Carbon markets = corruption
Fake markets are easy to scam, because no one really wants or cares about “the product”. Fake markets are dangerous tools. Judging by the way people act, the point of carbon markets is to feed bureaucrats and bankers, not to change the weather. If that’s true, it’s entirely predictable that yet another scandal has run for years, and no one “noticed” or acted to stop it. Not only were diesel cars scamming the lab tests for pollution, but other cars were built to exploit loopholes (that may be legal) in the lab tests for fuel economy as well. The audacity is remarkable — real car CO2 emissions are often a gobsmacking 40- 50% higher than reported, even in top brand, expensive cars.*
As much as two-thirds of CO2 cuts since 2008 may have been imaginary and made by cars that were only fuel efficient in the lab. CO2 “pollution” doesn’t hurt anyone, but misleading fuel economy figures may have cost owners €450 a year more in fuel to run. The companies known to get suspiciously good results on fuel economy (so far) are BMW, Mercedes, Renault and Peugeot. Companies using software to get around other pollution tests now include VW, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Seat, and Skoda. (VW owns Audi, Skoda, and apparently Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini as well.) South Korea, Britain, France and Japan are all ordering their car makers to answer questions. Though, hypocritically, governments of UK, France and Germany have all lobbied to keep in the loopholes in the emissions tests. Everywhere we look, “seeming” is important, but few really care about CO2 or pollution. The market is fake, the numbers are fake, and the “concern” is fake too.
From GWPF
“Two-thirds of CO2 emissions cuts due to improved fuel economy since 2008 were delivered through manipulating car tests”
Date: 28/09/15 Energy Post
“On average, two-thirds of the claimed gains in CO2 emissions and fuel consumption since 2008 have been delivered through manipulating tests with only 13.3 g/km of real progress on the roads set against 22.2 g/km of ‘hot air’” according to the T&E report.
New cars, including the Mercedes A, C and E class, BMW 5 series and Peugeot 308, are now swallowing around 50% more fuel than their lab test results reveal, according to new on-the-road results compiled by NGO Transport & Environment (T&E). T&E calls for a comprehensive investigation into both air pollution and fuel economy tests across Europe and a complete overhaul of the testing system.
“The gap between official and real-world performance found in many car models has grown so wide that it cannot be explained through known factors including test manipulations. While this does not constitute proof of ‘defeat devices’ being used to fiddle fuel economy tests, similar to that used by Volkswagen, EU governments must extend probes into defeat devices to CO2 tests and petrol cars too,” says T&E in a press release.
T& notes: “The gap between official test results for CO2 emissions/fuel economy and real-world performance has increased to 40% on average in 2014 from 8% in 2001, according to T&E’s 2015 Mind the Gap report, which analyses on-the-road fuel consumption by motorists and highlights the abuses by carmakers of the current tests and the failure of EU regulators to close loopholes. T&E said the gap has become a chasm and, without action, will likely grow to 50% on average by 2020.”
Greens create real pollution — the VW, and now BMW, Audi, Mercedes, software scandal
All up, the carnage is pretty impressive. In Europe, the Greens played tax games and encouraged people to buy diesels to “cut CO2”. Once, there were hardly any diesel cars, then there were lots — thanks to green-government incentives. Meanwhile the companies cheated on software which produced good results in lab tests, but spewed out noxious gas the rest of the time. Eleven million VW’s maybe affected. Nearly half a million VWs and Audis have already been recalled. Those US cars would make made 10,000 – 40,000 tons of NOx, which is 10 – 40 times as much as they were supposed too if they met EPA standards.
The global warming zealots are to blame for the deadly diesel fiasco, writes STEPHEN GLOVER
“Twenty years ago, diesel cars constituted a tiny minority. But following the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, most Western countries, including Britain, were legally obliged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions — alleged by some to cause climate change — by 8 per cent over the following 15 years.
Diesel cars produce slightly less — but only slightly — carbon dioxide than petrol ones. In 2001 the Labour government introduced a new tax regime whereby cars were taxed according to how much carbon dioxide they produce, a development that enormously favoured diesel over petrol. (Duty at the pump has been the same for petrol and diesel since 2000.)”
Mercedes and BMW hit too
25 Sept: UK Times: David Charter/Ben Webster: BMW and Mercedes hit as fraud scandal spreads
BMW was sucked into the widening Volkswagen fraud scandal yesterday after a report stated that emissions from one of the carmaker’s models were far higher than the European Union limit. Shares in BMW fell by nearly 10 per cent at one point after it was claimed that emissions from the X3 were 11 times the legal threshold under the same tests that first raised concerns about VW… The disclosure came on a day of crisis in the car industry as the German government admitted that software used by VW to cheat in American laboratory tests was also used in Europe…
So when did EU official know and why didn’t they do something sooner?
25 Sept: UK Times: Exhausting Dishonesty
EU officials and the transport secretary must clarify when they learnt of flaws in diesel emissions tests and why they have not acted more swiftly All the worst scandals have a prequel in which they are open secrets. Anybody even on the periphery of the automobile industry has known for years that many carmakers’ claims about the performance of their products are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Features in which the official claims of miles-per-gallon of new vehicles are contrasted with actual, real-world levels have long been commonplace, with the latter invariably clocking in at about two thirds of the former…
Vox calculates the death toll (theoretically)
Using these figures, the estimated extra pollution from Volkswagen’s US cars can be expected to lead to an additional 5 to 27 premature deaths per year. If we extrapolated worldwide to all 11 million vehicles, that would come to somewhere between 74 and 404 premature deaths each year
h/t Colin, GWPF, Pat, David B, Helen, Panda, Tim Blair.
* (Surely some owners would notice this latter discrepancy in fuel economy, since fuel is real and it does matter? But perhaps car owners don’t care that much about the real but marginal cost of their fuel economy figures — And for some owners, maybe the theoretical figure is good enough for bragging rights at dinner parties?) But I am surprised that dedicated log-book keepers didn’t notice (my Dad would have).