30 European carbon trading countries still prohibited from trading due to fraud

1/27/11, "European commission extends carbon market freeze indefinitely," UK Guardian, Leigh Phillips

• 'Countries must prove their systems are protected against theft of credits by hackers'

"The European commission's emergency suspension last week of trading in carbon allowances to put a halt to rampant theft of credits by hackers has been extended indefinitely until countries can prove their systems are protected from further fraud.

While the suspension had been expected to end last night, Brussels now says that the freeze in trades had been imposed to give the commission executive some breathing space to figure out what to do.

"The suspension last week was only a transitional measure to give the commission and member states the time to assess the situation and decide the way forward," the commission's climate spokeswoman, Maria Kokkonen, said....

A total of 30 countries that participate in the Emissions Trading Scheme, Europe's flagship climate change policy, must now send assessments of the situation

• performed by independent monitors.

On 19 January, the commission suspended "spot" trading in allowances after up to 2m permits worth around €30m were stolen by computer hackers. Brussels said that half the participating countries were not sufficiently secure.

• Permits went missing in Austria, the Czech Republic and Greece.

"We must check the reports and it may take some time," Kokkonen said, although, according to one EU source, this will be "weeks, not months"....

She added that while the general suspension is likely to persist for weeks, "certain movements some time next week"

• may occur on a country-by-country basis.

The UK is thought to be one of the states most likely to be given the all-clear, while the countries where the problems originated are having the most difficulties adhering to security requirements.

Once there is a centralised clearinghouse, starting in 2013, Kokkonen said these sort of problems will no longer be an issue:

"We have to survive till 2013.""

via Tom Nelson

California court rejects PG&E wind farm, notes wind power adds CO2 as needs back up generators running or idling

1/25/11, "Wind power's dirty little secret," The Daily Bayonet

"A California court tells the naked and ugly truth about a proposed PG&E wind farm, the Manzana Wind Project:

We reject the application because we find that the Manzana Wind Project is not cost-competitive and poses unacceptable risks to ratepayers. We find that the proposed cost of the Manzana Wind Project is significantly higher than other resources PG&E can procure to meet its RPS program goal. Moreover, it will subject the ratepayers to unacceptable risks due to potential cost increases resulting from project under-performance, less than forecasted project life, and any delays which might occur concerning transmission upgrades and commercial online date.

There’s a lot more at the American Spectator link, but that simple quote above exposes a lot of wind’s problems, including the inconvenient difference between a wind turbine’s capacity and actual performance, the uncertain useful life of turbines and the exposure of

• customers tied in to paying a fixed sum for intermittent energy.
  

That last point is one that should resonate with Ontarians.

Even before all the promised wind capacity is plugged into the grid, the unpredictability of wind power has forced Ontario to give away electricity when it is generating more than it can use, but consumers still pay producers a fixed amount per kilowatt hour:

“The IESO would experience surplus conditions roughly 14.5% of the time based on average wind output,” it predicts. Under normal market conditions that would cause the price to fall to zero or below and some generators would shut down. But the new wind farms, operating under current contracts that pay the operator 13.5 cents a kilowatt hour, would see all of their power flow onto the grid at the contract price.

There is no incentive for wind producers to stop the turbines, it doesn’t matter to them if the energy they send to the grid is worth zero – they get paid 13.5 cents per KW/h regardless. If you think that’s bad, solar producers earn nearly 80 cents per KW/h – again a guaranteed sum regardless of the market price of power. Today’s spot price for electricity generated by all sources is 3.69 cents per KW/h (link price will change daily).

The Star article also mentions wind power’s really dirty little secret – it doesn’t save a single ounce of CO2:

There’s one other, counter-intuitive problem with increased wind generation. At the moment, more wind power means more gas-fired power. Because wind power is variable, it has to be backed up by natural gas-fired generators, kept idling to be switched in if the wind dips. The reserve generators also have to be paid for, and they boost carbon emissions that wind power is supposed to prevent.

Renewable energy early adopters Spain and France have slashed wind and solar subsidies in the face of economic reality, leaving Ontario with some of the most generous renewables subsidies on the planet. No wonder

• rent-seekers are salivating at the prospect of money for nothing.

The provincial government is committed to spend $1.1 billion this year on the Orwellian named Ontario Clean Energy Benefit – a subsidy to offset increasing energy costs caused in large part by unaffordable and uneconomic green energy subsidies. The OCEB cannot sustain that high level of consumer credits any more than the province can sustain the wind and solar subsidies.

Premier McGuinty has built a green house of cards that he hopes will stand long enough to get him past October’s election. The opposition thinks differently and if you live in Ontario you should give them a hearing. If you live in a jurisdiction that has grand plans for renewable energy, learn from the mistakes of California, Spain, Italy, Ontario and the UK, and go with coal, gas or

• if you like green – nuclear.
  

Don’t rely on bird shredders or solar panels – the cost is too high and the benefit too little."

via Tom Nelson

US satellites 'proving' global warming work poorly or not at all

It's the hottest, it's the coldest, though US "science" systems for measuring such things work poorly or not at all. The 'climate' industry has a 'national security' branch, ie devoted to the belief that not only did Americans cause global warming, but even worse, they created national security risks around the world. Having decided this, enormous taxpayer money (from the same evil Americans) is spent coming up with alleged data to prove this (that is window dressing because those finding the alleged 'proof' have financial/career interest in the outcome). This article's point of view is that we need many more billions of American tax dollars for more satellites to inform us of alleged national security risks of global warming, and that the system we have now is all but broken down--not to the point where they can't assure us that global warming exists for which we owe billions more, of course. Britain's Prince Phillip was born a royal, had nothing to do, so spent his royal clout building up the global warming industry which now strangles the UK.

1/24/11, "Aging and failed satellites jeopardize efforts to collect data on climate change," Washington Post, Emmarie Huetteman

"A 2005 report by the National Research Council sounded the alarm about the climate satellite system, declaring it was "at risk of collapse," largely because of weakening of U.S. financial support for such programs. The 2010 report by Lewis and others asserted that half of all climate satellites will have outlived their design life within the next eight years....

The Landsat series of Earth observation satellites, a nearly 40-year-old mission run by the U.S. Geological Survey, had its next satellite delayed from this year, with the latest plans estimating a 2012 launch. This mission watches rising sea levels, glacial movement and coral reef decline, and it charts environmental conditions for military and intelligence uses. But one of its two satellites is experiencing

• degraded image quality
  

• and the other has been up since 1984,
  

• far past its life expectancy.
  

The Hydros mission, to measure soil moisture and permafrost, and to improve forecasting of droughts and floods, which was to have been launched this month, was canceled altogether. The Obama administration has proposed a 2014 launch for a satellite to measure soil moisture....

Last April, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that criticized NOAA and the Defense Department for failing to come up with plans to restore the climate-monitoring instruments and warned that there could be major gaps in data as a result.

NPOESS has still not launched any satellites, and

• only one of the older orbiters of the NOAA system
  
• is still circling the Earth.
  

The Obama administration recently re-split the program into its military and civilian parts in an effort to get it back on track....

Meanwhile, NASA must rely on limited aircraft surveillance to measure ice sheet thickness in the cryosphere - the Earth's surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, glaciers and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica -

• since its Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat)
  
• failed nearly a year ago.
  

A new version of that satellite, ICESat-2, is planned for launch in 2015, but until then NASA will be limited to three narrower flight-path views, observing only key regions where NASA knows it can't afford to go blind....

"When you come right down to it, these are usually … policy decisions," said Kearns. "As scientists, we try to make these requirements and concerns known, and then we kind of hope for the best.""
-------------------

"health-science@washpost.com Huetteman is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. This article is part of the "Global Warming" series, produced by Medill's National Security Reporting Project, on the national security implications of climate change."

----------

via Climate Depot

UK monarchy must have global warming income for financial freedom from parliament. Latest Greenland news can't make them happy.

The UK is the be-jeweled HQ of global warming complete with Palace Guards. UK Monarch Prince Phillip was a founder of the WWF, president from 1961 to 1996, and is now president emeritus. The monarchy' s income for centuries was allocated from The Civil List, but that mechanism will soon change to an income stream in part dependent on global warming (eg. wind turbine) investments. A necessary part of their living expenses will derive from millions in rent paid to the Crown for wind turbine locations off the coast of the UK. These monies enable the monarchy freedom from parliamentary oversight for the first time in centuries.

The following article dampens a recent WWF report that Greenland was melting very fast and would have a lethal effect on sea levels.

1/26/11, "Greenland ice sheet is safer than scientists previously thought," UK Guardian, D. Carrington

"The threat of the Greenland ice sheet slipping ever faster into the sea because of warmer summers has been ruled out by a scientific study.

Until now, it was thought that increased melting could lubricate the ice sheet, causing it to sink ever faster into the sea. The issue was a key unknown in the landmark 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which pinned the blame for climate change firmly on greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

However, the impact of rising sea temperatures on melting ice sheets is still uncertain, meaning it remains

• difficult to put an upper limit on potential sea level rises.
  

Understanding the risk is crucial because about 70% of the world's population live in coastal regions, which host many of the world's biggest cities, such as London, New York and Bangkok.

"The Greenland ice sheet is safer than we thought," said Professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, who led the research published tomorrow in Nature.

Shepherd's team used satellite imagery to track the progress of the west Greenland ice sheet as it slipped towards the sea each summer,

• over five years.

Researchers had feared that more melting from the surface of the ice in hotter years would in turn provide more meltwater for a slippery film at the sheet's base. More melting would mean more slippage and a greater rise in the sea level.

But they discovered that, above a certain threshold, the slipping began to slow. On-the-ground studies and work done on alpine glaciers suggest that higher volumes of meltwater form distinct channels under the ice, draining the water more efficiently and reducing the formation of a lubricating film.

The Greenland ice sheet studied by Shepherd's team is up to 1,000m (3,280ft) thick. If the entire ice sheet melted, sea levels would rise by a catastrophic seven metres, but this is likely to take 3,000 years if warm air blowing over the ice is the only way in which the ice melts."...

==================================

12/8/2010, "Prince Philip: Celebrating Ninety Years," Windsor.Gov.UK

"Prince Philip is known for his interest in wildlife and support of wildlife organisations. He was the first President of the World Wildlife Fund - UK (WWF) from its formation in 1961 until 1982, and International President of WWF (later the World Wide Fund for Nature) from 1981 to 1996. He is now President Emeritus of WWF."...

===========================

10/25/10, "Queen set to earn millions from windfarm expansion," UK Independent, Andy McSmith

"The royals will indirectly benefit from the £200m extra that the Government will invest in offshore wind farms and in the port facilities needed to handle them. The seabed within Britain’s territorial waters, which extend almost 14 miles from the coast,

• is owned by the Crown Estate.
  

Operators pay rent to the Crown Estate for the right to run cables along the seabed, and they also pay out a percentage of the profit from the electricity generated.

For more than two centuries, income from the Crown Estate has gone to the Exchequer, under a deal reached between Parliament and George III. But during his announcement of the Spending Review, Mr Osborne said

• the royal family is to receive a proportion of the income from the estate.
  

The civil list, which has been Parliament’s way of financing the royal family up to now, is to be frozen, and then

• abolished outright in 2013.

The number of turbines operating around Britain’s coastline is scheduled to grow from 436 at present to around 6,400 in 2020, creating thousands of new jobs and generating tens of millions of extra income for the Crown Estate.

Prince Charles is a well-known campaigner for offshore wind turbines and other forms of clean energy – although he strongly disapproves of wind turbines sited in beauty spots on land, describing these as a “horrendous blot on the landscape”. He refused to have them built on his Highgrove estate.

The estate owns about £6bn worth of land and other assets, bringing in last year a profit of £210m. The development of

• wind turbines could more than double that annual figure.

The new arrangement means that, for the first time since Parliament bailed out George III’s debts, the monarchy will not have to negotiate with the government over its expenditure, as it

• will have an independent source of income more than adequate to cover its costs.
  

Buckingham Palace estimates that it costs £38.2m a year to run the monarchy (a figure that does not include security and certain other costs). If operations are to be maintained at that level, it will need to receive something like 15 per cent of the income from the Crown Estate....

Once the figure is agreed, the monarchy will have an independence from parliamentary oversight

• that it has not enjoyed for centuries.

Mr Osborne declared last week that his intention was to settle the question of royal finances once and for all. A Buckingham Palace spokes-man said: “The details have not yet been finalised with the Treasury.”"

===============================

Reference: 12/31/10, "One's in the money! Why Prince Charles's secret 20-year campaign could make him the richest king in history," UK Daily Mail, G. Levy

via Tom Nelson

Obama's 2012 campaign manager, John McCain, is already working his butt off to get the guy re-elected. Commenters weigh in on this.

McCain is a good example of why many of us avoid the RNC. You don't see democrats campaigning incessantly in the media for a republican's re-election.

1/26/11, "Obama 2012 Campaign Manager: John McCain," American Thinker, Jeannie DeAngelis

"As witnessed during the last presidential campaign, the Republican nominee had a peculiar way of promoting his bid for the presidency. On more than one occasion, rather than pointing out the inauspicious prospect of electing Barack Obama, avuncular John reassured a tentative electorate, dismissing very real fears. Senator McCain encouraged anxious voters not to worry, because his unqualified opponent was "absolutely qualified" to be president.

Instead of promoting his own candidacy, on occasion McCain would attempt to put voters on both the right and the left at ease by saying things like

• "Barack Obama would make a good president."

McCain reassured America that his opponent was someone that he "both admired and respected."...

John McCain's self-deprecating approach, suppressing a well-deserved distrust for Obama's left-wing agenda, started two years ago, and now nothing -- not even a country devastated by the president's less-than-impressive stint -- can stop John from continuing that trend. Fawning over Barry in the name of civility compounds the mess McCain started during the presidential election,

• undermines the success of the midterm election,

and paves the way for Obama to leave his suitcases unpacked."...

=====================
Comments:

"Posted by: FulghumInk

Jan 26, 02:07 AM

---

I will never forget Rush Limbaugh asking John McCain over the airwaves, "Sir, do you want to win this election?" When John McCain came up for reelection to the Senate, this citizen was, and still is to this day, a Sarah Palin supporter for J.D. Hayworth. If Hayworth were in the Senate instead of John McCain, we would have another Conservative fighting for Conservative principles, not lavishing praise for a complete and utter fraud.
=============================================================

Posted by: Freempg

Jan 26, 02:25 AM

---

Spot on, Jeannie. McCain never misses an opportunity to curry favor with the enemy. Let's not forget Colonel David Hackworth's appraisal: "In McCain's own words just four days after being captured [by the North Vietnamese] he admits he violated the U.S. Code of Conduct by telling his captors 'O.K, I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.' "A Vietnam vet detractor says, 'He received the nation's third highest award, the Silver Star, for treason. He provided aid and comfort to the enemy!'"

Sarah Palin should have stiffed McCain during the 2010 campaign. She owed him nothing. It was he who picked her to salvage the mess his candidacy had become thanks to his incompetent staff who then tried to blame her for their failures. McCain is nothing more than a spoiled rich kid who got where he is because of his father and grandfather. On top of it, like the gigalo John Kerry he married into money. There is not much to admire about John McCain.

Posted by: sarsfield Jan 26, 02:46 AM

---

Third party, anyone? The RINO McCains will never change!

===================================================
Posted by: plague

Jan 26, 02:53 AM

---

McCain is worse than “fundamentally flawed” in the political sense. There has always been something very wrong with his character, which is one of extreme “me-first-and-only” self-entitlement. He was wrongfully admitted to the Naval Academy with bad grades ahead of more qualified applicants because his daddy and granddaddy were admirals. Rules that apply to ordinary people don’t apply to him. He thumbed his nose at Annapolis because he couldn’t be kicked out or flunked out, because he was John McCain, son and grandson of Admirals. He ignored orders and crashed planes, because he couldn’t be disciplined as the son and grandson of admirals. He ditched the wife who stood by him, when he wanted a rich blonde chick young enough to be his daughter, who could finance his political ambition. He was caught taking bribes to his wife from the Keating 5, so tried to cover his tracks by imposing the McCain-Feingold nonsense on everyone else (laws only apply to everyone else, not JOHN MCCAIN). He entertained a blonde lobbyist in ways that worried his staff, and improperly pressured the FCC for her in exchange for …., because he is John McCain!!!. He yells obscenities at other senators who questioned ramming his McCain-Kennedy amnesty through the Senate in the dead of night without debate, and screams he knows more about it than anyome else - because he is John McCain, a legend in his own mind !!!!!! He has secret “no press allowed meetings to praise Mexico as our dearest friend and closest neighbor, calling enforcement of the laws “Rhetoric". If any GOP congresscritter disagrees with him -> “I’m John McCain, King Of The Universe!” There has always been something consistently very wrong with McCain’s character. Through it all, this lying unreliable self-aggrandizing megalomaniac poses as a “straight talker", and is so sick, he probably believes it himself, because he is JOHN MCCAIN !!, son and grandson of ADMIRALS!!!
====================================================

Posted by: Westie

Jan 26, 03:28 AM

---

McCain/Obadiah sittin' in a tree...both are "lying unreliable self-aggrandizing megalomaniacs posing as straight talkers". McCain is the real Manchurian candidate....he is a bitter enemy of all Conservatives and would have done more damage as POTUS than Obadiah. McCain in the WH would have us on the train to Amnesty and Cap & Trade already and he would be out in 2012 followed by OB or Hell-dog Clinton....never forget McCain is also a big fan of the Albanian Criminals.

Posted by: NaperBille Jan 26, 04:00 AM

---

Juan McCain does indeed have a great many character flaws. Juan ran an absolutely pathetic campaign (which is why so many of us will not contribute to the Republican Party, instead contributing to Conservative candidates who run as Republicans). Juan McCain can appear on every TV show he wants, don't watch. Juan McCain can say anything he wants, don't listen."

=====================================================

UK plans personal energy credit cards, says rationing may begin by 2020

Personal CO2 trading scheme hatched in 1996 coming to fruition!

1/18/11, "Fuel Rationing in U.K. Needed by 2020 to Cut CO2 Emissions, Lawmakers Say," Bloomberg, Alex Morales

"Fuel rationing may be needed by 2020 in the U.K. to meet the government’s carbon emission targets, a panel of lawmakers said, suggesting an electronic trading system for energy quotas.

Under the system, called Tradable Energy Quotas, or TEQs, energy credits would be distributed free to every adult,

• who could then buy and sell surplus units,

the London-based research group The Lean Economy Connection said today in a report commissioned by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil. The multi-party panel of lawmakers looks at the impacts of declining fossil-fuel production.

The system would help guarantee the U.K. meets its target to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels, according to the study. At the same time, it would ensure everyone has access to energy at a time when fossil fuels may become more scarce, it said.

“The only way of keeping energy prices as low as possible in a time of constrained supply

• is to reduce demand,
  

and that’s what TEQs do,” Shaun Chamberlin, a co-author of the report, told journalists today in London.

Under the system, energy consumers would have to pay their normal energy bills,

• as well as having to surrender a certain amount of TEQs,
  

depending on the carbon content of the fuel they are buying. Fewer TEQs would be needed for electricity from wind and solar power than from coal- and gas-fired power stations.

John Hemming, chair of the parliamentary panel, said a payment system could involve a credit card with two numbers -- one linked to the customer’s bank account and another to their energy TEQs account. The system would help level out price changes, because the value of TEQs would decline as energy prices rise, said Chamberlin.

• “If there’s a spike in oil prices, demand for energy drops, and as demand drops, the price of TEQs go down,” Chamberlin said. That would counterbalance some of the increase in energy price, he said.

Caroline Lucas, leader of the U.K. Green Party and vice chair of the panel, said in an interview that using the tradable quotas would place a cap on emissions that gives more certainty to achieving greenhouse gas goals than existing measures.

“It’s the most equitable way and the most certain way that we have to make sure we can meet our emission reduction targets,” Lucas said. “We need to put in place mechanisms that will guarantee we can meet and in fact exceed them,” she said,

• referring to a goal enshrined in U.K. law to slash emissions by 34 percent by 2020.
  

She says it should be higher."

---------------------

• Reference: Even the UK Guardian thinks carbon trading is hopelessly fraudulent and should be scrapped:

1/24/11, "The carbon market--Gone in a puff of smoke?" UK Guardian, Sabina Manea

via Haunting the Library

Global warming shakedown time for trial lawyers, taxpayers to pay tab

1/24/11, "Price of Junk Science," Investors Business Daily Editorial

"Global Warming: After the 1998 tobacco deal, many wondered where the next battleground for the shakedown lawyers would be. Few wonder now. The legal war over climate change is heating up —

• and it'll be costly.

The $246 billion tobacco settlement, reached by 46 state attorneys general and the tobacco industry, was not designed to improve public health. It was simply a way to line lawyers' pockets and

• create a slush fund for lawmakers.

Private plaintiffs' lawyers took in $8.2 billion in legal fees, and states have spent their share of the funds on items unconnected to tobacco-related illnesses and anti-smoking education.

It was, as we said a few years ago, "a naked cash grab."

Having exhausted that lucrative source, trial lawyers went trolling for another. Would it be the fast-food industry? Gun makers? What about companies that sell sugary drinks? Or those making pharmaceuticals?

While those industries will be beset by suing lawyers, they will be spared relative to the target that attracts the most attention. As we predicted on these pages, global warming will be the vehicle for the next litigation lottery. And the media are finally picking up on this.

"Climate-change litigation is fast emerging as a new frontier of law where some believe

• hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake," AFP reported Sunday.

Though not yet widespread, climate-related lawsuits have "ballooned" in the last three years, AFP said. Deutsche Bank says filings in the U.S. alone went from 48 in 2009 to 132 last year. "Entrepreneurial lawyers" are stalking prospective defendants, while businesses and insurers are trying to find ways to protect themselves.

While none of the lawsuits has been successful, the sheer volume of future suits is expected to generate what Rutgers law professor Howard Latin predicted in 2007 would be

• "one of the biggest legal practices in the next 20 years."

The typical defendants are energy-related companies and those that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide, or whose products generate CO2, which is supposedly causing the planet to heat.

We've found no reliable estimates as to how much global warming litigation will cost. But this we do know: It will be expensive, and painfully so.

AFP reports that "compensation for losses inflicted by man-made global warming would be jaw-dropping, a payout that would make tobacco and asbestos damages

• look like pocket money."

The potential defendants in global warming litigation have a far bigger financial footprint than the handful of giant tobacco companies who were victimized by the settlement.

The costs won't be borne only by big corporations that deserve to be separated from their money, either. They'll be passed on to consumers, who will have to pay a tax in the form of higher prices for the next generation of goods that will be made as producers go to great lengths to avoid future litigation.

The fact is, the trial lawyers wouldn't have chosen climate change if they didn't think it would be lucrative. They're confident that they can show that contributions of CO2 emissions are causing the Earth to warm, which in turn is causing harm to the environment.

Of course, lawyers aren't shy about

• using junk science in the courtroom.

John Edwards, a former U.S. senator and one-time vice presidential candidate, made a fortune out of suing doctors in medical malpractice cases, claiming that physicians' errors were causing cerebral palsy in infants during childbirth.

The real science, though, pointed to genetics, not botched deliveries, a fact revealed during, not after, the roughly 10-year period that Edwards was trying cerebral palsy cases.

Our courthouses should be bastions of justice, not sources of cheap wealth or chambers that

• create laws out of thin air that no legislature would pass.
  

Lawmakers create the policies that govern our judicial system, and they have both the authority, and the duty, to ensure

• that global warming litigation
  

• doesn't become legal plunder.

What should be on trial is the global warming guesswork that passes as science,

• not the producers in our economy."
• ---------------
  

Reference: 10/9/09, "Environmental lawsuits rake in billions for lawyers," by Jake Putnam

• ------------------

Reference:3/24/09, "Climate Lobbyists Look Beyond Cap and Trade," by Christa Marshall, NY Times

• "Once we're actually trading carbon, everything moves into the litigation stage," he said.

• "That's going to be a madhouse. Everyone will be arguing over whether a ton of carbon is really a ton.""

-----------------------------

9/16/09, McCullagh, CBSNewsBlog: "The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would

• cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year,

• the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent."...
• ----------------
  

(So they already view this as their money, not ours. ed.)


via Tom Nelson