It is no secret that we don’t think much of carbon trading here in the USA. Witness the fact that the much ballyhooed Chicago Climate Exchange has closed up trading for good after the spot price for carbon fell to a nickel per ton. They couldn’t give it away. At that price, had they issued them, the fancy carbon credit certificate paper would be worth more than the carbon itself. I’d actually like to get my hands on those, because they’d sell better on Ebay as novelties and earn a better price.
So, when I read this sentence about the EU carbon market, I couldn’t help but chuckle and think it makes a good QOTW:
The European commission’s emergency suspension last week of trading in carbon allowances to put a halt to rampant theft of credits by hackers has been extended indefinitely until countries can prove their systems are protected from further fraud.
Hmmm…”further fraud”… isn’t that an oxymoron when it comes to describing carbon trading?
Story at The Guardian
This shows what can happen when emissions trading doesn’t have proper checks and balances – Carbon trading tempts firms to make greenhouse gas
If you want carbon certificates that aren’t a fraud risk, try these, which are worth exactly what you pay for them:
Get yours here: freecarbonoffsets.com
Now if somebody can just talk some sense into California.
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You have to admire the way these international crooks blamed hackers for their own theft of $trillions. If it was $trillions — I haven’t seen any reputable audit. Suffice it to say, they made Madoff look like small potatoes.
WTF?
“Extra climate summit to focus on Kyoto successor
UN confirms Bangkok talks in April…
28 Jan 2011
Climate negotiators will stage an extra round of talks this year as they attempt to thrash out a deal to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol.
UN officials said a five-day session will be held in Bangkok in April on top of planned meetings in Bonn in June and ahead of the annual summit of environment ministers in Durban at the end of the year…
Even though the Bangkok talks will gather senior negotiators from almost 200 countries, a further session is likely to be held between Bonn and Durban, officials said, after the false start of Copenhagen and incremental progress last month in Cancun.”
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/1940380/extra-climate-summit-focus-kyoto-successor
Looks like the gang is going to squeeze another vacation out of things before the gravy train slows down too much.
M.A.DeLuca says:
January 3 2011 at 12:04 pm
No, an oxymoron is when two opposite words come together to describe something. The common examples are ‘jumbo shrimp’ and ‘military intelligence’ …
Examples of a tautology include “fruity banana”, “software program”, and “fair-haired blonde”.
True enough. I have always been curious as to the classification of phrases like, “true facts”, 0r “true freshman”, and “live nudes”. Interesting w0rld out there.
“…until countries can prove their systems are protected from further fraud.”
should read:
“…until countries can prove their systems are protected from further unauthorized fraud.”
“Rich millionaire” and its like are also known as pleonasms.
David says
Here in the UK, in the dying days of the Labour administation, the Indian owners of Redcar steelworks closed it (‘mothballed’ it, according to the government’s slippery Business Minister, Lord Mandleson) – so that they could move production to IUndia.
Result – mass unemployment in that area – and bucketloads of carbon credits for closing down a plant in the ‘polluting’ west, and moving it to an area where the pollution ‘base’ is much lower.
Smart, isn’t it..??
Guess who the Indian owners were? TATA Steel who sponsor the Tata Research Institute who is headed by none other than Pachauri
Does “true believer” count as an oxymoron? (especially if applied to catastrophiliacs)
Re the UN ‘summit’ in Bangkok – when are people going to realise the UN is just a corrupt organization of corrupt people, and stop funding it?
The USA should have pulled the pin years ago. Why keep funding an organisation that treats the US with contempt?
Wilky. January 30, 2011 at 9:11 am:
“What do you call taking the keys away from a Prius driver? Smug control”
Where I come from, the ‘r’ in Prius is silent…
Very weird wording in that EU carbon market paragraph; almost seems like the problem was too much ‘visible’ fraud going on. Now without an official market, will all this carbon trading go underground in some form of ‘carbon black market’..
Psst! Anyone one want a slightly used carbon credit??
Ah! So the little boy was right all along! The King really is bollock naked!
‘Examples of a tautology include “fruity banana”, “software program”, and “fair-haired blonde”.’
How about: The department of redundancy department.
Mike D. says:
“January 30, 2011 at 11:15 am
The question I have, and maybe you all can help to answer it, is how much money did the CCX bilk out of “investors” before they shut the doors? The same question could be asked about the EU Carbon fraudsters. How much was the haul?”
The largest people sold out before the place shut down and before the axe fell, so they made a nice profit on it, but it was mostly owned by banks at the end. (IE: Goldman, etc. if my memory serves me correctly) who still claim ownership to it. The idea is to claim a loss on the investment over the next few years before they trash it…so that they pay less taxes and end up not losing very much at all. Government bails out banks, the banks screw the Government twice….But shrug, not sure what you can do when banks are “too big to fail..”
So individual people did not get duped, but the Government did and our taxpayer monies will over the next few years. And the people who got out mostly made nice money…its been awhile since I finished the research on that, so the details are really fuzzy and what not, but that was the general idea at the end. All of it is of course legal with our current system…but shrug, what can individuals do who do not have political connections nowadays?
“Grumpy Old Man says:
January 30, 2011 at 10:43 am
Ref: oxymoron. an oxymoron is a figure of speech that contains apparently contradictory terms in conjunction, eg, “left-wing intellectual” or ,”socialist democracy”. “Further fraud”, doesn’t seem to meet the criteria, as “further”, is complementary to,” fraud”, and is not contradicting the meaning of,”fraud”.”
Tautology is meant.
What I find rather objectionable, and that you have not picked up on / pointed out, is that the market is closed due to “hackers”. As though this is the fault of some bunch of evil pen-clicking Boris’s (See James Bond, Goldeneye).
What’s actually going on is that a bunch of criminals and clever conniving theives have figured out that this is a silly market ripe for scamming. Strange that, seeing as verification is kinda hard.
It’s not shut down because of hackers, its shut down because of fraud.
The EU should stop trying to muddy the water. But then, ClimageGate was due to “hackers” too.
Gore’s (hundreds of) millions: Whose were they when they were at home? Someone paid for something they didn’t get. I wonder if Big Al offered refunds. No? Surely an ethical politician would …
Oh.
Cultures that don’t learn their own history keep making the same mistakes. Does the term ‘South Sea Bubble’ ring any bells?
The South Sea Company was a British joint stock company founded in 1711 to take over three-fifths of the British national debt financed from the profits of future trading with South Sea Islands and Spanish South America. In 1720 the company proposed that it should assume ALL of the British national debt, most of which had been incurred in the war against Spain. Th3ew company offered its own stock in exchange for government bonds and expected to make huge profits on these transactions, which epitomise the worst of insider trading. The publicity led to the trading frenzy being termed the ‘South Sea Bubble’, which burst in Sept. 1720. A similar ‘bubble’, John Law’s Mississippi Scheme, failed in France at the same time. As a consequence of these and other ‘bubbles’ bursting, all joint-stock arrangements, banks failed, thousands were ruined, fraud was exposed in the South Sea Company and corruption exposed in the British parliamentary cabinet. Joint-stock companies, which allowed buyers to purchase stock on credit then sell again for cash when prices rose, were made illegal by an act of parliament.. The South Sea Comwpany’s directors had their estates confiscated and sold, the proceeds used to relieve the suffering creditors, among them Sir Isaac Newton, understandably annoyed at his own foolishness in losing twenty thousand pounds, the current equivalent of about 3 million pounds.
The Company was restructured, it’s stock divided between the Bank of England and the East India Company and acts of parliament to stabilise the British economy were driven through under the guidance of newly-appointed First Lord of the Treasury Robert Walpole. The company continued to trade for more than a century, involving itself in the slave trade, whaling in Greenland waters and other activities, but not with much success.
This inglorious epidode in history has been termed ‘the 18th Century Enron’.
Why do governments and citizens never learn from history that there is no such thing as a free lunch?
Oxymoron: climate science.
I object to the military intelligence one. Retired USN. 🙂
re: “CA will have to learn the hard way” – I live in a socialist country – Canada. CA will not learn the hard way – CA will be rewarded for their liberal nonsense and bailed out by the rest of the U.S. taxpayers – who will have no input or choice in the matter – the socialist way.
Fair enough then MKelly, how about “Military Music”?
What was the carbon footprint from start to finish of the CCX?
Must have been megatons.
EU and Chicago CX shut down…..
OH NO!
Where do I go to buy my carbon credits?
Mike Restin wants to know “Where do I go to buy my carbon credits?.
Fear not. The exchanges in Chicago and in the European Union may have shut down, but there’s a guy I know in Brooklyn who can sell you carbon credits and ownership shares in one of the classic pieces of suspension bridge architecture presently extant.
Florida real estate, too.
From Mike Restin on January 31, 2011 at 1:52 pm:
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I b’lieve a recent study of bubbles and markets concluded that they are intrinsic, part of the way people do business. Enthusiasms and greed create bubbles, little and large, and no regulations or controls can stop that without actually eliminating the markets.