Pajamas media update: There have been some developments since this was published. The short version is that a series of coincidences led Gabriel Calzada to believe a package was a bomb threat. Let’s just review what Calzada was responding to: he received an unsolicited package addressed as from a “green” company. Thermotechnic. When he called to ask about it, he was told: “It’s our response to your study [on green jobs].”
It didn’t look like, or feel like, a letter or report, so at that point Calzada got a security guard to scan it — and what was inside was a cylindrical object with wires attached. At that point, the security guard got an expert to examine it, with others in attendance. The contents were a container for diesel of some sort, and some other parts. The expert saw this as a bomb threat, based on a pattern used by, eg., ETA: “This one is a hoax bomb. The next one might not be.”
So Calzada took this as a threat based on the experts’ opinions. Remember that Calzada has been viciously attacked for having had the temerity to publish a study that questioned the economic effectiveness of “green jobs” in Spain, including having been threatened personally and professionally. It was at that point Horner wrote this piece.
Since then, especially following the controversy becoming public in the Spanish press, the company contacted Calzada; what appears to have happened is this:
- A package containing car parts was swapped for a package containing a report intended for Calzada.
- The Thermotechnic person Calzada contacted said something that was ambiguous.
- Calzada, already the subject of threats and intimidation, relied on expert opinion that it was a bomb threat.
As further information became available, it became clear it was a misunderstanding based on several coincidences. Calzada has written an open letter explaining this in detail, and now agrees there was no threat from Thermotechnic.
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The author of a damning study about the failure of Spain’s “green jobs” program — a story broken here at PJM — received the threatening package on Tuesday from solar energy company Thermotechnic.
June 24, 2010 – by Christopher Horner
Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.
Says Calzada:
Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside … they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.
Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert.
The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:
This time you receive unconnected pieces. Next time it can explode in your hands.
Dr. Calzada added:
[The terrorism expert] told me that this was a warning.
The bomb threat is just the latest intimidation Dr. Calzada has faced since releasing his report and following up with articles in Expansion (a Spanish paper similar to the Financial Times). A minister from Spain’s Socialist government called the rector of King Juan Carlos University — Dr. Calzada’s employer — seeking Calzada’s ouster. Calzada was not fired, but he was stripped of half of his classes at the university. The school then dropped its accreditation of a summer university program with which Calzada’s think tank — Instituto Juan de Mariana — was associated.
Additionally, the head of Spain’s renewable energy association and the head of its communist trade union wrote opinion pieces in top Spanish newspapers accusing Calzada of being “unpatriotic” — they did not charge him with being incorrect, but of undermining Spain by daring to write the report.
Their reasoning? If the skepticism that Calzada’s revelations prompted were to prevail in the U.S., Spanish industry would face collapse should U.S. subsidies and mandates dry up.
As I have previously reported at PJM (here and here), Spain’s “green jobs” program was repeatedly referenced by President Obama as a model for what he would like to implement in the United States. Following the release of Calzada’s report, Spain’s Socialist government has since acknowledged the debacle — both privately and publicly. This month, Spain’s government instituted massive reductions in subsidies to “renewable” energy sources.
Read the rest of the story here:
Obviously there’s billions of dollars at stake here. It’s the only motivation, in my humble opinion, that a corporation would deem as ‘justification’ to acts of terrorism. And the government is right behind them, doling out the pats on the back.
This is just sick. The dogma we’re talkin about here is unfathomable. And the public are blindly following along. Rest assured this is what’s going on in many industrial countries behind the curtains… It seems as though our society is literally going down the toilet.
And for those of us who are not sucked into this dogmatic religion, we’re in the unfortunate position of watching all of this unfold with our eyes wide open and our hands tied behind our back.
It won’t be the oceans that sink us all… it’ll be the eco-fascists squeezing our wallets under the false umbrella of “going green”.
… I need a stiff drink.
I smell “staged” stink.
I though similar, but in my case I wondered what made Dr Calzada call in a terrorism expert to scan the package, and then call in a journalist before opening it. It just sounds a little suspicious to me.
Ringing the company to ask what was in it was okay. Then, based on that response, he calls in a terrorism expert?
Pamela Gray says:
June 24, 2010 at 8:29 pm
The massive economic failure that resulted from Spain’s Green Energy Policy was apparently enough to make the Spanish Govt. do an about-face.
It should also put a big chill down the spine of similar policies here in the U.S.
As for the credibility of communist forces making threats, one has only to look at what happened to Russia and China under Stalin & Mao. Is this happening in Spain? I don’t know. But I do know that such green job policies are full of Perpetual Motion idealism.
Sorry to say I m skeptical of the facts and conclusions presented here.
No legitimate company would acknowledge threatening or black mailing packages.
It is either a misunderstanding, a wrong package was sent.
A deliberate use of a return address by a malevolent sender , not the company. In that case when asked they might have said: advertizing material? and that is what made him suspicious.
They should have sent a picture of a bomb… they would have saved on shipment. Austerity measures.
I can not find any reference to this in the Spanish msm press, and I do not think they could really ignore this if true , so it´s probably a premature to assume it’s true , until it’s genuinely verified.
@Charles
This so-called bomb threat is almost certainly a crock of excrement. Nobody puts a legitimate return address on a bomb.
Examiner.com is about the bottom of the barrel for reliable news too. Go read about it here and think twice about using it as a source in the future.
Nevermind the remark about Examiner.com. Not sure what link led me to it now and made me think it was connected with this report. It’s still a good idea to know about Examiner’s untrustworthy character though…
Fortunately, the bomb was a do-it-yourself package and they’re incapable to merge the pieces so far.
At any rate, similar terrorists from green companies should be sent to Gitmo.
Great. What next? Will my GE clock/radio explode if they find out I’m a climate realist? Green death squads knocking at my door? The Unabomber named Energy Czar?
I’m glad I wasn’t on the AGW Black List from Stanford. Still, GreenPeace knows where I live, according to them anyway. I throw all the mail in the burn barrel unopened as a precaution – been doing that for years – but maybe I should get another doberman.
Like GreenPeace advocating a GreenWar
Actually if a company has big enough people behind them they can act with the belief of impugnity.
The very fact that they were brave enough to send it in their own box and then give an eery explanation to him over the phone, is it really any wonder he called a terrorist expert and a bomb expert before opening it?
I’m not that familiar with Spains companies but I am familiar with the fact that they have a very insidious crime situation and a 21% and climbing unemployment rate and since they decided to be guinnea pigs for Cap and Trade they have had businesses leave the country in droves.
>The Monster says:
June 24, 2010 at 6:46 pm
>There is really no other way to look at the situation. The AGW industry has become an organized crime syndicate.
Close, but it’s the other way around: the organized crime syndicate that has bought, stolen, brainwashed, terrorised and warred its way into power is the very syndicate that conceived the AGW hoax and has funded its goons in the industry.
I always get a sick chuckle out of statements about people in high positions who love to line their pockets and make endless piles of money. At a certain point, somewhere above the average salary of a Major League ace pitcher or Wall Street credit default swapper, it’s about power. Sure, the institutions fall in line for the money, but it’s the agenda that greases their palms and those promoting the agenda are all about control. With meters on all devices that use energy, taxes on all reproduction and movement of people and goods, and a carbon dioxide derivatives bubble to boot, AGW is a sociopathic control freak’s ultimate dream.
If you travel around southern Spain today, the one thing you notice is the fields of solar panels outside almost every town or village. If you go up into the Sierras, there seem to be wind farms everywhere, although the number of windmills actually working is usually none or just a few – maybe, they have been turned off to save costs.
Most sites have a stated output of 2-8 Megawatts, I have always been intrigued at how quickly these solar power sites sprung up – there were almost none three years ago, so the subsidy trough must have been both deep and wide.
Calzada’s study is an excellent read and a damning indictment of politicians and the incredible waste and job destruction of their “greener than thou” policies.
Spain is a good lesson for all countries, whose political leaders are obsessed by the idea of ‘green’ power generation. Calzada’s paper should be a compulsory read for all these politicians, although I suspect it would be a little difficult for their limited intellects to comprehend.
Is the company already under criminal investigation? It seems that Spain is a kind of tough on terrorist threats and activities. Any follow up of the story in this context?
Geez, this story is starting to get legs. There is not enough information out to reliably determine either way the truth. I did bother to check the Thermotech website…. they deal mostly in solar…. so does solar technology require a fuel filter and would they send one to a customer on the day they also sent documents to someone else? Was the thing in pieces as Horner suggests? Even assembled, does it look like a bomb when unwrapped? Would you send it to the FBI field office and be sure they’d recognize the humor and satire? Something happened in Spain this week and it would be good to reserve judgement until we can get a good translation.
Spanish police have special anti-terrorist units and a long experience in dealing with domestic terrorism. Any Spaniard would know that. I find Calzada’s response extremely odd.
Histrionics aside, the numbers are straightforward. You need about 40-cents (U.S.) per kwh at the plant fence, either through subsidies or in the market, to make economic sense of a solar power plant investment. Wind power translates to about 27-cents, The average wholesale electric power rate in the U.S. is about 4-cents per kwh. It really is that simple.
The above numbers do not take into account the capital cost of backup capacity required for both solar and wind for “when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow”.
I built 23 alternate energy plants during my career and I know the economics.
It is well known that in Italy and Spain local mafias have taken hold of environmental programmes, waste removal services, etc. They have ties to energy companies, government local and national, and to EU ministers.
Gangsters are controlling this racket just like in the days of Al Capone.
I’ll wait to see if this story turns out to be true, but its worth homing in on the renewables aspect, as a number of people seem to be sceptical of their benefits.
There is no doubt that the correct renewables used in the correct place have the potential to be a useful source of power. For example, Britain has a fantastic potential for wave and tidal power, but would not be a good choice for solar energy.
However, most renewables are, in general, hopelessly uneconomic and inefficient at present and they are being promoted because they are green rather than because they work.
The truth is that our current industrialisation and standard of living was built on cheap and plentiful fossil fuel. It is likely that the developing world needs access to the same route to wealth and that the developed world can’t currently afford costly experiments into the alternatives.
However, we need to add to the equation the need for security of supply and continuity of supply. I don’t like the idea of unfriendly countries having their boot on my fuel supplies and for that reason would favour the use of coal and nuclear to generate the base power we need, whilst spending money on seeking viable alternatives.
It is likely that there is a 20 year gap before renewables can deliver cheap abundant energy so it would suggest that we are realistically stuck with existing sources of conventional power for rather longer than Government wants, but they intend to make it highly expensive and scarcer, so we have the worst of all worlds.
All in all its a bit of a mess-Governments have become convinced we need to change to green power but unfortunately the technology is not there yet and we will have to pay more than we can afford on the expensive alternatives. This is going to impact on every walk of life.
Tonyb
I don’t speak Spanish but I’m familiar with the language of BS. I will definitely reserve judgement on this story until more verified details emerge. The story itself reeks of a Peter Sellars/Pink Panther-type film comedy rather than anything real thus far.
Return address label on an unassembled bomb? I also understand Spain is all too familiar with bombs and bomb threats and has well-known protocols for dealing with such events and this does not fit.
Nice try, but I remain sceptical of this one.
Steve Oregon says:
June 24, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Like GreenPeace advocating a GreenWar
Greenpeace = Redwar!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nothing has changed.
Re: Nick Stokes
My local garage has a separate spare parts department which would make it very difficult for them to send a spare part when they meant to send a document (the wrong spare part or the wrong document would be easy). I assume Termotechnics is slightly bigger than my local garage. If it has any structure to it then the department dealing with sending out spare parts will be completely separate from any department that would be sending a document to Dr Calzada. This would make it nearly impossible for them to accidentally have sent a fuel filter.
The Mafia Loves AGW
Much like the late 19th century produced plenty of sordid stories and crime in the development of the oil industry, there’s a lot of organised crime rushing to get involved in renewable energy. We can either praise the Mafia’s newfound sense of ecological correctness or note the large amount of government subsidy being thrown around rather carelessly.
Lord Oxburgh is chairman of Falck Renewables, a wind farm manufacturer that is a subsidiary of the troubled Falck Group in Milan, Italy. The projects that Falck Renewables build seem to follow a pattern:
Their project in La Muela, Spain, was associated with the arrest of 18 people on organised crime issues. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/22/la-muela-renewables-spain-corruption]
“Powerful wind turbines churned the air above La Muela last week but the stir in this small Aragonese town was caused by the arrest of the mayor and 18 other people on charges that reveal a new phenomenon in Spain: eco-corruption.”
And at Falck’s windfarm at Buddusò – Alà dei Sardi: “Four people arrested [http://gruppodinterventogiuridico.blog.tiscali.it/2009/11/10/arresti_di__signori_del_vento___2018496-shtml/], seven wind farms and 12 companies under sequestration, and “that’s the outcome of the operation” Gone With the Wind “for which the magistrate court of Avellino has issued arrest warrants for Oreste Vigorito, 62 years Naples lawyer, administrator and president of IVPC Benevento Calcio; Vito Nicastro, 52 years of Alcamo, Ferdinand Renzulli, 42 years of Avellino, and Vincent Dongarra, 46 years of Enna. Another 11 people were investigated in various capacities for accountability in organized fraud for receiving government grants for the construction of wind farms. Nine of the seized companies are based in Avellino, the other 3 in Sicily.”
As for Falck’s windfarm at Minervino Murge,”the Anti-Mafia prosecutor in Trapani gave life to operation “Aeolus”, with 8 arrest warrants issued at the time of men linked to local clans, public administrators, municipal officials and entrepreneurs “for allowing the association called La Cosa Nostra mafia, and in particular the Mafia family Mazara del Vallo control of economic activities, permits, contracts and public services in the production of electricity through wind turbines and the exchange of vows with the political mafia. “Identification of persons and companies involved in the investigation Sicilian revealed disturbing links with the construction of wind farms in the territory of Puglia: Minervino Murge, Spinazzola and Poggiorsini municipalities in whose territories some companies have shown interest and in some cases initiated installations without the necessary concessions.”
As for their wind farm near Palermo, Petralia Sottana, what do “Puglia, Sicily, Mazara del Vallo-Minervino Murge have in common? Nothing but an interest in wind power. Companies interested in plant wind turbines in Apulia are committed to the same plant in Sicily.
Italian and EU subsidies for the building of wind farms and the world’s highest guaranteed rates, €180 ($240, £160) per kWh, for the electricity they produce have turned southern Italy into a highly attractive market exploited by organised crime.
As story in 2009 by the Financial Times put it, “Multinationals are starting to find out something that is well known to Italian investors: that concealed beneath Europe’s most generous system of incentives – supported by “green credits” that industrial polluters have to purchase – there exists a web of corruption and shady deals.
Rossana Interlandi, recently appointed head of Sicily’s environment department, explains that project developers – she calls them “speculators” – were also lured by the appeal of a law that obliges Italy’s national grid operator to pay wind farm owners even when they are not producing electricity.”
The number of Italian cities with a wind-farm nearby has doubled within a year, thanks to EU subsidies. It would be astonishing if the Mafia hadn’t gotten involved. The situation has deteriorated in Italy to the point that they are moving to residential solar to cut carbon dioxide emissions, in large part to minimize Mafia involvement.
Wind energy has become big business and it’s growing in a hurry. Lots of shady people are getting involved, in no small part because of government subsidies for both construction and feed in tariffs for so-called “green electricity”.
The parent group of Oxburgh’s Falck Renewables is the Falck Group of Milan. As with so many Italian businesses, it’s a complicated maze of cross-holdings and interlocked ownership that makes it almost impossible to decipher. However Falck’s sister company Actelios was the target of an anti-Mafia investigation.
Nobody from Falck Renewables or its parent company has been arrested, although Achille Colombo, its former head, has resigned, and news reports of questionable dealings with a Sicilian incinerator project that was canceled have arisen. The deal, which was canceled and is still under investigation, was worth an estimated €4 billion. Falck Group is a Milan based company that has built wind-farms in Calabria and Sicily that have been part of an anti-Mafia investigation. Some of the wind-farms, including one near Corleone, were completed quite some time ago, but haven’t been connected to the grid. However, generous EU subsidies were forthcoming nonetheless.
Falck’s sister company Platani Energia Ambiente was part of an anti-mafia investigation regarding a controversial land deal that lasted from 2002 to 2007 and involved the removal from office of the contract administrator, Gioacchino Genchi.
Just about the last thing they needed was news that wind energy wasn’t crucial to the planet’s survival and that news that the research unit which told the world that current warming was “unprecedented in the past 1,000 years” was probably wrong. The recession had hammered stock prices in green technology. The failure of COP15 in Copenhagen, the collapse of carbon pricing and various scandals about trading permits had not helped.
A quick investigation focusing on internal interviews and a review of papers selected (it seems) by a committee on which one of the targets of the investigation served, and pointedly did not review any of the papers that had been criticized by skeptics, left the CRU smelling like a “slightly disorganized but committed” rose.
The reaction of major media sources and governments to the Oxburgh results show that his findings were more than welcome – they may well have been necessary to continue the momentum for widespread conversion to green energy.
I’ll repeat here that I have no evidence linking Oxburgh or his company to the mafia – even honest companies in Italy can’t get far away from the mafia and can be surprised when they are linked in an investigation.
But the pressure Lord Oxburgh’s company was under due to general financial conditions and being enmeshed in legal difficulties in Italy make it inevitable that someone would raise the question of whether he could have been impartial.
More importantly, the flood of new government money, new deals and new partnerships for projects in faraway countries makes due diligence difficult, if not impossible. This is a Wild West frenzy of renewable building and carbon trading, and there have been scandals for years–and there will be more. What was the thinking behind choosing someone (even one so respected as Oxburgh) to sit in judgment on issues that affected his company’s health – even survival? I’ll repeat I’m not questioning Oxburgh’s integrity – but could anyone from the renewable sector have escaped some kind of association of this sort? In 2009 alone, 19 were arrested in Spain in connection with corruption surrounding a wind farm, there was a scandal regarding recycled carbon trading permits in Hungary, a regulator in Maine accepted an ownership interest in a company he regulated and which he went on to lead, a Washington biologist is accused of steering wind farm funding to his organization, Canada is investigating lobbying violations by green lobbyists, the list literally goes on and on.
And now a company with so many controversial ties to scandals in renewable energy comes up with a verdict that provides needed breathing space for renewable energy companies in general, and his own and his sister companies to boot.
It was a most convenient finding, this exoneration of the CRU.
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Carousel fraud plagues European carbon trading markets
Why are mysterious UK businesses registering to trade carbon in Europe?
It is a building site, formerly a derelict car park, in a deprived part of West London, where the neon glow of curry houses and late-night grocery stores could not be further from the wealth and glamour of London’s financial markets. Described as a “consulting” business, this is the address of a UK company that has signed up to trade carbon permits under the European Emissions Trading Scheme in Copenhagen. But there is no trace of its existence on the Companies House database. At the newsagent next door, nobody has ever even heard of ”emissions trading” – the system where companies buy and sell the right to emit carbon dioxide – and there has not been a building there for many years.
It is not the only oddity to emerge from the Danish Carbon Registry. All the expected big players are on the list – utilities, oil and heavy industry – the only sectors obliged by law to own permits to cover emissions.
Quite a few investment banks are also signed up, on behalf of industry or trading to make a profit. But outnumbering these familiar names, hundreds of UK companies selling anything from hair loss treatments to electronics have mysteriously registered to buy and sell carbon permits in the Scandinavian nation – mostly in the last 18 months.
Many give addresses in the regions such as Yorkshire, Lancashire, Essex and other places not known for their links to the world of finance. The appearance of these obscure British companies – among them businesses with unreachable addresses and Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo email accounts for company representatives – has recently come to the attention of the Danish authorities. While many are bound to be genuine individual private traders playing the carbon markets, investigators are examining the possibility that some of these unknown UK-based companies have used the system to commit “carousel” fraud linked to VAT.
The Danish registry may be at the heart of Europe’s problems with carbon trading fraud. Local media has repeatedly raised the fact that few, if any, checks are done on new traders and approval can be much quicker than in other countries.
Criminals profit by importing goods VAT-free, selling them through a series of companies, each liable to VAT, before exporting them again. Then, the first link in the chain often goes missing without accounting for the VAT and the final link reclaims the VAT it has paid from the state before disappearing.
It might sound like the tin-pot scheme of local small-time crooks, but fleecing the tax man can bring in big money.
Just a few weeks ago, Europol, the cross-border police force, said that carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90% of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland pocketing an estimated €5bn (£4.5bn). “It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities,” Europol said.
Figures from New Energy Finance show the value of the global market falling from $38bn (£23bn) in the second quarter to $30bn in the three months to the end of September after several countries cracked down.
The London platform, the European Climate Exchange, where banks and energy companies tend to trade, is not affected by the fraud because it does not offer the spot contracts on which VAT was payable. But British traders can still defraud authorities by buying and selling permits on other European exchanges. This organised criminal activity has even “endangered the credibility” of the current carbon trading system, according to Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol.
So why have fraudsters particularly targeted carbon trading? And what is being done to iron out problems in Europe before other areas – such as the US – start to trade carbon in the next few years?
Carousel fraud has been a known scam for years among mobile commodities, such as phones, computer chips and cigarettes. But the attraction of carbon permits is their intangible nature, so there is no need physically to ship goods across borders. All is done at the click of a mouse.
The very nature of carbon credits makes them “an incredibly lucrative target for criminals”, Rafael Rondelez, who was involved with the Europol investigation, has warned. His message is clear: other types of carbon fraud could soon spring up because there are “no strong regulations or checking principles as there is in banking to prevent such activities as money laundering.”
This has to be the ultimate vehicle for fraudsters; turning thin air into hard cash on the basis of the biggest scientific fraud in history.
The whole carbon trading apparatus has become the biggest racket on the planet on a par with the worst excesses of the bankers. The whole thing is a sinners charter which allows rich countries to do what they like. They make money by switching operations to low-cost foreign subsidiaries in developing countries These guys then claim carbon credits for selling back to their principals. The transaction show up as costs in the profit and loss accounts and reduce exposure to corporation tax.
Carbon trading fraudsters in Europe pocket €5bn
Carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90% of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals pocketing an estimated €5bn (£4.5bn) mainly in Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland, according to Europol, the European law enforcement agency.
The London platform, the ICE European Climate Exchange, where the big banks and energy companies tend to trade, is not affected by the fraud because it does not offer spot contracts – the only form of emissions trading on which VAT is payable. But British traders can still defraud HM Revenue and Customs by buying and selling permits on other European exchanges.
Europol said it had reason to believe the sophisticated techniques developed in the carbon market could soon “migrate” to the gas and electricity sectors. It is estimated that in some countries, “up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities,” a Europol spokesman said.
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Thinking of investing?
Here is who you go to if you need to run a fraud check on the trader with whom you are chatting about playing these particular ponies:
http://www.environmentalmarkets.org/
If the firm with which you are working is not a member of said group, then don’t pay them a penny. Carbon reduction offsets are a registered security like gilts, and regulated just as strictly, if in fact they are real offsets.
If you are in need of a genuine registered broker in the existing infrastructure compliant with NASD and other licencing schemes, in London the two major houses are Evolution Markets at http://www.evomarkets.com and CO2e at http://www.co2e.com