Climate Conversation Group

Monday, 21 November, 2011 – 12:40

Campaign Speech on the Emissions Trading Scheme

Don Brash, Leader ACT New Zealand

Bureta Park Inn, Tauranga

Monday 21 November 2011

My talk today is about the economy. It’s one of three that I’ll be giving this week as New Zealanders close in on the polls. This particular one focuses on the Emissions Trading Scheme, one of the most damaging policy choices that New Zealand has made in recent years.

This is an adopted article.

New Zealand’s hyperactive adoption of the world’s only all-sectors-all-gases Emissions Trading Scheme will not save us money on international obligations, because after the Kyoto Protocol expires next year there will not be any such obligations. It will not affect the global climate because New Zealand’s emissions form an utterly trivial fraction of global emissions [0.2% - Ed.]. It will not set an example to the world: if anything it will show the world that trying to lead on climate change policy is counterproductive. It might improve “Brand New Zealand,” but only at an unacceptable cost.

First, though, let me set some context. Read more… »

How much does our ETS increase petrol & power prices?

The following passage is from our government’s web page explaining the ETS. It’s only a short piece, but there are numerous examples of non-sequiturs, or illogical derivations from the previous statement.

Anyone convinced it’s based on science or logic? Anyone at all?

The government reasons*

Most forms of travel are fuelled by liquid fossil fuels, such as petrol and diesel, which result in emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

New Zealanders travel frequently and have a high level of vehicle ownership. Our use of freight transport has increased as the economy has grown, and our geographical isolation makes us reliant on ships and planes to connect us and our products to the rest of the world.

Between 1990 and 2006, total transport emissions increased by 5.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or 64 per cent. If we do not make changes to the ways we travel and transport freight, or to the technology and fuels we use, transport energy use will grow further. Public transport, biofuels, electric vehicles, rail, cycling and walking, as well as improved vehicle efficiency will all help – as will the ETS.

^*Of course, this is among the worst of oxymorons.

An evicted woman showed proof of her family’s land ownership.

Ugandans left homeless, child dies

The UN’s ingenious global warming money-making scheme, called the clean development mechanism (CDM), was predicted to lead to abuse and fraud. The essence of the CDM is built around trust, so you just know it’s headed for disaster. Another scandal has come to light, in Uganda.

A reader posted a link to a dramatic headline at Prison Planet, Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming. Which quickly took my attention away from the All Blacks’ fine win against France.

The Prison Planet story was taken from a NY Times story with a milder headline: In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out. In that story, it turns out that a single child was murdered when his house was burned down.

The NY Times article, in turn, was taken from an Oxfam report about land grabs. So some of the lurid flavour of the story has been watered down, though there’s plenty left of concern. Read more… »

Global agreement transcends environment.

– by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

When the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, the base year for calculating emissions was back-dated to 1990. They knew then that the ratification process would take many years (it was actually completed in 2005), so why did it hark back to the distant past?

EU

Two big European events occurred in 1991. As a result of the Soviet collapse, heavy industry had closed down in droves throughout the East. And North Sea gas came ashore in the West with a “dash to gas” displacing coal power in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

At the time of the Berlin COP in 1995, EU countries collectively had enough past credits from the 1991-94 period to cover all the obligations they later accepted under the Protocol. It was a no-brainer for them to demand that other developed countries match the EU misfortunes during “the First Commitment Period.” Read more… »

Carbon trading: Sell a product you don’t have and can’t deliver to a buyer who doesn’t want it.

That is the very definition of easy money, yet the NZ Government has proposed that process and legalised it in what they call the “Emissions Trading Scheme.” Though they created it to “fight climate change” they now openly admit it will have no effect upon the climate. But, persuading us to agree to something on grounds later admitted to be false is the definition of fraud. And, since they claim to be “fighting climate change” while admitting the climate will be unaffected, they reveal a distinct denial.

So, regrettably, our Government is controlled by fraudsters and climate deniers.

Since the Government knows about the climate through the climate specialists in NIWA, is NIWA’s scientific advice also controlled by fraudsters and climate deniers? Since the climate specialists in NIWA are also the climate specialists in the NZ Royal Society, is the Royal Society, too, controlled by fraudsters and climate deniers?

The following quotes are from a NZ Herald article, The Carbon Detectives, published Dec 20, 2010.

Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, says if the US creates a nationwide cap-and-trade market, carbon could become the world’s most widely traded commodity.

But it’s a “commodity” in fiction, not truth. The commodity of “carbon” is unlike oil, pork bellies or platinum. You don’t possess the commodity you sell, it’s impossible to deliver and anyway the buyer has no reason to receive it.

Such a contract is witless, created only to extract money from the unwitting. If you’re awake, you might become rich, but at the expense of your fellow citizens, who don’t really get a poor bargain: they get no bargain, for the price of everything connected with “carbon” emissions rises and they must pay the increase or go without. There is no benefit.

In a society where getting to work needs a few litres of petrol and keeping the house liveable in winter needs a few kilowatts of electricity, going without is not an option.

Gregg Marland, a staff scientist at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, says, “If you’re selling oil, you’re actually transferring something tangible. If somebody lies, somebody loses,” he says. “In a CO2 transaction, you can lie and both win.” The seller gets paid, and the buyer has his credit for compliance. “We’re going to create a situation where both sides can win by cheating,” Marland says.

The consequence of this spectacular foolishness cannot be a reduction in atmospheric levels of CO2. Not that that’s a tragedy, because nobody cares and the climate won’t notice. But the money it’s costing us to not reduce CO2 is perfectly scandalous!

The only precedent for such willing self-delusion lies in the Dutch tulip bulb craze, the South Sea Company bubble and the original 1920 Ponzi scheme.

Wake up, my people!

An ancient pyramid makes you think.

by Viv Forbes

20th December 2010

One of the fastest growing industries in the world is based on a pyramid of frauds and its inevitable collapse will be worse than the sub-prime crash.

The Global Warming Industry is now fed by billions of dollars from western taxpayers and consumers. It is based on the unproven and now discredited claim that man’s production of carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming.

The basic fraud is this:

There is no evidence that carbon dioxide controls world temperature – just a theory and the manipulated results from a handful of giant computer models that very few people have checked or understand. But there is clear evidence from historical records of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature that carbon dioxide does not control temperature. Rather the reverse – as solar or volcanic heat warms the oceans, the waters expel carbon dioxide. Global warming causes an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the reverse. Read more… »

Hell now, y’all didn’t take me seriously on that li’l ol’ carbon tradin’ thang, didya?
Well, gosh-darn and gee-willikers!

UPDATE 15 November: see end of post

Is it goodbye to carbon raids trades?

A story sweeping through blogdom announces the end of the Chicago Carbon Exchange and its carbon trading in the wake of a totally collapsed price for carbon. This means a victory for opponents of man-made global warming and the death of a scheme that separates people from their money for the sake of the climate but has no effect on the climate.

However, it appears the exchange is not closing down, carbon trading is not finished and the carbon price is not even in the basement. What on earth is going on? Read more… »

A suit in handcuffs. Only the educated, trusted men can engage in theft on this grand scale — £156 million! This story concerns GST fraud (called VAT in Europe) but there are easier scams occurring in the carbon trading field, based on the simple fact that the only thing being sold is thin air. Actually, it’s worse than that: they’re selling CO₂. Unmeasurable, invisible and useless to both buyer and seller. At least air is of some use. What a confidence trick!

Sends shivers down the spine, this does. For, not only does “regular” carbon trading take food from the mouths of mothers and babies, but fraudulent activities, increasing costs and therefore prices, take even more. How long before it turns up in New Zealand, if National really does launch its ill-advised scheme on July 1? The most important part of the story waits until the last two paragraphs, though I’ve flagged it in the heading. Further comments below.

First published by BusinessGreen, 30 Apr 2010

by BusinessGreen.com staff

German carbon fraud investigation moves to UK

Prosecutors confirm that four arrests have been made in €180m fraud investigation

German prosecutors today confirmed they have arrested four people in Germany and the UK following raids on more than 50 homes and offices this week in connection with an alleged €180m (£156m) carbon fraud. Read more… »

This is a picture of steam. Steam is water vapour and unrelated to carbon dioxide, but we cannot see carbon dioxide, so steam is more interesting to look at. In a similar vein, carbon trading does not trade in carbon, which is black and dirty, unless it is a diamond and glorious. No, carbon trading deals in the invisible carbon dioxide, which is impossible to measure accurately, never mind, let’s just say it was 64,000 tonnes, all right? Wow, that’s a lot higher than I was thinking, but why not — who’s to know? Normally, traded goods are visible and useful, but carbon dioxide is invisible and useless to everybody but Mother Nature, yet we prefer to trade in the useless, invisible gas. Strange? Not when you realise the money to be made from thin air.

Once upon a time, people thought they would stop global warming, caused by carbon dioxide, by extinguishing their fossil-fuelled fires. But everybody loved their fossil fires and depended on them for every good thing in modern life. So they didn’t want to give them up. What would be the best way to persuade the people to extinguish the lovely fires?

Tax or ETS

The people decided that they just had to make the lovely fires more expensive and invent other ways of providing every good thing in modern life. That gave them two options to choose between: let the government put an extra tax on the fossil fuels, or create licences to emit carbon dioxide and let everybody trade them with each other. That was called an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), sometimes “cap and trade”.

Either scheme would have the effect of making the lovely fires more expensive because the cost of the tax or the emission certificates would be added to the price of the goods and services. Naturally, the people would end up paying more, but that was the whole point. All the good things in modern life were destroying the planet so they had to become too expensive to buy and the leaders said that was a sacrifice they were willing to make. Read more… »

Guest post by Viv Forbes, Chairman, Carbon Sense Coalition.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the practice of governments trying to buy support for their failing Ration-N-Tax Scheme using tax money raised in an underhand fashion from the same people.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that since the “Climate Scare-a-Day” campaign of 2009 has failed to spook the people, the New Year will see acceleration of the next ploy: “carbon bribery and corruption”. Read more… »

President Obama is charming, credible and he fronts well, but he just revealed some of what truly lies within. It was a disturbing insight and I hope his advisors can amend his ignorance.

It was just last Tuesday — Barack Obama, at a White House press conference, was urging the House of Representatives to pass the Waxman-Markey bill, properly known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, when he let slip that he doesn’t know what carbon dioxide is. Read more… »

Following the virtual demise of traditional Western religion, the newly-instituted worship of “the environment” has spread and flourished. Commentators point out how many things are done and called for in the name of the environment, as were once done and called for in the name of God.

Nothing has changed except the name of the deity. We brook no argument against our deity, nor questioning; we demand blind obedience, for fear of public obloquy. We still call upon people to consider, to fret, to act and to pay handsomely in the name of the deity—just the projects differ. Where once it was a fine new cathedral in Coventry or the Swansea city square statuary, now we want action on poverty or global warming.

And there’s an even newer deity: it’s the “developing world”. Read more… »

History and reason say no—so can we greatly alter the climate? Study history, for it says the climate has changed like this before. Study science, for it says that puny man has no effect. more…