Scandal brewing in the Euro carbon credits market

Well, Ed Begley jr. has got to be the biggest phoney around after his act at the Green conference a year or so ago.
Does this start to smell like the tulip scam ?

New investment: Ocean Acidification Offset Trading! Methane Offset trading!
Chance to make your money now!
Hurry because this offer ends in 1.7 days….or less. It might end in about two hours.
Or less….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Obama, Kerry, Boxer, Holdren and Lisa Jackson desperately want to expand this fiasco, the corner stone of AGW, fraudulent behavior.

A nightmare for politicians as their dreams of huge carbon-based revenue streams dry up before their eyes.

A link to info regarding Obama’s role in founding the Chicago Climate Exchange.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517188,00.html

Pachauri’s Pollution Ponzi
(Yeah yeah … Cee-oh-two is not a pollutant. ☺ ☺)
Clive

Hah, remember this?
“The European Union (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS) has been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately 5 billion euros for several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.” (9 Dec 2009)

So it looks like the gullible fools are just now realizing what the rest of us knew all along… carbon credits are worthless! You can’t sell something that doesn’t exist! There are no laws on the books requiring anyone to buy carbon credits to emit CO2, that means that they are worthless imaginary certificates that are purchased by the people that P.T. Barnum loved to do business with.

In my neck of the woods we sell carbon credit by the cord – cut, split, dried, and stacked. Price varies inversely with temperature.

Not out of the woods yet. Those with a vested interests will try to keep the game going as long as possible. Beware.
“Glossop says the closures at the exchanges could last some time. “The exchanges need to sort out their internal problems and ensure surrendered carbon credits cannot be transacted on the exchanges and that might take a little bit of time,” he adds.
A list of surrendered CERs is publicly available and the exchanges will now need to cross-check the serial numbers on their CERs with this list.
A spokesperson for BlueNext said it has not got specific date for the reopening of CER trade in place as yet, but the exchange was working to ensure the closure would be as short as possible.”
Recycled CER scandal could push carbon trading over the counter
http://www.risk.net/energy-risk/news/1597003/recycled-cer-scandal-push-carbon-trading-counter

Is it even moral to limit the number of carbon credits a carbon unit will be allowed to use each day? Knowing CO2 has virtually no effect on the climate as it always changes with or without the influence of CO2, why would we bestow on our leaders the right to limit the number of carbon credits I may expel each day? Oh I forgot, the Illuminati have to have control of everyone and everything.

The article says “Europe’s emissions trading system was in uproar yesterday amid a mounting scandal over “recycled” carbon permits.”
Hey, WTF? I thought that Greens LIKE recycling?? Sounds very sustainable to me….sell the same credits over, and over, and over…..

Was listening to “All Things Considered” on NPR Radio, (we get it here in OZ via our ABC News Radio). A farmer was interviewed about carbon credits. He apparantly receives credits for not tilling his soil, (in order not to release the CO2 in the soil). He said, and I paraphrase…”We used to get enough money to buy dinner once in a while, now that the price (of carbon?) has dropped to a nickel, we get enough to buy lunch at a takeaway.”
He is hopefull the market comes back. I wouldn’t hold my breath. Go back to good farming practice, till away me old son.

It’s mean, I know. But I just can’t stop laughing 😀

On a completely unrelated side note the UAH temps are toasty. We’re almost a quarter into the year and it’s been well above average. Looks like the warmers have a good shot to claim 2010 is the hottest year on record. :/

So at 10¢ a metric tonne, how many would I need to buy so I don’t have to spend 1,000’s upgrading my house etc.
For a $100 I’d get 1000 metric tonne exemption for my CO2 footprint. How long would that last me? A year, a decade, my life?

You people caused this!
I hope you’re proud, now the sea levels are going to rise and flood 30 million people living in coasts throughout the world. Millions more will die of thirst because the glaciers that provide water to their communities will melt and vanish. There will be more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more floods, more ice storms that will affect untold millions more planet wide. The amazon rain forest with it’s life giving fauna will dry up and die, and with it, most of the earth’s population.
Behold your great achievement! may God have mercy on your souls.

Hotlink (20:22:54) :
Look for traders shorting the market!

I understand your intent and agree with it, …but usually a short sale is based on the assumption that the price of the traded issue will go down. In the case of these junk carbon credits, the “price” is already so low that it cannot go much lower.
You probably knew that already so apologies if so.

Question for statisticians and economists (not climatologists):
Can the Enron stock price be superimposed on the CFI chart?

OT but… Warming globe?
http://m.naplesnews.com/news/2010/mar/15/cold-kills-record-number-manatees-193/
NAPLES — The largest manatee die-off ever recorded in Florida is playing out in the state’s backwaters and bays this winter…
…The 193 manatee deaths probably are just the tip of the iceberg, scientists say.
Another 151 manatee deaths have been categorized as undetermined or their carcasses unrecovered, but most of them likely are cold weather related as well, De Wit said.
Manatee hospitals around the state are so busy caring for cold stressed manatees that Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park is keeping manatees in its above-ground — and heated — pool…
In all, 368 manatees have died between Jan. 1 and March 5 — only 61 deaths short of the record 429 manatees that died in all of 2009….
Latest update: 206 cold related and 393 total:
http://m.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100317/GREEN/100317043/-1/WAP&template=wapart
Florida’s 2010 manatee death count nearing record news-press.com
With more than nine months left in 2010, Florida’s manatee death count is closing in on the single-year record.
Through March 12, 393 manatees died in state waters; the record, set last year, is 429.
Manatees are extremely cold sensitive, and this year, a record 206 manatees have died from cold stress; the record for cold-stress deaths, also set last year, was 56…
http://myfwc.com/NEWSROOM/Index.htm should have a press release soon. Though it may be under manatee research.

FYI here is an annotated Enron chart:
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2006/01/the_astonishing.html
“The information that Enron was giant fraud was out, and yet the stock took over a year to collapse.”

Omigod, dhogaza is jumping out of his pants at Bart’s.
=====================

Fred is a prime example of the fear mongering and fraud perpetrated on humanity by those wishing to decieve others for their own gain be it political and/or fiscal.
Ordinary people have been subjected to a constant barrage of lies designed to create a state of fear within the population and is it surprising that the end product are people like Fred?
The prophets of doom are working their magic on our children every day, scare mongering and creating fear and uncertainty and guilt, ignorance and superstition is their currency as they play to our darkest fears and nightmares.
The coalition of carpetbaggers and fanatical ideologues has effectively poisoned the minds of a generation. Never before has the world been subjected to such a massive organised fraud, the poisonous tentacles of hate and fear have reached deep into many peoples minds and all for money and power?
Money and power, the age old motivator of the wicked, it all comes down to money and power in the end. The selling of the appocalypse needs willing stooges and gullible fools, even when the giant AGW fraud is exposed we will be dealing with the poisonous effects of the fraud for years and there will many brainwashed cult members who will simply never accept the truth, they will be the danger because it will be they who will attempt to indoctrinate others in the next fraudulant appocalypse down the road.

i wonder what the third world thinks of carbon trading?

spangled drongo (20:39:55) :
Can I interest anyone in a nice tulip bulb?
Yes, but only if it’s a low energy one!

Fred (22:19:37) :
You people caused this!
I hope you’re proud, now the sea levels are going to rise and flood 30 million people living in coasts throughout the world. Millions more will die of thirst because the glaciers that provide water to their communities will melt and vanish. There will be more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more floods, more ice storms that will affect untold millions more planet wide. The amazon rain forest with it’s life giving fauna will dry up and die, and with it, most of the earth’s population. Behold your great achievement!
may God have mercy on your souls.
This is a joke, right? Lighten up Fred, its not real.
Keep an eye out here for more press releases on the more than doubling and now more than quadrupling of the endangered Florida manatees freezing to death.
Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
http://research.myfwc.com/features/default.asp?id=1001
Meanwhile the polar bear populations increase more and more.

The silver lining in all this is that people holding Carbon Offset Certificates can still use them for toilet paper. It’ll be cheaper, too.
Saving Teh Planet One Sheet At A Time.
Sheryl Crow will be so proud of them…

Fred (22:19:37) :
“You people caused this!”
“I hope you’re proud, now the sea levels are going to rise and flood 30 million people living in coasts throughout the world. Millions more will die of thirst because the glaciers that provide water to their communities will melt and vanish. There will be more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more floods, more ice storms that will affect untold millions more planet wide. The amazon rain forest with it’s life giving fauna will dry up and die, and with it, most of the earth’s population. Behold your great achievement!”
And your point is … ?
Look Fred, the way it works is that some scientist, somewhere, comes up with an idea. It may be a good idea, or it may be a stupid idea, but whatever, it is their idea and they are proud of it.
Lets say, for example, that it is a way of automatically mowing lawns.
The sceptics job (that’s us, by the way) is to question the scientist to see if the idea is good or bad. If it is good, then great, but if it is bad then he or she had better think again.
Using our example, I (as a sceptic) might ask, “How well will it mow wet grass?”, or “How will your idea cope with lawns with corners?” Both of these are valid questions, and we actually hope the scientist has answers to them.
But if they have not, then they need to go away and do some more thinking and change their ideas.
However, if the scientist, when asked our questions, gets abusive and defensive and claims that our questions should not have been asked, and it is our fault for asking them, then they loose all credibility, and no longer deserve to be scientists.
Good science can withstand searching questions. Belief systems that lack a basis of fact cannot.
I am truly sorry that your religion has been shown to be based on false idols.

In the last few months, there have been periodic stories (more opinion pieces or reports of opinion pieces) in the British and other European newspapers suggesting that MPs/MEPs/Europe should impose a minimum trading price for carbon credits, since the prices have fallen so low / “too low”
Would this make this market more profitable for somebody? Who?
Is this story being planted?

Copner: “Is this story being planted?”
I’ve just worked out a wonderful scenario. If you were part of the anti-capitalist movement, how would you seek to destroy capitalism? Obviously the direct assault was a complete disaster, but what if you were to create a market so potentially lucrative that no capitalist could resist?
What then if you were to make that market so destructive to capitalism (like the steel works that were shut down due to carbon trading) that it would literally rot the capitalist infrastructure from inside forcing billions to be traded from the rich to the poor.
And what if, all along you knew the whole thing was a scam, and that sooner or later it would all fall apart bringing the whole capitalist system crashing to the ground?

The carbon trading fraud has got its hooks into all our British politicians. The leader of our glorious opposition has been speaking about the need to “get our share of a $6 trillion-a-year business”. Venturing further onto the sunny uplands, he’s planning massive investments in nuclear power plants and bird-shredders.
***************************************************************************
From The Times today
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article7067947.ece
Tories’ green bank to revolutionise power policy
Huge offshore wind parks and new nuclear reactors to be financed by a state-backed Green Investment Bank would be built under plans to reform energy policy and meet tough emission reduction targets to be announced by the Conservatives today.
In a package of measures with far-reaching implications for industry and consumers, David Cameron is also expected to call for a floor price for carbon to be set as a way of stimulating investment in cleaner forms of energy.
The policy will punish coal and gas-fired power generation while benefiting producers of wind and nuclear electricity. Greg Clark, Shadow Energy Secretary, did not reveal details, but said: “We believe that the time has come to establish new financial mechanisms to make it easier for people to invest. At the moment it is too difficult.”
The policies will also include a measure that marks a return to the same principle used to defeat Nazi Germany in the 1940s. Mr Cameron will for the first time set out plans for government-backed green “war bonds” to help to finance energy projects of up to £200 billion that are considered critical for Britain to meet its goal of cutting carbon emissions by 34% by 2020.
The scheme will allow money to be put into clean energy through the purchase of Treasury-backed “Green ISAs” linked to renewable projects including tidal, solar and wind farms.
***************************************************************************
As to the fact that global warming has been proved to be the biggest scientific fraud in history, and where all the money to support these policies which are based on a fairy story is coming from, he remains, like all British politicians, completely silent.

Speculative bubbles:
“Although each of these episodes is well documented, this book examines the monetary interventions that engendered each of these events showing that not only the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble were caused by government meddling, but Tulipmania as well.”
“Although these episodes occurred centuries ago, readers will find the events eerily similar to today’s bubbles and busts: low interest rates, easy credit terms, widespread public participation, bankrupt governments, price inflation, frantic attempts by government to keep the booms going, and government bailouts of companies after the crash.”
http://mises.org/store/Early-Speculative-Bubbles-P578.aspx

Some empires are brought down by attack from the outside.
The other way that empires fall is from internal corruption.
Perhaps, sometimes, it is a good thing to be on the inside and help it along.

Fred, that’s way too whiny, too amateurish. No, you need to study the Hellfire Preachers to get this art form down.
First put on your deep voice, then stretch both hands out, and sonorously intone: “WOE unto you ye evildoers! Your wickedness will be punished unto the 7th generation! Floods!!! FIres! Famines! THIS shall be the wages or your unbelief and your great wickedness! REPENT ye, REPENT! Or ye shall be struck down from above with HELLFIRE AND EVERLASTING DAMNATION!!!!”
there, that’s a quick example, see how it’s done? With some practice on a local street corner I’m sure you could get really good at it – put a hat out and some people may even toss you some quarters. See, in your post you were coming off like a peeved 12 year old, that won’t get you anywhere. Study the masters, they know what works.

As Kate ((02:48:14) writes, the Conservative section of the UK’s single political party fully subscribes to this lunacy. As has become customary, the taxpayer will be expected to underwrite not only the construction of uneconomic generators of energy (although the Conservatives throw the UK voting dogs a bone by mentioning nuclear power) but also this market in imaginary assets (or is it liabilities?). Incredibly, the Conservatives wonder why their “me-too” policies (not restricted to their religious adherence to AGW and expensive devotion to wind-power) are not translating into an election-winning lead in the polls.

STEPHEN PARKER (23:18:17) :
i wonder what the third world thinks of carbon trading?
Not much — they burn carbon (in the form of charcoal) for cooking and heating, but they trade tangibles for it because they get something tangible in return.
Third World folks are poor, but they’re not *stupid*.

Another way to look at it, fees have risen to 50% of the contract price. Sweet, if you are the broker. Or as Soros might say, “buy low, sell high”.

wws (05:39:43) :
Fred, that’s way too whiny, too amateurish. No, you need to study the Hellfire Preachers to get this art form down.
His expostulation that all the animals in the rain forest would dry up and die paints too bland a picture — it would have been more effective if he’d said, “…will dry up and then explode like week-old kittens in a microwave with a tactical nuclear chili setting!”
Now *that’s* an apocalyptic vision.

I think ‘fred’ was being sarcastic. No one can be that idiotic, can they?
(oh how naive I am…)
Maybe the ocean is out there. Plotting. Waiting. Ready to rise when we decide to not whip ourselves because of our inconsideration for mother earth. Yes, it’s plotting. You can see it – every day.
It’s saying “See this? I’m coming in! I’m coming to get you and I’m not stopping this time, like I did yesterday! That House? gone! that beach? What beach? I’m moving it over ‘there’! Ha! What will you do then. eh? Don’t be building that hotel there! only *I* can tell you where dry land will be!…uh, maybe not today, you see me leave now, but I’m watching you! I’ll be back! maybe not tomorrow…well, actually, yes, tomorrow I *will* be back, but you don’t know where I’ll stop…well, actually, you will, but I’m out here, see, and there’s nothing you can do!”

I just saw your post!
>>>>Mike Haseler (02:34:11) :
Copner: “Is this story being planted?”
I’ve just worked out a wonderful scenario. If you were part of the anti-capitalist movement, how would you seek to destroy capitalism? Obviously the direct assault was a complete disaster, but what if you were to create a market so potentially lucrative that no capitalist could resist?
What then if you were to make that market so destructive to capitalism (like the steel works that were shut down due to carbon trading) that it would literally rot the capitalist infrastructure from inside forcing billions to be traded from the rich to the poor.
And what if, all along you knew the whole thing was a scam, and that sooner or later it would all fall apart bringing the whole capitalist system crashing to the ground?<<<>>r (04:28:23) :
Some empires are brought down by attack from the outside.
The other way that empires fall is from internal corruption.
Perhaps, sometimes, it is a good thing to be on the inside and help it along.<<<
I MEANT THE COLLAPSE OF CAP AND TRADE, NOT CAPITALISM!!! YIKES!

LightRain“For a $100 I’d get 1000 metric tonne exemption for my CO2 footprint. How long would that last me? A year, a decade, my life?”
Supposedly, the average carbon burden of us Westerners is 20 t/year, so the answer is: 50 years.
From what I’ve read, ’twas Enron who came up with this scheme. They expected to make a killing from being the clearing agent.

Nothing would give me more pleasure than seeing this trade going down the drain.
Nothing.

Men, you people are so sad…
“rbateman (20:18:12) :
For a market that is based on thin air (trace C02) and Piltdown-Man trickery this is hardly surprising as the end result.
Double cross: The con artists were conned.”
Yes, because money has intrinsic value…Sooooo sad…
“From what I’ve read, ’twas Enron who came up with this scheme. They expected to make a killing from being the clearing agent.”
You do know that the carbon market is in Europe right? Do you think Europe is like the US? Companies in Europe aren’t people (What country can put that in the law…that’s insane…) and they don’t own the people or the politicians…
You people are like children…can´t have an idea of your one, and because of that, you just repeat what other people say…sad…

Ref – Vincent (10:51:22) :
” At least if you trade pork bellies, corn, wheat, or even orange juice, there’s something tangible that will eventually be delivered somewhere – Anthony.”
“And I could add that even the most insolvent banks that overlent on subprime trailer parks have at least got the trailer parks to show for their stupidity. Compared to those buying emissions certificates, these banks are the very model of prudent financial management.”
__________________________
Don’t be surprised if we start getting inundated with phone sales pitches from the ‘Save The World From Change Coalition’ (aka -the ‘STWFCC’). I believe they claim to be a non-profit religious charity.
PS: Someone’s going to make a bundle off the gray haired Miami and Los Angeles retiree populations selling Billion Share Certificates with Fat Albert’s signature and a nice gold seal and pretty green ribbon on it. Wonder if the UN has already put in a copyright on something like that; sure would pay off the General Secretary’s “Entertainment Expenses” for a week or two.

It appears to me that the carbon traders have left their noncarbon footprints as result stepping of something more familiar and tangible that was deposited by a low-belching cow at the carbon trading post. They missed a real market opportunity that I can buy at Lowes for $1.45 a bag.

DOA is the proper term for the carbon footprint for those coming down from the tallest banana tree in the jungle.

The problem was perceived as how to pay for the alternative energy technology? So demon CO2 was fingered and a “credits” market invented. Trouble is, as Anthony and others point out, there is no commodity. You can’t sell CO2 if the trading scheme fails. And it has failed.
If government had its wits about it, it would belt tighten to pay for new tech. Why rely on new taxes – why not re-allocate current tax revenue and cut spending? Or is that too much government sacrifice?

Is this the makings of CDOs all over again?

Paging Michael Milken….