CORRECTION: David Lessmann, Communications Manager of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, has written by that it is indeed “For €100 billion Climate Change Delayed 37 Hours“.
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Hat-tip Die kalte Sonne.
The online schwäbische.de here presents an interview with warmist Bjorn Lomborg. His conclusion on Germany’s Energiewende (transition to renewable energy): It’s “inefficient and too expensive.”
Photo by: Emil Jupin
Lomborg, a former green activist, is just latest expert to give a failing grade to the German energy-man-on-the-moon project, which is clearly on a crash-and-burn trajectory. And despite the Energiewende’s imminent failure don’t expect the government to abandon it ever. With typical Teutonic obstinance, expect them fight to very the bitter end – until the energy system is completely ruined and the last trembly-handed-green gets ferreted from his bunker reality-surrounded bunker. That’s the German way.
The schwäbische.de writes:
Taken globally, the German Energiewinde delays global warming only a few hours.”
Though Lomborg commends Germany for its noble effort in tackling the “climate problem”, the Danish economics professor sees it as a huge waste of resources. Lomborg tells the schwäbische.de (translated from the German):
The Germans are achieving very little and are paying too much for it. This is only serving as a deterrent for other countries. With the investment of approximately 100 billion euros in solar systems, climate change is being delayed only 37 hours and is only making electricity expensive. That in turn is making your production more expensive and thus threatens jobs.”
Here I believe the schwäbische.de misquoted, and likely meant to write “approximately 100 billion euros”. In the end it boils down to a grotesque sum of money for virtually nothing.
So what should be done? According to Lomborg the answer lies in technical innovation, and this can be already be witnessed in the USA. Through the technology of fracking for natural gas, the “US-economy is experiencing through the drop in energy prices a revitalization valued at 125 billion dollars per year. At the same time the US has massively reduced its CO2 emissions.”
Lomborg also suggests that German R&D in renewable energy has been failure up to now. He adds: “Instead of investing 100 billion in subsidizing wind and solar, why not just invest the 100 billion directly into developing a better kind of renewable energy?”
Clearly the indications that the German Energiewende as we now know it is going nowhere except over a cliff are mounting. The question is: Will the government bail out before the plunge, or is it going to go over the edge and hope it miraculously survives the crash landing?
I think that should be €100bn, not €100m.
No matter, even if catastrophic climate change is on its way, the policy has cost the German people more than if the money had not been spent. Even if Germany had managed to reduce emissions by 80% at a tenth of the cost per tonne of CO2 they have so far achieved, mitigation would still have left the German people worse off than doing nothing. That is because the emissions growth from emerging economies will far outstrip any reductions from the rich nations. So the German people will bear the policy costs AND greater than 95% of the consequences of climate change from no policy. With the huge policy failures so far, no non-policy countries are going to want to inflict such burdens on their people. I discuss further at:-
http://manicbeancounter.com/2014/02/23/why-climate-change-mitigation-policies-will-always-fail/
BTW re fracking,the German Pirate Party – who copied their entire energy policy verbatim from the Greensm, and are virulently anti-fracking – fear that a new free trade treaty contains a hidden obligation to allow fracking in all partaking countries.
https://www.piratenpartei.de/2014/03/06/ttip-freihandelsabkommen-soll-fracking-ueber-umweg-nach-europa-bringen/
This would also be a typical – Realpolitik – German way of doing things: set things in motion in an underhanded way, then proclaim that unfortunately you have to give up your cherished religious goals – in this case solar and wind subsidation – because circumstances force you to.
The Green Energy mining for rare earth elements sourcing for batteries, bird blending windmill magnets and solar panels; discards as waste the super fuel Thorium. There is enough Thorium top power the world without mining recovering it from green Energy’s waste tailing ponds.
“. . . the answer lies in technical innovation, and this can be already be witnessed in the USA. ” [Bjorn Lomborg]
Fracking for natural gas in the USA is taking place despite efforts by the federal government and environmental groups. This is mostly because private land owners also own the mineral rights. The issue is now less of a technical one than a political one. Note the continuing holdup on the pipeline from Canada into the US. There is simply an imaginary line on a map – not a grand canyon to be crossed.
Many in the EU may have to rethink some issues as serious political activities on their eastern border overwhelm cherished green ones.
Of course the models “don’t agree with empirical nature” because Mother Nature hasn’t been listening and learning about The Second Law of Climatology. Climatologists, it seems, recognise the need to teach Mother Nature how to perform.
You see, the second law of thermodynamics states that “Every process occurring in nature proceeds in the sense in which the sum of the entropies of all bodies taking part in the process is increased.”
So climatologists are telling Mother Nature to cross out the words “every process” and replace with “any combination of independent processes” and delete “proceeds” and somehow explain that all that matters is the end “net” result. Nothing has to proceed continuously in the direction of increasing entropy, according to what these weather folk are telling Mother Nature. Mother Nature needs to learn that water can run uphill into a lake, provided it “knows” it will flow further down the other side of the hill.
But wait! There’s more.
They also need to tell Mother Nature that if she finds isothermal conditions in a vertical column of something, which thus has more gravitational potential energy per molecule at the top (though equal kinetic energy per molecule) then Mother Nature should ignore the fact that there are unbalanced energy potentials that could still do further work. So, Mother Nature, you need to learn that this is a very special climatology limitation of the Second Law which means things have to stop right there and not gain the extra entropy that they could of course still do.
/sarc
No offence,, but Dr Lomborg could do with a dose of natural vitamin D. “It’s the Sun, stupid.”
Proof that there is a green religion
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt#ooid=hsZXUybDq7Fj_SUgNLjge0ranFaHFyPL
09 March 2014
BOLT EDITORIAL
Abbott’s god vs the Greens’ god – who owns the trees?
Lomborg warns Sweden to follow the german example. http://mobil.svd.se/c.jsp;jsessionid=AA61BC545367E407828BE637AF8D5E9E.rocco4?cid=25967591&rssId=25967481&item=http%3a%2f%2fwww.svd.se%2f%3fservice%3dmobile%26amp%3barticleId%3d3342990
Slightly off topic:
Talking about “typical Teutonic obstinance” I heard on the Deutschlandfunk radio news report this evening once again the claim that 16 000 people were killed in the Fukushima reactor accident . (They were killed by the tsunami … ).
This has been debunked many times before, most famously last year when Claudia Roth was forced to make a reluctant apology after making the same claim via Facebook.
http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article114366195/Roth-im-Strudel-der-Atomopfer-von-Fukushima.html
But this “factoid” has embedded itself in the German media psyche and just won’t go away.
I registered a complaint with the radio station; it will be interesting to see what kind of response I get.
Good old Deutschlandfunk. Somebody ask them how many people Mao killed; answer should be amusing.
I wish Mr Lomborg would write about the climate saving debacles in his native country before branching outward. Then I might trust him.
I have his book The Skeptical Environmentalist. You should get it too. He is very much in favor of economic solutions and against squandering money on no-problems. Basically he is a technological optimist in the spirit of Julian Simon, whom he also references.
For people who don’t know it already:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
Wind turbine demolition in Dingelstaedt Mar 07, 2014
video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JzLFoPF-KJw
article
http://www.tlz.de/web/zgt/leben/detail/-/specific/Windrad-in-Dingelstaedt-gesprengt-1218264496
Was an old one.
Good point about investing in a better form of alternative energy. What could 100 billion Euros achieve if invested in development of thorium reactors?
Have a go at finding the benefits of thorium and why we are not now using thorium, and why we went down the uranium path.
Germany developed the pebble bed HTC Thorium reactor in the 70ies; a trial reactor still stands in the Jülich research facility; but shut down; a big commercial one ran in Hamm-Uentrop but shut down after an incident where a little bit of Strontium got into the environment. As Strontium dust can be concentrated by wind into hotspots, this lead to a radiation scare in the 80ies and the reactor was shut down as well.
China has licensed the technology a few years ago.
You would have thought the memory of the German 6th Army freezing to death at Stalingrad would have cured them of harsh winters, and that a little warming might not be so bad.
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I love it. More, please!
The French-speaking part of Belgium has the great advantage of having the largest representation of a Green party in Europe. We are following the Germans in completely destroying our landscapes with hundreds of wind turbines, and creating a debt bubble which is unpayable. I can only hope that the stupid “Energiewende” explodes in Germany for the whole of Europe to start stopping the madness of “renewable energies”.
Thanks Lomborg!
Our supreme court in Germany has just rejected all lawsuits against the ESM; meaning Germany faces liability for other EU nations to the tune of 190 bn EUR.
This means that the German Moon Landing project renewables has officially been replaced by the German Moon Landing project Save The EU.
As usual, one order of magnitude bigger than the last one. 190 bn EUR is only the start.