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The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write. No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007. Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former...

Wall Street sees carbon trading and related derivative products as the next big thing in financial innovation. Critics say it's the next big financial mess. Carbon trading provides a way for companies to stimulate green energy and carbon reduction projects by financing them through the purchase of carbon credits. Such trading has slowed over the past year or so amid uncertainty about regulations and global emissions targets. Eventually, though, many expect carbon trading to balloon into a multitrillion-dollar business. FOE and other environmental groups have been pressing the Senate to pass legislation that puts strict limits on banks' involvement in...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is scheduled to meet privately Wednesday evening with top administration climate aide Carol Browner. Graham is working with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to craft a bipartisan cap and trade bill. He plans to discuss the ways Senate leaders can deal with manufacturing and coal state worries that the bill will spike electricity bills in the midst of a deep recession. “We’ve got to address people’s concerns about compliance costs and rate payer increases,” he told POLITICO. He’ll also use the meaning to address nuclear power, off-shore drilling and new coal technologies —...

"...The charity was the Joyce Foundation on whose board of directors Obama served and which gave nearly $1.1 million in two separate grants that were “instrumental in developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange, which now calls itself “North America’s only cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.” And that’s only the beginning of this tawdry tale, Mr. Barnes. The “privately-owned” Chicago Climate Exchange is heavily influenced by Obama cohorts Al Gore and Maurice Strong. For years now Strong and Gore have been cashing in on that lucrative cottage industry known...

Contraception is almost five times cheaper than conventional green technologies as a means of combating climate change, according to new research commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust.

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHO WAS A GUEST AT OBAMA’s FIRST STATE DINNER….. Mr. Ratan Tata [The chairman of the Tata Group - India's biggest conglomerate] A story emerging out of Britain suggests “follow the money” may explain the enthusiasm of the United Nations to pursue caps on carbon emissions, despite doubts surfacing in the scientific community about the validity of the underlying global warming hypothesis. A Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in...

Hot on the heels of Obama’s statements that a carbon market similar to the European Union’s greenhouse gas regulatory scheme would be centerpiece to his climate policy, Friends of the Earth has released a great overview of the proposals on the table. They warn that the lynchpin of US and global climate policy seriously risks replicating the boom and bust, experimental marketplace created in the last 10 years for mortgages and other debts. Like those markets, carbon trading is increasingly sparking fraud and wreaking havoc on prices. Moreover, it risks superseding, distracting from — and even discrediting — more legitimate...

Close followers of the Climategate controversy know that much of the mêlée surrounds an email in which Climate Research Unit (CRU) chief Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature Trick” (MNT) to “hide the decline.” And yet, 17 days and thousands of almost exclusively on-line op-eds into this scandal, it still seems very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so, and why Jones’s words have become the slogan for the greatest scientific fraud in history. As the mainstream media move from abject denial to dismissive whitewashing, CRU co-conspirators move to Copenhagen for...

Hot air and high-minded speeches might be the most obvious emissions from the Copenhagen climate talks, skeptics say. But behind the scenes Russia will play an old card from communism's fall that could tip the odds even higher against ever meeting the summit's goals. Russia's greenhouse gas emissions plunged in the 1990s as its economy collapsed. Moscow now sits on a potential treasure trove of unused carbon emission permits it could sell to other countries. Those permits expire in 2012 along with the original Kyoto Treaty. Russia has signaled that it wants them rolled forward if it is going to...

(snip) “Why did I do this? I want my time to count. I want to be seen as someone who can solve a hard problem by working with my colleagues across the aisle. I want to do something that matters. I can’t think of a better use of my time than to work with Democrats and Republicans to break our dependency on foreign oil, to create jobs for our next generation of Americans that will never go to China. And yes, leave behind a cleaner planet.” (snip)

Warming Scandal: The architect of climate fraud steps down, the creator of the infamous "hockey stick" is investigated, and Australia's parliament defeats cap-and-trade. We love the smell of truth in the morning. As the high priests of what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a "religion" prepare their pilgrimage to worship the earth goddess Gaia in Copenhagen, complete with humanity being sacrificed, the heresy of climate truth is finally being heard. The gospel of climate change, once expressed with the messianic fervor of an Elmer Gantry by Al Gore, is now expressed with the stammering incoherence of an Elmer Fudd...

The Environment Agency will argue today that carbon rationing is the fairest and most effective way for the UK to meet its legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Agency’s chairman, Lord Smith, will propose at the organisation's annual conference in London that every citizen be provided with a "carbon account" and unique number that they submit when buying carbon-intensive items such as petrol, electricity or airline tickets. Individuals would then periodically receive statements that show the carbon impact of each purchase and how much of their annual ration has been used up. If they exceeded this ration,...

The carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU's emissions trading scheme. The ETS market may see $3tn (£1.8tn) worth of transactions a year in the next decade or two, according to Andrew Ager, head of emissions trading at Bache Commodities in London, with it even being used as a hedge against falling equities or rising inflation. "It is still a relatively new industry with annual trades of around €300bn every year. But this could grow to around $3tn compared...

While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president. In 2000 and 2001, while Barack Obama served as a board member for a Chicago-based charitable foundation, he helped to fund a pioneering carbon trading exchange that is likely to fill a critical role in the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme that President Obama is now trying to push rapidly through Congress. During those two years, the Joyce Foundation gave nearly...

The cover of Nobel Laureate Al Gore's new book "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis" was intentionally doctored to exaggerate the appearance of hurricanes in the northern hemisphere as well as reduce the amount of ice present in the Arctic. Maybe even more ominously, Florida was so diminished it's almost totally gone. As reported by Florida State University hurricane expert Ryan Maue at the website Watts Up With That, the truth was apparently inconvenient for the Global Warmingist-in-Chief (h/t NBer Blonde): The cover opens and closes half and half - so you only see one hurricane...as in...

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-...

Thanks for killing the planet, dog owners. Well, that's a rough paraphrase of a New Zealand study that claims a medium-size dog leaves a larger ecological footprint than an SUV. In "Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," authors Robert and Brenda Vale argue that resources required to feed a dog — including the amount of land needed to feed the animals that go into its food — give it about twice the eco-footprint of, say, building and fueling a Toyota Land Cruiser. Noting that a cat's pawprint was roughly equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf's, "New...

Over the past year, the economic crisis has devastated the financial services industry that fueled New York's boom years. The ripple effect from Wall Street is still being felt, as unemployment has risen to 10.3% in New York City. In this turmoil, it may seem hard to imagine a financial market poised to deliver significant growth. However, a rising number of investors and financiers see one in the trading and reduction of carbon. According to financial experts, carbon permits could quickly become the world's largest commodities market, growing to as much as $3 trillion by 2020 from just over $100...

At a conference for environmental journalists in Wisconsin, Al Gore dodged questions on the many identified errors in his global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. "We're very close to that political tipping point," Gore said. "Never before in human history has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions." While the audience of environmental journalists were largely in agreement with Mr. Gore's presentation and his positions, one Irish journalist and filmmaker asked Gore about the many scientific errors that were found in Gore's global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. "A judge in the British High Court,...

Now that the Senate has returned from its August recess, its members have many issues with which to contend. Although health care reform has received much of the attention in recent weeks, another bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) or more widely known as Waxman-Markey or “cap & trade,” is equally deserving of scrutiny. This is because most major economic impact studies demonstrate that the “cap & trade” scheme proposed in the Waxman-Markey bill will create massive consumer costs with undefined environmental benefits. In June, the Waxman-Markey bill narrowly passed the U.S. House 219-212...

The Schwarzenegger administration pushed through new rules Thursday allowing California's biggest timber firms to cash in on the fight against global warming even as they clear-cut parts of their forests. Forest owners stand to reap tens of millions of dollars in the coming decades by selling the capacity of their woods to cleanse the air of carbon dioxide, offsetting greenhouse gases belched by industrial polluters. But the administration's successful effort to allow loggers to sell their carbon credits to industry while also clear-cutting their lands sparked intense opposition from several conservation groups. Ecologists say the self-styled "green" governor, an opponent...

A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as "citizens" will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation. The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."

Gov. Charlie Crist said he wasn't sure if he would host another climate-change summit and is backing away from his cap-and-trade energy policy. BY MARC CAPUTO TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Charlie Crist is cooling to global warming. Under mounting criticism from fellow Republicans, Crist looks ready to cancel his climate-change summit and is backing away from advocating a "cap-and-trade" energy policy. At his well-publicized climate summit last summer, Crist pushed a number of energy plans to encourage renewable energy development and establish a cap-and-trade market that would penalize fossil-fuel use. But Crist's plans were shredded by the Republican Legislature and his...

For decades, the conventional wisdom foreseeing an end to population growth has been based on evidence that as countries advance, the fertility rate - babies per mother - declines. A new study in Nature, focused on several dozen countries with the highest Human Development Index, or H.D.I., find they are seeing a rise in fertility. Here’s Nature’s summary of the paper, “Advances in development reverse fertility declines,” which is behind a subscription wall: The increasing wealth of nations is accompanied by a fall in fertility, so that in many developed (and developing) nations, fertility rates have dropped below the replacement...

Drastic action to stop a potential multi-billion fraud was taken by the Treasury yesterday when it imposed a zero rate of value added tax on carbon credits, the allowances issued as part of a scheme to help curb greenhouse gas emissions. Losses to the exchequer so far are unlikely to have exceeded a few hundred millions pounds but the Treasury said in a statement that "there now exists a substantiated and increasing risk of the UK becoming a major target for the fraudsters during the next few months". The move is highly unusual because changes to VAT need to be...

Prince Charles: next generation faces 'living hell' unless climate change tackled The Prince of Wales has warned the next generation face a "living hell" unless governments tackle climate change urgently. By Urmee Khan, Digital and Media Correspondent Published: 7:00AM BST 09 Jul 2009 Delivering this year's Richard Dimbleby Lecture, the Prince said: "In failing the Earth, we are failing humanity." Drawing parallels with the global financial crisis, he said Nature was the "biggest bank of all", warning the Earth is on ethe bring of environmental disaster. "Just as our banking sector is struggling with its debts... so Nature's life-support systems...

Washington -- President Barack Obama's landmark bill on energy and global warming squeaked through the House this week only after the White House made dozens of concessions to coal, manufacturing and other interests. As the battle moves to the Senate, Obama faces demands for more concessions, including to open the coastline to offshore oil and gas drilling. The Senate will take up issues that were glossed over or omitted from the House bill. Among them is giving the government sweeping new powers to overcome local objections and approve thousands of miles of new transmission lines to carry electricity to coastal...

Ok, I don't usually wade into the entire "global warming" schism on this board, preferring to write about it on Musings instead. But this is going to hit the economy, and as such I'm compelled to do so. You have to be living under a rock to not know that The House passed an "energy bill" late Friday that includes what amounts to a carbon tax via so-called "cap and trade." Let's first define what this is - "Cap and Trade" is a taxation system when what you do (commercially) that causes carbon dioxide to be emitted into the atmosphere...

Fiscal Policy: The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump. Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey. The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact. It's what Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security,...

Fiscal Policy: The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump...As we've said before, capping emissions is capping economic growth. An analysis of Waxman-Markey by the Heritage Foundation projects that by 2035 it would reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million. Consumers would pay through the nose as electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, as President Obama once...

Trees to be planted for each green flag at Cup races The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing announced "NASCAR Green Clean Air" -- a program to help capture the carbon emissions produced by racing. Under a pilot program that will expand significantly next year, NASCAR will plant 10 new trees for each green flag that drops during Cup Series events. The tracks participating in the tree-planting program -- 11 this year and every venue visited by the Cup Series in 2010 -- will mitigate 100 percent of the carbon emissions produced by the race cars competing in their...

The Clinton administration's interest in an international agreement to combat global warming also dovetailed with Enron's business plans. Enron officials envisioned the company at the center of a new trading system, in which industries worldwide could buy and sell credits to emit carbon dioxide as part of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases. Such a system would curtail the use of inefficient coal-fired power plants that emitted large amounts of carbon dioxide, while encouraging new investments in gas-fired plants and pipelines -- precisely Enron's line of business.

Former NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw has been reduced to doing infomercials. I don't know if it's because he has some psychological need to be on tv or he lost his money to Bernie Madoff. Perhaps he expects to profit from trading carbon credits. Most of us have watched at least portions of infomercials. They often use a similar format. A shill pretending to be a real interviewer asks the questions the seller wants to answer. Usually the seller has a manufactured product, some medical treatment, a book or perhaps some get rich quick scheme. The format can also be used...

...Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, keen to engineer an encore, saw his opportunity when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were inaugurated as president and vice-president in 1993. To capitalize on Al Gore’s interest in global warming, Enron immediately embarked on a massive lobbying effort to develop a trading system for carbon dioxide, working both the Clinton administration and Congress. Political contributions and Enron-funded analyses flowed freely, all geared to demonstrating a looming global catastrophe if carbon dioxide emissions weren’t curbed. An Enron-funded study that dismissed the notion that calamity could come of global warming, meanwhile, was quietly buried...

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul United States House of Representatives Statement on Global Warming Petition Signed by 31,478 Scientists June 4, 2009 Mr. PAUL. Madam Speaker, before voting on the "cap-and-trade" legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists: "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare...

I am heavily concerned about an expanding social phenomenon that is rolling across our country. We are faced with a national crisis that demands the focus and commitment of every citizen of our country. Trying to cover up the issue, or just ignoring it, will only inflate the problem. Although there have been countless studies, reports, and broadcast hours dedicated to the problem, I have finally been able to digest the issue and have just been able to get my arms around the solution. Lying awake late at night pondering this issue, I realized the answer. It came to me...

Not because the plan now under debate in the U.S. Congress would complicate the lives of energy producers, or impose new costs on consumers. Those drawbacks might be bearable if the system was truly designed to reduce emissions, and if the expense was reasonable. The alarm results from increasing evidence that emissions have become a secondary concern of a plan whose main purpose is to serve the partisan interests of the Democratic Party. If Washington continues along the path toward discrimination, Mr. Prentice warned, Ottawa will take appropriate action — a clear hint at retaliation. A trade war would benefit...

I have changed my mind about participating in the carbon credit program. And have resolved to give the money I received to St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Here is why. Recently I sat in the fire hall with a few dozen farmers. We had been invited to hear how we can get paid for carbon credits. The speaker explained how their satellites can measure the carbon in our land individually and how much money we could get. Then asked for questions. I asked “what is the source of this money”? The presenter said it comes from big companies that pollute. I...

GREGORY: You just heard Secretary Geithner. What’s your level of confidence in him? MCCAIN: Well, I have some confidence in him. I think he’s very smart. And I hope that this new plan -- which, by the way, I thought was well-described... . . . . . GREGORY: Have Republicans heeded that call, and do you think President Obama has heeded that call? MCCAIN: I think neither side, perhaps, has done it as much as maybe we should. But you establish an environment. Really, bipartisanship is sitting down across a table from each other and negotiating, recognizing there’s got to...

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer plans to outline her cap-and-trade legislation Tuesday morning. Although specific points were not immediately available Monday afternoon, the guess from those in the energy industry is that the bill will look a lot like the ill-fated measure crafted by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and former Virginia Sen. John Warner.

Howie thread starting with his Sunday Herald column

...Gore showed up on Capitol Hill with an updated version of his 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," including time-lapsed photos of melting glaciers.. He also urged Congress to consider a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions, whereby the government caps the amount of carbon that can be emitted by businesses. Those that produce less carbon earn credits that can be sold to businesses that produce more carbon. Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican who holds the Tennessee Senate seat once held by Gore, suggested that a carbon tax, refunded to companies that produce less carbon, would be a better avenue. Gore...

XIAOXI, China (AP) — The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate — while putting lucrative "carbon credits" into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. [snip] The AP has found that hydroelectric projects, whose climate impact is most widely questioned, have quickly become the No....

Here's a holiday gift idea that may conjure images of the proverbial lump of coal in the Christmas stocking: Carbon credits. The environmental group the Adirondack Council is selling carbon dioxide pollution allowances that it purchased in the nation's first mandatory greenhouse gas auction. Under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, power plants in New York and nine other Northeast states must buy enough carbon credits to cover their emissions. The “cap and trade” program sets a limit on the number of credits available. So if environmental groups buy and “retire” some of the those credits, it reduces the total amount...

Remember Bambi saying he'd destroy the coal industry? That he'd have a cap and trade system for carbon credits covering all of industry? There must be a way to follow this fool's swath through the economy and profit off it. Let's figure out how to trade carbon credits.

As reported in the August 2007 issue of Foundation Watch ("Al Gore’s Carbon Crusade: The Money and Connections Behind It," by Deborah Corey Barnes), with help from friends at Goldman Sachs, including Hank Paulson, the investment bank’s former CEO who is now the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Gore has created a web of organizations to promote the so-called climate crisis.

Abstract: President-elect Barack Obama said attacking global climate change is a "matter of urgency" that will create jobs as he got advice from Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue. Obama made clear he would adopt an aggressive approach to global warming when he takes over the White House on January 20. He and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met for nearly two hours with Gore at Obama's presidential transition office in Chicago. Obama hopes addressing climate change can create the kind of jobs that will help pull the U.S. economy out of a...

LONDON (Reuters) – The arctic tundra emits the same amount of methane in winter as in the warmer months, a surprising finding that bolsters understanding of how greenhouse gases interact with nature, researchers said on Wednesday. Scientists have long known that wetlands produce large amounts of methane and had thought it unlikely that greenhouse gases escaped from beneath frozen tundra, said Torben Christensen, a biogeochemist at Lund University in Sweden. "Mother Nature is showing us something that is really surprising," Christensen, who led the study published in the journal Nature, said in a telephone interview. "Nobody would expect to have...

BRUSSELS, Nov 26 (Reuters) - European Union industries will be able to offset no more than half their emissions cuts under the bloc's carbon market from 2008-2020, a source close to EU talks said on Wednesday. That limit implies about 1.6 billion tonnes of offsets being allowed into the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) from 2008-2020, the source said. The ETS is the EU's flagship climate policy, forcing industrial polluters to buy carbon permits above a certain emissions limit. Some member states are worried a proposed revamp of the scheme will impose crippling costs on industry entering a recession.

LONDON - A ballooning global supply of carbon offsets could flood the European Union's emissions market and dent prices, according to a report to be published next month by Britain's Carbon Trust.EU member states, lawmakers and the EU executive Commission are in negotiations now to revamp the bloc's emissions trading scheme (ETS) from 2013-2020, and face a mid-December deadline.The EU ETS is the cornerstone of European climate policy. It distributes to industry a fixed quota of carbon emissions permits, which trade at a certain carbon price.The scheme allows companies a cheap alternative way to meet their carbon caps, buying carbon...