Comments on: WSJ’s "Heard on the Street": Political Energy Down, Market Energy Up Post-Copenhagen (Remembering the risks of Enron’s political capitalism model)

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:38:00 +0000

Steve C,

Exactly right. It’s another effort by the Obama and the Dems to tax the producers of this country without using an explicit tax. The new health care reform bill (with its tax increases on high earners) is similar. Why not just increase medicare payroll tax to 5% (up from 2 x 1.45% = 2.9%) to cover more people?

By: TheSkyIsFalling

TheSkyIsFalling — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:40:59 +0000

Thanks Steve C, that certainly clarifies the matter. Well said.

By: steve C.

steve C. — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:40:47 +0000

Emissions trading came to be because politicians lack the courage to tax carbon dioxide. Emissions trading schemes enable the government to create artificial scarcity, which gives them the power to endow favors on allies. It also requires the creation of trading organizations, operated by the same folks who enable the trade in financial instruments. Who are naturally inclined to favor such schemes.

The political leaders can then say, “well we’ve created a market solution to account for the alleged external costs of CO2 emmisions”. Everyone is happy. The politicians avoid accountability for passing a tax. The financial markets get a new toy. The greens delight in outfitting us with hair shirts. The CO2 producers are not so happy, but at least they have a system that they can game. Which is why “consultants” are happy. Purveyors of magical technology (wind, solar etc) are happy because their uncompetitive contraptions become more competitive by dint of government fiat.

The only groups left out are consumers and workers who have to suffer the consequences of a Rube Goldberg solution to a problem that might be a problem one hundred years in the future.

Other than stealing from the 90% to enrich the 10%, what could possibly be wrong with that.

By: TheSkyIsFalling

TheSkyIsFalling — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:30:12 +0000

I would like to know just how it came to pass that trading in emissions became the flavour of the month. Such an ephemeral “commodity” is so dependant upon mandate rather than reality, questions of auditing arise, accounting for so called sequestration in trees, disused mines and wells and it goes on. Half the population would be employed in monitoring. It would be obvious to anyone that it is open to massive abuse. (See recent billions lost in Europe). From an outside perspective it looks like madness and a very hard way to go about something that other mechanisms could achieve more easily (if it were indeed appropriate to do so). It is also very enlightening to see the holes in the scheme in the opening paragraphs. In addition there is interesting material on the link to political capitalism which I had not seen before. Concerns were raised here in Australia regarding the lack of certainty as the ETS bill failed to pass pre-Copenhagen although just how much certainty would be accomplished by the ETS bill I am not sure given the problems associated with it.
Charles

By: nofreewind

nofreewind — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:09:58 +0000

It is likely that the science has already been settled on CO2 as a greenhouse gas, but the politicians and their shill scientists could care less. Here is some real science. The decreasing logarithmic effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Does Hansen know this?

I keep coming across my skeptic pals stating that increasing CO2 will only have a mild effect on temperature, because it has a reverse logarithmic GHG effect. The first 20 ppm have a big effect, then less so to 100 ppm and then by the time we get to 380, doubling it’s concentration will have little effect.
I found that greenhouse plastic has a similar effect.
http://www.nofreewind.com/2009/12/dimin … c-co2.html

some other pal told me that even the IPCC agrees that: the reverse logarithmic effect from CO2 “settled science”.

The best answer I found was right here.
http://wrauny.blogspot.com/2009/…-co2- alone.html
If the scientists accept the MODTRAN program calculations, then this entire thing is “once again” nothing but a complete scam, hoax or whatever. spent trillions on nonsense, and literally kill people by freezing them to death and impoverishing them by increasing their energy prices.

Here in the physics forum some seemingly “good guys” come up with the exact same thing as the blogger, just trying to get to the truth.
http://www.physicsforums.com/sho…ad.php? t=174215
Listen to RealScientists talking
“Look in the Modtran graph right below the output data, that should answer both questions. CO2 only radiates only with a certain narrow frequency spectrum. the first ppmv’s saturate it rather quickly, then at higher CO2 concentrations the adjacent frequencies only get slowly affected.

Compare it with painting with a little transparent paint. The first layer gives the strongest coloring. Additional layers of paint only deepen the color slightly. This a 100% identical process, only in another frequency band.

….That brings to question, what does cause the earth to be warmer if ghgs don’t have much of anything to do with it. It would appear that cloud cover might be the actual reason – that combined with albedo – as well as being the dominant reasons for variations.”

http://www.junkscience.com/Green…eenhouse- X2.png
This is what happens every time I look into any of the green claims, it always turns to nonsense.