CDM is perhaps the standout example of green fuzzy thinking. Pay other countries money for essentially nothing while cheaply excusing your own pollution. Burn all the coal you want while telling yourself it has been neutralised but not only that you are helping the poor.

The basic flaw is that it creates something from nothing, namely using less than a presumed entitlement. Increase the presumed entitlement and a bigger carbon credit can be sold to exonerate emissions elsewhere. Example
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/19/865471/in-the-crazy-world-of-carbon-finance-coal-now-qualifies-for-emission-reduction-credits/

Perverse examples abound. At one time the World Bank paid Chinese CFC refrigerator gas manufacturers $550m to change their formula. A simple prohibition would have sufficed. We might also ask when China can be reclassified from a 'developing' country to one that is 'developed'.

Now we are told the Australian government may buy CDM credits if we are not on track with emissions by 2015. Mind you they have fiddled the numbers in a couple of ways to make this less likely. However if they do spend billions on CDM credits that is money that could have been spent on our hospitals. Compounding the error is the fact that the CDM credits don't really represent genuine CO2 cuts elsewhere. It's a massive scam.

It is said that an Emperor played a musical instrument while Rome burned.

Our world is in the process of burning while the fossils who mine and use the fossil fuels consume and pollute like there is no tomorrow.

Soon there will be no tomorrow and no world!

Look, how about some realism in these green articles?

DavidL would do well to read Taswegian post, as Taswegian is right but does not go far enough.

The CDM has had enormous problems from the start. In its early years all it really did was pay was pay developers in third world countries for projects that would have gone ahead anyway. Some of this has been cleaned up, but there are still the problems of verification and additionality.

Verification: how do we know the project will do what the project developers say it will do, particularly given the project may be places like Ghana or far inland in China? These project verifiers (I think that's the term) have to have some expertise in the area and have to be certified by yet another body. So who pays them - I understand its an expensive process - and how do we know they will remain independent? These complexities are only now being dealt with.

Additionality: Prof Ross Garnaut pointed to this problem in one of his reports and keeps on cropping up. Okay, so this or that project saves greenhouse gases, but then how do we know that they have not increased gases elsewhere in the economy through various knock-on effects? The classic example is major PV projects in India.. good money is being spent on ways of generating expensive electricity while the main electricity grid is so run down that major users have reacted to the frequent blackouts by installing their own generators.

The anti-emissions push has had some absurd results, and the CDM is one of them. Instead of condescending lectures on CDM the author should acknowledge these problems and, perhaps, point to ways they may be overcome.

"It is in Australia's national interest to ensure that once the first Kyoto period expires it is replaced by an effective secondary phase."

This must be some new sense of the word 'interest' which I am not familiar with. In what sense is it in our 'interest' to cripple our most profitable industries, impose swingeing new taxes, and reroute money away from successful investments towards the kind of pseudo-environmental scams which are busily going broke at this moment all over Europe and the USA?

Even if AGW is real -- an increasingly unlikely assumption -- we could devote Australia's entire GNP to 'mitigating' it and achieve nothing. Far better to keep our money where it belongs, in the pockets of those who earn it, so they can be better prepared for ANY hypothetical disasters -- climate-related or otherwise.

Oh dear here's another one. Why is it that anyone who has anything to do with the UN & its sprawling octopus like money hungry arms, sounds or looks like a monkey? Could it be that the disorganisation is today controlled by African dictators. African & middle eastern interests prevail, & watch out westerners.

I was unfortunately enough to catch the start of the ABC news, [or 730 report] last night, in time to hear some fool academic bleating some stupidity about "how much worse it is than they thought", you know the usual. He then went on to talk about 10 meters of sea level rise in this century. To prove himself an imbecile, if there was any doubt, he even claimed 6C temperature rise. Gee it's going to have to hurry, with it so far cooling this century.

I would almost feel sorry for these oh so desperate fools, if I did not remember, we are paying them for this bull dust.

Later I actually tuned into "I know what I saw" on ABC2. This was a rehash of the flying sauces scares of years ago. Despite the poor quality of the recordings, I could not help but be struck by the similarities of those who had seen them, & our global warming profits.

Both are desperate to convince someone, anyone that they are speaking truth. I guess flying saucer people did believe, but global warming people have their jobs depending on it, thus they are most desperate.

I suppose they can claim some success. This author is either convinced, or a fellow traveler, it doesn't much matter which. Anyone who wants to support the 3 greatest rip off organisations ever seen, the UN, global warming & academia, is sure to be a pushover.

Notice the continuum folks, flying saucers, global cooling, Y2K bug, global warming. Did you notice it was academia doing most of the spruiking. I think the cry wolf factor is growing, & they are loosing their punch, hence the desperation showing.

Hasbeen

you mean someone was seriously talking about 10 meters of sea level rise in this century?? Dear lord but that's behind the times.. no wonder I don't listen to the ABC..