This latest [in the carbon cap-and-trade] comes on top of a) plants being closed in Valencia and Zaragoza for lack of a Kyoto permit and b) Acerinox’s CEO announcing his (steel manufacutring) investment would all go outside Europe now (the US — so far, 175 jobs in Carroll County, KY — and South Africa)..
Ceramics are an industry that Spain seeks to protect from Brussels like Germany (ideally) would its chemicals — they tried, e.g., in the REACh debate — and they require a bit of energy to make their products. Now, in Galicia, a manufacturer announced that last year it earned more from selling credits than ceramics (reminding me of an email I once got in which a French pharma company announced that selling credits was where its future lies, not pharmaceuticals).
Their statement was couched in terms of thanking the government for generously (that is, “over-“) allocating ETS credits to them (for free, as industry lobbyists already demand of Congress), and noted that with the credit price having skyrocketed (before collapsing) they were able to reap a windfall by selling what the government had given them. They lamented that the price collapse, however, indicated this wasn’t, er, sustainable.
Buried in this however was the phrase that, taking that price spike into account, they had decided to “equalibriate” their operations so as to maximize profits with an ideal mix of selling allocations and using them by, well, using electricity to make stuff…which is to say they also went into the business of making nothing, dedicating more of their operations to the task, which is far less labor intensive. That is, they found it more profitable to partially shut down, to idle workers.
Emphasis mine. That said, it’s been proven possible to reduce C02 emissions on a national scale. Indeed, the US has accomplished it twice the recent past;
In modern times, according to the Department of Energy, CO2 emissions have dropped only twice _ during the recessions of 1981-82 and 1990-91. The 1981-82 recession, the deepest since the Great Depression, reduced CO2 emissions by 8 percent.
Read the whole thing and note the date.
Breaking… The world’s leading* geneticist on economics responds: “stop listening to the goddamn economists,”
“Because if you don’t do what I say, the economies of the world will suffer a collapse larger than the great depression and both world wars combined and the polar bears will drown in boiling seas, Vancouver will be under 20 feet of water and all your grandchildren will die.”.
“And besides, Baird is just scaremongering.”
First of all, try comparing the greenies calling John Baird a “scaremonger” to a hypothetical goldbug calling Stanley Roach of Morgan Stanley “an enemy of U.S. prosperity.” Even the sleaziest real-life goldbug hasn’t descended to that level.
Secondly, what’s unusual about the carbon-market idea is that it hasn’t gotten the ire of any free-market libertarian up. When the socialists introduced Oskar Lange’s artificial-market idea, von Mises took umbrage to it, and shot it down. I haven’t read any critique of the carbon-credit-market idea being castigated as “playing market,” at all. The free-market dog isn’t barking over this one.
Job 1 for our elected politicians is to protect Canadians from whatever calamity is taking place in the world that can do harm to us.
Suzuki says that if the world doesn’t abide by Kyoto “Twenty per cent of the economy will disappear. It will cost more than World War I and World War II put together. We’ll go into a kind of depression we’ve never, ever had in all of history”.
Given this scenario our politicians should be debating … what if both Suzuki and “the godamn economists” are right? I.E., that Suzuki is right on the Global depression part and the Canadian economists are right on the estimated billions it will cost us to fulfill our Kyoto targets.
Therefore a strategy that needs to be tabled in Parliament is:
Should we quit wasting our time and money worrying about the whole world?
We can’t isolate ourselves from inevitable global climate change.
Even if we spend billions and meet our goals, that won’t even make a dint on the World climate which Suzuki says, will cause a world depression. Massive economies and populations in China and India are not going to do their share on Kyoto; therefore we’re doomed, according to Suzuki.
Therefore we should be using our billions to build dikes and our politicians should come up with a plan to make sure Canada can adapt to the inevitable disaster that Suzuki and Gore and Dion are predicting.
Maybe the inconvenient truth is that we’d better start adapting to the inevitable.
The hypocritical greenies are making me laugh…..they are accusing Baird of scaremongering?
Thats priceless!
I guess you really “can’t fix stupid!”
I would respect the enviromentals sooo much more if the focus was on pollution, clean water and presevation/replanting of both rain forest and boreal forests.
This, on a world wide scale, is a far more pressing environmental concern, in my opinion.
Looks like Rev Al is making a run for the White House:
Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House.
w3.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/22/wgore22.xml
What Suzuki really meant;
Stop listening to ANYBODY other than the fanatics.
A fanatic ex-presidential looser. That’s ok.
A flunky Brit so-call economist fanatic. Ok.
A fanatic, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life lib-leader. Ok
A fanatic $$CBC$$ fruit fly watcher …. oh, c’est moi.
We need a Yellow Party, with the motto “We’re Scared”. The Inconvenient Truth has shaken us to our Gore. The Yellow Party’s solution is to build an Arc and take on 2 of every species (except Liberals).
lorrie goldstien has a good commentary on scare mongering this morning.
http://torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/
Wow! Ya had to do some digging, Kate, to come up with working examples of the bizzaro world the GW freaks have designed with the Kyoto fraud but there it is: industry subsidized to sell/produce nothing….Producers actually having the cost of their production stolen from buyers by the government who then pays them not to deliver goods to the customer.
…..this has got to be the ultimate commie supply control economics ponzie scheme! The only scheme I’ve seen like this is where some degenerate comme ag-bureaucracy pays farmers not to grow certain crops to create false supply.
Well, I guess this is the new trend in commie economics..paying producers with our tax money not to produce….the greens/GW fanatics meet commie economics. I think it’s a good idea to just sit back and watch what this does to Europe before we jump in…we may be able to pick up one or 2 refugee EU industries as they flee this anti- productivity terror storm on their way to China.
BTW: Is it just me or does anyone else detect a new subtle “madness” about the good fruit fly doc? He has become foamy-mouthed mad with dissent to the GW gospels.
“”And besides, Baird is just scaremongering.””
A Greeny complaining about about scaremongering ?
Kettle, meet pot.
Nomdenet has nailed it . . . using the fruit fly guy’s own argument to prove he is wrong. If the giant WW1 + WW2 cost mega depression is going to happen, then spending a nickel on foreign credits is treason by any Canadian government.
The more hysterical they get, the more the end-game is starting on this giant ponzi scheme known as Kyoto.
and Al Gore as president . . . vewy, vewy, scawy.
nice comment, nomdenet. What is also interesting is that the environmentalist cultists focus almost exclusively on ‘big business’ as the Evil Agents of climate change. The average individual who buys and drives the SUV is not of interest to the cultists.
This leads one to a hunch that the real agenda of the cultists is, as usual, actions against capitalism and industrialism.
The cultists are not interested in the environment; they aren’t focused on getting the developing nations involved in any lowering of their pollutants, and, by ratio, these nations are the worst emitters and polluters in the world. The cultists say nothing about the fact that these nations are exempt from emissions and pollution standards.
And, the cultists aren’t interested in pollution – take a look at the city streets in which they live and hear their silence about the responsibility of the individuals to ‘keep a clean city’.
No, Kyotoism is a socialist scheme, to transfer money, lots of money, from the developed to the undeveloped world. Not as loans, but disguised as ‘fines’.
Kyotoism has absolutely nothing to do with a clean environment, for the moneys spent, are ‘fines’ or ‘carbon credits’. That means that you, the industrial nation, keep up your high pollution and emissions – and simply ‘pay for it’.
And the third world nations who receive the money, can build their cheap polluting factories, because they are exempt from any standards.
So, the result of Kyotoism, is an increase in global emissions and pollution.
The new technology to lower emissions and factory pollution are not yet fully developed and tested; they are expensive to research and develop – and use. The money should be spent on this research and development. Not on building cheap polluting factories in China for Mo Strong.
As the late, 20th century American philospher James Douglas Morrison once opined:
Come on people don’t you look so down
You know the rainman’s coming to town
He’ll change the weather, change your luck
And then he’ll teach you how to………………..
When I was young, they used to teach us parables – morality stories illustrating life lessons. As I recall, the parable about the rainmaker was the story of a stranger coming to the drought-stricken town, promising that in exchange for their material wealth, he would make it rain, thus saving their crops and way of life. The story ends badly for the town (but good for the rainmaker).
The global warming scaremongers are nothing more than modern rainmakers. They have not presented a scientific case for man-made global warming (which at a bare minimum would include steady-state carbon transfer equations) nor do they use empirical data in their arguments. Instead they use misrepresentation (ie CO2 levels leading rather than lagging temperature change), rhetoric and clairvoyance while refusing honest debate. Their target audience are the ignorant, the uninformed, and lazy, shallow thinkers who accept casual observance without the need for further research to examine root cause. Unfortunately, this latter group would seem to include most journalists and politicians.
It is extremely scary that this hoax has been allowed to perpetrate as far as it has. And when it is finally exposed and explained to the ignorant masses, all of the perpetraters – every media pundit, newscaster, politician and advocate that have helped promote this farce should be permanently purged from the forum of public debate, for they are either too stupid or too dishonest for their opinions to merit public exposure.
The best way those enviromentalists wackos can do to celebrate this EARTH DAY thing is to keep their mouths shut and cut off all that HOT AIR and this especialy gose for AL GORE the biggist source of HOT AIR in the world
Another whack job mouthpiece for Libs on cbc sunday(lib.senator Dawson)Now this man IS scary!Have to say,that I was surprised to hear Solomon and McNeil push back about where the Lib.party’s ‘estimates’are for how to fund Kyoto.
Copps had quite the column today also,slagging Baird/Cons.and surprise..praise for herself.Suggests TD Bank should ‘muzzle’Drummond for report on costs of Kyoto.Hmmmm,muzzling someone..isn’t that one of the big accusations Libs make re:PMSH.
ET says “The average individual who buys and drives the SUV is not of interest to the cultists.”
That’s because the benefits of Kyoto to a consumer are very difficult to quantify, it’s mostly costs, therefore the cultists don’t talk about the consumer.
Nor is the average volcano of interest to the cultists. But apparently your average volcano can spew out more CO2 than all the cars in North America.
However, I took note of David McGuinty’s comment on Duffy that “Baird has put forward no analysis on the related positive benefits. In fact, he deliberately ignored those benefits that come from better energy efficiency, lower energy use and jobs related to the benefits of emission reductions.”
Therefore, the Yellow Party will provide unseemly handouts to Bombardier to convert their Seadoo plants to SeaArc plants. The “benefit” that will accrue to the Yellow party will be to capture all 75 seats in Quebec.
Next, we will out-asymmetrically-equalize Dion with Danny Williams … the “benefits” to the Yellow Party in Atlantic Canada will be “fundamentally clear” as Martin used to say.
The enviro-fanatics will fight tooth and nail because they got everything they wanted in Kyoto. Why should they compromise?
\the cons are doing the right thing by doing an ambrace and extend. Most people, while worried about the potential of climate change, dont really understand it or believe it totally, they fear it because it us unknown, magical and unclear. Kind of like the monster and ghost stories you are told as a child.
Saw Dennis Dawson on CBC this morning. Now the complaint is they dont have the resources to properly critique the governments economic response.
Government will make the Kyoto supporters look like the radicals…..
OT but a nice mention in the second paragraph of Mark Steyn’s column in the Chicago Sun-Times:
http://tinyurl.com/2qv935
Damn PD. Very well said. I’ve never heard the comparison to the rainmaker before, and it is an excellent comparison of how these snake oil salesmen have swept onto the scene to liberate us of our wallets while promising something to fix nothing.
Hey, the rainman did come to our small town about 40 yrs ago, with a plan to increase our rainfall 50% of the previous year. (very bad drought). My husband, along with most of the farmers went, and were mesmerized and ready to take the bait. For 1.00/acre the rainman would put some machine on your land to emit something that would seed the clouds etc, and double the rainfall. When this was explained to me I laughed. First, we could not afford the 640.00 to do this, and many farmers had triple our land base. I asked a simple question not asked by one farmer at the meeting. How much rain did we get last year. About 1 inch, he responded. So, what will 1.5 inches of rain do for the crops. No one had given that a thought. No wonder we have kyototologist kooks out there. Someone somewhere must have bought the program as we had 4 inches of rain the next year and it never cost us a cent.
Has any provincial budget been brought down with millions for building dykes etc. Wonder what happen if that happened. Even in areas that have frequent floods, no action has been taken. Maybe the red/green group will campaign on megatons of money for dykes in southern AB.
There is only one way to point out the stupidity of the whole carbon BS thing and that is to use it and abuse it. Show it up for the scam it is, show it up for what it really is, another leftover wealth transfer scheme and nothing more.
The mindset of the promoters is such that it WILL be wide open to wide abuse.
How does one become involve in buying or selling carbon credits? I have absolutely no idea but would be quite interested in learning the mechanics of the whole thing. Any help appreciated.
The net result of purchasing carbon credits: zero real reduction in carbon. Farmers in SK (good for them!) are now receiving cheques from a US company that has sold their carbon credits for zero tillage farming. They’ve been farming this way for many, many years, and now will get extra cash for it. Zero additional, real reduction in carbon for the world, but someone with lots of money can buy “credits” so they can feel better about owning 5 huge homes, jetting between them, and producing more carbon in a year than most of us will in a lifetime. Anyone note the emperor has no clothes?
Nomdenet said:
“That’s because the benefits of Kyoto to a consumer are very difficult to quantify, it’s mostly costs, therefore the cultists don’t talk about the consumer.”
That’s because there are NO benefits to the consumer. Suzuki’s future is lose/lose for the consumer. If Suzuki’s right, the consumer, ie. you and me who don’t own a gun, are pooched by collapse of the environment, and, apparently, the economy. If Suzuki’s wrong, we’re pooched regardless by the failure of the economy trying to fight off the Goreites and the Kyotophiles. Either way, if we don’t soon bury the Goreites et al, the survival plan will be to stockpile food, fuel and ammo, not necessarily in that order, if your family is even to have a future.
I posted the following on Joanne’s Journey…it’s applicable here as well.
Climate change has been a regular occurance since time and the planet earth began. No politition will ever have the ability to change that. The location of the oil discoveries world wide indicate that at different times, different areas have enjoyed near-tropical conditions sometime in the past. Who knows, they may again in the future as well. But it won’t be because of anything mankind does, it will be in spite of what mankind does.
The whole global warming nonsense is about nothing more than money…who’s got it, who wants it and how are they going to get it. Unfortunately we seem to be hell-bent on transferring that money for nothing more than a feel-good-we’ve-done-our-bit reason. Carbon credits are not going to reduce pollution one iota, and will probably increa
I’m quite disappointed that there have been NO ‘Happy Earth Day’greetings yet here at SDA!! Wondering how all of you will celebrate.I’ll be busy separating my toilet paper rolls into single-squares,then drive my suv over 200 kms to work.Kate,can you put up a post area for Happy Earth Day Helpful Hints????
oops….missed my last sentence.
increase pollution as the recipients of our largesse industrialize more.
I hope that Dion & Suzuki end up so tight, that ultimately we’ll see a hotel room scene a la Borat between the two of them.
I’m celebrating earth dat by running the diesel enfinr in my boat for the next 10 hours at high idle.
oops sorry about the typos, shouldn’t type in the dark.
Skip, the reason I don’t say “NO benefits” is that if we reduced the purchase of oil from Islamofascists that would benefit the infidel consumer by increasing the chances of keeping one’s head. But, I doubt that was David McGuinty’s line of reasoning.
I like your thoughts on “if your family is even to have a future”.
We’ve lulled ourselves into a cocoon of thinking that it’s not necessary to defend ourselves. Today in a remake of the Rawhide TV series, the wagon master wouldn’t yell “circle the wagons”; he’d send the women and children out to negotiate with the attackers.
Ain’t gonna happen but can you just imagine Gore as President and Dion as Prime Minister. What a hell of a love in that would be!
I’ll join the Earth Day celebrations, by lamenting the fact that the environmental movement has now strayed so far from Science that humanity is not considered part of the environment and a healthy Earth.
I’m an agnostic, but I’d never go as far as to endow God/Mother Nature-like powers to lowly humans. When I meet anyone at all brainwashed by this Global Warming bs, I bring up solar flares, volcanic activity and methane emissions from animals. How are us humans going to stop this?
I’ll be bike riding, as Spring is finally here, rejoicing the industrialization and human ingenuity that created bicycle factories and paved roads.
Survey over at CTV:
“Will you be making an effort to go green for Earth Day?
Yes
No
I’ve already done all that I can”
Very encouraging results! Yes: 27%; No: 48%; I’ve already done all that I can: 25%.
So, the percenatge of respondents who don’t seem to be buying the GW scaremongering is a whopping 73%.
Another poll gone horribly wrong. Yeah!!
P.S. It appears that voting’s still open.
If Canada is seriously considering joining the US and others in the Asia6 or whatever it ends up being designated, you would think at least some of the so-called experts would applaud this seeing as they would be bringing India and China into the mix. China may really go for this after being caught red handed (pardon the pun) enhancing products with melamine. It’s a way of saving face. Course the moonbats can see all the money they were set to rake in on the carbon credit scam flying out the window until they dream up the next piece of BS.
I recently cut my carbon footprint to zero and did it without scams like credits and such.
I find the mud hut quite airy and accommodating, and a diet of grasshoppers and slugs isn’t as bad as people make it out to be.
I just tried to vote in their poll but it said I have already voted. (I haven’t) It would probably work with any answer but No. (Which I voted)
But did you notice at the CBC site where Suzuki has his rant printed … right under the rant is a big ad for a high performance Cadillac!
Check it out here …
More madness from CBC
I am entertained.
Get your indulgence$$$$$$ here:
Neutralize Your Pollution
http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=270
Disclaimer: This commenter has no interest, financial, or, otherwise, in posting this information.
Watched Sunday’s Question Period today on CTV to hear Minister John Baird, but he was interviewed by Giggles Tabor and didn’t get asked anything of note.
Cut to Craigie, but he was totally involved in his orgasmic bout of self-gratification again; kept on and on about “Harper’s stylist cum spiritualist.”
And I mean ON and ON… Is this really the issue we plebes in the imaginary socialist country of Canada should worry about?
Check it out at Offset World. It’s simple just sell credits to whomever will pay you. There is no way to measure any effect whatsoever, so why not get in on it? It’s just snake oil folks. Gore does it and Suzuki is one of his ad-men. You can do it too!
Offset World
Remember HIV/AIDS? Remember when everyone in Hollywood would wear a red ribbon at every award ceremony and if they won they would thank their courageous gay friends – all of whom had AIDS – and then everyone went on with their lives. I miss the good days, before Global Warming.
I wonder how much longer the MSM will be able to put this GW scare garbage on the front page before people get sick of it.
“I’m quite disappointed that there have been NO ‘Happy Earth Day’greetings yet here at SDA!!”
Most folks will probably ignore the fact that today is Earth Day but not me. Nope, I’m a sadistic bugger. I pledge to spend at least 4 hours designing and building the sign that I’m going to use to protest Al Gore when he visits Calgary tomorrow.
It’s not much, I know, but we’ve got to think globally while acting locally.
The whole Chicken Little campaign will go down in history as irrefutable proof of what we say herein about the stupidity, guillibility and mental disorder of the left.
Soon enough the alarmist campaign will run out of steam. Something so crazy and so opposed by the silent majority cannot sustain itself and will just quietly go away, like so many other fads.
People, when they realize that they’ll lose their livelihoods if our governments go along with the Kyoto madness, will oppose the more extreme ideas being pushed, preferring a balanced, sane, safe approach.
The mainstream doesn’t like extremism, after all.
Any loss of jobs in Canada will be more than offset by the jobs created in the “new green economy.” What this economy is,we don’t know. How many jobs will it create,we don’t know. What companies will be leading it,we don’t know.What will they be manufacturing,green technology,of course. What is green technology,we don’t know. Will it be tax-payered subsidized,we don’t know.Just trust us,says steffette,lizzie, and davey boy,it is the only way to save the planet.A vote for us is a vote for the future.Ka-ching.
I’ve decided to build my own line of cars and open up my own production plant. These cars will have the best fuel mileage of any car never built. I plan to build none of these cars on a yearly basis, but based on my plants output=0, i should be able to make billions.
Before anyone starts getting critical both Al Gore and Maurice Strong have decided to invest in my company. A grand opening ceremony is planned for next week, and will be attended by Stephane Dion. There will be free hot dogs for everyone(knife and fork provided).
Also, throwing partisan politics aside, Elizabeth May has agreed not to attend after backroom meetings with Dion.
Re: carbon credits represent the value of doing nothing, which should actually have a cost, such as increasing pollution, as ET and others say.
Well, that didn’t stop the tulip mania in Holland either, where people lost their wealth speculating in, get this, tulips. Carbon credits are the tulips of the 21st century.
How will the first world develop truly clean technologies (not the sequestering garbage), where we can once and for all convert from carbon fuels, if we send our wealth to nations like China that will use it to build coal-fired generators?
As for Africa, apparently they can sink into a cesspool of aids, malaria and grinding poverty, prevented from using their natural resources to modernize.
http://www.mytelus.com/new_homepage/
Harper vs Suzuki
We dont’ celebrate Earth Day here. Instead, we give a moment of silence for the victims of Lenin.
The inflationary pressure of this system is worrisome to say the least. Forget the extra costs involved in purchasing credits, but add to that the volatility of said market and the reduction in production….I think I’m going to call my bank on Monday and lock my mortgage rate for 10 years.
Good one paulstuff. Reserve two of those marvellous cars for me! They won’t take up much room in my garage, and the mileage can’t be beat.
The thing about Canada’s role in reducing GW is that even if we buy into the Suzuki/Gore/Dion ‘rainmakers’ philosophy we are still going to end up like King Canute. Canada can begger herself to buy carbon credits and after we send our last job and dollar overseas the tides will still rise. We have to look at a real solution and it sure isn’t carbon offsets. If we want to have a real solution and prevent further escalation of the so-called GW problem then we have to do two things immediately. First stop all foreign aid to third world countries: by subsidizing third world economies through charity we enable a burgeoning birth rate in areas of the world that people sustain themselves. Secondly we must immediately cease immigration across the board; we can no longer import refugees and immigrants from areas of the world that are unable to sustain their way of life. If the earth is a finite resource then it goes without question that Canada is a finite resource. As long as we keep bringing in refugees and immigrants we will keep building houses and highways thereby reducing the life sustaining arable land that our future generations will require. We must come to the realization that Canada must be the “Future Ark” of mankind and as such it may be time to rise the gangplank. Sarcasm on/off depending on your point of view.