Pirate's Cove

If there is any measure that truly shows that the AGW movement is about generating free $$$ and the government controlling private industry, cap and trade is it. Found in the Wall Street Journal story about Obama’s proposed tax increases on “the rich”

Aiding the other end of the income scale, the president’s budget plan would extend his tax cuts for the middle class and working poor with some of the billions of dollars raised by the sale of new carbon-emission permits for renewable energy projects. The “cap and trade” program to battle global warming would force companies to buy permits if they wish to emit heat-trapping pollutants, and they would be auctioned to businesses beginning in 2012.

Can anyone explain how cap and trade will actually reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (Believers are really think CO2)? I’ve read lots on this, and no one can really explain how this will happen, except in the land of unicorns. It almost seems like a government run extortion scheme. Here’s what happens

1. The cap is, say, 50ppm. Permits are expensive
2. Company A puts out 75ppm
3. Company B puts out 25 ppm
4. Company A buys the right to the other 25ppm. Government gets the bribe
5. Company B raises costs to the consumer

And CO2 output is reduced how, exactly? Of course, the Believers will say that reducing CO2 is not the point (of course not. snark off): the point is to make companies pay a penalty. In other words, government will make it almost criminal. But, it gets even better

A year ago European governments allocated a limited number of carbon emission permits to their big polluters. Businesses that reduce pollution are allowed to sell spare permits to ones that need more. As demand outstrips this capped supply, and the price of permits rises, an incentive grows to invest in green energy. Why buy costly permits to keep a coal plant running when you can put the cash into clean power instead?

All this only works as the carbon price lifts. As with 1924 Château Lafite or Damian Hirst’s diamond skulls, scarcity and speculation create the value. If permits are cheap, and everyone has lots, the green incentive crashes into reverse. As recession slashes output, companies pile up permits they don’t need and sell them on. The price falls, and anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so. The result is a system that does nothing at all for climate change but a lot for the bottom lines of mega-polluters such as the steelmaker Corus: industrial assistance in camouflage.

“I don’t know why industrials would miss this opportunity,” said one trader last week. “They are using it to compensate for the tightening of credit and the slowdown, to pay for redundancies.”

So what could start out as expensive, quickly became cheaper then roof rabbit, and now everyone can pollute on the cheap. But, no worries, because the Believers are changing the goal posts (not that this is surprising. They change the data and time periods to fit their current talking points)

The Earth won’t have to warm up as much as had been thought to cause serious consequences of global warming, including more extreme weather and increasing threats to plants and animals, says an international team of climate experts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the risk of increased severe weather would rise with a global average temperature increase of between 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and 3.6 degrees above 1990 levels. The National Climatic Data Center currently reports that global temperatures have risen 0.22 degree since 1990.

Now, researchers report that “increases in drought, heat waves and floods are projected in many regions and would have adverse impacts, including increased water stress, wildfire frequency and flood risks starting at less than (1.8 degrees) of additional warming above 1990 levels.”

Just making it up as they go along. And, seriously, the Climahysterics are getting upset about .22 degrees? And they wonder why I call them Climahysterics?