“the World Bank will buy carbon credits of 350,000 temporary certified emission reductions (tCERs) for plantations raised over 4,003 hectares in the first phase till 2017.
[…]
The World Bank committed to buying nearly 350,000 tCERs. “This became possible after Spain committed to purchasing tCERs from the World Bank,” he said.
[…]
However, the process of physical verification of the plantations raised so far on 3,000 hectares has not started yet.
“An independent team of evaluators will soon tour the state to study the exact growth of the biomass,” said project director R.K. Kapoor.
Project officials said the exact rate of purchase of carbon credits would be determined on the growth of biomass. The normal range is $4.5-5 per tCER.”
The Green political religion and its guilt trip and indulgence business fascinates me more every day.
Junkink says:
June 25, 2011 at 2:17 pm
“Please don’t make a habit of using graphs that don’t have zero at the origin. ”
Quotes are always presented in an auto-scaled fashion; one gets used to it. Never expect anything else whenever you see a price chart.
Lawrie Ayres says:
June 25, 2011 at 3:36 pm
“All we need now is for Angela Merkel to be displaced and Europe will return to the real world. ”
The alternative to Angela Merkel (conservative; at least allegedly) would be a Red-Green government or, even worse, Green-Red with Greens having the higher share. The consequences would be agonizing to devastating, depending on the exact level of incompetence.
Unfortunately, we have a very large proportion of urban arch-Green voters. Don’t pray for the end of Angela. You don’t know what you’re wishing for.
That´s the night the lights went out in the EU! That´s the night that they hung an innocent CO2! Hopefully this will be the end of this nonsense along with the death of the Kyoto Protocol.
P.S. Anthony you might want to take a look at that “can´t hardly” part of the headline. Maybe “they can hardly give EU carbon credits away” instead?
Rúnar
DirkH … while I would sympathize with the German people, a Germany doomed by insane green policies might save a few other countries.
I’m proud to be a Pole
Yes, we can do that!
Bruce says:
June 25, 2011 at 4:13 pm
“DirkH … while I would sympathize with the German people, a Germany doomed by insane green policies might save a few other countries.”
The EU depends on German money. If the Greens get the power in Berlin, they will turn the EU into a Malthusian hellhole.
Looks like a hockey stick graph to me. Maybe we can inverted the sign (that’s accepted science isn’t it?) and save the entire industry.
The Invisible Hand has brass knuckles …
“Quotes are always presented in an auto-scaled fashion; one gets used to it. Never expect anything else whenever you see a price chart.”
Perhaps, but I expect more from this blog. High standards will serve us well.
DirkH: “If the Greens get the power in Berlin, they will turn the EU into a Malthusian hellhole.”
Thats the plan. It is coming along nicely. If they can demonize nuclear and shale gas, they win.
In the 1980s, Steve Bell, Grauniad cartoonist, invented something so utterly useless, they created absolutely nothing except profits for the finance industry. He called them “Dead Dog Futures”. He anticipated carbon credits by 20 years, but got the name wrong. Brilliant.
Now, Hector. How could he have been able to anticipate “Dead ManBearPig Futures”?
That would have been well beyond merely “Brilliant”! 😉
“The alternative to Angela Merkel (conservative; at least allegedly) would be a Red-Green”
Red Green would be an improvement.
I wish I had caught that short. I am sure all the insiders did since those short crashes like that are planned. Some people made a mint in the exchange.
В “Известиях” нет правды, в “Правде” нет известий. У нас в Америке, то же самое теперь, дорогие товарищи.
@ Amino Acids in Meteorites.
You bet they did! AGW is a scam by the big-money boys, and they always make sure that they walk away with the big pot, regardless of the mess they drop the rest of us into.
The Greeks are trying to save themselves from being screwed yet again by the banksters, but I don’t know whether they will succeed.
(@Ecotretas
“Hardly” has a limiting and negating meaning, so “can’t hardly” is, in effect, a double negative. The correct English is “they can hardly give EU carbon credits away.”)
And despite the collapse in thin air trading, even here on WUWT, we still see the snake-oil salesmen’s advertising promising us we can make 100% profit in two years by trading carbon (dioxide).
Clearly there must be some truth in the assertation that a fool and his money are soon parted. Equally clearly the snake-oil salesmen aren’t about to let truth get in the way of a profit making opportunity.
The last thing the Greeks need at the moment is an increase in manufacturing costs due to some imagined problem.
Another thing the BBC will not be saying is that the Greek, and Portugese, Spanish, Italian, Irish problems is the Euro. The one size fits all monetary policies with a single interest rate does not work especially with a hard working north and less willing to work or pay taxes south. (It has been discovered that the Greek Government is owed over 100Billion Euros in tax which the rich Greeks refuse to pay or evade in their tax returns.).
The big unanswered question is: How much of ordinary peoples pension funds are tied up in this market? There are going to be a lot of very angry folk wanting to know why their hard earned has been thrown away on this junk bond scam. We know the BBC has a vested interest which biases its coverage of the climate debate. How many other pension funds are heavily exposed?
There will be some pension fund managers getting a little sweaty right about now.
Damn good question.
If this sucker drags down anyone other than the dimwits that voluntarily became involved, woe be to them. Remember that Enron and Ken Lay and most other large-scale Wall Street fiascos were primarily driven in the media by the collateral damage to innocent 3rd (or 4th really) parties.
This thing should have been labeled an ENRON pump-and-dump from the beginning. Now there is two birds with one stone! The public can easily relate to the comparison, and, the green machine (pun intended) gets stuck with a label that will drive them certifiably insane.
John Marshall says:
June 26, 2011 at 3:15 am
The last thing the Greeks need at the moment is an increase in manufacturing costs due to some imagined problem.
Another thing the BBC will not be saying is that the Greek, and Portugese, Spanish, Italian, Irish problems is the Euro. The one size fits all monetary policies with a single interest rate does not work especially with a hard working north and less willing to work or pay taxes south.
——————————————————————————————–
Not true, John.
The real problem is, that these countries far too long have been spending much more money for the bread and games than they could actually afford – something, which should sound eerily familiar in America.
But whle we europeans are at least trying to clean our house and get the financial acts of the southern countries of Europe – plus Ireland – back in order, everything Washington does actually is borrowing yet-another Trillion from China and use it to bail out banksters and to feed the MIC.
Junkink says:
June 25, 2011 at 7:14 pm
““Quotes are always presented in an auto-scaled fashion; one gets used to it. Never expect anything else whenever you see a price chart.”
Perhaps, but I expect more from this blog. High standards will serve us well.”
Yeah, so you expect a climate and science blog to digitize and reformat financial information as if it were scientific data… why do i feel a bit trolled now.
REPLY: Hansen’s NASA GISS autoscales all of the temperature graphs they produce for stations here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
For example:
So, given that GISS thinks it is fine to do, Junkinks complaint is denied. – Anthony
Why all the hate? The top says co2 price tumbling down. In other co2 markets the price crashed to zero. It looked the same here, but instead the crash was 20% not 100%. It is good practice not to have graphs that don’t have zero at the origin. If that is too hard, fine. Having the moderator come in and say “troll” or “denied” is really a page from real climate.
It is a small point, and I have made it. You may have the last word.
J
REPLY: I didn’t say troll, only that your complaint was denied, mainly because it is without merit and nitpicking. But cheer up, in a couple of weeks, there won’t be any need to autoscale the graph. – Anthony
I apologize, but one last comment. (meant to include this above) It would take about 2 min to get the data from bloomberg and create an excel chart. Not sure what you mean by digitizing data.
J
“How long will it be before the so-called progressives in the US realize that the ” European model ” is a failure ?”
It’ll never happen. These failures are always blamed on something besides central planning, bad policies, etc – so the corrective action must be more government regulation.
Ecotretas made reference to a growing concern of mine when he stated: “Fortunately, the IMF bailout we’re experiencing has several conditions, involving alternative energy rationalization measures that have to be met…” I have seen several mentions about the IMF insisting on an end to oil subsidies and ‘sustainable solutions’ as a condition of loans. Certainly George Papandreou came out last week proposing that a ‘green economy’ would help solve Greece’s monetary woes. Does anyone know if the IMF is making the implementation of renewables a condition of financial relief? I have also read that countries receiving assistance from the IMF are balking at the attempt to privatize water. Are the financial collapse and AGW fear-mongering simply a cover for the takeover of water and energy? The implications of that are quite staggering.
@Michael Schaefer says: June 26, 2011 at 5:01 am
Your observation has merit. Extremes always have extreme consequences whether it is extreme socialism like Greece (they won’t pay taxes) or extreme Capitalism like the USA (where they don’t want to pay taxes) and borrow trillions. Greece will be a disaster on a small scale, if the USA doesn’t get their debt under control very shortly it will be a big disaster.
The headline states ….
“EU Carbon Credit trading takes a dive.”
This is hardly surprising however since a Europol investigation revealed massive frauds in the system amounting to billions of Euros. See the article ………..
“Europol Arrests More Than 100 In Carbon Trading Fraud”
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/28/europol-arrests-more-than-100-in-carbon-trading-fraud/
Subsequently Europol aske the EU Commission to suspend all carbon trading until all EU partner governments could assure Europol that there were anti-fraud arrangements in place. No such arrangements have since taken place. Furthermore Europol have published two statements on this issue.
“Further investigations into VAT fraud linked to the Carbon Emissions Trading System”
28 December 2010
http://www.europol.europa.eu/content/press/further-investigations-vat-fraud-linked-carbon-emissions-trading-system-641
“organised_crime_in_energy_supply.pdf”
http://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/organised_crime_in_energy_supply.pdf
In January 2011 The Guardian Newspaper reported on the loss of carbon credits worth €28m due to “cyber attacks”. Frankly that sounds like an excuse toi me, and covering the baskside of the carbon fraudsters. I mean really, are we expected to believe that countries trade millions of Euros in onliner carbon credit deals without the buyers and sellers ever evben seeing one another?
“The carbon market – gone in a puff of smoke?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2011/jan/24/carbon-market-credits-trading
(again however that article is accompanied by a photograph of a factory or power station chimney with steam coming out , and lablelled as though this were CO2, which we all know is an INVISIBLE gas !!!)
The question is how ANY country in Europe is able to trade a single carbon credit under such circumstances. They are all fraudulent in my view and just a sort of “Papal indulgence” really.
The Guardian published another article as long ago as February 2009, saying that trading in credits had failed to reduce emissions, and henbce was no more than an unfounded tax.
“Scrap carbon trading – This flawed system has failed to cut emissions.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/01/emissionstrading-carbonoffsetprojects?
For hundreds of videos on the carbon scams and related climate change issues
go to the Fraudulent Climate of Hokum Science Website at the URL Below or click the name “Axel” above this article. http://fraudulentclimate.atspace.com/
There is question about the behavior of GISS temperature data? There certainly should be!
These 2 videos should make it clear, with alacrity, that GISS is dubious
Part 1
Part 2
fantastic news
“Cap and Trade” is failing because it is based on fantasy economics derived from the Marxist philosophy of “perception is reality”.
Just as all Marxist fantasy economics fail because, as investors are stating to realise with “Cap and Trade”, it has been designed and implemented by deviants and perverts and instead of being grounded in sound economics, it is based upon the fantasies of the criminally insane.
Investors have finally realised that if “Cap and Trade” is a genuine attempt to move towards alternative carbon free energy, then as that process takes effect their investments in carbon offsets can only ever go down in value.
Carbon offsets can only maintain or increase in value if our economies remain carbon based and therefore carbon offsets/credits remain in high demand. If we transition to low carbon or carbon free energy production, which is the stated goal of this whole carbon offsetting scam, then demand for carbon offsets or carbon credits will naturally diminish.
The only way that Cap and Trade can produce true longterm wealth is if the transition away from carbon based fuels never happens.
“Cap and Trade” is therefore a self defeating self consuming economic paradox which can never produce any true wealth. It is a scam from the outset which has been devised by the criminally insane. The stated goal of this ridiculous scam is a transition away from carbon based energy production. If that were at all possible, perhaps if we all move over to nuclear power like France, then the value of a ton of CO2 would plummet.
Evidence that this is exactly what will occur has come in the form of economic projections of the effect of the current global economic slow/melt-down. As the global economy slows, demand for carbon based energy falls and with it, the imaginary value of a ton of carbon.
This is the cause of the current correction in the EU carbon markets.
It is proof that “Cap and Trade” is not just a self defeating paradox, it is an outright scam.
Why should carbon rights be worth anything in Athens when they are worth “0” in Chicago? Because Greeks (and the rest of the Europeans) have the threat of a (German) carbon tax in 2013.
How likely is it for the Germans to imposer a pan-European carbon tax if they shut down their nukes? Ι am anxiously waiting on that one…
A scam made in Germany, and the Germans are caught in the Green Eco Trap they set up for the rest of the World.
Rest assured that the real criminals in the Green Bubble have already escaped with the loot, strewing roofing nails in their tracks. It’s the little people, and the useful idiots who will take it in the shorts. Or, rather, be depanted by the shorts.
================
Good observation and point(s), but not improved by chewing it over and spitting out 3 or 4 times in slightly different words. Makes you sound like you’re babbling, even though you’re really not.
Good editing is mostly getting rid of unnecessary over-statement and wandering wordiness.