Link broken?

Link works fine for me, so don't know what's happening.

"Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas"

Six pages from the NY Times 8/8/12

"Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions.

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/world/asia/incentive-to-slow-climate-change-drives-output-of-harmful-gases.html?pagewanted=all

“I was a climate negotiator, and no one had this in mind,” said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it. It turned the economics of the business on its head.”

Doh! Pork barrels, fishing quotas, wine lakes, grain mountains (and now ethanol-from-grain lakes) ....

A never-ending list of scams

Posted By: fostertomWhat are the alternatives, to trying to incentivise behaviours that you consider desirable? Dictatorial edict? No desires, just amoral-free-market?

Free ice cream.

A free ice crime?

On Wednesday, despite claims by one of Gore's representatives two months ago, it was revealed that his Generation Investment Management private equity fund has taken a 9.5 percent stake in a company that has one of the largest carbon credit portfolios in the world

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/06/04/gore-invests-carbon-credit-company-will-media-care#ixzz23BPuxf9z
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"Creators of carbon credit scheme cashing in on it"
There's an elephant in global warming's living room that few in the mainstream media want to talk about: the creators of the carbon credit scheme are the ones cashing in on it.
The two cherub like choirboys singing loudest in the Holier Than Thou Global Warming Cathedral are Maurice Strong and Al Gore.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover031307.htm
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"Vice Chair of Carbon Rating Agency (subsidiary of IdeaCarbon) 2008-2010, Christiana Figueres (now the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was trained by Al Gore, chairman of Generation Investment Management, which owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Chicago Climate Exchange owns half of the European Climate Exchange. Thus if the United States and Europe adopt a “cap and trade” carbon credit trading scheme Al Gore could potentially rake in billions of dollars"

Actually, Colin, that was indeed the impression I got from reading the article.

Bot - excellent links.

Jeez, this world stinks.

Gore's a wealthy man - you have to be to be an American politician and, yes, being an American politician probably helps you to become more wealthy.

So, should he invest his money in schemes intended to help solve a problem he is seriously and noisily concerned about or should he invest it in businesses which have nothing to do with the matter (and are probably actually harmful)? Either way he gets to be called a hypocrite but at least with what he's doing it's only by people with an axe to grind who wouldn't listen to him anyway.

But Joiner, that's got nothing to do with the argument that Bot's putting forward.

And it says nothing about how rational is the opinion of those who've listened to Gore and many other, better qualified, people on the subject. Somebody who based their opinion just on what Gore has to say would indeed be a bit clueless but I doubt there are many of them. At most Gore draws the big picture to help people to make sense of the details elsewhere, if they so choose.