CO2: Making Money from Air

Umberto Mazzei

17/06/2010

Opinión

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Last week (06/11) ended an environmental conclave in Bonn to prepare for the meeting over climate, next December, in Cancun. We were expecting fresh ideas over our serious environmental problems, but there were none. The ideas that had failed in Copenhagen were up once again for consideration, such as the 32 billion decoy – part of an hypothetical 100 billions- to be given to developing countries for capping their fossil fuel consumption. Translate as: freeze current pattern of economic relations. It seems that those who stir the spectre of "climate change" have no Plan B. It is once again the tactic of insisting on the same proposals in order to wear down resistance.

It is curious that among the many agencies and environmental NGOs present, there was no talk about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico - the biggest ecological disaster caused by man - and indeed zero proposals to prevent a recurrence.

Regardless of the merits of the 32 billion promise, the question is : Is it plausible that developed countries meet their funding promises? Almost none fulfilled their UN promise to aid poor countries with 0.7% of their GDP[1], made 40 years ago, for example. It is difficult now to believe in their funding promises, when they are bankrupt because the debt incurred to bail out banks and are trimming their social services to make economies. It is the old trick of making empty promises to encourage gullible governments to sign.

There are some that believe that the world is made of fools and act accordingly. The World Bank’s report on World Development Indicators[2], published last April, has a jewel in the art of disinformation. On page 185, under Definitions, it states: "Carbon dioxide emissions are emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement and includes carbon dioxide produced during consumption of solid, liquid and gas fuels and gas flaring. "

Are we to believe that at the World Bank they don’t know about other sources of CO2? It is clear bad faith. In economics, the World Bank already preaches a dogma that excludes a lot of science and puts aside proven doctrine[3]. Is it that it intends to apply the same policy to CO2? Are they planning to sell a new alchemy to make money from the air? Its definition implies that the molecules of CO2 emitted by the activities listed are different to those produced by nature: by plants, oceans, animals and ... us. CO2 is one. It is a molecule composed by one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms and that’s it.

The real pollution
CO2 is a beneficial gas at the origin of terrestrial life and the main element of the organic chemistry that creates and sustains life. The attempt to demonize CO2 and designate it as the measure of pollution is bad science. We all know that human greed poisons, dirties and destroys nature and the future of man, but with other substances. Just look at the disaster caused by the British Petroleum-BP- in order to save $ 500,000 on a safety valve and with the approval of the U.S. governmental agency responsible for oversight.

It is not in counting CO2 levels that we can measure the contamination produced by humans, because CO2 has been there for millions of years before us. The most elementary scientific method requires calculating the impact of an agent by measuring whatever is produced only by that agent. That is the real contamination. Burning fossil fuels produces dozens of gases and to properly measure the impact the proper method would be to select and measure those gases which nature rarely produces: carbon monoxide (CO), sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide, ozone (O3), dioxygen (O2 ), carbon aldehydes (CHx, COH), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), for example.

Another statement that deserves examination is the greenhouse warming issue. Elementary physics teaches that the atmosphere preserves the planet from excessive heating from the sun, so that an increase in atmospheric density should be cooling it. What greenhouses actually do is to provide isolation from the outside temperature and do not produce heat in themselves. The confinement of plants does indeed produce a concentration of CO2 emitted by them and that improves their development.

Changes in the Earth's temperature - the astrophysicists claim so – happen because of changes in solar activity, which also follow cyclical patterns. As if the earth wanted to confirm it, this last years temperatures have been lower. This past Nordic winter the Baltic Sea froze, it snowed in Bariloche (Argentina), during the summer, it snowed in Guatemala and snow made a never seen before mess in London. It is rather funny to hear explanations for such a climate by spokesmen from IPCC[4] or the complicit governments: it is colder now because of global warming.

Convenient Lies
In comments on a previous note over this issue, some people find my arguments convincing, but with reservations because I am not an environmental expert. Firstly, this is not about environment, but about astrophysics. It is matter of researching and not believing only on what is preached. The Nobel Prizes on the issue are IPCC’s Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, who is a railway engineer and Al Gore, who is an American politician. Since the Peace Nobel prize was given to "Barrak” Obama, we know that the Nobel prizes can promote big lies.

We have seen reported Big Lies on this issue, so it is now called “Climategate”[5]. A YouTube video[6] pokes fun at the "scientists" who tried to hide data that show global cooling and whose e-mails were disclosed. The British press has reported that scientists who support the global warming theory dodge the review of their reports by peers and refuse to share data.

Stephen McIntyre, a Canadian publisher (ClimateAudit.org.) proved that the steep curve on English temperature was the work of selective sampling and the British government now checks fake climate data reported in East Anglia. Anthony Watts, a meteorologist, found out that most of the 1,200 U.S. weather stations did not follow scientific standards by reporting temperatures taken in places surrounded by asphalt and heat sources. Such false information is used afterwards to calibrate satellite measurements. There is the known colossal lie of IPCC when it reported in 2007[7] that the Himalayan glaciers would be reduced from 500,000 km2 to 100,000 km2 by 2035, and would cause huge floodings in India and China. The truth is that there are only 33 000 km2 of glaciers there and all in good health[8], something that Professor Georg Kaser, from the Innsbruck University, had already alerted the IPCC about, in 2006[9].

Things appear more consistent when we learn that Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, is director or consultant in more than a dozen companies and organizations that have billionaire concerns in what is called the "Climate Industry" and that the salaries he takes or the donations to his Dehli institute[10] add to tens of millions of dollars annually[11]. It proves that there is, perhaps, a case on conflict of interests.

Money from the Air
On May 24, 2010, the BBC reported that Italy was in economic difficulty because it had a deficit equal to 114% of their GDP and also a deficit - not specified- in Carbon. The intention to slide CO2 among macroeconomic figures is clear. It is an attempt to use CO2 as a tool to manipulate development and include it in the financial structure.

Present problems originated long ago. Four decades of emitting dollars without funds created a huge mass of fantasy money unrelated to productive activities and many times bigger than the real economy. So much money could not be absorbed by productive activity and therefore it was invested in stock markets and financial "products". That speculation created the illusion of perpetual growth, until it collapsed on its own fraud. Profits went up in smoke when the values fell and governments in Europe and the U.S. contracted public debt to give the banks money that was invested in the recovery of the stock exchanges.

One wonders, with whom do governments go into debt to save the banks? With the banks of couse! Banks invent money and provide it to the government with interest. What is the Federal Reserve? A consortium of private banks that charges the government interest on the money we pay to save those same banks. Good Business!

In Greece and Spain, there is public debt to the citizens and to the banks, but the European Central Bank and the IMF provided money to pay wholly to the banks, while demanding cuts in pensions, jobs and wages to the citizens to pay for the new loan. A procedure identical to the Third World debt deal. Of course, with unemployment and lower wages, tax revenue will be less and thus the ability to pay. A very vicious circle.

The financial US and European crisis has halted growth in developed countries but developing countries continue to grow. Increases in 2009: China 8.7%, India 7.4%, Brazil 2.7%. It is growth of real economies producing goods and services, while in the U.S. and Europe there is talk of recovery because of stock market raises. That is the cause of the is scaremongering with CO2 and the attempt to create carbon markets. Limiting CO2 emissions is to limit energy, at least with current technologies, it actually means to limit the use of oxygen, but that would be too scary a word.

There are two pathways to controlling the use of fossil fuels. One uses the NATO military supremacy in order to control gas or oil fields - regardless of cost, death and destruction- to hand them over to oil corporations international cartels. The second channels the outrage over environmental destruction to create a global bureaucracy that will administer the right to produce energy from fossil fuels.

The above global bureaucracy project seems to be delegating technical management to IPCC and effective control of carbon funds to the World Bank, which already has a long and successful experience in curbing development. There would be an additional financial tool by backing IMF Special Drawing Rights with carbon securities. SDRs would eventually replace the dollar as international reserve currency. It is a bankers pipe dream, instead of lending money that needs some backing in gold, production capacity or labor force, the new SDRs enables international bankers to lend money made out of thin air.

- Umberto Mazzei has a PhD in political science from the University of Florence. He has taught international economics at universities in Colombia, Venezuela and Guatemala. He is Director of the Institute of International Economic Relations in Geneva.

[1] UN agreement on November 19,1970 known as Official Development Assistance - ODA

[2] World Development Indicators 2010.

[3] A long list, from Sismondi, Marx, List up to Pareto, Kondratieff, Sombart y Reinhardt, just to mention some.

[4] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC

[5] Reference to the lies during the Watergate case that caused President Richard Nixon resignation

[6] Hide the Decline

[7] 2007 UN IPCC Report.

[8] It became known that IPCC lie was based in a press release from WWF. Lies quoting lies.

[9] The Market Oracle, January 22, 2010.More Global Warming Scandals Implicate IPCC Climate Scientists

[10] The Energy and Resources Institute - TERI

[11] London. The Daily Express : New Climate Change Scandal by Anil Dawar ( 18/01/2010); London. The Sunday Telegraph: Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri by Christopher Booker and Richard North (20/12/2009)

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/142244