In a move sure to set off a tirade from Joe Romm, we have this story from the BBC:
French government backs down on carbon tax plan
The French government has signalled that it is dropping a plan for a tax on domestic carbon dioxide emissions.
Jean-Francois Cope, parliamentary leader of the governing UMP party, was quoted as saying the tax “would be Europe-wide or not (exist) at all”.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon told parliament that the government should focus on policies that increased France’s economic competitiveness.
France had been rethinking the tax after a court rejected it last year.
The Constitutional Council said there were too many exemptions for polluters in the tax plan, and that a minority of consumers would bear the burden.
But President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government had still been planning to push through a revised version of the measure later this year.
more at the BBC here
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AusieDan (03:33:55) :
“Vuk etc…….lines of magnetic force seems to mirror the rise of global temperature through quite a long time frame. Have you any evidence that this is more than just a coincidence, like the correlation of CO2 levels with temperature?”
No I have not any evidence, or even hypothesis that the geomagnetic field causes the climate changes. What I speculate is that there may be a link between GMF and ocean and atmospheric currents. Ocean currents have a definite link to climatic events, is there a reverse effect difficult to say, but possible. Also circulation of the electrically charged gas molecules in the atmosphere will be affected by GMF in the polar regions. I have identified number of location where magnetic and climatic movements have similar trends. Coincidence possible, even likely but that does not mean it should be ignored.
It is highly unlikely that climatic changes could affect to any degree the GMF, however imprint of GMF on climatic trends is frequent:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC8.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC16.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC18.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC19.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC5.htm
Sarcozy has no choice.
His party just lost the elections and he does not like the idea losing France to the Left!
In two years he’s up for Presidential elections again.
So, he will keep low profile with any climate related ruling.
Late season snowfall … http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog
looks like those Frenchies aren’t “cheese eating surrender monkeys” after all – retract your words Bush, the French are doing us all a favour
/Mango
Romm posted on Carbon cabal tax schemes. How fine they are. If Climate Progress drools in regard to taxation, let’s see how it looks.
New York just dipped in the kitty and used their RGGI tax for general state expenses. It seems New York is short on pocket money. Jersey is dipping into 60 million of RGGI shakedown moneys. New Jersey’s governor said this week he will use move $65 million in RGGI money
So they lied about how the carbon/energy tax money was to be spent. A rational person is opposed to fake arguments for taxation.
Of course they used cooked temp records to assure us the planet was rapidly reaching a biiling point. Had the liberals not caused a lot of snow, New England would have roasted this winter.
Ooops, that went on the wrong thread, I normally type and paste posts, had two threads opened simultaneously. Sorry.
Given the state of the EU at present (Germany refuses to bail out Greece and the rest of the PIIGS), I don’t see any ‘EU-Wide’ anything financial for quite some time. Indeed, if you read AEP over at the Torygraph, the EU – originally conceived to keep France and Germany from dragging the rest of the show into yet another conflict – will do well to survive at all.
As a character on a Brit war comedy show used to say:
“Oh dear, how sad, never mind”.
Big Story developing
http://www.prisonplanet.com/how-government-cash-created-the-climategate-scandal.html
Is New Zealand the only contry stupid enough to pass an emissions trading scheme – essentially a tax or increase in cost of living of at least $1400 a year / person!
Hansen says today that the SST temperatures still rising!
“Global Cooling Is Politics, Not Science: Study”
“Wayne Findley (14:13:14) :
Given the state of the EU at present (Germany refuses to bail out Greece and the rest of the PIIGS), I don’t see any ‘EU-Wide’ anything financial for quite some time.”
There’ll be a deal before Thursday according to the FTD:
http://www.ftd.de/politik/europa/:streit-ueber-finanzpaket-eu-steht-vor-durchbruch-fuer-griechenland-hilfe/50091997.html
It’s just the usual tortuous haggling…
Now if Cameron will join the French band wagon there might be some point in the coming election.
@ur momisugly R. de Haan
Sarkozy (we French skeptics call him Carbozy) is an extreme statist. To US standards, he would be on the left of Obama.
Like elsewhere in Europe, politicians have all drunk the carbon kool aid and we in France, just like the Brits with Labor and Tory, have the same choice between the left and the right regarding carbon & energy policies : no choice.
Maybe some more shattering defeats (Copenhagen being the first) will help them open their eyes.
Sarkozy’s Government dropped the carbon tax because they got clobbered in the recent regional elections. From the NY Times article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/business/global/24iht-carbon.html
The Socialists almost swept the board in the regional poll, leaving them and their allies in control of 21 of 22 mainland regions plus Corsica
I never did think that China had any intentions of reducing their emissions, but now it’s official. In fact, China is going to allow their emissions to increase.
China says no emissions cap for now
Thu, Feb 25, 2010
AFP
BEIJING, Feb 25, 2010 (AFP) – China’s top climate change negotiator has said the world’s biggest carbon polluter has no intention of capping greenhouse gas emissions for the time being, state media reported Thursday.
Su Wei, who led China’s negotiating team at the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December, said the country’s carbon emissions had to increase because the economy is still developing, the China Daily said.
Read more: http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20100225-200907.html
David A (12:28:48) :
“BTW, can anyone comment on this, as I have not seen it discussed…. According to this…
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2009/12/sea-level-decrease-over-last-6-years.html
The argos system not only shows no warming, but no sea level rise for the past six years. if this is true how do the AGW proponents insist sea level rise is accelerating?”
That is very simple to answer.
The AGW crowd believe in the IPCC. The IPCC cherry-pick from models, and refuse to look at data from the real world.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Why this isnt the biggest Gate of them all beats me. SeaGate.
Niels Axel Moerner speaks in Oslo the 17’th of April 2010.
I wouldn’t go too far in cheering the French, they’re still a rum lot. Rude, useless policemen, stuck in their ways, and completely useless in a war. Their engineering can be really iffy too – although there are exceptions. They banned sales of our UK beef for six years – three of those years completely against EU rules. The EU decided not to fine them a single Franc because they wouldn’t have paid it! Seriously! France has some serious problems coming up in the future with regard to its fiscal confidence, medical care, its education, social welfare, taxes, and pensions. The French workers will strike at the drop of a hat, and the government there have some future battles on their hands.
Oh, and they actually do smell of garlic.
Reference: The ghost of Big Jim Cooley (15:36:39) :
Spoken like an Englishman. French medical care is superb and readily available at reasonable cost; your country’s heath care is an unfolding disaster. French citizens pay reasonable fees for ordinary doctor’s visits and the Government pays for catastrophic expenses like cancer, kidney failure, major trauma accidents, etc.
The garlic makes the food taste good, and it is considerably better on average than that served across the channel. Same goes for the wine. As my French step-daughter says “The English burned Joan ‘d Arc and boil their beef”
Most of their electrical power comes from nuclear energy, and has for many years. A carbon tax is complete nonsense, and the French citizens turned it down for good reasons even though the current Government was smoking the AGW dope. Then there is the matter of driving on the wrong side of the road…
Ghost of Big Jim Cooley
I think you got a little carried away slagging the French because of your own personal experience. My experience with France could not be more different. The French just did all of us fighting carbon taxes a big, big favour. No doubt they have fought hard to rid themselves of this tax and my congratulations to them for this accomplishment.
Bravo et Merci mes amis!
“The ghost of Big Jim Cooley (15:36:39) :
[…]
Oh, and they actually do smell of garlic.”
Mais les filles!
OT but the AGW are in need of a little Dutch boy with an increasing number of fingers.
UK Times Online has: –
Public scepticism prompts Science Museum to rename climate exhibition
“Even the title of the £4 million gallery has been changed to reflect the museum’s more circumspect approach. The museum had intended to call it the Climate Change Gallery, but has decided to change this to Climate Science Gallery to avoid being accused of presuming that emissions would change the temperature.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7073272.ece
“I never did think that China had any intentions of reducing their emissions, but now it’s official. In fact, China is going to allow their emissions to increase.” –
toyotawhizguy (15:27:29) :
Even if China was onboard China would be about as effective curbing their CO2 emission as thay are at protecting against trademark & copywrite infringement, which is to say, Good luck. Only the AGW devotees would buy that idea as they get suckered by China.
From Junk Bonds to Sub-prime to Carbon Trading, he just keeps getting richer and richer.
Carbon emissions trading might be useless at tackling climate change but it is proving to be highly profitable for the financial engineers behind it – men like the godfather of pollution trading, an American called Richard Sandor, who was one of the founders of financial derivatives in the 1980s at junk bond trader Drexel Burnham Lambert.
It was at Drexel Burnham Lambert that Sandor pioneered the “collateral mortgage obligations” that eventually brought the financial markets to their knees. He was also architect of the first pollution permit trading scheme (in sulphur emissions) in the US in the 1990s.
Today, he chairs the company controlling more than 80% of EU carbon emissions trading, Climate Exchange plc, which regularly launches “innovative” carbon products such as daily futures contracts and has set up trading exchanges in China, Canada and Australia. Sandor meanwhile has been a big mover behind plans for a mandatory trading system in the US that would see his company”s income multiply.
“Significant long-term growth potential”
Under Sandor, and chief executive and offshore insurance specialist Neil Eckert, Climate Exchange plc owns the European Climate Exchange based in London’s Bishopsgate, as well as the Chicago Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange. Business is especially booming in London, as Eckert boasted in a results announcement last week: “ECX had a wonderful year and with the continuing EU discussion of an anticipated 30% cut [in emissions] by 2020 and particularly the move to 100% auctioning [of allowances] in 2011, shows significant long-term growth potential.”
Last year Sandor earned $1m and Eckert £575,000. Sandor”s shares in the company are worth more than £40m, and Eckert”s around £5m on top of £7m worth of options. These riches came on the back of operating profits last year of £11.5m, made almost entirely in London, where trading in £70bn worth of emissions allowances by the European exchange’s 100 members, including such renowned environmentalists as Shell, Barclays and RBS, earned the exchange £11.4m.
Not that any of this finds its way into the government’s coffers in the form of tax that might be invested in slightly more useful environmental measures. Climate Exchange plc is registered in the tax haven of the Isle of Man, where, according to its accounts, “it is subject to tax at 0%”, having been set up there when it was simply a fund company in order to avoid capital gains tax. But the company also claims that its operating subsidiaries “are resident in various jurisdictions where they are subject to local rates of taxation”.
Same name, different company
In Britain this might be thought to refer to the company ostensibly running the exchange in Bishopsgate, European Climate Exchange Ltd. But its accounts, filed quietly at Companies House, show that it is owned by an Irish company with exactly the same name: European Climate Exchange Ltd. It is this Irish company, registered at its lawyer”s office at 70 Sir John Rogerson’s Quay in Dublin (without a trading exchange in sight and only a company secretary to be found there), that earns the commissions.
The synonymous British company is reimbursed for its costs of running the exchange while the profits that accumulate in Dublin are then returned to its ultimate parent company, Climate Exchange plc, in the Isle of Man in the form of tax-free interest payments on the substantial loans from Douglas that fund the operation.
This kind of tax planning requires plenty of carbon dioxide-intensive jetting off to board meetings in whichever countries the directors want their companies to be tax resident. As a Climate Exchange plc spokesman was quoted “They’re always traveling.” This might not do much for the planet but it’ll be good for business when airlines are forced into the trading scheme from 2012.
And I’m sure when prices increase we will all be grateful that this man is receiving so much of our carbon taxes.
Our local weather guy continues to predict 80s and about daily. The high today barely hit 74, and then went right back down. right now out weather bug shows 60. Normal is high in low 80s lows about 65. And then everyday he puts out his ‘tourists only’ weather cast.
Eventually everybody knows the truth and you begin looking laughable. The French, the French have figured it out.
Re kwik (15:31:13) :
Thank you for responding. I am familiar with Morner and respect his presentation. Your commetnrefers to 2010, but the link is from 2007.
I am aware somewhat of the use of models in sea rise projections, but I thought most claims of increasing rate of SLR came from satelite data. I am most curious as to the data from satelites vs the recordings from the argos ocean buoys. This is what I have not seen discussed. http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2009/12/sea-level-decrease-over-last-6-years.html I agree that this potential “gate” is relatively neglected. (perhaps because there are so many “gates”)