The NZX announces a listing guaranteed to moisten the eyes of greenies around the world. But they won’t be the only ones weeping.
The fund, which received more than $1 million in applications from a range of investors, intends to buy carbon credits in emissions trading schemes in New Zealand and offshore. It is designed to give individuals and organisations a chance to invest in or offset carbon.
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Rodney Hide’s been allowed to write in the Herald on Sunday.
This week he talks about the ETS and he’s not kind about it. The carbon price has collapsed and the government’s changed the playing field so the trading will probably never recover. Shame.
He mentions the CCG blog (thanks, Rodney!) and something I said about selling unwanted CO2. Stirred up a large number of comments. Do join in.
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Monday, 21 November, 2011 – 12:40
Campaign Speech on the Emissions Trading Scheme
Don Brash, Leader ACT New Zealand
Bureta Park Inn, Tauranga
Monday 21 November 2011
My talk today is about the economy. It’s one of three that I’ll be giving this week as New Zealanders close in on the polls. This particular one focuses on the Emissions Trading Scheme, one of the most damaging policy choices that New Zealand has made in recent years.
This is an adopted article.
New Zealand’s hyperactive adoption of the world’s only all-sectors-all-gases Emissions Trading Scheme will not save us money on international obligations, because after the Kyoto Protocol expires next year there will not be any such obligations. It will not affect the global climate because New Zealand’s emissions form an utterly trivial fraction of global emissions [0.2% – Ed.]. It will not set an example to the world: if anything it will show the world that trying to lead on climate change policy is counterproductive. It might improve “Brand New Zealand,” but only at an unacceptable cost.
First, though, let me set some context. Continue Reading →
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The following passage is from our government’s web page explaining the ETS. It’s only a short piece, but there are numerous examples of non-sequiturs, or illogical derivations from the previous statement.
Anyone convinced it’s based on science or logic? Anyone at all?
Most forms of travel are fuelled by liquid fossil fuels, such as petrol and diesel, which result in emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
New Zealanders travel frequently and have a high level of vehicle ownership. Our use of freight transport has increased as the economy has grown, and our geographical isolation makes us reliant on ships and planes to connect us and our products to the rest of the world.
Between 1990 and 2006, total transport emissions increased by 5.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or 64 per cent. If we do not make changes to the ways we travel and transport freight, or to the technology and fuels we use, transport energy use will grow further. Public transport, biofuels, electric vehicles, rail, cycling and walking, as well as improved vehicle efficiency will all help – as will the ETS.
*Of course, this is among the worst of oxymorons.
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The UN’s ingenious global warming money-making scheme, called the clean development mechanism (CDM), was predicted to lead to abuse and fraud. The essence of the CDM is built around trust, so you just know it’s headed for disaster. Another scandal has come to light, in Uganda.
A reader posted a link to a dramatic headline at Prison Planet, Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming. Which quickly took my attention away from the All Blacks’ fine win against France.
The Prison Planet story was taken from a NY Times story with a milder headline: In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out. In that story, it turns out that a single child was murdered when his house was burned down.
The NY Times article, in turn, was taken from an Oxfam report about land grabs. So some of the lurid flavour of the story has been watered down, though there’s plenty left of concern. Continue Reading →
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When the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, the base year for calculating emissions was back-dated to 1990. They knew then that the ratification process would take many years (it was actually completed in 2005), so why did it hark back to the distant past?
Two big European events occurred in 1991. As a result of the Soviet collapse, heavy industry had closed down in droves throughout the East. And North Sea gas came ashore in the West with a “dash to gas” displacing coal power in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.
At the time of the Berlin COP in 1995, EU countries collectively had enough past credits from the 1991-94 period to cover all the obligations they later accepted under the Protocol. It was a no-brainer for them to demand that other developed countries match the EU misfortunes during “the First Commitment Period.” Continue Reading →
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Brian Fallow, in the Herald today, emphasis added (h/t Richard Cumming):
“The review, to be chaired by David Caygill, is a statutory requirement. It is expressly not to revisit the issues, debated at tedious length for at least the past decade, about whether New Zealand should be taking action on climate change at all or whether an emotions trading scheme is the most appropriate response.”
Oh, the emotions trading scheme? Ha-ha! His error illuminates an inconvenient truth about the ETS! It’s founded on emotion. Yes, Brian, I know it was a simple mistake, saying ’emotions’ instead of ’emissions’, but it reveals a great deal about the ETS and it’s worth laughing at because you say it again! Further on:
The Obama Administration has acknowledged that a national cap-and-trade (emotions trading) scheme is a non-starter for at least the next couple of years. Japan has shelved its plans for an ETS. Climate policy in Australia remains up in the air.
There can be no clearer example of an “error” revealing the writer’s true thinking. For the ETS depends entirely on trading on our emotions. There’s no science persuading us to reduce our emissions — there’s no evidence. There’s only speculation and the electronic dreams of computer models. The activists convince us only through emotive appeals to save polar bears and other cuddly animals, using graphs of carbon dioxide and temperature to illustrate fraudulent descriptions of climate science. Continue Reading →
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That is the very definition of easy money, yet the NZ Government has proposed that process and legalised it in what they call the “Emissions Trading Scheme.” Though they created it to “fight climate change” they now openly admit it will have no effect upon the climate. But, persuading us to agree to something on grounds later admitted to be false is the definition of fraud. And, since they claim to be “fighting climate change” while admitting the climate will be unaffected, they reveal a distinct denial.
So, regrettably, our Government is controlled by fraudsters and climate deniers.
Since the Government knows about the climate through the climate specialists in NIWA, is NIWA’s scientific advice also controlled by fraudsters and climate deniers? Since the climate specialists in NIWA are also the climate specialists in the NZ Royal Society, is the Royal Society, too, controlled by fraudsters and climate deniers?
The following quotes are from a NZ Herald article, The Carbon Detectives, published Dec 20, 2010.
Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, says if the US creates a nationwide cap-and-trade market, carbon could become the world’s most widely traded commodity.
But it’s a “commodity” in fiction, not truth. The commodity of “carbon” is unlike oil, pork bellies or platinum. You don’t possess the commodity you sell, it’s impossible to deliver and anyway the buyer has no reason to receive it.
Such a contract is witless, created only to extract money from the unwitting. If you’re awake, you might become rich, but at the expense of your fellow citizens, who don’t really get a poor bargain: they get no bargain, for the price of everything connected with “carbon” emissions rises and they must pay the increase or go without. There is no benefit.
In a society where getting to work needs a few litres of petrol and keeping the house liveable in winter needs a few kilowatts of electricity, going without is not an option.
Gregg Marland, a staff scientist at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, says, “If you’re selling oil, you’re actually transferring something tangible. If somebody lies, somebody loses,” he says. “In a CO2 transaction, you can lie and both win.” The seller gets paid, and the buyer has his credit for compliance. “We’re going to create a situation where both sides can win by cheating,” Marland says.
The consequence of this spectacular foolishness cannot be a reduction in atmospheric levels of CO2. Not that that’s a tragedy, because nobody cares and the climate won’t notice. But the money it’s costing us to not reduce CO2 is perfectly scandalous!
The only precedent for such willing self-delusion lies in the Dutch tulip bulb craze, the South Sea Company bubble and the original 1920 Ponzi scheme.
Wake up, my people!
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One of the fastest growing industries in the world is based on a pyramid of frauds and its inevitable collapse will be worse than the sub-prime crash.
The Global Warming Industry is now fed by billions of dollars from western taxpayers and consumers. It is based on the unproven and now discredited claim that man’s production of carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming.
The basic fraud is this:
There is no evidence that carbon dioxide controls world temperature – just a theory and the manipulated results from a handful of giant computer models that very few people have checked or understand. But there is clear evidence from historical records of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature that carbon dioxide does not control temperature. Rather the reverse – as solar or volcanic heat warms the oceans, the waters expel carbon dioxide. Global warming causes an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the reverse. Continue Reading →
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A story sweeping through blogdom announces the end of the Chicago Carbon Exchange and its carbon trading in the wake of a totally collapsed price for carbon. This means a victory for opponents of man-made global warming and the death of a scheme that separates people from their money for the sake of the climate but has no effect on the climate.
However, it appears the exchange is not closing down, carbon trading is not finished and the carbon price is not even in the basement. What on earth is going on? Continue Reading →
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The National government is determined to fire up an emissions trading scheme (ETS) on July 1st, but a new study criticises it forcefully.
NZ sceptics, led by ACT’s John Boscawen, have for some months campaigned against the ETS on scientific and economic grounds, inside and outside the Parliament. But this study by two Victoria University academics – believers in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) – could do more to force a government change of mind than any protest action so far.
Since it comes from within the warmist camp, John Key, Nick Smith and their advisers will, or should, pay it close attention. For it expresses arguments made by supporters of government “climate” policy, so they will be more difficult to dismiss than those of mere “deniers” of “climate change” (whoever they are). Continue Reading →
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How obvious must the lack of credibility in AGW become before New Zealand’s so-called journalists wake up to it?
Their disconnection from reality now transcends mere embarrassment for the onlookers; it has become actually humiliating, because the only remaining reason for our nation’s professional journalists to hold to the IPCC line on dangerous man-made global warming is an intentional neglect of the facts. Continue Reading →
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Sends shivers down the spine, this does. For, not only does “regular” carbon trading take food from the mouths of mothers and babies, but fraudulent activities, increasing costs and therefore prices, take even more. How long before it turns up in New Zealand, if National really does launch its ill-advised scheme on July 1? The most important part of the story waits until the last two paragraphs, though I’ve flagged it in the heading. Further comments below.
Prosecutors confirm that four arrests have been made in €180m fraud investigation
German prosecutors today confirmed they have arrested four people in Germany and the UK following raids on more than 50 homes and offices this week in connection with an alleged €180m (£156m) carbon fraud. Continue Reading →
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It is significant that there are so many voices raised against the ETS.
Rodney Hide confirms this, saying that he has never received such a high level of public support on any other issue. He says Kiwis around the country are annoyed. They know there’s no need for an expensive ETS that will deliver no benefits whatsoever.
It behoves you to listen to us and very smartly do something about our concerns or next year you will find yourself back in the loneliness of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Our ETS will do nothing for the environment, will diminish the budgets of hard-working families and will require a monstrous create-nothing bureaucracy.
In addition, though the ETS purports to be based on movements of carbon dioxide into and out of almost every large-scale process in the country, there is no way to measure such movements. If you don’t believe me, ask your officials; uptake and emission of CO2 are based predominantly on computer models.
Since it can’t be measured, everyone can overstate with impunity the quantities involved and has an incentive to do so. Fraud is rife in the overseas schemes and there’s no reason to think it won’t occur here, too.
Because of our power generation structure, even the price of renewable electricity will go up because of the ETS, giving windfall profits of millions of dollars to the generators.
It’s too much to pay; and we refuse to stroke the over-anxious egos of comfortable, middle-class, socialist greenies.
Pay attention: We don’t want an ETS.
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Once upon a time, people thought they would stop global warming, caused by carbon dioxide, by extinguishing their fossil-fuelled fires. But everybody loved their fossil fires and depended on them for every good thing in modern life. So they didn’t want to give them up. What would be the best way to persuade the people to extinguish the lovely fires?
The people decided that they just had to make the lovely fires more expensive and invent other ways of providing every good thing in modern life. That gave them two options to choose between: let the government put an extra tax on the fossil fuels, or create licences to emit carbon dioxide and let everybody trade them with each other. That was called an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), sometimes “cap and trade”.
Either scheme would have the effect of making the lovely fires more expensive because the cost of the tax or the emission certificates would be added to the price of the goods and services. Naturally, the people would end up paying more, but that was the whole point. All the good things in modern life were destroying the planet so they had to become too expensive to buy and the leaders said that was a sacrifice they were willing to make. Continue Reading →
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The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the practice of governments trying to buy support for their failing Ration-N-Tax Scheme using tax money raised in an underhand fashion from the same people.
The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that since the “Climate Scare-a-Day” campaign of 2009 has failed to spook the people, the New Year will see acceleration of the next ploy: “carbon bribery and corruption”. Continue Reading →
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President Obama is charming, credible and he fronts well, but he just revealed some of what truly lies within. It was a disturbing insight and I hope his advisors can amend his ignorance.
It was just last Tuesday — Barack Obama, at a White House press conference, was urging the House of Representatives to pass the Waxman-Markey bill, properly known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, when he let slip that he doesn’t know what carbon dioxide is. Continue Reading →
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Following the virtual demise of traditional Western religion, the newly-instituted worship of “the environment” has spread and flourished. Commentators point out how many things are done and called for in the name of the environment, as were once done and called for in the name of God.
Nothing has changed except the name of the deity. We brook no argument against our deity, nor questioning; we demand blind obedience, for fear of public obloquy. We still call upon people to consider, to fret, to act and to pay handsomely in the name of the deity—just the projects differ. Where once it was a fine new cathedral in Coventry or the Swansea city square statuary, now we want action on poverty or global warming.
And there’s an even newer deity: it’s the “developing world”. Continue Reading →
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So CO2 is now a polluting gas. Does nobody have any elementary science knowledge? Dr Muriel Newman lambasts the Commissioner for the Environment for stupidly declaring CO2 a pollutant. But the campaign against carbon dioxide originates with the IPCC, who breaches its own rules, ignores accepted scientific procedure and whose objective when set up was to find evidence of human interference in the climate. With all those bureaucrats employed for that single purpose, there was never much chance of not finding evidence, was there? more…
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History and reason say no—so can we greatly alter the climate? Study history, for it says the climate has changed like this before. Study science, for it says that puny man has no effect. more…
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