Oh Lookie, Cap and Trade Is Back!

Look what's being resurrected from the dead, thanks to the Gulf oil spill debacle: Crap and Trap, aka Cap and Trade. Even Al Gore is back in the spotlight!

Have you seen the movie "Groundhog Day"?

Senators Lieberman and Kerry excoriate us the non-believers in Crap and Trap that if we are unwilling to shell out less than a dollar a day every single day for the rest of our lives to save the planet (and developing nations in particular) from the good old man-made global warming, we are bad, we are selfish, we are demagogues. Probably we are terrorists, too, in their eyes, if we dare insist on using oil and gas.

The "less than a dollar a day" figure comes from the EPA, an executive-branch agency (i.e. Obama's tool). That's on top of the added tax per family of over $2000 per year (calculated by none other than the Obama administration).

This is right back to one year ago, when Obama and his underlings kept pushing for agenda after agenda after agenda. No wonder the stock market is rising again, just like last year. It will keep rising for another 12 months, for sure. It was exactly one year ago that the House passed the climate bill.

(Here's the link to this blog's June 2009 archive. There I was, blogging about carbon emission allowance as new bubble. Just look through the headlines. Hardly anything has changed. Cap and trade, financial reform bill, fear of hyperinflation, ECB pouring $600 billion to prop up money market funds... This is indeed "Groundhog Day"...)

Just like Goldman Sachs gives thumbs up for the financial "reform" bill, the cap and trade climate bill is supported by three oil majors. That alone would tell you that they are the ones who will profit handsomely at the expense of, as usual, taxpayers. And also remember the nice joint venture by Goldman Sachs and Al Gore on carbon trading exchange.

There is a name for the type of government run by technocrats in bed with large corporate interests. It starts with "f".

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Bloomberg: French Constitutional Court Rejects Carbon Tax

After the disaster in Copenhagen, global warmers seem to have gone awfully quiet around the world. Now, the French constitutional court rejected a carbon emission tax as inequitable.

French Constitutional Court Rejects Carbon Tax
(12/30/09 Bloomberg)

"France’s constitutional court rejected a proposed tax on carbon emissions, saying a web of exemptions violated the principal of equality and rendered efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions ineffective.

"The government said it will make new proposals on Jan. 20.

"The tax, which would have started on Jan. 1, was set at 17 euros ($24.38) per ton of carbon-dioxide emissions, President Nicolas Sarkozy said in September. To make the tax more palatable, he partially or fully exempted power plants, public transport, airlines, farming and fishing, as well as 1,018 older cement, steel and glass factories.

"In all, 93 percent of all industrial carbon emissions in France would have avoided paying the full tax, the constitutional court said in a decision published on its Web site. The tax would have fallen disproportionately on fuel for heating and cars, it said.

"“The court ruled that the system of exemptions, due to their extensive nature, were contrary to the objective of fighting global warming and contravene the principle of equality before the tax system,” the court said.

"The court rejected all the articles relating to the carbon tax in the government’s 2010 budget."

According to the article, it is the Socialist-led opposition who opposes the carbon tax in France, as hurting the poor and handicap employers.

The cap and trade scheme advocated by the U.S. administration and Democratic Congress is even worse. Polluting industries get to pass the cost of carbon credit to the consumers almost entirely, and the middleman (i.e. the government) get to skim off of the consumers by taking from some and giving it to others as subsidies and credits.

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Climategate: Gore Falsifies the Record

or he misspoke. (Ooo I hate that word.)

This from Andrew Bolt of Australia's Herald Sun, regarding Slate magazine's Q&A with Al Gore over global warming, those pesky leaked emails, and his new book (what a surprise). Andrew Bolt has other excellent posts on global warming and the "Climategate".

(Remember that Australia's Senate voted down the government's bill on carbon trading recently, partly thanks to the "Climategate" emails.)

Climategate: Gore falsifies the record (12/9/09, Herald Sun, Australia)
[emphasis is original]

"Al Gore has studied the Climategate emails with his typically rigorous eye and dismissed them as mere piffle:

Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?

A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus.

" And in case you think that was a mere slip of the tongue:

Q: There is a sense in these e-mails, though, that data was hidden and hoarded, which is the opposite of the case you make [in your book] about having an open and fair debate.

A: I think it’s been taken wildly out of context. The discussion you’re referring to was about two papers that two of these scientists felt shouldn’t be accepted as part of the IPCC report. Both of them, in fact, were included, referenced, and discussed. So an e-mail exchange more than 10 years ago including somebody’s opinion that a particular study isn’t any good is one thing, but the fact that the study ended up being included and discussed anyway is a more powerful comment on what the result of the scientific process really is.

"In fact, thrice denied:

These people are examining what they can or should do to deal with the P.R.
dimensions of this, but where the scientific consensus is concerned, it’s completely unchanged. What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly.

"In fact, as Watts Up With That shows, one Climategate email was from just two months ago. The most recent was sent on November 12 - just a month ago. The emails which have Tom Wigley seeming (to me) to choke on the deceit are all from this year. Phil Jones’ infamous email urging other Climategate scientists to delete emails is from last year.

"How closely did Gore read these emails? Did he actually read any at all? Was he lying or just terribly mistaken? What else has he got wrong?"


It's Newspeak, Mr. Bolt. "One month ago" means "10-years ago", and "two months ago" means "more than 10 years ago", by imperious Al Gore's decree. Well, Mr. Gore has a lot depending on the global consensus on global warming and implementation of cap and trade globally.

What I want to ask in addition is this: Since when is the validity of science determined by consensus?

If the age of the planet earth had been determined by the consensus, it would have stayed at 100 million years, the number mathematically derived by the very influential and brilliant physicist (Lord Kelvin). For the next three decades, it stayed that way during which scientists tried their best to come up with the evidence that would justify Lord Kelvin's conclusion. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

This brilliant conclusion about the age of the planet, agreed upon by most scientists, was rudely overturned by empirical evidence: Discovery of radioactivity that threw a monkey wrench into Lord Kelvin's meticulous calculation on thermodynamics. (For more, please read the article by David Deming, titled "Global Warming and the Age of the Earth: A Lesson on the Nature of Scientific Knowledge", 12/3/09 Lewrockwell.com)

But the age of the planet didn't affect nation's GDP or welfare of the nation's inhabitants the way this idea of global warming is going to affect.

Mr. Gore, himself a non-scientist, seems to have decided science should be run like politics - compromise, consensus, arm-twisting, silencing the opponent, outspending the opponent to win the race. And partly thanks to people like Mr. Gore, science, particularly climate science, has become exactly that: a branch of politics.

Another thing I want to ask is about Slate: Were they also unaware that the emails were as recent as a month ago? Or are they taking part in perpetuating this new myth created by Al Gore that those emails were "more than 10 years ago"?

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Tax, Tax, And More Tax to Prosperity!

for the U.S. government. Not for the citizens.

Health care deform, oops "reform": increased tax for the "wealthy" as defined by the government, penalty for anyone who don't buy insurance, increased cost (insurance cost, medical equipment, pharmaceutical drugs) for everyone because all these entities will be taxed on their gross revenue of their services and products.

Crap, oops, cap and trade: even the Obama administration admits it will be equivalent to 15% income tax hike, so that Mr. Gore and his ilk can mightily profit from their "entrepreneurship". If the government says 15%, double that as a matter of course. They will cook data to fit the "religion".

War surtax: 1 to 5% extra for everyone with a taxable income, 2 to 10% extra for every corporation with a taxable income, whether you support the Af-Pak war or not.

Trading tax (yes they are yakking about it again): 0.25% on the trade. You buy 100 Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares and pay your discount broker the commission ($6 to 12), and you pay the tax of $50 so that the government can create new jobs. If you use a broker who lets you trade for free, the trading cost skyrockets to infinity. If you trade AAPL 5 times a year (buy or sell) and AAPL remains more or less at $200/share, that will be the end of your first $100,000 transactions for which the government will generously refund the tax. If AAPL surges to $300 you will get to fund the job growth with your $75 that you would have kept otherwise.

What a joke. Every single one of them. I would be surprised if Americans take them lying down. But I've been surprised before.

It would be a miracle if the economy and society ever recover. But a miracle has happened before, I suppose.

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Cooking Up Data on Global "Warming"?

Can we kiss "cap and trade" goodbye now?

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? (James Delingpole, 11/20/09 Telegraph UK)

"If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

"When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

"One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

In an odd way this is cheering news.

"But perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause."

The article continues to list some of their amusing emails.

James Delingpole has several deliciously-titled books like Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work.

Despite the article's title, he is realistic (that nothing of that sort happens any time soon) but at the same time thinks the tide is turning against Al Gores of the world:

"I asked in my title whether this will be the final nail in the coffin of Anthropenic Global Warming. This was wishful thinking, of course. In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more hysterical (and grotesquely exaggerated) stories such as this in the Mainstream Media. And we will see ever-more-virulent campaigns conducted by eco-fascist activists, such as this risible new advertising campaign by Plane Stupid showing CGI polar bears falling from the sky and exploding because kind of, like, man, that’s sort of what happens whenever you take another trip on an aeroplane.

"The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

"Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight."

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Carbon Emissions Fall By Steepest in 40 Years

said Reuters, although hardly anyone seems to have paid attention.

Carbon emissions fall by steepest in 40 years (9/21/09 Reuters)

Despite the cold wave sweeping through the country, people pushing the climate change legislation (domestic and international) are upbeat as ever. Cold weather, hot weather, as long as it is "extreme", they can call it "the result of global warming".

Former Vice President Al Gore, who is set to profit tremendously from so-called green business once the climate bill passes, is naturally the lead proponent for the cap and trade that would potentially raise the income tax for most Americans by 15%. His Generation Investment Management, nicknamed "blood and gore", and co-founded by ex-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, owns 10% of Chicago Climate Exchange.

But did you know that the carbon emission in the U.S. dropped 9% in the past two years and is set to drop even further (6% drop)? You don't hear about it much, do you?

What did it? Recession.

Proponents for the climate legislation want to attribute the decline to the clean energy initiatives (see the Washington Post article from September 20, 2009). I am sure solar, wind, and other forms of alternative energy generation must have helped, but the main reason is global recession that has caused the global tumbling of factory output, as Reuters put it.

If the Senate passes its climate bill and this cap and trade tax is forced on the populace, the carbon emission is set to decrease for a foreseeable future. Not because of cap and trade, but because of prolonged recession/depression thanks to the added tax burden on productive citizens and private businesses. Unless those businesses of course are Mr. Gore's companies.

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Cap and Trade = 15% Income Tax Hike

so says the Obama administration, it turns out.

Remember Cap and Trade? The House passed this controversial climate change bill H.R. 2454 (what isn't controversial these days?) back in June, with an extremely close vote (219-212).

Declan McCullagh of CBS News, who has recently written probing articles on health care "reform" and cyberspace regulation, reports that Cap and Trade would cost families $1761 a year, equivalent of 15% increase in personal income tax.

The information comes from the previously undisclosed documents by the Obama administration and Treasury, which were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday, according to McCullagh.

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year
(Declan McCullagh, 9/15/09 CBS News)

"The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

"A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

"A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama's transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: "Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation." "

The article has a link to the documents obtained under FOIA, which I link here also.

GOP's estimate is about $3100 per family a year, or $366 billion a year. Democrats' number is $800 per family, or less than $100 billion a year. The Heritage Foundation says it will be $1500 per family a year by 2035.

Considering the government's track record in containing costs, we could safely jettison the lowest estimate.

""Heritage is saying publicly what the administration is saying to itself privately," says Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who filed the FOIA request. "It's nice to see they're not spinning each other behind closed doors."

""They're not telling you the cost -- they're not telling you the benefit," says Horner, who wrote the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming. "If they don't tell you the cost, and they don't tell you the benefit, what are they telling you? They're just talking about global salvation.""

Wealth distribution within the U.S., and from the U.S. to the rest of the world, particularly poorer countries. But the one who is set to gain most is the government: 15% more tax revenue, not from the polluting industries who will get numerous subsidies, but from the consumers, rich and not so rich alike.

"Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 or 8 percent increase a year."

(But watch out, opponents of cap and trade, health care, or anything that's been proposed. According to the former president Jimmy Carter and numerous other pundits (the article linked was written by a neo-conservative), it seems you are racist and you don't even know it if you dare oppose President Obama's policies. To me as a non-native here, it is totally incomprehensible, though I've been trying to understand the rationale.)

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Views On Cap And Trade

Gerald Celente


Warren Buffett

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New Bubble Machine - Carbon Emission Allowance

Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in its analysis of the climate bill titled "The Estimated Costs to Households From the Cap-and-Trade Provisions of H.R. 2454" says the following about the emission allowance under the Cap and Trade provision of the bill:

"CBO estimates that the price of an allowance, which would permit one ton of GHG emissions measured in CO2 equivalents, in 2020 would be $28.2. H.R. 2454 would require the federal government to sell a portion of the allowances and distribute the remainder to specified entities at no cost. The portions of allowances that were sold and distributed for free would vary from year to year. This analysis focuses on the year 2020, when 17 percent of the allowances would be sold by the government and the remaining 83 percent would be given away. Entities that received allowances could sell them or use them to meet their compliance obligations."

One of the big problems (there are many) with the Cap and Trade way of reducing the pollution (whether it's sulphur dioxide or nitrogen oxide or carbon dioxide) is how the initial allowance is priced and allocated. Initial allowance will be arbitrarily set by the government, both allowance amount and price. And when the allowance is not auctioned off entirely but is given away free to certain companies/industries as seen appropriate by the government, the entire process is screaming "manipulation", "corruption", "collusion".

So, entities that received free allowances from the government could sell them for profit if they don't need them. Get them for free, sell them for some price: infinite return on the money. Or they can choose to keep them, waiting for future price appreciation as the emission limit gets lower and lower. Some entities may get 4 free allowances for 1 paid allowance, others may get 2 free for 1 paid, yet others may get 10 free for 1 paid. Who knows? No one knows.

Is it just me, or do you also see a dot-com bubble era practice of investment banks giving pre-IPO shares to certain people at a low price so that these people can turn around and sell after IPO for filthy profits?

Now comes valuable middlemen (like Goldman Sachs) who will offer to manage the allowances. I can envision a whole set of derivatives coming out of this allowances business. Futures market, options on the futures to start. Then, to smooth out the allowance cost over the years and hedge against allowance price fluctuation, they will develop an allowance swap, much like interest rate swap. Since the number of allowances are set to decrease over the years, the price of allowances is assumed to be increasing all the time. So what better product, if they can package it right, to sell to pension funds and college endowments who want to hold long positions only (like they did during the oil bubble in 2008)?

Just like CDS, at some point there will be buyers and sellers of derivatives on allowances without underlying commodity (in this case, source of pollution), even if there is no intrinsic value to the allowance other than what the government mandates. (U.S. dollar bill does not have intrinsic value either, other than as a piece of paper and the word from the Federal Reserve "Trust us".)

No wonder big businesses support this bill. If E.U.'s experience is any indication, the carbon emission will not decrease because of the cap and trade (in E.U.'s case, it decreased by 3% but not due to the cap and trade; it is due to the recession), but the taxpayers will be presented with increased energy bills and attendant price increase on just about every product with no appreciable benefit.

This is the new bubble that the government wants to blow. It is set to feed on the money of people who have hardly any say in the matter: the taxpayers money. So the bubble will keep on blowing at the expense of the taxpayers until they realize they've been had.

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Cap And Trade Is On - HR 2454 Passed The House

American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) has passed the House, 219 - 212, closer than the trial vote but passed nonetheless. Now it goes to the Senate.

• Democrats: Yes 211, No 44, NV 1
• Republicans: Yes 8, No 168, NV 2

So now, the bill that hardly anyone in the House of Representatives read, with 300 pages missing ("but always available on the Internet" or the "cloak room" of the House), is going to dictate the energy policy of the world.

8 Republicans who voted Yes:

• Bono Mack (CA)
• Castle (DE)
• Kirk (IL)
• Lance (NJ)
• LoBiondo (NJ)
• McHugh (NY)
• Reichert (WA)
• Smith (NJ)

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"Official" Copy Of Climate Bill Missing 300 Pages

I was just watching c-span coverage of the House floor debate. It's hilarious. And they are going to vote for this bill?

You can watch it yourself at: http://www.cspan.org/Watch/C-SPAN_wm.aspx

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