The idea behind carbon credits is that you can "offset" the alleged harm done by your CO2 emissions by paying someone else for not emitting an equivalent amount of CO2. Imagine Tiger Woods or John Edwards making everything all right by paying someone else to "offset" their infidelities by remaining faithful.
It's a fraudulent bit of nonsense through and through, but it's made Al Gore and his cohorts hundreds of millions of dollars from selling believers in the Church of Climate Change the modern equivalent of the medieval Roman Catholic Church's indulgences.
Now, I think the authorities need to subpoena Gore's records from his ISP and check his online activities over the past week. Just to see if he had a role in this scamming of the scam:
According to a report in the Wednesday edition of the Financial Times Deutschland, hackers sent e-mails last Thursday to several companies in Europe, Japan and New Zealand which appeared to originate from the Potsdam-based German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt), part of the EU's Emission Trading System (EU ETS). Ironically, the e-mail said that the recipient needed to re-register on the agency's Web site to counter the threat of hacker attacks.
The cyber-thieves then exploited the user data that was entered into their spoof Web site to transfer emissions allowances to other accounts, mainly in Denmark and Britain, from which they were quickly resold. The new owners of the allowances would have assumed that they had acquired them legally.
"The attack was highly professional," a DEHSt employee told the newspaper. Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is now investigating the incident.
Of course, Gore might not be involved, or might not have been acting alone. Other credible suspects in any scam related to climate change include Phil Jones, James Hansen, Murari Lal, and Rajendra Pachauri.
