Carbon Credits Are Unraveling

On Friday, WattsUpWithThat posted an article about the very predictable unraveling of carbon credits. This is not a new phenomena.

In 2003, CCX (Chicago Climate Exchange) was founded. It was assumed that when Democrats got control of Congress, they would pass Cap and Trade legislation and carbon credits would be exchanged through CCX. Some major Democrat figures were heavily invested in CCX. Cap and Trade never passed and the CCX began laying off employees in 2010. (article here)

Yesterday WattsUpWithThat reported:

The world of carbon credits has long been presented as a major tool for supposed climate woes. Advocates of this system have been quick to sing its praises, positioning it as the ultimate solution for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. But skeptics, like yours truly, have long pointed out the inherent flaws in such a system. Now, even The Guardian, a publication that has been a staunch advocate of climate alarmism, seems to be having second thoughts. It’s almost as if they’re saying, “Oops, maybe the skeptics had a point.”

The Guardian’s Late Awakening

The article from The Guardian delves deep into the world of carbon credits, questioning their actual impact on reducing emissions. It’s almost amusing to see them now asking:

“Carbon credits are supposed to offset the emissions caused by companies and individuals. But do they really reduce greenhouse gases?”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases

A question that should have been asked and critically examined long before jumping on the carbon credit bandwagon.

The Mirage of Offsetting

The Guardian highlights a significant concern: the illusion of offsetting. Purchasing carbon credits doesn’t necessarily equate to genuine offsetting of emissions. Many of these credits are tied to projects that would have been executed regardless, meaning no real reduction in emissions.

“Many of the projects supported by carbon credits, such as the construction of windfarms and solar parks, would have been built anyway.”

In essence, it’s a system that allows companies to parade their “green” credentials without making any tangible changes to their carbon footprint.

The Inconsistencies of Carbon Credit Accounting

The article also sheds light on the convoluted and inconsistent world of carbon credit accounting. With no unified standard and a lack of rigorous oversight, it’s a system rife with potential for manipulation.

“There is no single standard for carbon credits, and critics argue that this has allowed projects that do not deliver real-world emissions reductions to flourish.”

It’s a system that skeptics have long warned about, and it seems these concerns were not unfounded.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. People are beginning to wake up.

Did He Accidentally Tell The Truth?

On Wednesday, Legal Insurrection posted an article about a recent statement by former secretary of state John Kerry.

The article reports:

While speaking at the World Economic Forum this week, former secretary of state John Kerry seemed to inadvertently admit that the issue of climate change is all about money.

It makes perfect sense. Climate change and all of the activism around it have become big business. All those private jets in the parking lot aren’t going to pay for themselves.

This is the full quote:

“I’m convinced we will get to a low-carbon, no-carbon economy — we’re going to get there because we have to,” he said.

“I am not convinced we’re going to get there in time to do what the scientists said, which is avoid the worst consequences of the crisis,” he added.

“And those worst consequences are going to affect millions of people all around the world, [in] Africa and other places. Of the 20 most affected countries in the world from [the] climate crisis, 17 are in Africa.”

In his remarks, Kerry also spoke about the task of keeping the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius alive.

“So, how do we get there? Well, the lesson I’ve learned in the last years and I learned it as secretary [of State] and I’ve learned it since, reinforced in spades, is: money, money, money, money, money, money, money. And I’m sorry to say that.”

Actually, I doubt that he is sorry to say that. How many government-subsidized green energy companies is he invested in? You did notice that the majority of the delegates (if not all) to the WEF in Davos flew there in private jets. Where is their effort to save the planet (other than to impose restrictions on the rest of us)?

To illustrate how the political left plans to make money by forcing the rest of us to depend on green energy, please read about the collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange in 2010 (article here).

That article reports:

“The biggest losers have been CCX’s two biggest investors – Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs – and President Obama, who helped launch CCX with funding from the Joyce Foundation, where he and presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett once sat on the board of directors.”

If you have questions about climate change and global warming, the two best sources of truth are Joe Bastardi and Anthony Watts. Joe Bastardi has written a number of books about climate cycles and how they impact our weather, and Anthony Watts blogs at wattsupwtihthat.com. Both authors provide scientifically valid information on the earth’s climate.

Cap And Trade Comes To America

In 2010, the Democrats were talking about passing a Cap and Trade Bill. Their efforts were futile.

As I reported in 2010 (article here):

Informed sources are predicting that if the Democrat party loses the House of Representatives in the November election, there will be lame-duck session of Congress after the election to pass some of the legislation that the Democrats can’t seem to get passed now.  The logic is that since many members will have been voted out and thus not have to worry about being re-elected, they will be willing to vote for some of the more unpopular bills–Cap and Trade, Card Check, and tax increases.  I suppose that is possible, but it really would be political suicide for the Democrat party.  When I thought about that, I wondered why, even after the global warming scandals, the Democrats would still be pushing Cap and Trade.  Well, I think I have my answer–follow the money!

There was a very interesting article at the American Thinker yesterday.  The article reported that the Chicago Climate Exchange is running out of money and laying off employees.  What is the Chicago Climate Exchange?   It is a company that trades ‘carbon credits.’

The American Thinker pointed out:

“The biggest losers have been CCX’s two biggest investors – Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs – and President Obama, who helped launch CCX with funding from the Joyce Foundation, where he and presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett once sat on the board of directors.”

As usual, follow the money.

Well, Cap and Trade is back. The Conservative Treehouse reported the following on September 15th:

Deep inside the legislative language of the falsely titled “inflation reduction act”, aka The Green New Deal legislative vehicle constructed by lobbyists and passed by congress, people are now starting to realize a carbon-trading system was created.

Ultimately, a carbon trading system has always been the holy grail of the people who run the western financial system and want to create mechanisms to control wealth by using the ‘climate change’ agenda.

A carbon trading system is a very lucrative financial transfer mechanism with a potential scale to dwarf the derivative, Wall Street betting, market.  Secondarily, such a market would cement the climate change energy policy making it very difficult to reverse.  The new creation as explained by the Wall Street Journal, holds similarities to the EPA ethanol program.

On September 14th, The Wall Street Journal reported:

A brand-new market for green tax credits is taking shape as bankers and advisers figure out how to funnel tax breaks from energy companies that generate them to profitable corporations eager for smaller tax bills. 

The market is forming because Congress last month expanded renewable-energy tax credits and made them transferable in the law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which also lowers prescription drug prices and imposes new taxes on large corporations.

The tax-credit sales mark a shift in the U.S. strategy for attracting public and private capital to renewable-energy projects, and they will happen alongside existing climate-finance markets such as carbon offset purchases. The deals won’t start in earnest until 2023, but lawyers and financiers are already structuring transactions. They are discussing arrangements in which credits would be sold at discounts from face value, and they are determining how to cushion tax-credit buyers against potential risks. 

The bottom line here is simple–the federal government is going to have more control over who prospers and who doesn’t. At the rate we are going, we can pretty much assume that companies with the correct politics will be allowed to flourish and companies with incorrect politics will be hampered in their ability to grow. Yuck.

Elections Have Consequences

The election of Virginia Governor Youngkin has already had an impact beyond Virginia. Heeded or not, the election was a wake-up call for the radical leftist agenda being pushed in Washington, D.C. The election itself was important, but the policies that Governor Youngkin enacts will also have an impact on America’s future.

On Saturday, Fox News reported the following:

Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has signaled his intention to pull the state out of a climate compact that many small businesses there are glad to see go.

Youngkin has made clear his intention to pull Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The interstate compact places penalties on entities that exceed emission regulations set by an organization representing all member states.

The article concludes:

The RGGI currently boasts eleven member states in the initiative, all from the northeast: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia.

The RGGI is currently being courted by Pennsylvania for membership. It boasts itself as the “first market-based, cap-and-invest regional initiative in the United States.”

The Cato Institute puts out an index of personal and economic freedom annually. The Sixth Edition (2021) has a list of states according to the “Miscellaneous Regulatory Freedom Score.” The least regulated state on that list is Arizona, the most regulated is North Carolina. Of the states in the RGGI, Connecticut ranks 31, Delware 29, Maine 33, Maryland 42, Massachusetts 49, New Hampshire 6, New Jersey 41, New York 47, Rhode Island 30, Vermont 14, and Virginia 20.

It appears to me that the RGGI is simply the latest cap and trade proposal put in place by the Democrats. To learn some interesting history on the cap and trade scams of the past, please read the article from August 2010 about what happened to the Chicago Climate Exchange when the Democrats were predicted to lose the majority in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, much of the talk of the environment is actually a smoke screen for hidden financial interests and governmental quests for more power.

Despite What The Mainstream Media Says…

Stephen Moore posted an article at Real Clear Politics today about global pollution. Remember all the hysteria when America didn’t sign the Kyoto Treat and didn’t institute a cap-and-trade carbon tax? Well, evidently Americans cared enough about keeping the air clean to reduce carbon dioxide emission on their own.

The article reports:

Yet the latest world climate report from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy finds that in 2017, America reduced its carbon emissions by 0.5 percent, the most of all major countries. That’s especially impressive given that our economy grew by nearly 3 percent — so we had more growth and less pollution — the best of all worlds. The major reason for the reduced pollution levels is the shale oil and gas revolution that is transitioning the world to cheap and clean natural gas for electric power generation.

Meanwhile, as our emissions fell, the pollution levels rose internationally and by a larger amount than in previous years. So much for the rest of the world going green.

The world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions is China. According to the invaluable Institute for Energy Research, “China produces 28 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. India is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide and had the second-largest increment (93 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide emissions in 2017, more than twice as much an increase as the U.S. reduction.” This means it doesn’t really matter how much America reduces its greenhouse gases because China and India cancel out any and all progress we make. Those who think they are helping save the planet by purchasing an electric car or putting a solar panel on their roof are barking up the wrong tree. There is no way to make progress on greenhouse gases without China and India on board — which they clearly are not.

It is basically ironic that China and India, both countries that signed the Kyoto Treaty, have increased their carbon dioxide to the point where they are cancelling out the gains made by America.

The article concludes:

So there you have it. The countries in the Paris climate accord have broken almost every promise they’ve made and the nation (the U.S.) that hasn’t signed the treaty is doing more than any other nation to reduce global warming. Yet, we are being lectured by the sanctimonious Europeans and Asians for not doing our fair share to save the planet. It’s another case study in how the left cares far more about good intentions than actual results. What matters is that you say that you will wash the dishes, not that you actually do it.

Unfortunately the war on carbon has never been about making the earth a cleaner place–it has always been about money. The Chicago Climate Exchange was set up in 2003 so that powerful Democrats could make a ton of money once cap-and-trade legislation was passed in America. It closed in 2010 when the legislation was not passed, and those Democrats lost their investment. Its two biggest investors were Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs–and President Obama, who helped launch CCX with funding from the Joyce Foundation, where he and presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett once sat on the board of directors. Had cap and trade gotten through Congress, all of those people would have made a lot of money. That is one of many reasons why they supported the legislation–clean air was simply a side issue. (References here and here).

 

 

Passing Fiction Off As News

A lot of people have lost faith in the mainstream media as a source of information. Many of my friends have cancelled their subscriptions to various newspapers. So what is going on? The Internet has given people a chance to do their own research and draw their own opinions. One example of media hype of something that is questionable at best is the way the media has handled the concept of man-made global warming. Despite little scientific evidence to support the claim, our government is shutting down power plants, causing the price of utilities to rise, and trying to control the lives of the American people in ways our founding fathers never intended.

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article with a graph showing the difference between actual global temperatures and what global warming proponents have predicted in the past.

The article reports:

The Science and Environmental Policy Project does a good job of explaining this fundamental point in its Climate Fears and Finance:

By far, the most rigorous, comprehensive data on global temperatures come from satellite measurements of the atmosphere (mid-troposphere), which is where the greenhouse effect takes place. The measurements started in December 1978 and the temperature estimates are calculated by two independent groups, who closely agree. These data are independently supported by four sets of direct temperature measurements from weather balloons. …

We can see below the direct comparison between 102 model runs and observations.

Screen Shot 2014-09-07 at 9.22.08 PM

The differences in the data are obvious. So why are many journalists and people in power trying to convince us that man-made global warming is real? Follow the money. I posted an article in 2010 (rightwinggranny.com) about the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). This was a carbon credit exchange heavily invested in by many political leaders. When cap and trade legislation was defeated, the CCX went out of business and many political leaders lost money. Unfortunately, the people we send to Congress are not always looking out for our interests.

Problems For The Global Warming People And For The Obama Administration

Aerial view of the Greenland village Qaarsut, ...

Image via Wikipedia

One of the things that is supposed to make our government work is transparency. With the Freedom of Information Act, we the taxpayers can follow the path of a concept as it is discussed and eventually made into some sort of law. That transparency is supposed to be part of the system–except when it is purposely avoided.

Yesterday wattsupwiththat.com posted a story stating that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official  correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.”

The article at wattsupwiththat states:

CEI reminds OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy) that this practice was described as “creat[ing] non-governmental accounts for official business”, “using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications”, in a recent analogous situation involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.

This effort has apparently been conducted with participation — thereby direct assistance and enabling — by the Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, seized for Holdren’s office the lead role on IPCC work from the Department of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then implemented.

Man-made global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Obama Administration to pave the way for a government takeover of the energy sector. The government policies that would be enacted in the name of global warming will make all Americans poorer (except those invested in green energy). This is truly a ‘follow the money’ issue. Had the Cap and Trade bill been passed in Congress, the demand for solar panels made by Solyndra would have increased, Solyndra would have raised its prices, and many democrat contributors would have made a profit. Had Cap and Trade passed, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), which traded carbon credits would still be in business and investors such as Al Gore and many of our leading congressmen would have made a profit. If Cap and Trade can be implemented through federal agencies, it may not be too late to save the portfolios of some of the major Democrat contributors. It really is all about the money.

Please follow the link to wattsupwiththat.com to read the entire article. There is a lot of very good, but very technical information in the article that I did not fully understand. Hopefully it will make sense to you!

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