Perverse consequences - by Richard... Saturday, June 26, 2010

Perverse consequences - by Richard... Saturday, June 26, 2010

How to get rich was our subject for discussion last December as we reported how the CFC scam, mainly in China and India, was making entrepreneurs obscenely rich out of selling carbon credits. Now, six months later, Le Monde has picked up exactly the same story (translation here), complaining that CFCs have become the main source of CDMs.

Half a billion tonnes of CO2 (equivalent) "saved" through the CDM between 2004-2012 have come from the destruction of HCF 23. As we pointed out in our piece, this is the by-product of HCF 22 production but, so lucrative has the CDM business become that the by-product has become the product.

We now have the perverse consequences, says Le Monde, that because the price paid for the destruction of gas is up to 70 times the actual cost of production, it is now being produced in order to generate carbon credits. 

Manufacturers have increased their production, thereby artificially and deliberately maintaining high levels of HCF 23 production, which would not exist if there was no financial incentive from carbon credit sales. And it is now estimated that these abuses have allowed the industry to collect one billion dollars annually.

Thus, concludes Le Monde, we see the absurd situation in which one "device" of the UN – the Kyoto Protocol - encourages the production of a gas, while another "device" of the UN - the Montreal Protocol - seeks its eradication.

Only the greenies could invent such a stupid, malign system – and then keep schtum about it as money pours into the coffers of carbon traders and opportunists. Where is Moonbat when you really need him?

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A symbol of "Europe" - by Richard... Friday, June 25, 2010

The last time I looked seriously at Galileo, the EU's GPS vanity project, was in April 2008 when I was disputing the commission's then latest claim - that €3.4 billion of our money would be enough to get the system up and running. 

The figure, like the system, was pure moonshine, I wrote. That €3.4 billion was nowhere near enough to get the full constellation launched and operational - €10 billion was closer the mark, with additional through-life costs to maintain the system.

A few months previously, I had carried a report from Der Spiegel that the project would cost at least €5 billion and perhaps even €10 billion. Spiegel had added that a secret German government study had concluded the overall cost would rise by €1.5 billion even under optimum conditions.

Now, guess what? Bloomberg has reported a claim by Le Monde that Galileo will need another €1.5 billion "on top of the already budgeted €3.4 billion", to become operational in 2013.

Needless to say, the Italian commissioner now in charge of the project, Antonio Tajani, declines to confirm the figure, saying the amount of the extra funding needed will not be finalised until September. 

Then, that is hardly a surprise – the project has been built on a foundation of lies and deceit from word one. In November 2007, it was going to cost €2.4 billion. And in order to gain member state approval for the project, in 2001 the commission gave its "solemn guarantee" that "no more public money would be needed after 2007".

Three years later, the EU is still putting its hand out for more money – even after raiding the CAP budget (pictured) - and the cost has doubled (with no end point in sight). If ever there was a project to symbolise the "success" of the European Union, this has to be it.

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Muffin the Mule - by Richard...

Delingpole takes up the cudgels. "This ... has given greenies like Monbiot an excuse to prance up and down like Muffin the Mule on angel dust under the insane delusion that this somehow demolishes the entire sceptics' case against AGW."

"Muffin the Mule on angel dust" is such a delicious idea ... and, amazingly, I can't find a pic of it. Josh has done a superb cartoon though.

Comment: Moonbat/Corporate cowardice thread

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A Moonbat too far - by Richard...

In rather typical style, it would seem, Moonbat has half-read and then misunderstood the recentstatement by The Sunday Times on "Amazongate" (see also my comments), prompted by a Press Complaints Commission judgement which has yet to be published on the official web site. 

This controversial issue, of course, is about the provenance of the IPCC claim in the 4th Assessment Report that "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation", a claim which relies on a non-peer-reviewed paper published by the WWF.

Wrapped up in his own "cleverness" (a kind and overly polite way of putting it), the great warmist has visited this blog to look at this post, on the basis of which he seeks to deride my original claim that there was no reference to 40 percent of the Amazon being affected by even slight reductions in precipitation in the WWF paper.

This is the Rowell & Moore paper, and for want of what I originally thought to be a specific claim in that paper, I asserted that the IPCC claim: "seems to be a complete fabrication". 

Employing deep-fried sarcasm to what he fancies is devastating effect, Moonbat triumphantly tells us that he decided to check my claim using "a cunning and recondite technique known only to experienced sleuths": typing "40%" in the search bar at the top of the page.

"This stroke of genius," proclaims Moonbat, "took all of 10 seconds to reveal the following passage: 'Up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall.'" Preening himself, he then asks (rhetorically, of course): "Who says investigative journalism is dead?", before going on to assert, that "None of North's suckers had bothered to carry out this complex procedure. They hadn't bothered because they didn't want to spoil a good story."

What makes this triumphalism bizarre and totally misplaced is that my original claim was reproduced in Watts Up With That and picked up by one of his commenters (Icarus), who did exactly what Moonbat asserts none had bothered to do. 

From this emerged a correction. In that, posted the next day, I record having completely missed the passage which refers to 40%, thus charging wrongly that the IPCC assertion was "a fabrication, unsupported even by the reference it gives."

"With that, though," I then write, "the story gets even more interesting, as the assertion made by Rowell and his co-author Peter Moore is referenced to an article in Nature magazine," which does not support either their or the IPCC claims. 

It is this which becomes the substance of "Amazongate" – the undisputed fact that the IPCC makes an assertion about the Amazon rainforest relying on "grey" (WWF) literature. This in turn references a paper which does not support the assertions made. (It is later claimed (by the WWF) that the actual reference on which the WWF authors rely had been accidentally omitted; this turns out to be non-peer-referenced as well).

As I a matter of policy, I do not remove erroneous posts (or very rarely). If I make a mistake, I correct it in a subsequent piece (if it is important enough – and this was) and then link on the original piece, notifying readers of the update. But, it would seem, so full of himself and his clever little discovery, that Moonbat has completely missed (or ignored) the link and the correction – of which he seems to be unaware despite it being at the top of the piece.

Thus fortified by his own ignorance as to the actual case which I make, Moonbat then fast-forwards to the Sunday Times retraction. He claims that the paper "has been obliged to admit that the paper's account – and by inference North's almost identical treatment – was rubbish from top to toe."

Yet, whatever the PCC may or may not think of the Sunday Times article, it has neither examined nor adjudicated on my blog. The case made there is wholly unaffected by the PCC ruling, and indeed the core is not disputed, even in the ST statement. Despite this, Moonbat stridently declares:

Now that the IPCC has been vindicated, its accusers, North first among them, are exposed for peddling inaccuracy, misrepresentation and falsehood. Ashes to ashes, toast to toast.

And while I am very much in favour of open debate, even I tend to draw a line at being accused on the website of a national paper of "peddling inaccuracy, misrepresentation and falsehood." 

This is not debate. It is libel. Booker's advice on these things tends to be to avoid getting into a fight with a chimney sweep – for obvious reasons – but this is also a case of Moonbat going too far. And, since he is so keen on the PCC, I thought that this would be a good place to start.

Comment: Moonbat/Corporate cowardice thread

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Scientists are dangerous - by Richard... Thursday, June 24, 2010

Or so a very large number of people believe. And, are you surprised when so many lie through their teeth?