SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT CAN'T MEET GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION TARGETS, BLAMES COLD WEATHER.

You can't make this stuff up:





From The Herald, Scotland:

"THE FAILURE of the Scottish Government to meet its own climate emissions target has been blamed on the “beast from the east” bringing cold weather to the nation in 2018.

New statistics show that by the end of 2018, Scotland was unable to reduce its emissions by the 54 per cent requirement from levels in 1990, with a Scottish Government report stating that “the target for 2018 has not been met”.

The Scottish Government has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, including aviation, to net zero by 2045 but plans for Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee to set up low emission zones have been delayed due to the Covid-19 crisis. The latest climate change action plan will now not be published until the end of this year, after the Scottish Government announced a delay due to the pandemic.

Last year, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation setting the target for 2018 emissions at 54 per cent. The legislation set a target on 2018, which had passed by the time MSPs voted on the Bill in September 2019.The target for 2020 is currently set at 56 per cent."

And:

"Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said the annual increase is “certainly disappointing” and stressed that the bar has been “intentionally been set to provide an extremely stretching pathway to net zero”.

She added: “By being ambitious and by stretching ourselves in pursuit of net zero, we will go a long way to reaching our destination.”

Ms Cunningham put the increase in emissions from 2017 to 2018 down to “changes to the national energy mix and freezing temperatures from the beast from the east during the early months of 2018” which led to “a rise in emissions from energy supply and heating use for buildings."

Please help me up - I haven't laughed this hard since before I was born!


MFBB.

YOUR TAX £ AT WORK!!!

Uh-oh:





Via The Telegraph, JAN 19, 2020:

"Wind farms were paid up to £3 million per day to switch off their turbines and not produce electricity last week, The Telegraph can disclose.

Energy firms were handed more than £12 million in compensation following a fault with a major power line carrying electricity to England from turbines in Scotland.

The payouts, which will ultimately be added onto consumer bills, were between 25 per cent and 80 per cent more than the firms, which own giant wind farms in Scotland, would have received had they been producing electricity, according to an analysis of official figures.

The payments have prompted questions in Parliament, as one charity warned that consumers were having to fund the consequences of an "excessive" number of onshore wind farms, which can overwhelm the electricity grid...."

More harrowing info here.

It is quite clear. Wind turbines turn more on subsidies than on wind.


MFBB.

STILL BELIEVE IN THAT "97 PER CENT CONSENSUS" AMONG CLIMATE SCIENTISTS RE MMGW? CHANGE YOUR MIND.

First a quick recap from 2016, a Prager U video featuring Professor Richard Lindzen:





Now check this out:

"Within the last few years, over 50 papers have been added to our compilation of scientific studies that find the climate’s sensitivity to doubled CO2 (280 ppm to 560 ppm) ranges from <0 to 1°C. When no quantification is provided, words like “negligible” are used to describe CO2’s effect on the climate. The list has now reached 106 scientific papers."

This is indeed true, and has been documented in, a.o., Climate Change: The Facts (editor Alan Moran).


There is some arguing as to the exact number of scientific studies re climate sensitivity in particular, but that the number is rising is a fact.

Nobody is contesting the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. And global mean temperatures may have risen by 1 degree over the past 150 years. And we cannot even rule out that anthropogenic CO2 has, indeed, played a role in that phenomenon. Although, given that natural CO2 emissions far outweigh man-made ones, and because the uncertainties re the size of the (sinks of the) natural emissions are so huge, any policy proclaiming that global temperature can be kept under this or that treshold if only we spend this or that insane amount of money had to be regarded with the utmost scepticism.


The growing number of publications like these ones are therefore a welcome antidote to the ever more frantic efforts of an almost tyrannical EU that wants to spend 11,500 billion EUR (!) to 'fight climate change' in the course of the following years. If it is not kept in check, its horrendously costly anti climate change antics risk to plunge Europe in a man made socio-economic crisis not seen since WWII. The biggest charlatan in this regard is the EU's new 'Climate Pope', the Dutch socialist Frans Timmermans. More on this odious charachter later.



MFBB.

AUSTRALIA: CLIMATE CHANGE NUTTERS PROTEST IN SNOW THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN GONE BY NOW.

Today was Climate Change Nutter Day or Climate Strike Day or whatever, and it seems all over the globe gullible idiots, far too many of them seriously indoctrinated schoolchildren, went AWOL from whatever responsibilities they had to protest the governments' lack of measures to combat climate change.

One such a bunch of bozos demonstrated on Mount Hotham, a 1,862 metres (6,109 ft) high peak in the south of the Australian Alps, renowned for its skiing possibilities:





As you can all notice, the demonstrators stand or sit in an, ah, peculiar..., powdery, White Substance.

Which is REALLY WEIRD, because that substance, apparently sometimes referred to as 'snow', SHOULD NOT BE THERE!

Indeed, back in 2012 an Australian Professor, Catherine Pickering, of the Griffith School of Environment no less, scared the living sh*t out of all ski aficionados with her scientifically underpinned claim that by 2020, the snow in the Australian Alps would be gone:

"ENVIRONMENTAL researchers say the end of Australia's ski culture is in sight, despite Victoria and NSW experiencing one of their best snow seasons in almost a decade.

People were still shredding up powder last weekend at some of Australia's top ski resorts, but Griffith associate professor Catherine Pickering says snow is rapidly disappearing because of global warming and by 2020 Australia may not have any left.

"We've predicted by 2020 to lose something like 60 per cent of the snow cover of the Australian Alps," Professor Pickering, from the Griffith School of Environment, said.

"Unfortunately because our current emissions and our current rises in temperatures are at the high end of the predictions, it's definitely coming to us sooner and faster."

Professor Pickering researched the effects of declining snow cover and hotter summers on the Australian Alps and says this year's better than average season has been a one-off combination of La Nina and a cold snap.

"We'll still occasionally have good years, but they'll become less frequent," she said. "A poor year in the past will be a good year now."

The research covered all Victoria and NSW ski resorts and Professor Pickering says the alpine region is most threatened by climate change, with an increasing threat to endemic and endangered mountain species as well as plants because of early thaws...."

Listen to Prof Pickering yakking about the catastrophic effects of climate change:





But that was then (2012), this is now (2019):

2019:

A low-pressure system will bring snow during Friday through Saturday, mostly above 1400m, but possibly reaching 1200m, followed by another cold surge and more snow during Sunday into Monday. All up we can expect 20-40cm across all resorts...

This season has already passed expectations... The latest reading from Spencer’s Creek a week ago was up at 228.8cm, which puts us well above average. But looking lower down at Deep Creek (1620m) and Three Mile Dam (1460m), snow depths are fairly average.

Via The Herald Sun.


Prof Pickering may still be right of course. There's some three months left before it's 2020!



MFBB.

SECRETARY GENERAL OF WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION TO WARMISTS: COOL IT DUDES.

Warmists take notice! The Head of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, has called you out for nutcases!

Of course, you can now resort to your standard practice and shriek at the top of your lungs that Taalas is a climate denier and also moonlighting as a nazi and a racist.

Via The Global Warming Policy Forum:

Speaking to Finland’s financial newspaper Talouselämä (“The Journal”) on 6 September 2019, Petteri Taalas called for cooler heads to prevail, saying that he does not accept arguments that the end of the world is at hand:


~ It is not going to be the end of the world. The world is just becoming more challenging. In parts of the globe living conditions are becoming worse, but people have survived in harsh conditions.


He also says that the Finnish discourse on climate change has become overly doom-laden:


~ The atmosphere created by media has been provoking anxiety. The latest idea is that children are a negative thing. I am worried for young mothers, who are already under much pressure. This will only add to their burden.



Moreover, contrary to much of what is heard in the media, he thinks that the solution to climate change does not require people to live ascetic lives. “If you start to live like an orthodox monk”, he says, “the world is not going be saved”. He stresses that standards of living should not be lowered.

And he suggests that radical environmentalists are now a major problem:


~ While climate sceptisism has become less of an issue, now we are being challenged from the other side. Climate experts have been attacked by these people and they claim that we should be much more radical. They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats. Much more radical action is demanded by Extinction Rebellion movement. They demand zero emissions by 2025 and “honest” climate information from governments.


To Taalas, the deep greens have been abusing the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, cherrypicking parts that they think will support radical action.


~ The IPCC reports have been read in a similar way to the Bible: you try to find certain pieces or sections from which you try to justify your extreme views. This resembles religious extremism.


Although he is critical of right wing populists who do not accept any climate action, he warns of what might happen if fuel taxes are raised too far, noting the protests of the French gilets jaunes.

Taalas hopes that mainstream media will become more critical and hopes more for a more diverse presentation of views and argues that all sides should be interviewed.


~ We should consider critically, and with reservations, the thoughts of experts…”

Now if only we can get Mr Taalas to drop the nonsense about taking a measure of climate action...



MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: "WE HAVE TEN YEARS TO SAVE THE PLANET!!!"

Well, thirty years ago anyway:


By Peter James Spielmann, June 30, 1989:

"UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study.







″Ecological refugees will become a major concern, and what’s worse is you may find that people can move to drier ground, but the soils and the natural resources may not support life. Africa doesn’t have to worry about land, but would you want to live in the Sahara?″ he said.

UNEP estimates it would cost the United States at least $100 billion to protect its east coast alone.

Shifting climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheatlands, while the Soviet Union could reap bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time, according to a study by UNEP and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Excess carbon dioxide is pouring into the atmosphere because of humanity’s use of fossil fuels and burning of rain forests, the study says. The atmosphere is retaining more heat than it radiates, much like a greenhouse.

The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.

The difference may seem slight, he said, but the planet is only 9 degrees warmer now than during the 8,000-year Ice Age that ended 10,000 years ago.

Brown said if the warming trend continues, ″the question is will we be able to reverse the process in time? We say that within the next 10 years, given the present loads that the atmosphere has to bear, we have an opportunity to start the stabilizing process.″

He said even the most conservative scientists ″already tell us there’s nothing we can do now to stop a ... change″ of about 3 degrees.

″Anything beyond that, and we have to start thinking about the significant rise of the sea levels ... we can expect more ferocious storms, hurricanes, wind shear, dust erosion.″

He said there is time to act, but there is no time to waste."

Meanwhile... in the real world... 106 years ago... the 1st of July 1913 saw 100 degree (38°C) temperatures from California to Maine.





Hat tip Real Climate Science.



MFBB.

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK OFFICIALS QUIETLY REMOVED "GLACIERS GONE BY 2020 SIGNS".

Uh-oh.

Via Wattsupwiththat:

"GLACIERS APPEAR TO BE GROWING, NOT MELTING IN RECENT YEARS

By Roger I. Roots, J.D., Ph.D.,

Founder, Lysander Spooner University

May 30, 2019. St. Mary, Montana. Officials at Glacier National Park (GNP) have begun quietly removing and altering signs and government literature which told visitors that the Park’s glaciers were all expected to disappear by either 2020 or 2030.
In recent years the National Park Service prominently featured brochures, signs and films which boldly proclaimed that all glaciers at GNP were melting away rapidly. But now officials at GNP seem to be scrambling to hide or replace their previous hysterical claims while avoiding any notice to the public that the claims were inaccurate. Teams from Lysander Spooner University visiting the Park each September have noted that GNP’s most famous glaciers such as the Grinnell Glacier and the Jackson Glacier appear to have been growing—not shrinking—since about 2010. (The Jackson Glacier—easily seen from the Going-To-The-Sun Highway—may have grown as much as 25% or more over the past decade.)

The centerpiece of the visitor center at St. Mary near the east boundary is a large three-dimensional diorama showing lights going out as the glaciers disappear. Visitors press a button to see the diorama lit up like a Christmas tree in 1850, then showing fewer and fewer lights until the diorama goes completely dark. As recently as September 2018 the diorama displayed a sign saying GNP’s glaciers were expected to disappear completely by 2020.





But at some point during this past winter (as the visitor center was closed to the public), workers replaced the diorama’s ‘gone by 2020’ engraving with a new sign indicating the glaciers will disappear in “future generations.”

Almost everywhere, the Park’s specific claims of impending glacier disappearance have been replaced with more nuanced messaging indicating that everyone agrees that the glaciers are melting. Some signs indicate that glacial melt is “accelerating.”
A common trick used by the National Park Service at GNP is to display old black-and-white photos of glaciers from bygone years (say, “1922”) next to photos of the same glaciers taken in more recent years showing the glaciers much diminished (say, “2006”). Anyone familiar with glaciers in the northern Rockies knows that glaciers tend to grow for nine months each winter and melt for three months each summer. Thus, such photo displays without precise calendar dates may be highly deceptive.

Last year the Park Service quietly removed its two large steel trash cans at the Many Glacier Hotel which depicted “before and after” engravings of the Grinnell Glacier in 1910 and 2009. The steel carvings indicated that the Glacier had shrunk significantly between the two dates. But a viral video published on Wattsupwiththat.com showed that the Grinnell Glacier appears to be slightly larger than in 2009.

The ‘gone by 2020’ claims were repeated in the New York Times, National Geographic, and other international news sources. But no mainstream news outlet has done any meaningful reporting regarding the apparent stabilization and recovery of the glaciers in GNP over the past decade. Even local Montana news sources such as The Missoulian, Billings Gazette and Bozeman Daily Chronicle have remained utterly silent regarding this story."

Hat tip CDR Salamander.



MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: TODD ROYAL'S "QUESTIONING GLOBAL WARMING".

I have a perfect barometer of my own. My hands. When it's getting colder, not for just a day, or even two, but for a prolonged period, I start having chapped hands. To the point that they start bleeding and that I leave bloodstains every time I write something with a ballpoint pen, or even just put a simple signature on some document.

It is now almost the middle of April, and I am having chapped hands. Earlier this week I was slightly embarrassed to shake a customer's hand, for fear of leaving blood on it - not that I got something nasty to transmit, thank God.

But indeed, for some ten days now, temps over here in Flanders are down by at least some five degrees vs what is considered 'normal' for this time of the year. And when I checked out HLN this morning, this caught my eye:



IN THE COMING NIGHT, IT FREEZES ALMOST EVERYWHERE: UNTIL MINUS 4 DEGREES CENTIGRADE. Apple growers in Haspengouw have been working hard for the past nights with fire pots and covers to protect their blossoms from freezing temperatures.

And that is baaaaad news for the left and their newfound heroine Anuna De Wever, mastermind (or so she thinks) of the weekly climate marches of thousands of school children skipping class for the climate.


Over at American Thinker, Todd Royal takes the case of MMGW to the woodshed:

"In January 2012, sixteen eminent scientists published an article in the Wall Street Journal, titled, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming. If mankind is causing global warming then how do you explain:

“Today’s CO2 concentrations worldwide average about 380 parts per million. This level of CO2 concentration is trivial compared with the concentrations during earlier geologic periods. For example, 460 million years ago, during the Ordovician Period, CO2 concentrations were 4,400 ppm, and temperatures then were about the same as they are today. With such high levels of CO2 the Earth should have been boiling.”

It seems more reasonable to be agnostic based upon this fact:


~ According to the Climate.gov website, the current global average temperature is roughly ‘shy of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. About 55 million years ago – just after the age of the Dinosaurs – the era known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) saw average global temps as high as 73 degrees Fahrenheit.”



As humans only showed up about 100,000 years ago how do you account for the PETM era? Supposedly, 97% of scientists agree man is the cause of catastrophic GWCC. When in fact that statement is false. Moreover:


~ “A recent study reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies found that just 36 percent of earth scientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a climate change crisis. A majority of the 1,077 respondents in the survey believe that nature is the primary cause of recent GWCC.”


What if you believe the 97% scientist debate then why hasn’t this information been widely reported?


~ “The media ignore a petition on the Internet signed by more than 31,000 scientists, including 9,029 PhDs, 7,157 with a master’s of science, and 12, 715 with a bachelor of science degree, all of whom dispute the global warming thesis.”


The GWCC narrative also took a hit when a March 2019 NASA study found the famous Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland was starting to grow again “after retreating about 1.8 miles and thinning nearly 130 feet annually since 2013,” but is growing the past two years (2016-2018). Past natural variability seems to be the cause instead of vetting the scientific consensus that “demands to prove that rising CO2 is causing an effect like melting Greenland ice.”

Are there other factors that determine earth’s heating and cooling other than CO2? According to Professor A. Balasubramanian from the Centre for Advanced Studies in Earth Sciences, University of Mysore:


~ “The climate of a region (or whole earth) is determined by radiation energy of the sun, and its distribution and temporal fluctuations. The long-term state of the atmosphere is a function of variety of interacting elements. They are: Solar radiation, Air masses, Pressure systems (cyclone belts), Ocean Currents, Topography.”



CO2 is a factor that influences regional and global temperatures, and there are considerable questions about the role it plays in recent warming trends in the 20th and 21st century. Climate scientist Vijay Jayaraj cites these weather facts to make the case the earth is actually in danger of global cooling:



~ “There is poor correlation between CO2 emissions and global temperature. Between 2000 and 2018, global temperature showed no significant increase despite a steep increase in carbon dioxide emissions from anthropogenic sources. The same was the case between the years 1940 and 1970. When carbon dioxide concentration increases at a constant and steady rate and temperature doesn’t follow the pattern, we can be certain that carbon dioxide is not the primary driver of global temperature.”



MIT atmospheric physicist, Richard Lindzen, one of the world’s leading climatologists, also believes CO2 is not the main factor in GWCC and figuring out GWCC is a dicey proposition. He questions whether the earth is warming, cooling or somewhere in between – in other words Dr. Lindzen is a skeptic because he doesn’t know if CO2 is the main driver of weather. Climate scientists acknowledge life on earth happens because of the Earth’s positioning in the solar system to the sun and “that the sun is the biggest influencer and driver of global temperature.”

But our moral betters know better of course. Actually, while I wouldn't say I'm scared shitless, I do look forward to the upcoming May elections with more than dread. The ecoloons, i.e. the green parties, especially Groen! in Flanders, stand a good chance to win big, say 15 per cent of the electorate. This is the leading triumvirate of the Flemish Greens:





From left to right Petra De Sutter, formerly Peter De Sutter, but he got his dick chopped off. In other circumstances I would be sympathetic to the guy's plight, however, that dreadful appearance hides a mini-dictator. Then, in the middle, Meyrem Almaci, party chairwoman AND muslima. Don't let her liberal looks fool you, she's all for furthering the ongoing islamization of our formerly Christian countries. Finally to the right Kristof Calvo, a neocommunist who takes econutterism to troposheric heights, and is a proven liar. Some party leadership, huh?

Do these warmists look like clowns?

Yes they do.

But make no mistake, they are dangerous clowns. They are all ideological scions of Jos Geysels, Green party leader in the nineties and one of the leading architects of the cordon sanitaire, which has effectively put my party, the Vlaams Belang, in political quarantine for about a quarter of a century by now. De Sutter, Almaci and Calvo are the kind of people who, if you were living in the German 'Democratic' Republic and they were your neighbors and they caught you listening to Radio Free Europe, would report you to the Stasi.

If they win big enough, they will be incontournable when a government has to be formed, and that will mean carbon taxes, severely curtailing the use of company cars (in spite of the traffic jams, still hugely popular with the working population, even indispensable), enforced vegetarianism, and the installation of a "Climate Czar", yet another completely useless public 'function' whereby some green hack will get dictatorial powers to force all of us big carbon-footprinted chavs to spare Gaia...



It's articles like Todd Royal's that are needed to be brought to attention, for they offer solid arguments with which to fight the reigning climate lunacy.

Spread them wide and far.



MFBB.

WARMIST PANIC!!! JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER GROWING AGAIN!!!

Het Laatste Nieuws is having a bad time. This is their Week from Hell. First they can't get around the Mueller Report conclusions, then they have to publish that Congress can't do jack sh*t about the President's veto and he will somehow get the money to get the Wall built, THEN he recognizes the Golan Heights as Israeli territory (ROFL), and to top it all off...

... one of the fastest melting glaciers in Greenland is growing again!


But that ain't no good news... HLN today:

"GLACIER GROWS AGAIN, BUT THAT'S NO GOOD NEWS.


One of the fastest melting glaciers in Greenland is growing again, say NASA scientists. In 2016 and 2017 the ice got thicker. In some areas the glacier is about 30 meters thicker than in 2015. Yet this is no good news, warn the scientists.

The Jakobshavn Glacier is one of Greenland's biggest glaciers and was calving away frighteningly quick. Year after year the ice retreated some three kilometers, as a result of rising sea temperatures and the planet getting hotter. Over the past couple of years, the glacier grew again a little.

The growth can be explained by colder sea temperatures. Glaciers thus appear to be very sensitive to variations of the water temperature. And that's no good news, say the NASA scientists. The ice seems to be so sensitive, that forecasts in the longer term are difficult.

Anyway, the glacier growing again will only be a temporary phenomenon and won't have an impact on rising sea levels."

Yeah right. Personally I am so sensitive to leftist bullshit, that forecasts in the longer term are not difficult at all: in 30 years, normals will be laughing their asses off over the sheer lunacy of Warmists.



MFBB.

BELGIAN SCHOOLCHILDREN CLIMATE LUNACY GOING CRESCENDO, DELIBERATELY FUELED BY MSM AND TRADITIONAL POLITICAL PARTIES.

By now you must be getting to know Anuna De Wever, the 17 year old schoolgirl climate activist and Flemish version of Sweden's Greta Thunberg. If you don't, you're not up to date. Even the BBC, the New York Times and Leonardo Di Caprio have discovered her:








Some stills. This from the demo last Thursday:








Ms De Wever would NEVER be such a phenomenon if it wasn't for the eager, drooling two-pronged support of both MSM and the traditional parties. Belgian MSM, choke choke choke full of leftists and greens, is quite orgasmic because Anuna De Wever, as someone who is easy on the eye, very outspoken, AND not sure about whether she's a boy or a girl, is their dream candidate to promote the climate apocalypse if we don't go back living in caves. And surprise surprise, Anuna's mother is... a sociologist, and her father 'works' in the city planning department, i.e. sitting on his warm ass for a cushy government job.

This for instance is an HLN screenshot of two weeks back:

"Portrait of Anuna De Wever (17), the climate warrior who doesn't want to be a boy or a girl."

Not to be outdone, the Belgian traditional political parties are doing their damnedest best to recuperate the mass phenomenon of tens of thousands of youths demonstrating "for the climate" each and every week in Brussels, Ghent, Liège and next week Leuven, for in three months, there will be national and European elections and this climate lunacy is THE perfect excuse to neutralize the real pressing issue, unbridled immigration.


Meanwhile, in the real world, via The Weather Network:

"Sunday, February 3, 2019, 10:50 AM - Heavy snow left thousands of vehicles stranded in a 12 km-long traffic jam on an Italian highway Saturday. Firefighters were called upon to rescue some 200 people who had been trapped in cars and buses for hours amid freezing temperatures."

For the Howler of the Weekend, we turn to the Pyrenees, the mountain chain between France and Spain, where around one thousand Flemish schoolchildren en route for snow classes and ski lessons in Andorra, got stuck in their buses when a pass was blocked by a snowstorm:

"For about one thousand Flemish students their winter sports vacation in Andorra did not exactly start on a positive note. On 1,000m alt. several Belgian buses were surprised by a snowstorm. The foul weather even caused one of the buses to start swerving on the mountain road and a snow chain broke off. The youths were stuck for hours. To make matters worse, afterwards they got to hear that the mountain pass had been closed off. The beginning of hours of uncertainty. In the meantime the mountain pass is open again."

Cripes Suzette. Last time I checked they had been sitting on those buses for 42 hours. They should have skipped ski classes instead of mathematics classes. 42 hours! And now the poor sods are all guilty of excess CO2 emissions!



MFBB.

DOWNEASTBLOG'S TWAT OF THE DAY AWARD FOR ANUNA DE WEVER AND KYRA GANTOIS!!!

There really is no contest, DowneastBlog's famous Twat of the Day Award goes to Anuna De Wever (17) and Kyra Gantois (19)!!!


Via HLN:

"Students of the Atheneum in Mortsel no longer want to stand idly by as the climate continues to warm up. Two girls are exhorting Flemish school children to skip class from now on and to demonstrate for the climate in Brussels."

From now on Anuna (17) will skip class every Thursday for the climate: "What's a missed hour of mathematics, if you can also demonstrate for a better climate?"

And boy, did the message about skipping math class fall on deaf ears. Not. A couple of days later 4,000 youths skipped class to demonstrate in Brussels. For the climate. Again, via HLN:

"Eight days ago Anuna De Wever (17) and Kyra Gantois (19) decided to skip class every Thursday, to protest in Brussels and ask for attention for the climate. Yesterday was Day 1 of their action and - fasten your seat belts - a staggering 4,000 students demonstrated in Brussels. "I'm so fucking glad!"

You don't say. Indeed, what's a paltry 4,000 missed hours of mathematics? 8,000 by the week after? 16,000, 32,000, 640,000??? The Climate warming up is more important. Let Chinese and Indian schoolchildren study mathematics and let us demonstrate! Progress!!!


MEANWHILE IN SWITZERLAND....

"In Switzerland's East today an avalanche rumbled down inside the restaurant of a mountain hotel. Several people were wounded, local police said. On the Schwaegalp in the Appenzell Ausserrhoden canton snow came down. The snow mass buried vehicles and thundered inside the restaurant of Hotel Saentis....

...Several people were wounded, how many isn't clear. Emergency squads are still searching for possible missing ones."

You know what. I'm gonna sleep. Can't stand the insanity any more. Nite, except if you are Anuna (what kind of a name is that anyway?) or Kyra, or one of their eager acolytes, in which case I wish all of you have nightmares about being forced to watch An Inconvenient Truth over and over and over again and it turns out it's a bad comedy.

Oh wait... Duuuuh, it is actually a bad comedy.


MFBB.

EXTREME GLOBAL WARMING IN AUSTRIA AND GERMANY.

Hey, I am NOT kidding. Up to three meters of it!





If you're heading for Austria you might want to skip the red areas ('extreme Gefahr'). Red. Must have got something to do with sunburn.






South and Central Germany also got a healthy dose of GW:





Granted, that's in the old massif of the Harz region. From Schierke, elevation some 600 meters or so, you can climb the Brocken, the highest mountain in the Harz, some 1142m if I'm not mistaken. The train is a steam train that takes tourists up to the summit and back. But even so, snowfall like that is extraordinary.

Al Gore could not be reached for comment.


MFBB.

WARMING HOLE SPOTTED ON ZUGSPITZE, GERMANY'S HIGHEST MOUNTAIN.

Last week, this here humble blog informed you of the existence of the so-called Warming Holes, i.e. places on Earth where Mother Nature refuses to follow the computer models.

Such a warming hole has now been detected on the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain:





Meteorologist Dominik Jung of the website wetter.net announced that last night, on the Zugspitze the lowest temperature for the end of February in 117 years was measured, minus 30.5 degrees Centigrade. "It was really extreme", dixit Jung.

Al Gore could not be reached for comment. Leonardo di Caprio, currently residing at France's Côte d'Azur, will step in however, once he has recovered from a severe cold.


MFBB.

RISE OF THE TERRIFYING WARMING HOLE!!!

Faced with unrelenting freezing cold along almost the entire US East Coast, and this year after year, warmists have now come up with an EXPLANATION. Why, it's a Warming Hole!





My oh my, you gotta read this drivel:

"We present a novel approach to characterize the spatiotemporal evolution of regional cooling across the eastern U.S. (commonly called the U.S. warming hole), by defining a spatially explicit boundary around the region of most persistent cooling."

That's ponderous pseudoscientific babble which in normal speak can be translated as: "We really don't understand why Mother Nature downright refuses to follow our computer models but we're trying to sell you an explanayshun anyway".

And:

"The U.S. “Warming Hole” is a region in the eastern United States that experienced a broad decline in temperatures beginning in the late 1950's. The warming hole is fundamentally different than global temperature trends, which have been rising since 1880. There are several ideas as to why the warming hole exists, but most cannot fully explain the observed temperature patterns."

So if your ass is freezing off in Savannah, Georgia, don't you worry. It's just that you find yourself in a shitho, erm, a Warming Hole!

Hat tip James Delingpole.



MFBB.

PDF OF THE DAY!

From the NOAA Archives:

"The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fisherman, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto underheard-of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface.

In August, 1922, the Norwegian Department of Commerce sent an expedition to Spitzbergen and Bear Island under the leadership of Dr. Adolf Hoel, lecturer on geology at the University of Christiania. Its purpose was to survey and chart the lands adjacent to the Norwegian mines on those islands, take soundings of the adjacent waters, and make other oceanographic investigations.

Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81° 29′ in ice-free water. This is the farthest north ever reached with modern oceanographic apparatus.

The character of the waters of the great polar basic has heretofore been practically unknown. Dr. Hoel reports that he made a section of the Gulf Stream at 81° north latitude and took soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters. These show the Gulf Stream very warm, and it could be traced as a surface current till beyond the 81st parallel. The warmth of the waters makes it probable that the favorable ice conditions will continue for some time.

In connection with Dr. Hoel’s report, it is of interest to note the unusually warm summer in Arctic Norway and the observations of Capt. Martin Ingebrigsten, who has sailed the eastern Arctic for 54 years past. He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, that since that time it has steadily gotten warmer, and that to-day the Arctic of that region is not recognizable as the same region of 1868 to 1917.

Many old landmarks are so changed as to be unrecognizable. Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended far into the sea they have entirely disappeared."

and:





Is there global warming? I guess there is. Around 0.6 degrees Centigrades since 1950.

Last summer, I was in the Austrian Alps, more precisely the Hohe Tauern, where I climbed Grossglockner with two buddies. We started out from the Glocknerhaus, a relatively Spartan hotel near the Margaritzespeicher. Up the valley we could see what remained of the Pasterze Glacier below Grossglockner. There is indeed not much left.

However... behind the hotel there's a photo display consisting of some 5 or 6 billboard-like info panels with photos dating back to the 1860s or so.

On these displays you could clearly see that before the end of the 19th century, the retreat of the Pasterze Glacier had already begun... although the CO2 output of the world's industries was but a tiny fraction - perhaps as little as 2% - of what it is now. Make it 2%, for the sake of the argument.

Am I to believe that the Alpine glaciers started retreating because of 2 per cent of today's CO2 output?

I won't.


MFBB.

RECOMMENDED VIDEOS: MARK STEYN AT US SENATE HEARING ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

Last Tuesday Mark Steyn took part in a US Senate hearing on 'Climate Change' to which he was invited by Senator Ted Cruz, of the subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness.

A money quote from Steyn:

Climate alarmism is going nowhere. The two-decade global-warming pause, which no late 1990s climate model foresaw, led the public to doubt Big Climate's confident predictions for the future. In response, federal bodies such as NOAA and NASA have adjusted the past to make the present appear hotter, and thus supposedly demonstrated that in fact there is no such "pause". As a result, public opinion, which no longer trusts the Big Climate enforcers to tell them what the climate will be like in 2050, now no longer trusts them to tell them what it was like in 1950. A recent poll found that, notwithstanding the urgings of the President and the Secretary of State and others, only three per cent of Americans regard climate change as their major concern. Three per cent. There is your 97 per cent consensus, gentlemen.

Watch his opening statement:


At some point Ed Markey, US Senator for Massachusetts and a democrat (what else) showed up. It showed:

"Markey must have been a little shocked when climatologist Judith Curry demanded to be able to respond to his testimony trying to discredit her views on climate science.

"I did not ask you a question," Markey, a Democrat, retorted when Curry asked if she could respond to his testimony during a Senate hearing Tuesday on the science behind global warming.

"Why can't she respond senator?" Conservative author and columnist Mark Steyn shot back at Markey. "You impugned her integrity. I think she's entitled to..."

"I was basically called a 'denier' — that I'm denying science," said Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech University. "Did you read my written testimony?"

Markey sought to discredit Curry in his testimony by framing her as ignoring the evidence humans are putting the planet at risk. Curry was not happy with essentially being labelled a global warming "denier" and pushed back against the senator's remarks.

"Are you aware the IPCC and the consensus has no explanation for the increase of ice in the Antarctic?" Curry said. "Are you aware that they have no explanation for the fact the rate of sea level rise from 1920 to 1950 was as large, if not larger, as it currently is?"

"Are you aware that temperatures have been warming for more than 200 years, and, that in the 20th Century, 40 percent of the warming occurred before 1950 when carbon dioxide was not a factor in the warming?" Curry continued.

Curry highlighted even more uncertainties among climate scientists many Democrats and environmentalists are loathe to admit. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has trouble explaining the recent "hiatus" in warming as well as the warming trend before the 1950s.

"Doctor, as I just said in my testimony — corroborated by Dr. Titley [another witness on the panel] — this is the warmest year ever recorded," Markey shot back. "Last year was the warmest year ever recorded until this year. This was the warmest November ever recorded. October... was the warmest ever recorded."

"You do not have an answer for that," Markey said before going on to site Galileo and claim Curry was relying on "something that is perhaps God-made rather than dependent upon something that is man-made" and backed by science.

"Are you saying there's no natural variability senator?" Steyn cut in. "There were alligators at the North Pole. What was that? Was that you in your SUV?"

Markey was forced to acknowledge the planet does in fact warm and cool on its own, but said natural variability is regional and the warming trend "is straight up."

"Do you know what the little ice age was senator?" Steyn said to which Markey responded by claiming Boston's record levels of snow are a product of global warming."

Video featuring Professor Judith Curry:



Count on the eurolunatics gathering in Paris to take note of Prof Curry's statements.

Heck. They don't even take note of her existence.


MFBB.

GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES MASSIVE HEADACHES IN RESUPPLYING ANTARCTIC STATIONS.

At first I thought this was a Flying Pig moment: The Guardian admitting sea ice around Antarctica being at a record high:

"Sea ice around Antarctica is currently at record levels for May, part of a trend of increasing ice around the frozen continent making it harder to resupply and refuel research stations.

More than 50 scientists are gathering in Hobart in Tasmania this week for a series of workshops on techniques to more accurately forecast sea ice levels in the polar region, aiming to save millions of dollars in shipping costs.

They will also hope to avoid a repeat of the problems suffered by the Akademik Shokalskiy, the research vessel caught in a sudden freeze in December 2013.

Rod Wooding, from the Australian Antarctic Division, said last year ships “couldn’t get anywhere near” the Australian research site, Mawson station, requiring a year’s worth of supplies and fuel to be flown in by helicopter.

“[That] is inadequate for the long-term sustainability of the station,” Wooding said. “Other national programs have had similar problems, the French in particular, the Japanese also....”

Alas for me however, and luckily for The Graudian, Tony Worby was on hand with a bulletproof explanation:

"...Scientists were initially puzzled by the increasing sea ice around the continent, which reached record levels in September 2014, but have concluded it is “very largely driven by changes in wind”, Tony Worby, the chief executive of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre said.

“Those changes of wind are driven by the depletion of ozone in the stratosphere and the increasing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.”

The El Nino phenomenon, too, “drives changes in pressure which drives changes in wind which drives changes in sea ice”, he said.

Antarctica is also surrounded by ocean, leaving sea ice “completely free to expand however it wants to”, in contrast to the Arctic region, which is landlocked by Russia, Greenland and northern Canada...."

It's them nasty changes of wind caused by greenhouse gases!!!!!!!!!!! Who would have thunk it???



Dream on people, dream on....



MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: WALTER WILLIAMS ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

An excellent Walter Williams contribution over at Townhall:

"... GlobalChange.gov gives the definition of climate change: "Changes in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer. Climate change encompasses both increases and decreases in temperature, as well as shifts in precipitation, changing risk of certain types of severe weather events, and changes to other features of the climate system." That definition covers all weather phenomena throughout all 4.54 billion years of Earth's existence.
You say, "Williams, that's not what the warmers are talking about. It's the high CO2 levels caused by mankind's industrial activities that are causing the climate change!" There's a problem with that reasoning. Today CO2 concentrations worldwide average about 380 parts per million. This level of CO2 concentration is trivial compared with the concentrations during earlier geologic periods. For example, 460 million years ago, during the Ordovician Period, CO2 concentrations were 4,400 ppm, and temperatures then were about the same as they are today. With such high levels of CO2, at least according to the warmers, the Earth should have been boiling.

Then there are warmer predictions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, warmers, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, made all manner of doomsday predictions about global warming and the increased frequency of hurricanes. According to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, "no Category 3-5 hurricane has struck the United States for a record nine years, and Earth's temperature has not budged for 18 years."

Climate change predictions have been wrong for decades. Let's look at some. At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people (would) starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989 and that by 1999, the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier. He said, "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."




To the right the last polar bears. Or so the warmists would want you to believe. In reality however...


In 1970, Harvard University biologist George Wald predicted, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." Sen. Gaylord Nelson, in Look magazine in April 1970, said that by 1995, "somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals (would) be extinct."

Climate change propaganda is simply a ruse for a socialist agenda. Consider the statements of some environmentalist leaders. Christiana Figueres, the U.N.'s chief climate change official, said that her unelected bureaucrats are undertaking "probably the most difficult task" they have ever given themselves, "which is to intentionally transform the (global) economic development model." In 2010, German economist and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change official Ottmar Edenhofer said, "One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy." The article in which that interview appeared summarized Edenhofer's views this way: "Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. ... The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated."

The most disgusting aspect of the climate change debate is the statements by many that it's settled science. There is nothing more anti-scientific than the idea that any science is settled. Very often we find that the half-life of many scientific ideas is about 50 years. For academics to not criticize their colleagues and politicians for suggesting that scientific ideas are not subject to challenge is the height of academic dishonesty."

Listen to Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC):




People like Figueres need to be stopped.


MFBB.

RECOMMENDED READS: JEFFREY FOLKS ON OBAMA'S "ENERGIEWENDE".

Dang. Barely have I put up a modest post about the economical and financial disaster that is Germany's so-called 'Energiewende', or there's an insightful article from Jeffrey Folks over at American Thinker, regarding Obama using the same flawed arguments to strive for green energy which led to Germany's disastrous experiment with (especially) wind and solar:

"President Obama has committed the U.S. to a 26% to 28% reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by the year 2025. Is a reduction of that magnitude workable? The German experience with energiewende (“energy transition”) proves that it is not.

Having already begun its costly phase-out of nuclear power, Germany plans to rely on renewable sources for more than 35% of its needs by 2020 and 80% by 2050. The country is now more dependent on wind and solar to power its large industrial economy than ever. The result has been a colossal disaster.

German customers, both residential and commercial, pay twice what Americans pay for electricity. As higher energy costs filter through the economy, German industry is no longer expanding, consumers are purchasing fewer consumer goods, and job growth is stagnant. This is a recipe for national decline.

Germany’s GDP declined by .6% in the second quarter of 2014. In the third quarter, German GDP increased by just .1%, below that of the EU overall. The real problem is not so much current growth, or lack of it, but future growth as the cost of renewables sinks in. Anticipating this cost, German industry has cut domestic capital investment and shifted jobs overseas. According to a recent report, German capital investment fell by .9% in the third quarter of 2014. Capital investment is among the most reliable indicators of future economic growth.

The irony is that as Germany and other countries shift to renewable fuels to combat global warming, global temperatures show no sign of warming. Even if they did, Germany’s contribution to warming would be a fraction of one degree over the next century. Germany produces only 2% of global greenhouse gases. With an IPCC consensus of 3 degrees Celsius warming by 2100, and with man-made warming supposedly accounting for 40% of that, Germany’s contribution would be .024 degrees. Given the proven inaccuracy of IPCC forecasts in the past, Germany’s contribution to warming would likely be less than .024 degree or even zero. Is it worth impoverishing a nation, punishing retirees on fixed incomes, and forever dashing the hopes of a generation of young job seekers just to make an ideological point?




Compared to the U.S., which relies on fossil fuels and nuclear for 90% of its electricity needs, Germany derives less than 80% from fossil and nuclear, and it has been rapidly moving away from both (with nuclear to be phased out by 2022). As costs mount, business investment is fleeing Germany.

The recent decline of oil prices, along with sustained low prices for natural gas, makes Germany’s energy transition seem all the more doubtful. Germans pay 35 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity. Why not pay 12 cents, as Americans do?

The price differential between renewables and natural gas is even more compelling. With an import price just under $9 per mBtu, German electricity prices should be closer to 25 cents per kWh. And with the prospect of U.S. gas exports beginning in 2015, the European import price could decline further. A 43% cut in electricity prices, from 35 cents to a potential 20 cents, would revive growth in the German economy and in the EU as a whole. All that’s necessary is for Germany to abandon the energiewende and embrace clean fuels like natural gas and clean coal as the solution to its energy needs.

Fortunately, a light bulb seems to have been turned on among German lawmakers, who in June 2014 voted to curb future subsidies for renewables. The plan, which calls for a clawback of up to 40% of subsidies from future clean-energy producers, should slow the conversion to wind and solar, and may eventually rescue the German economy from some of the ruinous cost of renewables.

Yet just as Germany retreats from wind and solar, Obama is committing America to a renewables program that sounds a lot like the failed German experiment. Obama’s climate deal with Chinese Premier Xi calls for a 26 to 28% cut in U.S. carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2025. What did Obama get in return for this toxic pledge? A promise that China would begin cutting emissions by 2030—but by no more than they are already likely to be cut.




That doesn’t sound like much of a deal. The only thing Obama got in return is a bundle of cash from well-heeled environmental donors. That cash might help the Democratic Party in future elections, but the China deal will harm ordinary American workers for decades to come...."

Readers should not get me wrong. I do think that there is what I would call a substantial niche market for wind and solar power. In locations benefiting from relatively constant and predictable wind fluxes, windfarms might be an option. In the same manner, for certain localized industrial applications in regions with lots of sunshine solar furnaces, as pioneered by France's Odeillo plant, might be a solution for a.) cheap energy and b.) reducing the need for conventionally generated power. The same goes for small relatively isolated communities awash in sunlight: there solar power towers, like Spain's PS10 might be an attractive alternative. Hydropower and tidal power: same story. And I do believe that it makes great sense to ASAP develop technically sound electric cars - for them to be there by the time real alternative energy arrives.

But politicians and the media should be honest in acknowledging that wind and solar will NEVER be able (unless some efficient means to store the generated power is developed, which I doubt very much) to substitute for the massive energy provided by power plants using fossil fuel and nuclear power. To strive to do so with arguments rotating around the CO2-"threat" is a second lie.

Humanity's energy needs can only be solved adequately, and in the long term, through fusion. Until that arrives, we simply have to rely on the current means of production - and Earth can certainly take a few more decades of CO2-"pollution" augmented by nuclear power (with, in the latter field, a gradual shift from U235 fuel to thorium).


MFBB.

THE GERMAN "ENERGIEWENDE" TURNING INTO A FILTHY AND COSTLY DISASTER.

First an old article, dating from April 2014 already, and the coverage of Sigmar Gabriel, German vice-chancellor, has been interpreted and re-interpreted by critics and supporters of renewable energy alike. Via Wattsupwiththat:

Guest essay by Fred F. Mueller

On April 16th, 2014, a few quite remarkable statements were delivered during a discussion event at the premises of SMA Solar Technology AG, a leading German producer of photovoltaic panels and systems:


“The truth is that the Energy U-Turn (“Energiewende”, the German scheme aimed at pushing the “renewable” share of electricity production to 80 % by 2050) is about to fail”

“The truth is that under all aspects, we have underestimated the complexity of the “Energiewende”

“The noble aspiration of a decentralized energy supply, of self-sufficiency! This is of course utter madness”

“Anyway, most other countries in Europe think we are crazy”

Had this been one of the small albeit growing number of German “sceptics” casting doubt upon the XXL-sized politico-economical scam that has cost the German populace more than € 500 billion since its inception in 2000, it would not have gotten more than a footnote in the local press, crammed somewhere in between “horoscope” and “lost and found”. In fact, the media actually tried to keep a lid on the facts by giving them as little coverage as possible.

But the man at the speaker’s desk was Sigmar Gabriel, acting vice-chancellor of the German government, Secretary of Commerce with responsibility for the said „Energiewende” and chairman of the German social democrats (SPD), the second-largest political force in the country. Since December 2013, he is in charge of taming the runaway costs and growing security of supply risks that are unmasking the financial and technical nightmare of this ill-conceived project. In the past few months, he seems to have gotten some unpleasant insights causing him to admit the above-mentioned inconvenient truths when he was pushed too far by a number of aggressive lobbyists of the “renewable energy” sector. Gabriel, famous for his irascible temper that once already resulted in a heated verbal exchange with a top-dog TV journalist live on air, appears to have become quite candid when he vented his anger during the debate.




He must have realized his own political fate is in jeopardy because the task he has been assigned has conducted him into a situation that will inevitably result in failure. With respect to electric energy generation, Germany has painted itself into a corner. Since the introduction of the “Renewable Energy” law (EEG) in 2000 aimed at replacing coal and gas-fired as well as nuclear power generation by so-called renewable energy sources, the household price for electricity has jumped by more than 200 %. German customers now pay the second-highest electricity prices in Europe. At the same time, the task of stabilizing the grid against the massive erratic influx from solar and wind power plants that produce without regard for actual need has pushed the operators to their limits. Now already, with a combined share of just some 13 % of total electricity production, their unreliable input is massively imperiling the stability of the grid.

Conventional power plants – the most important units able to compensate these detrimental effects – are being pushed out of the market and shuttered at increasing rates. At the same time, Germany’s CO2 output has not diminished because coal-fired units have had to take over from closed nuclear plants. Costs are set to rise further on a ballistic path while security of supply is in free fall. At the same time, Gabriel is subjected to intense pressure from a number of factions of the “renewable” energy sector asking for ever greater slices of a cake that cannot be financed much longer. Together with inconvenient truths about feasibility limits given to him by his technical staff, this pressure seems to have risen to a level that pushed him to lecture his harassers when their clamors transgressed his tolerance limit.

This rare incident where a leading politician loses control of his words to such a degree shows that the “crash boom bang” path the German way of mishandling energy policies has indeed reached a threshold where said politicians feel cornered and unable to uphold their usual “muddling through” approach. Long-ignored financial and technical rules re-emerge and will force the German political class to abandon their “renewable” energy strategy centering on solar and wind power generation. Since the only low CO2 alternative – nuclear power – has been deviled by all political parties and the media beyond any chance of short-term oblivion, Germany will soon have to revert to coal for its power needs. And that in turn implies the country will have to abandon all aspirations to lower its CO2 emissions. German politicians might soon find out that demonizing CO2 is becoming a speedy path to ruining their career. And given the importance of the country within Europe and the pioneering role it claimed in the international crusade against climate change by limiting CO2 emissions, this might well herald the start of a paradigm shift of epochal dimensions in the whole climate change debate.

Then Fast forward to the beginning of December - it's turning ugly. If even Patrick Graichen, Director of Germany's Agora Energiewende thinktank uses words such as "filthy blunder" the sign is on the wall.

“Energiewende” Takes A Massive Blow…Top Green Energy Proponent Concedes: “Blunder With Ugly Consequences”!
By P Gosselin on 9. Dezember 2014
German national weekly DIE ZEIT writes in its latest hard copy edition that one of Europe’s leading green energy thinkers now concedes Germany’s much ballyhooed Energiewende (transition to renewable energies) has been a “filthy blunder”.

Die Zeit 4 Dec 2014

Page 4 of December 4, 2014, edition of DIE ZEIT. “Filthy Blunder”

When the green movement itself makes such an admission, then you know Germany’s once highly ballyhooed Energiewende is truly in deep trouble, if not a basket case.

“Germany will not even come close to reaching targets”

Moreover, DIE ZEIT, an influential publication among Germany’s green centre-left, writes, “Germany will not even come close to reaching its climate target despite the massive investment in wind and solar energies.”

The admission is a massive blow to Germany’s renewable energies movement, whose troubles have long been played down or denied by its proponents.

So what has finally compelled Germany’s top greens to make such an astonishing admission? The facts show that although the Energiewende has led to a rapid expansion of wind and solar energies, it has also led to the unexpected increase in coal-fired power. Renewable energies have had the unintended effect of revitalizing coal as a source of energy. A horror for climate protection activists.

The 180° U-turn begins with Patrick Graichen, Director of the Agora Energiewende thinktank, which according to DIE ZEIT, is “the most influential school of thought for energy policy in Germany“. Graichen himself was formerly responsible for energy at the Federal Ministry of Environment.

Making the air dirtier

The DIE ZEIT feature article explains how Germany’s original plan had been to expand wind and solar so that they would first replace the country’s unwanted nuclear power plants, and then later the filthy coal power plants. The idea was to use natural gas power plants to even out the huge irregularities that come with the weather-dependent solar and wind power. And as green and power grid technology developed further, even gas eventually would be throttled down to a bare minimum, and so Germany would be propelled from being the world’s worst villain to a most loved hero – in less than a 100-year span. That was the dream.

But now green energy dreamers are being rudely awakened, and the reality looks very different. More CO2 is being produced. Die ZEIT writes:

It’s a blunder with ugly consequences. The Energiewende, as it is now set up, is not making the air cleaner, but dirtier.”

The problem, DIE ZEIT explains, is that the coal is much cheaper than natural gas. As a a consequence power generators are opting to even out the green power supply fluctuations with coal power instead of gas. But because coal power plants cannot be driven up and down quickly to respond to fluctuations in supply, power producers no longer even bother throttling them down when too much power is fed in by wind in sun. The coal power plants just keep on humming and emitting anyway – even when the power is not needed. In the end it’s still cheaper than operating gas plants. Result: gas plants are being closed down, coal is coming back.

Grotesque market distortions – negative prices

The requirement to feed in green power and all the extra unneeded coal-fired electricity are now causing grotesque distortions on the electricity markets. To illustrate the perverse market conditions, DIE ZEIT describes the events of Sunday, May 11, 2014, when so much wind and solar power was fed into the grid that the power became worthless on the market and at times caused negative prices on the electricity exchanges, as DIE ZEIT illustrates:

The price on the market fell to nothing. A little later before noon, there was so much green power on the market that the German power companies were paying money to get rid of it. By early afternoon when solar power was flowing plentifully, the so-called negative power price rose to 60 euros per megawatt-hour.”

Negative prices due to an uncontrolled supply into the grid is no longer an isolated event that rarely occurs. DIE ZEIT continues:

And that is no isolated incident; it’s the future of German power production. In the first half of 2014 power prices were negative for 71 hours. But already in just a few years that number could be one thousand hours per year, according to the think tank Energy Brainpool. One quarter of the entire green energy production would be energy garbage.”

Skyrocketing electricity prices for consumers while the price on the exchanges go negative: This has got to be one of the 7 wonders of German energy management.

Outlaw Mike's advice? First STOP subsidizing 'renewable energies'. Windmills and solar panels can never offer more than local niche solutions. Only therein will they be able to hold their own without state subsidies.

The only truly long term solution for humanity is nuclear FUSION. DowneastBlog had an article on that back in 2006 already. If all the money that thanks to Green and Red insanity has evaporated in insane carbon offset Ponzi schemes had been used instead for fusion research we would be much farther down the road. As it stands now we cannot expect the first tangible results before 2025 - and that is by no means certain. I also think it was a mistake going for an international effort, thereby excluding the benefits of competition.

And in the runup to fusion? The first two decades simply continuing using fossil fuel. To that end it will be necessary to effectively counter the CO2 mass hysteria and propaganda.

Within that timeframe develop workable Thorium nuclear reactors. Thorium is available in relatively abundant qualities, it produces less nuclear waste, and is a dead end with regards to producing bomb material.

So, summarized:

a.) 2014-2035: fossil fuel, U235-based nuclear reactors, phasing the latter out as they gradually reach their intended lifespan (fossil fuel reactors should continue to be used however, and let them die off as the subsequent methods of producing energy gain importance)

b.) 2030 ~ 2080? Thorium nuclear reactors

c.) 2060 (?) ~ .....end of history : Fusion reactors


Vwala, Outlaw Mike's plan for sustainable energy production in a nutshell!

Greenies can continue to champion solar panels for powering parking ticket dispensers though.



MFBB.