One of the most egregious scams of modern times is carbon credits from HCF-23, the UN payments for which have enriched many an Indian and Chinese entrepreneur, who have been producing CFCs for the sole purpose of claiming payments for getting rid of the by-products.

Last year, almost to the day, after EU action to curtail this $6 billion scam, Chinese officials were threatening to vent these "powerful greenhouse gasses" direct to atmosphere.

Having had $1.3bn in tax revenues out of the scam, they were fearful about the loss of revenue. Historically, plants have been paid 70 times the cost of destroying HFC-23 gases, and the local governments have thus benefited hugely by being able to tax the generous profits.

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In these times when our knowledge and understanding of Science has advanced so far, and access to Super Computers allows us to believe in our ability to model, to predict and even to control the weather, the thought that we should be able to control the outcomes of government and trade by micro-regulation is but a small intuitive step.

This thought is widely held and cherished by even otherwise intelligent men and women. For instance,
I flinched when I heard him say this. He seemed otherwise a reasonable and intelligent man.

I repeated this quote to one of my friends who is in law. He said, “Yes? What about it?”

“Well, is he smart enough to see all the consequences of his decisions?” Then I answered my own question, “No. No one is that smart. There are always unintended consequences.”

I don’t know that my friend was particularly impressed by my argument, but he didn’t have an answer.

Consider the design of control laws for a new rocket. A team of engineers will spend years analyzing the distribution of mass, the sloshing of fuel in the tanks, changes in the mass and in the mass distribution as fuel is spent, the limitations of the inertial guidance system, gyroscope drift, and the raw capabilities of the main rocket motors and the attitude control thrusters. They will run thousands of Monte-Carlo simulations on computers to ensure that control can be maintained through all planned maneuvers and under all anticipated atmospheric conditions such as temperature, wind speed and direction and atmospheric shear. They will then build and launch a full-scale rocket to validate the control laws.

Sounds complex? Perhaps. But the point here is that compared to the laws required to control human behavior, control laws for a rocket are simple and easily fashioned. More can be drawn from this analogy such as the need to avoid over-steering (creates instability) and under-steering (fails to establish control), but I am not really interested in going there.

My final point is that attempts at improvement often result in disaster. It could be that the attempt was ill-considered. It could also be that the consequences of the attempt were not only unforeseen, but unforeseeable. In the present example, the crafters of the HCF-23 sought to exert control over the polluters; instead they led the EU to fall into the polluters’ control.

Yes, as I recall CFCs are meant to damage the ozone layer rather than cause heat.

When we first found out about the ozone layer in the mid 1980s, it was diminishing rapidly in size. It now turns out that this is a cyclic process, and we happened to come upon it when it was shrinking, but 'environmentalism' was in the air at the time. And, purely on the strength of some unsupported model chemical calculations, CFC production was banned, and we were all forced to use the more dangerous butane as a propellant, or other less effective proprietary chemicals...

It is instructive to look at the practical reason why the ban was so rapidly agreed. DuPont were the holders of the CFC patent, and making good money from it. There had been activist calls since the late 1970s to ban CFCs - these were ignored by DuPont and the politicians, since there was no reason to ban it. But the DuPont patent ran out at the end of the 1980s and DuPont had been unable to develop a better chemical to take its place. By 1990 DuPont manufacture of Freon would be undercut by Eastern manufacturers who would need no licence, and a major profit centre would be lost.

So in 1988 DuPont suddenly threw its lobbying weight behind the activists, and argued for a ban on manufacturing the chemical. With that support, the ban suddenly became practical, and the Montreal Protocol was signed. It now turns out that Freon does not have the effect on the ozone layer that was thought, and the ozone hole continues to grow and shrink cyclically.

But in the meantime, DuPont competitors were unable to use the patent-free Freon, and DuPont continued to make a fat profit selling replacement chemicals which were not as effective, but which had the benefit of still being under DuPont patent control...

Isn't big business exciting?

It is pretty damn obvious that, if you incentivise the destruction of HFC-23 to the extent that you are paying 70-times the cost of destruction, then people are going to make sure they have plenty to destroy.

I suspect the latter. They are almost certainly not recruited because of their experience in administration of complex organisations. They are drawn from an activist bubble where any consequences of their actions do not affect them, so they build pretty rainbow-coloured regulatory castles in the air and they are preyed upon by the more malicious entrepreneurs and lobbyists, who keep telling them that everything is marvelous while perverting the system in order to profit from it. Eventually, they get eaten...

A bit like the Eloi and the Morlocks...




Indeed. And it is equally obvious that if you create a vast profit-centre and call it Defence, people are going to make very sure that they will always have a lot to defend themselves against. Current Western foreign policy in a nutshell. Where is Eisenhower when you need him....?

It's something which pre-dates super computers. It harks back to the idea of a fully planned and controlled economy, Soviet Five Year Plans etc. Well, it stands to reason that a scientifically planned economy must be better and more efficient than a haphazard system of capitalism, doesn't it?

It's an idea that keeps popping up in one form or another. The reason it never worked before was that it was never done properly, this time it will be different......................