Why Obama, Gore, Pachauri, Hansen and Hackers Love Carbon Credits So Much
The hackers launched a targeted phishing attack against employees of numerous companies in Europe, New Zealand and Japan, which appeared to come from the German Emissions Trading Authority. The workers were told that their companies needed to re-register their accounts with the Authority, where carbon credits and transactions are recorded.Out of that $130 billion carbon trade in Europe, at least $5 billion or more was used for money laundering and other illegal purposes. Another recent carbon credit scam in the UK amounted to a $62 million loss. In fact up to 90% of all carbon trading in Belgium is fraudulent.
When workers entered their credentials into a bogus web page linked in the e-mail, the hackers were able to hi-jack the credentials to access the companies’ Trading Authority accounts and transfer their carbon credits to two other accounts controlled by the hackers.
Under environmental cap-and-trade laws, there’s a limit to the greenhouse gases companies can emit. Companies that exceed this limit can purchase so-called carbon credits from entities that produce fewer greenhouse emissions than the limit provides them.
The scheme has produced a robust market for the trade of credits. More than 8 million tons of CO2 emissions worth $130 billion were traded in Europe last year. _ImpactLab
What's not to love about a soon-to-be $trillion dollar market that has no careful controls or oversight? It's every scammers dream -- and Mr. Obama and his Chicago friends are no exceptions.
Now, after ClimateGate and the raft of revelations regarding the hoax of climate catastrophe, carbon credit trading scams are an even sweeter deal for a con -- they're fraudulent from top to bottom.
Addendum 8 Feb 10: A reader has pointed out in comments here that James Hansen is on the record as opposing the particular type of carbon credits that are being used currently in the European market.
If only James Hansen had opposed the shameful manipulation and mal-adjustment of GISS climate data, it is far less likely that the entire scam of carbon credits would have ever arisen.
Labels: Climate Grifters, crime
posted by al fin at 6:20 pm
4 Comments:
Hansen opposed cap and trade so I don't get the headline:
Hansen in NYT:
"AT the international climate talks in Copenhagen, President Obama is expected to announce that the United States wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to about 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. But at the heart of his plan is cap and trade, a market-based approach that has been widely praised but does little to slow global warming or reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It merely allows polluters and Wall Street traders to fleece the public out of billions of dollars."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07hansen.html?_r=1
Yes, you are right. Thanks for pointing that out.
You know what an attention-hog James Hansen is. He will do anything for a headline, even jump in where he doesn't belong! ;-)
Your snippet from the article stated that the Euro market sells $130b in credits for 8m tons of carbon. I have to assume that whoever put that together meant US tons and not metric tonnes so that should be about 16b pounds of carbon. Sooo...
($130b/16b-lbs) = $8.13/lb of carbon
This source states that there are 5.5lbs of carbon in a gallon of gasoline.
5.5*8.13=$44.72 to burn a single gallon of gasoline at a factory.
These numbers can't be right. Did I miss something here? Could this scheme be even worse, with the tax levied on the weight of the CO2 released and not the weight of the carbon released?
Ughh.
While we are on the subject of carbon emission markets, environmentalists are speculating that the doctrine of "prior appropriation" that is used to allocate water in the western United States could be applied to carbon emissions too.
Post a Comment
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell
<< Home