This report is from Europe via The Times Online. Meanwhile back here in the USA, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is going through a record period of low price (ten cents a metric ton) and extended lull in trading:
“Dead” is a word that might describe trading on this exchange.
Maybe it has something to do with the members of the advisory board? On it we find Ed Begley Jr., Joe Kennedy II, and Dr. Rajenda Pachauri. With a team like that, how could it fail? The real problem with carbon credits is that there’s nothing tangible to trade. It’s all spun from thin air, literally. At least if you trade pork bellies, corn, wheat, or even orange juice, there’s something tangible that will eventually be delivered somewhere – Anthony
Europe’s emissions trading system was in uproar yesterday amid a mounting scandal over “recycled” carbon permits.
Two carbon exchanges were forced to suspend trading as panic hit investors fearful that they had bought invalid permits.
BlueNext and Nord Pool, the French and Nordic exchanges, suspended trading in certificates of emission reduction (CERs) when it emerged that some had been illegally reused.
Concern that used and worthless permits were circulating caused the spot price of the certificates to collapse, from €12 per tonne of carbon to less than €1 .
The scare erupted after Hungary said last week that it had sold 2 million CERs submitted by Hungarian companies to satisfy their carbon emission allowances under the EU’s emission trading system (ETS).
Carbon permits submitted by companies every year to the national register are usually cancelled. However, Hungary exploited a loophole that allows CERs — which are issued not by European Union governments but by the United Nations under its Clean Development Mechanism — to be traded.
Investors in the carbon market took fright as it emerged that some of the Hungarian CERs had found their way back into the market, despite having been used to meet the carbon targets of Hungarian companies.
The double counting is threatening confidence in the ETS, according to staff at one energy consultancy. Icis Heren said: “For companies obliged by law to buy carbon credits … government-led carbon credit recycling means they risk buying a worthless asset.”
The Hungarian Government said that the used CERs were sold to non-European investors, but BlueNext said that it had found some of the suspect CERs trading on its system.
What I really meant to say, MAKE SOMETHING, BUILD SOMETHING, bring something to the table that brings an intrinsic value. A service is only good until as the people receiving the value figure out how to do it better. Then, not only do they receive the benefits of the service, the service rendered is of no value. And, ou can’t trade something that used to be.
Cassandra King
March 18, 2010 11:13 pm
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.
pft
March 18, 2010 11:14 pm
“James Sexton (22:50:15) :
What I meant to say, was, THERE IS NO VALUE TO CARBON1111 There is only a perceived value, but nothing intrinsic”
You can say the same thing about the dollar. Carbon credits are simply a currency manufactured out of thin air, like the dollar.
STEPHEN PARKER
March 18, 2010 11:18 pm
i wonder what the third world thinks of carbon trading?
Brian G Valentine
March 18, 2010 11:26 pm
Showing that the “invisible hand” of free market Capitalism not only feeds as many people as need to be fed but is guided by common sense as well.
Billyquiz
March 18, 2010 11:28 pm
spangled drongo (20:39:55) :
Can I interest anyone in a nice tulip bulb?
Yes, but only if it’s a low energy one!
Dave Wendt
March 18, 2010 11:33 pm
At least with the tulips you could plant them out back and let the brilliant burst of color each spring remind you of what a schnook you are.
Ed Murphy
March 18, 2010 11:33 pm
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.
Dave Wendt
March 18, 2010 11:38 pm
Hopefully the collapse of this fraudulent system has occurred at an early enough point that it’s not another “to big to fail” enterprise that we must bail out to avoid collapsing the entire economic system.
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…
kim
March 19, 2010 12:06 am
Fred 22:19:37
In Fred’s florid flow, he meant flora not fauna.
======================
Rereke Whakaaro
March 19, 2010 12:55 am
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.
Mike Haseler
March 19, 2010 1:54 am
An anti-capitalists inspired capital market trading thin air on the basis of temperature data from three incompetent people in the CRU.
Sure sounds like a recipe for success!
Copner
March 19, 2010 2:24 am
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?
David Alan Evans
March 19, 2010 2:32 am
KimW (20:41:35) :
The people who thought up the – trading in the equivalent of fluffy bunnies and Unicorns – have no idea about the real world and the con men and ’sharp’ businessmen that are out there. Trading an intangible – the Dutch Tulip Craze all over again – at 12 euro a ton. At least you can eat fluffy bunnies.
The people who thought up this scheme arethe con men and ’sharp’ businessmen that are out there
DaveE.
Mike Haseler
March 19, 2010 2:34 am
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?
Peter of Sydney
March 19, 2010 2:34 am
That’s a shame. I read somewhere that the carbon trading futures market was supposed to get much bigger than the existing forex market. If that ever still happens, and problems develop, I expect it will be the last straw and the world economic systems will collapse. In that case, let it happen. I’m now in favor of the carbon trading futures market picking up steam. I can’t wait for the collapse to bring to an end to all this nonsense once and for all, and for people to come to their senses. As I always believed, people only learn the hard way, never the common sense way through logical reasoning.
kim (22:56:07) :
Omigod, dhogaza is jumping out of his pants at Bart’s.
Do you reckon The Dhog has invested in carbon?
The Dhog is a legend.
Jimbo
March 19, 2010 2:45 am
Like the “dot-com Bubble”, “Tulip Mania”, “South Sea Bubble” and the “Roaring Twenties stock-market bubble” companies buy these ‘assets’ at prices they usually know are fictitious under the belief that another consumer will buy it from them at a still greater price. Unfortunately the market of “greater fools” eventually runs out, and the price typically plummets as owners try to unload the quickly devaluing asset.
Kate
March 19, 2010 2:48 am
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.
John F. Hultquist (21:12:20) :
In my neck of the woods we sell carbon credit by the cord – cut, split, dried, and stacked. Price varies inversely with temperature.
=============================================
Priceless !!!!!!!!!
Jimbo
March 19, 2010 4:18 am
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
Peter Miller
March 19, 2010 4:26 am
This could not happen to a nicer bunch of people.
Trading the equivalent of intangible snake oil on a global market is certain to riddled with fraud.
What I don’t understand is why anyone would be stupid enough to buy these credits, even if there was legislation in place. Just say you are going to close your carbon producing facility down – and mean it – if someone tries to make you pay. Energy shortages and unemployment should make the loonies/losers/lefties in governments see some sense.
Bre-X, black tulips, South Sea Bubbles, Icelandic bank savings, Enron were all frauds on an inconsequential scale compared to trading hundreds of billions of dollars in something which doesn’t exist and cannot be delivered against payment.
r
March 19, 2010 4:28 am
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.
John R. Walker
March 19, 2010 4:58 am
10 cents per tonne for virtual CO2 is still too much!
With a bit of luck these carbon exchanges will crash and burn…
What I really meant to say, MAKE SOMETHING, BUILD SOMETHING, bring something to the table that brings an intrinsic value. A service is only good until as the people receiving the value figure out how to do it better. Then, not only do they receive the benefits of the service, the service rendered is of no value. And, ou can’t trade something that used to be.
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.
“James Sexton (22:50:15) :
What I meant to say, was, THERE IS NO VALUE TO CARBON1111 There is only a perceived value, but nothing intrinsic”
You can say the same thing about the dollar. Carbon credits are simply a currency manufactured out of thin air, like the dollar.
i wonder what the third world thinks of carbon trading?
Showing that the “invisible hand” of free market Capitalism not only feeds as many people as need to be fed but is guided by common sense as well.
spangled drongo (20:39:55) :
Can I interest anyone in a nice tulip bulb?
Yes, but only if it’s a low energy one!
At least with the tulips you could plant them out back and let the brilliant burst of color each spring remind you of what a schnook you are.
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.
Hopefully the collapse of this fraudulent system has occurred at an early enough point that it’s not another “to big to fail” enterprise that we must bail out to avoid collapsing the entire economic system.
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
In Fred’s florid flow, he meant flora not fauna.
======================
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.
An anti-capitalists inspired capital market trading thin air on the basis of temperature data from three incompetent people in the CRU.
Sure sounds like a recipe for success!
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?
KimW (20:41:35) :
The people who thought up this scheme are the con men and ’sharp’ businessmen that are out there
DaveE.
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?
That’s a shame. I read somewhere that the carbon trading futures market was supposed to get much bigger than the existing forex market. If that ever still happens, and problems develop, I expect it will be the last straw and the world economic systems will collapse. In that case, let it happen. I’m now in favor of the carbon trading futures market picking up steam. I can’t wait for the collapse to bring to an end to all this nonsense once and for all, and for people to come to their senses. As I always believed, people only learn the hard way, never the common sense way through logical reasoning.
kim (22:56:07) :
Omigod, dhogaza is jumping out of his pants at Bart’s.
Do you reckon The Dhog has invested in carbon?
The Dhog is a legend.
Like the “dot-com Bubble”, “Tulip Mania”, “South Sea Bubble” and the “Roaring Twenties stock-market bubble” companies buy these ‘assets’ at prices they usually know are fictitious under the belief that another consumer will buy it from them at a still greater price. Unfortunately the market of “greater fools” eventually runs out, and the price typically plummets as owners try to unload the quickly devaluing asset.
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.
John F. Hultquist (21:12:20) :
In my neck of the woods we sell carbon credit by the cord – cut, split, dried, and stacked. Price varies inversely with temperature.
=============================================
Priceless !!!!!!!!!
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
This could not happen to a nicer bunch of people.
Trading the equivalent of intangible snake oil on a global market is certain to riddled with fraud.
What I don’t understand is why anyone would be stupid enough to buy these credits, even if there was legislation in place. Just say you are going to close your carbon producing facility down – and mean it – if someone tries to make you pay. Energy shortages and unemployment should make the loonies/losers/lefties in governments see some sense.
Bre-X, black tulips, South Sea Bubbles, Icelandic bank savings, Enron were all frauds on an inconsequential scale compared to trading hundreds of billions of dollars in something which doesn’t exist and cannot be delivered against payment.
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.
10 cents per tonne for virtual CO2 is still too much!
With a bit of luck these carbon exchanges will crash and burn…