It’s a hoax, folks.
Don’t feel too badly. MSNBC fell for it, too. Of course, they’ve made a habit of that.

Hot air ain’t worth what it used to be;

In July, the right to spew out one tonne of CO2 from a chimney would have cost a power generator E29.33, but yesterday it could be bought for only E18.25 ($34.14).
The sudden collapse of the carbon price mirrors the rout in the wider commodity markets. Carbon peaked in July, its price summit occurring within 10 days of the peak in the crude oil price.
Since then, everything from steel to potash has been tumbling and you might think it unsurprising that carbon has tracked the general retreat. Hedge funds and other financial investors dabbled in EUAs as they fiddled with palm oil and soya.
The rush to convert hedge fund investments into cash and US Treasury bills has resulted in rapid closure of positions on various carbon exchanges.There is a wider question about the ETS that must be addressed, and that is whether it is a sensible mechanism to regulate carbon.
[…]
It’s a measure of the speed at which politics moves in response to market prices that the green agenda has almost vanished from media political chatter.
Carbon’s falling price spells companies going bust, the loss of jobs and the shredding of political reputations. Over the next year, no politician with re-election hopes will back a policy that would triple the price of carbon for industry and raise consumers’ energy costs.

Any bets on how long before Gore and Strong (pdf) join the federal bailout bread line?

In order to reduce emissions from diesel engines (PDF)

Environment Canada has established strict new emissions standards for new on-road, heavy-duty diesel vehicles and engines. Starting with the 2007 model year, compliance with these emission standards will effectively require that new heavy-duty diesel engines be equipped with the next generation of advanced emission control systems. These systems are very sensitive to sulphur levels in the diesel fuel, and cannot tolerate the levels of sulphur allowed in the current on-road LSD. Therefore, Environment Canada has established regulations to significantly lower the maximum allowable amount of sulphur in diesel fuel and thereby enable the effective operation of advanced emission control systems.”

Calgary Herald, Oct.25, 2008;

Alberta’s diesel supply crunch — expected to continue into next month — could result in a shortage of everything from produce to electronics on store shelves, warns the province’s trucking industry.

Reflecting something I was told about refinery difficulties while in the province’s southeast oil patch last week, where a shortage of diesel is forcing a slow down in activity –

“…low sulphur demands make the [refining] system more fragile to loss of output. Not only in more units but also critical paths.”

But we have a number of industry experts among our readers, so perhaps they can shed more light on this.

Note REVISED SCHEDULE – The End Of Civilization As We Know It has been pre-empted by the End Of Civilization As We Know It.

A few years ago, I dropped in to my bank manager and asked her about throwing a few bucks a month into mutual funds. After going through all the various packages, she came to the last and explained, “This option is a little higher risk, but has been offering the highest returns.”
I looked at her over the desk and said, “If I was interested in ‘high risk, high return’ I’d be selling crack.”
Some useful context.
Open thread on today’s market meltdowns.

Get this man an air guitar!

Guilty on all counts, 13 years to the day from his acquittal on his first crimes.
Via Foxnews.

Pill-osi.
The Anchoress revisits her suspicions…

It seems to me that there is an illusion being worked in the middle of all this frenzy; if during this crisis, the Democrats can still worry about laying themselves out for ACORN, and Harry Reid can take the time to try to sneak a ban on oil shale mining into new legislation, then that tells me something. It tells me there is time and room, here, and that more is driving this than we can see. It makes me wonder if we should not hit the brakes before we go over a cliff, because we couldn’t clearly see the bend in the road.

Timing is everything…

“Behind the Housing Crash – Confessions from an Insider”

Full of stories guaranteed to make your blood boil, bring shame to the banking industry, and packed full of charty-goodness (35 charts no less!) this has been the single largest project I’ve ever embarked on. I did my best to write a clear, concise, but above all, entertaining book that I hope achieves its aim of explaining what happened, how the housing crash came to be, and why your house is all of the sudden worth $150,000 less than what it used to be.

By our own Captain Capitalism! His goal is to outsell Nancy Pelosi – we have enough hourly readers to accomplish that!
You can check out more, including how to order at Amazon.

Witness to an accident.
h/t C.B.

Writ large.

(I will confess, however, to watching Fox News this morning in the sole hope of witnessing Geraldo Rivera and his wind-speed-thingie swept out to sea.)

Jason “my law degree DOES NOT smell like Crackerjacks” Cherniak ponders his options….

I could start up a donation link on my sidebar and hold the money in trust, but I don’t want to try it only to find out that people aren’t really interested. I also don’t want to seem like a whiny person who wants everybody else to protect him. I think the answer is to put it all out there, as I have above, and let my commenters and other bloggers express their opinions. Hopefully, such an online brainstorming session will have some benefit no matter what the general view is.

Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. A lawyer is considering soliciting donations from his readership to pay the bills on a libel suit. Not a suit he’s defending himself against – a suit he’s threatening to file.
Because he can’t afford a lawyer.
He does not volunteer how the spoils might or might not be divided should he prevail.
Part of me hopes he goes ahead with this. The precedent could prove quite useful around here.

“Georgia is in the middle of a war and they are in 10th place.”

A reader emails – “The article is practically a parody of itself. Naturally the Globe has forbidden comments on this gem.”

Brian Minchin said his son, Michael Langan, was as healthy as a horse, and used to walk four or five miles a day in pursuit of aluminum cans, trying to scrounge together enough money for some beer and marijuana.
He said his son may have been drunk or high on marijuana when he was confronted by two police officers in an alley close to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg’s downtown core. Police say they ordered Mr. Langan to drop a knife, and when he refused they were forced to taser him.
[…]
“He was asked to drop the knife or something and he didn’t do it. I guess they asked him several times. Maybe he was drunk. He probably was drunk because he gets kind of crazy and brave when he’s drunk,” he said. “People think they’re Superman when they’re drunk, even adults.”
[…]
He said he doesn’t have many memories of his son, but will always cherish the thought of the day they spent together when the Grey Cup was last in Winnipeg. Mr. Minchin scalped half a dozen tickets and then went into the stadium to watch the game with his son. They smoked joints and drank beers at halftime, he said.

Is good enough for a Barenaked Lady.
Now, watch for the Black-bashers calls for the Canadian government to intervene on Steven Page’s behalf to begin in three, two, one…

Link

h/t to Glenn.