Carbon traded and a famous Swede

In his Prime Minister's New Year address Norway's Jens Stoltenberg announced "The government has decided that when state employees travel by plane abroad, we will buy quotas for the emissions caused by the trip." (BBC Online)

He said the scheme was thought to be the most ambitious of its kind in the world and hoped others would follow. Under the scheme the government will buy credits to be invested in projects which reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Norwegian Gubment would not give any figures but according to the Norwegian news agency NTB the estimated cost of the scheme would be around 2.5 million kroner ($400,000, £200,000) per year.

He described the plan as "an example" for Norway's companies and other countries.

Oddly the UK Gubment have also wasted the taxpayers money in the same way, but there has been (remarkably) zero publicity - except when Lord Patel published it on Tuesday, January 9 2007 Carbon Black hole - ETS price drops 23% in one day. - to point out that the price of carbon credits they had purchased had since being bought dropped by 40%. Learn more about this nonsense here.

Count Axel Oxenstiern (1583–1654)took his 13 year old son to watch the Swedish Parliament in session, which he explained to him was to illustrate ..."with how little wisdom the world is governed".

Axel Oxenstierna is not a well known figure but he was influential with Gustavus Adolphus in the 30 years wars, and took over when he was killed at the Battle of Lutzen November 6th 1632. It must be remembered that the Realm of Sweden had reached its greatest territorial extent at this time and was one of the great powers of Europe and included what is today Sweden, Finland along with parts of modern Russia, Poland, Germany, Estonia, and Latvia. Axel wasn't made a Count until 1645 by Queen Kristina but is almost always ennobled too soon in the text books. This was the year in which the Ordinari Post Tijdender newspaper was first published, the first one in Sweden.

One thing the Swedes are to this day grateful for was the decision arrived at by the Count and the Queen in 1649 on Sweden's first true School Law, establishing a distinction between grammar schools and elementary schools - that survives today.

It is said that the the Count was responsible for sending the two Swedish/Dutch ships, the Kalmar Nyckel and the Fogel Grip,which arrived on March 29th 1638 at the Delaware river (although it was known for many years as Swenskes Revier) in North America who soon bought land from the Indians, and Nova Svecia (New Sweden - now Wilmington ) was established. (see pic of tapestry of first Swedes stealing land from the native Indians) This was a commercial attempt to expand the Swedish empire and not the flight of people from religious persecution.

Oxenstierna died in February 1654 and the son whom he had so early in life exposed to the dunces of the Swedish Parliament became the new Chancellor.

(More here and here on the early Swedish development of North America)

Mona Sahlin, Swedish Minister of sustainable development announced in February 2006 the inention that Sweden (pop 6Mn ish) would by 2020 be free of using oil. (Guradian) Only 32% of Swedish energy came from oil - down from 77% in 1970.

The Swedish government works with vehicle builders Saab and Volvo to develop cars and lorries that burn ethanol and other biofuels. Swedish energy agency plan to get the public sector to move out of using oil. Its health and library services are being given grants to convert from oil use and homeowners are being encouraged with green taxes. The paper and pulp industries use bark to produce energy, and sawmills burn wood chips and sawdust to generate power.

They don't play at swapping carbon credits in a finamciers casino - they fucking do something about stopping the use of fossil fuels.

How Tony Blair throws away taxpayers money on carbon "offsets" on his air miles

If you are wondering what Tony Blair means when he says he will "offset" his long distance travel (as he did today) - this is what it means - when he travels , or anyone else does on Gubment business.

The UK Gubment are committed to offset Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from air travel by government staff from April 2006. (The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have their own emissions reduction commitments - don't ask why, that's how Gubments work - it's called joined up Gubment)
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The UK Gubment does this by buying credits from UK-based emissions trading fund Trading Emissions PLC (Y/E 30/6/2006 Turnover £7.21 Mn Profit £3.49 Mn - yes folks that's GROSS PROFIT of 50%) In this instance some other City based Hooray Henries called EEA Fund Management Ltd got a share of the action as well - (follow link for details)

On 28th December 2006 (last week - PAnews/20060029/32377087 and more details here) Trading Emissions sold 225,000t of certified emissions reduction (CER) credits to the UK government carbon offsetting fund at £9.76/t = Euro 7.40 (US$19/t), or 90pc of the price of 2008 EU emissions allowances(tender bid total £2.5 Mn 1/3rd of Annual T/O). The government has the option to buy a further 50,000t of CERs = £0.5Mn. (Today's price is somewhat less at £5.20 = Euro 3.55 - see graph) - smart buying eh ?

“The government is increasingly aware of the environmental impact of air travel and this is a way to mitigate unavoidable emissions,” a spokesman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.

The credits will be generated from small-scale renewable energy and energy efficiency clean development mechanism projects, one of the flexible mechanisms under the Kyoto protocol - such as Sri Lankan villagers using Photo voltaics to generate daytime electricity to run domestic low voltage lights in the evening , TV's etc instead of using paraffin fuelled lighting (which helps prevent the development of nationwide electricity supply systems that are more efficient) ...or Brazilian farmers preventing methane escaping from pig ..er...shit.

One CER will offset the emissions from around 10,000km of air travel — nearly enough for one London-New York return trip, according to the CarbonNeutral company.

All this hasn't stopped a single kilo of jetfuel being burnt - but it gives some folks in Whitehall and Westminster with a nice warm feeling , and of course a Carbon Trader with a fancy commission and if he/she anticipated the market dropping (ie they read Lord Patel on a regular basis) they could have dealt themselves a nice fat trading profit on top - which no doubt they did.

That is what Lord Patel means when he talks about the casino that carbon trading is..a casino that is fed very often with taxpayers money.

This my child is called climate change economics.

media lens - distorted visions corrected - at last

media lens is a website.

It claims to correct the distorted vision of the corporate media. It's a haven for humourless, muddle aged, muddle class, muddle brow media shit stirrers. These dysfunctional mutual back slappers maintain a cautious and Buddhist inspired and untroubled resevoir of careful comment - that spends endless time berating the BBC , Independent and Guradian Newsdesks over arcane points of textual analysis. They must absolutely fucking hate them.

About us, outs their tedious philosophy by their juvenile and unformed and uninformed ideas of which they say revealingly ..."We have to acknowledge the debt we owe to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, and in particular to their brilliant (and largely ignored) text, 'Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media'. (Pantheon, 1988) " ... you can just smell those socks and sandals and hear the scratchy Santana albums.

In truly Damascean fashion they have however finally understood that the whole post Kyoto scaremongering and deployment of the insane emissions trading scheme is a capitalist scam, perpetrated by capitalist scum.

The revelation .... "New Book Exposes Scandal of Carbon Trading" they belatedly recognise .. this is the unhandy sized "Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power" a product of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation.Which they ca;; their Development Dialogue 2006:September, no.48

You can download (PDF alert) the whole 350 odd pages or (recommended) 6 seperate chapters. OR better still obtain a free copy by e-mailing Kajsajsa.overgaard@dhf.uu.se or (in Britain only) larrylohmann@gn.apc.org or secretariat@dhf.uu.se or Fax: +46-18-12 20 72

This is how they outline the plot in an arch and quaint fashion but does give you an idea of the content - read and judge for yourself.

Chapter 1 A new fossil fuel crisis
In which the growing climate crisis is traced mainly to the mining of coal, oil and gas; the dangers to survival and livelihood are outlined; the political nature and implications of the problem explored; and reasonable and unreasonable solutions sketched.

Chapter 2 ‘Made in the USA’
A short history of carbon trading In which the surprising story is told of how corporations, academics, governments, United Nations agencies and environmentalists united around a neoliberal or ‘market’ approach to climate change emanating from North America.

Chapter 3 Lessons unlearned
In which carbon trading, contrary to slogans about the universal eff ectiveness of markets in dealing with environmental and social problems, is shown to be ill-suited to addressing climate change. The experience of the US in pollution trading is demonstrated to be an argument not for, but rather against, making carbon markets the centrepiece of action on global warming.

Chapter 4 Off sets
The fossil economy’s new arena of conflict In which it is shown how projects designed to compensate’ for continued fossil fuel use are helping to dispossess ordinary people of their land, water, air – and futures.

Chapter 5 Ways forward
In which the claim that ‘there is no alternative’ to carbon trading is dissected and set aside, and emerging alliances for a more democratic and effective climate politics are explored.

Pollution trading the authors have belatedly recognised is a completely new idea, foisted on the world by a small circle of neoliberal institutions in the US. Surprise - Surprise !! Pollution trading’s main appeal is that it promises to save make money for the rich over the short term. As a pollution control policy, it is sure to fail.

.... ahem .. in Europe where it HAS been tried ...it has FAILED ... the ETS market closed on Friday at just 6 Euros, the lowest ever....having made a lot of traders, lawyers, accountants, banks very rich on the way and many credulous investors much poorer.

All credit to media lens for finally realising what twats they have been all these years as the wool has been ever so gently pulled over their eyes... quite how difficult is it to deprive children of their candy ?

Pssssst.... want to stop somebody doing something? - tax and regulate, admittedly it has limited itility eg. European fuel taxes cf USA ... but of course it depends what you do with the taxes you raise.. the European Gubments just piss them up against the wall.

Anyway read the report - 350 pages but it's big type on artfully landscaped pages and the text boxes a la US textbooks makes reading easier ... the Bibliography is excellent.

Thanks to the two Daves .. welcome to the real world.

See also ....See also "Obscenity' of carbon trading" by Kevin Smith in the BBC Green Room , he is a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the Transnational Institute which studies the impacts of carbon trading on society and the environment.

Also by him "Stern Words While in Europe They are trading Hot air" also at (www.thepolitician.org)

"Labour MP Gerry Steinberg described the scheme as a ‘mockery’ and an ‘outrageous waste of public money’."

"A massively generous allocation resulted in windfall profits for some of the UK’s most polluting companies, to the collective value of £940 million according to Franck Schuttelar, an analyst at the energy-trading firm Gaselys."

"Waiting yet more years to learn further lessons from the next round of ineffective emissions trading is a luxury we don’t have."

See also his "Carbon Cop outs" - He is also co-author of The Carbon Neutral Myth: offset indulgences for your climate sins, forthcoming in January 2007.

See also Climate Fraud and Carbon Colonialism: The New Trade in Greenhouse Gases (pdf alert)by Heidi Bachram CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM VOLUME 15 NUMBER4 (DECEMBER 2004)

"The changes necessary to avert climate catastrophe are simple enough, namely, a switch away from fossil fuels and to renewable energy like solar and wind, along with a reduction in energy use generally."

SinksWatch is an initiative to track and scrutinize carbon sink projects that has useful information on CDM project scams.

OLympic Gold - Mining in reverse, dig holes and fill them with Gold.

Lord Patel thinks Mrs Jowell has been unreasonably criticised, this pleasant middle aged, housewife, Minister for Circuses has only to say the cost of the Olympics has risen from the initial guess estimate of £2.2 Bn. by only £900Mn and the attack dogs, Left AND Right are out for her blood.... and the ..er .. regeneration cost have risen to £1.5 Bn, surprisingly VAT is due (Not another VAT scam surely. Ed.) Who would want her job? Well she does apparently, she has hung on to her job longer than any Minister other than the dour preacher's son from the Lang Toon.

Just as well, as soon after the announcement of success at Singapore the jubilant Jowell told Paxman (who raised it must be remembered a quivering quizzical eyebrow and a broader than usual smirk).

“We can and will avoid the cost over-run which Athens experienced and the long-term debt which some other previous host cities have had to deal with,”

Ho. Ho.

VAT was't accounted for in the report prepared by KCMG, the country's foremost tax accountantcs, security costs have soared .. it goes on and on , and her foes are foaming at the mouth and stagger back at the size of the alleged Total Cost. Whatever and however that may possibly be prepared ,at this stage, puzzles the bean counters at Patel Mansions, confident that whatever it is, it well never be calculated carefully or publicised at all.

This rapidly climbing and fanciful figure is used loosely by those denizens of the night, un sober and fevered sub - editors on the Red Rag press, just so long as it will fit in a screaming headline. £ 5 Bn! £7Bn! a more precise £8.2 Bn. even 20 Bn Euros, a larger and more scaring number for London ratepayers and Lotto gamblers. Cast in this ersatz currency to allow for comparisons with the cost of Athens Olympics. Demonstrating, as if it needed demonstrating that London can out run the Greeks for overspending, if not at running.

Jowell faces up the to the inquisitive MP's on the committee sniffing a scandal in the air, and does a splendid job , much as a spendthrift Director might face his (her) creditors. Well she might because, in Italy her supposedly estranged husband, a cocksure, bi-lingual ( he lies fluently in both Italian and English) and deeply unpleasant man who faces, with his client, mentor, friend, and fellow crook charges of bribery and money laundering.

The plain , if not dowdy housewife who faced off the MP's with such aplomb, (all kids want a medal, all kids will get a medal! see Seb's wizard scheme) had a house with a joint mortgage with her sinister spouse. It was re-mortaged for £400,000 with an offshore bank, then 5 weeks later repaid . She asserted with unblinking stare and scarcely a blush, that, this was “a very normal thing to do, and certainly not illegal.” (Fashion note : are rumours of botoxification correct?)

Yes. Normal that is, for money launderers, especially when the source of the money ( a mere US$600,000) seems confusingly, in correspondence her untruthful husband has with his accountants, either a gift, or a loan or ... maybe even a standard payment for services (and hence taxable). He also said in a signed confession to the Italian police, the money came from Snr Berlusconi - a claim he now says was extracted under duress.

Ho. Ho.

To provide more "clarity" Mr Mills went on to explain the money was not in fact a bribe from Berlusconi for the evidence he had just given in an Italian court to keep Berlusconi out of jail. It was rather a ...er .....personal gift. Then he says that this statement was a lie to protect another client, - who it transpires now denies this, as he was in prison at the time.

So who is surprised that the financial affairs of the Olympics are awry already - a monster deal allegedly fudged through in a Singapore hotel room by Gold Medal liar Tony Blair who was handing out "favours", political payoffs in one on one meetings with IOC members and mutual backscratching to get the result he wanted. London beat Paris by 4 votes and the Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë, was quick to accuse his opponents of bending the rules by continue to lobby IOC members until only hours before the decisive session began. Deeper, darker, dirtier deeds are the subject that swell around what Tony Blair got up to sequestered in his Raffles City convention complex in Singapore as the IOC members (64 of the 100 IOC members met and jollied with Tony and Cherie in those 48 hours) relentlessly filed in and wreathed in smiles and bonhomie, filed out.

Olympic Gold, for sure - that will rapidly disappear into the capacious pockets of rapacious City Lawyers , Accountants, Consultants, Property tycoons, Construction companies, PR outfits with sleazy connections to No 10 and the general rag bag of carpet baggers, no goods , ne'er do groupies and camp followers wells that attend these hoopla missions - see Millennium dome.

However Lord Patel can provide some modest savings, his Logo which first he aired in December (see top) is available free of copyright, free of charge.

EU Carbon Trading a massive failure......Sssscccchhhh!!!

Here is a graph of the EU ETS price i.e the traded price of 1 ton of carbon in Euros - for the last month.

Looks like the market is a huge success having reached the lowest price levels ever. Or as Point Carbon said today (principal booster of this Alice in Wonderland casino) said ..."First-phase CO2 allowances in the EU emissions trading scheme took a dive today as the December 2006 contract lost €0.30 on yesterday to close at €8.60 at 17.30 CET."(Close of biz Friday 17th Nov down 10 cents to €8.60)

Meanwhile the Kyoto bandwagon rolled merrily along in Nairobi with the gravy train riders persisting in the illusion that carbon trading is going to prove effective - so far it's success is to take money from the credulous and place it in the capacious pockets of share boosters, consultants, lawyers and oher snake oil merchants.

McCartney condemns Cash for Honours SCAM

Ipedia Limited was incorporated on 17 January 2006 with a registered office and trading address at 4 Shepherds Way, Tilford, Surrey GU10 2AB.. The sole director of the company from 6 June 2006 was Mr Stephen Andrew Cocker. Mrs Joanne Cocker was the company secretary.

The registered office was a shed in the Cocker's garden. Their route to riches was detailed on their website www.channel6TV.co.uk . The server has closed down but the this link will take you to the fascinating cached home page.

Basically these wannabe billionaires (mis)represented themselves as controlling a media company called Channel 6TV with an internet television station on which it was about to broadcast. It claimed the TV channel would follow the progress of applicants as they worked on the Billion Pound Empire.

Applicants responding to the company's internet advertisements were invited to pay a £150 fee to become part of this tantalising prospect project (Curiously enough not named Project Midas) whereby 1000 individuals would each make £1 million in one year thereby creating a billion pound business empire - apparently 93 poor saps sent off their cheques. Some savvy keyboardists at Shell Live Wire had smelled out the scam by April 2006.

The harsh reqality was the garden shed at 4 Shepherds Way had no equipment, no studio and was incapable of producing a television programme or carrying out what it purported to offer. The company had no proper banking arrangements and did not keep adequate accounting records.

This comic duo had their dreams wound up in the High Court today after an investigation by the Companies Investigation Branch (CIB) of The Insolvency Service.

Consumer Minister Ian McCartney said:
"These scams are outrageous, ripping off those who can least afford it. The people behind them have no shame and we will not hesitate to shut them down".

It is not known if the scam Mr McCartney was referring to related to taking in "donations "(...er..."loans") to the New Labour Party in exchange for some very fancy dress and saucy headgear, and the right to interfere with preparing UK legislation whilst being paid a handsome retainer.

It is good to see Mr McCartney is up and about after his two heart operations in summer 2005, especially as he survived a visit by pert, raven haired, glamorous, pouting suspender clad Ruth Turner ( Prime Minister's head of government relations - see pic of visit (c) Lancashire Evening Post) bearing flowers, restorative grapes (see pic) messages of goodwill and some tiresome paperwork for House of Lords Appointments Commission enabling New Labour donors to be put forward for peerages.

On reflection this was DEFINITELY not the scam that Mr McCartney Consumer Minister was referring to today. NO. NO. Miss Ruth Turner did not supply nor did Mr McCartney sign false certificates stating untruths about the status of loans / donations / gifts of millions of pounds to the New Labour Party by good honest down to earth working class folk who had been proposed for Life Peerages. NO. Absolutely Not.

...and Inspector Knacker (nee Yates) of the Yard is evidently wasting not only his time but considerable sums of tax payers money in pursuing this "ludicrous endeavour."Yes. Completely.Totally. Time better spent chasing Muslims who have books about Ju-jitsu and look very, very suspicious.


PS. Channel 6TV is a very respectable TV station serving residents of Central Kentucky in Marion, Washington and Nelson Counties. http://www.channel6tv.com/

Carbon - Expanding Black Hole

The boosters of the global carbon market excitedly claim the world market in carbon in the first half of 2006 was 684 millionn tonnes "worth" €12 billion. In value more than the whole of trades in 2005(€9.4 billion) , and 85% of volume traded in the same period (800 millin tonnes).Note that the total of all allowances to end 2007 in the EU = 2.1 Billion tonnes per annum, covering 13,000 industrial installations. Remember also that these allowances can be traded between years, i.e "borrowing" allowances for next year for the current year. (Graph of collapsing EUA price (again) in last 30 days)

Do not lose sight of the fact that the whole EU carbon market is created by politicians through political decisions, a dimension to any market that is beyond calculation and subject to manifold influences, national, ideological, stupidity, lack of information, misinformation, misunderstanding and pure simple corruption.

EU Emissions trading accounted for 440 million tonnes or 65% of the traded volume worldwide. As the market price collapsed in April May traded value declined dramatically.

The flexible Kyoto market mechanisms of Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) have also seen a considerable growth in volumes and values this year compared to 2005. In total, 226 Mt, worth €1,976 million have been transacted. A major part of this was CDM trades at 193 Mt, worth €1,545 million. In addition, secondary CDM trades increased tenfold compared to 2005.

“This shows that the EU ETS is moving steadily forward and upwards, despite some turbulence during the last few months. The significant increase in traded volumes and values in emissions trading schemes in Australia and the US is also quite promising for the global carbon market as a whole”, says Henrik Hasselknippe, manager in Oslo based Point Carbon’s EU ETS team.

What the informed observer needs to bear in mind however is that all this activity is not related, as in standard commodity markets to actual amounts of actual product but to a notional amount of a product.

What is being "sold / traded" is the right to emit carbon as carbon dioxide from industrial / commercial processes. Typical sellers will or expect to produce less than they are allowed, so they may sell that unused right to emit to someone who emits more than their allocated amount.

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) operates in a similiar fashion to the milk licensing scheme. To regulate supplies, and therefore the price of a perishable product, farmers were provided with a quota or license to produce so many litres of
milk, they discovered this was tradeable, and so a market grew, it attracted traders who could buy and sell such licenses.

The EU ETS operates in an identical fashion but the tradeable blocks are bigger, more valuable and therefore attract greater commissions, and with an inherent volatility (derived in part by the uncontrollable weather in Europe - which affects energy demand and hence CO2 production), market price fluctuations which can be exploited by knowledgeable, or lucky traders.

Naturally this market attracts it's snake oil salesmen, just as the booming pensions market did in the 70's / 80's 90's and the trick is to attract as investors, not those who trade carbon as part of running their business - power utilities, steel works, etc., but equity investors.

In the UK, if you invest in a fund, especially a pension at least some of your money will be sinking into this black hole,(eg Fidelity funds have just bought into 0.9% of AgCert International) however you can throw away your money without involving anyone else but a share broker.

There are currently 5 listed companies in which you can invest.
(alphabetically) AgCert International, Climate Exchange,Econergy, Ecosecurities,Trading Emissions.

AgCert International Plc
Apex Building Blackthorn Road Sandyford
Dublin, 18P: +3531.2457400 F: +353.

“Climate change is key to the world’s economic progress and AgCert is determined to play its leadership role in the reduction of greenhouse gases. “ Bill Haskell, AgCert CEO, when announcing results for 2005 on April 6th 2006.(Loss Euros 19,289,830)

AgCert’s business is the production and sale of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (referred to as "Offsets") from agricultural sources on an industrial scale. Its methods involve the capture and combustion of biogas containing greenhouse gases, primarily methane, emitted from animal waste (shit) management systems ("AWMSs"). To achieve this, AgCert has developed proprietary data systems and processes which have been designed to be fully scalable and adaptable to the AWMSs of large confined animal feeding operations including those for swine, dairy and poultry.

AgCert has developed rapidly, expanding its initial operations in Brazil and Mexico, establishing operations in new geographies, namely Chile and Argentina, and extending its activities to new agricultural sectors, such as dairy and poultry.