It's just weather - by Richard... Sunday, December 20, 2009

It's just weather - by Richard... Sunday, December 20, 2009

A blizzard-like storm rocked the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern US states yesterday, crippling travel across the region and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power, reports The Times.

Five deaths appeared to have been caused by the storm system, which stretched from the Carolinas north to New England and also spread into some Midwestern states. The 16 inches (40cm) of snow that fell at Reagan National Airport outside Washington was the most ever recorded for a single December day, and 16 inches (40cm) had also fallen in Philadelphia.

The National Guard used Humvees to rescue stranded motorists in Virginia and some 500 people sought warmth and refuge in emergency shelters. Nearly two feet (60cm) of snow fell in some areas, and the US capital was under a blizzard warning. 

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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Another one - by Richard...

If you toddle off down to The Sunday Telegraph, you will see a piece headed: "Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri."

"The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies," it says.

The authors' names might look dreadfully familiar. Not quite Woodward and Bernstein, but close.

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Mistaken identity - by Richard...

Ignore the photo of the supposed author and forget the "D" – they've attributed the piece to the wrong Richard North. Just read the piece in the Mail on Sunday entitled: "Saved - the trillion-pound trade in carbon".

You might find the sentiments a little bit familiar.

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Protecting Big Carbon - by Richard...

In 2004, it was less than $300 million. But in 2005, the trade really started to soar, ending the year with $10.8 billion-worth of transactions. A year later, in 2006, the "carbon" market had grown to $31 billion. In 2007, again it more than doubled its turnover, to $64 billion. Last year, it did it again, reaching a colossal $126 billion. By 2020, some estimates suggest the annual value will reach $2 trillion.

Not only does this represent a very significant business volume, its stunning growth rate makes carbon trading the hottest item in town, with banks, financial houses and independent brokers piling in to make a killing.

The larger part of the market actually comprises the EU's mandatory Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) – and other very much smaller allowance schemes - accounting for 73 percent of trading volume in 2008. But the whole system is underpinned by what is known as "project-based transactions". These comprise, in the main, so-called "carbon credits" generated by the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

This mechanism was formally created in 1997 by the Kyoto climate treaty and started operating in a very small way in 1998 building to 78 million "credits" (or Certified Emission Reductions, CERs, as they are formally known) to 333 million this year with a projection of 1.7 billion by the end of 2012. 

The "end of 2012" is, of course, the key milestone - when the Kyoto treaty lapses. And as the World Bank warned in 2008, then the gravy train could come to an abrupt halt. "Created by regulation," it observed, "the carbon market's biggest risk is caused, perversely, by the absence of market continuity beyond 2012 and this can only be provided by policymakers and regulators."

It was those policymakers and regulators who were gathered at Copenhagen for the last two weeks, their primary concern – as Booker points out in his column this week - to protect this new and very valuable business.

Thus does he say that Copenhagen was not about global warming but money. The cash that Hillary Clinton so dramatically plonked on the table, rising to $100 billion by 2020, which includes the £1.5 billion offered by Gordon Brown (money which of course he hasn't got) and which like a crazed gambler he last week upped to £6 billion (even more money he hasn't got), was merely a "sweetener" to persuade the developing countries to maintain the money-machine set in motion by Kyoto.

And that was the only really concrete achievement of Copenhagen, winning the agreement to the perpetuating of those Kyoto rules that have created this vast industry.

That much was acknowledged by John Prescott on Channel 4 News yesterday, who talked up the Copenhagen "accord" – as we must now call it – saying that we had achieved a "Kyoto II" – the essence of which is the carbon trading scheme.

Interestingly, this business has two main beneficiaries. On the one hand, there are all those Western "entrepreneurs" who have piled into what has become the fastest growing commodity market in the world. But, on the other are that small number of people in China and India who have learnt how to work this system to their huge advantage, and account for the majority of CDMs.

As can be seen from the UN's own statistics - see chart above – these two countries account for by far the majority of the registered schemes, taking a 70 percent share of the total. And, of the two, China is by far the bigger player, averaging 197,792,890 CERs as against 38,308,631 from India.

The level of China's involvement, as a major beneficiary of the scheme, makes a nonsense of the commentators at Copenhagen who were predicting that China might sabotage a deal. With so much money at stake, there was no way China was not going to fall into line, showing up themuch-reported spat between Obama and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao for exactly what it was – pure theatre.

Thus does Booker conclude that the part played at Copenhagen by all the tree-huggers, abetted by the BBC and their media allies, was to keep hysteria over warming at fever pitch while the politicians haggled over the real prize, to keep the Kyoto system in place.

The only tree they were concerned with hugging was the money tree and all the vast political apparatus that now supports it, allowing governments to tax and regulate us into handing over ever more of our money, largely without realising it, every time we drive a car, fly in a plane, pay our electricity bill or carry out any of a vast range of activities that involve the emission of CO2. Compared with these sums, even the billions we all unwittingly spend on subsidies to the developers of useless wind turbines are chicken feed.

The tree-huggers have been well and truly "had" – but then so have we. It is us that are going to pay, through our electricity bills, our taxes and living expenses, in increasing amounts for this hidden bonanza which the negotiators so diligently protected last week. 

Trading in what amounts to thin air, on the farcical premise that life-giving carbon dioxide is a "pollutant", they have perpetrated the biggest heist in the history of mankind, all to protect "Big Carbon”.

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Welcome back Mr President - by Richard... Saturday, December 19, 2009

A major winter storm was moving up the Atlantic Coast on Friday night, with forecasters expecting accumulations of one to two feet of snow in some areas by Saturday night, reports theNew York Times.

Winter storm warnings were in effect from Tennessee and North Carolina to the southern New England states, and the storm was expected to affect Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities. A blizzard warning was in effect for Long Island. The National Weather Service said travel conditions in those areas would be "extremely treacherous" by Saturday morning.


In Washington, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty declared a snow emergency, effective at 7 am. Saturday. "All indications are this will be a major storm — perhaps the biggest we've seen in several years," he said in a news release, "and we are going to throw everything we have at it to keep the District open for business on this busy preholiday weekend."

The pictures above show president Obama's personal jet after his return from the global warming summit in Copenhagen, and the scene at his detached house in Washington DC. Kinda appropriate.