I wrote a few weeks ago that The only lower price than today’s closing price on a ton of carbon is ZERO. That’s true now more than ever. See the chart below from yesterday’s close of the Chicago Climate Exchange:
And it’s still crashing. Last week the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced that they were scrapping the existing carbon trading program, and focusing on a new one that deals with directly sold carbon offsets rather than open trading.
Of course, anybody with a lick of business sense could see this coming a mile away, especially after there were deep employee cuts in mid August all while the price of a ton of Carbon Dioxide continued to plummet.
According to Steve Milloy’s Green Hell Blog:
CCX was sold earlier this year for $600 million to the New York Stock Exchange-listed IntercontinentalExchange (Symbol: ICE), an electronic futures and derivatives platform based in Atlanta and London. ICE also acquired the European Climate Exchange as part of the transaction. The ECX remains open to accommodate the Kyoto Protocol-required carbon trading among EU nations. The sale of CCX to ICE allowed climateers like Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs to cash out of investments in CCX.
At its founding in November 2000, some estimated that the size of CCX’s carbon trading market could reach $500 billion.
$500 billion trading thin air? Sure, yep, you betcha. Do you think there will be any confidence in buying carbon offsets directly when the free market runs from carbon trading like they are vacating a burning house?
A bag of charcoal BBQ briquettes is worth far more than a ton of carbon dioxide right now. Stock up, you might be able to sell them to some unsuspecting dupe a briquette at a time just so long as you provide a certificate to go with each one.
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Closer look shows the first guy listed may have some real energy sector experience. The rest have mostly ‘public service’ backgrounds. Red flag for me if I was looking at this as an investor.
RHG, There is a story in Canada that the large numbers of salmon are due to Alaskan volcanoes. These put more nutrients into the sea at the right time. More nutrients, more phytoplankton, more salmon.
Clean energies anyone? …Buy one windmill and take three for the same price!…..now, if you are a politician, then we can talk, ya know…50%?, and you don’t have to worry, you just make a reference to the Un’s Agenda 21…..
Jim Cripwell says:
October 26, 2010 at 11:35 am
….or perhaps they are after that Suzuki guy up there… 🙂
From Climate to Climaterium: The Rise and Fall of Global Warming!
Frank K. says:
October 26, 2010 at 10:04 am
Perhaps people like James Hansen should have 100% of their 401K invested in the “Carbon Financial Instruments” – LOL!
Frank.
You are closer to the truth with your statement, Here is
Here is a delightful/sad story of the UK public broadcaster – BBC – AGW propaganda service.
BBC INVESTED MOST OF THE PENSION FUND IN GREEN PROJECTS; NOW THE FUND IS IN SERIOUS DEFICIT, CONFLICT OF INTEREST FOUND!
The BBC, prime proponents of warming theory, or AGW, has heavily invested its pension fund in the theory, and thus has had a major non-Scientific reason for their bias. As revealed this weekend in The Express:
The BBC £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit.
Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted.
The BBC is the only media organization in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.
The IIGCC is an interesting group.
The IIGCC is a forum for collaboration on climate change for European investors. The group’s objective is to catalyse greater investment in a low carbon economy by bringing investors together to use their collective influence with companies, policymakers and investors. The group currently has over 50 members, including some of the largest pension funds and asset managers in Europe, and represents assets of around €4 trillion.
Conflict of Interest???
The Chairman of IIGCC investment group is Peter Dunscombe, who also happens to be the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/156703/-8bn-BBC-eco-bias-
Just a little Fact Check . . . . Your half right. . . but I just got Vitol from Google
This is the Chart you mention . . .
Chicago Climate Excange
http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/
BUTT . . .
Vitol buys 8.5 mln U.N. CO2 credits from Asian projects
Reuters – 3 hours ago
The carbon credits, called certified emissions reductions (CERs), come from a portfolio of hydropower and wind projects in Vietnam and Laos, Vitol said in a …
laurie
Douglas DC says “Mark Twain would’ve had a field day,with this too…”
Indeed he would.
It was Twain, of course, who said “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” In his day, nobody was stupid enough to try.
Jim Cripwell says:
October 26, 2010 at 11:35 am
“RHG, There is a story in Canada that the large numbers of salmon are due to Alaskan volcanoes. These put more nutrients into the sea at the right time. More nutrients, more phytoplankton, more salmon.”
Indeed. Here’s the story:
Is B.C.’s sockeye boom a one-off? (Mark Hume – Globe & Mail – October 24, 2010)
When the Cohen Commission inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River opens evidentiary hearings Monday in Vancouver, it will be haunted by an unexpected, stunning turn of events on the waterfront.
After Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen to head a judicial inquiry into last year’s collapse of sockeye stocks – the fish came back. And they came back in bigger numbers than anyone had seen in almost 100 years.
Relevant excerpt:
Relying on research done by Roberta Hamme, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, Dr. Parsons speculates that the eruption of the Kasatochi volcano fertilized the sea, and stimulated the growth of the salmon, leading to higher survival rates.
Ms. Hamme, in a paper published in the science journal, Geophysical Research Letters, reports that a shower of iron-rich ash fell on the Gulf of Alaska after the eruption.
Read more here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/is-bcs-sockeye-boom-a-one-off/article1771042/
Thank you Ted Gray for the info. Where will this lead I wonder.
THE WORLD CLIMATE SUMMIT
Strangely, this year it’s going to be somewhere hot:
“The UNEP Finance Initiative and partners, including the World Bank, the UN Global Compact, the Carbon Disclosure Project and many others, have come together to launch the inaugural World Climate Summit, 4-5 December, 2010 at The Ritz-Carlton, Cancun, Mexico, in parallel to the UNFCCCCOP 16 conference.
“As the first founding partner of the WCS and the conference’s main focal point on finance, investment and insurance, the UNEP Finance Initiative is supported by a large coalition of financial institutions and investors, both UNEP FI Signatories as well as numerous climate change networks such as IIGCC, IGCC, INCR, the PRI, ClimateWise and FELABAN.”
Visit the conference’s website http://www.wclimate.com/World_Climate_Summit/HOME.html
See the Press Release http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/events/2010/cancun/wcs_press.pdf
Media Coverage http://www.unepfi.org/media/inthenews/2010/cancun/index.html
… Notice THERE’S NOT A SINGLE SCIENTIST THERE! … “the conference’s main focal point on finance, investment and insurance, the UNEP Finance Initiative is supported by a large coalition of financial institutions and investors … ”
And to think they get all upset when we don’t believe them!
When the final scientific truth is revealed we will want to pay the power companies for each ton of CO2 that they put into the atmosphere.
A CO2 enriched atmosphere will help solve the world food shortage because it will boost the growth of food plants. CO2 in the food that plants live on.
Wait a minute, directly sold offsets makes it a closed exchange like the Baltic Dry Index but the Baltic Dry Index reflects contracts for real goods and services.
They aren’t authorized to sell offsets directly. It would interfere with State powers and interstate commerce. Did the Fed buy the Chicago Climate Exchange?
I’d be really surprised if carbon trading doesn’t take hold in the US.
And I just found out that here in California, the government not only is using AB32 to help spark a national and then international global warming effort, they are trying to get CA hooked into a REDD scheme where we’d pay foreign countries money each year to store our carbon.
I bet prop 23 would get a boost if people knew that AB32 could end up being used to transfer some of their wealth via higher energy costs to other nations.
George E. Smith : Hey at five cents a ton, you could lkely make a profit selling it to Coca Cola.
Aren’t you buying the lack of emissions? I think all you get, is a piece of paper from someone that says for $0.05 they emitted/will emit 1 less ton than they have a right to; or perhaps that they have taken some action that removes 1 ton of C from the atmosphere.
Otherwise, sign me up for the coke deal… That would be arbitrage at its finest, provided you can overcome the transaction fees;)
Suzanne
October 26, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Jim Cripwell
October 26, 2010 at 11:35 am
##
Interesting theory but wrong. It seems to be just some eco-spin to explain away the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality by relegating the reality to a special outlier that can be safely ignored. I have not read the study, but from what I have seen, it completely ignores the know life cycle of salmon. Salmon go through 7, 11 year and multi-decadal cycles. What ever happened in 2008 will not have any affect on returning salmon for quite a while if ever. And anyway, it is not the number of salmon that return to spawn, but the number of fry that survive to breading age.
To think that the US is one of the only countries in the world where we naturally soak in more CO2 then we exhale so to speak. After taking into consideration all things, this is the truth…but then we have this stuff coming out…
So, now we can guess with lower uncertainty about why Skipper left old Al baby. The betting guess is it was because Al baby spent his entire allowance from Skipper’s rich family for the next 10 years on the US Carbon Trading Futures market.
John
If you’d like to vote Yes or No on Prop 23, here’s the latest LA Times Poll:
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/10/big-oil-companies-vs-the-global-warming-law.html
“Actually, the biggest tell is in the zero volume. This means the market is dead dead and dead. The 5 cent closing price is a fiction as there were no buyers or sellers.”
Actually it says nothing about sellers. Just no buyers. What a surprise!
There’s no longer a legitimate scientific problem when Wall Street invents a solution.
Okay. NOW is when I buy.
I can get a lifetime of carbon indulgences for… nothing. You get what you pay for.
“Well where I come from, it had to do with metal punch out plugs used in vending machines.”
I know those as slugs, hadn’t realized they were the plugged nickel.
With all scandals at ECX, I suppose ICE saw CCX as a cheap source of valid carbon credits. Since EXC is mandated by treaty, ICE can unload the CCX assets at a profit.
“When the final scientific truth is revealed we will want to pay the power companies for each ton of CO2 that they put into the atmosphere.
A CO2 enriched atmosphere will help solve the world food shortage because it will boost the growth of food plants. CO2 in the food that plants live on.”
So at these prices I could buy enough CO2 for the rest of my life, and that of the next, oh, 2-5 generations of my family for what I have in my pocket.
What a deal!
*(skips off to bank to withdraw cash 2.50 GBP)…
James Cameron should have an easy time buying carbon offsets for his CO2 indulgent living. While he may use the same carbon footprint as a small country in Africa, for a few hundred bucks he can buy his offsets.
At present pricing, CO2 for a flight from LAX to LHR that equates to 12.5 cents per passenger (for 2.52 tonnes) or if you prefer you could always go to JP Morgan Climate Care 🙂 and pay a more guilt respectable lot of £18.90($30) and watch your money disappear into the financial abyss. JP only marks up to from 5 cents to $12/tonne. (A mark up of only 24,000 %)