Alfred Wegener Institute Implies Cold Winters Caused By Global Warming

By P Gosselin on 27. Januar 2012

Here we go again. Global warming causes cold European winters! So no matter what happens – it proves man-made global warming is for real.

Just a few years ago, these off-the-wall scientists claimed that global warming would lead to warm, snowless winters, with palm trees eventually reaching Scandinavia.

But now that cold winters have caught the hapless scientists with their pants down and signs pointing to even colder winters ahead are piling up, scientists have now concocted a model that they say shows that warming lack of summertime Arctic sea ice cover leads to cold winters. At least that’s what some adventurous scientists are saying at Germany’s state-funded Alfred Wegener Institute in a new paper.

This proves warming!

The Alfred Wegener Institute press release here claims that because of the near surface warming, the air goes into upward motion and the atmosphere becomes unstable. According to the paper’s lead author Ralf Jaiser:

We have analysed the complex non-linear proceses that are behnind this destabilization, and have shown how the changed conditions in the Arctic have an impact on the typical circulation and air pressure patterns.”

The AWI tells us about the air pressure difference between the Arctic and the middle latitudes the so-called Arctic Oscillation, with the Azores high and the Iceland lows that we know from weather reports. If the index is high, then westerly winds prevail and transport warm, moist oceanic air deep into Europe. But if these westerly winds cease, then Arctic air penetrates into Europe, like the last 2 winters. The models calculation now show that in times of low Arctic ice cover, this air pressure index is weakened during the subsequent winter and thus allows Arctic air to penetrate down to the middle latitudes. It’s that simple – period. So let’s all just keep moving on.

So their knowledge of nature is complete now, and their models are tuned like no others and can recreate all the mysteries of nature. This may sound hard to believe, but it’ll do for the hordes of stupid gullible journalists out there. Overall the AWI press release takes on a sort of silly paternal attitude and treats the reader like a parent treats a 4-year old when explaining how Santa Claus brings presents at Christmas. Of course, when the child reaches the age of 8, he or she realises that he/she had been duped the whole time. Right now the media is at about age two and half, and stuck there.

 

 

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Professor Knut Löschke: IPCC Representatives Do Not Shy Away From Fraud And Falsification

By P Gosselin on 26. Januar 2012

Some German professors are beginning to speak up against the climate shenanigans. Take for example Prof. Dr. Dr.Knut Löschke, physicist, who gave a speech on Climate Policy titled “Give Reason Another Chance!” at the University of Passau last Friday. Ralph Bärligea has the story at eingentümlich frei.de.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Löschke (Photo: Uni Passau)

Bärligea summarizes Löscke’s speech. Here’s an excerpt:

Man-made climate change as a hypothesis is in the end one that has never been confirmed by any single experiment and does not harmonize in any way with existing physical theory. But even so, the hypothesis is implemented in real politics. Representatives of the IPCC do not shy away from using fraud and falsifications in its effort to fulfill its political agenda: which is to show that man influences the global climate. This is proven by the Climategate Scandal, and an especially crass example of a falsification that Professor Löschke introduced in his presentation. By spreading the hypothesis of man-made climate change and the “solution proposals” for global “climate control”, dangerous limits that go beyond the absurd have long since been over-stepped.”

Löschke thinks the whole climate issue is a dangerous political sham and called on the public: “Wehret den Anfängen!“ This is a call to defend against a dangerous movement. Those are the milder points he brought up.

At the end of his speech Professor Löschke compared the “international climate regime“ to the socialist regimes in Germany. According to Bärligea, up to 8 people walked out.

So, some are speaking up in Germany, and doing so loudly!

Well done! I say.

Knut Löschke is a university lecturer, business owner and a member of the supervisory board at the Deutsche Bahn AG.

 

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Energy Expert: Germany’s Renewable Energy Transition “Will Fail Spectacularly – Heavily Damaging The Economy”

By P Gosselin on 25. Januar 2012

The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) issued a press release on a 28-page report that German energy expert Dr. Guenter Keil wrote concerning Germany’s transition to renewable energy, and away from nuclear and fossil fuel energy.

DR. KEIL’S FULL 28-PAGE REPORT IN ENGLISH

As the report shows, Germany’s transition to green energy is turning into a real horror story. The 28-page full report will keep you up at night!

Germany's rushed shift to renewable energies is compromising Europe's entire power grid.

What follows is EIKE’s PRESS RELEASE describing the contents of the report.

======================================================
Germany’s Green Energy Supply Transformation Has Already Failed
EIKE Press Release, 24 January, 2012

Energy expert Dr. Guenter Keil has closely examined Germany’s energy policy of shifting away from nuclear and fossil fuels and over to renewables. What he finds is a bleak picture. Years ago Germany ambitiously embarked on transforming its energy supply system, and hopes to supply at least 80% of its energy needs through renewable energies by 2050, and thus become a moral leader on environmental responsibility for the rest of the world.

To do this, the former Socialist-Green coalition government, led by Gerhard Schröder, enacted the so-called Renewable
Energy Feed-In Act (EEG) in 2000. This Feed-In Act requires electric utilities to buy all renewable energies, such as solar and wind power, from all producers at fixed, exorbitant rates and to feed it into the power grid for a period of 20 years. This has led to a boon as thousands of homeowners, businesses, and investors have installed thousands of megawatts of solar and wind power capacity over the years. The current Conservative-Liberal government, not to be outdone by its predecessor, is also gleefully pushing the Feed-In Act to the limit.

Weather-dependent supply wreaking havoc on the power grid

The problem is that these energy sources are weather-dependent and thus their sporadic supply is starting to wreak havoc on Germany’s power grid and is even now threatening to destabilize power grids all across Europe. The other problem: the power grid needed to distribute the decentrally produced green power is simply not there yet. They forgot to build it! So far, after tens of billions of euros spent on renewable energy systems and higher prices for consumers, not a single coal or gas-fired power plant has been taken offline. To the contrary, old inefficient German plants have been brought back into service in an effort to stabilize the grid.

In a panic reaction, Germany shut down 8 nuclear power plants

To make matters worse, in a fit of panic and hysteria, the German government shut down 8 of its older 18 nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, thus removing a very cheap and stable supply of power and further pushing the grid to the limits. Before the shutdown of the nuclear reactors, Germany had been a net power exporter; today it is a net power importer and is at times severely straining neighboring power grids. To compensate for the missing nuclear power, the government is now heavily promoting even more weather-dependent wind power, which is further destabilizing the German and European power grids. A solution to the problem of storing electricity is still at least a generation away.

The question of course is how could such absurd decisions have been made to begin with? Were there no experts involved in the planning of the new power generation infrastructure? The answer obviously is no. Power executives are viewed as evil, dirty and greedy polluters, and thus were never really consulted. They could not be counted on to give the politically correct solutions. Therefore the decision to shut down the German nuclear power plants and to massively support renewables was done unilaterally by the government, without consulting the power executives or even neighboring countries.

Offshore wind parks, but no transmission lines to industrial regions!

Now that the damage is spreading, Germany’s utilities are now struggling to keep the grid stable and to fill in the power gap left by the shut-down of nuclear reactors. To do this the German government has ordered the installation of large-scale wind parks in the North and Baltic seas, in addition to the re-commissioning of mothballed, inefficient coal-fired plants. This overall energy production transition from nuclear and fossils over to “renewables” is dubbed by German officials as the Energy Supply Transformation. Construction of the offshore wind parks is now progressing rapidly. But there’s just one problem: the huge high voltage power transmission lines needed to bring their power to Germany’s industrial heartland to the south are missing! More than 3000 km of these lines are needed, but are nowhere near in sight. The government forgot about those too.

Activists groups blocking grid expansion

Building the power transmission lines quickly across the landscape will be a virtually impossible task. Activist groups have long since organized and are effectively blocking their approval and construction. So far only a measly 214 km have been built. As a result, surplus wind power cannot be delivered to the markets, and thus either has to be destroyed, dumped on the market at “negative prices”, or wind park owners are simply ordered to stop generating. No problem though – paragraph 12 of Germany’s Energy Feed-In Act requires electric utilities to pay for the electricity that they ask not to have produced! Technically, there is an incentive for wind parks to destabilize the grid.

Eventually all these costs add up and in the end they get passed along to the consumer. Under the bottom line, consumers have to pay more and more, and for a lower and lower quality supply. German industry is getting nervous and surveys show that many are leaving Germany, or are planning to do so. They no longer view Germany’s power supply as reliable.

In a death spiral…”will fail spectacularly”

Dr. Guenter Keil’s report focusses in detail on the amazing absurdities of Germany’s Renewable Energy Feed-In Act and the country’s utopian Energy Transformation. The government, through intrusive meddling and ballooning bureaucracy, has maneuvered Germany’s energy supply system into a vicious death spiral: the more the government intervenes, the greater the mess becomes. And the greater the mess becomes, the more the government intervenes! Dr. Keil concludes:

Germany’s energy transformation has already failed. For Germans, the outlook is bleak. …the planned mismanagement is heavily damaging the economy and will fail spectacularly some years later because its economic and social costs will have become unbearable. The question remaining open is how many billions of euros will have to be destroyed before a new energy policy (a new energy transformation?) picks up the shattered pieces.”

So it’s no wonder that according to a survey of experts from 21 national committees by the World Energy Council, 0% said they could imagine their own country completely taking over the German political approach. An equal number believe Germany will reach its stated targets. Germany’s model will serve as a classic lesson on how not to handle energy production and management.

Dr. Guenter Keil was a scientific employee at the Technical University of Munich / Fraunhofer Society, as well as Project Support at the Federal Research Ministry.
Contact EIKE at: limburg@grafik-system.de

============================================

DR. KEIL’S FULL 28-PAGE REPORT IN ENGLISH

I’ve read the entire report, and I can say that it sounds worse than Soviet-style central planning.

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More Peer Reviewed Papers Showing “It’s The Sun, Stupid!”

By P Gosselin on 24. Januar 2012

One of the IPCC’s most dubious achievements is ignoring so many papers showing that the sun plays a huge role in our climate. The sun play a role? Yeah, right!

Sun? What sun?

A reader brings our attention to some recent papers showing that the sun plays a major role on climate, not that the IPCC will be the least bit interested. Here are a few in case you may have missed any.

1. Variations in tree ring stable isotope records from northern Finland and their possible connection to solar activity; Ogurtsov et al, 2010, see abstract here.

Statistical analysis of the carbon and oxygen stable isotope recordsr eveals variations in the periods around 100, 11 and 3 years.A century scale connection between the 13C/12C record and solar activity is most evident.”

2. A possible solar pacemaker for Holocene fluctuations of a salt-marsh in southern Italy; Di Rita, 2011 abstract here.

The chronological correspondence between the ages of saltmarsh vegetation reductions and the minimum concentration values of 10Be in the GISP2 ice core supports the hypothesis that important fluctuations in the extent of the salt-marsh in the coastal Tavoliere plain are related to variations of solar activity.”

3. Solar and volcanic fingerprints in tree-ring chronologies over the past 2000 years; Breitenmoser et al, 2012

Results from wavelet analysis and SEA reveal significant periodicities near the solar DeVries frequency in the volcanic and residual ‘volcano free’ contributions during the LIA, making a clear separation of the solar and volcanic forcing signals difficult. Nevertheless, the ‘volcano free’ temperatures show significant periodicities near the DeVries frequency during the entire past 1500 years, pointing to a solar imprint on global climate.

4. Holocene hydrological changes in south-western Mediterranean as recorded by lake-level fluctuations at Lago Preola, a coastal lake in southern Sicily, Italy; Magny et al, 2011, see abstract here.

This major oscillation may be related to a non-linear response of the climatic system to the gradual decrease in insolation, in addition to seasonal and inter-hemispherical changes in insolation. Another major climate oscillation around 7500 – 7000 cal BP may have resulted from combined effects of a strong rate of change in insolation and of variations in solar activity.”

5. Variations in climate parameters at time intervals from hundreds to tens of millions of years in the past and its relation to solar activity; Raspopov et al, 2010, see abstract here.

Our analysis of 200-year climatic oscillations in modern times and also data of other researchers referred to above suggest that these climatic oscillations can be attributed to solar forcing. The results obtained in our study for climatic variations millions of years ago indicate, in our opinion, that the 200- year solar cycle exerted a strong influence on climate parameters at those time intervals as well.”

6. Climate patterns in north central China during the last 1800 yr and their possible driving force; Tan et al, 2011, see abstract here.

Solar activity may be the dominant force that drove the same-phase variations of the temperature and precipitation in north central China.

7. Multifractal Detrended Cross-Correlation Analysis of sunspot numbers and river flow fluctuations; Hajian, 2010, see abstract here.

Our results show that there exists a long-range cross-correlation between the sunspot numbers and the underlying streamflow records.”

Doesn’t Hajian work for the Iranian gas and oil industry?

 

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Super Deep Freeze To Grip Populated Europe / Asia!

By P Gosselin on 22. Januar 2012

The recent long-term forecasts for Europe show we most likely aren’t going to be escaping winter this year. Over the last week or so, the forecasts couldn’t seem to make up their minds, would it be cold or not cold?

Source: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp4.html

One day the forecast showed cold on the way, and the next day the charts would be revised and showed mild weather in the pipeline.

But over the last few days, the signs have all been converging and showing that cold is on the way from Russia. Europe this year may get a hard winter after all – it may be just arriving late. The bottom chart for Europe shows the anomaly for the coming week. The middle chart shows the forecast for the week after. It’s going to get even colder. We’ll see how it pans out.

Asia is already freezing to death!

Below if you click on the charts for Asia, you see that cold is the story of the day. In fact it’s rare to see that much cold over such a vast continent.

Source: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp11.html

The lower chart of central Asia shows below normal temps are forecast for almost every region for the coming week, and the middle chart shows even deeper cold for the week after, as we saw is the case for Europe.

Hansen ought to put his red crayons away and grab for blue or purple ones.

Charts for…

Central Asia: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp11.html
East Asia: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp5.html
South Asia: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp6.html
North America: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
Australia: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp7.html
Africa: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp10.html
Middle East: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp9.html
South America: http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp8.html

Look at Asia and South America! See all the global warming?

Yet the kooks say it’s still too warm!

Remember that for the climate dummies, like Hansen, NOAA, and a host of others, this is still dangerously too warm. Temperatures are supposed to be a lot lower in order for the Earth to be normal and for life on it to be safe.

Yeah right! Go tell that to the billions of folks In Europe, Asia, Middle East and South America who are now struggling to stay warm.

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Warming Summers Not Causing Colder Winters

By P Gosselin on 21. Januar 2012

By MATTI VOORO

A recent news clipping on the research of an international climate scientist claimed rising temperatures during the other three seasons are actually cooling off winters in North America –all because of snowfalls in Siberia and an atmosphere pressure pattern in high latitudes called the Arctic Oscillation (AO).

The argument that is being made is that the recent warmer summers (due to global warming) are causing more negative Arctic Oscillation, which in turn causes colder winters in North America and Europe. This is totally opposite to what the IPCC predicted.

Here is what the actual abstract to an article called Arctic Warming, Increasing Snow Cover & Widespread Boreal Winter Cooling by Judah L. Cohen et al 2012 in the Environmental Research Letter said:

The most up to date consensus from global climate models predicts warming in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) high latitudes to middle latitudes during boreal winter. However, recent trends in observed NH winter surface temperatures diverge from these projections. For the last two decades, large-scale cooling trends have existed instead across large stretches of eastern North America and northern Eurasia. We argue that this unforeseen trend is probably not due to internal variability alone. Instead, evidence suggests that summer and autumn warming trends are concurrent with increases in high-latitude moisture and an increase in Eurasian snow cover, which dynamically induces large-scale wintertime cooling. Understanding this counterintuitive response to radiative warming of the climate system has the potential for improving climate predictions at seasonal and longer timescales.”

I like the words ”most up to date consensus from global warming models” and “recent trends in observed NH winter surface temperatures diverge from these projections”. In plain English the AGW scientists are finally admitting that even their latest climate models are wrong with respect to global warming. I give the above authors credit for finally admitting what most of us have known for some time.

Also the statement “For the last two decades, large-scale cooling trends have existed instead across large stretches of eastern North America and northern Eurasia “seems overstating the cooling. There has not been large-scale cooling for 2 decades, only the last 10 years in North America – as noted below-  and in Europe only the last 4-5 years.

As has been recently reported by this writer on this blog and at Anthony Watts on WUWT, the summers in both the contiguous US and Canada have not warmed but have actually cooled in US and the trend is quite flat in Canada over the last 10 years. Therefore warmer summers cannot be causing more negative AO and colder winters.

The colder winters are more likely due to changing spatial pattern of more cooler water in the North East Pacific than in the Central and North West Pacific Ocean, especially since 2007 (see PDO) and more recently the slow cooling of the Atlantic Ocean (see AMO) here.

While it is true that a negative AO can result in cooler winters, what causes the AO to cycle unpredictably is not yet clearly understood. Scientists have been unable to predict AO levels for more than a week or two. Whatever has been causing AO to cycle or to be negative, it has been causing this for at least a century and probably much longer – our records only go back to about 1899. This not a new phenomena caused by recent global warming. Below is a plot of winter AO provided by Jiaso.Washington.edu for the years 1899-2002.

http://jisao.washington.edu/data/aots/

More recent AO Index data after 2002 to 2011 can be found at NOAA:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html

Here is how the winter AO has varied during past warming and cooling phases of this planet for the last century:

JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH AVERAGE AO INDEX
1900s decade: 7 positive, 3 negative AO winters

WARMING PHASE [temperatures rising] 1910 -1939
1910s 6 positive, 4 negative
1920s 8 positive, 2 negative
1930s 6 positive, 4 negative
TOTAL 20 positive, 10 negative

COOLING PHASE [temperatures dropping] 1940 -1969
1940s 4 positive, 6 negative
1950s 4 positive, 6 negative
1960s 4 positive, 6 negative
TOTAL 12 positive, 18 negative

WARMING PHASE [temperatures rising] 1970- 1999
1970s 5 positive, 5 negative
1980s 5 positive, 5 negative
1990s 7 positive3 negative
TOTAL 17 , 13 negative

POTENTIAL COOLING PHASE? 2010-2030

2010s 6 positive, 4 negative (temperatures have been declining slightly during the past decade)
2010 negative AO WINTER
2011 positive AO winter

Final Comments

It would appear that the Winter AO Index has a significant impact on global winter temperatures. During recent two 30 year global warming phases there were more positive (warm) AO winters than negative (cold) AO winters and almost twice as many. During 30 year global cooling phases, there are more negative AO winters than positive AO winters and about 50% more. During individual peak warm decades (1920s and 1990s) there were 2 to 4 times as many positive AO winters as negative AO winters. During individual peak cooling decades [1940s, 1950’s and 1960s, there were 50% more negative AO winters.

Clearly the recent negative AO winters are not new phenomena caused by warmer summers due to global warming but is a continuing natural climate process that has been ongoing for centuries. A recent extreme cold spell in Canada during January 2012 was happening with mostly positive AO, so we have a lot to understand about our climate. There seems to be no end to some climate scientists trying to tie every climate phenomena, however small or varied, to global warming.

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Amid Solar Bankruptcies And Red Ink – David Suzuki Insists Solar Power “Is Free, Man, It’s Free!”

By P Gosselin on 20. Januar 2012

Amid all the solar bankruptcies and exorbitant subsidies being paid out and causing electricity rates to skyrocket, see previous post, here’s hippie David Suzuki in the following video (3 min. mark) insisting “It’s free, man, it’s free!”

With idiots like that advising governments, we’re not surprised everything is going bankrupt.

It may be an alternative, but it’s lightyears from being free. Just ask the poor people in Germany.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,810370,00.html

 

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From Rescuing The Climate To Rescuing The Economy – Germany’s Energy Transition Goes Into Reverse

By P Gosselin on 20. Januar 2012

Imagine if the government forced supermarkets to buy bread from plain white bread bakeries, ordered them to pay these bakeries a fixed price that’s 5 times higher than normal for 20 years, and forced them to buy up all the white bread these bakeries could produce, whether needed or not.

And imagine if the government also forced the supermarkets to buy bread that was never baked to begin with! All of this of course justified by bogus science claiming plain white bread is healthy and whole grain bread is a killer.

You can imagine the consequences.

Well, that’s exactly what Germany is doing with electricity. It requires power utilities to buy up “green” electricity from every producer at exorbitant rates, and to do so for 20 years. And if the grid gets overloaded on windy days, the wind-farm operator is told to stop producing, but still gets paid by the power utilities.

Unfortunately, Germany’s green politicians here were too dim-witted to foresee the obvious consequences. Now reality has since caught up. The German electricity market is on the verge of collapse. The scale of the EEG Renewable Energy Feed-in Act is of unprecedented stupidity, a folly that will certainly go down in German history textbooks.

The backpedaling away from solar subsidies in Germany is now happening so fast that it’s making people’s heads spin. Call it the reverse energy supply transition – one from fantasy back to reality.

Germany pulls the emergency brake on solar energy

Today a growing number of German officials, who were once huge proponents of renewable energies and the EEG Feed-In Act, are now realizing that solar energy in gray and rainy Germany is a folly after all. Electricity rates in Germany are skyrocketing and the risks of uncontrolled energy supply interruptions are mounting. Officials are now screaming for a drastic scale-back of solar subsidies. Economics Minister Philip Rösler is now calling for an end to the fixed and guaranteed (for 20 years) renewable energy feed-in rates paid to green producers.

Even Germany’s super green Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen has seemingly woken up and now plans to drastically scale back new installations of solar systems in Germany, according to CO2 Handel here. In the new plan, subsidies will be scaled back on a monthly basis and accelerated. Subsidies for solar systems under the new plan would end by 2017.

Energy intensive industries are bolting, or are planning to do so

Power utilities have been finding it increasingly difficult to juggle the constantly and widely varying energy sources of wind and solar power, and are warning that power outages and grid collapses are just a question of time.

The mandatory feed-in of the vastly more expensive solar energy has caused electricity rates to surge and have been driving energy-intensive industries out of Germany. Solar energy was until recently seen as a way of filling in as a power supply in place of the shut down nuclear reactors, and rescuing the climate from coal plants. Now the focus of politics has reversed and shifted to rescuing the economy.

Recent surveys have shown that companies are becoming increasingly wary of conducting operations in Germany due to what they view as a potentially unreliable energy supply. The European Institute for Climate and Energy EIKE) here reports that:

One fifth of every industrial company has moved activities to foreign countries, or plans to do so, because of the uncertain energy and raw material supply. This is the result of a survey conducted by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), in which 1520 companies participated. DIHK-President Hans Heinrich Driftmann finds this alarming: Here, fears that Germany is losing its appeal for foreign investors in the wake of it’s energy supply transformation.”

No wonder Environment Minister Röttgen plans to take drastic measures in curbing solar energy. Germany’s industrial economy is eroding rapidly. Prof. Dr. Dieter Ameling, a former steel industry leader and spokesman, recently said the (green) energy supply transition in Germany meant the downfall of energy intensive industry in Germany.

Unfortunately greens don’t understand that transferring clean, high-standard German industry to foreign, low-standard countries means more CO2 emissions and pollution, and not less. And they certainly do not understand even the most basic laws of economics. Germany’s Renewable Energy Feed-In Act is proof.

Kook greens in Canada think solar power is for free!

Finally here’s hippie David Suzuki (3 min. mark) saying “It’s free, man, it’s free!”

With idiots like that advising governments, we’re not surprised everything is going bankrupt.

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Solar Subsidy Sinkhole – Germany’s Solar Debacle Is A “Massive Money Pit”

By P Gosselin on 18. Januar 2012

The English Der Spiegel presents a blistering report on the solar energy debacle in Germany this week in a piece titled:

Solar Subsidy Sinkhole, Re-Evaluating Germany’s Blind Faith in the Sun.

The costs of subsidizing solar electricity have exceeded the 100-billion-euro mark in Germany, but poor results are jeopardizing the country’s transition to renewable energy. The government is struggling to come up with a new concept to promote the inefficient technology in the future…continue reading at Der Spiegel here.

Some bits of reality:

Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels on their roofs collected more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but the electricity they generated made up only about 3 percent of the total power supply, and that at unpredictable times.

Until now, Merkel had consistently touted the environmental sector’s “opportunities for exports, development, technology and jobs.” But now even members of her own staff are calling it a massive money pit.

If all commitments to pay subsidies so far are added together, Frondel adds, ‘we have already exceeded the €100 billion level.’”

Read about the entire dismal mess at Der Spiegel, see link above.

Yet, the Greens in Germany are proud of this debacle and cannot get enough of it. Green Party leader Jürgen Trittin says here at CO2 Handel (emphasis added):

‘We are experiencing a concentrated campaign against renewable energy over the recent days,’ Trittin thinks. ‘It is being led by the coal lobby at RWE and Eon, but it is also being incited by the Federal Ministry of Economics.’ Trittin said, the Feed-In Act is by far the most inexpensive way of expanding renewable energies. ‘That’s why it has been copied by over 50 countries.’ “

50 countries that are ruining their energy supply. It should be clear just how detached from reality people like Trittin are.

But with such handouts, I really ought to start thinking about having a system of my own installed on our house. If you don’t jump through the hoop, then you pay through the nose. But on the other side of the hoop, you get rewarded. So it’s stupid not jump through it.

 

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Siemens: Nuclear Power Shutdown To Cost Germany $2,150,000,000,000.00 (2.15 Trillion)!

By P Gosselin on 18. Januar 2012

Germany is about to find out the real cost of the nuclear shut down.

Have you ever been to a dinner party with lots of people when suddenly a mouse runs across the room and someone yells “mouse!” Most people simply ignore the intrusion, while others may ask “where?” But you can always count on someone flying into a fit of hysteria, jumping up on a table screaming and shaking violently until the medics arrive and shoot the person up with a massive dose of tranquilizers before wheeling the sedated patient to the nearest hospital for overnight obsevation. Irrational? Yes.

That was pretty much how German politicians and media reacted in the wake of Fukushima. As the rest of the world watched with concern, and had their reactors checked over for good measure, Germany flipped out and plunged into a wave mass panic not seen since Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells on October 30, 1938. After Fukushima, Germany immediately shut down 8 of its older reactors and then rammed through a law ordering the remaining 9 reactors be shut down as soon as possible.

That bout of total irrationality and panicked decision-making is now going to cost Germany a bundle, so estimates engineering giant Siemens AG here. Hat-tip Benny Peiser.

According to Reuters:

Germany’s exit from nuclear power could cost the country as much as 1.7 trillion  euros ($2.15 trillion) by 2030, or two thirds of the country’s GDP in 2011,  according to Siemens (SIEGn.DE),  which built all of Germany’s 17 nuclear plants.”

If that does not bankrupt something, nothing will. Germany wants to switch over to renewable energy. How much will that impact global temperatures? A few hundreths of a degree?

The estimate from Siemens makes some assumptions. Reuters writes:

The estimate of 1.7 trillion euros assumes strong expansion of renewables, with feed-in tariffs as the biggest chunk of costs. The cost would be lower — at about 1.4 billion euros — if gas was one of the major energy alternatives, Suess said.

The estimates given by Siemens factor in feed-in tariffs — costs that utilities have to pay to generators of renewable energy — investments into power transmission and distribution, operations and maintenance as well as technologies to store renewable energy and carbon dioxide.”

Siemens’ estimate is much higher than the 250-300 billion euros estimate given earlier by power plant executives. In the end, the price increase will be paid by the consumer, both private and business. This will hardly make Germany an attractive place to work (which is an activity that requires energy).

So it’s little wonder that businesses are calling it quits in Germany and moving to places that are more business friendly and energy is cheaper.

Don’t take my word for it. According to CO2 Handel here, comnpanies now see Germnany as a risk:

Rising energy and raw material prices are the top risks for Germany as a place to do business. Also 58% of companies fear that power outages. Since switching off 8 nuclear power reactors, power plants are have to switch on and off faster than ever before.”

 

 

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