From the I’ve been telling you so for some time now department comes this headline from Bloomberg.
And it is getting desperate in the carbon market. Readers may recall last week I reported two new record lows on the EU carbon price, where Friday saw a 10% drop in a single day to add to the long slide:
I called it “end times for carbon trading“. The US CCX Carbon market collapsed two years ago, it was only a matter of time for the EU market. Today, there was a new record low according to Reuters “point carbon” where the price closed .10 lower than Friday.
EU carbon recovers from new low below 5 euros
Watch the stampede to sell tomorrow.
Dr. Roger Piekle Jr. said today in a tweet that:
So with EU ETS carbon “worthless” Aussie gov’t linkage to EU ETS now looking like a cost-free bit of political genius with no policy effect
And, then there’s California, going it alone with their CARB auction, who at least had the good sense not to linkup with Australia. I really do hope somebody goes to jail over this scam.
BTW, the EU Carbon Price is now in “charcoal briquette” territory, which is what happened just before the Chicago Climate Exchange collapsed. A ton of EU carbon is worth less than the smallest bag of charcoal briquettes:
E.M.Smith says:
January 22, 2013 at 4:12 am
“The basic problem forces things this way. Maybe that is the goal of the Greens (everyone back to cave man tech) but I think the government money launderers and business manipulators expected a cut… ”
That is exactly the goal of German Greens. They abhor modernity, are romantics, dream of self-sufficiency in a shack in the woods. Use non-electric gizmos when they have the choice. None of them ever actually achieves this of course. They suffer day in day out from being forced to use a car to go about their business. That’s why they want to stick it to the man; the SYSTEM forces them to violate their beliefs; you know they don’t WANT to drive that pickup truck but they need to because they own a landscaping business. (for instance.)
They are, at the same time, prodigious consumers – they need to fly to remote places all the time to see places where humans and nature still live in harmony, or even better, places where there are no humans and nature lives with itself in harmony.
They are the most contradictory specimen out there.
I’m not making this up, I am talking of several German Greens I know personally. They have travelled a lot of air miles more than I. They will happily inform you that we’re all doomed environmentally, then hop on an airliner to Mexico. And they’re not even rich.
It was Enron in 1990. They earned $20 billion from sulphur cap-and-trade as a result of the Clean Air Act, and looked with longing at the CO2 market. Problem was, according to the New Zealand’s Investigate Magazine, they had to convince people that CO2 was a pollutant. Wait…I just found a cached copy. You can read it here:
http://channelingreality.com/Power/Kyoto_Conspiracy_.pdf
@DirkH
And I guess the Romantic’s emphasis on subjectivity is why so many environmentalists believe that their personal feelings about a matter outweigh all objective rational points. It is a seductive mode; one’s own feelings can NEVER be questioned, because only their subject knows them. So it is a great way to feel right without having to study or have one’s opinions scrutinised by others. I’m sure hunter gatherers a million years ago had to think more clearly than that. The Enlightenment made it safe enough for Romantics to survive.
“I’m not making this up, I am talking of several German Greens I know personally.”
I picked up a couple of student hitch hikers back about 1992 or so, on their way to the west coast. The immediately asked me to roll down the car wiindows, as they slept in the ditches for a week and survived on raw garlic.. they said they were poor students and green vegans.. I gave them a place to stay that night, and a bath, and supper. Nice kids, but I was surprised to learn that 40% of German youth were both “green” and vegans. I wondered how it happened that German youth were so of one mind. Maybe it is a German thing, to group think? Or maybe it just is a left wing thing, or right wing thing.. or just “human” to group think? Scary though, if we humans are so credulous.
Carbon permits, don’t bother, buy carbon. In the US northeast anyway.
I have been burning Anthracite Coal to heat my home and hot water for 25 years, during the past 10 years the local price per ton has almost doubled from $171/ton to $330/ton.
Even at $330/ton the price per million BTU’s is less that all other sources except wood.
And just in time for the US govt. to put in place a carbon trading plan.
I kind of like this price point for CO2 offsets. Heck, I can buy enough to “carbon-neutralize” my entire (relatively normal) lifestyle from now until I meet my Maker for about $35. On second thought, that money would do plenty of good in the hands of a legitimate, boots-on-the-ground charity. Never mind…
Peak Carbon Credits, to go along with Peak Soil?
I KNEW I should have got into the carbon market at the beginning and cashed in my chips while it was high.
Because I also KNEW this was going to happen eventually.
Ed_B says,
“I gave them a place to stay that night, and a bath, and supper. Nice kids, but I was surprised to learn that 40% of German youth were both “green” and vegans. I wondered how it happened that German youth were so of one mind. Maybe it is a German thing, ”
There was the 1920s & 30s fashion in Germany for this sort of thing, fed, as an earlier comment pointed out, by the Romantics of the 18 & 19th centuries. I am afraid it has a very unpleasant outcome.
Why did they cancel the permit sale? Just because the prices are low is not a good reason.
And where are all the green groups that buy up the permits so as to reduce emissions?
Ed_B says:
January 22, 2013 at 6:16 am
“Nice kids, but I was surprised to learn that 40% of German youth were both “green” and vegans. I wondered how it happened that German youth were so of one mind. ”
You should have asked for the source. THe 40% “green” might be; after all that is the modern disguise of socialism and at least half of the kids are historically susceptible to socialist indoctrination; it subsides once one has to pay income taxes.
But 40% of the youth vegan? Never. They would drop like flies; they are growing organisms. Doesn’t happen. Too few fatalities amongst German kids. Can’t be vegan.
Philip Foster (Revd) says:
January 22, 2013 at 8:29 am
“There was the 1920s & 30s fashion in Germany for this sort of thing, fed, as an earlier comment pointed out, by the Romantics of the 18 & 19th centuries. I am afraid it has a very unpleasant outcome.”
Yes, a movement called Der Wandervogel (“the tramp”); a kind of Ur hippie movement. Most of them – much more than in the general populace – joined the NSDAP, I think 70% of them; they thought of themselves as apolitical and liked the NSDAP because they articulated environmental thoughts; and later when in power the NSDAP indeed created the first nature reserve / national park in Europe, so it was in fact an honest commitment to environmentalism. (Putting nature above humans, as history has shown)
The EU was told by the IMF to get their Sh*#t together, step 1 drop the carbon trading silliness.
Step 2 drop the other AGW ridiculousness.
Sun Spot says:
January 22, 2013 at 11:07 am
“The EU was told by the IMF to get their Sh*#t together, step 1 drop the carbon trading silliness.”
Really? What’s the name of the IMF boss again? Ah oui, Lagarde. And the IMF now funnels US money into the sinkhole that is the Eurozone. Bend over, America…
@DirkH:
Well have to forward that request to our Chinese Bankers and see if they will loan us a bend-over… We don’t have any of our own…
@Sun Spot:
I, too, would love a citation to explore on that..
@Ed_B:
I think they were ‘making stuff up’. Vegan is a very extreme form of vegetarian that few achieve. In the USA it’s only about 2.5% of the population. Thats got a tiny little “point” between the 2 and the decimal fraction…
The family decided they wanted to ‘go vegetarian’ on me, so I had to learn to cook that way. The book “Transition to Vegetarianism” lays out what you need to do as each ‘level’ of non-vegetarian is dropped. It’s not easy at all. By the time you are at Vegan, you pretty much need to be thinking biochem at every meal…
http://www.amazon.com/Transition-Vegetarianism-An-Evolutionary-Step/dp/0893891045
My family stopped at “Ovo-Lacto” so eggs and milk products stay in. MUCH easier. Spouse gave that up and joined me back at omnivore. It is possible to be a vegan and get all the things you need, but not something 40% of youth will or can do.
Major issues cluster around B vitamins, essential fatty acids, good protein mix – especially if anyone has food allergies such as wheat, and rising anti-nutrient factors from some of the plant items – like phyto-estrogens in soy and mineral chelation in some other foods. All quite manageable, but not by chance… The spouse, for example, developed kidney stones that are made worse in sensitive individuals by spinach… that fixes some of the things missing when meat is removed… So as we started leaving out the higher oxalic acid foods, it was even harder to keep a vegetarian solution set. Easier to just swap back to meat and toss the oxalate from the high plant component of a vegetarian diet.
(No, all you vegetarians do NOT need to tell me that kidney stones are not a normal consequence of being a vegetarian. I know this. That’s why I said “in sensitive individuals” and “can be done”. But not by everyone, and not easily. I did manage to do “low oxalate vegetarian”, but it’s not easy… Look up the list of ‘avoid’ foods for kidney stones then the list of ‘preferred’ foods for vegetarian… Spinach, nuts, …)
Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of reality, CO2 in the atmosphere (and as a human product) has a positive value. The credits are a pretense that the opposite is true. Unending surprises await the pretenders.