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If they fail to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen, world leaders flying in their private jets and huddling in five-star hotels will have little to show for their efforts beyond a big, fat carbon footprint. The U.N. estimates 40,500 tons of carbon dioxide will be pumped into the atmosphere during the 12-day conference -- 90 percent of it from flights. The rest comes from waste and electricity related to transport to and from the conference center and lodging in and around the Danish city. Most of the leaders were flying either on commercial airlines or government-owned jets and Sweden...

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – UN chief Ban Ki-moon said world leaders faced a "defining moment in history" as they balanced their nation's interests with a global clamour to halt the juggernaut of climate change. With just over three days left to broker one of the most ambitious, yet also fiendishly complex, deals in human history, conference chair Denmark appealed for all sides to embrace the spirit of compromise. But China and the United States -- the world's two biggest carbon polluters -- brushed aside European calls for concessions on emissions reductions, the thorniest issue of all. Related article: UN system to...

Bears have been spotted in Denmark. And these aren’t the friendly kind who are just looking for picnic baskets. As IBD predicted last week, Russia’s claim to mountains of carbon credits has proved to be a major stumbling block at the international climate talks in Copenhagen. As the AP notes, it has given Russia the rare chance to seize the moral high ground. ... Under the Kyoto treaty, that gives it claim to massive amounts of tradable carbon credits. Russia wants those credits rolled forward before it signs on to any new international carbon treaty. Other countries aren’t keen on...

COPENHAGEN, Dec 14 -- The Copenhagen climate talks will generate more carbon emissions than any previous climate conference, equivalent to the annual output of more than half- -a-million Ethiopians, figures commissioned by hosts Denmark show. Delegates, journalists, activists and observers from almost 200 countries have gathered at the Dec 7-18 summit and their travel and work will create 46,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, most of it from their flights. This would fill nearly 10,000 Olympic swimming pools, and is the same amount produced each year by 2,300 Americans or 660,000 Ethiopians -- the vast difference is due to the huge...

Duluth architecture firm donates $5,000 for credits to offset carbon from the Bentleyville light display

The European Union (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS) has been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately 5 billion euros for several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities. Indications of suspicious trading activities were noted in late 2008, when several market platforms saw an unprecedented increase in the trade volume of European Unit Allowances (EUAs). Market volume peaked in May 2009, with several hundred million EUAs traded in e.g. in France and Denmark. At...

this is yet another end run around Congress by the most radical and corrupt President in our nation’s 233 year history. A total usurpation of our Constitution’s separation of powers. It violates the idea of checks and balances our founders built into government. This little ruling by the EPA gives them virtually unlimited power to regulate, literally, every facet of your life. By classifying CO2 and methane (among other so-called greenhouse gases) it can inject itself into just about every industry in the US.

Across Uganda, thousands of women warm supper over new, $8 orange-painted stoves. The clay-and-metal pots burn about two-thirds the charcoal of the open-fire cooking typical of East Africa, where forests are being chopped down in the struggle to feed the region’s 125 million people. Four thousand miles away, at the Charles Hurst Land Rover dealership in southwest London, a Range Rover Vogue sells for £90,000 pounds. A blue windshield sticker proclaims that the gasoline-powered truck’s first 45,000 miles (72,421 km) will be carbon neutral. That’s because Land Rover, official purveyor of 4x4s to Queen Elizabeth II, is helping Ugandans cut...

EPA, already accused of scientific misconduct, abuses its regulatory authority to enrich special interestsThe Environmental Protection Agency, whose mission is to protect people from toxic pollutants like sulfur and nitrogen oxides, today declared carbon dioxide--a gas that we all generate and exhale every few seconds--a hazard to human life that must be regulated. We have little doubt that the EPA abused its regulatory authority on behalf of, or even on the direct orders of, Barack Obama for the purpose of enriching investment banks--Kirsten Gillibrand named J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs as explicit beneficiaries of cap and trade mandates--whose executives,...

CHEVRON has won a coup for its Wheatstone liquified natural gas development, signing up Tokyo Electric Power to a $90 billion supply agreement that will also see the utility take an equity stake in the project. TepCo has signed a heads of agreement for the annual delivery of 4.1 million tonnes of LNG for up to 20 years from Wheatstone, accounting for almost half of the initial yearly production capacity of 8.6 million tonnes.

With 20,000 delegates, advocates and journalists jetting to Copenhagen for planet Earth’s last chance, the carbon footprint of the global-warming summit will be the only impressive consequence of the climate change meeting. Its organizers had hoped it would produce binding caps on emissions, global taxation to redistribute trillions of dollars and micromanagement of everyone’s choices. China, nimble at the politics of pretending that is characteristic of climate-change theater, promises only to reduce its “carbon intensity” — carbon emissions per unit of production. So China’s emissions will rise.

Perhaps it is comforting to believe that science is an absolute discipline: immune from fads, fanatics and frauds, untroubled by extremists, evangelists, glory-seekers and bigots. But it is not. It is as vulnerable to the vested interests and biases of its practitioners as any corporate entity or political party. Uncomfortable truths are suppressed and dubious evidence given undue prominence. Nowhere is this more worryingly obvious than in the science of climate change. As a field of research it has become so heavily politicised that opposing views are spoken of in terms of religion: believers and non-believers, with the accent being...

SYDNEY (AP) — Australia's Senate has rejected legislation to set up an emissions trading system in the country to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. The Senate voted Tuesday to defeat a bill that is the centerpiece of the government's plans to slash Australia's emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020 as part of global efforts to fight global warming. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wanted the legislation passed before he attends next week's U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen so he could portray Australia as a leader on the issue. The government's next step is unclear. Rudd...

Dr Pachauri raised the prospect of so-called geo-engineering, whereby carbon dioxide is actively stripped from the atmosphere. A range of techniques have been proposed including seeding artificial clouds over oceans to reflect sunlight back into space, sowing the oceans with iron ore to boost plankton growth and using carbon capture and storage technology to fix emissions from power stations . . . Dr Pachauri, speaking to The Times on Saturday before travelling to Paris to brief President Sarkozy, suggested that the fossil fuel lobby could be behind a hacking incident last month that led to the publication of thousands of...

The NY Times this morning is running an Op-Ed piece which suggests that our government's policy toward ethanol production has been less than enlightened. Some of us arrived at this conclusion long ago. Georgie Cracks Corn I don't know how many State of the Union Addresses since 1973 have pledged commitment to energy independence, but to quote Jim Ignatowski when he was asked how many different illicit drugs he had ingested in his lifetime, it's "exactly a lot." It was still a surprise, however, when our current President touted ethanol last week citing the sustainability myth as just one of...

The world's oceans, which normally gobble up carbon dioxide, are getting stuffed to the gills, according to the most thorough study to date of human-made carbon in the seas.

Climate Change: Major U.S. corporations have set up a Web site calling for a global climate treaty to be signed in Copenhagen. Considering recent evidence of massive climate fraud, perhaps they should reconsider. Many will remember the classic soft drink ad campaign where young people from many nations gather on a mountaintop and sing that they'd like to buy the world a Coke, the theory being that sharing a soda was the key to world peace. That sort of naivete has led peoples and governments around the world to accept at face value the outright fraud perpetrated by the Milli...

The BBC has discovered that hundreds of millions of pounds promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for.

New evidence suggests that the correlation between atmospheric carbon and warming may not be as clear as previously believed Global warming is an extremely sensitive topic. Some ardently believe that man is pushing our planet towards global ruin, while others believe that proponents of anthropogenic warming theory are pushing the global economy towards financial ruin. Surprisingly, though, the evidence is not as black or white as either group would like you to believe. A recent study looking at atmospheric carbon when combined with a recent summary of global atmospheric temperatures over the past 30 years sharply illustrates this uncertainty. Looking...

Scientists' Leaked Correspondence Illustrates Bitter Feud over Global Warming The scientific community is buzzing over thousands of emails and documents -- posted on the Internet last week after being hacked from a prominent climate-change research center -- that some say raise ethical questions about a group of scientists who contend humans are responsible for global warming.The correspondence between dozens of climate-change researchers, including many in the U.S., illustrates bitter feelings among those who believe human activities cause global warming toward rivals who argue that the link between humans and climate change remains uncertain.Some emails also refer to efforts by scientists...

Apparently a "Global Climate Center" was hacked and the contents have been posted to the Internet. A ZIP file exceeding 60MB and containing a huge number of emails and other documents has been posted worldwide. Original speculation as to whether the files posted were legitimate or some sort of spoof appears to now be confirmed as legitimate: “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.” I have not had time to read all of the material...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - World atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, according to a report available online Tuesday (Nov. 17) in the journal Nature Geoscience The report, updated annually by a global team of climate experts that includes a Purdue University researcher, shows that global carbon emissions from fossil fuels rose 2 percent last year to a record high of 1.3 metric tons per person. Although the rate of increase is down versus the previous growth rate of 3 percent in 2007, it still comes as a surprise to the report's authors.

Copenhagen climate change agreement is impossible World leaders have finally accepted that it will be impossible to come to a deal on climate change this year and have moved their attention to setting new deadlines for a global agreement. By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent Published: 2:10PM GMT 15 Nov 2009 The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December has been billed as the world's last chance to stop global warming. But negotiations to forge a binding agreement have been hampered by a US refusal to sign up to targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The deadlock forced world...

An aggressive White House push on jobs and deficit reduction in 2010 may be yet another sign that climate-change legislation will stay on the back burner next year. “There is a growing chorus in the party that thinks we should be doing more to spur job creation and not necessarily tackle cap and trade right now,” said a moderate Democratic Senate aide. White House officials told POLITICO on Friday that President Barack Obama plans curb new domestic spending beyond jobs programs and focus on cutting the federal deficit next year. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid has hinted that...

Everyone in Britain should have an annual carbon ration and be penalised if they use too much fuel, the head of the Environment Agency will say. Lord Smith of Finsbury believes that implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity. If their "carbon account" hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits....

Warming: After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed. In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway. Williams and Zabel do not deny...

What is shocking is that anyone is surprised by the news that Al Gore's Silver Spring Networks company is benefiting from some $560 million in grants given by the energy department. Did anyone actually think that Al Gore was going to turn a profit by selling cow fart catalytic converters or solar ovens to people on the street? The fact is, the average person doesn't buy Al Gore's load of crap so he has to depend on like-minded wackos in the government who will make sure that his investments were not made in vain.

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive in St. John’s today for an 11-day visit that will bring them to Hamilton Thursday. It’s the 15th time Charles has toured Canada, but the first time with his wife Camilla by his side. One of the first things the couple must deal with is H1N1 flu... Charles is also up against an apparent apathy that could see him received with at least as much indifference as enthusiasm. A leaked poll, phone-in shows and online comments have suggested growing ho-hum feelings ... “Just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse around...

A SENIOR CSIRO environmental economist has gone public to accuse the science body of trying to gag his report attacking the Federal Government's climate change policies. The paper, by Clive Spash, criticises the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and argues that direct legislation or a tax on carbon is needed... Dr. Spash also wrote that the economic theory underpinning emissions trading schemes was far removed from the reality ... He said trading schemes were ineffective ... He claims the CSIRO had tried to block the publication of the report, despite it being internationally peer reviewed and accepted by the journal New...

Environmentalism: As polls show belief in global warming is dropping, a new study suggests that dogs and cats, like people, are a plague upon the earth. They say people should have edible pets. Here, kitty, kitty. A new Pew Research Center study conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 says the number of Americans who think there's solid evidence the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades has plummeted from 71% in April 2008 to 57% today. Over the same period, there's been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising...

Climate Change: As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming? Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out — in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year. It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to...

It's truly extraordinary how every left-of-centre journalist in the country has managed to become an instant expert on the arcane subjects of global warming and the science of climate change. Imagine, for example, if some average Canadian hack who had never studied the Middle East suddenly announced that he was an authority on Israel-Palestine, knew which side was right and knew how to solve all of the associated problems. This, however, is what we are told every day when it comes to the fashion of sounding green. The more sympathy we can exhibit for Al Gore's polar bear or David...

An internal memo produced by Bernstein Research in June described how Mr. Rowe met with investors to rejoice that the House legislation will allow Exelon to rake in additional revenue—by some estimates, up to $1.5 billion a year. Others will pay for this Exelon privilege, of course—notably, Midwestern customers of traditional coal utilities who will see their energy prices double. But hey, all's fair in love and lobbying. ...Let's also not forget that Chicago-based Exelon and employees, including Mr. Rowe, contributed tens of thousands of dollars for their home-city presidential aspirant. And that Mr. Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, was...

For Utilities, the Future Is Now Generating power from the sun and burying carbon underground are two old concepts on the cusp of reality. By Jim Ostroff, Associate Editor, The Kiplinger Letter September 29, 2009 National Security Space Office, study on space based power Note two exciting energy technology developments whose times have come: Space based power plants and a coal burning facility that emits no carbon dioxide. Both are likely to be key elements in helping electric utilities meet expected stringent U.S. emissions requirements without having to mothball a large number of existing coal fired power plants. Power plants...

Former Vice President Al Gore and current White House climate change czar Carol Browner are warning companies and lawmakers that the courts will step in to regulate greenhouse gases if Congress fails to act. "All of the discussion has been about the president and the Congress," Gore told journalists at a U.N. press conference Tuesday. "We have a third branch of government: the courts."

"If that global allowance was distributed according to population levels, many developed nations would face almost immediate carbon bankruptcy. With 4.6 per cent of global population, the US would receive a 35 billion tonne allowance between now and 2050, which it would use up in around six years at current rates. The European Union's budget would run out in 12 years and China's in 24. "It is clear that the industrialised countries must carry out rapid and comprehensive decarbonisation if they wish to present themselves as credible advocates of global climate protection," concludes the council. The US carbon budget would...

UC-SD Green Gone Wild by: Deborah Lambert, September 16, 2009 Do students entering U.C. San Diego this year have any idea what awaits them? Those who read Pat Jacoby’s article in UCSD News will learn how the green movement has transformed the school into a “next generation array of green innovations ranging from Econauts and drought tolerant bio-swale landscaping to organic foods and ‘hydration stations’ that eliminate the need for disposable water bottles.” “UC San Diego is a living laboratory for climate change solutions,” said Mark Cunningham, the school’s director of Housing, Dining and Hospitality, adding that “if we...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced plans for a new carbon tax aimed at combating global warming. The tax will be introduced next year and will cover the use of oil, gas and coal, he said. The new tax will be 17 euros (£15) per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide (CO2). It will be phased in gradually. It will apply to households as well as enterprises, but not to the heavy industries and power firms included in the EU's emissions trading scheme. Most electricity in France - excluded from the new carbon tax - is nuclear generated. Mr Sarkozy said...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday unveiled a new carbon tax to help combat global warming, calling it a "fiscal revolution" and overriding strong public opposition to the plan. The new levy on oil, gas and coal consumption by households and businesses will come into effect next year, making France the biggest economy yet to impose a straight-up carbon tax. "It is time to create green taxation," Sarkozy said in an address in Culoz, a town near the French border with Switzerland. "This is a major fiscal shift, an important innovation," he said. "It is the first step of a...

CAP YOUR CO2 GENERATORS! Ahh wait 1 while I open another CO2 generator and pour it into an open glass filled with ice. I wonder how much a can of soda pop will cost after the CO2 tax is applied... how about that CO2 fire extinguisher, a block of dry ice for the hunting shack...beer anyone or how about some bubbley! America will reap what it sews.

Don't Exhale. EPA Expected to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Dangerous Pollutant The Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the next few weeks to declare that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a pollutant, a move that would require the federal government to regulate them -- even without legislation. FOXNews.com Friday, August 28, 2009 Don't exhale. That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases a dangerous pollutant, a move -- expected in the next couple weeks -- that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions....

Junk Science: The EPA may be considering closing the watchdog office that exposed the flimsy evidence of man-caused warming. So much for the administration's promise to "restore science to its rightful place."Recently we commented on the plight of Dr. Allen Carlin, the EPA senior research analyst at the National Center for Environmental Economics who dared to say, in essence, that emperor Al Gore and his environmental sycophants at the Environmental Protection Agency wore no clothes. The EPA had been working on an "endangerment finding" that would say carbon dioxide, rather than being the basis for all life on earth, was...

WASHINGTON — At a bend in the Ohio River, a bulky new device is being attached to a 30-year-old coal plant near the small town of New Haven, W.Va. The device is being housed in a building four stories tall and bigger than a football field. A 150-foot-tall exhaust stack — so wide that it would take six adults with their arms fully stretched to reach around it — will reach into the sky. And pipelines will run out of the building and into saline aquifers two miles underground. The entire contraption will start up as early as September. The...

Climate Change: NASA's James Hansen leads a protest against a District of Columbia power plant in the middle of a snowstorm. Meanwhile, a scientist fired by Al Gore says we need to emit more carbon dioxide, not less.Speaking before Bill Clinton's Global Initiative in New York City last Nov. 2, Gore advocated the concept of civil disobedience to fight climate change. "I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore said to loud applause. Following Gore's lead, a...

I am wondering: Obama and Al Gore think huge carbon footprints are sinful. But they apparently endorsed a private jet flying all the way across the ocean with one guy...to pick up two women. Can we measure how much carbon was put into our atmosphere for these liberals' jaunt?

Pine trees grown for 12 years in air one-and-a-half times richer in carbon dioxide than today's levels produced twice as many seeds of at least as good a quality as those growing under normal conditions, a Duke University-led research team reported Aug. 3 at a national ecology conference.

The price of coal and efforts to control its emissions keep energy costs spiraling higher. American Electric Power, parent of Appalachian Power Co., reports that it is "the largest purchaser of coal in the Western Hemisphere." For Appalachian, coal-fired power plants generate about 98 percent of the electricity it delivers to customers in a territory that includes portions of Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. For AEP companywide, coal fuels about 70 percent of power generation. And all that coal, an increasingly controversial fuel, helps explain the upward spiral of Appalachian's costs for complying with environmental regulations. Appalachian and AEP report...

No one knows exactly how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions, but a new study this week suggests scientists' best predictions about global warming might be incorrect. The study, which appears in Nature Geoscience, found that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth's ancient past. The study contains an analysis of published records from a period of rapid climatic warming about 55 million years ago AKA the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM. "In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in...

LOS ANGELES – A piece of rocket hardware failed to separate during the launch of a NASA climate satellite earlier this year, causing it crash back to Earth, according to an accident summary released Friday. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory splashed into the ocean near Antarctica on Feb. 24, minutes after lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a Taurus rocket. A team of space experts appointed by NASA to investigate the mishap said the nose cone that protects the satellite did not come off as planned. Although the investigators could not pinpoint the exact cause for the...