Free Republic

A LITTLE more than 100 years ago, president Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet steamed into Sydney Harbour. Hundreds of thousands of Australians cheered the 16 battleships that would circumnavigate the globe as a demonstration that America was now a Pacific and a world power. On board the gunboat Panay, patrolling the Philippine archipelago, a young midshipman named John Sidney McCain - my grandfather - shared in the navy's pride at Roosevelt's audacious gesture. Only two years out of the naval academy, my grandfather would shortly be promoted to ensign and assigned to the flagship USS Connecticut for the fleet's triumphant...

NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) - The first auction in the United States of permits allowing power plants to emit a greenhouse gas raised nearly $39 million, which states plan to use to protect consumers from any higher energy bills that could result from capping the pollution. The auction kicked off the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an agreement by ten states to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions from more than 230 power plants in January. The states, from Maryland to Maine, are taking action in the absence of guidance from the Bush Administration on how to regulate the gases widely...

What is the connection between the bankrupt Lehman Brothers and the likelihood that in four years' time our electricity bills will jump another 25 per cent (on top of the rises likely from soaring coal and gas prices)? The answer is that, before its collapse, Lehman was pitching to become the leader in the vast trade created by the new worldwide regulatory system to "fight climate change" by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide. The biggest money-spinners will be the schemes whereby industry will pay for permits to emit CO2 at so much a ton, either directly to governments or by...

Results of a program using Aspen’s Canary Initiative to sell carbon offset credits to Democratic National Convention attendees are a little underwhelming. The program, set up by the DNC Host Committee through the Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau and rolled out about a week before the convention started, raised a total of $18.34 worth of Canary Tags...

Sign Kyoto – fund a war Mark Henderson August 11 2008 New Zealanders are starting to get nervous about what might happen to the money they are paying the Russians for failing to meet their Kyoto targets. As reported in our feature on New Zealand and Kyoto, the poor kiwis are paying the Russians 4.1 billion dollars by 2012 to purchase carbon credits to offset the increase in CO2 emissions beyond mandated Kyoto targets. Kiwiblog is reporting that there is no mechanism for New Zealand to avoid handing over this money even if it is used to fund the war...

The eastern Colorado wind turbine tapped for the Democratic National Convention's carbon-offset program has one problem: It doesn't generate any electricity. Convention organizers are now being questioned for their eagerness to market those credits to delegates. The DNC has contracted with Vermont-based NativeEnergy to offer delegates "Green challenge" carbon offsets to soften the environmental impact of convention travel. That money is then invested in carbon-free "green" energy sources around the country, including a wind turbine installed this year by the Wray School District RD-2. But a Face The State investigation reveals the district's turbine has never produced marketable energy due...

Carbon credits' dirty secret Energy companies and speculators make windfall profits while consumers are hit hardAt the bottom of the house of sand on which the Kyoto accord and world carbon trading markets are built, there's a leaking foundation. Otherwise known as a carbon credit. A carbon credit is a permit or, alternatively, a unit of currency, allowing a country or corporation to emit one metric tonne of carbon dioxide, linked to man-made global warming. Carbon credits are the main mechanism by which Kyoto transfers wealth from developed nations like Canada to developing ones like China. They are also the...

A whole new industry is springing up that will dwarf Al Gore's ripping off of the population through Global Warming. Companies are figuring out how to work the ridiculous "Carbon Credits" debacle to make big bucks. Rhodia, is a French Company, makes adipic acid which is a chemical used in the production of nylon. They have moved their operation to South Korea and Brazil. Why? A by-product of their manufacturing process is the creation of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is over 300 times more potent as an atmospheric warming agent than carbon dioxide. Rhodia destroys the nitrous oxide...

DENVER - Planners of the Democratic National Convention are limiting the party's carbon footprint through a unique partnership with an Indian-focused environmental business. The Democratic National Convention Committee began working with NativeEnergy Inc. this spring to purchase carbon offsets for the dozens of convention staff who are flying, driving and otherwise polluting Denver as they carry out the big event. Party organizers are now asking that delegates, members of the media and other political officials who will be attending the late August gathering do the same. Delegates to the convention with the highest percentage of members offsetting their carbon emissions...

The price of European emission permits is rising so rapidly that German companies are threatening to leave the country.... And the environment may, in the end, be no better off. They sat silently through two lectures, but then they couldn't control their anger any longer. The civil servants from the Environment Ministry, the Environment Agency and the German Emissions Trading Authority made it sound easy for industry to take up carbon trading. It was just too much for the managers to tolerate. "If that's the shape the trading will take, we will simply move our cement operation to Ukraine," a...

Airlines Now Offer Carbon offsets

A research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has uncovered evidence of explosive volcanic eruptions deep beneath the ice-covered surface of the Arctic Ocean. Such violent eruptions of splintered, fragmented rock--known as pyroclastic deposits -- were not thought possible at great ocean depths because of the intense weight and pressure of water and because of the composition of seafloor magma and rock.

DUBAI: Doha Bank is in talks with JPMorgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley to help it sell $1bn of Islamic bonds to fund the Gulf’s first carbon credits exchange. The sale will probably happen in the first quarter of next year after being delayed from this October, Doha Bank chief executive R Seetharaman said in an interview in Dubai yesterday. “I want to make sure we have all the regulatory approvals for our Energy City project and that the borrowing is cost- effective,” Seetharaman said. Seetharaman said last year Doha Bank was working with the San Francisco, California-based RainTrust...

LONDON, June 9 - The World Bank on Monday priced a $25 million bond linked to United Nations-approved carbon emission offset credits, the market's first such bond, lead manager Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe said. Payments on the bond are linked to Certified Emissions Reduction credits , which are issued under the Clean Development Mechanism, a trading scheme that allows rich nations to invest in clean energy projects in developing countries. Trade in CERs, which holders can either sell for profit or use to meet emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol, more than doubled to $13 billion last year, according to...

Evidence of serious flaws in the multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credits has been uncovered by a BBC World Service investigation. The credits are generated by a United Nations-run scheme called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The mechanism gives firms in developing countries financial incentives to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But in some cases, carbon credits are paid to projects that would have been realised without external funding. The findings reinforce doubts that the CDM is leading to real emission cuts, which is not good news for the effort to combat climate change. And in one case a company...

An unprecedentedly radical government grab for control of the American economy will be debated this week when the Senate considers saving the planet by means of a cap-and-trade system to ration carbon emissions. The plan is co-authored (with John Warner) by Joe Lieberman, an ardent supporter of John McCain, who supports Lieberman's legislation and recently spoke about "the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring." A carbon tax would be too clear and candid for political comfort. It would clearly be what cap-and-trade deviously is, a tax, but one with...

Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme. Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say. The criticism centres on the UN's clean development...

TORSHAVN (AFP) - Nobel Peace Prize-winner and former US vice president Al Gore said Monday that he believes Washington will sign up to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen in 2009. ADVERTISEMENT "The United States will definitely join the next treaty," Gore said at a conference on global warming and rising oceans in the Faroe Islands. "The good news is that after the next (presidential, November 2008) elections, we will have a new politics." The United States was the only industrialised economy not to sign up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, but a new deal has to be agreed...

Al Gore bought carbon credits to cover his "global footprint." Sounds impressive, but in reality, if I thought the Earth was in such peril, paying to help maintain the Redwood Forest is a strange payoff. When any claim is repeated over and over, the mantra seems to become fact. One's rational thought and reason are "tweaked," and we just believe. "Yes we are in a warming, but CO2 has not been proven as the cause," says John R. Christy, who is a partial recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and a climatologist. "Mother Nature simply operates at a level of...

In the mail today, I received a catalog from "The Lighter Side" (Memorable Gifts That Delight, Entertain and Amuse). On page 11, amidst the assorted tidbits that include Betty Boop, Elvis, and John Wayne items, I came across the "NEW! > Save the Earth One Turn At A Time!" Earth-Opoly game. A steal at only $29.98, the advertisement says, "100% recyclable board game teaches easy 'green' tips as players become caretakers of wondrous locations around the planet and increase property values by collecting Carbon Credits and trading them for clean air!" While encouraging a clean environment is good, the link...

BISMARCK — The North Dakota Public Service Commission got a walk-through Wednesday of the congressional bill that would create a “cap and trade” system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Some don’t like what they’ve learned. It’s the Lieberman-Warner bill, which is expected to be debated in the Senate in June. It would set up a system in which coal-fired plants, farms, industrial processors, manufacturers, utility companies and others will be issued a set number of allowances which will then be decreased over the next few decades to match the decrease in their emissions, until 2031, when their...

Sen. John McCain and his staff have been adamant for days that his upcoming overseas trip to Britain, France and Israel is not political. /snip ...Apparently, though, there will still be room for fundraising. McCain's campaign has sent out an invitation for a March 20 luncheon at Spencer House -- the neo-classical home built for an ancestor of Diana, the late Princess of Wales -- "by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon. Nathaniel Rothschild." The price to attend is $1000 to $2,300. And the dress code for the event? "Lounge suits" -- British for business...

The founder of the Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping a legal debate will settle the global warming debate once and for all. John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits. "Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said. "Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once joked that Sacramento was "death," apparently doesn't want to spend many nights in the graveyard. As the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the governor has been spending nearly every night in his Brentwood mansion, shuttling between Sacramento and Southern California in his private jet. The governor uses his own money to pay for his Gulfstream flights, which price out at about $10,000 an hour, the Times reports. And what about the cost to the environment? The governor's staff says he purchases "carbon credits."

By now most people are aware that the founder of The Weather Channel, John Coleman, said global warming is "the greatest scam in history" last November. On Monday, while speaking at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change being held in New York City, Coleman took his criticisms further by advocating that all those involved in the sale and marketing of carbon credits, including Al Gore, should be sued "to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”

It may come as a surprise to conservatives, but University of Ottawa physics Professor Denis G. Rancourt suggests that the real purpose of the global warming myth is to hide the threat posed by profit driven corporations: "I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized." Certainly...

GLOBAL WARMING IS a planet-sized problem, so policy solutions tend to aim for the grandest possible scale. The signatories of the Kyoto Protocol have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions at a national level, while laws in various countries and states seek to reform entire industries.

Clean and Green no longer gets "Green-e" stamp of approval. In dozens of shops and restaurants around Boulder, customers can find signs proclaiming "This Business Is Wind Powered" above the logo for local company Clean and Green. The whole idea may strike some customers as counter-intuitive -- after all, where are the windmills? Clearly, not on the roof, not in the yard and not even in the city limits. It's possible the windmills aren't even in Colorado. Clean and Green is one of many brokers in the United States selling renewable energy credits, or RECs, which allow customers with no...

Can We Offset Global Warming By Geoengineering The Climate With Aerosols? Volcano eruption on Reunion Island. Should humans deliberately mimic the effect of volcanic aerosols to try to offset global warming? (Credit: iStockphoto/Julien Grondin) ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2008) — Concerned that energy system transformations are proceeding too slowly to avoid risks from dangerous human-induced climate change, many scientists are wondering whether geoengineering (the deliberate change of the Earth's climate) may help counteract global warming. Sulfate aerosols, commonly released by volcanoes, serve to scatter incoming solar energy in the stratosphere, preventing it from reaching the surface. To investigate the feasibility of...

Wisconsin farmers are used to hard work and hard times, but now some are making a little easy money off their land by cashing in on growing environmental awareness and selling carbon credits to big corporations. Voluntary, but legally binding, contracts for these so-called carbon credits are traded on the Chicago Climate Exchange, and the agreements are subject to audits and verification. "It's been about an extra dollar or two an acre for the farming operation For cropland to qualify for carbon credits, it must be farmed with no-till or conservation tillage practices. Not tilling up the land each season...

Energy Disaster Looming [Iain Murray] There are strong suggestions circulating that the Administration is being firmly lobbied to announce a cap-and-trade scheme for electricity utilities in the State of the Union address as a 'legacy' item and in a futile attempt to bind the hands of an incoming President. This would be a disaster. At a time when the Fed and the rest of the Administration is doing its best to avoid recession, what Mike Huckabee might call the "Wall Street Lobby" within the White House is doing its best to counteract all that effort. Given that the Bureau of...

Al Gore was right about one thing. The debate about global warming is over. Global Warming has been exposed as a complete hoax. It’s just the latest Socialist scheme to control People’s lives. Global mean temperatures have risen perhaps 0.6o C over the past 100 years. But to attribute that insignificant rise in temperatures solely to Mankind is preposterous. First, we have to assume that temperatures have always been measured accurately. How exact do you suppose the measuring devices were 100 years ago? 200 years ago? 500 years ago? What did we use to measure global temperatures 10,000 years ago?...

Earlier this month Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson refused to briefly answer a question about global warming at a debate in Iowa, suggesting 30 seconds wasn't long enough to lay out his views on the issue. During a recent telephone interview with Radio Iowa, Thompson was given an unlimited amount of time to talk about global warming. He said it was a problem. "We don't know the extent to which it's warming. We don't know whether or not it's part of a cycle. We've had cooling periods in our country. We don't know the extent to which man-made causes are...

For the most execrable behavior of bewythching the general public and causing panics and expenses to citizenry, and for making pretense beyond that which Satan the devil could ever conjure, we goode people of this land must cause thee above sons of belial to repenteth of their neer-do-welling through the appropriate punishments affordeth us by Divine direction.Sir James Hansen of NASA, Madame Heidi Cullen of the Weather Channel and Sir Albert Gore with the accompaniment of their false so-called sciences have been leading the disgusting practice of imagineering apocalyptic consequences, and so profiting thereby, despite the objections of many calmer...

Every person in Britain would be given a "carbon limit" under radical government plans to limit emissions, it was announced today. Everybody could be issued with a "carbon credit card" which they would swipe when buying petrol, paying their utility bills, purchasing food, or travelling. People with lifestyles that are damaging to the environment - such as frequent fliers, motorists who drive gas-guzzling vehicles or people who live in large homes with poor insulation - would have to buy more carbon credits from greener individuals. Foreign Secretary David Miliband floated the idea when he was Environment Secretary and the Government...

OSLO, Norway - Saying it's "time to make peace with the planet," Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday with a call for humanity to rise up against a looming climate crisis and stop waging war on the environment. The United States and China — the world's leading emitters of greenhouse gases — will stand accountable before history if they don't take the lead in that global challenge, the former vice president said. "Without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the Earth itself," Gore said in his acceptance speech. "Now, we and the Earth's climate...

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize on Monday and urged the United States and China to make the boldest moves on climate change or "stand accountable before history for their failure to act." In accepting the prize he shared with the U.N. climate panel, the former vice president said humanity risks sliding down a path of "mutually assured destruction."

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Dec 7 - Traders are already betting on a new global climate deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, as talks in Bali on Friday inched towards a two-year negotiating agenda for an expanded global climate pact. Financiers are buying rights to emit planet-warming greenhouses gases after present Kyoto commitments expire in 2012, hoping that countries will agree new, tougher emissions limits -- and drive demand for such permits. "It's a great bet," said one trader attending the talks on the tropical Indonesian island. The new, more speculative offsets came at a substantial discount, the trader, who declined...

SYDNEY, Australia - Peter Garrett _ the towering, baldheaded former singer of the disbanded Australian rock group Midnight Oil _ continued his long, strange tour from pop star to politician Thursday when he was named Australia's environment minister. ADVERTISEMENT With his wild dancing and strident voice, Garrett was one of Australia's most recognizable singers until his band broke up in 2002, after belting out politically charged hits for more than 25 years. Garrett founded Midnight Oil when he was a law student in 1973, but the semi-punk rock group did not achieve global fame until its 1987 track "Beds are...

SYDNEY, Australia - Incoming Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Tuesday he had a telephone chat with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore about global warming, underscoring Australia's new focus on protecting the environment. Rudd's Labor Party on Saturday swept conservative Prime Minister John Howard's government from power after 11 years. Ratifying the Kyoto pact on limiting greenhouse gas emissions was one of two major campaign promises likely to rile close ally, the United States. While security, economic and diplomatic ties between Canberra and Washington will remain friendly under Rudd's government, the White House is losing a key ally in its...

Gov. Spitzer's boast last week that power plants will soon have to pay for the right to emit carbon dioxide is just the latest sign of his unseemly obeisance to over-the-top environmentalism. Spitzer told Congress how New York has joined 10 northeastern states in a Kyoto-style project called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), meant to combat global warming. In 2009, these states will force power plants to buy CO2 "allowances," which will be traded on the open market. Plants will have to get one credit for each ton of CO2 they emit. The supply of credits, to start, will...

Japan announces carbon credit deal with Hungary Friday 23rd November, 2007 Japan has announced it intends to buy carbon credits from Hungary to become the world's biggest buyer of carbon credits. Japan's trade ministry believes the agreement with Hungary could lead to similar deals with Poland and the Czech Republic. Under the Kyoto Protocol, Japan has pledged to cut emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels. It is currently running at 8 per cent above. Buying carbon credits from Hungary is bound to bring criticism from other countries as the credits do not result in cuts in emissions.

After years of debates and documentaries, Congress is poised to address the issue of climate change. The Warner-Lieberman bill is the vehicle and it’s headed for a bumpy ride, as industries mobilize to set up roadblocks to stall or wreck the passage of legislation that could cost them millions. Advocates are equally passionate, and they include some heavy hitters. Co-sponsor John Warner (R-Va.), who is retiring, plans to make it his “top priority for the next 14 months that I’m blessed to be in this Senate,” he said. An industry lobbyist said Warner pressed Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and...

LISBON, Portugal (AP) -- Senior officials from the European Union, three U.S. states, Canada, Norway and New Zealand launched an international effort Monday to fight climate change by building a global carbon trading market. The International Carbon Action Partnership aims to add momentum toward low-carbon economies by grouping countries and regions that cap and trade environmentally damaging carbon dioxide emissions. Under the scheme, local authorities place an annual ceiling on carbon dioxide emissions and issue "pollution permits" to companies, which can then buy and sell them. ICAP intends to push for a worldwide marketplace that will allow cross-border trading in...

GOP Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, faulted Democratic Chairwoman Barbara Boxer's leadership of the committee this morning in the most recent of a series of attacks on her handling of global warming legislation. At a hearing on human health effects of global warming, Inhofe implied that she was distracting members with studies of what might happen from global warming rather than focusing on "what will happen if we legislate global warming." Inhofe believes that any mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions will bear too great a cost for the economy for too...

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

(YINCHUAN, China) -- Agriculture contributes more to total global greenhouse-gas emissions than the entire world transportation sector, according to a United Nations-sponsored panel. To Eric Rey, that sounds like the makings of a business plan. On a recent day, Mr. Rey pulled on a pair of rubber boots and waded into a muddy rice paddy -- the place where he hopes to battle global warming and earn a fortune for his budding biotech company. Mr. Rey, president and chief executive of Arcadia Biosciences of Davis, Calif., has ventured to this remote corner of northern China -- a patchwork of flower...

Hollywood sending mixed messages on global warming By: GARY GENTILE - Associated Press LOS ANGELES ---- From "green carpets" at awards shows to organic fruit served to actors on sets, Hollywood is going all out to promote itself as being environmentally hip. But is it all just show? No amount of public service announcements or celebrities driving hybrid cars can mask the fact that movie and TV production is a gritty industrial operation, consuming enormous amounts of power to feed bright lights, run sophisticated cameras, and feed a cast of thousands. Studios' back lots host cavernous soundstages that must be...