Miguel Rakiewicz writes in Tips and Notes:
Spiegel.com has today published the English translation of its interview of “The Cold Sun” author, Fritz Vahrenholt.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,813814,00.html
Not only is Vahrenholt a prominent Social Democrat and former German Environment Minister, but also outgoing CEO of the renewable energy group RWE Innogy.
It’s an extensive interview, touching upon the various climate-influencing factors left out by the IPCC in its promotion of CO2 as the apocalyptic threat to mankind, and the massive government intervention and expense to supposedly make it go away.
“The Cold Sun” author explains the reason of his current point of view as
follows:
Vahrenholt:
For years, I disseminated the hypotheses of the IPCC, and I feel duped. Renewable energy is near and dear to me, and I’ve been fighting for its expansion for more than 30 years. My concern is that if citizens discover that the people who warn of a climate disaster are only telling half the truth, they will no longer be prepared to pay higher electricity costs for wind and solar (energy). Then the conversion of our energy supply will lack the necessary acceptance.
“Again, I want us to continue stressing renewable energy, which we have to make competitive.”
=============
“they will no longer be prepared to pay higher electricity costs for wind and solar (energy)”
=====================
Mar 18, 2009 – Barack Obama: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Steve from Rockwood says (February 8, 2012 at 1:05 pm): “Link not working.”
Try copying it to another browser window.
Vahrenholt may still be a little brainwashed.
May I suggest therapy ?
A cruise Way South this summer ?
On the bright side, even a modicum of conversion back to reality
lets the light start shining in on the brain cells,
allowing room for more truth to enter.
What Mr. Vahrenholt is describing is precisely what I have been saying for decades in response to “What’s the worst that could happen?” from the Warmist crowd. The problem is they can’t see the effect that the global warming scam will have on the public at large when they eventually realize they have thrown trillion of dollars down a hole to stave off a catastrophe that was never going to happen.
If Green, renewab;e energy is to survive it has to be sold on sound science, or at cheaper costs. There is no third way. Look at the gas crisis of the 1970s. By the early 80s we were accepting Geo Metros as the wave of the future because gasoline was going to cost an arm and a leg forever more… then the price of gas dropped and the SUV era blossomed. Absent the gasoline cost justification the consumer had no other reason for driving around in an aluminum egg with an engine that made moped owners feel butch.
Now we are trying yet again to pull people off of fosile fuels with yet another bogus argument and the rebound will match extent of the alarmist message. So at this rate by the year 2020 we will all be driving Abrahams tanks.
😆 good stuff, even if ye snipped Me earlier post! But Me’s knows ye were laughing!
It is worth reading the whole article. Vahrenholt treads a moderate line here. He still thinks that 50% of warming is from CO2. His belief in renewables excludes solar as:-
“Wind power and biomass are fine in Germany, but no solar panels, please! They’re better off in Africa and southern Europe. It’s crazy to install 50 percent of worldwide solar panels in “Solar Country Germany” for fear of the supposed climate disaster and to spend €8 billion ($10.4 billion) a year on it!”
What Vahrenholt is saying is that we should put CO2 in context and is open to being proved wrong. That is an enormous step for a former believer. Those who have traveled further down the road should rejoice in this progression and encourage others to do so. Those who are younger, and with less baggage, will travel further as a result of the steps Vahrenholt has made.
It took Vahrenholt years to figure out he was duped on the CO2 story.
I wonder how long itwill take before he understands that he’s also duped on wind, solar and bio fuels.
If someone this prominent breaks ranks he should do it on all fronts.
This is just half a job.
We now have double digit freezing temperatures in Germany and high pressure so all the costly wind farms do nothing. Solar is covered by snow and everything that runs on bio fuels is out of business.
The guy is still half an idiot,
This book is excellent and causing a lot of discussion. Rank 88 in Amazon right now, but the rapid response team has already begun to work hard. The usual kind of comments and concerted actions: He’s not a climate scientist, he works for Big energy, nothing new, already proven wrong …
And then this, Stasi style observation: He and his co-author have joined a sceptic event (EIKE). “While V. spent some hours, his co-author joined them all day long.”
Lots of sick people out there.
.
If his admiration of renewable energy is not founded in concerns about AGW, I am guessing he has concerns about Peak Oil.
The real, overriding problem here is that if you give money to rich people they squirrel most of it away. Give money to poor people and they spend it, so that it circulates and stimulates an economy instead of stalling it by hiding in tax havens and safe deposit accounts.
The climate scam is just the latest implementation of this trick by the wealthy to push the poor more deeply into the mire. There are, and will be, others, as Simple, above, says.
R de Haan says:
February 8, 2012 at 1:56 pm
The guy is still half an idiot,
=========================================================
No, no…. he’s still a full fledged idiot. He’s just a better informed idiot than he was. You can’t fix stupid, you can only mitigate its effects. He’s been partially mitigated. It isn’t like this guy wasn’t told, he was for years. Now he has learned a bit of truth and he feels “duped”.
This has me so mad…I can’t even see straight
For years this expert know-it-all has been telling us we’re all going to die…
…then he finally sit down and reads the science he’s been pushing
and now he feels duped
All those years……he just took their word for it….but promoted it, pushed it, argued the science, talked down to people that did read the science
People are easily duped or self-duped when there is money to be made. Vahrenholt chose to be blinkered whilst acting as CEO for a renewable energy corporation. Allegedly, it was only after being figuratively whacked over the head with “The Hockey Stick Illusion” that the lights came on upstairs. Still, it’s a significant defection from the CAGW camp. A few more like this might turn the tide.
“happiness is a warm fast breeder.”
You need this for a high functioning civilization..
Vahrenholt:
“For years, I disseminated the hypotheses of the IPCC, and I feel duped.”
============
In Greek mythology, Sirens were part human, part bird. The Sirens lived on a rocky island in the middle of the sea, possibly near Italy. They sang melodies so beautiful that sailors passing by couldn’t resist getting closer to them. Following the sound of music, the sailors would steer their boats towards them or jump in the water to get closer. Either way, it always ended in disaster on the rocks.
——-
It would seem, there is, truly, nothing new under our sun.
kbray in california says:
February 8, 2012 at 12:42 pm
“Is something lost in the translation?
His lamenting sounds like he wants to keep duping the public…
into accepting the cost of conversion to renewable energy.
eh? That’s a betrayal.”
No, the translation is accurate.
RockyRoad says:
February 8, 2012 at 1:23 pm
“Why does this gentleman feel like citizens should be forced into the “necessary acceptance” of anything?”
He’s a Social Democrat.
His thinking is a little “on the fritz”…
?”off the fritz”?
I think we are going to have a few more dramatic head in hands ” I was duped” conversions as some of the previous cheerleaders start seeing the revolting peasants gathering the torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers.
This guy keeps his pension and now he gets his book royalties.
As a former environment Minister, it was his duty not to be duped.
&%$£*% them all!
God survives because dead people can’t return to tell us its crap. The green myth survives only because humanity is inately superstitious and technically illiterate politicians think its a good idea to hedge their bets. This guy believes in renewable technology but whilst he is beginning to doubt the IPCC he fails to recognise that wind turbines can never replace coal, oil, gas or nuclear because their performance is weather dependent and therefore intermittant and you can neither run the met offices supercomputer or a hospital on a wind turbine. If there was a working alternative to fossil fuel then all of this bitching would disappear but there isn’t and that is crux of the problem.
James Sexton says:
February 8, 2012 at 2:29 pm
This just demonstrates that the HSI is a supremely timely, important and influential publication. It is well researched, well written and accessible by the educated layman. The narrative compelling, a veritable “tour de force”.
Delingpole’s blog has a good piece on this and subsequently a good piece on Windfarms in the Irish Independent.
Unfortunately it looks like he hitched the renewable energy car to the AGW gravy train assuming it was a short cut to renewable utopia and then realised that the train was on the wrong track! Of course, the problem he is expressing is that we still need to find a sustainable low impact source of energy. Still because none of the current candidates will serve us in the long run or even the short run. There are no shortcuts!
It looks like the Italian government must of had an advanced copy of the book as
“Italy to discontinue ground-mounted PV
From July to December, Italy will not have a list for arrays larger than a megawatt because too much PV was installed last year. Those currently finishing the installation of a grount-mounted array have to hurry to be eligible for feed-in tariffs.” /
“Legal experts say the sudden announcement is dubious, but for the moment the industry has to live with it. The stipulations remained basically unchanged, however. Solar arrays on farmland will not be eligible for feed-in tariffs unless they are smaller than a megawatt and take up less than 10 percent of the plot. Furthermore, the land in question has to have been unused for at least the past five years.” http://www.renewablesinternational.net/italy-pulls-up-deadline-for-farmland-pv/150/510/33029/www.renewablesinternational.net/italy-to-discontinue-ground-mounted-pv/150/510/32958/ “
Paul Milligan says:
February 8, 2012 at 2:19 pm
“If his admiration of renewable energy is not founded in concerns about AGW, I am guessing he has concerns about Peak Oil.”
Well, that’s just another pretense for the public (just like CAGW); the real and constant worry of Germans is energy security in a strategic sense; being a country that is relatively poor in energy resources. (this might change with future shale gas production in Northrhine Westphalia, though)
Vahrenholt argues that wind power makes sense and is close to being economic in Germany while solar power is not. I think the subsidy tariffs are at the moment about 5 Eurocent for a wind power kWh and 24 cent for solar so the numbers for wind are at least not THAT bad for wind.
Global Warming as a theory seems to be untenable. The reason in addition to many other issues, apparently may be Fritz Vahrenholt a German prominent green supporter who is no longer following IPCC. One nice GOAL for the pro CO2 anti global warming team. Long way still to go and our happiness may break at once I have a poem:
“Look not for happiness from Fate,
For all life’s yield is but a breath:
Each grain of dust records the death
Of some once lordly potentate.”
“The world’s affairs, as so they seem,
Nay, the universe complete
Is a delusion and a cheat,
A fantasy, an idle dream.”