Most WUWT readers know Joltin Joe Romm by his trademark over the top rhetoric and his outright hatred of skeptics on parade every day at his Center for American Progress blog. Most of us have learned to ignore it, because he’s simply pushing a company brand.
That said, Master Resource has this interesting story today; it seems Joe was endorsing the nastiest energy company in history, as told by someone who was an employee, Robert Bradley Jr..
From Master Resource:
It is a common refrain in headlines at Joe Romm’s Climate Progress:
- “Koch-Fueled Americans for Prosperity Takes Credit for Bullying GOP Lawmakers Into Climate Denial” (Emilee Piece: December 8, 2011);
- “Koch-Fueled Denial Backfires: Independents, Other Republicans Split With Tea-Party Extremists on Global Warming” (Romm: December 2, 2012); and
- “Koch-Fueled Americans for Prosperity Spends $2.4 Million on Solyndra Attack Ad (VIDEO)” (Stephen Lacey: November 28, 2011).
Smearing and innuendo is hardly fair play. But in this case, Joe Romm has something embarrassing to hide. Just as Koch Industries might be his least favorite company, Enron was his darling company.
Specifically, Romm was not only a cheerleader of Enron (Enron is “a company I greatly respect,” Romm would say). He was also an unpaid consultant and collaborator with the infamously fraudulent division, Enron Energy Services (EES), purveyor of energy efficiency service in (gamed) long-term contracts.
It is timely to reestablish the linkage between Joe Romm and once-mighty Enron Corporation, a company which went bankrupt ten years ago this month. Perhaps this history will help the combustible Romm to deal with the arguments more and funding links less. (Besides, would he like for his critics to bring in the funding link between George Soros and Center for American Progress?)
Some Romm Enron Quotations
Read the rest here at Master Resource
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“EnRomm” has a nice, accurate ring to it.
Ken Lay, leader of enron, was heavily involved in getting kyoto protocol advanced, circa 1997.
Why? At least because he saw a boost to natural gas market from kyoto.
he wanted U.S. to sign on.
But otherwise, he knew a cap-n-trade carbon market would be awesome.
ken lay was one of the ppl credited with dreaming up the carbon exchange cap and trade idea, while at the department of energy in the early 1970s.
the dept of energy funded michael mann’s dissertation, in 1996:
1996 Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship.
that was funded by the dept of energy.
Joe EnRomm
EnRomm
Great
My company delivered some of the technology to get Enron into the wind business. Enron wind is now GEWind. Northern Natural is owned by Buffett/berkshire.
Koch,
ElPaso, Dynegy and a couple others were big in counter trades with Enron. Enron scams took many folks down. Koch was too large to get damage. Many Koch workers were lured to Enron with huge increases.
SOX, COX, NoX and Ch4 control trade schemes were conjured up at Enron. alGore, Clinton, Jim Hansen were participants.
There is so much fiasco bred at Enron that people still don’t connect the dots.
Sorry to hear about Enron using it’s own stock for 401K plans. I made a lot of money trading Enron stock. I wrote a market trading model in the early 70’s in fortran. i used what I remembered about fortran to see where the Mann manipulated his data.
The only good out of enron was EOG and they spun off if i recall a couple years before the implosion.
As you probably already know, Enron invented Cap-and-Trade, attempting to make their subsidiary Enron Wind profitable. Apparently, they tried hard to get the US to sign the Kyoto protocol.
Greenhouse gas quotas will be an off-book asset, so some companies are going to get a windfall financial gain…. And when you’re allocating a $100 billion pie, or in fact, a potentially larger pie than that, even a small slice of that pie is pretty valuable.
http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2011/12/enron-on-cap-and-trade-ene.html
T Boone picked up the wind power mantle in Texas after Ken Lay died. GE bought Enron Wind. Remember “ecomagination”?
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/03/governor-rick-perry-r-tx-t-boone-pickens-and-the-enron-legacy-of-windpower/
When corporations and individuals successfully use the power of govenment coercion to make money, it isn’t in our best interest. Regulations distort the free market and limit competition. We lose jobs and pay higher prices for poorer quality products. Innovation is stifled.
http://biggovernment.com/chorner/2011/05/18/media-gift-republicans-pickens-new-subsidy-and-the-circular-firing-squad/
Of course, government doesn’t give anything away for free. They get something out of the deal. Smart grid is one example. The following link barely scratches the surface.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/are-smart-meters-real-time-surveillance-spies
Although T Boone promoted wind power and natural gas fuel, his unstated goal was to acquire land under which the Ogallala aquifer sits. Texas law does not restrict landowners from pumping groundwater from their property. The plan was to sell approximately 1 million acre-feet per year to the larger cities in Texas. However, Dallas, for example, isn’t buying into the plan.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089040017753.htm
The potential impact of the Pickens water plan argues for legitimate regulation. However, what will stop the government from taking ever more control? An informed population has a chance to control a limited government. An uninformed population can’t. An unlimited government can’t be controlled. Economic reality eventually will restrain government. The starving bureaucracy will try to save itself by borrowing, or by finding an internal or external enemy to fight. It would be better if we could stop the spending early and shrink government.
Unfortunately, too many people have become dependent on public services – by design they become hostages. When the collapse comes, there may be no safety net except their families, friends, and neighbors.
Some half-baked ideas I’m tossing around:
Perhaps some form of economic collapse is an inevitable part of a longer term cycle of nations. Progressive corruption in government, unchecked bureaucratic growth, and abuse of power may be impossible to prevent. If so, it may be better to avoid creating synchronized and deeply tied multi-national economies that rise and fall together. The damage may be limited if individual countries collapse and re-organize, instead of letting neighboring nations “save” them. Preserving the corruption only allows it to spread, possibly making the delayed collapse wider and deeper. People should be able to move out of a failing nation to acquire new skills and new ideas about how a successful country should be run. After the re-org, investors from wealthier nations should be able to make some money in the rebuilding process. As conditions improve, people will want to move back.
Another socialist goal, at least in the US, is to discredit capitalism, crush the economy, and replace it with one the socialists prefer (e.g. centralized command and control). They have to corrupt the system to make it fail. Our economies are not failing because they are free – there is no free market anymore; governments have too much control over markets, improperly picking winners and losers.
Enron has left quite a legacy. However, it is only a symptom of a more deadly disease.
oh wow, someone who has outdone the Australian Tim Flannery, the Flim Flam man!! Way to go Joe!! / sarc off
Maybe somebody like Minnesotans for Global Warming can put that to this:
Chris says:
December 19, 2011 at 12:01 pm
You’re right – Google games is fun…
“President Obama” Enron:
About 4,390,000 results (0.18 seconds)
“Andrew” Enron
About 2,470,000 results (0.08 seconds)
Great catch! I had forgotten about Andrew Fastow, Enron’s CFO, he got a reduced sentence for testifying against Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. Since Lay is dead, and Skilling is continuing his appeal of his 24 year sentence, Andrew Fastow is the guy people should be talk with! He got a 6 year sentence…so he should be free soon.
Andrew (not Fastow)
=))
Enron Romm
Posted on December 19, 2011 by Anthony Watts
[i]Most WUWT readers know Joltin Joe Romm by his trademark over the top rhetoric and his outright hatred of skeptics on parade every day at his Center for American Progress blog. Most of us have learned to ignore it, because he’s simply pushing a company brand.[/i]
I used to check in regularly at CP to see what his hate target [i]du jour[/i]was. Since he vainly added his visage to the site’s banner, I quit looking. One can take only so much.
January 2002: National Center for Public Policy Research: Enron and the Environmental Movement:
Global Warming Politics Makes for Strange Bedfellows
by Amy Ridenour
Enron hoped to cash in on the Kyoto treaty by masterminding a worldwide trading network in which major industries could buy and sell credits to emit carbon dioxide – the inert gas that some scientists and most environmentalists believe contributes to global warming.
The Houston firm’s lobbying push appeared to be on the verge of success when Vice President Al Gore signed the Kyoto Protocol in November of 1998…
The Clinton Administration’s interest in obtaining an international agreement to fight global warming meshed with Enron’s dream of huge profits from new investments in natural gas utilities and pipelines. Ratification of the Kyoto treaty would have played into Enron’s greed by forcing the U.S. to switch from coal-fired power plants to ones fueled by cleaner-burning natural gas. The trading surge in emission credits thus would have funneled an ever-increasing flow of cash into its coffers…
As part of the strategy, CEO Kenneth Lay signed Enron onto the Business Environmental Leadership Council of the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, a left-leaning think-tank headed by Eileen Claussen, a former Environmental Protection Agency and State Department official in the Clinton Administration.
The Pew Center has waged an expensive propaganda campaign over the past few years aimed at convincing journalists that global warming is a dire threat.
Other companies joining Pew’s Business Environmental Leadership Council also stood to gain vast sums if federal regulators imposed strict new limits on carbon dioxide emissions, including such powerhouses as Boeing, British Petroleum, International Paper, Lockheed-Martin, Maytag, 3M, Toyota, Weyerhaeuser and Whirlpool.
Lay, a close personal friend of leading Republicans and Democrats, also joined two far-left environmental groups – the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council – in calling for new curbs on emitting CO2 into the atmosphere…
How duplicitous were the environmental groups that joined Enron in its crusade for Kyoto? Did these organizations financially benefit from their strange bedfellow alliance with giant energy company?…
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA384.html
Hansen mention here:
6 Feb 2002: Cato Institute: Why Enron Wants Global Warming
by Patrick J. Michaels
By now, much to the chagrin of my greener friends, it is common knowledge that Enron Corporation was lobbying the Bush administration for highly profitable policies relating to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. In fact, the tatters of Enron still want the administration to place a cap on carbon dioxide emissions so the company can broker the trading of “permits” to emit carbon dioxide under that cap…
But what’s not run-of -the-sty is a 1998 letter, signed by Enron’s then-CEO Ken Lay (and a few other bigwigs), asking President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue. Apparently they were standing in Enron’s way.
The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date. In particular, it requested Clinton to “moderate the political aspects” of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan “Blue Ribbon Commission.”
The purpose of this commission was clear: high-level trashing of dissident scientists…
But what about Kyoto itself, which Enron knew would never be ratified by the required 67 senators? In 1998, Kyoto enjoyed the support of about 12 senators. “We urge the Kyoto Protocol not be submitted to the Senate in the near future, where pre-emptive rejection would remove the U.S. from a political leadership role,” said Lay’s letter. In other words, Lay wanted to derail the normal democratic process of having our elected officials vote on a treaty, so that Enron could prosper.
While that was happening, Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: “[T]he very real possibility that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.”
One of Enron’s major consultants in that study was NASA scientists James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony…
True to its plan, Enron never made its own findings public, self-censoring them while it pleaded with the new Bush administration for a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that it could broker. That pleading continues today — the remnant-Enron still views global warming regulation as the straw that will raise it from its corporate oblivion.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3388
——————————————————————————–
Carbon Trade Exchange: Our People
Lloyd Fleming, Managing Director, European Operations
Lloyd’s commercial experience began over 20 years ago with a small commercial law firm. In 1993 he moved to Standard Chartered to help establish a market risk management function. Progressing through a number of credit and operational risk roles, he moved to Enron Corporation in early 2000 and gained a breadth of experience across electricity, gas, broadband and metals trading.
Returning to Australia in September 2002, Lloyd worked for PwC in financial risk management before to moving to ANZ into a strategic risk role. Lloyd’s growing interest in sustainability and climate change ultimately led to his becoming a director in ANZ’s Institutional Sustainability team for two years. In this role he worked on developing revenue opportunities for financing based on climate change impacts, carbon markets and energy efficiency…
Peter Fusaro, Non-Executive Director
Peter is Chairman of Global Change Associates a financial services advisory in New York and is the best selling author of What Went Wrong at Enron as well as 15 other books on energy and the environmental financial markets..
http://www.carbontradexchange.com/our-people.php
this appeared the moment Durban ended:
12 December 2011: PR Wire: Sydney Australia: Carbon Trading Goes Mobile in World First Deployment
Carbon Trade Exchange (CTX), an Australian-based carbon credits (offsets) trading marketplace, today expanded its service for brokers and corporate clients with the launch of a new, mobile service for accessing the CTX trading platform…
***(Wayne Sharpe, CEO of CTX “It’s incredible to think that a broker, CEO, CFO or head of sustainability could be on the beach in Australia or in the South of France buying carbon credits, real time, from South America or Africa, in an end-to-end electronic transaction. That really is cool. We believe that the mobility we’ve announced today is the future of carbon trading.”
The new technology is live for Carbon Trade exchange members today.
About Carbon Trade Exchange
Carbon Trade Exchange is a global carbon credit trading exchange…
http://www.prwire.com.au/pr/26462/carbon-trading-goes-mobile-in-world-first-deployment
@ur momisugly Hoser,
If you have been keeping tabs on the MF Global issue (and others) regarding sophisticated financial instruments and how the UK handles them, we need to revisit this.
Risk management
Main article: Risk management
Before its fall, Enron was lauded for its sophisticated financial risk management tools.[47] Risk management was crucial to Enron not only because of its regulatory environment, but also because of its business plan. Enron established long-term fixed commitments which needed to be hedged to prepare for the inevitable fluctuation of future energy prices.[48] Enron’s bankruptcy downfall was attributed to its reckless use of derivatives and special purpose entities. By hedging its risks with special purpose entities which it owned, Enron retained the risks associated with the transactions. This setup had Enron implementing hedges with itself.[49]
Enron’s aggressive accounting practices were not hidden from the board of directors, as later learned by a Senate subcommittee. The board was informed on the rationale for using the Whitewing, LJM, and Raptor transactions, and after approving them, received status updates on the entities’ operations. Although not all of Enron’s widespread improper accounting practices were revealed to the board, the practices were dependent on board decisions.[50] Even though Enron extensively relied on derivatives for its business, the company’s Finance Committee and board did not have comprehensive backgrounds in derivatives to grasp what they were being told. The Senate subcommittee argued that had there been a detailed understanding of how the derivatives were organized, the board would have prevented their use.[51]
Special purpose entities
Main article: Special purpose entity
Enron used special purpose entities—limited partnerships or companies created to fulfill a temporary or specific purpose—to fund or manage risks associated with specific assets. The company elected to disclose minimal details on its use of special purpose entities.[25] These shell firms were created by a sponsor, but funded by independent equity investors and debt financing. For financial reporting purposes, a series of rules dictates whether a special purpose entity is a separate entity from the sponsor. In total, by 2001, Enron had used hundreds of special purpose entities to hide its debt.[22]
The special purpose entities were used for more than just circumventing accounting conventions. As a result of one violation, Enron’s balance sheet understated its liabilities and overstated its equity, and its earnings were overstated.[25] Enron disclosed to its shareholders that it had hedged downside risk in its own illiquid investments using special purpose entities. However, the investors were oblivious to the fact that the special purpose entities were actually using the company’s own stock and financial guarantees to finance these hedges. This setup prevented Enron from being protected from the downside risk.[25] Notable examples of special purpose entities that Enron employed were JEDI, Chewco, Whitewing, and LJM…
source: Wikipedia: Enron Scandal.
Ok, so how does this tie into current events? There is a wind company (companies) formed and headed by former Enron/GE guys from the Enron operation that was located in London.
http://seekingalpha.com/user/473076/comments/symbol/ge
The companies are First Wind/UPC/IVPV and numerous shell and shelf LLC’s.
http://bjdurk.newsvine.com/_news/2010/02/23/3941671-who-are-these-guys-cape-wind-emi-upc-first-wind-paul-gaynor-oreste-vigorito-ivpc
They just blew in out of nowhere and are getting hundred of millions in loan guarantees and even bailout money, have connections to Chicago hedge funds, connections to Larry Summers, the white house, GE and on and on. In light of the MF Global issues one has to wonder where did all that enron money disappear too? The UK? That’s my bet.
Just today they got another 210mm in financing.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/first-wind-secures-210-million-financing-for-palouse-wind-project-2011-12-19
excerpt:
As part of the financing, Palouse Wind, LLC closed an approximate $170 million construction and term facility loan, and letters of credit of up to $40 million. KeyBank National Association KEY +0.39% served as the joint lead arranger and administrative agent, and Nordduetsche Landesbank Girozentrale, CoBank ACB, and Banco Santander served as joint lead arrangers.
Now Goolge this: Banco Santander GE
Joe is our generation’s version of Lord Haw Haw or Tokyo Rose.
And his legacy will be as odious.
Our friends at the UEA were also open to engagement from Enron:
date: Mon Sep 17 10:17:17 2001
from: Keith Briffa
subject: RE: Climate Research at The University of East Anglia
to: “Jean Palutikof”
I am interested but happy for you and Phil to meet with him/them . If a visit to CRU is requested , I would be happy to take part in a general discussion.
Thanks
Keith
At 10:11 AM 9/17/01 +010 ???, you wrote:
Does anyone have a strong desire to meet him? Otherwise, I guess Phil and I can handle it.
Phil – do you want me to reply?
Jean
—–Original Message—–
From: Hamilton, Tony [[1]mailto:???@enron.com]
Sent: 14 September 2001 19:31
To: ???@uea.ac.uk; ???@uea.ac.uk; ???@uea.ac.uk;
???@uea.ac.uk; ???@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Climate Research at The University of East Anglia
Dear Sirs/Madam,
I am a senior specialist in statistical forecasting and meteorology with the research group at Enron Europe Ltd., based at Grosvenor Place, London. As you will know energy demand and supply is heavily dependant on climate, weather and weather forecasts. Also, increasingly, global energy demand and supply depends on climate and weather around the whole northern hemisphere.
Our devoted weather research and synoptic forecasting team based in our Houston office, and myself here in London, are extremely interested in the potential for collaborative University-University and University-Industry applied research projects, particularly between joint US/European research institutes and ourselves. We are interested in all aspects of Meteorology from new ideas in theoretical atmospheric physics through more practical aspects such as short-range deterministic forecasting, medium-range ensemble forecasting and long-range seasonal/climatic forecasting and analysis. My colleagues from Houston (who are currently planning visits to research institutes on the US side in the near future) will be in London in early November and I would very much like to set up an introductory meeting with the heads of the research groups at The Climatic Research Unit to introduce ourselves to you and discuss possible areas of mutual research interest.
If this is something that you would be interesting in setting up, or if you can direct me to a more suitable group or individuals at The University of East Anglia, please let me know and we can hopefully arrange a date for sometime in early November. I am currently in Houston, but hope to be able to return to London early next week depending on the current tragic situation here in the US. I can be contacted by email in the meantime.
Look forward to the opportunity of meeting with you in the near future.
In confidence,
Tony Hamilton
_______________________________________
Dr. Tony Hamilton
Senior Specialist, Meteorology and Forecasting
Weather Research
Enron Europe Ltd.
Enron House
–
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +4 ???-1603-593909
Fax: +4 ???-1603-507784
[2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[3]/
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2241.txt&search=enron
john says:
December 19, 2011 at 3:21 pm
“Ok, so how does this tie into current events? There is a wind company (companies) formed and headed by former Enron/GE guys from the Enron operation that was located in London.”
I believe the London location is so that they can be close to Al Gore’s Hedge fund:
http://www.generationim.com/
Why would former VP of the USA and former CEO of Goldman Sachs form their investment company in London?
Could it be that if they established the investment company in the United States, Al Gore would be breaking Federal Securities Laws regarding conflict’s of interest? Since Al Gore is based in London, and subject to British Securities Regulations, Algore can say whatever he wants in the USA, with full protection of the First Amendment. Anybody that is a stockbroker/financial planner in the USA knows the rules on conflict of interest and insider trading, or at least they should.
Does that tie into current events enough for you?
Andrew
Looks like yet another case of “Do what I say not what I do” from a warmist. They should eventually enter the lexicon under hypocrite as an example or maybe a synonym.
And you can’t quote him on that can you?
Can’t – can’t – can’t.
I just want to underscore that point.
Can’t.
.
Good comparison.
.
I sometimes wish that I had taken the blue pill…………….
@ur momisugly Andrew,
Enron used Arthur Anderson there (UK)…. It seems that the exact same thing is happening in the case of MF Global. Al Gore (Generation Investment) certainly has ‘advantages’ there in the (UK) as you say and remember that Ken Lay helped Al get his carbon business going.
Ironically, Cantor Fitzgerald was the first to really get things going until that Sept. day in 2001. No tin foil hats here, but I was involved in wind at the time and knew about Cantor’s Renewable Energy Credits efforts.
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell
Maybe we should all reread Animal Farm, then go eat a bunch of bacon and pork sausage!
Andrew
“over the top rhetoric and his outright hatred” – quite different to what one can find here, yes.
Mighty hoax from little Enrons grow…
When politicians say “too many regulations” they actually mean “too much corporate oversight”. Most of these scandals where the direct result of reduced “regulation”.
http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/25/accountingtracker.html
Of course congress can add supposed oversight and then the president/staff reduce the manpower or just “prosecute” with the SEC who can only levy fines (unlike the Dept. of Justice). The post ENRON/WorldCom/Tyco blowouts resulted in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act which was supposed to have real teeth but turned out to have only gumming power after the 2008 meltdown. One of the arguments against FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act was that the banks in the 1930’s where too small, making them susceptible to failure. Well, the banks in 2008 were plenty large and “too big too fail” but legal/deregulated corruption took care of that. Oversight may have some inhibitory effect on competition, but me thinks I would prefer that relative to the pain of the effects of a 2008 near catastrophe.
Unfortunately when empowering “Free Enterprise” it is assumed that most are honest and that may be. But is too easy to forget that it only takes a small number of large companies run by greedy corrupt groups to make large dents in or overwhelm the economic systems and as a result expensive oversight must be be kept on all.