A farmer's view on carbon credits

Hmmm, I wonder if Ted Turner is eligible to receive carbon credits from all of his land he bought in the Midwest. He owns something like 2 million acres of land, much of it in the Midwest, and nobody has a clue as to what he intends to do with it. I wonder if he planned on getting carbon credits (assuming he is eligible)?
http://www.landreport.com/2009/01/100-ted-turner/

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Carbon Credits are a scam. This is an article I wrote last year, perhaps some elements of this could be used for another WUWT article.
This is not a spam email, but an article.
Ralph
Global Warming and the Carbon Trading Scam
Welcome to the world of legal pyramid selling, and the newest scam in town is Carbon Trading. Roll up folks, roll up – make £billions and save the planet at the same time. To good to be true? You bet, but there is no point missing out on a good scam.
So what is Carbon Trading, and what is it supposed to achieve? Well, it was created by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was signed by many countries in 2005, but ratified by only 32. Since then many other nations have ratified the protocol, but America remains a significant absentee, although its 2007 Climate Security Act may finally bring America into the Kyoto fold.
The goal of Carbon Trading was to set up a worldwide trade in Carbon Credits (CCs), designed around a standard market mechanism, so that greenhouse gas producers could be penalised while greenhouse gas consumers could be rewarded. While you might think that CCs only apply to carbon dioxide, there are actually six primary pollutants included in the scheme, and these include methane, CFCs and nitrous oxide. Significantly, the scheme also covers water (water vapour), but more on that later.
So far, so good: we are saving the planet through capitalist market regulation, rather than government bureaucracy. But why choose a market-based system? Surely, if you want to penalise greenhouse gas emitters, you just measure their output and tax it; and then ring-fence those taxes for use on environmental projects. A tax of £5 per tonne of CO2 produced per year would soon get polluters adding scrubbers to their smoke stacks. So why the trading scheme?
This is a good question. The answer cannot simply be that the current generation of politicians are so firmly wedded to capitalist markets, that everything has to be done that way; it has to be that Carbon Trading is simply another method of inflating the economies of the world, because it creates money. But how does it do that? Well, markets can be created in anything. Airlines trade ‘landing slots’ at Heathrow, and these have matured into a market all of their own, and are now regarded as legitimate ‘money’. And lots of money at that. In 2004, Qantas bought two Heathrow slots at $16 million each. In October, Lufthansa bought 50% of BMI for about £320 million. So why buy a small airline for such a huge sum at the beginning of a slump in the airline industry? Answer: they were not interested in BMI, they were buying their Heathrow landing slots, which they will now add to their financial balance sheets. But this is all fresh air accounting, because landing slots have no real value. If Heathrow were to build another two runways, or move to the Thames estuary, those slots would be worth about 35p each, and Lufthansa would have made a poor purchase.
So how does Carbon Trading create money? Well, industries and polluters were originally given ‘grandfather rights’ – free Carbon Credits (CCs) that reflected their past emissions output. These CCs were then traded through London brokers, and acquired a value – they became ‘money’. But this had the perverse effect of rewarding the largest polluters, by giving them the most CCs (the most ‘money’). In addition, it was very difficult to regulate how many CCs were given to each and every industry around the world, so individual plant managers, especially in India and China, made hugely inflated claims about their emissions, in order to get a larger allocation of ‘grandfather’ CCs. These CCs were then traded on the open market and brought in huge profits (of ‘real’ money) for these unscrupulous companies. As usual, Britain played by the rules of cricket and got nothing.
The net effect of this new market in CCs, is to create a whole new raft of ‘money units’. Some money units are called pounds, some dollars, its just that these ‘money units’ are called Carbon Credits (CCs), for they have achieved the status of ‘real money’. But like landing-slots at Heathrow, CCs are fresh-air money-units that are adding to the global over-supply of fiat (or false) money. These are some of the false ‘money units’ that banks have invested so heavily in, and are now finding to be as worthless as American ‘sub-prime money units’; which is why the banks have great holes in their financial accounts and we now have a credit crunch.
But this is not the only problem, for the whole concept of a Carbon Trading Market is perverse. For example, refrigeration manufacturers in India and China were given huge numbers of Carbon Credits (CCs) because their CFC emissions were hugely polluting. Subsequently, these manufacturers installed scrubbers to reduce CFC emissions, and then sold their excess CCs on the global market for around £4 billion. Planet saved? A success story? No! It would only have cost an international fund about £150 million to install scrubbers on these polluters, so these companies have pocketed an obscene profit. In addition, they have sold on the ‘right to pollute’ to other companies (by selling their CCs), and so now that pollution will be transferred from China and India to, say, America or Brazil. Trading Carbon Credits does not reduce greenhouse gasses, it just spreads them around a bit.
In addition, the Clean Development Mechanism creates yet more CCs – more ‘rights to pollute’. If, say, a company wants to build a CO2 consuming industry, like ‘carbon capture’ technology, it can be issued with new CCs – new rights to pollute. Now you might think that this is good, because atmospheric CO2 is being reduced by these new technologies, but David Victor, a carbon analyst of Stanford University, estimates that 60% of emission reduction or capture schemes are fraudulent. But new CCs have been issued, and new rights to pollute have been created, so that China and Russia can continue pumping out yet more noxious gasses.
Even the one or two honest Clean Development Mechanisms are probably a waste of time. Many of these schemes for ‘carbon capture’ involve planting trees, which at face value might seem like a worthwhile enterprise. However, trees do not capture CO2 unless you bury them. As trees grow they consume (capture) CO2; but many trees burn in wild-fires or simply die and rot, releasing their CO2 back into the atmosphere, so no CO2 has been captured. If the wood is logged and used as timber, it will eventually find its way onto a rubbish dump or fire at the end of its useful life, and so the CO2 is again released. The only way to capture CO2 through trees is to bury the timber, which I have not heard proposed as yet. But even if this is done, some bright environmentalist spark will point out that these buried trees are producing methane, which can be used for generating electricity. A good idea? No, because the tree’s CO2 will simply be released back into the atmosphere. Trees are only a temporary storage media for CO2, not a solution for rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
Then there is the issue of the current price of CCs. It has been estimated that in order to be punitive to polluters, each CC should be valued at around £30 to £40. However, there is so much fraud in the CC market, with millions of CCs being created on the back of creative accounting, that the price of each CC has slumped. They currently stand at around £12 each, and so it is now cheaper to buy CCs and pollute, rather than invest in new technology to reduce emissions. And even if you do reduce your emissions, you can then sell on your excess CCs so that someone else can pollute instead. In short, Carbon Trading does nothing to reduce overall emissions output. Indeed, in June 2008 SmartMoney magazine stated that Carbon Trading was the ‘ultimate rigged market’, and that the value of CCs was not simply regulated by market forces but also by the fortunes of the various Green movements. When Al Gore jumped on the bandwagon prices rose, when his arguments were torn to shreds they fell. This is not a market that will regulate or have any hope in reducing greenhouse gasses.
So now we come to the whole crux of this fraudulent Carbon Trading market, the great unspoken issue of water vapour. A while back I said that Carbon Trading covers all the major greenhouse gasses, including water vapour; but water vapour has been brushed aside, as it it almost wholly natural in origin. But why do we have the mention of water vapour at all? Well, the great unspoken scientific fact is that water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas of them all. Yes, pure, unadulterated, ‘harmless’ water is the greatest evil of our time. As a political sound-bite this does not really have the right ring to it, and so it has been dropped in favour of the rather insignificant influence of CO2 and the dreaded ‘carbon footprint’.
In actual fact, water vapour accounts for 60% of the total greenhouse effect on the Earth; and if we include the action of clouds, which are also greenhouse ‘gasses’, water produces 90 – 95% of the total greenhouse effect. If we then recall that man only accounts for 5% of total annual CO2 emissions, then it suddenly becomes obvious that man is only accountable for 0.25% of greenhouse gasses. In other words, man’s effect on the environment is miniscule in comparison to the expansive forces of nature.
A counter argument is that our small effect is cumulative – that our contribution of CO2 is building up over the years and is becoming significant. This is not necessarily so. There is considerable interchange every year between atmospheric CO2 and the CO2 dissolved in the oceans, and man’s annual CO2 production represents only about 6% of the annual churn of CO2 between sea and sky. So why is the total proportion of atmospheric CO2 increasing? Is this the result of industrial pollution? Probably not. It is a known scientific fact that CO2 is given off by the oceans as they warm, and the oceans have indeed been warming over the last four decades, and so this atmospheric CO2 increase is both natural and predictable. But why are the oceans warming? The BBC jumped upon a 2005 report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science which claimed that ocean warming was caused by CO2 emissions and Global Warming. But every indicator, from the great ice ages onwards, indicates that CO2 concentrations lag behind sea temperature. In other words, changes in sea temperature cause atmospheric CO2 levels to fluctuate, and not vice verse.
It is a fact that sea temperatures have been rising over the last four or five decades and this increase is often blamed upon Global Warming.
http://www.csiro.au/news/OceansWarming.html.
But Global Warming may well be a symptom, not a cause of this warming. So what other factors can warm the sea to such a degree, that it is emitting more CO2 than it absorbs. Two factors are likely to be in play here: solar output and ocean currents. In the first of these, it is a known fact that solar output has slowly increased over the last century, and it may be this increasing solar activity that is warming the oceans. This increase has plateaued recently, but more on that later.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html
It is also a scientific fact that the sea currents undergo periodic changes in direction and temperature, and that oceanic temperature rises can be symptomatic of these periodic fluctuations. El Nino and La Nina are the most famous of these oceanic oscillations. This general warming trend, in both Sun and sea, can then induce a ‘positive feedback’ mechanism, whereby the increased sea temperature then increases atmospheric water vapour and CO2 concentrations, which are both significant greenhouse gasses – and so the warming trend continues up to a natural maximum limit. Another of these oceanic fluctuations is called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and Prof Don Easterbrook of Washington University has recently suggested that the limit of its recent warming trend has been reached in the Pacific. In fact, he goes on to speculate that the entire Global Warming phenomena may also be at an end, and that we face three decades of Global Cooling.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/20/shifting-of-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation-from-its-warm-mode-to-cool-mode-assures-global-cooling-for-the-next-three-decades/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?old=2006092123135
Global Cooling? But we all know that the Earth and its atmosphere are still warming, don’t we? While governmental and environmentalist propaganda (and the BBC) may still be promoting the Global Warming scam, the Inconvenient Truth of the matter is that the world has been cooling for the last ten years. Yes, surprising as it may seem, the Earth reached its maximum average temperature in 1998, and has been cooling ever since. This is why some of the more evasive environmentalists now refer to ‘Climate Change’ rather than ‘Global Warming’, because they cannot substantiate the latter title, while the former is indisputable – the climate is always changing. But in which direction?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/19/another-global-temp-index-dives-in-jan08-this-time-hadcrut/
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/september-2008-update-on-global-temperature-hadcrut/
The data shows a clear dip in global temperatures following the 1998 peak, but the real question is where do temperatures go from here? A dip in temperatures over ten years, following a steady rise over previous decades, does not prove a reversal. This could be a short-lived blip in an upward trend that will continue unabated in subsequent years, perhaps because it coincides with a periodic dip in solar output due to the Sun-spot cycle. However, within that casual suggestion lies a greater possibility, for it is a little-known fact that the best link between a global variable and observed global temperatures lies not between temperature and CO2 levels, but between temperature and geomagnetism. (see graph**) So how does geomagnetism influence global temperatures? Well, geomagnetic activity is directly proportional to sunspot activity and the resulting levels of solar-wind, which Prof Landscheit suggests is the prime ‘forcing agent’ of global warming.
However, Prof Landscheit and others suggest that the general upward trend that has been witnessed in Solar-wind output this century is now beginning to decline; and, due to periodic cycles in the spin characteristics of the Sun, it is further predicted that this will result in three decades of decreasing solar-wind and decreasing global temperatures. In addition, the data from the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the change in ocean currents in the Pacific, also suggests a distinct cooling period. But if sea temperatures cool, more CO2 will be absorbed by the world’s oceans and a reversed feedback loop may well establish itself. As Prof Don Easterbrook suggests, the observed oceanic cooling in the Pacific may herald three decades of Global Cooling, a cooling that will be in sympathy with the decline in solar activity.
This process may already be in action, as the ice sheets in the Antarctic have grown to unprecedented levels in recent years. Yes, ice-sheets growing! Now you don’t hear about that on the BBC.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3066
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20020015034521data_trunc_sys.shtml
The reason you may not have heard about all of this, is that we live in a world propaganda bubble that has all the attributes of a New Age religion, including its established doctrines that cannot be challenged and its Al Gore-style high priesthood. This may initially appear to be a media bubble organised by a media elite, who all worship the same environmentalist god, which is why the BBC now appears to blame anything and everything on Global Warming. There is some truth to this, as the media likes to tell a story and exaggerate, to keep its viewers enthralled, and this is a never-ending news story that can be exaggerated indefinitely right up to Hollywood proportions.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Io-Tb7vTamY&feature=related
However, The Global Warming swindle is a governmental bubble too. If you really want to ‘follow the money’, it does not lead back to greedy oil companies, who are more than happy to invest in wind-power if there is money to be made there instead. No, the money trail leads back to the governments of this world, who have been cooperating to a remarkable degree to undermine scientific debate and honesty. Why? Because of fear and taxes. Governments always like to keep their people in fear of something, because they will then seek protection – from the government. Keep the people fearful and thus keep them docile. Its good for taxes too – how else could a government force through huge increases in taxes on basics, like oil and energy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2679/218/
Meanwhile, back at the financial dealing desks for Carbon Credits, another commodity is about to crash. But perhaps I should not use the term ‘commodity’, for Carbon Credits (CCs) are an abstract construct that have even less contact with the real world than our over-inflated monetary systems. If there was ever an emperor with no clothes, it is a carbon trader declaring that a CC is worth £30 or £20 or £10, or any other figure that he or she may invent. CCs are a new pyramid selling scheme, that only survives as long as someone is promoting it and as long as there are more gullible customers pilling into this new market. But there are not. A small element of science is beginning to doubt the Global Warming trends, fraud has destabilised the Carbon Trading market, and a global recession will flood this already unsteady market with millions of unwanted CCs. The price of a CC is about to fall through the floor, and I expect that the whole concept of a Carbon Trading market will fall over the cliff with it.
So where do we go from here? Well, while I remain to be convinced that Global Warming is anything other than a governmental con-trick, to increase taxes and the general money supply, the notion of controlling industrial emissions is a noble one. The simplest method of doing this would be through taxes, and so a tax on everything from sulphur dioxide to heavy metals emissions should be levied on industry. But there is absolutely no point in doing this if we are the only nation to play by the rules, as we will only succeed in driving our industry towards bankruptcy. We have already achieved this with our multitude of planning regulations, disabled access, health and safety directives and existing emissions regulations, which have driven our factories to India and China, where no such regulations exist. What, I ask you, is the point of proclaiming that our factories are now 100% healthy and safe (because they now stand empty), while millions of Chinese are being injured and maimed to make the products we buy? Where are the overall health and safety benefits in that strategy? Ditto our export of noxious emissions to China, which often find their way back to us in the form of polluted fish and acid rains.
But if we cannot rely on the Far East to play by international rules, then the alternative is a degree of protectionism, a policy that the party already endorses. While I personally believe that international trade is good for us and the wider world, it can only exist and prosper when the playing-field is level. Clearly, the pitch upon which we play the trade-game with China is sloped at a 30 degree angle towards our goal-mouth, so it is hardly surprising that we cannot score any trade goals against China. The Chinese have no great regard for health and safety, emissions, planning, pay, health care or pensions, so it is hardly surprising that our industry cannot compete. What is required is a 10% import tax for each of these items, and more besides, until China gets its industrial house in order. Only then will China, India and the rest of the Far East adopt Western industrial standards, and only then will the worldwide emission of toxic chemicals from industry be reduced.
We don’t need Carbon Trading, we need an element of protectionism.
Ralph Ellis
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
** Graph of geomagnetic activity (solid line) vs global temperatures (dotted line) Note the very good fit of these two trend lines. However, predictions (and recent measurements post 2000) indicate a rapid decline in geomagnetic activity. This should result in a decline in global temperatures from 2006 onwards (there is a lag of about 6 years between geomagnetic activity and global temperatures). Recent global temperatures have confirmed this decline. http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/24
P.S. In the Sunday Times on 21st December, it was mentioned that Norway’s DNV company, the largest auditor of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), has been ‘suspended’.
The CDM is the mechanism by which carbon reduction projects are issued with new Carbon Credits (CCs) for their ‘good’ work in reducing CO2. These CCs can then be traded on the market for real cash. Thus DNV was actually the ‘bank of carbon credits’ – it acted like a commercial bank, but printed CCs instead of dollars.
For DNV to be suspended means that there must be either either incompetence, corruption or fraud at the heart of the CC issuing and trading scheme (or all three), and so we are likely to see a complete collapse of this ridiculous scheme in the near future (it is wide-open to corruption and fraud). This, together with 2008 being the coldest year this century, indicates that this is the beginning of the demise of the whole Global Warming confidence trick. On the upside, any political party that has tied their banner to this wobbly mast (that’s all of them) is likely to be severely wounded in the resulting wreckage, which may reduce Labour’s results at the next election.