Elsewhere in this newsletter we indict climate alarmists for being unable to hear bad news or contrary arguments. So to be fair, Bloomberg Green notes spectacular reductions in methane emissions in the EU, specifically from coal mines, and says if it’s too good to be true don’t believe it. Apparently they have, of all things, rigged the measurement system so politicians can take credit without voters feeling pain. Who saw that one coming? OK, CDN readers. But not most climate alarmists, apparently. Especially since Heatmap just can’t give up on carbon removal, or government, so it pops corks on “The Carbon Removal Buyer the World Has Been Waiting For” and celebrates that “Proposed reforms to Europe’s Emissions Trading System could see the EU itself become a carbon credit customer.” Oh great. Having set targets it can’t meet, it steps in to rig the market including the metrics and you really think we’re going back to 1719 weather conditions, as if we should even want to.

Normal people know fools and politicians (but we repeat ourselves) rush in where angels fear to tread. And they also know zealots are not normal people. Especially omnicause zealots.

Who could get excited that:

“The bloc’s highest governing body, the European Commission, is expected to publish a proposal on Friday to reform the EU Emissions Trading System, or ETS, to align it with the EU’s 2040 emissions target. Under the current rules, companies cannot use carbon credits of any kind to comply with the regulations. But as 2040 grows closer, the EU plans to rely on carbon removal to offset some of the residual emissions from industries that are the most difficult to decarbonize. Friday’s proposal will cover which types of carbon removal will be accepted, how many carbon removal credits can enter the market and when, and who will be allowed to buy them. One leading approach would have the EU government buy carbon removal directly, which would give the industry unprecedented market certainty.”

Well, they could. They did. Microsoft might be out but Ursula von der Leyen is in. And the EU has such a good track record compared to… uh… wait a minute. But at least carbon removal is… uh… wait a minute. Who are these fools?

Ones with spreadsheets:

“The ETS enforces a cap on emissions that declines over time. Large emitters located in the EU must buy ‘allowances’ for each ton of carbon they release, while the pool of available allowances shrinks apace with the emissions cap. Last year, the EU set a new target to reduce emissions 90% below 1990 levels by 2040, building off its earlier target of a 55% reduction by 2030. The upcoming proposal will address how the market should operate between 2030 and 2040 to achieve that goal.”

Normal people would ask how well the earlier targets were met before making them that much more ambitious. And also what exactly these indulgences, sorry, allowances consist of and who monitors compliance. Especially after reading on the CDN blog (what, Heatmap writers don’t check out contrary views to be sure they’re not missing something?) that a UN scheme to promote Chinese firms selling lack of carbon turned out to be so bogus that the companies taking Western cash to reduce their own emissions as “offsets” actually increased them more than those not being paid to do so.

Here we were going to ridicule Heatmap for blithe confidence that it would work, this time for sure, writing only about problems in what to do, not how to do it or whether any of it is feasible. But since we really do try to be fair, we read on. And sure enough, eventually they get to:

“The integration of carbon removal is also controversial. At best, it could be an opportunity to improve and scale up nascent technologies that take carbon out of the atmosphere. At worst, it could enable polluters to avoid cutting their own emissions by purchasing carbon credits that don’t represent real climate benefits.”

Wow. Enlightenment. Or not, because that passage immediately continued:

“Then there’s the possibility that removals will be so expensive that their integration into the ETS will have no effect at all — that is, it will be less expensive for companies to pursue emissions reductions than to buy their way out. The outcome will depend on the rules the EU Commission proposes and what its member states ultimately agree to.”

Well, no. Of course it does matter what rules they propose, including ones driven by crooked government accounting. And the piece admits that the EU seems to be favouring the most expensive and inefficient methods of carbon removal. But what really matters isn’t what its member states agree to, it’s what they do. Including whether there are any affordable efficient ways of making carbon disappear from the carbon cycle in vast amounts, and also whether a trivial reduction in human emissions, because the EU emits a trivial amount of the human world total and that total is in turn a tiny fraction of the total massive carbon cycle, actually changes the weather at all, let alone for the better.

Strange thing to celebrate, but as we said, they’re strange people.