Once upon a time, carbon trading was supposed to be the salvation for Earth’s climate problems. But as time went on, people started realizing that something was wrong. As usual, financial markets anticipated the move. Late last year, US carbon trading crashed. Two weeks later, it closed.
In Europe, the price of CO2 emissions even flourished earlier this year. The European Union pushed for stronger policies towards renewables. And Fukushima pressed German’s chancellor Angela Merkel to abandon nuclear, with some imagining that renewables would fill in the gap.
Last week, Greece started auctioning their EUAs (European Union Allowances). They need the money, and probably other countries will follow, including Portugal. But they were not that lucky! Of the 1 million permits, only 6000 EUA were sold. The reason: nobody is buying…
In the meantime, Poland has blocked an EU deal on CO2 emissions. They are the largest producer of hard coal in the EU, and the share of coal in electricity generation (92% in 2004) is the highest among the EU Member States. They are also pushing for shale gas. The result for them: the biggest GDP growth in 2009 and the third in 2010, amongst the 27 European member states.
Finally, Yvo de Boer has confirmed what everyone knows: the Kyoto Protocol is dead!
The result: This week, Bluenext‘s EUA phase 2 2008-2012, went tumbling down. It closed at 12.21 €, down from 15.41 € a week before, a 20% drop in a week! And after all, carbon markets are not actually helping to combat global warming and climate change, and are open to the kind of speculation and fraud that led to the global financial crisis of 2008…
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I’m proud to be a Pole
Yes, we can do that!
Bruce says:
June 25, 2011 at 4:13 pm
“DirkH … while I would sympathize with the German people, a Germany doomed by insane green policies might save a few other countries.”
The EU depends on German money. If the Greens get the power in Berlin, they will turn the EU into a Malthusian hellhole.
Looks like a hockey stick graph to me. Maybe we can inverted the sign (that’s accepted science isn’t it?) and save the entire industry.
The Invisible Hand has brass knuckles …
“Quotes are always presented in an auto-scaled fashion; one gets used to it. Never expect anything else whenever you see a price chart.”
Perhaps, but I expect more from this blog. High standards will serve us well.
DirkH: “If the Greens get the power in Berlin, they will turn the EU into a Malthusian hellhole.”
Thats the plan. It is coming along nicely. If they can demonize nuclear and shale gas, they win.
In the 1980s, Steve Bell, Grauniad cartoonist, invented something so utterly useless, they created absolutely nothing except profits for the finance industry. He called them “Dead Dog Futures”. He anticipated carbon credits by 20 years, but got the name wrong. Brilliant.
Now, Hector. How could he have been able to anticipate “Dead ManBearPig Futures”?
That would have been well beyond merely “Brilliant”! 😉
“The alternative to Angela Merkel (conservative; at least allegedly) would be a Red-Green”
Red Green would be an improvement.
I wish I had caught that short. I am sure all the insiders did since those short crashes like that are planned. Some people made a mint in the exchange.
В “Известиях” нет правды, в “Правде” нет известий. У нас в Америке, то же самое теперь, дорогие товарищи.
@ur momisugly Amino Acids in Meteorites.
You bet they did! AGW is a scam by the big-money boys, and they always make sure that they walk away with the big pot, regardless of the mess they drop the rest of us into.
The Greeks are trying to save themselves from being screwed yet again by the banksters, but I don’t know whether they will succeed.
(@ur momisuglyEcotretas
“Hardly” has a limiting and negating meaning, so “can’t hardly” is, in effect, a double negative. The correct English is “they can hardly give EU carbon credits away.”)
And despite the collapse in thin air trading, even here on WUWT, we still see the snake-oil salesmen’s advertising promising us we can make 100% profit in two years by trading carbon (dioxide).
Clearly there must be some truth in the assertation that a fool and his money are soon parted. Equally clearly the snake-oil salesmen aren’t about to let truth get in the way of a profit making opportunity.
The last thing the Greeks need at the moment is an increase in manufacturing costs due to some imagined problem.
Another thing the BBC will not be saying is that the Greek, and Portugese, Spanish, Italian, Irish problems is the Euro. The one size fits all monetary policies with a single interest rate does not work especially with a hard working north and less willing to work or pay taxes south. (It has been discovered that the Greek Government is owed over 100Billion Euros in tax which the rich Greeks refuse to pay or evade in their tax returns.).
The big unanswered question is: How much of ordinary peoples pension funds are tied up in this market? There are going to be a lot of very angry folk wanting to know why their hard earned has been thrown away on this junk bond scam. We know the BBC has a vested interest which biases its coverage of the climate debate. How many other pension funds are heavily exposed?
There will be some pension fund managers getting a little sweaty right about now.
Damn good question.
If this sucker drags down anyone other than the dimwits that voluntarily became involved, woe be to them. Remember that Enron and Ken Lay and most other large-scale Wall Street fiascos were primarily driven in the media by the collateral damage to innocent 3rd (or 4th really) parties.
This thing should have been labeled an ENRON pump-and-dump from the beginning. Now there is two birds with one stone! The public can easily relate to the comparison, and, the green machine (pun intended) gets stuck with a label that will drive them certifiably insane.
John Marshall says:
June 26, 2011 at 3:15 am
The last thing the Greeks need at the moment is an increase in manufacturing costs due to some imagined problem.
Another thing the BBC will not be saying is that the Greek, and Portugese, Spanish, Italian, Irish problems is the Euro. The one size fits all monetary policies with a single interest rate does not work especially with a hard working north and less willing to work or pay taxes south.
——————————————————————————————–
Not true, John.
The real problem is, that these countries far too long have been spending much more money for the bread and games than they could actually afford – something, which should sound eerily familiar in America.
But whle we europeans are at least trying to clean our house and get the financial acts of the southern countries of Europe – plus Ireland – back in order, everything Washington does actually is borrowing yet-another Trillion from China and use it to bail out banksters and to feed the MIC.
Junkink says:
June 25, 2011 at 7:14 pm
““Quotes are always presented in an auto-scaled fashion; one gets used to it. Never expect anything else whenever you see a price chart.”
Perhaps, but I expect more from this blog. High standards will serve us well.”
Yeah, so you expect a climate and science blog to digitize and reformat financial information as if it were scientific data… why do i feel a bit trolled now.
REPLY: Hansen’s NASA GISS autoscales all of the temperature graphs they produce for stations here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
For example:
So, given that GISS thinks it is fine to do, Junkinks complaint is denied. – Anthony
Why all the hate? The top says co2 price tumbling down. In other co2 markets the price crashed to zero. It looked the same here, but instead the crash was 20% not 100%. It is good practice not to have graphs that don’t have zero at the origin. If that is too hard, fine. Having the moderator come in and say “troll” or “denied” is really a page from real climate.
It is a small point, and I have made it. You may have the last word.
J
REPLY: I didn’t say troll, only that your complaint was denied, mainly because it is without merit and nitpicking. But cheer up, in a couple of weeks, there won’t be any need to autoscale the graph. – Anthony
I apologize, but one last comment. (meant to include this above) It would take about 2 min to get the data from bloomberg and create an excel chart. Not sure what you mean by digitizing data.
J
“How long will it be before the so-called progressives in the US realize that the ” European model ” is a failure ?”
It’ll never happen. These failures are always blamed on something besides central planning, bad policies, etc – so the corrective action must be more government regulation.
Ecotretas made reference to a growing concern of mine when he stated: “Fortunately, the IMF bailout we’re experiencing has several conditions, involving alternative energy rationalization measures that have to be met…” I have seen several mentions about the IMF insisting on an end to oil subsidies and ‘sustainable solutions’ as a condition of loans. Certainly George Papandreou came out last week proposing that a ‘green economy’ would help solve Greece’s monetary woes. Does anyone know if the IMF is making the implementation of renewables a condition of financial relief? I have also read that countries receiving assistance from the IMF are balking at the attempt to privatize water. Are the financial collapse and AGW fear-mongering simply a cover for the takeover of water and energy? The implications of that are quite staggering.
@Michael Schaefer says: June 26, 2011 at 5:01 am
Your observation has merit. Extremes always have extreme consequences whether it is extreme socialism like Greece (they won’t pay taxes) or extreme Capitalism like the USA (where they don’t want to pay taxes) and borrow trillions. Greece will be a disaster on a small scale, if the USA doesn’t get their debt under control very shortly it will be a big disaster.
The headline states ….
“EU Carbon Credit trading takes a dive.”
This is hardly surprising however since a Europol investigation revealed massive frauds in the system amounting to billions of Euros. See the article ………..
“Europol Arrests More Than 100 In Carbon Trading Fraud”
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/28/europol-arrests-more-than-100-in-carbon-trading-fraud/
Subsequently Europol aske the EU Commission to suspend all carbon trading until all EU partner governments could assure Europol that there were anti-fraud arrangements in place. No such arrangements have since taken place. Furthermore Europol have published two statements on this issue.
“Further investigations into VAT fraud linked to the Carbon Emissions Trading System”
28 December 2010
http://www.europol.europa.eu/content/press/further-investigations-vat-fraud-linked-carbon-emissions-trading-system-641
“organised_crime_in_energy_supply.pdf”
http://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/organised_crime_in_energy_supply.pdf
In January 2011 The Guardian Newspaper reported on the loss of carbon credits worth €28m due to “cyber attacks”. Frankly that sounds like an excuse toi me, and covering the baskside of the carbon fraudsters. I mean really, are we expected to believe that countries trade millions of Euros in onliner carbon credit deals without the buyers and sellers ever evben seeing one another?
“The carbon market – gone in a puff of smoke?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2011/jan/24/carbon-market-credits-trading
(again however that article is accompanied by a photograph of a factory or power station chimney with steam coming out , and lablelled as though this were CO2, which we all know is an INVISIBLE gas !!!)
The question is how ANY country in Europe is able to trade a single carbon credit under such circumstances. They are all fraudulent in my view and just a sort of “Papal indulgence” really.
The Guardian published another article as long ago as February 2009, saying that trading in credits had failed to reduce emissions, and henbce was no more than an unfounded tax.
“Scrap carbon trading – This flawed system has failed to cut emissions.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/01/emissionstrading-carbonoffsetprojects?
For hundreds of videos on the carbon scams and related climate change issues
go to the Fraudulent Climate of Hokum Science Website at the URL Below or click the name “Axel” above this article. http://fraudulentclimate.atspace.com/
There is question about the behavior of GISS temperature data? There certainly should be!
These 2 videos should make it clear, with alacrity, that GISS is dubious
Part 1
Part 2