Despite all the big talk by German political leaders on cutting back CO2 and fighting climate change, the country’s actions speak far greater volumes.
Germany’s CO2 reductions over the past few years have not gone anywhere – except up – despite two consecutive much warmer than normal weather years. These are the results coming from Germany’s leading alarmist climate site klimaretter.de here.
Rising CO2 emissions, energy consumption
At klimaretter.de, alarmist (and fashion trendsetter) Nick Reimer is so disappointed by Germany’s failed CO2 reductions that he was compelled to lash out in an angry post at German climate policy, calling it: “a first class political fraud“. According to the German AGEB here, which Reimer cites, in 2015 German CO2 emissions actually rose slightly as energy consumption rose 1.3%.
So far most of Germany’s reductions have come from the shut down of old dilapidated East German industry in 1990 and the outsourcing of labor-intensive industry to China and abroad. Future CO2 emissions reductions are going to be almost impossible, that is unless the country puts itself on the path of economic suicide.
The dream of 40% CO2 reduction (compared to 1990 levels) by 2020 is a totally wet one, and even the German government officials know it. Reimer moans that German Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel promised Germany would reach its 40% CO2 reductions target by 2020, but it is in fact nowhere near on track to do so. Reimer writes that the country would have to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 3.25 percent every year in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 – a monumental amount.
GERMANY IS NOT GOING TO REACH ITS TARGET
There are a number of reasons why future cuts in CO2 aren’t going to happen easily.
Firstly, fossil fuels prices are at rock bottom and show no signs of rising soon. People, especially the poor, are rejoicing and no longer worry as much when making that extra trip with the car.
Another reason is that the country will have at least 2 or more million new immigrants by 2020, and they are going to need housing, heat, electricity, cars, refrigeration etc.. It is expected that they will boost the German economy further. Moreover, energy efficiency is not their culture. For example one gas heating specialist told me that many immigrants heat their housing at full blast, with the windows open, with the children running around on tile floors bare foot. It goes without saying that these people have much greater concerns than saving energy, which for them is free anyway. They don’t worry hysterically about every GHG molecule that gets emitted into the atmosphere – like the neurotic environmental westerners do.
A third reason why Germany reaching its CO2 target will be almost impossible is that the mild winter weather we’ve seen the last two years isn’t going to last. This is because the current solar cycle is winding down and the next La Nina is in the pipeline. Despite what some will insist, the cold winters aren’t going to vanish over the next few years. Even the alarmist Potsdam Institute warns that Europe will be seeing cold winters.
The fourth reason Germany will not meet its 2020 CO2 reduction target is because the country is set to shut down its remaining nuclear power plants, meaning more coal power is going to have to come online. Meanwhile subsidies for sun and wind and biogas are still getting scaled back.
2015 “a lost year”
The klimaretter.de alarmist Reimer now calls 2015 “a lost year in the struggle against global warming“, writing that it’s the second year in a row that the country will completely miss its annual reduction target.
In summary, expect to keep hearing lots of lofty climate-protection talk from German politicians, but don’t expect any real action from them. The Paris Agreement, after all, is just a piece of paper, and everybody knows it.
Being somewhat of a cynic, I’d say that the policy did accomplish one primary goal. As elsewhere around the West, the “renewable energy” schemes (scams) have lined the pockets of each country’s 1%ers with loans, grants and subsidies. Note that the plans for more such waste is being spear-headed by the UN, IMF, Goldman Sachs and the uber-rich. It will go on in spite of the fact there is no reduction in GHGs. It never was about CO2. Peanuts from Canada- where our wealthy are rubbing their hands in anticipation of major profits under PM Trudeau.
Unfortunately, you are absolutely correct. Certainly, “decarbonization” is the most massive political fraud that ever happened, created to wreck national economies through asset transfers and income equalization from the developed to the lesser developed countries.
No price is too high to save the globe, but all that will happen is that taxes will go up to promote global socialism under a new name.
Turns out, Reimer lives comfortably off taxpayer money , by teaching the next generation of journaliars about sustainability.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Reimer
“Seit 2014 hat er einen Lehrauftrag für Nachhaltigkeit und Journalismus an der Universität Lüneburg.”
Liarburg, breeding ground of the liar press.
So. He founded klimaretter in 2007. At the peak of warmunism. So it should have gone downhill from there.
Alexa says:
Global rank 558,761 (+91,767 over last quarter – higher=less readers)
Rank in Germany
21,405
Compare to notrickszone:
Global rank 271,061 (-3,976 over last quarter)
Rank in United States
84,039
Well I guess Reimer still has SOME readers in Germany.
Ah, yes. Eventually, reality intrudes in spite of all of the hoping and dreaming.
Thank God! there’s no man made global warming to worry about, that’s not all, there’s not even any greenhouse gases anywhere. Temperature is dependent on the sun, no new energy are being created in the atmosphere. Heat is lost to space but are being delayed by gravity / pressure / mass ..
AGW theory is a fraud, massive fraud. Bout time the “green” frauds start preparing for some jailtime!
95% of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor. Positive water vapor feedback has only ever been observed in computer models, never in reality. That’s the major reason the warmunist models are total crap.
If the attacks on environmental plans (and authors) by individual, blog-related eco-greens goes on, the arguments will decay into he-said-she-said. Individual action will be organized around shaming those who claimed to be pro-environment, and raise the fear level in the general public (the audience). The shaming will be ineffectual – we’re dealing with career politicians, remember. Raising the threat level to the public could be counter productive. The weather better assist, though I note now that every single strong weather event is now “unprecedented” (which it is not) and “probably” driven by climate change (which it probably is not). The shift from climate changes to weather changes is another bit of brilliant PR by the green blob. So I’d say individual action will be more of a digital version of placard-waving hippies outside government buildings, which grows old fairly quickly but does keep the subject in the public mind.
The danger for the eco-greens is if they collectively, through their organizations, pressure the government (through the demands of their “partners” in the renewable industry?) to raise public subsidies and build more renewables. It really isn’t the spread of renewables that would be the problem (once in place) but their lack of success in reducing CO2 and fossil fuel use due to their inefficiences and unreliability. I expect the public to accept the massive subsidies, the increased electricity costs, the loss of jobs – if the end result is what was claimed to be. It would be like a huge freeway that chops through the neighbourhood. Everybody objects until the shiny thing is operational, and then everyone marvels at how far you can get so easily. But you’d better be able to use that highway.
The German greens are rushing quickly towards a philosophical crisis. If Germany suffers BUT is successful in significantly reducing its CO2 emissions, while CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise, and the shrieking about upcoming catastrophe continue – which they will – then the Noble Effort will be for nothing. Worse, the “planet” will now be under a death sentence not from the semi-nice people like the neighbours, but the Others. Predictably, the Chinese, the Indians, Africans and pretty much everyone else whose emissions haven’t dropped. How is that obvious racial, ethnic and cultural split going to be handled by the liberal left? And what happens when the liberal left is told to pound sand by the now demonized Others? There isn’t a country in the world where, when this happened, the left have remained liberal. Or adhered to their liberal views even with respect to their own people.
Don’t waste your time overanalyzing it. Warmunism had its propaganda heyday in 2007 with Al Gore’s AIT, and it has been steeply downhill ever since. Remember the days when every day the journaliars came up with a different catastrophe caused by Global Warming? Ah those were the days.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Since then the proponents of the Total Global State have switched to terrorist imports to destabilize the nation states. Their journaliars switched with it. They milked warmunism, it’s scrap now.
I agree with the analysis done by Reimer. In Germany, we made very little progress this year on the topic of climate change.
There are three simple reasons: Sigmar Gabriel wants to become chancellor and is moving towards the middle as fast as he can. He is basically doing the opposite of what he said as minister of the environment.
Angela Merkel has a lot of trouble with her policy on asylum. She is trying not to anger her party with additional climate action.
The big power companies had to open their books (stresstest for the nuclear “clean up”). they are on the brink of going bancrupt, because they completely missed the changing trend. We are not doing anything on climate change, to save these failed companies (as the state would have to take over a lot of their broken assets).
They are bankrupt because The government shut down a large part of their assets and forced them to pay high prices for junk power.
To sod, it is not a bug but a feature.
“The government shut down a large part of their assets”
This is a misleading oversimplification. There was a planned nuclear exit. The big power companies were greedy and undid that, together with the CDU. Then came Fukushima, and they lost their bet.
That was simply a bad business decision and nothing else.
When the customer does no longer want your product, you made a false decision. It is not different from building red cars, when the customer wants blue cars. (just that customer pressure works more indirectly here via a conservative governmente, which was afraid of losing all elections if they did not bow to popular opinion)
“pay high prices for junk power.”
Again, bad business decision. They could be the ones earning that money, not paying for it.It was their decision, to not get involved in alternative power, which now make up 30% of electricity production. It is their fault, that they know less about solar, than the average guy with panels on his roof. The boss of RWE recently admitted just that.
It is also their fault, that they let the grid decay (saving money) and that their plants are mostly 30 years old. Bad planning.
Fukushima hysteria-driven shutdown was not a “planned exit”. Your arguments are not objective. You refuse to acknowledge the huge problems of wind and sun. It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you. It’s not for nothing the government has massively scaled back subsidies for renewables. Even they see the economic suicide they were headed for.
Pierre:
There is no point in arguing with sod, he never listens. Just ban him. It would be bad initially with the loss of any social life but eventually he will be forced to interact with the real world.
What did Mark Twain say – “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I wondered how he had survived in the world. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years”.
Appropriate for sod.
He’s got the right to his own opinion and to express it here. I just don’t see any way of agreeing with it in the face of the facts out there. He’s a wind and sun energy proponent and so his mind is not going to change. When the german media like Spiegel or the SPD party backpedal their support for wind and sun, then you know without even looking at the technical efficiency numbers that green energy has got a huge problem.
“Fukushima hysteria-driven shutdown was not a “planned exit”.”
Green red had an exit plan (14. Juni 2000). The CDU and the power companies undid that in 2010, then came Fukushima in 2011. It was just a lost bet.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomausstieg#2000.2F2011.E2.80.932022:_.E2.80.9EAlte.E2.80.9C_Bundesl.C3.A4nder_und_wiedervereinigtes_Deutschland
“It’s not for nothing the government has massively scaled back subsidies for renewables. Even they see the economic suicide they were headed for.”
I disagree. The current government will be punished badly, when they will have to admit that they are failing their 2020 targets by a huge margin. The public backlash will be huge. Just wait and see.
Graeme,
You have a point about the “pointlessness” of arguing with sod but I agree with Pierre. Dealing with pig-headed people is always frustrating but sod plays a useful role. There are scores of people like him in the world. For example, over 5000 people to date “liked” Bernie Sanders’s tweet that we must address “climate change” because he can’t recall a Christmas Eve temperature of 65°F (18°C). They were so impressed by it that nearly half their number retweeted his embarrassing babble under their own name.
https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/681552243653488640
It is good to know what the low information dimwits think and sod reminds us regularly as he does here:
sod says: “The current government will be punished badly, when they will have to admit that they are failing their 2020 targets by a huge margin. The public backlash will be huge. Just wait and see.”
Let’s wait and see. It is certain that there will always be some people in complete denial of the real world around them. Let’s hope their numbers dwindle as reality sets in. He is right that they vote.
“There are three simple reasons: Sigmar Gabriel wants to become chancellor and is moving towards the middle as fast as he can.”
Well, his big goal in life is to be voted in by the people into an office ONE TIME in his life (because, he never was – he made his career by being an Atlantikbruecke Young Leader. Never won an election.).
Does this show how stupid the Atlantikbruecke is? No. They got their peeps in all Bundestag parties.
Some useful comparative numbers to reinforce the point made here.
Using the BP CO2 emissions data 2014 and with revisions arising from the recent under-reporting of CO2 emissions from China:
• China’s CO2 emissions rate at 8.24 tonnes / head for its population of some 1.4 billion have now exceeded the average emissions/head in Europe at 7.33 tonnes / head.
• China’s rate of CO2 emissions / head is higher than most of the EU Nations except for Germany.
• By 2014 CO2 emissions for the developing world were ~60% higher than those from the developed world.
• CO2 emissions / head for India and the rest of the world’s underdeveloped nations (~53% of the world population) remained very low at ~1.7 tonnes / head, meaning that their state of very serious deprivation and underdevelopment is continuing.
• India’s growth in CO2 emissions 2013 – 2014 exceeded China’s rate of growth.
• The UK emissions/head at 6.65 tonnes / head is now ~21% lower than China.
• Remarkably France’s Co2 emissions / head at 4.96 tonnes / head is now below the whole world average of 5.09 tonnes / head.
• However the underdeveloped world, including India (53% 0f the world population) remained at very low emissions level of 1.71 tonnes / head representing their very low level of development and great comparative deprivation.
See
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/1290-2/
“China’s rate of CO2 emissions / head is higher than most of the EU Nations except for Germany.”
That claim is strange at best. Belgium (lots of nuclear) and Czech Republic also are above china per capita.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tsdgp410&plugin=1
“• Remarkably France’s Co2 emissions / head at 4.96 tonnes / head is now below the whole world average of 5.09 tonnes / head.”
Emissions per head are a strange metric. Emissions per GDP tell a completely different story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions
sod, that’s interesting. So you say we should follow Chad and Afganistan as posterchild sustainable economies? Afghanistan I can see, drug production produces lots of GDP and little emissions. But Chad? What do they do, burn camel dung?
Mali is also a posterchild sustainable economy. I think what they do is, they sell roasted rat on a stick on the street. Yummi!
So – basically you are confirming what we said for years: Warmunists want total impoverishment and enslavement for humanity.
Okay, Chad:
“About 85% of the population depends on agriculture, including the herding of livestock.”
Wait WHAT? Hey, didn’t warmunists consistently claim that producing meat kills the planet more than all cars combined? And now you’re telling us that Chad is the posterchild planet saving economy?
This kind of contradictions invariably reminds one of all the things caused by Global Warming.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Just run the numbers for yourself all the data is there.
CO2 emissions / head of population is an entirely logical comparative measure
Dont ignore it because it does not fit your religion
”
Let us look at a positive article on this subject and let us look at the false claims from the past:
” Schließlich hatte uns doch im Jahr 1993 die geballte Kompetenz von Badenwerk, RWE und Co. in ganzseitigen Anzeigen aufgeklärt: “Regenerative Energien wie Sonne, Wasser oder Wind können auch langfristig nicht mehr als vier Prozent unseres Strombedarfs decken.” Merkwürdig nun, dass die Erneuerbaren im Jahr 2015 satte 32 Prozent des hiesigen Strombedarfs gedeckt haben, was nach Adam Riese bekanntlich deutlich mehr ist als vier.
Nach dem gleichen Muster war ein zweiter Spruch oberschlauer Lobbyisten der alten Stromwirtschaft gestrickt: Als Dänemark seinen Strombedarf zu 0,9 Prozent aus Windkraft deckte, verkündete im Jahr 1990 der Informationskreis Kernenergie ohne Scheu in großen Zeitungen: “Eine vergleichbar intensive Nutzung der Windkraft ist in der Bundesrepublik wegen anderer klimatischer Bedingungen nicht möglich.””
http://www.badische-zeitung.de/wirtschaft-3/stromerzeugung-aus-kohle-und-gas-sinkt-auf-tiefpunkt–115684469.html
The amount of alternative power that we get today, was thought to be impossible. We will have people making the same claims, until we have 100% renewables everywhere.
Basically we had plenty of good alternative power news this year:
“Ein Blick in die Statistik macht das deutlich, denn gleich in mehreren Monaten gab es positive Entwicklungen: Im Mai zum Beispiel sank die Stromerzeugung aus fossilen Energien in Deutschland auf den niedrigsten Monatswert seit der Fukushima-Atomwende. Im Juli erzeugte die Photovoltaik in einem Monat erstmals so viel Strom, wie alle Atomkraftwerke zusammen. Im November lag die Windkraft erstmals auf Augenhöhe mit der Braunkohle. Und während der jüngsten Sturmtage deckten die Erneuerbaren zeitweise 80 Prozent des deutschen Strombedarfs. Wenn das mal keine guten Nachrichten sind.”
And even the price increase is smaller than those of money being earned:
Auch die Mär von den unbezahlbaren Strompreisen durch die Erneuerbaren ist längst als solche entlarvt. In den vergangenen beiden Jahren sind die Kilowattstundenpreise weniger stark gestiegen als die Löhne – somit ist Strom relativ gesehen sogar billiger geworden. Und ohnehin ist alle Larmoyanz fehl am Platze, wenn man die Langfristperspektive einnimmt: Gemessen am Lohn ist Strom heute nicht teurer als in den achtziger Jahren. Und damals waren Kohle und Atom noch groß im Geschäft, die angeblichen Billigheimer.
and prices in day ahead markets are falling, not rising.