Scam Within a Scam- Hackers Hit EU Carbon Credit Exchange, Steal €30 Million in Carbon Credits

Trading on the European Union Carbon Exchange was halted after hackers made off with an estimated €30 million in carbon emission allowances from five European countries in late January.

The Czech Registry for Emissions Trading was one of the worst affected by the hack, losing 7 million euros worth of the pollution permits, known as EU Allowances (EUAs).

Some 2 million EUAs were stolen by hackers from Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Estonia and Poland within a few days. Each credit allows the bearer one ton of emissions and is worth 14 euros.

EU authorities say they suspect a phishing scam enabled hackers to log into unsuspecting companies' carbon credit accounts and transfer the allowances to themselves, allowing them to be sold on.

The credits are normally traded between companies that have a shortage of or excess emissions allowances for their current operations, and involve instant payment, meaning hackers can create accounts and then delete them as soon as they are paid.

Investigators in Greece have traced the thefts to at least 8 internet protocol addresses in Romania. Registry officials in Estonia and Germany say they have located some 610,000 allowances stolen from the Czech registry, but the theft not only highlights a lack of security on the international exchanges, but also raises concerns that credits purchased in good faith on the open market could turn out to be stolen from the registries.

Some of the markets reopened with limited activity on Feb 3rd after giving "reasonable reassurances that the minimum security requirements are in place".

It is not the first time the ETS has suffered a security breach. The system was hit by a phishing scam last year that saw 13 European markets shut down, while a cross-border fraud scam in 2008 and 2009 netted criminals 5 million euros, according to Agence France-Presse.

I could go on about how such 'cap and trade' or climate or carbon Exchanges are pretty much worse than useless, but they do a bang up job of explaining that all by themselves- however unintentionally. Hell, Chicago's much-ballyhooed Climate Exchange shut down at the end of 2010.

Leaving aside the fact that such a system would arbitrarily place limits on output from manufacturing, transportation, utilities and energy exploration, how exactly would these trading mechanisms be enforced? It would require a massive bureaucracy and even more red tape- think along the lines of 0bamacare's 1099 mandate, only for air instead of healthcare.

All while obstructing further exploration and drilling for oil in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, coal in West Virginia or natural gas in the Marcellus shale. This in turn has already driven up energy costs and will only further America's dependence on energy imported from unstable or belligerent nations.

And if anybody think the above problems will magically go away thanks to some sort arbitrary imposition of cap and trade of carbon exchange scheme, I have a bridge in Brooklyn couple of EU carbon credits to sell you.

Al Gore Does About Face on Ethanol

Addressing a green energy conference in Athens last month, former Vice President Al Gore told an audience that he only supported tax breaks and subsidies for corn-based ethanol to try and gain votes from farmers in Iowa and his native Tennessee.

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Reuters quoted Gore saying of the U.S. policy that is about to come up for congressional review. "First-generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president," the wire service reported Gore saying.

Ethanol production this year is estimated to take up slightly over 40% of the total US corn crop. Opponents of ethanol say that producing the combustible materiel from corn raises food prices by creating an artificial shortage of corn.

Of course, this begs the question of whether Gore felt this way about ethanol all along, but voted for an EPA mandate requiring ethanol in 1994 (as Vice President, he was the tie-breaking vote) as a means of currying favor with farmers and agribusiness ahead of the '96 campaign, or if he simply changed his mind out of the blue. I'll refrain from using the word 'sincere', since it doesn't quite seem to belong in the same sentence as a snake-oil salesman selling doomsday unless we (but not Gore himself) forfeit our freedom of choice, our industry, our agriculture and our resources to accommodate his carbon trading ponzi scheme.

Credits and tax breaks for the ethanol subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress chooses to renew the $7.7 billion program.

10 Reasons Why I Parted Ways With Sanctimonious, Dishonest, Ponytailed Blogger

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of husky, pony-tailed blogger Charles Johnson making his contrived, self-serving ideological pivot official on his blog. On November 30, 2009 Charles Johnson officially 'broke' with the vast right wing conspiracy in a lengthy, petulant screed titled 'Why I parted ways with the right'. The thing is, when he had been earlier linking to conservative sites like Pajamas Media or Hot Air, he claimed that he never was a conservative or part of the right to begin with- which made his blatant attention whoring all the more disingenuous.

There's also the notion that Johnson bailed because he wanted to remain on the side of whoever was in charge. During LGF's heyday, that was the Bush Administration- and now, during it's precipitous, inevitable decline, Johnson and his hangers-on are making every effort to rally around the Obama Administration and portray the GOP as greedy, racist, clueless obstructionists (which also proves that Johnson's pretty bad at math too, since the GOP won't be able to 'obstruct' much of anything until January when 63 new members will be sworn in to the House of Representatives).

Speaking of, I wonder how it feels to so publicly and vocally attach yourself to the Democrats and progressives before their worst Congressional losses since the end of WWII. Also keep in mind Johnson was pretty much finished with the right when Chris Cristie, Robert McDonnell and Scott Brown won their respective elections in late 2009 early 2010.

Still, in the spirit of the 1-year mark, I thought I'd make my own list of why I broke with Johnson's blog

10) Moderate and popular New England Republicans like Scott Brown supposedly are the spearhead for some massive Tea Party/Ron Paul/John Birch Society/Big Oil/Gold Merchant/Climate Denier conspiracy according to speculation by Johnson.

9) Johsnon's supposedly well thought out and introspective reasons for parting with the right read like a half-assed laundry list of boilerplate talking points from Media Matters or Act Blue. Seriously, it might as well have been titled 'Me! Me! Me! It's all about me! Now praise me for how principled I am!'. This is conduct I'd expect from an attention starved 6-year old, not a middle aged man with a once-credible blog that had tens of thousands of hits a day.

8) Besides longtime conservative posters, the 'purges' from LGF in late 2009 included a large number of both Jewish and Military veteran posters. I'm convinced that was by design on his part.

7) Open hostility or antipathy towards religion- with two notable exceptions; Islam and the Church of Climate Change

6) Encouraging disdain and outright dismissal of any news story that ran on FOX News (even if the same story was running concurrently on other news outlets) while posting as gospel truth opinion pieces from blogs such as crooks and liars, media matters or the Huffington Post.

5) Encouraging disdain and outright dismissal of any news story and public or media figure that appeared on the FOX network UNTIL Johnson's appearance on Alan Colmes' radio show....which aired on FOX News/Talk radio.

4) Flags.....Good Lord. For a man of Charles Johnson's supposed intellect, he sure gets worked up (and frequently tripped up) by easily researched matters such as flags. Seriously.

3) Contrived guilt-by-association from Johnson, but only directed at those on the right. Apparently the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and talk radio were responsible for the death of a Kentucky Census worker or the Texas man who flew an airplane into an IRS Field office. But as far as the Discovery Channel gunman or homicidal University of Alabama-Huntsville professor Amy Bishop and their political leanings are concerned, then the 'No true Scotsman' argument applies there.

2) The other remaining posters at LGF. Ever have to visit some particularly activist, obnoxious, strident and in your face relatives for the Holidays? They're on the opposite end of the political spectrum, but will take advantage of having a quasi captive audience to lecture and browbeat you, even though it will do little to change you mind? That's what the majority of the 'new' LGF posters were like, emboldened after the 2009 bloodletting.

1) The administrators or 'monitor lizards'. Just as bad as the posters, only they had the ability to make your posts disappear for high crimes like mentioning President Barack Hussein Obama's middle name. Attempting to debate them was even worse, since they'd simply deny, dodge and obfuscate- then after moving around the goal posts on their terms, claim they had prevailed. 'Monitor lizards' were also known to type out lengthy, vitriolic screeds hoping that global warming skeptics would be rounded up and put into prison camps, opponents of a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be deported to North Korea and members of the Tea Party would be publicly shot and killed...and I won't even start with the disturbing fixation regarding Sarah Palin some of them maintain. Keep in mind these are the sort of individuals Johnson not only wanted to keep around on his blog, but granted them admin status while others were banned for pointing out how much the blog had changed.