Finance, Business and Carbon Trading

The enthusiasm of investment banks for global warming is easily explained by understanding that the transformation to more expensive energy generation in the developed world and the related shift of industry to China and India are the two biggest investment opportunities in history. They will also control world energy supplies through their extremely profitable carbon trading schemes. The argument is simply that big finance will promote AGW irrespective of the science because it is in their interests. It isn't a conspiracy, just business.

It is clear that the oil companies were the originators of carbon trading. Enron and BP persuaded Vice President Gore to sign the Kyoto Protocol and insert emissions trading into article 17. The biggest pressure group at Copenhagen will be The International Emissions Trading Association whose members include :-BP, Conoco Philips, Shell, E.ON AG (coal power stations owner, EDF (one of the largest participants in the global coal market), Gazprom (Russian oil and gas) and of course, the banks. Yes, it was the oil companies .

Carbon Trading / Cap and Trade

Kyoto

Carbon trading began in response to the Kyoto Protocol, signed by 180 countries in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol, signed by 180 countries in 1997, called for 37 industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions between the years 2008 to 2012 to levels that are 5% lower than those of 1990.^[1] Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol established emissions trading by allowing countries that have emission units to spare (emissions permitted to them but unused) to sell this excess capacity to countries that are over their emissions limits. In effect, this created a new commodity in the form of emissions and created a carbon market. Since CO2 is the principal greenhouse gas, emissions trading effectively became carbon trading.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carbon_trading#History

As many people in Kyoto suspected at the time, the reality has been very different. At the demand of the United States, the Kyoto rules were tweaked to allow rich countries to buy their way out of their targets, a move that gave birth to the multi-billion carbon trading industry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/10/copenhagen-climate-change-summit-2c

Enron Also Courted Democrats Washington Post - Kyoto

According to internal Enron documents and the recollections of former employees, Chairman Kenneth L. Lay had the ear of top Democrats in the 1980s and '90s. He and his colleagues used that access to promote the company's interests with the Clinton administration and key congressional Democrats.

In a White House meeting in August 1997, for example, Lay urged President Clinton and Vice President Gore to back a "market-based" approach to the problem of global warming -- a strategy that a later Enron memo makes clear would be "good for Enron stock."

On Aug. 4, 1997, Lay and seven other energy executives met with Clinton, Gore, Rubin and other top officials at the White House to discuss the U.S. position at the upcoming conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan. Lay, in a memo to Enron employees, said there was broad consensus in favor of an emissions-trading system.

Enron officials later expressed elation at the results of the Kyoto conference. An internal memo said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A37287-2002Jan12&notFound=true

Washington Post - Kyoto 2

But some business fgroups -- especially those representing alternative energy technologies -- praised the president's plan. "This is a measured, appropriate action plan, given what we know about global warming," said Terry Thorn, senior vice president of Enron Corp. of Houston.

More than a dozen senior executives representing such companies as Nike Inc., Bechtel Group Inc. and Mitsubishi Motor Corp. have endorsed a newspaper ad running this week that calls for "strong leadership" by the United States on climate change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/climate/stories/clim102397.htm

BP calls for ratification of Kyoto Protocol

The multinational BP has challenged the Australian Government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. BP's South Australia and Australasia president, Greg Bourne, has said that Australia's economy will suffer if the nation doesn't commit to ratifying the protocol which regulates greenhouse gas emissions.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s410744.htm

International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)

The biggest lobbying group at Copenhagen will be the International Emissions Trading Association which was created to promote carbon trading more than ten years ago.

Its members include :-

BP, Conoco Philips, Shell, E.ON AG (coal power stations owner, EDF (one of the largest participants in the global coal market), Gazprom (Russian oil and gas), Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley..

http://www.ieta.org/ieta/www/pages/index.php?IdSiteTree=1249

Their aim

the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and ultimately climate protection;

the establishment of effective market-based trading systems for greenhouse gas emissions by businesses that are demonstrably fair, open, efficient, accountable and consistent across national boundaries; and maintaining societal equity and environmental integrity while establishing these systems.

http://www.ieta.org/ieta/www/pages/index.php?IdSiteTree=1248

why ?

Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in next decade

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 to the $1.5tn market there is for oil," says Ager, who used to be a foreign currencies trader.

The speed of that growth will depend on whether the Copenhagen summit gives a go-ahead for a low-carbon economy, but Ager says whatever happens schemes such as the ETS will expand around the globe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/29/carbon-trading-market-copenhagen-summit

Paven Sukhdev, a career banker for Deutsche Bank who now works on the issue for the UN and EU, argues that at least 65% of reductions must be made within developed countries. That means firms such as AEP may still be limited in how much they can invest in projects abroad. Firms in developing countries may not have to buy credits at all. That has led to worries in the City that there won't be enough money to buy all the forest carbon. London's financial centre is the main home to the incipient global carbon market. Prof Heal believes that in a decade, the trade could be worth trillions of dollars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8359397.stm

James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a vocal advocate for action on global warming, told an audience at a conference hosted by Columbia University climate policy students that cap and trade is a scheme devised by Wall Street that will do nothing to alleviate the global warming problem.

“Trading of rights to pollute … introduces speculation and makes millionaires on Wall Street,” Hansen said in his keynote lecture at Columbia University’s 350 Climate Conference held here Saturday. “I hope cap and trade doesn’t pass, because we need a much more effective approach.”

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/05/04/hansen-hopes-lawmakers-cap-and-trade-approach-to-climate-will-fail/

The European Commission disclosed that since the Kyoto treaty targets for cutting emissions were set in 1997, the EU has achieved a 2 per cent reduction. This means that at its average rate of reduction it would be impossible to achieve its Kyoto obligations to reduce emissions by 8 per cent by 2012

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/europe-falling-behind-in-kyoto-carbon-targets/2007/06/15/1181414548676.html



carbon markets

One lesson the current financial crisis teaches us is: beware of the new carbon markets that constitute today's main official response to climate change. These markets are startlingly similar to the financial derivatives markets that have thrown banking systems into chaos and the world economy into a tailspin.


http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate/

Copenhagen climate summit: Carbon trading fraudsters in Europe pocket €5bn

Carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90pc of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals pocketing an estimated €5bn (£4.5bn) mainly in Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland, according to Europol, the European law enforcement agency.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6778003/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Carbon-trading-fraudsters-in-Europe-pocket-5bn.html

Carbon credits bring Lakshmi Mittal £1bn bonanza

LAKSHMI MITTAL, Britain’s richest man, stands to benefit from a £1 billion windfall from a European scheme to curb global warming. His company ArcelorMittal, the steel business where he is chairman and chief executive, will make the gain on “carbon credits” given to it under the European emissions trading scheme (ETS).

The scheme grants companies permits to emit CO2 up to a specified “cap”. Beyond this they must buy extra permits. An investigation has revealed that ArcelorMittal has been given far more carbon permits than it needs. It has the largest allocation of any organisation in Europe

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/industrials/article6945991.ece


Copenhagen climate summit: Carbon trading fraudsters in Europe pocket €5bn

Carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90pc of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals pocketing an estimated €5bn (£4.5bn) mainly in Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland, according to Europol, the European law enforcement agency.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6778003/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Carbon-trading-fraudsters-in-Europe-pocket-5bn.html

Gordon Brown interview in which he reveals, to the obvious extreme scepticism and incredulity of the BBC interviewer that the so called help for poor countries will come from carbon trading , carefully hiding the mechanism.that will bring that about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pbq6r

outside UK (2mb)

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tlr.chalmers/gordonbrownoncarbontrading.mp3

Falling carbon price could result in higher bills, energy firms warn

Electricity bills could go up as a result of the weekend's feeble agreement on climate change at Copenhagen, energy suppliers have warned.

The price of carbon – paid by heavy polluters such as power plant operators – plummeted yesterday by almost 10% on Europe's emissions trading market. This was in response to the EU scrapping a planned commitment to cut emissions by 30% by 2020 because other countries failed to show similar ambition.

E.ON and Centrica warned that they would not invest the tens of billions of pounds to build expensive new nuclear reactors and clean coal plants at today's carbon price, which is supposed to penalise dirty coal and gas plants.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/21/falling-carbon-price-higher-energy-bills

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Shell Sponsorship

Mick Kelly (climategate) Shell

Quote:
SHELL INTERNATIONAL Mick Kelly and Aeree Kim (CRU, ENV) met with Robert Kleiburg (Shell International’s climate change team) on July 4th primarily to discuss access to Shell information as part of Aeree’s PhD study (our initiative) and broader collaboration through postgrad. student project placements (their initiative), but Robert was also interested in plans for the Tyndall Centre (TC). What ensued was necessarily a rather speculative discussion with the following points emerging.

1. Shell International would give serious consideration to what I referred to in the meeting as a ‘strategic partnership’ with the TC, broadly equivalent to a ‘flagship alliance’ in the TC proposal. A strategic partnership would involve not only the provision of funding but some (limited but genuine) role in setting the research agenda etc.

2. Shell’s interest is not in basic science. Any work they support must have a clear and immediate relevance to ‘real-world’ activities. They are particularly interested in emissions trading and CDM.

uea-tyndall-shell-memo.doc

http://magicjava.blogspot.com/2009/11/setting-research-agenda.html

CRU Sponsorship

This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order): British Council, British Petroleum, Broom's Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, Central Electricity Generating Board, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), Commercial Union, Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU), Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Department of Energy, Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA), Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Eastern Electricity, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Greenpeace International, International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED), Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany, Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), National Power, National Rivers Authority, Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), Norwich Union, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Overseas Development Administration (ODA), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates, Royal Society, Scientific Consultants, Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, Shell, Stockholm Environment Agency, Sultanate of Oman, Tate and Lyle, UK Met. Office, UK Nirex Ltd., United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP), United States Department of Energy, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/

Mick Kelly, from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia is quoted as saying; “Acceptance of the carbon trading provisions of the Kyoto Protocol represents an article of faith, faith in the free market and faith in the process of globalisation. It rests on an ideological stance

http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Carbon_Trading#cite_note-1

Climategate: George Monbiot, the Guardian and Big Oil

But who is it that sponsors the Guardian?s Environment pages and eco conferences? Why, only that famous non-fossil-fuel company Shell. (Though I notice their logo no longer appears on top of the Guardian?s eco pages: has the Guardian decided the relationship was just too embarrassing to be, er, sustainable?)

And which company has one of the largest carbon trading desks in London, cashing in on industry currently worth around $120 billion ? an industry which could not possibly exist without pan-global governmental CO2 emissions laws ? BP (which stands for British Petroleum)

And how much has Indian steel king Lakshmi Mittal made from carbon credits thanks to Europe?s Emissions Trading Scheme? £1 billion.

And which companies were the CRU scientists revealed cosying up to as early as 2000 in the Climategate emails? There?s a clue in this line here: ?Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday.?

And how much was Phil Jones, director of the discredited CRU, found to have collected in grants since 1990? £13.7 million ($22.7 million)

And why does this Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild?s bank sound so enthusiastic in this (frankly terrifying) letter about the prospects of the ?new world order? (his phrase not mine) which result from globally regulated carbon trading?

Or why not try this blog, in which a German Green party MP is revealed being given hefty donations by a solar power company?

Or how about this tiny $7o million donation to the climate change industry from the Rockefeller Foundation?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100019523/climategate-george-monbiot-is-in-the-pay-of-big-oil/

Climategate: peak oil, the CRU and the Oman connection

Now, the environmental movement is comprised mostly of followers, you can look up ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ (water), on many occasions at environmental conferences comedians and light news organizations have managed to get lots of environmentalists to sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide. So apparently they do not do a lot of independent analysis before making a conclusion, they are mostly followers.

So if you need a large number of followers, there is a ready supply, but you need people, a few leaders, to tell the followers what to think. The followers do not need to, or perhaps even want to, know the reason or the facts; they just need something or someone to follow.

Now you gain control of a climate research business, and begin the task of demonizing CO2, you realize that it will take years but that is OK, there are billions of dollars waiting at the end. Slowly over time you manage to get control of the worlds climate data and begin adjusting it, you use what you have been told by the marketing people to present the information needed in as clear and scary manager as is possible. Remember the two biggest motivators are fear and greed, and in this case, because of the number of followers greed will not work. There are simply too many followers to pay them all off.

So there we have it, a campaign of fear, based on non-science emanating from a few leaders that ultimately drive the followers to do something that would just not have been possible after Three Mile Island.

They are marching in the streets of Copenhagen in support of nuclear power. They do not know this of course, but that is what the plan on the table says. Check it out, look at exactly what are the big technologies being pushed at the summit. I will give you a hint, it is not windmills.

They are also marching in Copenhagen against big business, while supporting one of the biggest businesses possible, the World Bank. Is it not strange that the Dutch Text looks to have the World Bank control the trillions being put on the table? So they are marching against exactly what they are supporting, they are simply followers.

Perhaps you can fill in the blanks between the possible objectives I mentioned earlier and where we find ourselves today. Fill in the blanks, connect the dots and follow the money. Look at the funders, how many are involved in delivery, support, financing and maintenance of the movement of liquid energy and the generation of nuclear power.

I do not think this was ever about the environment.

There are lots of other things that may tie into this, like GE buying and now selling a
TV network, they needed then but do not need it now, a bit of a stretch perhaps but GE is a big player in gas and nuclear power generation. Look around, there are others.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020304/climategate-peak-oil-the-cru-and-the-oman-connection/

Rothschild Australia and E3 International to take the lead in the global carbon trading market

PR Newswire
Friday, March 20, 2009

Sydney, Australia – Rothschild Australia and E3 International are set to become key players in the international carbon credit trading market, an emerging commodity market that analysts estimate could be worth up to US$150 billion by 2012.

In a move that will re-shape the fledgling emissions trading market, Rothschild Australia and E3 International today announced their intention to launch the Carbon Ring Consortium — an investment vehicle that will provide companies in the Asia Pacific Region with an innovative way of learning about and understanding their risks in the new carbon market.

The Carbon Ring Consortium is the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific Region, and is the first in a series of private investment vehicles that Carbon Ring Pty Ltd will launch in coming years

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=90090

Carbon Capitalists Warming to Climate Market Using Derivatives

As a young London banker in the early 1990s, Blythe Masters of JPMorgan Chase was part of JPMorgan’s team developing ideas for transferring risk to third parties. She went on to manage credit risk for JPMorgan’s investment bank.

Among the credit derivatives that grew from the bank’s early efforts was the credit-default swap. A CDS is a contract that functions like insurance by protecting debt holders against default. In 2008, after U.S. home prices plunged, the cost of protection against subprime-mortgage bond defaults jumped. Insurer American International Group Inc., which had sold billions in CDSs, was forced into government ownership, roiling markets and helping trigger the worst global recession since the 1930s.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aXRBOxU5KT5M

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Criticism of Carbon Trading

Michelle Chan, a senior policy analyst in San Francisco for Friends of the Earth, isn’t convinced.

“Should we really create a new $2 trillion market when we haven’t yet finished the job of revamping and testing new financial regulation?” she asks. Chan says that, given their recent history, the banks’ ability to turn climate change into a new commodities market should be curbed.

“What we have just been woken up to in the credit crisis -- to a jarring and shocking degree -- is what happens in the real world,” she says.

Even George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator, says money managers would find ways to manipulate cap-and-trade markets. “The system can be gamed,” Soros, 79, remarked at a London School of Economics seminar in July. “That’s why financial types like me like it -- because there are financial opportunities.”

Masters says U.S. carbon markets should be transparent and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Standardized derivatives contracts -- securities that can be bought and sold by anyone -- should be traded on exchanges or centrally cleared, she says. The British-born Masters, who has an economics degree from Cambridge University, took over JPMorgan’s commodities business in 2007

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aXRBOxU5KT5M

JAMES HANSEN: Cap and trade, they attempt to put a cap on different sources of carbon dioxide emissions. They say there’s a limit on how much a given industry in a country can emit. But the problem is that the emissions just go someplace else. That’s what happened after Kyoto, and that’s what would happen again, if—as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they will be burned someplace. You know, the Europeans thought they actually reduced their emissions after Kyoto, but what happened was the products that had been made in their countries began to be made in other countries, which were burning the cheapest form of fossil fuel, so the total emissions actually increased.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/22/leading_climate_scientist_james_hansen_on

Hurray! We’re Going Backwards!

Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. United States negotiators have pulled the same trick twice and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto Protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Al Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism(6). Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/17/hurray-were-going-backwards/

Cold in the dark prospects (Washington Times)

Federal energy policies spell shortages, rising prices

The government, through the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation, aims to save us from global warming by imposing arbitrary limits on domestic carbon emissions. This regime would enable its proponents' Wall Street allies to trade and swap the allowances and offsets -- the new currency under this system -- among themselves. Think Bernard Madoff.

In doing so, the federal government would seize control of our energy use, rationing it to ensure it is both more expensive and less plentiful. The certain loss of manufacturing jobs to China and India that would result from this scheme

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/10/cold-in-the-dark-prospects/

The great American bubble machine

By Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone Magazine

The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Here's how it works: If the bill passes; there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy "allocations" or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billions worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine/7

Copenhagen accord keeps Big Carbon in business

Copenhagen was not about global warming but money. The cash that Hillary Clinton so dramatically plonked on the table, rising to $100 billion by 2020, which includes the £1.5 billion offered by Gordon Brown (money which of course he hasn't got) and which like a crazed gambler he last week upped to £6 billion (even more money he hasn't got), was merely a "sweetener" to persuade the developing countries to maintain the money-machine set in motion by Kyoto.

This is the new global industry based on buying and selling the right to emit CO2, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year, which through schemes such as the UN's Clean Development Mechanism and the EU's Emissions Trading System is making a small minority of people, including Al Gore, extremely rich.

The only really concrete achievement of Copenhagen was to win agreement to the perpetuating of those Kyoto rules that have created this vast industry, which has two main beneficiaries. On one hand are that small number of people in China and India who have learnt how to work this system to their huge advantage. On the other are all those Western entrepreneurs who have piled into what has become the fastest-growing commodity market in the world.

The part played at Copenhagen by all the tree-huggers, abetted by the BBC and their media allies, was to keep hysteria over warming at fever pitch while the politicians haggled over the real prize, to keep the Kyoto system in place.

The only tree they were concerned with hugging was the money tree and all the vast political apparatus that now supports it, allowing governments to tax and regulate us into handing over ever more of our money, largely without realising it, every time we drive a car, fly in a plane, pay our electricity bill or carry out any of a vast range of activities that involve the emission of CO2. Compared with these sums, even the billions we all unwittingly spend on subsidies to the developers of useless wind turbines are chicken feed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6845686/Copenhagen-accord-keeps-Big-Carbon-in-business.html

Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading

An FoE reports says 'cap and trade' carbon markets have done little to reduce emissions but have been plagued by corruption and inefficiency

The world's carbon trading markets growing complexity threatens another "sub-prime" style financial crisis that could again destabilise the global economy, campaigners warn today.

In a new report, Friends of the Earth says that to date "cap and trade" carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions but have been plagued by inefficiency and corruption that render them unfit for purpose.

As the world heads towards the Copenhagen climate summit, Britain and other developed countries want to see carbon trading expanded worldwide. The carbon market, mainly based in Europe, was worth $126bn in 2008 and is predicted to mushroom to $3.1tn by 2020 if a global carbon market takes off

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/05/friends-of-the-earth-attacks-carbon-trading

Greenpeace Market Poison and Carbon Trading

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/groups/berkshire/blog/market-poison-and-carbon-trading

Could Cap and Trade Cause Another Market Meltdown?

You've heard of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. Are carbon default swaps and subprime offsets next? If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is signed into law, it will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor. And if Washington doesn't get the rules right, it will be vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by the very same players who brought us the financial meltdown.

Cap and trade would create what Commodity Futures Trading commissioner Bart Chilton anticipates as a $2 trillion market, "the biggest of any [commodities] derivatives product in the next five years."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/could-cap-and-trade-cause-another-market-meltdown?page=1

The EU's carbon trading scheme has increased electricity bills, given a windfall to power companies and failed to cut greenhouse gases, it is claimed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/6720119.stm

At the moment over 90% of the licences to produce CO2 are given away to the biggest polluters. Some of these companies have made billions by passing on the nominal costs of the licences to their customers, even though they didn't have to pay anything themselves

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/12/greenpolitics-poznan

Reasons to Oppose Cap and Trade

1.) It will destroy 1.15 million jobs. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that, for the average year over the 2012-2035 timeline, job loss will be 1.1 million greater than the baseline assumptions. By 2035, there is a projected 2.5 million fewer jobs than without a cap-and-trade bill. But Heritage isn’t alone in these estimates. The Brookings Institute, a supporter of a carbon tax, projects that cap and trade will increase unemployment would by 0.5% in the first decade below the baseline. Using U.S. Census population projection estimates, that’s equivalent to about 1.7 million fewer jobs than without cap and trade. A study done by Charles River Associates prepared for the National Black Chamber of Congress projects higher unemployment of 2.3-2.7 million jobs in each year of the policy through 2030–after accounting for “green job” creation.

2.) It will reduce economic growth. All three aforementioned studies found significant losses in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), our primary measure of economic activity. Heritage found the average GDP lost is $393 billion, hitting a high of $662 billion in 2035. From 2012 to 2035, the accumulated GDP lost is $9.4 trillion (in 2009 dollars). Brookings predicts GDP in the United States would be lower by 2.5 percent in 2050 and the National Black Chamber estimates that in GDP will be 1.3 percent ($350 billon) below the baseline in 2030 and 1.5 percent ($730 billion) below the baseline in 2050.

3.) It will increase your energy bills. Since 85 percent of America’s energy needs come from carbon emitting fossil fuels, cap and trade would be massive tax on energy consumption. The carbon dioxide reduction targets are still the same at the end of the day, and the way they will be met is by raising the price of energy high enough so people use less. Heritage’s CDA found that by 2035 gasoline prices would increase 58 percent, natural gas prices would increase 55 percent, home heating oil would increase 56 percent, and worst of all, electricity prices would jump 90 percent. CRA’s and the Black Chamber’s study found that relative to the baseline, natural gas prices would rise by an estimated 16%, electricity prices go up by 22% and gasoline increases by 23 center per gallon, all in the year 2030.

4.) It hits low-income households hardest. Cap and trade is an energy tax that falls disproportionately on the poor. Although upper income families tend to use more energy (and thus emit more carbon per household), since low-income households spend a larger percentage of their income on energy, the poor suffer most. Proponents of a carbon cap acknowledge this, saying, “Relative to total expenditure, however, the poor pay more […]. This means that carbon emission-reduction policies have a regressive impact on income distribution – unless coupled with revenue-recycling policies that protect the real incomes of the poor and middle classes.” Policymakers sought to protect consumers, especially the poor, from higher energy prices by handing out rebate checks or tax cuts. If only a small portion (15 percent) of the energy tax revenue is given back to the consumer, the burden on the poor obviously becomes heavier. Rebates or not, the higher energy prices would reduce economic activity by forcing businesses to cut costs elsewhere, by reducing their workforce for example, and thus doing damage that no check would cover.

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/the-money-trail/4663-a-bakers-dozen-of-reasons-to-oppose-cap-and-trade

Angry Mermaid page on IETA

Background

The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) describes itself as a “non profit business organisation” created to “establish a… framework for trading in greenhouse gas emission reductions”. Formed in 1999, it has 168 member companies, including big energy (BP, Shell, Vattenfall); banks (BNP Parisbas, Goldman Sachs); lawyers (Clifford Chance, Norton Rose,); and carbon trading companies (including EcoSecurities). It works in partnership with bodies like the World Bank to develop “an active, global greenhouse gas market.”

A lobbying powerhouse in climate talks

In just over ten years, IETA has become a lobbying powerhouse at the UN climate change talks. At two of the most important recent UN meetings on climate change – held in Bali and Poznan – IETA had the largest accredited non-governmental delegation (lobby groups are accredited as non-governmental organisations, or NGOs), dwarfing the presence of established NGOs such as Greenpeace.

In Bali, for example, with some 336 representatives including lawyers, financiers, consultants, certifiers and emissions trading experts, IETA made up 7.5% of the 4,483 NGO delegates at the UN climate talks. The sheer size of IETA’s presence worried environmental and development groups at the conference. Peter Hardstaff, from the World Development Movement commented: “The fact that the IETA is the biggest NGO in Bali is indicative of the influence it will extend over the outcome of the talks.”

In Poznan, IETA once again had the biggest NGO presence with over 250 lobbyists. The lobby group had hired a whole building where it was holding up to 12 events per day, described by one delegate as a “real parallel conference”. IETA is already gearing up for a large lobbying presence at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen with some 66 events scheduled.

Promoting the CDM

IETA uses these events to promote the idea of a totally global market in greenhouse gases, a mechanism which allows corporations and governments to buy and sell the right to pollute. Key to this market is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows governments and industry in developed countries to claim to be making carbon reductions by investing in supposed “clean developments” in the developing world. This is also known as offsetting.

The CDM has been severely criticised because it allows rich countries to avoid making emissions cuts at home. There is also strong evidence that some of its projects are creating serious social and environmental problems in developing countries. According to David Victor, a leading carbon trading analyst at Stanford University, two-thirds of the supposed emission reduction credits being produced by the CDM are not backed by real reductions in pollution.

Some even argue that the CDM increases pollution. In 2008, at an IETA lobbying event at the European Parliament, a participant from the Öko-Institut commented that by giving credit to what is effectively business as usual, the CDM “results in a global increase of greenhouse gas emissions.”

A key area of controversy is the ‘additional’ nature of CDM projects: that is where projects that qualify for CDM credits must be able to show that the emission reductions would not have happened anyway, even without the CDM funding: ie they are “additional” to what would have happened. But even IETA concedes that proving ‘additionality’ is “an almost impossible task” and one EU Commission official estimated in Poznan that 40% of CDM projects are not additional to what would have happened without CDM funding.

IETA knows the issue of ‘additionality’ will be an issue in Copenhagen. One of its events is called “Sustainability instead of additionality?” where it concedes that “During the negotiations, many Parties highlighted the fact that the CDM to date is being perceived to have contributed little to sustainable development.”

Although the CDM has failed to reduce global emissions, IETA still claims it has been a success. Its lobbying documents argue that the CDM “has demonstrated that market-based mechanisms spark new, keen interest in clean development activities in countries whose emissions must be addressed if the international community is to meet its climate change objectives. The invaluable momentum that the CDM has created must be preserved and built upon.”

IETA goes further and argues that what is needed now is “a new CDM with more flexible mechanisms”, including an expansion and broader standards for project approval, including sector-specific standards, allowing different rules for polluting industries – creating the potential for those industries to escape tough standards.

High level access to decision-makers

IETA secures valuable access to decision-makers through its staff and members. Its President is Henry Derwent, a former Director for International Climate Change in the UK government. It also secures access through its members, such as Ecosecurities, a leading emissions trading company recently taken over by JP Morgan.

Ecosecurities develops CDM projects, sells carbon credits and provides consultancy services to business as well as the European Commission and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Ecosecurities has set up a body called the Project Developers’ Forum to lobby for more CDM projects to be approved. In Poznan, Ecosecurities had 16 lobbyists, 15 of whom were operating under the umbrella of business associations, including the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, the Carbon Markets and Investors Association, and as IETA lobbyists.

In response to being told IETA had been nominated, Henry Derwent said: “We will be honoured to accept this recognition of the work we have been doing over more than 10 years. During that time we have been delighted to see that the principle of emissions trading has been more and more widely accepted across the world.”

http://www.angrymermaid.org/ieta

Cap and Trade WSJ

Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123655590609066021.html

Cap-and-Trade: All Cost, No Benefit

The proposed legislation would have a trivially small effect on global warming while imposing substantial costs on all American households. And to get political support in key states, the legislation would abandon the auctioning of permits in favor of giving permits to selected corporations.

The leading legislative proposal, the Waxman-Markey bill that was recently passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would reduce allowable CO2 emissions to 83 percent of the 2005 level by 2020, then gradually decrease the amount further. Under the cap-and-trade system, the federal government would limit the total volume of CO2 that U.S. companies can emit each year and would issue permits that companies would be required to have for each ton of CO2 emitted. Once issued, these permits would be tradable and could be bought and sold, establishing a market price reflecting the targeted CO2 reduction, with a tougher CO2 standard and fewer available permits leading to higher prices.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102077.html

UN suspends carbon-trading auditor

THE validity of the Kyoto Protocol’s $100 billion (£67 billion) carbon-trading scheme has been called into question after the United Nations suspended the world’s largest auditor of clean-energy projects.

Norway’s DNV, which claims to have approved half of the world’s carbon-credit ventures, had its accreditation suspended last month after it was unable to prove that its agents had properly vetted projects that it then approved for the carbon-trading scheme

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5375493.ece

Treasury acts on carbon-credit fraud fears

By Vanessa Houlder

Published: July 30 2009 20:53 | Last updated: July 30 2009 20:53

Drastic action to stop a potential multi-billion-pound fraud was taken by the UK Treasury on Thursday 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”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7fba19c8-7d40-11de-b8ee-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Environment Agency preps carbon police force Source: Jul. 6, 2009

The Environment Agency is to launch a dedicated unit to ensure that the government's imminent Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) legislation is properly enforced.

According to The Sunday Times, around 50 auditors and inspectors will be given wide-ranging powers, including the right to search company premises, view energy meters and seize records.

Ed Mitchell, head of business performance and regulation at the agency, told the newspaper that the new unit would have the necessary teeth to catch firms failing to provide accurate energy use data. 'The inspectors will carry warrant cards giving them powers of entry to collect evidence,' he said. 'We will also have access to company accounts with suppliers.'

Under the CRC, around 6,000 businesses and public-sector organisations will be required to report on annual energy use and carbon emissions from their facilities

http://water.environmental-expert.com/resultEachPressRelease.aspx?cid=31242&codi=54965&lr=1

Copenhagen's Hidden Agenda: The Multibillion Trade in Carbon Derivatives Architect of Credit Default Swaps behind the Development of "Carbon Derivatives"

As I have previously shown, speculative derivatives (especially credit default swaps) are a primary cause of the economic crisis.

And I have pointed out that (1) the giant banks will make a killing on carbon trading, (2) while the leading scientist crusading against global warming says it won't work, and (3) there is a very high probability of massive fraud and insider trading in the carbon trading markets.

Now, Bloomberg notes that the carbon trading scheme will be centered around derivatives:

The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbon-related financial products to outside investors.

[Blythe] Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity -- in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases...

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16449

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Carbon trading surges in London

The carbon trading business is ramping up in London, as more European countries commit to policies to reduce emissions. The New York Times notes that many top banks, like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are staffing up quickly. In the Mayfair area, some boutiques are sprouting up to generate carbon emissions reductions via allowances among other things. Some think the market could rival credit derivatives in growth

http://www.fiercefinance.com/story/carbon-trading-surges-in-london/2007-07-06

Cap and trade not enough to cut carbon -Goldman Sachs

NEW YORK, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Capping and trading carbon emissions will not be enough to fight output of the gases blamed for warming the planet, the managing director of Goldman Sachs' U.S. carbon emissions desk said on Thursday.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN1724371820080117

Prospects Good for Carbon Trading

How hot is the idea of trading carbon emissions to limit global warming? Hot enough that Goldman Sachs purchased 10 percent of the Chicago Climate Exchange.

The Exchange (CCX) is a voluntary greenhouse gas emission trading system where companies promise to reduce emissions, and they can buy or sell credits. If a company reduces more emissions then it pledged, it can sell the surplus to other organizations.

Goldman acquired shares in CCX as well as ownership of its European counterpart, which is part of a mandatory carbon trading system. I'm guessing Goldman thinks that the Exchange, or the technology used for trading shares, could be used if the U.S. ever mandates emissions trading.

http://www.matternetwork.com/2006/9/prospects-good-for-carbon-trading.cfm

Goldman Sachs Buys Into Carbon Offsets

Goldman Sachs has recently bought pieces of two carbon-offset companies, in the latest sign of investment banks’ interest in the area.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/goldman-sachs-buys-into-carbon-offsets/

McKinsey Guardian report

The total up-front financing would be €530 billion by 2020 – less than the cost of the current US financial-sector bailout plan – and €810 billion by 2030, which is well within range of what financial markets can handle.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/apr/25/climate-copenhagen-carbon-emissions?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:3b5a0383-2a16-4179-b9e1-fe8a211cd4c8

JP Morgan Climate Care

ClimateCare has provided high quality carbon offsets since the solution began. We help people have an impact, lowering business emissions and individual carbon footprints through carefully sourced carbon reduction projects, because we all want to tackle climate change today

http://www.jpmorganclimatecare.com/

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More on Enron

The oil companies were members of an anti global warming organisation called the Global Change Coalition until just before Kyoto was signed . Many jumped ship after the Americans managed to insert cap and trade into article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol on ther insistence of Enron and BP, even though the Senate was complete against it and voted 95-0 against ratification. The Global Change Coalition eventually disbanded in 2000, four years before Kyoto was ratified.

Opposing Views on Global Warming: The Corporate Climate Coup

by Prof. David F. Noble - York University, Toronto, Canada

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5568

Enron: The Godfather of Kyoto - How Enron hyped global warming for profit

As the movement to establish the Kyoto Protocol developed momentum, it was necessary for Ken Lay to build up alliances with the green movement including Greenpeace. A 1998 letter, signed by Lay and a few other bigwigs asked President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue, because these individuals were standing in Enron’s way. The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date. In particular, it requested Clinton to moderate the political aspects of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission. The purpose of this commission was clear – high-level trashing of dissident scientists. Setting up a panel to do this was simple; just look at the recent issue of Scientific American where four attack dogs were called out to chew up Bjorn Lomborg. He had the audacity to publish The Skeptic Environmentalist demonstrating that global warming is overblown. David Bellamy, the world’s foremost environmentalist also stepped out of line with his widely printed article “Global Warming? What a load of old Poppycock.” In the same way Galileo was forced to publicly utter that the moon had no effect on tides, so Bellamy under pressure backtracked on some of his claims.

http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html

But some business groups -- especially those representing alternative energy technologies -- praised the president's plan. "This is a measured, appropriate action plan, given what we know about global warming," said Terry Thorn, senior vice president of Enron Corp. of Houston.

More than a dozen senior executives representing such companies as Nike Inc., Bechtel Group Inc. and Mitsubishi Motor Corp. have endorsed a newspaper ad running this week that calls for "strong leadership" by the United States on climate change.

In a White House meeting in August 1997, for example, Lay urged President Clinton and Vice President Gore to back a "market-based" approach to the problem of global warming -- a strategy that a later Enron memo makes clear would be "good for Enron stock."

The climate-industrial complex - Wall Street journal

The cozy corporate-climate relationship was pioneered by Enron, which bought up renewable energy companies and credit-trading outfits while boasting of its relationship with green interest groups. When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, an internal memo was sent within Enron that stated, "If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory business."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286145192740987.html

Money and Kyoto Protocol are the real Enron story

Enron executives worked closely with the Clinton administration to secure support for the Kyoto Protocol because the company believed the treaty could provide it with a financial windfall. An internal Enron memo circulated immediately after the 1997 Kyoto meeting - and first reported by The Washington Post - shows the company believed the treaty "would do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."

So Enron philanthropists lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to reduce so-called global warming. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million dollars - $990,000 - to the Nature Conservancy, whose "Climate Change" project promotes global warming theories.

http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2002/Feb/20020226Comm007.asp


BP too

An August 4, 1997 Oval Office meeting with Kenny Boy, (then-) Sir John Browne of BP, and the President and Vice President of the United States. Let that sink in. He didn’t know the guy. But anyone who can even spell “Beltway” can tell you that that kind of orchestration and attention takes serious influence. Ask Gordon Brown.

As revealed by the August 1, 1997 Kenny Boy briefing memo subsequently aired after the unpleasantness, in this meeting Kenny Boy was to demand that the Senate be ignored, that the administration agree to Kyoto, and most important that it contain a cap-and-trade scheme

http://www.globalwarming.org/2009/04/28/gores-inconvenient-enron/

Whatever its impact on the environment, the cap-and-trade carbon scheme is sure to boost the economic and political prospects of people and groups that are behind it. Before the company collapsed under the weight of financial scandal, Enron under CEO Ken Lay was a key proponent of the cap-and-trade idea. So was BP’s Lord John Browne, before he resigned last May under a cloud of personal scandal. In August 1997, Lay and Browne met with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Gore in the Oval Office to develop administration positions for the Kyoto negotiations that resulted in an international treaty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22663

Wall Street Extorts Kyoto Protocol: Lehman, Enron and other Cap-and-Trade Coincidences

When Enron’s drama unfolded in 2001, the pressure group for rent-seeking businesses called the Pew Center on Global Climate Change quickly airbrushed its Web site of praise for the company, specifically Pew’s erstwhile poster boy for climate “responsibility,” Ken Lay. Lay and Enron were founders of Pew’s Business Environmental Leadership Council, a green-tinted coalition that was pushing the Kyoto agenda.

Lay was also a favorite and longtime trustee at a similar outfit known as the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment (run by John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz). An embarrassing e-mail emerged in which Heinz staff pleaded with Lay, “Simply stated, your background, expertise and experience make you uniquely qualified [to run our] global-warming [initiative].”

This was a sufficiently serious endeavor that soon after I left Enron in 1997, Lay and BP boss John Browne met in the Oval Office with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. Lay’s briefing memo reveals that they clarified what Enron needed from the treaty at the upcoming December Kyoto negotiations. Just the week before, a unanimous U.S. Senate had voted instructing Clinton not to agree to the pact.

The rest is history, if often misreported. The Clinton administration disregarded the Senate and agreed to Kyoto on December 11, 1997, and signed it – yes, signed it – on November 12, 1998. Score: Lay and Browne 1, Senate 0. However, then as now, and every year in the interim, the Senate has refused to bind the U.S. to such an agreement.

With that bit of history out of the way and as Lehman Brothers lies in ruins, let us take notice of certain coincidences. For example, as Lehman melted down, observers spotted the web of climate-specific similarities connecting that company’s priorities and activism and Enron’s. Like Enron, the bank was a strong promoter of carbon pricing, and its recommendations on the subject had begun to be adopted by governments around the world. Lehman was also the banker for Gore’s private equity firm, Generation Investment Management.

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=1023&idli=3

While that was happening, Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: "[T]he very real possibility that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed."

One of Enron's major consultants in that study was NASA scientists James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony. Last month, he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same, inconsequential amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron wanted to gag. They were a decade ahead of NASA.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3388

Enron: The Godfather of Kyoto

In addition, Enron began to cultivate new friends in the environmental community. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation gave nearly $1 million to the Nature Conservancy, whose Climate Change Project promoted global warming theories. Another $1.5 million was donated to other groups advocating international controls to curb global warming, including Greenpeace.

In 1997, Enron set about to promote an international treaty to impose cuts in CO2 emissions while allowing emission rights trading. Such an agreement would produce a gigantic windfall for Enron because it would boost the usage of natural gas at the expense of coal and it would help Enron’s growing commodity trading business.

As the push for a treaty gained more support around the world, Enron CEO Ken Lay and other business leaders wrote to President Bill Clinton on September 1, 1998, asking him to create a bipartisan blue ribbon commission that would essentially shut off the scientific debate on global warming and discredit those scientists who opposed the treaty and did not support the global warming theory.

Simultaneously, Enron commissioned an internal study of global warming science, only to find the results did not support the theory. In conclusion, the report noted, “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.”A primary consultant for that study was NASA scientist James Hansen, the very same scientist who now castigates the Bush administration for its stance on Kyoto and who trashes scientists who dispute global warming as being in the hip pocket of big business. That certainly did not keep Mr. Hansen from cashing Enron’s check.

Ring’s investigation, as reported in Investigate magazine, notes that “…coal-burning utilities would have had to pay billions for permits because they emit more CO2 than do natural gas facilities. That would have encouraged closing coal plants in favor of natural gas or other kinds of power plants, driving up prices for those alternatives. Enron, along with other key energy companies in the so-called Clean Power Group – El Paso Corp., NiSource, Trigen Energy, and Calpine – would make money both coming and going from selling permits and then their own energy at higher prices.”


http://www.theforgottenstreet.com/index.php?action=website-view&WebPageID=15046&WebSiteID=444

Investigate Oct 05, The Kyoto Conspiracy - How Enron hyped global warming for profit

Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists that Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.” One of Enron’s major consultants in that study was NASA scientist James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony. Recently he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same inconsequential amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron wanted to gag. They were a decade ahead of NASA.

True to its plan, Enron never made its own findings public, self-censoring them while it pleaded with the Bush administration for a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that it could broker. That pleading continues today – the remnant-Enron still views global warming regulation as the straw that will raise it from its corporate oblivion. Some greenie campaigning in America is still directed from this source. On July 7, 2004, Kenneth Lay was indicted by a federal grand jury for his involvement in the scandal.

Everyone knows that a few hundred votes in Florida tipped the election to George W, but few are aware that West Virginia, normally a Democrat stronghold, went for Bush because the coal industry in that state decided to back him because he would not endorse Kyoto. Without West Virginia, the vote in Florida would have made no difference.
”Enron stood to profit millions from global warming energy-trading schemes,” said Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association and American Coal Coalition. The investigation into the collapse of Enron will reveal much more about the intricacies of the Baptist-bootlegger coalition which was promoting the Kyoto cause within the Republican Party and within US business circles. Coal-burning utilities would have had to pay billions for permits because they emit more CO2 than do natural gas facilities. That would have encouraged closing coal plants in favor of natural gas or other kinds of power plants, driving up prices for those alternatives. Enron, along with other key energy companies in the so-called Clean Power Group – El Paso Corp., NiSource, Trigen Energy, and Calpine – would make money both coming and going – from selling permits and then their own energy at higher prices. If the Kyoto Protocol were ratified and in full force, experts estimated that Americans would lose between $100 billion and $400 billion each year. Additionally, between 1 and 3.5 million jobs could be lost. That means that each household could lose an average of up to $6,000 each year. That is a lot to ask of Americans just so large energy companies can pocket millions from a regulatory scheme. Moreover, a cost of $400 billion annually makes Enron’s current one-time loss of $6 billion look like pocket change. Little wonder Americans and the incoming Bush administration did not want a bar of it.


http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html

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The New Environmental Lobby

Here are some environmental organisations (with annual incomes of hundreds of millions of dollars) which are supported and controlled by the biggest banks and multi national corporations on earth. The Environmental Defense Fund claims to be the world's wealthiest environmental pressure group.



Environmental Defense Fund

Sutter Hill Ventures, CNET Networks, Duquesne Capital Management,

Chairman, DreamWorks Animation, SKG; former Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo, Inc., Advisory Director, Morgan Stanley, Managing Director, Berkshire Partners LLC, Managing Director, The Carlyle Group, Seven Hills Group (investment), Ranieri investment, Morgan Stanley

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=365

Environmental Defense is the only environmental group named among "the most successful nonprofits in recent U.S. history" in the new book Forces for Good.

We also ranked first among environmental groups — and second overall — in the 2007 Financial Times global study of 850 business-nonprofit partnerships

"...the power broker rewarding good behavior"
Time Magazine

"...one of the hottest environmental groups around"
The Wall Street Journal

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=381

EDF has an annual revenue of over 100 million dollars

http://edf.org/documents/8857_AR08_Financial_Comment.pdf

Greenpeace funding

Greenpeace even has a website that "exposes" donations of Exxon/Esso to various U.S. think-tanks. What Greenpeace does not expose, is that its own funding comes from extremely right-wing sources -- take a look at these donations to Greenpeace USA and the very conservative, reactionary people behind them.

No doubt this is why so many of the policies and programmes of "environmentalism" are so close to those of neofascist political parties. As the British National Party (British neofascists) says, "we are the true green party

http://badecology.blogspot.com/2008/07/greenpeace-funding.html

http://www.activistcash.com/organization_financials_full.cfm/oid/131

The Climate Group

http://www.theclimategroup.org/index.php/our_partners/supporters/

http://www.theclimategroup.org/index.php/our_partners/

Climate Group on Sourcewatch

http://216.92.66.74/index.php?title=The_Climate_Group



NRDC (The Natural Resources Defense Council)

NRDC is the nation's most effective environmental action organization. We use law, science and the support of 1.2 million members and online activists to protect the planet's wildlife and wild places and to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all living things.

Worth Magazine has named NRDC one of America's 100 best charities, and the Wise Giving Alliance of the Better Business Bureau reports that NRDC meets its highest standards for accountability and use of donor funds.

http://www.nrdc.org/about/board.asp

The NDRC has an annual revenue of 87 million dollars

http://www.nrdc.org/about/finances.asp

Grantham Institute for Climate Change

In fact, it (Grantham) refers to the wealthy chairman of GMO, a large investment management company: Jeremy Grantham. Grantham has donated £12million to the London School of Economics (LSE) to fund the institute. He has also forked out another £12million to Imperial College London for the similarly named Grantham Institute for Climate Change (1)

No wonder, then, that the chair of LSE, Howard Davies – once the head of the Financial Services Authority and a former deputy governor of the Bank of England – was more than a little fawning over the ‘extremely generous’ Grantham. The new LSE institute will be headed by Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the UK government-commissioned report.


http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5799/

The Grantham is chaired by Professor Lord Sir Nicholas Stern of Brentford, author of a rather influential report on the economics of climate change, and who stands to profit admirably from institutional environmentalism via his carbon credit reference agency. It is no surprise that Ward and Sir Nicholas find themselves in the same company department, given their shared interests. Stern is also Chair of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP), which is funded by the UK government’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and which acknowledges that ‘Generous support for the Centre’s work is also provided by Munich Re’. Munich Re is the insurance giant that claims to know what the IPCC does not when it comes to the reality of climate change in the present.

http://www.climate-resistance.org/

Jeremy Grantham


Jeremy Grantham is the Chairman of the Board of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, an American investor well known among institutional investors, but relatively unknown to retail investors. He is regarded as a highly knowledgeable investor in various stock bond and commodity markets. Grantham started one of the world's first index funds in the early 1970s and currently manages approximately $120 billion US.[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Grantham

Paulson plans to donate £410m fortune to environmental causes

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary and former head of Goldman Sachs, is believed to be planning to give away the bulk of his fortune to charity - up to $800m (£410m).

The move would see him follow in the footsteps of a string of wealthy businessmen, including Microsoft's founder Bill Gates and investment guru Warren Buffett, who have all announced plans to donate the vast proportion of their wealth to good causes over the past year.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/paulson-plans-to-donate-163410m-fortune-to-environmental-causes-432346.html

This is pure Orwellian corporate speak

E3G is organised around a permanent strategic conversation which identifies the critical actions required to accelerate change, and the political, economic, technical and cultural conditions needed to drive it. This combines the expertise of all E3G staff in the development of compelling strategic insights and narratives which shape our interventions.

http://www.e3g.org/index.php/about/What-we-do/

COIN

According to the profile on CiF, "George Marshall is the founder and director of projects at the Climate Outreach and Information Network. He posts regularly to the blog climatedenial.org"

This set me digging.I discovered that COIN was a registered charity, so my next port of call was the Charity Commission, to have a look at their accounts.

None have yet been filed, as the organisation is newly registered: Mem and Arts were incorporated on 21st December 2007 and they were registered with the Charity Commission on 26th March 2008 (though according to their own website they were founded in 2004).

Its charitable objects are listed on the Charity Commission website as "to promote any charitable purposes at the discretion of the trustees concerning climate change and its impact".

Their objects look rather more political on their "about us" page. The contact was listed as a Mr Tim Baster of Oxford.  Additionally there are two trustees.

Googling Mr Baster's name came up trumps.  The buggers are getting close on £700,000 from DEFRA over two years.

According to DEFRA's press release this is to "profoundly change the attitude of rank and file union members; generating visible collective reduction action, establishing a social norm for personal action, and creating a persuasive synergy and cross over between personal action, work-placed programmes such as 'Greening the workplace', and the emissions reduction targets of employers."

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/25/whos-been-spinning-in-my-newspaper.html

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Simon Linnett, Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild, has called for a new international body, the World Environment Agency, to regulate carbon trading.

In a recently published paper, Trading Emissions, for the Social Market Foundation, Mr Linnett argues that the International problem of climate change demands an international solution.

Unless governments cede some of their sovereignty to a new world body, he says, a global carbon trading scheme cannot be enforced and regulated.

"An urgent global response." This was how Nicolas Stern described the problem of carbon dioxide emissions, in his recent review of the economics of climate change. The sense of an impending crisis infuses our all debates on this issue.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14294

Cooling on Global Warming

Germany and the rest of Europe are getting more rational on climate change

The EU climate deal was diluted beyond recognition. Instead of standing by plans to cut CO2 emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, the actual reductions might be as trivial as 4% if all exemptions are factored in.

Second, disillusionment with the failed Kyoto Protocol has turned utopian thinking into sobriety. After all, most of the Kyoto signatories failed to reduce their CO2 emissions during the last 10 years. There are also growing doubts about the long-term viability of the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme

The inclusion of a revision clause, pushed by Italy, is particularly significant as it makes the EU's climate targets conditional on the outcome of international climate talks. If the U.N.'s Copenhagen conference in 2009 fails to seal a post-Kyoto deal, it is as good as certain that some of the EU's targets will be further cut. By linking its decisions to those of the rest of the world, Europe has begun to act as a more rational player on the stage of international climate diplomacy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122937766062908297.html

After watching An Inconvenient Truth and sitting through one of Al Gore's PowerPoint presentations, I have just one question remaining: Why is Al Gore pushing Enron's agenda?

Before you decide that I'm delusional, check out my new book, The Big Ripoff : How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, and my section called "Green: The Color of Money." The book shows how Enron was a key lobbyist for the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change (the Holy Grail of Gore's Crusade), and how almost every environmentalist policy we are being fed by Washington is really a meal ticket for one big business or another.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-carney/follow-the-money-in-wash_b_25017.html

Germany Plans Boom in Coal-Fired Power Plants -- Despite High Emissions

Estimates by climate protection experts such as Rainer Baake from German Environment Aid (DUH) suggest the new power plants will release at least 150 million tons of CO2 every year.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,472786,00.html

Train can be worse for climate than plane

"New rail systems should serve as links to other transit modes, as is often the case in Europe and Japan," he says. "We should avoid building rail systems that are disconnected from major population areas and require car trips and parking to access."



http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17260-train-can-be-worse-for-climate-than-plane.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8089722.stm

Fox admitting to inserting global warming propaganda into TV shows.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=47149952

This week, an independent panel of experts called the Climate Change Committee (CCC) published the details of its recent advice to Parliament that the UK should reduce its CO₂ emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

There's no doubt there's money to be made from this new legislation, which was passed last week. A recent conference, given the title 'Cashing in on Carbon' was, in its own words, "aimed squarely at investment banks, investors and major compliance buyers and is focused on how they can profit today from an increasingly diverse range of carbon-related investment opportunities".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/03/climate_change_committee_double_standards/

Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals

In the worst case scenario, sustainable energy plants might even have a detrimental effect on the climate. As more wind turbines go online, coal plants will be able to reduce their output. This in itself is desirable -- but the problem is that the total number of available CO2 emission certificates remains the same. In other words, there will suddenly be more certificates per kilowatt of coal energy. That means the price per ton of CO2 emitted will fall.

That is exactly what happened in recent trading. A certificate to emit a ton of CO2 cost almost nothing. As a result, there was very little incentive for big energy companies to invest in climate friendly technologies.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,606763,00.html

‘There’s a lot of rich people backing this cause’, says Horner. ‘Al Gore has just raised $300million. Over the past few years, the greens continue to say we receive Exxon Mobil support – and we do not. But where did Al Gore get $300million, far more than the entire sceptic community has received ever from any source? No one seems to care. How much of this is from George Soros? How much of it is from his buddies at the venture capital companies that are invested in a bunch of dogs-with-fleas that won’t be at all attractive until this regime is put in place? We don’t know – and we don’t have a curious media or state.’

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/5956/

Exxon

Exxon supports carbon tax

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/calgarybusiness/story.html?id=e8aecbbb-16c6-412d-8054-7e64e2b176ef

IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prepares periodic climate assessments on science, impacts and adaptation, and mitigation based on the contributions of several hundred expert authors nominated by governments. The majority of experts work in academia and government labs, but a handful work in business, including Haroon Kheshgi and Brian Flannery from ExxonMobil. Over the years, they have contributed to three IPCC assessments and two special reports and have served as review editors for IPCC publications. The valuable contributions of these experts were recognized, when the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/energy_climate_views.aspx

There is increasing evidence that the earth's climate has warmed on average about 0.7 C in the last century. Many global ecosystems, especially the polar areas, are showing signs of warming. CO2 emissions have increased during this same time period - and emissions from fossil fuels and land use changes are one source of these emissions.

Climate remains today an extraordinarily complex area of scientific study. The risks to society and ecosystems from increases in CO2 emissions could prove to be significant, it is prudent to develop and implement strategies that address the risks, keeping in mind the central importance of energy to the economies of the world.

This includes putting policies in place that start us on a path to reduce emissions, while understanding the context of managing carbon emissions among other important world priorities, such as economic development, poverty eradication and public health.

While this long term objective is pursued, near term objectives should include supporting climate research to reduce uncertainties while pacing policy responses; promoting energy efficiency; deploying existing technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and supporting research and development of new, low-GHG technologies. 

Policymakers are considering a variety of proposed regulatory options to mitigate GHG emissions. In our view, assessing these options requires an understanding of their likely effectiveness, scale and cost, as well as their implications for economic growth and quality of life. Within ExxonMobil, we analyze and compare the various policy options by evaluating the degree to which they: 

• maximize the use of market forces
• ensure a uniform and predictable cost of reducing CO2
• promote global participation
• minimize complexity and administrative costs
• provide transparency to companies and consumers
• adjust to new developments in climate science and the economic impacts of policies

ExxonMobil scientists have undertaken climate change research and related policy analysis for 25 years and their work has produced more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed literature. In addition, our scientists participate in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous related scientific bodies

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Europe-English/Citizen/Eu_VP_climate.asp

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EDF Energy will scale down plans to build a new generation of nuclear reactors in the UK unless the government fixes the price of carbon, its chief executive, Vincent de Rivaz, has warned.

De Rivaz said that EDF's business case to build four new reactors depended on a carbon tax or minimum carbon price being introduced.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/05/edf-nuclear-power-energy

The rise in price is apparently caused by speculation due to changes in American trading laws that permit (amongst other things) the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), to use its terminals to trade U.S. crude oil futures, gasoline and heating oil contracts. Supply is actually greater than demand but oil is being horded (some have said by oil companies).

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/08/enron_and_todays_oil_and_gas_p.html

Britain's dirty business

These four projects are among the most environmentally damaging on the planet. So why is a British government department backing them?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3666273.ece

BP Climate

http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?categoryId=9015577&contentId=7031715

BP CEO Lord Browne's Speech (Pew Foundation)

We’ve shown that it is possible to reduce emissions of methane and CO2 from our own operations – by eliminating waste and leaks and by applying technology, for instance to eliminate the venting of methane.

http://www.pewclimate.org/companies_leading_the_way_belc/company_profiles/bp_amoco/browne.cfm

Carbon's Power Brokers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002521_pf.html

Czech President Vaclav Klaus

We have to repeatedly deal with the simple questions that have been many times discussed here and elsewhere:

1) Is there a statistically significant global warming?

2) If so, is it man-made?

3) If we decide to stop it, is there anything a man can do about it?

4) Should an eventual moderate temperature increase bother us?

We have our answers to these questions and are fortunate to have many well-known and respected experts here who have made important contributions in answering them. Yet, I am not sure this is enough. People tend to blindly believe in the IPCC’s conclusions (especially in the easier to understand formulations presented in the “Summaries for Policymakers”) despite the fact that from the very beginning, the IPCC has been a political rather than a scientific undertaking.

http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=XpAV39wT4A32

BP gave $500 million to UC Berkeley to develop new sources of energy.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/02/01_ebi.shtml

ExxonMobil worked to establish and is providing $100 million to Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project.

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_actions_gcep.aspx

addressing the risks of climate change: ExxonMobil's views and actions

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_views.aspx

The Creeping Fascism of Global Warming Hysteria (alex ones)

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/130207globalwarming.htm

Czech president derogates UN global-warming panel

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Czech_president_derogates_UN_global_02092007.html

***************************************

Pew Foundation and global warming
http://www.pewtrusts.com/ideas/index.cfm?issue=19

This right wing piece is complaining about the Pew Founation unaware they are owned by the aforemention ed oil company fascists (literally).

http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-08-99.html

The story was rooted in a recent study by Tom Wigley, introduced as "a respected climatologist." Wigley's study was financed by the Pew Foundation, which is running a multi-million-dollar campaign to hype global warming.

http://www.pewclimate.org/

The Pew family (Sun Ol)

Pew - Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/pew.html

Climate Change Speech
By John Browne, Group [b]Chief Executive, British Petroleum[/b] (BP America)

http://dieoff.org/page106.htm

"But there is now an effective consensus among the world's leading scientists and serious and well informed people outside the scientific community that there is a discernible human influence on the climate, and a link between the concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in temperature.

The prediction of the IPCC is that over the next century temperatures might rise by a further 1 to 3.5 degrees centigrade, and that sea levels might rise by between 15 and 95 centimetres. Some of that impact is probably unavoidable, because it results from current emissions. "



Exxon

For our part, ExxonMobil is taking action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions today and to support the development of advanced energy technologies with the potential to significantly reduce future emissions. These include:

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/energynow_savingenergy.asp

ExxonMobil is committed to consistent, comprehensive reporting of greenhouse gas emissions

ExxonMobil worked to establish and is providing $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project – the largest-ever independent climate and energy research.

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/climate_view.asp

http://www2.exxonmobil.com/corporate/Campaign/Campaign_energysaving_research.asp

Clean tech: Green energy is the modern gold rush

Alternative power Investors are falling over themselves to put cash into the search for cleaner fuels

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/02/renewableenergy.carbonemissions

The EU's carbon trading scheme has increased electricity bills, given a windfall to power companies and failed to cut greenhouse gases, it is claimed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/6720119.stm

The rise in price is apparently caused by speculation due to changes in American trading laws that permit (amongst other things) the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), to use its terminals to trade U.S. crude oil futures, gasoline and heating oil contracts. Supply is actually greater than demand but oil is being horded (some have said by oil companies).

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/08/enron_and_todays_oil_and_gas_p.html

Britain's dirty business

These four projects are among the most environmentally damaging on the planet. So why is a British government department backing them?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3666273.ece

BP Climate

http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?categoryId=9015577&contentId=7031715

BP CEO Lord Browne's Speech (Pew Foundation)

We’ve shown that it is possible to reduce emissions of methane and CO2 from our own operations – by eliminating waste and leaks and by applying technology, for instance to eliminate the venting of methane.

http://www.pewclimate.org/companies_leading_the_way_belc/company_profiles/bp_amoco/browne.cfm

Carbon's Power Brokers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002521_pf.html

Pew Center on Global Climate Change

http://www.pewclimate.org/about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pew_Center_on_Global_Climate_Change

The Pew Charitable Trusts

http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work.aspx?category=112

The Trusts, a single entity, is the successor to, and sole beneficiary of, seven charitable funds established between 1948 and 1979 by the adult children of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N Pew.

Joseph Pew and his heirs were politically conservative. The J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust had as its mission to "acquaint the American people with 'the evils of bureaucracy' and 'the values of a free market' and 'to inform our people of the struggle, persecution, hardship, sacrifice and death by which freedom of the individual was won.'" Joseph N. Pew, Jr. called Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, "a gigantic scheme to raze U.S businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs."^[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pew_Charitable_Trusts

The Plot to Sieze the White House by Jules Archer - pews

http://www.eclectica.org/v1n1/reviews/wharton_plot.html

Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC) Member Companies (pew)

http://www.pewclimate.org/companies_leading_the_way_belc/company_profiles/

BP gave $500 million to UC Berkeley to develop new sources of energy.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/02/01_ebi.shtml

ExxonMobil worked to establish and is providing $100 million to Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project.

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_actions_gcep.aspx

addressing the risks of climate change: ExxonMobil's views and actions

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_views.aspx

The Creeping Fascism of Global Warming Hysteria (alex ones)

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/130207globalwarming.htm

Czech president derogates UN global-warming panel

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Czech_president_derogates_UN_global_02092007.html

***************************************

Pew Foundation and global warming
http://www.pewtrusts.com/ideas/index.cfm?issue=19

This right wing piece is complaining about the Pew Founation unaware they are owned by the aforemention ed oil company fascists (literally).

http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-08-99.html

The story was rooted in a recent study by Tom Wigley, introduced as "a respected climatologist." Wigley's study was financed by the Pew Foundation, which is running a multi-million-dollar campaign to hype global warming.

http://www.pewclimate.org/

The Pew family (Sun Ol)

Pew - Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/pew.html

Climate Change Speech
By John Browne, Group [b]Chief Executive, British Petroleum[/b] (BP America)

http://dieoff.org/page106.htm

"But there is now an effective consensus among the world's leading scientists and serious and well informed people outside the scientific community that there is a discernible human influence on the climate, and a link between the concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in temperature.

The prediction of the IPCC is that over the next century temperatures might rise by a further 1 to 3.5 degrees centigrade, and that sea levels might rise by between 15 and 95 centimetres. Some of that impact is probably unavoidable, because it results from current emissions. "



Exxon

For our part, ExxonMobil is taking action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions today and to support the development of advanced energy technologies with the potential to significantly reduce future emissions. These include:

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/energynow_savingenergy.asp

ExxonMobil is committed to consistent, comprehensive reporting of greenhouse gas emissions

ExxonMobil worked to establish and is providing $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project – the largest-ever independent climate and energy research.

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/climate_view.asp

http://www2.exxonmobil.com/corporate/Campaign/Campaign_energysaving_research.asp

Why are the massive global corporations and banks who promote global warming investing enormous amounts of capital in India and China where there are no environmental controls ? Why do they want billions Indian, Chinese and other developing world workers to buy cars and pour out massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Why do they want Americans and Europeans to save pennies a week on long life light bulbs when the investment banks are paying for a new coal power station every week in India and the same in China ?

http://www.theclimategroup.org/about/members_and_partners/associates

B&Q
Barclaycard
British Gas
Business in the Community
Church of England
Coca-Cola
Man Group
MORE TH>N
MySpace
National Express
O2
Sky
Tesco
The Energy Saving Trust
The Government's Act on CO2 Campaign
The HSBC Climate Partnership The Mayor of London
The National Trust
Warner Bros
WRAP
WWF
Your M&S

BT
Dow
DuPont
General Motors
Holcim
IBM
IKEA
Interface
Johnson & Johnson
Michelin
Nike
Staple
Tetra Pak
Unilever
Vodafone
Wal-Mart


US
Dell
Chase
ClimateCounts
Climate Savers
City of Boston
City of Chicago
City of Las Vegas
City of Los Angeles
City of Miami
City of New York
City of Seattle
Global Footprint Network
ICLEI
Lenovo
MTv
MercyCorps
MySpace
National Wildlife Federation
New American Dream
Nestle Water
News Corporation
Recyclebank
American Red Cross
Smart
Target
Timberland
TimeWarner

Baker & McKenzie Limited
Barclays Bank
Thor Björgólfsson
Bullitt Foundation
W. Carey Crane III, Clean Power Foundation
Stephen Dawson
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Oleg Deripaska
DOEN Foundation
Dutch Postcode Lottery
Michael Edge
Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Garfield Weston Foundation
Goldman Sachs & Co.
HDR
HSBC Holdings plc
JP Morgan Chase Foundation
Lazard Foundation
Lifesize
Man Group plc
MSST Foundation
MWH
Oak Foundation
Paul Pheby, Lotus Asset Management
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund
Rockefeller Family Fund
Gary Ross and Allison Thomas
Schroder Foundation
Shell International Ltd
Stanley and Barbara Fink Foundation
State of Victoria
Supply Chain Consulting
Swiss Reinsurance Company
The Carbon Trust
The Energy Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The Nand and Jeet Khemka Foundation
The Robertson Foundation
UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office
United Nations Foundation
Universal City Studios
Wadham College Students Union
Webex
World Resource Institute
Zennström Philanthropies

This confirms Svensmark's research which will be further tested at CERN in the near future.

<b>Study shows CFCs, cosmic rays major culprits for global warming </b>

Cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), both already implicated in depleting the Earth's ozone layer, are also responsible for changes in the global climate, a University of Waterloo scientist reports in a new peer-reviewed paper.

In his paper, Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, shows how CFCs - compounds once widely used as refrigerants - and cosmic rays - energy particles originating in outer space - are mostly to blame for climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. His paper, derived from observations of satellite, ground-based and balloon measurements as well as an innovative use of an established mechanism, was published online in the prestigious journal Physics Reports.

"My findings do not agree with the climate models that conventionally thought that greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, are the major culprits for the global warming seen in the late 20th century," Lu said. "Instead, the observed data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused both the Antarctic ozone hole and global warming. These findings are totally unexpected and striking, as I was focused on studying the mechanism for the formation of the ozone hole, rather than global warming."


<a href="http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=8012">http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=8012</a>