Why do so few countries in Europe follow Germany in green electricity? The answer could lie in electricity prices:
Eurostat lists these for the first half of 2020. Of all countries, Germany, Denmark and the United Kingdom are the wind energy countries that are very far ahead in terms of consumer prices. Hat-tip Die kalte Sonne.
Wind, sun absent extended periods
Not only has electricity gotten expensive in these countries, but the supply is highly unreliable. Germany’s massive 110 GW of installed sun and wind energy capacity produced next to nothing over a period of five days earlier this month, not even coming close to meeting the country’s demand:
Or during the dead of winter, when power is in big demand, see below for a period two weeks:
Fortunately there were fossil and nuclear power plants available to keep the power grid from collapsing. But there’s a problem: It’s very uneconomical to operate these conventional plants only part-time. The added costs end up being borne by the consumer.
And due to the high electricity rates, every year tens of thousands of German households see their power cut off due to unpaid electricity bills, read here and here.
Not surprisingly, climate alarmist and Guardian contributor Dana Nuccitelli reported in to brag about winning the recent bet.
Then one day later he mustered the courage to express his willingness to bet again:
Okay Dana, I’m in against you and will bet 100 USD, applying the same conditions of the previous bet. I say the 2021-2030 decade will be same or cooler than the 2011-2020 decade.
If you’re right again, then I might have to concede man is causing a significant part of the surface warming – depending on what the data suggest and the conclusions reached by objective scientists.
A new analysis by Drs. Wijngaarden and Happer (2020) suggests the “self-interference” saturation of all greenhouse gases in the current atmosphere substantially reduces their climate forcing power.
At the current concentrations, the forcing power for greenhouse gases like CO2 (~400 ppm) and CH4 (1.8 ppm) are already saturated. Therefore, even doubling the current greenhouse gas concentrations may only increase their forcings “by a few percent” in the parts of the atmosphere where there are no clouds. When clouds are present, the influence of greenhouse gases is even further minimized.
While the “consensus” model view is that doubling CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm results in a surface forcing of 3.7 W/m², Wijngaarden and Happer find doubling CO2 concentrations from 400 to 800 ppm increases climate forcing by 3 W/m². This warms the surface by 1.4 K as it “hypothetically” cools the upper atmosphere by 10 K.
Equilibrium climate sensitivity (when positive feedback with water vapor is included) is identified as 2.2 K, which is within 10% of multiple other analyses.
Germany’s massive public broadcasting media has a budget of €6.9 billion and 22,612 employees. The budget comes primarily from a licence fee which every household, company and public institution are required by law to pay. For an ordinary household the fee is currently €17.50 per month.
ARD logo since 2019. Public domain image
But over the years, criticism of unbalanced reporting has become increasingly loud. Many citizens would be happy to do away with the mandatory fees, citing onesidedness in ARD reporting.
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Volunteers at ARD vote 92% Socialist, Communist or Green
According to Wikipedia, Germany’s public broadcasting has a variety of tasks:
In addition to a basic service mandate and a legally defined program mandate, one of the other essential tasks of public service broadcasting is therefore to maintain political and economic independence.”
Thus, independence and distance from the state are supposed to be a fundamental principle by the publicly funded broadcasters. According to an article in Meedia. Volunteers were asked about their political preferences and the pendulum swung strongly in the direction of green and red. Even the flagship daily FAZ did an article on the topic.
Volunteers at ARD and Deutschland Radio were asked about their political preferences. According to the study, 57.1 percent of the volunteers said they would vote for the Greens, 23.4 percent for Die Linke (former communists) and about 11 percent for the SPD Socialists. The center-right CDU/CSU would get only 3% of the votes among ARD volunteers.”
Of course it would be wrong to conclude that mostly greens and communists would be covering stories if these volunteers were ever to come into the normal operation of the stations at some point. Normally journalists are supposed to be critical and independent despite their party preferences.
However, this is rarely the case. The topic of climate and energy is certainly one of them. The rare reports on, for example, the negative consequences of the transition to renewable energies, are more the exception rather than the rule. Will such exceptions become even rarer in the future? It looks more as if the homogenization of reporting on the topic of climate is making great strides.
Unusual harsh winter conditions have struck the northern hemisphere this October as record snow cover has been observed. More on this below.
No more October warming?
But first looking at the untampered data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) for stations with complete data going back to 1998 for Canada and 2001 for France, we see there has not been any significant warming for the month of October.
Some stations have warmed modestly, while the others have cooled. Overall, there hasn’t been much October warming at these stations over the past two decades.
In France, whose climate is heavily impacted by the Atlantic, we plot the JMA October data since 2001 for 14 stations across the country.
Nine of 14 stations have seen cooling or no warming for October since 2001. So here the data show that the opposite of what was projected is really happening, and that natural factors, likely Atlantic patterns, are at play.
Dehli sees coldest October in 58 years
Meanwhile Twitter account Electroverse here reports on a variety of unusually harsh early winter events taking place. For example: “Following on from its coldest October in 58 Years, India’s capital city of Delhi has continued toppling low temperature records into November.”
Also Pakistan is getting pounded by heavy snows and the northern hemisphere currently has seen well above normal snow cover, reports Electroverse:
IN PICTURES: PAKISTAN MOUNTAINS BURIED UNDER “TONNES” OF EARLY SEASON SNOW
The Northern Hemisphere's total snow mass, aided by central Asia's record snowfall, is now sitting above the 1982-2012 average by 400 gigatons (as of Nov 21). #GSMhttps://t.co/8NQx1OvHv6
In fact, German Snowfan here reports how October has set a new record for northern hemisphere snow cover since data recording this magnitude began more than 50 years ago, according to the data from the University of Rutgers:
The Northeast US also saw record low temperatures last week, as the jet stream drove Arctic air far south.
“The mercury held as much as 16°C below the season average in some parts, particularly in New York State, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut,” reported Electroverse. “Long Island, New York wound-up setting a new record low.”
Western USA and Canada have also been hard hit by early, severe winter conditions.
“After a barrage of early-season storms, the snowpack across the Western United States is now well above average for mid-November, wrote Electroverse.
Snowfall 1500% over normal
“In parts of Oregon, totals are hitting as much as 786% of normal. The story is similar across Washington State. While in Idaho and Montana, and elsewhere, the current Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) is comfortably above the 1981-2010 median. Finally, note the 1500% in Texas (the key only goes >= 150%!).”
CO2 reached 1980s (352 ppm, average) to 2000s (380 ppm, max) levels 2500-5500 years ago in Japan per stomata records.
Scientists (Wang et al., 2020) have determined stomatal evidence can uncover large short-term CO2 fluxes of 50-100 ppm within a century or less.
Measurements from a forest near Mt. Kurikoma, Japan, reveal minimum to maximum CO2 values ranged between 288 ppm (minimum) to 383 ppm (maximum) between 3,903 to 3,795 cal. yr BP. The region’s sea surface temperatures were 1-2°C warmer (23-24°C) than today (22°C) from about 4,000 to 5,500 years ago.
Other reconstructions have also determined CO2 fluctuates far more rapidly in stomatal records than in the records divined from bubbles in old ice. For example, CO2 rose from about 260 to 380 ppm during the century between 1850 and 1950 (Kouwenberg et al, 2005) and declined by 77 ppm in <200 years (Mcelwain et al., 2002) during the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event per evidence from stomata.
Atmospheric CO2 just doesn’t change on a whim and cause global temperature to follow along in response. Press release from The Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI):
During the last 2.6 million years of Earth’s climate has altered between glacial and interglacial states. As such, there have been times in which the transition between the two climate states appeared with either regular or irregular periodicity. AWI researcher Peter Köhler has now discovered that the irregular appearance of interglacials has been more frequent than previously thought.
In order to understand human beings’ role in the development of our current climate, we have to look back a long way, since there has always been climate change – albeit over vastly different timescales than the anthropogenic climate change, which is mainly due to the use of fossil fuels over the past 200 years. Without humans, for millions of years, climate altered between glacial and interglacial states over periods of many thousands of years, mainly because of the Earth’s tilt which changes by a few degrees with a periodicity of 41,000 years. This in turn changes the angle at which the sun’s rays strike Earth – and as such the energy that reaches the planet, especially at high latitudes in summer. However, there is strong evidence that during the course of the last 2.6 million years, interglacials have repeatedly been ‘skipped’. The Northern Hemisphere – particularly North America – remained frozen for long periods, despite the angle of the axial tilt changing to such an extent that more solar energy once again reached Earth during the summer, which should have melted the inland ice masses. This means Earth’s tilt can’t be the sole reason for Earth’s climate to alter between glacial and interglacial states.
Aerial view of the Beyond EPICA camp (Photo: Beyond EPICA, AWI)
In order to solve the puzzle, climate researchers are investigating more closely at what points in Earth’s history irregularities occurred. Together with colleagues at Utrecht University, physicist Peter Köhler from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) has now made a significant contribution towards providing a clearer picture of the sequence of glacial and interglacial periods over the last 2.6 million years. Until now, experts thought that, especially over the past 1.0 million years, glacial and interglacial periods deviated from their 41,000- year cycle, and that interglacial periods were skipped, as a result of which some glacial periods lasted for 80,0000 or even 120,000 years. “For the period between 2.6 and 1.0 million years ago, it was assumed that the rhythm was 41,000 years,” says Peter Köhler. But as his study, which has now been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, shows, there were also repeated irregularities during the period between 2.6 and 1.0 million years ago.
Köhler’s study is particularly interesting because he re-evaluated a well-known dataset that researchers have been using for several years – the LR04 climate dataset – yet arrived at completely different conclusions. This dataset consists of a global evaluation of core samples from deep-sea sediments that are millions of years old, and includes measurements from the ancient shells of microscopic, single-celled marine organisms – foraminifera – that were deposited on the ocean floor. Foraminifera incorporate oxygen from the seawater into their calcium shells. But over millennia, the level of specific oxygen isotopes – oxygen atoms that have differing numbers of neutrons and therefore different masses – varies in seawater.
18O reveals what the world was like in the past
The LR04 dataset contains measurements of the ratio of the heavy oxygen isotope 18O to the lighter 16O. The ratio of 18O/16O stored in the foraminifera’s shells depends on the water temperature. But there is also another effect that leads to relatively large amounts of 18O being found in the foraminifera’s shells in glacial periods: when, during the course of a glacial period, there is heavy snowfall on land, which leads to the formation of thick ice sheets, the sea level falls – in the period studied, by as much as 120 m. Since 18O is heavier than 16O, water molecules containing this heavy isotope evaporate less readily than molecules containing the lighter isotope. As such, comparatively more 18O remains in the ocean and the 18O content of the foraminifera shells increases. “If you take the LR04 dataset at face value, it means you blur two effects – the influence of ocean temperature and that of land ice, or rather that of sea level change,” says Peter Köhler. “This makes statements regarding the alternation of the glacial periods uncertain.” And there is an additional factor: climate researchers mainly determine the sequence of glacial periods on the basis of glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere. But using 18O values doesn’t allow us to say whether prehistoric glaciation chiefly occurred in the Northern Hemisphere or in Antarctica.
Computer model separates the influencing parameters
In an attempt to solve this problem, Köhler and his team evaluated the LR04 dataset in a completely different way. The data was fed into a computer model that simulates the growth and melting of the large continental ice sheets. What sets it apart: the model is capable of separating the influence of temperature and that of sea level change on the 18O concentration. Furthermore, it can accurately analyse where and when snow falls and the ice increases – more in the Northern Hemisphere or in Antarctica. “Mathematicians call this separation a deconvolution,” Köhler explains, “which our model is capable of delivering.” The results show that the sequence of glacials and interglacials was irregular even in the period 2.6 to 1.0 million years ago – a finding that could be crucial in the coming years. As part of the ongoing major EU project ‘BE-OIC (Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Core)’, researchers are drilling deeper than ever before into the Antarctic ice. With the oldest ice core recovered to date, ‘EPICA’, they have ‘only’ travelled back roughly 800,000 years into the past. The ancient ice provides, among other things, information on how much carbon dioxide Earth’s atmosphere contained at that time. With ‘Beyond EPICA’ they will delve circa 1.5 million years into the past. By combining the carbon dioxide measurements with Köhler’s analyses, valuable insights can be gained into the relation between these two factors – the fluctuations in the sequence of glacials and the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. And this can help us understand the fundamental relationship between greenhouse gases and climate changes in Earth’s glacial history.
Original publication
The study has now been released in Nature Communications:
Köhler, P., van de Wal, R.S.W., Interglacials of the Quaternary defined by northern hemispheric land ice distribution outside of Greenland. Nat Commun11, 5124 (2020). DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-18897-5
Germany began installing wind turbines in earnest some 20 years ago. Now that their lifetime has been exceeded, many are being ripped down. But there’s a big problem about what to do with the leftover carbon and glass-fibre reinforced blades.
A recent report on ZDF German public television explains that currently there’s no plan in place on what to do with the turbine blades, which weigh up to 15 tonnes each.
There’s no way to recycle them to use as raw material for new blades. Currently the old blades are being shredded and the chips mixed in with concrete. “You need too much energy and power to shred them,” says Hans-Dieter Wilcken, the operator of a German recycling company.
Burning them is also not an option.
Hazardous waste
The problem with chopping them up is that dangerous carbon fibre particles are produced and pose a threat to human health. Used wind turbine blades have been designated hazardous waste and no one knows how to deal with them.
Currently 30,000 wind turbines are in operation across Germany and many will have to be dismantled over the next 20 years. That volume alone means over a million tonnes of hazardous waste (30,000 turbines x 3 blades/turbine x 15 tonnes/blade = 1.35 million tonnes).
By 2100, with wind turbine use expected to rise, millions of tonnes of non-recyclable hazardous waste will be left for future generations to deal with – that’s in Germany alone.
Bloomberg: Massive waste “forever”
In the USA, Casper Wyoming is currently serving as a landfill for used blades, Bloomberg here reports:
‘The wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,’ said Bob Cappadona, chief operating officer for the North American unit of Paris-based Veolia Environnement SA, which is searching for better ways to deal with the massive waste. ‘Most landfills are considered a dry tomb.’
‘The last thing we want to do is create even more environmental challenges.’
On top of the hazardous wind turbine blade waste, there’s also the problem of the massive steel reinforced turbine foundations, which are simply being swept under a layer of dirt as well. These too will forever have an impact on ground and ground water.
Legacy of waste, breathtaking stupidity
Future generations will wonder how dumb their ancestors must have been to opt for a form of energy that blighted the landscape, destroyed ecosystems over vast areas, killed avian wildlife, was an unreliable and expensive energy source, made nearby residents sick and left millions and millions of tonnes of waste behind.
Never mind ll the solar panel waste that is about to added to that.
Despite all the money-generating gloomy predictions of sinking islands, we reported in 2013 on how the Maldives was planning to build 30 new luxury hotels for future tourists.
We recall how in 2012, the former President of the Maldives Islands, Mohamed, Nasheed said: “If carbon emissions continue at the rate they are climbing today, my country will be underwater in seven years.”
4 new airports!
Well, today the islands have not gone underwater and remains popular with tourists like never before. And to help with the job of ferrying the 1.7 million (2019) tourists to and from the resort islands, the Maldives have recently opened 4 new airports, according to German site Aero here!
Long-term investment defies alarmist claims
No, the airports are not designed to evacuate tourists because sea levels are “rapidly rising”, as climate alarmists claim. The airports are a long-term investment aimed at drawing in even more tourists and they are based on the projection that they’ll still be very much in unhindered operation in 30 or 50 years from now. Obviously the catastrophic climate warnings are not being heeded. Most likely these warnings are not really serious at all.
The Maldives comprise 1200 islands, which were made accessible through a total of ten airports. However, they are not enough to handle the expected traffic. So four new domestic airports would open this year alone, announced Transportation and Aviation Minister Aishath Nahula,
Deforestation, paved beaches
The new airports will feature 2200 meter runways, thus allowing commercial passenger jets to takeoff and land. According to Aero, citing the Arabian Business news site, some 52 million dollars was financed by Abu Dhabi to cover the construction costs.
Environmentalists expressed anger at the project because “forests had to be cut down and beaches concreted over”.
The first-ever randomized controlled trial (4,862 participants) for mask-use effectiveness in the COVID-19 era reveals that people who wear face masks properly in public are infected only 0.1 of a percentage point less often (2.0% vs. 2.1%) than those who do not wear masks in public.
In 2018 the United States’ Center for Disease Control (CDC) cited a study that said wearing a cloth mask is only effective 1% of the time in preventing viral transmission. This is because facemasks do not tightly seal to the face and thus they “cannot prevent particles in the air from bypassing the filter.”
In the spring of 2020, just as COVID-19 was surging throughout the world, the CDC reviewed 10 randomized controlled trials of mask effectiveness in preventing influenza-like viral infections. In each instance they found “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks” and the “overall reduction in ILI or laboratory-confirmed influenza cases was not significant” and “none of the household studies reported a significant reduction in…influenza virus infections in the face mask group.”
On the 18th of November, 2020, the first comprehensive randomized controlled trial study (Bundgaard et al., 2020) assessing mask effectiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic was made available online.
The study was conducted in Denmark, a country where health authorities did not recommended universal mask use during the study period (April and May, 2020). There were 4,862 participants who completed the study in either the control group (no masks) or mask-wearing group. Only about half (46%) of the mask-wearing group admitted they wore their masks in the way they were instructed (i.e., always fully covering the nose and mouth).
When comparing the proper mask-wearing group to the no-masks control group, the authors found no statistically significant difference in the rates of COVID-19 infection: 2.0% of those who wore masks properly in public were infected with the virus compared to a 2.1% infection rate for those who did not wear masks in public.
So out of 1,000 participants, 1 more person (20 vs. 21) wearing a mask (properly) avoided infection when directly compared to 1,000 participants who didn’t wear a mask at all.
Perhaps this now-affirmed lack of effectiveness is the reason why there is no less of a surge in new COVID-19 cases after mask mandates are put into place across the world.
Early in 2011, NTZ readers and I entered a climate bet with Rob Honeycutt and climate warming dogmatist Dana Nuccitelli. The bet, which I dubbed the Honeycutt Climate Bet for Charity, was whether globally the 2011-2020 decade would be warmer or cooler than the previous 2001-2010 decade.
Myself and and a number of NTZ followers that bet the 2011-2020 decade would see no warming, or even cooling. Conversely Messieurs Honeycutt and Nuccitelli claimed global warming would continue, due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions, of course. To decide the winner of the bet, it was agreed that the RSS and UAH datasets would be used.
Now we are at the end of 2020, and the data suffices to declare a winner. The following chart is the latest UAH from Dr. Roy Spencer:
As we can see, before 2016 the global mean temperature had been cooling since 1998, thus establishing what came to be known as “the hiatus”. The early half of the 2011-2020 decade had been running a bit cooler than the previous decade.
But then came the monster 2015/16 El Nino, a natural event occurring at the equatorial Pacific and it saved the warmists from losing the bet:
That ENSO event was the strongest in memory, and thus drove global surface temperatures to a new level. As we can see from the UAH chart above, the overall current decade indeed did become warmer than the previous 2001-2010 decade. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I think no one will dispute it.
Congratulations to the warmists on winning the bet, all thanks to the natural factors that coolists keep arguing in favor of.
Of course, the bet winners will boast and insist it’s all due to human activity. But it isn’t. Such a claim is Dominion-voting-machine science. The one deciding factor was the powerful mid-decade El Nino event, which is natural and has little to do with people burning fossil fuels.
Personally the results do not change my skeptic view of CO2’s role in climate at all. In fact the results only reinforce my view because it’s crystal clear that the 2016- 2020 warming was due to the El Nino, a natural factor, and not CO2.
200 euros for SOS Kinderdorf e.V.
Those participating in the bet of course must honor their bets and pay the pledged amounts to a charity helping needy children. I myself will be paying to SOS Kinderdorf e.V., a Germany-based charity set up to aid needy kids, 200 euros (ca. 230 USD). I’ll be posting proof of payment in the days ahead, as soon as the bank statement comes in).
I’ll also be sending an e-mail to the other bet participants and asking them to pay up. Hopefully they are all still with us.
I don’t ever lose my climate bets. But as you can see, there’s always a first time.
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