Alberta, Canada $60M emissions trading program lacks a single verifiable agricultural credit says auditor general-Nature

11/25/11, "The problems with emissions trading," Nature, Hannah Hoag

"How does putting a price on carbon reduce greenhouse-gas emissions?"

"Alberta’s Can$60 million (US$57 million) carbon-cutting programme is failing, according to the latest report from the Canadian province’s auditor-general, Merwan Saher. Like many such programmes around the world, it includes an emissions trading scheme, which allows polluters to meet their emissions reductions targets by buying carbon offsets from a selection of approved projects. The offsets are supposed to be real, measurable and provable. But the report claims that the province, despite earlier warnings, has not improved its regulatory structure

• — and calls the emissions estimates and the offsets themselves into question....

The Alberta report found a lack of standards for how agricultural credits were verified — not one of the credits the auditors checked could be confirmed. It also pointed out that there was no standardized, accurate method for measuring the emissions from oil-sands tailing ponds, which store contaminated water, clay, sand and bitumen from oil-sands processing."...

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11/18/11, "UN IPCC Official Admits 'We Redistribute World's Wealth By Climate Policy'," NewsBusters (item is third paragraph of Edenhofer quotes)

via Tom Nelson