Romania probes carbon credits theft from Swiss Holcim

Romania probes carbon credits theft from Swiss Holcim

This is an outrage. (Notice they call this a "scheme".) It should be placed under the RICO Act.

Late November, Holcim informed authorities about "10 unauthorised transfers of polluting rights from two of its accounts opened at the national registry of carbon credits."
Romanian prosecutors have requested rogatory commissions in Italy, Britain, Liechtenstein, Belgium and Israel.
According to Romanian daily Gandul, the polluting rights were first transferred to Liechtenstein and then resold.
The EU on Thursday extended a halt on trading in carbon credits ordered after hackers broke into national trading registries and stole and then sold millions of euros worth of polluting rights.
Trading was first suspended on January 19.
The European Union Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) is the largest multi-national, greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme in the world, with about 12,000 companies on the exchange

Piling On-EPA Style

Obama Will Make You Pay More at the Pump

“What do you say to people who are losing patience with gas prices at $3 a gallon? And how much of a political price do you think you're paying for that, right now?” This was a question asked of the president at a press conference in August…of 2006. The president was George W. Bush. In fact, it was a question that was asked in one way or another regularly during the entire eight years of the Bush presidency, regardless of where energy prices stood at that moment.

.....Yet, at the end of President Bush’s presidency, gas prices were 9% lower than when he took office (adjusted for inflation). So where have these outspoken critics been since Bush left office?

Just last week (as frigid temperatures and blizzards blasted Europe and the U.S.), the EPA announced that it will begin regulating power plants and oil refineries in an attempt to curb global warming. The new regulations will seek to cut greenhouse gas emissions by making it more expensive to turn fossil fuels into energy. And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Bureau of Land Management would issue new rules making it harder to develop natural resources on government-owned land. These measures will not only drive up the cost of electricity and gasoline but will also make us more dependent on foreign sources of energy.

Read the entire piece here

American Power Act-Wacky Marxist With A New Name

VALVO: Cap-and-trade magic show
Carbon offset plan puts a new face on an old illusion

It's possible Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lieberman can pull a rabbit out of a hat on this one, but I doubt it.

The trick with any global warming bill is to convince enough people that everything will change but nothing will hurt. You need enough details to appease environmentalists, while using enough sleight of hand so that no one else can tell what you're doing. This is why politicians have abandoned a straight carbon tax - it's too obvious. It's no surprise that Congress hasn't passed a global warming bill - this is a pretty hard trick to pull off.

Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, (he served in Viet Nam) and Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Independent, have unveiled their latest effort, the American Power Act, which tries to put a new face on an old illusion. Instead of using the same, tired, global warming rhetoric the American people have soundly rejected, the Kerry-Lieberman bill is supposedly about national security or energy independence. However, the core of bill is the same cap-and-trade proposal that would drive up energy costs, cripple domestic industries and cost American jobs - with one key difference.

Kerry-Lieberman changes the landscape by using a sector-based approach. The bill targets any source with more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, which the authors estimate would affect 7,500 sources. These sources are then divided into three sectors: power plants, manufacturers and transportation. This is cap and trade via divide and conquer. By establishing separate programs for these major sectors, Kerry-Lieberman attempts to use giveaways to buy off enough opposition in each sector to pass the bill.

However, Kerry-Lieberman is more similar to Waxman-Markey than it is different. Both bills threaten green tariffs on countries that don't self-inflict austerity measures. They both include massive subsidies for politically favored energy sources and use welfare-style energy rebates to buy off consumer outrage.

Both bills also fail to put caps on either agriculture or forestry. The reasons are twofold. Simply put, farm state lawmakers would never support a bill that attacks agricultural emissions. This played out in the Waxman-Markey process when House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, Minnesota Democrat, successfully obtained absolution for farmers in exchange for his caucus' votes.

Second, cap-and-trade bills need to sell offsets as a supplemental way for covered sources to get under the cap. Both bills allow 2 billion tons in offsets per year. Land use, soil treatment and trees are the easiest ways to generate offsets. If agriculture and forestry were forced to account for their own emissions, they would simply consume all of their own offsets and would have nothing left to sell back to other regulated sources. Carbon offsets are the farm subsidies of the 21st century, which is sure to please hesitant farm state senators.

It's no wonder trust in government is at an all-time low. Citizens have seen this game before and they know what cap and trade means for them. It would be refreshing for a politician to embrace the true costs of the bill and not pretend central energy planning comes without significant pain.

Cap and Trade Fraud Investigation

DC Protest Warrior: Cap and Trade Fraud Investigation

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. legislators have obtained a court order unsealing documents in a case involving a multi-million-dollar cap-and-trade fraud.

Republican legislators say the records--due to be opened to the public in early January--could shed light on the potential challenges of policing a new, trillion-dollar commodities market that would be created under climate legislation that Congress is considering.

In a rare filing by House lawyers, Reps. Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Greg Walden (R., Ore.), the ranking members respectively of the Energy Committee and the Oversight Subcommittee, asked a federal district court in California to unseal all the closed records regarding the successful prosecution for fraud of Anne Masters Sholtz, a former California Institute of Technology economist.

Cap and Tax-NewsMax

Nobel Prize-Winner: Cap-and-Trade Could Ruin U.S. Economy

With climate change legislation under consideration by Congress, an environmental expert with a Nobel Prize-winning organization warns that the cap-and-trade bill supported by Democrats could destroy the American economy.

Dr. Steve Running, Director of the University of Montana’s Climate Change Studies program, is on the board of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with global warming crusader Algore.

During a Wednesday interview with a radio talk show host in Montana, Dr. Running said efforts to deal with climate change will fail unless they involve all nations.

"If the U.S. passed cap-and-trade and other countries did not, it wouldn’t work," he declared.

"It would ruin the U.S. economy and it wouldn’t save the climate either. So this is a global issue, the global climate statistics are global in nature, global carbon emissions are global in nature, and we really have to have an international consensus of what to do. That is going to stretch our international diplomacy to its limit, there’s no doubt about that."

Running called on the U.S. to show leadership on the climate change issue, saying other countries will follow suit. But China and India, two nations that produce large amounts of greenhouse gases, are not expected to adopt cap-and-trade measures like those being debated in the U.S. Congress.

Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has voiced sentiments similar to Dr. Running's. He told Newsmax in a recent interview that cap-and-trade won't work because "it doesn't matter what we do in America — if we drive our manufacturing base off to places like China, India, and Mexico, places where they don't have any emissions standards or restrictions, then it's going to have the effect of increasing and not deceasing CO2."

He also said cap-and-trade would amount to the "largest tax increase in the history of America."

Coal, National Security and Virginia Jobs

We have a petition opposing the Wacky-Marxist legislation.

It goes like this:

We, your constituents, have signed this petition against the passage of the Waxman-Markey bill and the Senate version of the Cap and Trade Bill and the trillions of dollars and the 100’s of thousands of jobs it will cost the Commonwealth and all of America.

This legislation will increase the cost of energy in the Commonwealth at a time when every feasible source of domestic energy should be explored and used, and at a time when Virginians can afford it least.

Virginia is a coal state. There are thousands of Virginians whose livelihood depends upon the production and use of coal; hard working, tax-paying Virginians who deserve better.

Coal is a reliable source of energy.

It is plentiful.

Clean coal technology works.

The theory of so-called “global warming”, or “climate change” is junk science.

CO2 is not a pollutant.

Ya'll know how I feel about domestic energy production and specifically, the use of coal. You know I help build clean coal facilities for Dominion Power. I've told people over and over, clean coal works its viable, and its cheap.

This is, IMAO, a states' rights issue. A 10th Amendment Issue. Its Virginia's coal. We should be able to use our resources as we see fit, within the guidelines of good sense and economic viability.

The current crop of new candidates seeking election to the House of Delegates and VA Senate would be well-served to address this issue now. Do not allow the radicals and outside agitators to dictate Virginia's economy. The future of Virginia jobs and her citizens depend on you for protection.

Thanks to one of my Facebook friends I found a link to a website supporting coal production in Appalachia. You'll see a new avatar on the left hand side of this website.

Go and sign the letter, please.

From the website:
Coal energizes our communities and the nation. It fuels our economy and powers our homes and businesses. It provides good jobs and an economic future for our families. But radical activists are determined to end coal in Appalachia. They don't care about our jobs, our communities or our future. Without coal, our thriving communities will not survive. Sign the letter today.

Dear Elected Officials,
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has arbitrarily decided to halt for further review 79 pending coal mining permits in the Appalachian states. These permits have been reviewed and approved by both state and federal regulatory authorities, after the EPA had commented, or chosen not to comment, on each of the permit applications.

Only when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wholly rejected the challenges by outside environmental activists, did EPA decide to intervene and reassert the same arguments the courts had already rejected.

EPA's action, or inaction, is threatening more than 100,000 jobs and further destabilizes communities that have been battered by the recession. Moreover, millions of Americans depend on coal for affordable electricity, and the Appalachian states depend on coal for tax revenue that keeps their budgets afloat.

When nationwide unemployment is at its highest level in years, the government should not stop Americans from going to work. When states are facing major budget shortfalls and even bankruptcy because of the weak economy, the federal government should not kill significant sources of revenue.

The consequences of the EPA's actions will be severe. Please take action today to pressure the EPA to lift these bureaucratic roadblocks. The future of families across Appalachia depends on you.

Thank you,

If You're Not Getting The Patriot Post, You're Not Getting It

I've been reading Mark Alexander since forever; back when it was the Federalist Digest.
If you don't get this delivered to your email box every week, three times a week, you're woefully under-informed.

THE DEMO-GOGUES

The Waxman-Malarkey cap and tax bill is bad news
Biggest Big Lie of the Year: "Just last Friday, the House of Representatives came together to pass an extraordinary piece of legislation that will finally open the door to decreasing our dependence on foreign oil, preventing the worst consequences of climate change, and making clean energy the profitable kind of energy. Thanks to members of Congress who were willing to place America's progress before the usual Washington politics, this bill will create new businesses, new industries, and millions of new jobs, all without imposing untenable new burdens on the American people or America's businesses." --President Barack Obama on the cap and tax bill
**In January 2008, Obama said, "[U]nder my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket ... because I'm capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas ... you name it ... whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations. That will cost money. ...[T]hey will pass that money on to the consumers." He was right then.

Queen Nancy patting her own back:
"We passed transformational legislation, which will take us into the future. For some it was a very difficult vote because the entrenched agents of the status quo were out there full force, jamming the lines in their districts and here, and they withstood that." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on cap and tax

Projecting Demo faults on the GOP:
"[Republicans] want to play politics and see if they can keep any achievements from being accomplished that may be beneficial to the Democrats. They're rooting against the country and I think in this case, even rooting against the world because the world needs to get its act together to stop global warming." --Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)

How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb: "The first step we're taking sets new efficiency standards on fluorescent and incandescent lighting. I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and our businesses. Between 2012 and 2042 these new standards will save consumers up to $4 billion a year. We're going to start here at the White House. Secretary Chu has already started to take a look at our light bulbs and we're going to see what we need to replace them with energy efficient light bulbs." --Barack Obama

Can We Afford N0bama's Infrastructure Program?

This story was originally posted with the title "Can Obama Afford His Infrastructure Program?"
It's not his money, it's ours. I work in construction; I've seen the prices rise over the last 6 months. This ain't gonna happen unless they raise taxes. The price of concrete is at an all time high. Asphalt is through the roof.

On Saturday, President-elect Obama pledged the biggest road and bridge construction program since the 1950s. But has anyone in Washington asked Wilson County, Tennessee road superintendent Steve Armistead about the price of asphalt
these days? For that matter, has anyone thought about how much more cement is likely to cost when that industry has to pass through costs associated with its carbon dioxide emissions?

Bottom line: the two most essential materials of an infrastructure rebuilding program – asphalt and cement – could be so expensive that Obama won’t be able to fix nearly as many roads, bridges and buildings as he wants to, and thus fewer jobs will be created.

Armistead told The Tennessean newspaper earlier this month that, notwithstanding crude oil’s precipitous price decline, in November the price of asphalt, which is made from crude, was more than double what it was last January. Rodney Carmichael, head of the Tennessee County Highways Officials Association, told the newspaper asphalt prices will remain high because, when crude prices shot up, oil refiners tweaked their equipment to refine more gasoline, leaving less feedstock available to make asphalt. “The newer technology has backfired,” Carmichael said.

Speaking of backfires, the Obama administration’s plan to force CO2-emitting manufacturers to have to pay for their emissions appears likely to cause cement prices to surge.

The cement industry is one of the world’s worst CO2 emitters. To exempt cement manufacturers from CO2 emissions reductions would make the entire program Obama wants to impose a joke. And yet, if Canada is any example, forcing cement manufacturers to have to pay extra to offset the CO2 emissions they generate could cause cement prices to skyrocket.

Facing a carbon tax, British Columbia cement manufacturers recently told government officials in Ottawa that such a tax would eliminate their profit margins for years to come. The officials made it sound as if, even if they raise prices, they may still have to cut back manufacturing.

Party of the Common Man?

Human Events Online
Obama Gets Failing Grade on Three E's: Energy, Education, and Eastern Europe

"Senator Obama has presented a variety of sound bites on many issues, but he has failed to provide any real solutions, or any hint of change," says David Freddoso, author of the new bestseller The Case Against Barack Obama.

Over the next few days, we will explore Senator Obama's position on three issues dominating today's headlines—energy, education, and Eastern Europe. Today we delve into his energy agenda.

Helping Americans by Raising Gas Prices?
High gas prices continue to punish American consumers and businesses. Yet Senator Obama's political track record clearly supports policies that would raise gas prices even higher, says author David Freddoso.

In his new bestseller, The Case Against Barack Obama, Freddoso points out that n0bama lamented in mid-June that high gasoline prices have hurt Americans. But n0bama supports carbon caps and carbon taxes—environmental controls that are designed to intentionally increase prices at the pump. The idea is to make gasoline more expensive so that people use less of it and emit less carbon. n0bama also eagerly embraces ethanol as a key solution to our energy crisis, adds Freddoso, but experts agree that ethanol will lead to much higher food prices, without providing real energy relief.

"Obama supports an environmental policy that requires higher gas prices over the long run," says Freddoso. "Until he drops his environmental program, Obama is only shedding crocodile tears when he talks about how high gas prices are hurting Americans. His real goal is $6 or $7 gasoline, as a matter of policy."

Americans need a leader who will offer real leadership and real solutions, not simply pay lip service to their concerns while pursuing policies that will hurt average Americans. For his energy policy, Barack Obama receives an "F."

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These are just as valuable as the ones you can buy from Al Gore.