BBC NEWS | UK to auction carbon permits

The UK Government is to auction carbon emissions permits to power firms in a sale projected to raise between 1.5 and 2bn euros over the next 5 years.

The Treasury is being warned that if it keeps the money, it risks fuelling public cynicism about green taxes.
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...many energy firms outsmarted politicians by acting as though they had been forced to buy all their permits, and then passing the cost on to electricity users.

This brought an increase in energy prices - and a huge windfall to the energy sector, which it said would be needed to invest in clean energy supplies. From this month, the windfall should be over in the UK, as the firms will have to buy 30% of their carbon permits - equivalent to the Treasury's estimate of the previous windfall.

Remarkably stupid analysis from John Matson at Scientific American

Despite broad consensus on the existence, origins and potentially catastrophic effects of global warming, a vocal minority continues to question the motives, methods and assumptions of climate scientists sounding the alarm.
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Reality check: GISS climate modeler Gavin Schmidt notes on the blog RealClimate.org that the problem occurred because a small but significant percentage of the hundreds of weather stations scattered around the globe mistakenly reported September instead of October temps.
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What Booker fails to mention—apart from the folly of relying on anecdotal evidence—is that even the corrected figures show one of the hottest Octobers on record. (This fact, and many others pertaining to Booker's article, are neatly addressed by blogger Tim Lambert.) It's also worth noting that Booker was recently dubbed the "patron saint of charlatans" by the left-leaning Guardian newspaper for his views questioning both global warming and the documented health hazards of asbestos, a known carcinogen.
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The fact remains that October was significant for its high temperatures relative to the historical record. In other words, the example that climate skeptics seized upon to poke holes in the evidence of climate change served only to confirm that the world is warming because of humans' actions.