NOTE: See updates below, it appears a green group, Climate Justice Action claims responsibility and apparently attacked ECX.eu in a tiff over carbon credit policy.

The Independent Media Centre of Australia is reporting that the sister website of the flatlining Chicago Climate Exchange, the European Climate Exchange (ECX), had it’s main page hacked and replaced with the image above. I’ve confirmed this with Google cache of the ECX website available here, Screencap of the cached page here. [Update: Wikipedia now has a larger screencap online here]
While they have since taken down that image, video, and text, the main page and the rest of the website appears to still be mostly nonfunctional (as of this writing) as you can see in the next screencap.
Indymedia writes:
In a protest against carbon trading as a method for acting on climate change, on Friday, July 23 at just before midnight, the public website of the European Climate Exchange (ECX), the leading marketplace for trading CO2 emissions in Europe, was targetted by hacktivists of the autonomous tech collective *decocidio* (#?).
In a public act of digital direct action, the ECX website was taken offline and replaced with a message in an effort to try to raise awareness about carbon trading as a dangerous false solution to the climate crisis, in support of the grassroots activists aiming to oppose the power structures and companies profiteering from the dysfunctional Cap & Trade scheme.
The hacked page shows the embedded video of The Story of Cap and Trade with links to activist groups Earth First, Climate Justice Action, and the Hack Bloc. The purpose of the hack was to expose carbon trading as a scam:
According to the hack message:
“The Cap and Trade system (as implemented in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme) has a whole range of issues:
* It’s main purpose is not to reduce emissions, but to help polluters meet “reduction” targets in the cheapest way possible, in a business-as-usual scenario.
* Leaves room for unverifiable manipulation.
* Generates outrageous profits for big industry polluters, investors in fraudulent offset projects, opportunist traders and new ‘marketplaces’ such as the European Climate Exchange.
* It distracts attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken to tackle climate change and it’s fundamental root causes.”
In 2009 Friends of the Earth UK released a report warning that carbon trading could trigger a second ‘sub-prime’ style financial collapse and fail to protect the world from global warming catastrophe. A copy of the full report, ‘A Dangerous Obsession’, is available at: http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/dangerous_obsession.pdf
IndyMediaAU full story here, h/t to Tom Nelson
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In other news, if you are interested in Carbon Trading, there’s a manual for it:

Above: thanks to Kate at smalldeadanimals.com
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Update: For the record, to prevent some from jumping to conclusions, I don’t condone hacking of websites. I also don’t condone carbon trading as I think it is indeed a recipe for easy abuse and “gaming” of the system.
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Update2: The hacker or hackers identifies on Wikipedia:
Excerpt:
Decocidio #ϴ is an anonymous group of hacktivists describing themselves as an autonomous tech collective. They take action in the spirit of Climate Justice Action, pursuing the same goals.
In a bizarre twist, it appears that one group of greens (CJA) attacked another (ECX.eu).
h/t to WUWT reader Neil
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Update3: It appears that the ECX website is back to normal now, but look at what is on the main page:

It’s worse than we thought.
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The only people we hate more than BIG OIL is the European Climate Exchange
So, lets look at the evidence. There’s seems to be a rash of bad schoolboy-error grammar errors in the hacker’s text, especially with an inability to correctly spell “its”, i.e. the possessive of it.
“* It’s main purpose is not to reduce emissions…”
…collective political action that needs to be taken to tackle climate change and it’s fundamental root causes…”
Now let’s look at Anthony’s text introducing the hack:
“the European Climate Exchange (ECX), had it’s main page hacked”
Hummmmm. Watson, what do you make of it?
🙂
Steve says:
July 25, 2010 at 2:14 am
So, lets look at the evidence.
Methinks thou dost spend thy nights burning too much AGW midnight oil, Sherlock.
It’s elementary, dear WATT’s on….
Maybe it was an inside job. Send in the East Anglian police. They’ll find the culprit.
Oh wait…
Mike says:
July 24, 2010 at 11:14 pm
I assume WUWT is appalled at such acts of cyber-vandalism. I would certainly denounce any effort to disrupt your website. But instead it appears you are encouraging it. You accuse climate scientists of being part of some crazy conspiracy, but hacking is a conspiracy.
===================
Reply:
I know that feeding a troll is supposed to be a bad thing, but really…… Mike you’re a moron……
Mike says:
July 24, 2010 at 11:14 pm
I assume WUWT is appalled at such acts of cyber-vandalism. I would certainly denounce any effort to disrupt your website. But instead it appears you are encouraging it. You accuse climate scientists of being part of some crazy conspiracy, but hacking is a conspiracy.
So according to Mike, simply reporting on an event is to be seen as “encouraging it.” And to top off his comment, he ends with a completely fabricated accusation. Way to go Mike.
As for me, I am not quite so appalled as to lose any sleep over this hacking. In fact, to the contrary, I am delighted to see some whacko Greenies acknowledging the massive con that is carbon trading. OK, so they still insist that the climate is in “crisis” and needs to be tackled along with its “fundamental root causes” (isn’t it superfluous to say “fundamental” followed by “root”?) . I’m sure we can guess what this implies. What the Greenies (Reds) will never see, is that this con is indicative of the entire global warming con.
Jan Pompe says:
July 25, 2010 at 12:44 am
Johnh
……..I think it is a better option because it will be easier to roll back should it prove unnecessary or ineffective than cap and trade or any ETS scheme.
=========
Couldn’t agree more mate…..!
@Mike
“but hacking is a conspiracy.”
Oh please. Just one person needs to get lucky once with a script – and one they probably didn’t even write themselves.
Mike Jowsey & Anthony
– Freedom of information .
– Freedom of speech .
– Freedom to think for yourself .
With friends like this…..
M White says:
“The only people we hate more….”
For every lesson in life there is always a Monty Python sketch! Thanks for reminding me. I wonder when Al Gore will start asking us to call him Loretta???
Malcolm
It could be an insider that lost the faith. Climategate claims to be hacked but it also could have been a back slider warmista. an infidel.
This is terrible, just terrible, and until the criminals who did this are caught and punished it will be difficult to sleep. I know I won’t be able to sleep tonight.
Might as well stay up and party.
The watermelons reveal their red deepness. Evil profiting captelists!!
On the funny side…
This hacking would be on the same level as the Sierra club hacking into GreenPeace.
On the serious side…
Are you willing to have all your goods and services go up in price to cover the carbon tax and have no accountability in what it is actually for except for free money to new trading companies?
These massive debts that the governments have racked up have to be paid somehow.
Mike Jowsey says:
July 25, 2010 at 12:09 am
OK – so we are agreed then that this hacking was a bad thing (in the same vein as other bad things like robberies, embezzlement, vandalism, computer virus creation).
And fabricating Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming lies would fall into that category quite nicely too, right?
You would think for someone operating what is in effect a trading information site that their security would have been somewhat more ‘solid’. The technical due diligence for anything related to financial or personal info goes through the roof if you are doing it properly…
Also the ‘state’ the site is currently in doesn’t bode well for the engineering level of whoever is maintaining it, and their future career prospects…
Although, that being said, the points that were made in the screen capture of the hack were on the ball – too many ‘multipliers’ and ‘exceptions’ for it to really do anything except act as a barrier to entry for competition – the climate won’t really benefit in any sense.
Truly amazing.
These eco-watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) have finally realised that their ideology has been stolen, repackaged, branded and sold back to them.
Maybe having begun to question the solutions presented to this mythic problem, some of them might even be smart enough to start questioning the “science” that arrived at these conclusions.
Or maybe not – these are crackers after all, NOT hackers as people insist on calling them. Hackers make things – Crackers break things. The ability to break computer security no more makes you a hacker than the ability to hotwire a car makes you an automotive engineer!!
But if ever they start that process of questioning there is so much evidence on-line as to the corruption of climate-“science” (ht/WUWT) that anyone not fully indoctrinated into the church of
global-coolingthe Population-bombban DDTthe green house effectnuclear winterglobal warmingpassive smokingclimate change, must come away with a host of doubts.I challenge any intellectually honest observer to actually read the CRUTape letters and then still claim that the “science” is deserving of the name. Which is why those recent investigations into climate “science” have avoided doing so.
And for the same reason Phil Jones was never asked if he deleted data – i.e. the inquiriers didn’t want to be burdened by knowing the answer.
But there is no surprise here – we already knew how climate “science” deals with investigation – their tactics are well documented in the – When the National Academies of the United States invited Keith Briffa to appear before its enquiry Mann wrote to him as follows:
I think you really should do this if you possibly can. The panel is entirely legitimate, and the report was requested by Sherwood Boehlert, who as you probably know has been very supportive of us in the whole Barton affair. … Especially, with the new Science article by you and Tim I think its really important that one of you attend, if at all possible.
If one is wondering about Mann’s definition of “legitimate”, he quickly erases any doubt:
The panel is solid. Gerry North should do a good job in chairing this, and the other members are all solid. Christy is the token skeptic, but there are many others to keep him in check:
(link to list of members)
So I would encourage you to strongly reconsider!
One wonders if they even bothered to include a “token skeptic” in the recent “investigations”. The results would suggest not.
have you got a take on this developing story?
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/ryano-foi-to-watch-will-ncar-try-to-pull-a-cru/
Jack Savage says:
July 25, 2010 at 12:15 am
At the risk of having “Godwin’s Law” invoked…hands up those who would have hacked into Hitler’s website?
All right, it was wrong, but a part of me has a tiny little smile,because I am convinced that carbon trading really is a scam and it distracts us from real environmental problems and causes needless expense to the common man.
Okay, Jack, I’m game: What ‘real environmental problems’ are you talking about?
Hint: If you even think about mentioning CO2, then you’ll be seen as insincere, inasmuch as that gas isn’t a problem.
Amino Acids in Meteorites at 11:11 pm
“Barak Obama was part of the founding of CCX.”
Yes he was, and so was Lord Browne of BP.
Some of the comments here are funnier than the Friday Funnies! Hacking is a conspiracy? I guess the whole skeptics community is its own conspiracy. As are republicans, democrats, the Catholic church, ….
While there may have been a conspiracy to hack ECX, Mike is making unfounded allegations. Mike should have learned by now this is not a good forum for that!
Hmm, I guess I better document my claims too. When I get a chance. 🙂
The funniest thing is that everything the hackers put up on that page is exactly right. It’s been insane for the Enviro’s to support cap & trade, since as constituted it will do *nothing* to actually reduce CO2 in any real way, supposedly their main goal. It only makes “sense” from a government-business point of view; the goal for the government is to create tax revenues, the goal for business is to a) create a tradable commodity, with all the business opportunity that entails, and b) layer on enough costs that only the big boys can survive and all the smaller players get wiped out, thus guaranteeing growth and profits to the big players in spite of the increased costs.
And those 2 goals explain 99% of the Legislative support for “cap and trade”. I imagine there are a handful of True Believers even still, but this has always been about the money, and about ripping off the public while doing little else.
The hacker’s page has got that exactly right. It’s been insane for the greens to have bought into this, apparently with the excuse “it’s the best we can do” – but any honest Green who looks at this with an open mind would *Have* to hate Cap’n’Trade as much as we do! It truly is a *massive* fraud, and I mean that in the exact, literal, dictionary entry meaning of the word FRAUD. It promises to do something it cannot possibly do for the sole purpose of parting innocent people from their money.
But it does say something that it had to die (we know the bill’s dead in the Senate now) before even the most honest of them would start to tell the truth about it.
I love it, it looks like the central committee has a major problem, non-civil war is erupting.
Carbon Trading always makes me think of a part of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where Douglas Adams discussed a global problem.
He described Earth as a planet where most of the people were unhappy for pretty much of the time and that most of the suggested solutions were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green bits of paper that were unhappy.