Mining Affairs Forum
By Ken Thornberg

“Carbon-Offset Scam Decried by UN and Environmental Liberals”

            Is anyone besides me getting fed up with international entities attempting to tell our citizens and our government what laws to pass and how to run our nation?   Can’t anyone mind their own business and accept a nation’s sovereignty?  Of course, I include the United States in that scenario also.  We also have no business attempting to tell a country how to run its business.  Sometimes the old Monroe Doctrine doesn’t sound all that bad.

            Well, today we find the United Nations once again pushing for carbon credit “cap and trade” schemes; its ongoing strategy is to force our U.S. Senate to adopt cap and trade legislation.  It is none of their business and it would help if all of us would write our government leaders and ask them to tell the U.N. to stay out of our business.

UN Board Upset with Environmental Scam

            Now, here is the paradox.  A U.N. environmental oversight board decried a purported “scam” associated with carbon credits!   Here are some quotes from an AP story by John Heilprin posted at ABCNews.com:   “An obscure board that oversees a $2.7 billion market intended to cut heat-trapping gases, has agreed to take steps that could lead to it eventually reining in what European and U.S. environmentalists are calling a huge scam…the executive board of the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) said that five chemical plants in China would no longer qualify for funding as so-called carbon-offset credits until the environmentalists’ claims can be further investigated.  The ‘CDM’ credits have been widely used in the carbon trading markets of the European Union, Japan, and other nations that signed onto the 1997 Kyoto Protocol requiring mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases.  Rather than cut their own carbon emissions, industrialized nations can buy the credits which then pay developing countries to cut their greenhouse gases instead.”

            The carbon-offset credit has been, in essence, a concession to the reality that the standard of living enjoyed by the modern Western world requires a level of industrialization that will inevitably produce carbon dioxide.  The carbon-offset credit appears to be based on the notion of a systematized effort to retard industrial development in the underdeveloped world for the benefit of the industrialized world.   The environmentalists’ Copenhagen Conference held last year was designed actually to create a system for redistribution of wealth from the industrialized world to those nations ostensibly suffering the effects of global warming.  It turns out that the Chinese chemical plants were working the system and profiting off of CDM funds.

            To continue with Heilprin’s report:  “The money from the CDM-authorized fund goes to pay the carbon offsets claimed by more than 20 chemical makers mostly in China and India, but also in nations such as South Korea, Argentina and Mexico.  These chemical makers are paid as much as $100,000 or more for every ton they destroy of a potent greenhouse gas, HFC-23.  The price for destroying it is based on its being 11,700 times more powerful as a climate-warming gas than carbon dioxide.”

Adding One Scam to Another

            If you were in those firms’ position, it would be beneficial to have a lot of HFC-23 to destroy, would it not?  This is the heart of the CDM executive board’s accusation against the Chinese plants:  in the pursuit of profit, the plants were allegedly “working the system.”  Gee, imagine that!   According to Heilprin, “But that gas is a by-product of an ozone-friendly refrigerant, HCFC-22, which those chemical makers also are paid to produce under the U.N.’s ozone treaty.  Environmentalists say there is so much money in getting rid of HFC-23 that the chemical makers are overproducing HCFC-22 to have more of the byproduct to destroy.” 

“The evidence is overwhelming that manufacturers are creating excess HFC-23 simply to destroy it and earn carbon credits,” said Mark Roberts of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a research and advocacy group.   “This is the biggest environmental scandal in history and makes an absolute mockery of international efforts to combat climate change.”  We could add a few more things to his list, but you get the idea.

Global Warming Advocates on a Suicidal Plunge

While this was going on in one sector, more proofs arose to show that promoters of global warming alarmism falsified even more data and smeared contrariwise scientists.   First, there was a series of scandals surrounding extreme misconduct by leading climate scientists and errors surrounding the movement’s theories.   Next, analysts began announcing the inevitable collapse of climate hysteria.  Prior to Copenhagen, a 2009 Pew poll showed that only 36% of Americans even believed in man-made global warming, a good sign that this scheme was not having the effect promoters had hoped.  The issue has continually ranked dead last among public priorities too.  Climategate was followed by Glaciergate, both of which I’ve written about earlier.   But then we had Amazongate, involving fantastical predictions about global warming’s effect upon the Amazon rain forest.   Then Africagate with false claims on rain-dependent countries.  Chinagate followed as an example of the misuse of China’s temperature records.   Hurricane frequencies, percentages of Dutch lands below sea level, university reviews, and now even a U.S. Senator proposing criminal investigations to determine if alarmists have violated any laws (Inhofe, OK).  Even British authorities were recently investigating criminal activity by Climategate scientists who refused to provide documents and data under lawful Freedom of Information requests.    Many of the rats are leaving the ship, as we say. 

One of Their Own Admitting the End of Global Warming

Possibly the most heart-warming quote of all came from a senior foreign policy Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, Walter Mead:  “The global warming movement as we have known it is dead” because of “bad science and bad politics…The global warming meltdown confirms all the populist suspicions out there about an arrogantly clueless establishment invoking faked ‘science’ to impose cockamamie social mandates on the long-suffering American people, backed by a mainstream media that is totally in the tank.”   Even large liberal corporations are bailing on the funding, including two large oil firms.  

Even Al Gore stated on a Norwegian talk show in March, “I have thus far failed” in his efforts to educate the public on climate change.   The U.K. Telegraph ran a piece entitled, “Warmists overwhelmed by fear, panic and deranged hatred as their ‘science’ collapses.”   Even the BBC said “the dam is cracking.”  

The War is not Over Yet

There are many in both government and business—mostly banks—which have a lot to lose if their scam fails, however.   That is why we still see our government steam-rolling ahead, now changing “cap and trade” language with “pollution reduction targets.”   Anything to mislead the American public and confuse them.  The taxation commissioner for the EU, for example, is promoting carbon taxes on the people.   The IMF is pushing for a giant climate-change slush fund, the EPA wants more anti-CO2 regulations, and the U.N. is promoting a “green world order” by 2012.  So, the fight is not over yet, even though the movement has taken a severe beating brought on by itself and probably the prayers of millions. 

Professor Nils-Axel Morner, one of the world’s foremost experts on seal levels and the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Dept. at Stockholm U., has been extremely critical of the inaccuracies of seal levels scaremongering and calls it an “iceberg of shame,” adding that “The first thing which now has to come is the restoration of scientific values.”  He added that the climate campaign had “autocratically” tried to impose beliefs on the public that were not based on science.  “Al Gore is a salesman, not a scientist, and we don’t need salesmen.”  
May we stop blindly accepting and trusting government and the media.  This self-destructing movement is showing us that more and more Americans are thinking for themselves now.  That is good news.   It also shows that when truth hits the blogs on the Internet, people will read them and make up their own minds.   It behooves us to contact our federal representatives and ask them to cease all efforts toward carbon credits and the “Cap and Trade” scheme.  Better to do it now rather than later when it’s too late.  Who knows?   Maybe all the ice caps will melt and drown everyone!