Question: A man sitting next to a radiator in his living room wants to feel 0.2°C cooler. What should he do?
a) Move his chair a couple centimeters further away from the radiator, or
b) Go out and pay $5000 for a completely new heating system from a shady manufacturer who promises it will be 0.2°C cooler.
Sane persons of course will answer with “a”. But if you’re the European Union and your advisers are German economist Ottmar Edenhofer, and sleazy furnace salesmen Hans Schellnhuber and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Malthusian Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research (PIK), your answer is “b”.
In fact salesmen Schellnhuber and Rahmstorf have convinced the man that unless he buys the new, cooler furnace today, he’ll soon fry.
Worse, the furnace that promises to solve “the problem”, does not even work when there’s no sun or little wind. No matter though, you still have to buy it. This is what Schellnhuber and Edenhofer of the alarmist/activist PIK are demanding of every global citizen today. The absurdity and arrogance simply could not be more profound.
Call it a field plan for a green September 1, 1939 kind of bank account invasion (US citizens, watch your 401k). It’s that crazy.
According to the green-fundamentalist Klima Der Gerechtigkeit (in English: Climate of Justice), the teutonic Edenhofer of the PIK) on Monday will introduce to the public his master economic plan for mitigating dangerous global warming, dubbedSpecial Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation.
The Special Report sums up 164 existing studies and tries to get an overview of just how much renewable energies can contribute in solving the “climate problem”. This of course involves spending gargantuan sums of money that an almost bankrupt planet does not have. How much will it cost? Klima der Gerechtigkeit writes (emphasis added):
Witha mere twelve thousand billion dollars by 2030, a global energy transformation could be achieved that would lead to about 3/4 regenerative energy worldwide by 2050.”
Yes, for that “mere” amount of money, we can get a temperature change that no one will even notice. That “mere” amount is about 8 times the direct cost of WWII for the planet, see here (h/t ArndB). So far I have yet to find a single language that has the words to describe the magnitude of this proposed folly.
As it stands now for the greenshirts, we are nowhere near where we have to be. Klima der Gerechtigkeit writes:
Indeed the current situation is dismal: Almost the entire energy mix comes from coal, gas and oil. Nuclear energy is only 2% (and growth here is very improbable). About 13% is already generated by“renewables”, by behind this is unfortunately too much biomass that is used conventionally, i.e. firewood, and so directly drives deforestation (and the climate problem) . ‘Water power then follows (2.3%), wind energy (0.2%), solar energy and geothermal (each 0.1%) as well as ocean energy(0.002%).’ (Zeit)”
How many tens of billions have flowed into renewables so far? 0.3% is all we have to show for it? The 12 trillion number can be doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled, and you still will never reach the 75% target by 2050. In the end as a result, we’ll have a hollowed out society with hundreds of millions more suffering and dying in abject poverty.
What we need is economic sustainability, and not sustainable wealth destruction.
“Call it a field plan for a green September 1, 1939 kind of bank account invasion (US citizens, watch your 401k). It’s that crazy.”
Perfect Keynesianism – spend, spend, spend (other people’s money), no matter on what.
It’s difficult for me to fathom off exactly which cliff the Eurocracy will go next; so i’m doing only short term trades now.
Last weeks print edition of Der Stern had one of the usual reneables-gloating articles, including an interview with the German Greenpeace “expert” for energy. I learned that the German feed in tariff cross subsidy practically pays for itself as the energy generated by wind and solar drives down the prizes at the energy exchange. You see it works like this, you pay people 30 Eurocent each kWh and that will drive down the energy exchange bulk prize from 5 to 4.5 Eurocent or something and this is how you make money. 😉
I don’t know what i pity more, the poor Germans who get hoodwinked or the Journalists at Der Stern for having to live without a functioning brain.
It doesn’t take much brain to figure out that Renewables are not Sustainable. Firewood might be the exception to that.
Ed, thanks for your latest essay – will post tomorrow.
It seems it would come not much cheaper than the greatest damage mankind had to deal with during the last 150 years, which was proven anthropogenic, lasted less than 6 years, and procured roughly direct economic costs in the range of $1’600’000 Million. This is an estimated figure about the Second World War at: honoluluadvertiser; http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/peaceinthepacific/numbers
That was, BTW, the one data point used to justify Keynesian spending sprees.
Actually, replacing the carbon economy with renewables will be something like replacing a 747 with these:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1505178/video_clips_of_early_flight_attempts/
And this is the future of commuting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhxVtUFZVzk&feature=related
And who’s going to pay for all the Shweeb monorails?? And calling it “Mass” transportation is a bit rich…
Haven’t you heard of the unlimited resource OPM – Other People’s Money?
BTW, Greenpeace says the electric car will be a “colossal flop”. Found a report about an interview about Sept 2010 where the German Greenpeace “traffic expert” urges an end for individual car ownership and “free” public transportation for all… Just so you know what they have planned for us.
http://www.meinauto.de/news/artikel/greenpeace-experte-elektroauto-wird-ein-flopp
Kretschmann can now prototype this utopia in Baden-Württemberg. Have fun shweebing up and down the hills, Stuttgarters… 😉 Oh, BTW, the Germen economy can pack it in when nobody buys cars anymore… too bad, so sad…
Meanwhile, VW invests in wind power and prototypes H2 and CH4 synthesis for use in fuel cell and ICE vehicles, respectively. Looks like they have different plans than Greenpeace.
http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/harz/vw589.html
I don’t think that OPM is going to remain “unlimited”. There’s only so much The Powers That Be can keep stealing from us…
As for electric cars being useless – The motoring show Top Gear are in trouble again. They have been filmed pushing an electric car through the streets of Lincoln, after (apparently) running out of juice. Since they are being sued by the makers of Tesla cars it’s quite possible that this may have been a stunt, but scenes like this could be commonplace in the future “Utopia”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1386781/Jeremy-Clarkson-James-May-left-embarrassed-car-breaks-filming-Top-Gear.html
The sooner the EU collapses, the better.
Perhaps these lunatics can then find employment in a suitable asylum.
Tide gauges refute alarmism: http://oi56.tinypic.com/11jsp5i.jpg
So do thermometers: http://oi51.tinypic.com/34qjmgn.jpg
So does the global average: http://i49.tinypic.com/2mpg0tz.jpg
So do dozens of temperature reconstructions, e.g.: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2upvlvm.jpg
So do astronauts: http://oi51.tinypic.com/2hi4kuw.jpg
So do serious left wing intellectuals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz0Y
But at least psychopaths support it: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2mx31gi.jpg
I’ve read Edenhofers Summary For Policymakers, well, skimmed through it, looking for data. The grafic on page 13 is interesting, showing the cost development of wind and PV.
http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/srren-spm-fd4
Two important points:
a) It looks like wind is not becoming any cheaper from where it is now. Maybe because it doesn’t have to.
b) Edenhofer shows only the PV module cost of 1.4 USD/W (2011). This is only half the cost of a complete installation; inverters, wires and installation cost typically are about as expensive as the modules themselves. One could call this a deception if one were not used to the standards of the IPCC.
They are all crooks without any respect for our civilization our tax payers and individual people.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/imf-head-strauss-khan-dragged-plane-arrested-following-hotel-maid-sodomy-charges
What is it with these leftwinger statists?
Sounds like Al Gore and his masseuses. They seem to have a mental illness where they think everybody else has to submit to their will. These people think they can do whatever they want with everyone else. Some are so crazy that they even think entire societies have to drop to their knees and submit.
Okay – we do have to wait for the results of the DSK investigation before reaching conclusions.
But again, this is a poor young girl now up against a person of great power. Let’s see if justice still works.
My bet is that he’ll be off the hook in a couple of days.
“Historic climate change deal with legal powers agreed by Cabinet”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/14/historic-climate-change-deal-agreed-chris-huhne
The idiots have done it again
“The package will require sweeping changes to domestic life, transport and business and will place Britain at the forefront of the global battle against climate change.”
The only problem is that those on the front lines of battle are the ones who get killed. Good that we have volunteers stupid enough to serve as examples for the more wary among us.
And in the independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/campaigners-welcome-emission-pledge-2284487.html
“Greenpeace said a “strong intervention” by Prime Minister David Cameron had resolved a fraught battle within the Cabinet over the merits of the far-reaching deal to cut emissions by 50% on 1990 levels by 2025.”
50% on 1990 levels by 2025 LOL. The last time they put some “climate change” legislation through parliament three MPs voted against it.
“Perfect Keynesianism” – no, it isn’t. The idea behind Keynesianism being that spending vast sums of government money would lead to vastly increased consumption, which would generate taxes to recoup the money so kindly laid out by the Government… (which was, mirabile dictu, not even OPM, since most Keynesians – not all – argued for printing money and shrugging off the resulting inflation). Keynesianist measures were also to be temporarily limited, giving a starting boost to industries which would take off, the faster the better, and start generating a fat revenue for all around (at least that was the rhetorical icing on the cake). Not quite what these Small-IS-Beautiful want to dish out.
Printing money is just another form of taxation; it devalues the money the people have so it is OPM by stealth.
It’s even worse than stealth, since it drives down investment at a catastrophic rate, makes long-term projects impossible, necessitates a grey market economy/parallel ecomony based either on some stable foreign currency or supposedly valuable goods, thereby destroying the value of prices as an economic indicator… But it’s a wonderful selling point -both for economists (to the politicos) and for politicians (to the public).