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Editor’s Note: This column was co-authored by Dennis Mitchell.Some years ago, a telegenic televangelist built quite an empire, before publicly falling from grace and adopting a less opulent life style. But back then he liked big homes and Lear jets with Rolls Royce engines and, even though Dennis’s lab primarily did environmental monitoring, his chief pilot came there because he needed demanding analyses on the methanol fuels he used for extra thrust. The lab did the analyses uneventfully for several months, until it discovered an unpaid invoice. When Dennis inquired about it, the pilot said, “Sometimes he doesn’t pay certain...

DPA Much of Germany's energy supply still comes from burning brown coal. Europe's once celebrated cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions has languished. The economic crisis has caused the price of emissions licenses to plummet, and a recent remedy to the problem has been rejected by EU lawmakers. Climate policy expert Felix Matthes tells SPIEGEL ONLINE that an opportunity has been squandered. The European Parliament on Tuesday voted down a proposal to make it more expensive for companies to burn fossil fuels, in what environmental advocates are calling a major setback in the fight against climate change.

What today’s closing graph may look like: A Tiljander-Mann hockey stickHmmm, looks like they might read WUWT, that headline below looks familiar.CO2 prices in freefall as traders despair over EU vote 24 Jan 2013 11:26 Last updated: 24 Jan 2013 13:44LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters Point Carbon) – European carbon prices went into freefall on Thursday, dropping 40 percent at one point to a record low 2.81 euros, after members of the EU Parliament’s industry committee voted against a plan to rescue the ailing market.  http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2151825==============================================================Yesterday’s close was 4.74 euros. The market hasn’t closed yet, so there could be some...

Perhaps greens just aren't the good guysAnalysis "Why should we sacrifice 10 per cent of our income today to make Bill Gates better off?" asked an MP. "As the world's [second] richest man, he doesn't need our sacrifice." The second richest man in the world, Bill Gates, is a proxy in this rhetorical question. The MP, a former Cabinet minister, is raising a fascinating and rarely asked moral question. Should we make ourselves poorer to save the rich of the future some insignificant amount of money: an amount so small, it will be a rounding error? The argument he builds...

Pending auctions of greenhouse-gas permits will benefit only California’s government. It's probably no coincidence that Gov. Jerry Brown recently launched a website to scare Californians into embracing his global-warming hype. The state is about to launch a cap-and-trade scheme that potentially will raise billions of dollars for the government, ostensibly to fight global warming.In reality, the money is likely to be diverted to more mundane political uses – like backfilling the huge budget hole perpetuated by Mr. Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

California Air Resources Board (CARB) met on Thursday, May 24. On the agenda was discussion toward deciding where and how to spend the billions raised from cap-and-trade carbon trading in the state.At the public meeting was Betty Plowman, who attended the meeting to present a letter on behalf of the industries that CARB calls polluters, the California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA) and California Dump Truck Owners Association. The letter describes CARB’s threats to these industries, induced by the Board’s regulations that are, in turn, based on junk science. The letter’s signatories indicate intention to seek reparations for the regulated class...

The fate of all carbon is Davy Jones’ locker. Following the post on the imminent decline in world oil production and the effect that would have on agricultural operating costs at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/27/peak-oil-now-for-the-downslope/, let’s have a look at what total peak fossil fuel production looks like and the effect that will have on climate. It will look something like this:Figure 1: World Fossil Fuel Production 1800 – 2300The figure is in millions of barrels of oil and its equivalent in energy content per annum. Peak production is in 2025. Coal production keeps rising until about 2050 but that is more than...

The California Air Resources Board is now being investigated by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. On Wednesday, the committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Temecula, sent Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols a 13-page letter advising her that he was "expanding" the committee's ongoing investigation into the establishment of fuel economy standards. .. "Your refusal to subject yourself and your office to congressional scrutiny is emblematic of the core concern that many in Congress share...that CARB, as a state actor, is unresponsive to congressional concerns and unappreciative of congressional priorities," Issa wrote.

A mass exodus of business and jobs out of California will be the likely result of this madness. From the San Franscisco Chronicle:…Free and paid credits Businesses that emit more carbon dioxide than is allowed under the law will have to use “allowances” – or credits – to make up for the difference. The allowances will be mostly free when the program starts in a little more than two months, but eventually businesses will have to purchase credits in an auction – a sort of penalty for exceeding the limit. The board’s major action on Thursday was to finalize how...

Newsbytes from Dr. Benny Peiser at The Global Warming Policy FoundationA diplomatic cable published last month by the WikiLeaks website reveals that most of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in India should not have been certified because they did not reduce emissions beyond those that would have been achieved without foreign investment. Indian officials have apparently known about the problem for at least two years. The revelations imply that millions of tonnes of claimed reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions are mere phantoms, she says, and potentially cast doubt over the principle of carbon trading. –Quirin Schiermeier, Nature News, 27...

Despite winning a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his work in the global warming area, most voters don’t consider former Vice President Al Gore an expert on the subject. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that just 24% of voters consider Gore an expert on global warming. Fifty-nine percent (59%) do not think Gore is an expert on the subject, an increase in skepticism of 12 points since March 2007. Another 18% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.) While a plurality of Democrats (43%) considers Gore an expert on global...

RGGI Is The Prototype For More Regional Cap & Tax Entities Soon RGGI will expand to every state and stick you with astronomical energy prices. RGGI is the model for two new stealth cap & tax entities. The Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord would bring the tax scheme to Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas. The Western Climate Initiative will force California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Montana to start paying through the nose for energy. Both programs are set to start in 2012. The corruptocrats in Washington are completely responsible for this gigantic waste of tax...

Who would have ever guessed trees store carbon by utilizing the gas of plant photosynthesis, carbon dioxide, and in an “immense, profound” way? From the Institute of Arctic Biology, where they seem to see no positive benefit to this, but worry about fires and insect damages instead. In a previous story, it was shown by NASA that the biosphere is booming thanks to CO2. A conifer forest in the Swiss Alps (National Park) Image: Wikipedia World’s forests role in carbon storage immense, profound FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 14 July 2011 FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Until now, scientists were uncertain about how much...

The Web’s Longest-Running Climate Change Blog April 14, 2011 Biggest Drop in U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Filed under: Climate Forcings, Greenhouse Gases — In 2009, greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. experienced their biggest drop since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began tracking them during the 1990-2009 timeframe. The EIA’s latest numbers on greenhouse gas emissions can be found in their just released report “Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2009.” The EIA starts out with this summary: Total U.S. anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas emissions in 2009 were 5.8 percent below the 2008 total. The decline in total...

The New Hampshire House of Representatives today voted overwhelmingly — 246 to 104 — for New Hampshire to become the first state to repeal an up-and-running global warming cap-and-trade energy tax system. The state senate is expected to follow suit with a similarly veto-proof repeal. The move has major implications both in the region and nationally. Since 2008, New Hampshire has been one of the 10 members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a power plant-only cap-and-trade system that holds quarterly auctions requiring electric utilities to buy carbon dioxide permits. The cost of those permits is buried in the...

Dr David Evans’ address to the Anti-Carbon-Tax rally, Perth Australia, 23 March 2011.Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen.The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence,  was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools and liars out of our politicians.Let’s set a few things straight. The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global...

ASTONISHINGLY, the PM, the Cabinet and members of the Canberra Press Gallery don't know the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide. There are two great lies told about the need to "put a price on carbon". Lies which I can't recall a single member of the gallery ever confronting the liars with -- far less the prime liar herself.And it'll be a cold day in hell before you see a critical commentary from any of the supposed leading lights of the gallery such as Fairfax's Michelle Grattan or Peter Hartcher applying a critical analysis to the claims.Now these two lies...

As Congress looks for ways to trim the budget, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) represents an opportunity for up to $9 billion in savings. This outfit has become little more than an advocacy group for trendy leftist causes operating on the public’s dime. Many liberal policies being promoted are so unpopular that congressional Democrats can’t muster the votes to get them through the proper legislative process. So they go to the EPA instead. That’s why the EPA announced Tuesday that it had revised the deadlines imposed on certain companies for reporting so-called “greenhouse gas” production. A facility that manufactures paper,...

Barack Obama may be forced to order a two-year delay in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action on climate change to try to avoid a complete government shutdown, an environmental conference has been warned. Buried among the $61bn in Republican budget cuts are a series of measures that would strip the overall budget of the EPA by 30%. The Republican bill would specifically bar the Obama administration from funding programmes regulating greenhouse gas emissions, or connected to climate science and international negotiations for a deal to end global warming. It cuts funds for the post of White House climate adviser, Carol...

SPECIAL REPORT-The California Carbon Rush (Hold the Eureka!)It could be worse than sticky, argues Gary Stern, a power utility executive. Stern lived through the disastrous deregulation of the California power market a decade ago and fears the carbon market will be small and open to manipulation. The state refuses to set a limit for prices. Traders could learn how to corner the market (think Enron) and then hold hostage utilities and factories with no option but to buy sky-high permits on the open market.State officials say they are working on new safeguards to stop just such efforts and will unveil...