Newsbytes from The Global Warming Policy Foundation
EU carbon prices have slumped 15% in one week, as a slew of bearish news took its toll on the markets. “It’s just been carnage these last few days,” said a trader at an investment bank in London. “There has been a huge amount of liquidation from funds, banks and utilities.” Mark Lewis, a Paris-based analyst at Deutsche Bank, said he does not expect emissions in the ETS to ever return to their 2008 levels of 2.12 billion tCO2e. —Christopher Cundy, Environmental Finance, 24 June 2011
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… —Eco Treatas, 25 June 2011
Just as the federal government prepares to announce details of its carbon pricing regime in the next week or two, the European emissions trading scheme is lurching through another crisis. Or should that be crises? The European carbon price has plunged dramatically in the past month. –Giles Parkinson, Climate Spectator, 27 June 2011
China is holding up a multi-billion euro aircraft order, placed with Airbus by Hong Kong Airlines, in protest at European Union plans to extend carbon dioxide emissions trading to air traffic, a German newspaper reported. —Reuters, 24 June 2011
Opposition is ratcheting up over Europe’s unilateral imposition of its emissions trading scheme to cover international airlines from next year, as the spectre of retaliatory action moves closer to the surface. —Flight Global News, 24 June 2011
Last Thursday (June 23rd) in a mini-plenary session in Brussels, the European parliament was due to vote on a proposal to increase the EU’s 2020 emissions reduction target from 20% to 30%. The Guardian built up a story of a huge row between Prime Minister David Cameron and his MEPs. Downing Street enforcers were going to beat up on us. But it didn’t look like that from our end. There were a few amicable conversations with London in which each side understood the other’s position. –Roger Helmer, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 24 June 2011
Just when you think our Government’s obsession with wind power could reach no further heights of absurdity, we learn that it now plans for us all to shovel billions of pounds into the pockets of the Irish wind industry. –Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 26 June 2011
BRITAIN will have to abandon its carbon emission reduction targets if the public continues to resist higher bills, according to the chief executive of the British Gas owner, Centrica. Mr Laidlaw warned in his speech that Britain was “rapidly approaching a tipping point” and there was a risk society was being unrealistic about the scale and cost of the energy challenge. Without wider acceptance of higher bills, Mr Laidlaw suggested that carbon emission targets would have to be ditched. —Tim Webb, The Times, 24 June 2011
Carbon control futures have been like a fine dinner in an expensive restaurant. Great fun until the waiter presents the bill.
The collection of bullets points here hardly qualifies as “folds”. I’m sure the regulars will be along soon with the normal high-fives….
REPLY: That’s the title as sent to me, accurately reproduced. Complain to the spectator and GWPF if you don’t like it, then we’ll revisit your complaint to see how it panned out. – Anthony
Yes, but think of the alternatives! /sarc
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/toles?wpisrc=nl_opinions
UK Energy giants want billions for back-up to windfarms.
Britain’s richest energy companies want homeowners to subsidise billions of pounds worth of gas-powered stations that will stand idle for most of the time. See link below for more…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-2008055/Energy-giants-want-billions-windfarms.html
and a reminder of what CHRISTOPHER BOOKER said last February
Why the £250bn wind power industry could be the greatest scam of our age – and here are the three ‘lies’ that prove it…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361316/250bn-wind-power-industry-greatest-scam-age.html
Well this is the pigeons coming home to roost. The soft underbelly of Europe spent all their money due to the cheap borrowing of a single currency with one bank rate. The one size fits all does not work and we told them so. The Cap and Trade collapse is a function of the same socialist dogmatic approach to life and what they think will happen against what actually does. Kind of a model approach that the climate alarmists have achieved, and failed, to show.
I gave them 10 years when monetary union started and I probably won’t be far out. But then, what do I know?
Sorry to be the voice of pessimism, but I don’t think a little voter dissent is enough to halt the CO2 movement. When the propaganda machine fails, there’s always public policy to fall back on. I predict it won’t be long before we begin to see sceptics locked up and control mechanisms placed on individual carbon usage. I can imagine living in a world where one’s bank card stops working once the CO2 credits are spent, such as no gas for your car unless you buy more credits.
The costs that have been hidden for so long are now becoming obvious. From where I am in London UK, I see and hear rapidly growing resistance to the 14% extra that the government is tacking onto some energy accounts to consumers ‘to help the environment’ which is a tax, and a heavy one. The retail cost of petrol and diesel at the pumps is ridiculous, at well over £6.0 per gallon (Imperial gallon is slightly bigger than a US gallon) and large numbers of retail businesses on the nation’s high streets folding with depressing regularity. When I was fuelling my car a couple of days ago, the guy using the adjacent pump to me remarked that ‘these things aren’t petrol pumps anymore, theyr’e tax pumps!”The idiocy of the current UK energy policy is insupportable and the latest idea, to clutter the Irish hinterland and seas with wind farms, is beyond madness.
The job market is shrinking and the cost of a university education is rocketing upward.
I have no idea where Moderate Republican is based, but I can’t see anyone doing high fives in UK villages, towns and cities, but the local greens will be rejoicing in their theme of ‘back to the Medieval Period’ as that is looking like a rapidly-approaching reality. The only good news on the horizon for us in the UK was the announcement last week about the new nuclear-powered electricity generation plants that will be built and come on-stream in the near future.
I remember the bit about David Cameron being at odds with his MEP’s in that the latter were planning to vote against the EU proposal (for deeper emission cuts). The opposition Labour party raised a question about this apparant wobble in the commons last week – something along the lines that the government might be backing away from its commitment to being the ‘greenest government ever.’
So, not only is the opposition not forcefully opposing this economic madness that will destroy jobs, not only are they not objecting to the fact that wealth is being transferred from the poor to the rich, but they are quibbling with the fact that the government might not be pursuing this goal with enough vigour and commitment. For the voter, there is nowhere left to run.
You know, we still talk about the South Sea Bubble. Few know it was the South Atlantic.
=================
“Sorry to be the voice of pessimism, but I don’t think a little voter dissent is enough to halt the CO2 movement.”
Maybe, but the collapse of the graft engine — the “carbon markets” — is.
the good people in Euroland are far too complacent when it comes to being lead by their collective noses by their collective political leadership to their collective economic doom.
Time for a good Euroland Revolution, just like the good old days.
How about this for a Quote of the Week from the end of the post – the first tipping point has been identified:
” Britain was “rapidly approaching a tipping point” and there was a risk society was being unrealistic about the scale and cost of the energy challenge. Without wider acceptance of higher bills, Mr Laidlaw suggested that carbon emission targets would have to be ditched.”
Euroland, meet the NY Times. Let the naked emperor parade more often.
“FEELING the need for an example of government policy run amok? Look no further than the box of cornflakes on your kitchen shelf. In its myriad corn-related interventions, Washington has managed simultaneously to help drive up food prices and add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit, while arguably increasing energy use and harming the environment.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/opinion/25Rattner.html?_r=1
I don’t see any evidence they won’t cook up some other scheme to replace the carbon market. Perhaps a carbon tax instead, added at every level of the supply chain, just like a VAT? (I know, don’t give them any ideas!) It has to be something that’s not market-based.
It is EcoTretas (loose translation from portuguese: Eco B.S.)
Off topic, but @ Moderate Republican: What exactly is a “moderate Republican?” Someone who believes in moderately small government? Someone who believes we should each have individual freedom – but not too much? Someone who believes the markets should be moderately free – but controlled? Moderately? Or did you just choose that pathetic moniker with a misguided hope of appealing to some perceived prejudice of the average visitor here? Come on man, be honest, show your colours. We get read about enough dishonesty here through the reports of the crappy post-modern scientists with their fudged data, dodgy statistics and whitewashed investigations, we don’t need more of it from you. Without honesty you’re just another troll.
Now they are discovering that the whole carbon agenda is a luxury goods item in the national shopping basket.
It’s hard to latch your mind onto the higher purpose when your job is under threat and you are no longer sure where the next meal is coming from.
Not that most of the third world ever got to the luxurious point of seeing beyond the next meal in the first place.
Tony Blair and the Europhiles lead the charge but few followed willingly into the valley of debt. Those like Greece that did, followed the trail of free handouts that are now running out.
Now the tide is turning and many will be left high and dry.
OR
Now the tide is turning and many will be high and dry lefts.
It’s a simple economic decision of what goes into the ditch, and what does not.
Either the Carbon Market crashes, or the EU economy crashes.
You can have your crisis and eat it too.
Moderate Republican says:
June 27, 2011 at 5:47 am
I don’t think you’re are moderate or republican.
To fold would imply they’re capable of recognizing reality when they’re staring it in the face. I have doubts about that.
I think this is just a simple problem. A causation of the need for financial means in a continuos financial crisis, with continuos increasing interest rates, when the population and internal market growth rate continuos to exceed all projections. The infrastructures just can’t keep up. And besides who wants to pay for (un)regulated virtual trade goods nobody ever can control anyhow?
We don’t need the “carbon tax” in the UK.
Every energy bill we pay comes complete with an “environmental levy” added-on.
With gas it is about 24% (on which we pay value-added tax as well)
So when the guy from Centrica was saying that people wouldn’t pay higher bills, he was probably talking about people paying something for nothing, since the 24% just goes to pay for more rotary bird choppers or more grandiose and inefficient green the-end-of-society-as-we-know-it schemes.
Fuel poverty is already a serious issue for some people in the UK, but will increasingly become a very serious issue for many in the UK. There is a tripple whammy at work. First, the green subsidies adding £200 to £400 per year for the typical user. Second, generally increasing energy costs.The price of gas, coal and oil has risen steadily these past 5 years and will continue to do so in the future and the effect of this is exacerbated with a weak pound which has devalued significantly. This has pushed up energy prices by about 40% Third, incomes are being squeezed due to the financial crisis. Many people are not receiving pay increases yet inflation is running at about 5% and tax liabilities are increasing. All of this inevitably means that energy costs are becoming an ever increasing proportion of people’s disposal income and for many energy bills becoming unaffordable.
If every one was to deduct say between £200 to £400 from their energy bills writing to the energy companies advising them that they are not interested in green renewables and are not willing to pay a surcharge for something not wanted, there would be little that the energy companies could do (being swamped by numbers) and this madness would soon die a natural death. If the English were more like the French, I am sure that this is what would happen. Not an issue for the French since their government had the foresight to invest in nuclear on a large scale.
The death of this low CO2 energy production may be the only good thging to come out of the financial crisis.
mkelly says @ June 27, 2011 at 1:55 pm “I don’t think you’re are moderate or republican.”
Since when is arguing with physics a litmus test of if someone a moderate or a republican?
Since when did you do that on this thread? All we’ve seen on this thread by you is a lame attempt to argue the “Green Agenda” is not folding.
Maybe that’s what mkelly was referring to?
there is no such thing as a moderate republican… Liberal light is still a mental disorder… and it is worse than being an admitted lib.. a RINO is one we weed out because they can not be trusted to think clearly. as you clearly demonstrated here with the attempt to prop up the green agenda..
there is a big difference of being a good steward of the planet and its resources than crying foul when there are no facts that clearly warrant the AGW chicken little screams.. at some point the people figure out it isn’t happening and they ignore you.. as is now happening in both Europe… and the US now….
i just wish we could get back to an open and honest scientific discussion and leave the grant whores at home… agenda driven garbage is NOT SCIENCE…
Charlie Crist considered himself to be a moderate republican.
The nail in the coffin for AGW wont be scienice, it will be when all the carbon markets die, than there is no reason to fund the AGW machine and it will crumble down around them
John M says @ June 27, 2011 at 4:34 pm “Since when did you do that on this thread? ”
As a rule I try not to do that since it is a losing proposition, but then again I don’t disbelief the science either.
It is still a bogus title…
Hmmm. Appropriate comment. Good circular argument.
Moderate Republican says:
June 27, 2011 at 8:04 pm
It is still a bogus title…
There was a knock on the door yesterday: “How do you read your gas meter”, asked my next door neighbour “I can’t get the cabinet open”. A few seconds later I had located the key and opened the cabinet.
Just an everyday occurrence in Lenzie … two neighbours meeting. What is new, is that she just couldn’t understand why her gas bill was so high. A 20% hike in prices on top of numerous other smaller hikes as well as increasing electricity prices are definitely beginning to bite.
And the politicians know that these bag fulls of complaints they are receiving is just the first wave of complaints. They know they have already signed legislation which will hike up energy prices and dump that money to a few very rich profiteers who have been the ones telling the politicians that they needed to take global warming seriously.
Here in Australia, Gillard is still pushing the “carbon” tax on people, even though most Australians have indicated this is not the way forward. Gillard is to spend AU$12mil to “sell” the tax to people who Gillard and Labor consider plebs. But Gillard is selling bribes too. Pensioners and low income earners will be protected by a 120% finanicial “buffer” to assist with price increases. So, Gillard, let me get this straight, only “rich” people will pay the tax to save the planet from climate change? Do I have that right?
A politico friend of mine in Canberra reckons she’ll lose her job fairly soon. And it looks like she may lose that job sooner than anyone reckons as the latest polls suggest Tony Abbott, leader of the opposition party, is the prefered PM.
I am 100% liberal and 100% CO2-GW sceptic.
“Hydro-electric energy (today) and geothermal sources (soon) are perfectly plausible renewable energy sources, promising to be reliable and cheap. The public backlash against renewables today is directed against wind and solar, which produce energy far above market prices, leaving the public to pay the difference”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/28/eco_investment_worries/
Moderate Republican says:
June 27, 2011 at 3:53 pm
mkelly says @ June 27, 2011 at 1:55 pm “I don’t think you’re are moderate or republican.”
Since when is arguing with physics a litmus test of if someone a moderate or a republican?
I have not seen you argue the physics of AGW here. I or any number of others would be willing to have an open debate with you on AGW if you like.
State your case. Take you lumps and BZ’s like the rest of us. Things walking in the middle of the road never end up well in the end.
Gee, now they can add to the cost of wind power and the higher electric bills the tab for $30 billion for back up generators for when the wind fails. They recognize that the wind does not blow, among other times, in the dead of winter in the middle of a high pressure system.
mkelly says: June 28, 2011 at 6:34 am
“I have not seen you argue the physics of AGW here. I or any number of others would be willing to have an open debate with you on AGW if you like.”
There is no debate when one side is supported by science and the other side by false graphs, assumptions, and refuted by the climate.
AGW’s whole stand is based on two false graphs, the unfounded, indefensible assumption that all natural climate factors and cycles have been canceled by a small increase in a trace gas, and computer climate models (which are NOT science).
The CO2 hockeystick graph is false, blending, dishonestly, data from two vastly different sources and placing indirect data as more accurate than direct data. CO2 has been higher than now during three periods of the last 200 years, most recently in the 1940s, during which temperatures began to crash. CO2 cannot maintain warming let alone cause it.
The temperature hockeystick is false as the unadulterated data shows that the Medieval Warm Period and the 1930s were both warmer than recently. Only by performing bad science and altering data can they pretend the recent warming was higher.
Their assumption that all natural factors and the Sun have been overwhelmed by CO2 is simply groundless, but convenient as that only leaves CO2 on the table.
The computer models have failed miserably, particularly as they lack so many major factors, cannot model some important aspects, do not include the real relationships (they use analog approximations), lack horribly in resolution (the Rockies look like low foothills), and drastically overblow CO2’s thermodynamics and water vapor’s role (it is actually part of a huge global heat engine, called the water cycle, which carries heat to altitude; CO2 and water vapor interfere with each other, rather than augment – all basic thermodynamics).
The AGW crowd all agree that the upper troposphere MUST warm more then the lower in order for the lower to be warming. Not only has it been shown clearly that this has not happened (the AGWers are baffled why it cannot be found – “It must be there somewhere!”). Millions of readings, nothing—in fact it has cooled a bit instead.
As we have not warmed since 1995 (had an El Nino peak in 1998), started cooling gently in 2002, and actively cooling in 2006, the AGW crowd has to make more and more wild claims to try to panic the public. Two ocean cycles flipped to cooling in 2006 right on schedule and the Sun appears to be doing a good imitation of a Dalton or even a Maunder Minimum, two of the coldest parts of the LIttle Ice Age when the Sun went quiet for 2 or 3 cycles and the cosmic wind moved in, created clouds, and caused serious cooling.
So, where is the debate? A debate can only be had when there are two opinions or stands which each have some merit. Other than being the excuse for pushing a rather evil, ill intentioned political agenda, AGW has no stand. Sorry.
North Europe has a Plan B for the EURO, don’t spoil it!
Most counties around the north sea never joined the Euro.
Why not found the old sucsecfull Hanse tradae block again. Togethe with Netherlands, UK , Norway GER & Scandinavia etc we rere far more stable and successful then the Renaissance guys.
Yes, we loose 30% on the EURO exit, but we know what we got:
Real Friends & future of Northern Europe.
Probably Profit withe a strong new currency.
Take your loss. Europe was never one.
No one united EUrope last thousand years and that is it’s strength. Greece is for holidays and you should pay there with holiday fake drachma. Greek people will have a bright future as one big holiday resort with holiday currency. How they manage, the market will judge. Please be what you are and want to be.
It is reasonable th ask for a moment where to say STOP. At this moment no one tells. That is alone reason enough to leave the Euro. North Europe has a Plan B, don’t spoil it! If you do not have a serious plan, you cannot negotiate. The north has a plan B and it is even better off. This is the end of the EU. North Knows!
They expect to add on a CO2 charge to folks flying IN to Europe from abroad and they do NOT think that folks will just fly to Rio or Cancun instead?
Lets walk through this.
I have a vacation budget. I’m picking where to fly. I hit the booking engine at the consolidator of my choice and find:
Rio: $900
Cancun: $500
London: $1200 + $100 “Carbon Tax” + $50 “Euro Fee”.
Let’s see… Decisions decisions…
(Or I could just visit Disney World… just booked a ticket SJC to MCO – Orlando- for $120 one way. From California. I’ll come back after they finally launch the shuttle, whenever they launch it… I’ll be spending some time in The Parks as well. Oh, and on the beach… in the sun… and warm… and away from our June WInter in California… )