H/T: Rudolf Kipp at Skeptical Science (see first reader comment).
That is about the same as the US annual GDP. That’s the number reported in a recent article appearing in the online Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung FAZ), Germany’s leading political daily.
Europe set to climax with green bloody self-flagellation.
The FAZ writes:
In the coming 40 years, the EU must invest 270 billion Euros annually if it wants to reach its long-term climate targets. That’s the result of a draft of a strategy paper that Climate Commissar Connie Hedegaard wants to introduce in early March. In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95% by 2050, large-scale investments for the expansion of renewable energies, energy grid, CCS, passive homes, electric vehicles and modern industrial plants will be needed.”
What return will European taxpayers and citizens get for this investment? Maybe a theoretical, imperceptible o.1°C of reduced warming, along with a phony belief they saved the planet. Not even the Soviets could have managed a failure of such proportions. What better way to drive an entire continent into ruin could one possibly conceive?
But the EU seems to think this is all bearable. After all, it is only 1.5% of the EU economy – about the amount paid by the EU because of the financial crisis. And it’s the way to keep Europe in the leading position as the world’s climate protector.
But it is doubtful that even the most green-eyed bureaucrats believe these targets are achievable. So they added an escape clause in the whole thing. The EU will also be allowed to count CO2 reductions achieved in third countries. I’m not clear on what that means exactly, but to me it’s an open door to accounting tricks.
Still, it is an ambitious plan, especially amid all the conference failures of the past. Indeed rather than discouraging Europe, these global failures to agree on reductions in emissions have only emboldened Europe to get even tougher. FAZ writes:
The European Parliament and enviironmental activists have repeatedly demanded that the EU unilaterally commit itself to even tougher reductions in order to give climate change negotiations more impetus.”
What do the EU bureaucrats care? After all, it’s the EU citizens who are going to have to bear all the pain. The citizens be damned. And besides, they’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of an imperceptibly cooler 0.1°C and a feeling they rescued planet. So let the self-flagellation begin.
Ireland wants to renegotiate the interest rate on its IMF credits from, i think 5.8% downwards… 24 h general strike in Greece, with violent protests, one policeman hit by a petrol bomb… Portugal is going to the wall, soon forced to take 7% interest rate European safety fund money… Spain next, then Italy and Belgium (still without a government for 250 days and counting)… Arabia and Northern Africa in turmoil…
Somehow i think Climate Commissioner Connie will not find anyone listening to her.
What a way of managing disasters! We need real disasters to keep our politicians from venturing into new ones.
It’s about resource availability. Without economic crises and AGW, they would venture somewhere else expensive… In German, it’s called “politischer Gestaltungswille” – the will to shape the world in some way using policies; it’s what drives people to become politicians. You can’t help it very much. They are made this way.
I put up a guest post a few days ago – an analysis of just how little we can hope to change by CO2 mitigation that summarises this with some good graphics:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/the-futility-of-trying-to-limit-co2-emissions/
In particular it underlines exactly what you are preprting here – that so many countries are opting out that anything Europe tries to do will have virtually no effect despite very high cost. Please feel free to repost if you think it is of interest here.
It all makes me very cross. I mean all the money that has been spent on researching (ad infinitum) climate change and is now being spent on promoting it – think what else – for the better good if you must spend it ‘for the good of mankind’ could have been done with it.
Verity, the German renewables feed-in tariff will cost 16 bn Euros in 2011. That’s about 16 Euro/month per inhabitant slapped on the electricity bill. For our long-term unemployed, they get Hartz IV, that’s rent+heating+350 Euro per month. They lose, in effect, 4 % of their meager financial means to the scam.
It’s a giant redistribution, and also a very real inflation driver, as the payments go up each year. Who profits? Green teachers and engineers with a PV installation on their roof, or shares in a wind farm. These people, ironically, would mostly define themselves as left-leaning – yet they support a scheme that hits the poor hardest. I guess bigotry is a small prize to pay when you save the planet 😉
These green goof for nothing investments will drive our economies into the ground.
The EU Government is ruling it’s member states by a doctrine based on lies.
Therefore we must regard the EU as our enemy.
Even the o.1 degree Celsius reduction isn’t sure fact.
It’s total madness and we should stop this circus immediately.
No time to waste.
Our policies are killing people, real living people.
Like the ethanol scam.
Even a hack like Clinton is convinced of that.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110225/ap_on_re_us/us_clinton_biofuels
And while Warmists gear up for religious crusade: Mark ‘death spiral’ Serreze and Mr. Unscientific Jeff Masters, link snowfalls to AGW serreze@kryos.colorado.edu
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/02/teleconference-will-attempt-to-explain.html
Joe Bastardi continues to tell us the truth
Counter to Serreze & Masters: 1) tropospheric relative and specific humidity has significantly declined since ‘safe CO2 levels’ of 1948, 2) atmospheric water vapor has declined since satellite measurements began in 1983, 3) there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995, 4) IPCC predicted milder winters and ‘milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms’
Bastardi: ‘We’ve had the 3rd snowiest weather in N. Hemisphere history, but moisture in snow pack is below normal. Which means it’s not because there’s more moisture but because it’s been colder. With the global temperature collapsing, you can’t be saying, ‘Well, it’s getting colder because it’s getting warmer.’ That’s the opposite argument they were using when the temperature was going up.’
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2011/02/joe-bastardi-explains-why-the-cold-miser-is-winning-the-climate-change-showdown.html
And so does Professor Dyson
Dyson: ‘My impression is that the experts are deluded because they have been studying the details of climate models for 30 years and they come to believe the models are real. After 30 years they lose the ability to think outside the models’
How log do we have to take the garbage and the completely mad climate policies and public spending?
These people are wrecking our economies, our future and our freedom.
They are our enemy
270 billion e?
To do what?
Connie – now there’s a very apt name……….. .
If I’d were to have such a mental aberration, a fugue, people would no doubt accuse me of a disconnect with reality and very quickly commit me to an institution to preserve what little sanity I’d had remaining.
What is the difference, when a load of EU Brain-dead politicians say something similar??
Collective hysteria = The EU whack job project – it truly is insanity.
The only significant reduction in co2 emissions that I am aware of has been through fuel switching. Primarily this is from switching from coal to natural gas as a power generation source like England did the last thirty years. Another example is France’s switch to nuclear. Germany however due to energy security concerns is building new brown fired coal plants. In addition they plan to close nuclear plants and replace them with either coal or natural gas fired plants. This trend along with the expected colder winters due to the negative NAO and carbon emissions must be exploding. Does anybody have up to date numbers on total carbon emissions from Germany?
[…] The answer are respectively: a fortune and nothing. Next week Connie Heedegard, EU Climate Commissar, will release more on the costs. But this is no big secret. Last week I posted on this here: 15 Trillion Dollar Self Flagellation. […]