Kyoto: A Story of Corruption and Profit

As we previously discussed, the Kyoto treaty seeks to reduce carbon emissions through a system of carbon credits.

Quite simply, carbon credits is a concept whereby someone (or a company) is allowed to continue their lifestyle unaltered by purchasing someone else's unused emissions. By this system, you are essentially forcing poor countries and people into a continued cycle of destitude because their ability to improve their lifestyle is hampered because a poor financial decision.

For instance, Canada wants to lower its carbon footprint, so it "buys" 10 million tons of carbon credits from Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe (by signing the Kyoto treaty) is allowed to produce 50 million tons of carbon per year, but currently only produces 40 tons of carbon. It is allowed more carbon than it produces; so it sells its 10 million tons to Canada. Now, Canada has "reduced" its carbon footprint (yay!) and Zimbabwe gets money. It's the perfect redistribution of wealth system. But, now if Zimbabwe wants to make a power plant to power homes, businesses and improve its economy, it cannot. It is already using all of its carbon credits. To surpass that, would result in hefty fines from the UN under the Kyoto protocol. Zimbabwe is forced into a continual system of destitute because of this. And Canadians feel better about themselves. Isn't it wonderful?

There have already been many stories about the Carbon credit industry and how its wrought with fraud. Now, we come to know that it's far worse than expected:

The CDM is one of two global markets which have been set up in the wake of the Kyoto climate summit in 1997. Both finally started work in January 2005. Although both were launched with the claim that they would reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, evidence collected by the Guardian suggests that thus far, both markets have earned fortunes for speculators and for some of the companies which produce most greenhouse gases and yet, through a combination of teething troubles and multiple forms of malpractice and possibly fraud, they have delivered little or no benefit for the environment.

While the CDM is run under the umbrella of the UN, the second market is overseen by the European commission. Before launching, it churned through a mass of figures and produced a maximum number of tonnes of carbon dioxide which could be produced by each nation in the scheme; each nation then handed its big corporations and organisations a set number of permits - EU allocations - defining the number of tonnes of carbon dioxide they could produce between January 2005 and December 2007. But they got their sums wrong.

The carbon market's leading analysts, Point Carbon, recently calculated that this scheme handed out 170m too many EUAs. In the early days, nobody realised quite how badly the commission had miscalculated, and so the price of the EUAs was quite high, at up to €30 a tonne. But individual companies, particularly energy companies, rapidly saw they had millions of tonnes of EUAs that they didn't need, and so they sold their surplus, making huge profits. A 2005 report by IPA Energy Consulting found that the six UK electricity generators stood to earn some £800m in each of the three years of the scheme.

A separate report by Open Europe, in July 2006, found that UK oil companies were also poised to make a lot of free money: £10.2m for Esso; £17.9m for BP; and £20.7m for Shell. And behind this profiteering, the environmental reality was that these major producers of carbon emissions were under no pressure from the scheme to cut emissions.

So, in the end Kyoto has become the newest oil for food scandal. A few people making a ton of money, while millions of people suffer (specifically in 3rd world countries) and nothing is gained. Isn't that typical UN behavior, though? This whole article is worth reading actually, and highlights that the people who are "most concerned" about the environment are really just concerned about making money without actually doing anything to earn it.

But it makes no difference, does it? The carbon credit industry is beset with incompetence and fraud.

One senior figure suggested there may be faults with up to 20% of the carbon credits - known as certified emissions reductions - already sold. Since these are used by European governments and corporations to justify increases in emissions, the effect is that in some cases malpractice at the CDM has added to the net amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

The problems focus on the specialist companies that validate and verify the projects in the developing world which produce the certified emission reductions. Three of those companies have failed spot checks, which revealed a catalogue of weakness.

Separately, one of the CDM's experts calculates that as many as one third of the projects registered in India are commercial ventures which do not produce any additional cut in greenhouse gases and were wrongly approved.

Hey. But as long as we are helping the environment, its okay if someone makes a few bucks greasing the wheels right?

And, now the Europeans are in a huff because Bush doesn't want another Kyoto boondoggle for the G8:

But the US president’s apparent about-turn on global warming last week does not fit the bill for the Germans or the EU. Merkel welcomed Bush’s belated acceptance that global warming was essentially caused by humans, but added: ‘‘As far as the concrete issues are concerned, we still have some work ahead of us.”

Above all, she made clear she would not countenance the US hijacking negotiations, insisting they must remain with the UN. That means some kind of agreement must be reached now to kick off the post-Kyoto talks due to begin in Bali in December.

Of course they want the UN involved. The UN gets a lot of money from Kyoto; and the European Commission gets a little piece on the side for its market as well. Guess we know what the real priorities are, don't we?

Reuters Lies About Bush and Kyoto

From a story today on Yahoo News:

President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing it would cost U.S. jobs and that it wrongly excluded 2012 goals for poorer nations such as China.

Uh. Reuters, please do some fact checking. Bush did not pull the US out of Kyoto. Even Wikipedia gets this one right. This is really basic fact checking. How can we take you seriously as a "news" company if you can't get recent history correct?

Without further adieu, here is the Wikipedia article; that is mostly correct:

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),^[40][41] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.^[42] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.

So Bush couldn't have possibly pulled the US from Kyoto; since Clinton never submitted the protocol to the Senate.

Reuters, give truthful reporting a chance, will ya?

CBC Alters Photo to Dramatize Global Warming

Small Dead Animals found a shocking (well, not that shocking, almost expected these days) fauxtography on http://www.cbc.ca, that shows them editting a photo to accentuate their story on Global Warming. He features the before image, and the "dirtified" image as well. Nice catch!

The media should be ashamed for altering photos like this. They report reality, not an agenda - or at least, they should.

Global Warming Skeptics Win High Profile Debate

In a high profile debate between Global Warming Skeptics and Alarmists, the skeptics came out on top.

Participants included:

The debate was sponsored by the Oxford-style debating group Intelligence Squared and featured such prominent man-made global warming skeptics as MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, the University of London emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott and Physician turned Novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton on one side.

The scientists arguing for a climate ‘crisis’ were NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, meteorologist Richard C.J. Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The event, which was moderated by New York Public Radio’s Brian Lehrer, debated the proposition: "Global warming is not a crisis.”

The audience, who intially had a clear majority (57%) who believed in the crisis, by the end of the debate only 42% believed in the crisis. This tells me two things. That the majority is not certain what it thinks; and that the position is easily changed. Too bad enough real information is not put out there or it would not be such an uphill battle to convince people that the driving force behind this is is cash. Al Gore is cashing in on Global Warming in a big way. So are many scientists who are funded by the government to "prove" Global Warming happens.

Some entertaining quotes from the skeptics side:

Skeptical quotes from Novelist Michael Crichton:

"I would like to suggest a few symbolic actions that right—might really mean something. One of them, which is very simple, 99% of the American population doesn’t care, is ban private jets. Nobody needs to fly in them, ban them now. And, and in addition, [APPLAUSE] "Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [electrical] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously? [APPLAUSE]"

"I suddenly think about my friends, you know, getting on their private jets. And I think, well, you know, maybe they have the right idea. Maybe all that we have to do is mouth a few platitudes, show a good, expression of concern on our faces, buy a Prius, drive it around for a while and give it to the maid, attend a few fundraisers and you’re done. Because, actually, all anybody really wants to do is talk about it."

"I mean, haven’t we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes. [LAUGHTER]"

More...

Skeptical quotes of University of London’s emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott:  

“And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change. Well let’s use an engineer; I don’t think I’d want to cross Brooklyn Bridge if it were built by an engineer who only understood 80% of the forces on that bridge. [LAUGHTER]”

More...

Skeptical quotes of MIT’s Professor of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen:

"The impact on temperature per unit carbon dioxide actually goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is not directly related to the emissions rate or even CO2 levels, which is what the legislation is hitting on, but rather to the impact of these gases on the greenhouse effect."

"The real signature of greenhouse warming is not surface temperature but temperature in the middle of the troposphere, about five kilometers. And that is going up even slower than the temperature at the surface."

Congratulations to the skeptics.

Global Warming Causes Cockroach Migration

The weather is getting hotter, and here come the roaches.

Martyn Robinson from the Australian Museum says the Australian house cockroach, methana marginalus, which likes warmer climates, has begun moving in.

"It's most likely to be the...warmer climate," he said.

Well; at least the rising sea levels will drown them quick enough. That is good news, I suppose. Gotta look for those silver linings on a planet where we are all doomed! Doomed!

But I had a thought about this. According to Ray, from Ghostbusters, he was present at an unexplained mass migration of sponges. Did Global Warming cause this too? (IMBD)

Dr. Peter Venkman: As a friend, I have to tell ya you've finally gone around the bend on this ghost business. You guys have been running your ass off, meetin' and greetin' every schizo in the five boroughs who says he has a paranormal experience. What have you seen?
Dr Ray Stantz: Of course you forget, Peter. I was present at an undersea unexplained mass sponge migration.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Oh, Ray, the sponges "migrated" about a foot and a half.

Unexplained? Bah. Global Warming made them migrate.

I see many possibilities here. Why have science anymore at all? Don't understand something (re-read the above quote ... the hesitation is interesting.  Must be ... global warming. Must be)? Global warming caused it. Oh to be a student in school these days.

Can't find the length of an arc on a circle. Doesn't matter anymore, global warming will doom us all. I'd use it for causing trouble too. I broke into school and stole the laptops because I wanted to research global warming. Awesome.

Global Warming Hike Ends in Frostbite

God is laughing again. An expedition to the North Pole was been called off due to frostbite.

The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

You'd think that with all there Global Warming going on that the temperatures would allow a 530 mile trek into the Arctic without the risk of losing some toes. But God works in mysterious ways.

Then there was the cold — quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.

Their hot water bottles froze over and they had to wake up constantly to keep some fresh water available. I figured with all those glaciers melting; there'd be free fresh water everywhere. Hmm. Guess not.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

Remind me when the post talking unexpected cold temperatures, frost bite and harsher than expected conditions goes online. I don't think it ever will.

Hat Tip - Ace

 More:

New York Times calls out Gore for Global Warming alarmism and exagerrating the risks.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

Wonder if the lie about Cardon Dioxide being a leading indicator of Global Warming will ever be mentioned? Probably not, but at least some sanity seems to be creeping into the debate.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

76 minutes long, but well worth it. I'm sure it'll highlight points that I've been making on this blog for quite a while now.