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Carbon Trading Halted After EU Exchange Is Hacked
chicksdaddy writes "The European Commission (EC) suspended trading in carbon credits on Wednesday after unknown hackers compromised the accounts of Czech traders and siphoned off around $38 million, Threatpost reports. EU countries including Estonia, Austria, The Czech Republic, Poland and France began closing their carbon trading registries yesterday after learning that carbon allowances had been siphoned from the account of the Czech based register. A notice posted on the Web site of the Czech based registry said that it was 'not accessible for technical reasons' on Thursday and the EC issued an order to cease spot trading until January 26 so that it can sort out what appears to be chronic security lapses within the system."
I always assumed this whole silly emissions trading business was just one big scam already.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I don't take Czechs.
Yes, it is. The news here is that someone scammed the scammers. That's the 21st century Robin Hood for you (and definitely better than that movie).
How does one liquidate siphoned carbon credits? Do they hold a black market value?
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
"Carbon pollution" is about as valid a phrase as "pigeon antennae."
The thing that costs the economy is people fabricating global catastrophes that aren't there, and legislating "solutions" to false problems in order to steal.
They're guilt removers. People can buy carbon credits to offset their overuse of natural resources and pollution of the air (like Al Gore). This makes them a better person overall, and allows them to continue to tell other people they should all be riding bicycles while they fly around in private jets (like Al Gore).
Or something like that.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
1. They stole the 'carbon credits', not electronic cash.
2. You can't legally sell them anywhere except via the exchange.
3. The exchange tracks all legal sales.
4. Therefore, can't the government require the exchange to show all legal sales and invalidate the unapproved sales?
Isn't that the entire value of using the exchange? To track the sales of said credits?
Assuming that they have already used the exchange to sell the the fraudlenty exchanged credits, is it not a relatively easy matter to find the account that sold the stolen carbon credits and force them to buy them back?
This assumes of course that it was actually carbon credits that were stolen instead of cash stolen from un-authorized trades (in which case, the article needs to be re-written, removing the sensational crap)
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Apparently you and I have completely different mechanisms for drawing conclusions.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
You should read more about the subject, and then you'd realise it isn't.
What, pray tell, should we be reading?
In theory, carbon trading is a good idea. But the way it is actually implemented in Europe, and the way it is likely to be implement in the USA, are scams. The credits should be auctioned, not handed out to politically connected corporations. The credits should be scarce enough so they actually mean something.
But it would be much simpler and effective to just have a carbon tax, paid at the point of extraction or import.
While carbon credits may sound like a good idea in theory, I had assumed from the start that they were doomed to fail in practice. How do you verify that a company that sells credits has really reduced their own carbon footprint by the requisite amount? It just seems too easy to game the system.
I hadn't considered the possibility of cyber-criminals simply stealing the credits outright; that makes matters even worse!
Shouldn't these credits be individually traceable, so that the stolen ones can simply be voided and re-issued? If not, then someone really f**ked up the implementation of this system.
The entire cap and trade scheme is wrong. Companies should not be permitted to purchase "credits" from companies that are in compliance.
Those companies that are in compliance are following the law, not doing anything special.
Those companies who continue to exceed carbon emission standards should be fined progressively to the point that they achieve zero profit until they rectify the problem.
You either follow the law or you don't.
Cap and Trade is a farce. Perhaps I can purchase some "Non-meth dealer credits" and then sell meth without consequence.
You should read more about the subject, and then you'd realise it isn't.
Indeed. It's more about economic self-mutilation. There are three warning signs: 1) Advocates for carbon trading are upset because carbon emission behavior not changed (market's goal is to ensure carbon emission costs are accounted for by carbon emitters, not to change behavior); 2) Carbon markets are poorly designed in Europe due to hard caps and the flaws have been known since early on (hard caps mean there is a sudden change from a very elastic supply of carbon credits to a very inelastic supply, instead as the supply of carbon credits increases, the marginal cost of additional credits should increase, resulting in a market with a smoothly more inelastic supply as demand increases); and 3) no economic justification for carbon markets (by this, I mean a proper cost/benefits analysis of whether carbon markets or for that matter, any carbon emission reduction strategy which shows greater harm from not implementing the strategy and which takes into account the time value of money).
Congratulations! You've won $38MM in carbon credits!
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Yes it is a scam. The very idea of "paying for the right to pollute" is simply bad and wrong.
what do think an EPA permit is? It is actually a permit to emit pollution to the current standards. It is not a permit that stops you from polluting.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
We've reinvented papal indulgences. Where's Martin Luther?
Excellent! Tacos al carbon for everybody!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why do people always have to bring up Al Gore? He may or may not be a hypocrite. Either way, it matters very little compared to climate change.
If your doctor tells you that you have lung cancer and need surgery, only an idiot would focus on the fact that your doctor smokes and is a hypocrite, and use that as an excuse to keep smoking and not get the scary and painful surgery.
Companies should not be permitted to purchase "credits" from companies that are in compliance.
"Compliance" is whether or not you are producing more carbon dioxide than allowed by the number of credits you hold. If a company pollutes more, but purchases the appropriate amount of credits, then they are in compliance, are following the law, etc. Sounds to me like you don't understand the point of cap and trade. They are an economically sound way to reduce overall pollution amounts, in other words, they address directly what pollution regulation tries to do indirectly. That is, cap net pollution from the entire system rather than capping individually pollution from each source.
Entirely different; that's a carbon offset.
Carbon credits are part of cap-and-trade, in which CO2-producing industrial concerns have their CO2 production limited by law. Entities that are below their limit can essentially sell the difference between their limit and their actual CO2 emissions to other entities (who presumably would otherwise be above their limit).
If CO2 emissions were simply capped by law, industrial concerns would all have to make CO2 emissions reductions regardless of the cost-effectiveness of doing so. Adding the "and trade" component means that it becomes economically advantageous to make reductions wherever it is the most cost-effective. Since CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't care where it comes from, this means that CO2 emissions are reduced more for lower cost than with a cap-only system.
I'm surprised people/companies were actually seriously putting any type of serious money into this crap.
Are there some countries that are actually mandating carbon credits, etc? I mean, if not by law, why would anyone take part in this scam, unless they were on the money making side?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The European Commission (EC) suspended trading in carbon credits on Wednesday after unknown hackers compromised the accounts of Czech traders and siphoned off around $38 million
According to Wall street journal (original poster yuna49) the latest theft was $7 million and the $38 million (0.02% of the market) is the total of the permits missing in action.
We did just that with SOx emissions and it worked. Mind you they also reduced the total allowable each year. Also the only people who could sell credits were those who were reducing their own emissions compared to past years.
The problem with your analogy is that the other doctors, who disagree with the diagnosis, are paid spokesmen of the tobacco industry.
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Except for one major difference. Carbon credits are for something that we can actually measure. We have the capability of determining how much carbon one particular activity expels and how much another locks up.
Now whether or not carbon credits are an accurate reflection of how much carbon is locked up vs expelled, however, is a whole other issue.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
You mean paying another group to reduce pollution so you can pollute isn't a scam? It's a shell game whose goal isn't to improve things just to maintain the status quo. It's a pointless exercise. Offer companies tax credits to reduce emissions and fine them for exceeding but letting them pay to pollute is a joke.
I have a headache and I'm quite tired, so feel free to correct me if any of my understanding of the subject is wrong here.
.
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As I understand it, the basic concept is thus (shown via a hypothetical example):
1) The nation of Countrystan decides that there will be no more than 1,000 tons of carbon exhausted per year, by law, from certain industries.
2) Each business within the industry is allocated a certain number of "carbon credits" that effectively cap how much bad stuff they can spew into the air.
3) Since the total number of credits is a fixed number, any business that doesn't want to be hit with major fines will try to stay under their credits.
4) Businesses that are way below their credits can sell other businesses their credits. Businesses that may exceed their cap can purchase credits from other businesses, but the total number of credits (and thus the total amount of pollution) out there doesn't increase in any way.
5) Due to 4, there are economic incentives to reduce carbon output. Heavy polluters would likely need to buy extra credits, thereby incurring a cost that would offset any financial benefits of lackadaisical pollution control. Light (or non) polluters would (rather than a cost) receive a gain in revenue by selling their allotted credits to businesses that can't keep pace. Therefore, businesses stand to lose money if they pollute and gain money if they cut back on pollution, thereby providing the best kind of incentive (economic) for businesses to get their pollution under control.
6) Eventually, more businesses would have a surplus of credits that no one needs to buy. At this point, I imagine the total number of credits in circulation could be reduced.
.
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So, this is how I roughly understand the whole carbon credits thing is supposed to work. Am I right here? And does the real-world application work like this model, or is it rife with corruption, bureaucracy, and an inability to accomplish its stated goals like every other government project? Have their been any studies on the effectiveness of such a system?
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It's also worth pointing out that, in a cap-and-trade system, environmental organizations can buy up carbon credits from the market to encourage industry to reduce emissions more quickly.
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Consider that people buy and sell goods and services in WoW for actual money.
Also, these kinds of markets is the "cure-all" of classical economist orthodoxy.
And as long as there is a chance to make a profit on it, someone will put money into it.
In the end, it is no different from the recent CDOs and such. It is all numbers being traded via computers...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Now make the same argument about gasoline:
Companies should not be permitted to purchase gasoline from other companies that have it. Those companies that use less than their government alloted ration are in compliance. Those companies who use more gasoline are fined. You either follow the law or you don't. Commerce is a farce. If we allow commerce to happen, next people will be using it to buy and sell illicit drugs.
I already have, have you?
There isn't a single piece of hard evidence that the two are linked. Again, very qualified opinions by doctors who have studied the issue lead to the belief, and it's probably true.
However, second hand smoke is a different story altogether.
This article from Medical News Today says it's a widely accepted notion and goes on to say more research is needed.
This article from Cancer.org says there is strong evidence that the two are linked, and that more research is needed.
In 2006 the UK Scientific Community on Tobacco and Health issued a report describing "a tentative link between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and lung cancer."
Of course there are no real scientific studies to show why people who have never been exposed sometimes die of lung cancer, but George Burns lived to 100 and died from fluid buildup in his skull from a fall in the bathtub.
So to sum up, invitation preemptively accepted, although it appears I'm the only one in this conversation who actually has done any research.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
yes
Congratulations! You've won $38MM in carbon credits!
Sorry, guess he didn't after all. The Czech bounced.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I mean, if not by law, why would anyone take part in this scam, unless they were on the money making side?
Guilt? Good public relations? There are plenty of reasons. Penn and Teller did a decent episode on it - they exposed some of the "carbon credit" companies for the scams that they are, and they also sent out a woman to randomly approach people doing their shopping, "assess" their purchases for carbon emissions (by randomly throwing out numbers) and then ask them to pay for the environmental damage. Most people seemed glad to fork over the cash.
And this is how I know that the folks who came up with this scheme failed high school economics. The mere fact that you can make money selling credits does not inherently provide any incentive to reduce pollution. It only provides incentive to do so if the amount you make by selling those credits exceeds the amount it would cost you to update your equipment to produce less emissions.
Here's the catch: if it would cost you less to update your equipment to produce less emissions, it would also probably cost your buyer less to upgrade their equipment than it would cost to buy the credit, so they will not buy the credit. As soon as you understand that fundamental flaw in this scheme, the whole thing falls apart. The inherent value of the carbon credit must, then, be cheaper than the cost of the upgrades in order for anyone to buy them. So with the exception of a few edge cases (where upgrading is unusually cheap or expensive), these don't provide any incentive at all, and most of those would either already have converted to cleaner energy or would be specifically exempted from pure caps anyway, making those edge cases largely uninteresting.
Thus, the only possible long-term effect of cap and trade is that companies who would have upgraded anyway will do so, but will now be able to sell their credits, allowing other companies to produce more pollution than they would have been able to produce under a strict system of caps.
Worse, this is the case in the short term as well. If initially there are companies that produce substantially less than the cap as you propose (as opposed to each company being capped at its current output), then there will be a glut of these credits, making them much cheaper than the cost of upgrading equipment, thus providing not just incentive not to upgrade, but also incentive to horde credits so that you can continue to pollute more and more at will, in effect eliminating environmental regulation altogether.
In short, cap and trade can only lead to increased pollution in reasonable human timeframes, not decreased. Sure, it does limit the growth to a certain total, which might result in lower total pollution in the really, really long term, but even that requires us to assume that the market will never result in newer, lower-polluting manufacturing technology being cheaper than ancient clunker hardware. Color me unconvinced.
The only way cap and trade is useful is if the current total is substantially less than the total output now, and to the extent that this is the case, the same can be achieved with simple caps, goals, and fines.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Why so defensive? All that is certain is that a few Slashdot posters question the wisdom of a carbon credit exchange. You can be a global climate change acolyte and yet refuse to support capitalization of it, can you not?
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WOW!! REally? Ok..I'm gonna have to go look for these videos, and get some ideas.
I see some new activities for the upcoming weekends!! Hell, maybe I can convince drunk folks at Mardi Gras, throwing stuff in the streets to purchase some carbon credits from me!!!
Geez...that would be better than the years we pretended to be cameramen from the Girls Gone Wild videos...we ran out of tape early on, but still got plenty of good 'shows'....and even some real action from chicks thinking they were gonna be on the show.
Money sounds good too!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Given that there's no actual regulation, you can do whatever the hell you want. Next time someone you know goes on a vacation, tell them you'll stay at home if they pay you to offset their carbon emissions :) Given the current setup, the whole thing is completely meaningless, and plenty of companies have been raking in money without actually doing anything.
No.
The caps are essentially "licenses" that are sold at market value for the "right" to pollute a certain amount.
You could purchase these licenses to pollute and then try to re-sell them (like a broker) but you don't automatically get credits just for having a company.
I think the idea of cap and trade is that we need to drasticly cut emissions. The problem is it is hard to come up with a fair way for requiring all of the major polluters to cut emissions. The hope with "cap and trade" it that the free market can be used to fine-tune the original political decisions. If one major emitter finds it is prohibitively expensive to cut emissions because they are actually increasing production, they can buy credits on the carbon market. The hope is that industries with little growth may be able to accelerate equipment upgrades with funds from those industries growing faster than equipment upgrades help.
Of course, until every major government implements strong carbon caps, the carbon market is a shell game. Currently here in Canada they are still talking about "intensity-based targets"; that is to say: carbon releases are allowed to increase as long as there is economic growth. There is also the issue of using hard-to-measure things as "carbon sinks" such as forests. If a framer has a small forest they are being paid credits for; are the expected to pay back all that money if the forest burns down, releasing a lot of carbon?
I don't mean to be too insulting
Always means you are about to be insulting.
No I'm not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. But thank you for the demeaning comment.
I am a global warming denyist though, but you worded that with what appears to be spefic intent. I understand climate change and that the real argument is how much impact people actually have on the change. I believe we do have an impact, but also that long before man climate changed as well.
My attempt was to show that there is more to the story. Again, George Burns lived to 100, while my neighbor as a child who never smoked died of lung cancer. That there's no hard evidence proving the link allows for conjecture from the other side in attempt to alleviate the assumption that there is a link after all.
And what I did say was that it's probably a good guess, but a guess at that. No lab tests ever proved the theory. We're not talking about something that happened billions of years ago, we're talking about something that is happening right now.
Of note: this will be my last response to you. I generally don't respond to people who like to discredit others with assumptions of ludicrous behavior (conspiracy theorist) however sugarcoated with "I don't mean to be" insults.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
You're assuming that it's equally easy for all companies to cut down on carbon emission, and that the total carbon credit can't be altered. Assume that the number of credits is inadequate to allow all companies to do all the carbon emission they want. Somebody's going to have to cut down in this case, which is the desired outcome.
Now, suppose that there's one company that finds it cheap and one that finds it expensive. The cheap one will cut down and sell its carbon credits to the expensive company. The economy is therefore reducing carbon emissions to the set limit in the most economical way possible. As time goes on, the number of carbon credits can be reduced.
There's lots of complications, but overall it's an economically valid approach.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Here's the catch: if it would cost you less to update your equipment to produce less emissions, it would also probably cost your buyer less to upgrade their equipment than it would cost to buy the credit, so they will not buy the credit.
This is only true if production is occuring in the same way. For example it may be cheaper for a steel mill to support expansion by investing (purchasing credits) making a plastic manufacturer more efficient.
Thus, the only possible long-term effect of cap and trade is that companies who would have upgraded anyway will do so, but will now be able to sell their credits, allowing other companies to produce more pollution than they would have been able to produce under a strict system of caps.
Currently industries can expand without regards to environmental impact since there is little cost impact. Creating a cap sets a limit to how much pollution can be released. The only way for an industry to expand is to become more efficient, or to offset its output elsewhere in the economy. The overall result is net pollution remains the same or is reduced.
It's not sustainable to have uncontrolled growth ignoring the negative environmental effects. Not that cap & trade is perfect, but it does provide market flexibility that traditional government controls don't have.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
You're the one that chose to interpret it in a condescending and moralizing way. Others of us didn't let emotions get in the way when making a judgment on the validity of the message.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
What is it with all the global warming deniers?
What's a "global warming denier"? Is that like holocaust deniers? Is this some group of anti-Semitic racists? Or is denying that genocidal events in history ever happened now no worse than denying a vague prediction of events in some future probability?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Urea is a key component in clean diesel engines.
brb, pissing on my truck engine.
The difference in toxicity is a well known fact. The difference in function of the two gases is a well-known fact.
Then stop arguing like they are identical.
And that's why regulating CO2 the same way you do SO2 is stupid.
And that's why they're subjected to different regulations.
In any case, the regulation of CO2 has nothing to do with quantity and distribution, it has everything to do with how much money can be made and how much power can be shifted where the regulators want it to wind up.
pics or GTFO. You're ascribing motivation to people you don't know. I'd like some proof, thank you.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Denying Climate Change is exactly like denying that you have cancer when your oncologist tells you that you do. It's easier on yourself to consider this reaction as scepticism, although you know that if you were really sceptical you would seek a second opinion rather than simply going home and ignoring the symptoms.
Understanding this reaction as denial helps the rest of us to see that these people are not insane, not necessarily dumb, and not necessarily evil - it is just taking them a little longer to work through the cognitive coping process. Also the term is a useful counter to the labelling of this reaction as scepticism - a term used deliberately to imply that it is the role of those who accept climate change to convince those who do not (a obviously absurd notion, when stated explicitly, which is why that rarely happens).
It is easier to force/guilt/... China and India into carbon trading if the Western world is already doing it. In my view Cap-and-trade is faulty, because it allows a default level of free pollution. If EVERYONE was fairly and equally taxed for their CO2 (and other greenhouse gas or pollutant) emissions and then the revenue from these taxes would be spent exclusively on cleaning up that pollution (most likely by purchasing carbon credits from carbon-negative businesses), then it would be fair. The pointis that a coal power plant does not pay for the pollution it causes, the harm that it causes to the whole population. If this harm is converted into actual finansial cost, then we will clearly see whether coal is really that cheap and we will see free market dump all they can into clean energy, because the dirt of the dirty energy would be taxed and make it not so profitable as it is now.
Oil, coeal and gas is only a cheap energy source to the consumer because part of the cost is hidden - the enviromental cost, as in, they don't pay for the clean air that they steal from all of them. Steal just a little bit from everyone and you have a nice profit. Government taxation and regulation is there to prevent exactly such abuses of the common good.