JoNova

A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).

The Skeptics Handbook

The Skeptics Handbook II

Climate Money Paper

Advertising

micropace

GoldNerds

The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments in Australia and North America

Carbon Price just jumped 30% — It’s not a free market, it’s a fixed charade

A small group of selected rulers just raised a hand, changed the rules, and sent billions of dollars from some people to some others.

This type of arbitrary control over the  carbon market shows why it is a misnomer to call it a “free” market, and why a “market” is the wrong tool to try to use to reduce emissions. CO2 is a universal molecule, found in every walk of life and many inanimate processes. We can’t include them all, and someone somewhere gets to decide which ones count and which ones don’t, and how many of them we are allowed to emit in the first place.

Supply and demand of CO2 emissions are not set by a free market (you know, voluntary and willing participants exchanging things for mutual benefit). The bureaucrats just mandated an illusion of market forces, within a range set by said ‘crats. The price of carbon credits had gotten too painfully low for the rulers and their patrons and fans, so something had to be “done”. They made the carbon caps more stringent. If the price was too high, they would have loosened them (and they admit as much below). This has nothing to do [...]

December 21st, 2011 | Tags: , , | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (74)

Kyoto II is dead. EU bails out (as Australia tries to “save Earth”)

The End Game of the Great Global Warming Myth draws closer

With impeccable timing the Australian Government is snatching defeat from the jaws of what could have been a glorious victory. Just as Gore,  activists and then Hansen admit they lost, the infighting among the big scare campaign begins, the EU pulls the pin on Kyoto, and UK news outlets are asking if a Little Ice Age is on the way…

No one in officialdom is admitting the science has changed, or that they got it wrong, but the world is behaving as though it no longer believes.

What are the odds? Today the Australian Government is voting on the “Clean Energy Bill” (which will henceforth be known as the “Costly Energy Bill”) and at the same time the EU is saying: Enough! The big boys have to play or we are out. Which means the impossible trio of USA, China and India need to sign up to Kyoto II.

They might as well have said: “It’s all over for us. Kyoto II is dead”.

EU sets conditions for signing up to Kyoto II

LUXEMBOURG – European Union environment ministers — responsible for only 11 percent of global carbon emissions [...]

October 12th, 2011 | Tags: , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Big-Government, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (198)

The fickle nature of a fake free market

Carbon prices have plummeted in the US.

(So they are that much closer to their true value…)

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative sold 40.7 million permits for $1.88 each, 19 cents lower than the last auction held in March and 2 cents above the minimum allowable bid, the cap-and-trade program said on its website today. Each permit in the carbon trading program for power plants from Maryland to Maine represents one ton of carbon dioxide.

Why are prices so low? On the one hand, people have doubts about Congress creating a national market for them. Fair enough. But on the other hand, “Tim Cheung, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance said: “Demand for power hasn’t increased with the economic recovery…”

Since people aren’t buying as much electricity there are spare “permits to pollute” all over the place. But it begs the question of what kind of economic recovery it is, if it doesn’t need … power?

Can I sell you some air over China?

Meanwhile some NGOs are waking up to the scammability of permits for invisible unverifiable goods. CDMWatch was set up by a group of NGO’s and has found the firms that sell the [...]

June 19th, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (53)

Carbon market chaos strikes again

What a surprise: The free-market-that-is-not-free leaps from one scandal to the next. In a real free market where salesmen sell something real, and buyers buy something they want, people can’t get away with cheating, or not for long.

If someone sold you a bulk carrier of coal, and it turned up empty, you’d notice.

[...]

March 19th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (107)