The smart money is starting to abandon the CO2 vessel
Guest essay by Fred F. Mueller
The IPCC and its supporters in the media, in NGO’s and in governments have taken advantage of the issuing of the newly released 5th Assessment Report (AR 5) to mount an all-out PR offensive promoting their view of CO2-induced doom for humanity using any and all news channels and tabloids as pitchmen. Despite growing distrust in the general public, few people have the mettle to stand their ground against such a massive persuasiveness. How can an average citizen acquire the steadfastness to brush off this veil of lies? The answer is simple: follow the money trail.
When confronted with overwhelming “scientific evidence”, one should keep in mind the basic question any criminal investigator learns to ask whenever being confronted with a puzzling case: who is benefitting? In the case of “climate change science”, the answer is simple, since in the past decades a trillion-dollar-business has sprung up providing all sorts of equipment and services intended to lower what is dubbed our “CO2 footprint”. Whole sectors such as solar and wind energy farms have grown like mushrooms promising to supply our nations with so-called clean and green energy.
These sectors have one common mark distinguishing them from normal business activities. They do not provide us with a better or a cheaper product, one that we would want to buy, but rely on subsidies guaranteed by legal frameworks instead. During the past 20 years, they have grown from modest to big to supersized and now feature the proportions of a cuckoo hatchling in the nest of a tiny songbird. This powerful business sector has all the money and resources to pay for adequate services in the world of science. And modern science is by no means impartial. Scientific institutions are business units with a well-developed service orientation that will of course avoid anything that might displease their sponsors. The same applies of course for state-run agencies such as NASA or NOAA, who are supervised and alimented by political bodies packed with green-minded politicians. So forget about any claims of “pure” science, ignore colorful screenshots and simply sniff for the smell of money – and you’ll be on the right trail.
Would the business plan please stand up?
As in the case of any economic bubble, the “climate saving” industries have been building up on promises of returns that would be delivered sometime in the future, in the form of reduced CO2 emissions and lower energy costs due to reductions in fossil fuel consumptions. But unfortunately, it looks like nobody bothered to deliver a sound cost or return on investment calculation: the proponents of the green energy revolution simply ignited a frenzy resulting in the chaotic buildup of all sorts of “green energy” plants in parallel to existing power supplies, without any risks for investors thanks to legal frameworks guaranteeing ample monetary returns for lengthy time periods. In Europe and more particularly in Germany, where the already strong green ideology has been overtaken by a political leader raised in a communist country, this policy has been exaggerated to a point where the financial tolerance limits even of a sound economy start to be transgressed. For a number of reasons, Germany has thus become the nexus of a host of developments that will ultimately result in the rupture of the “green energy and climate rescue by CO2 reduction” bubble.
The German money sink
Germany currently has committed itself to reduce its CO2 emissions by achieving an 80 % share of “renewable” power generation by 2050 while at the same time shutting down its nuclear power plants, which had been contributing 20-30 % of its power supply. Currently, “renewables” including biomass and water contribute about 22 % to Germany’s power production, with the share of wind and solar reaching roughly half of this figure. But for this rather modest achievement, the German populace has been served with a commitment to a € 370.- billion (US-$ 500.- billion) bill, payable over the next 20 years, picture 1. As a consequence, the average German household will have to pay north of € 0.30 (US-$ 0.40) per kWh by 2014. While the majority of the population is up to now indulgently accepting this rip-off, the industry is increasingly feeling disadvantaged in comparison to international competitors benefitting from substantially lower power supply tariffs. But the real challenge for Germany lies in the fact that in order to reach its 80 % “renewable” objective, the sum already spent would have to be more than quadrupled to more than € 2 trillion (US-$ 2.7 trillion). Even for Germany’s rather robust economy, such a sum represents a burden that might well bring down even this sturdy horse.
Picture 1. The German population is burdened with an ever-growing financial commitment based on 20-year offtake obligations at guaranteed prices
No returns: Neither with respect to power supply…
Given these enormous expenditures, one would normally expect to see some kind of return by the prospect of an adequately ample supply of “clean” electric power able to supplant a certain portion of the “dirty” energy produced by burning coal or gas and a corresponding amount of fossil fired production capacity rendered obsolete. But this is not the case, due to the fact that wind and sun are following their own rules. In the case of Germany, where the minimum (nighttime) power supply requirement is around 30000-40000 MW and the max grid load on winter working days can reach 85000 MW, a total of 66000 MW of nominal wind and solar power generation capacity has already been connected to the grid. Nevertheless, there are sometimes extended periods of time when neither the sun nor the wind are inclined to fulfill their duties, as documented by picture 2 showing the situation on Aug. 22nd, 2013. In the time between 05.00 and 07.00 o’clock in the morning of that day, the total power provided by both sources barely transgressed 500 MW, less than the output of a single gas-fired power plant. If one compares this to the needs of an highly industrialized nation with 80 million inhabitants, it would probably not even have sufficed to power the standby lights of the country’s electronic devices. In other words, virtually the complete fleet of German conventional power stations has to remain in standby mode in order to secure the grid supply in case the “renewables” suddenly decide they deserve a more or less prolonged rest. And in the case of coal-fired plants, the term “standby” means they must continuously burn fuel to maintain a certain minimum level of boiler pressure and temperature in order to be able to react quickly to changes in demand.
Picture 2. Production of electric power from wind and photovoltaic plants in Germany on Aug. 22nd, 2013. In the early morning hours, the total fell below 600 MW, not even enough to keep the nation’s standby lamps glowing (Data source: transparency.eex.com)
nor to CO2 reduction
To make things even worse, the decision of the German government to shut down nearly half of the country’s nuclear power generation plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster has deprived the country of a major carbon-free power generating source. The result is that between 2000 and 2012, despite enormous expenditures in wind and solar generating capacities, the quantity of CO2 emitted from power generating sources has not been reduced at all, picture 3. And that situation will further deteriorate when by 2022, a further 16-17 % of the current power generating capacity still supplied by nuclear plants will be shuttered as scheduled. Worse still, before even taking into consideration any cost aspects, one must take into account the fact that a substantial portion of this lost capacity cannot be replaced by wind or solar power for technical reasons, since further increasing their share would simply jeopardize the stability of the grid. A projection of the power production breakdown by CO2 sources reveals that by 2022, when the last German nuclear power plant will be shuttered, the country will have spent at least around US-$ 1 trillion in order to achieve a 10 % increase in CO2 emissions linked to power generation. Not quite what was promised…
Picture 3. Even after 12 years of massive funding of „renewable“ power production, the CO2 output from German power stations shows no decline (figures in Mio. t CO2/ year)
The smart money starts to leave ship
This scenario implies some very interesting consequences. First of all, the CO2 reduction policy currently pursued by our political leaders is doomed to fail, albeit one cannot predict when and how exactly, but fail it must. Producing such mediocre results for so much money thrown at the CO2-“problem” will ultimately be met with growing resistance since the financing of other vital parts of society will be negatively affected. And there is one natural force the doomsday prophets seem to completely underestimate: the explosive reaction of masses of people that feel they have been let down by their leaders. To understand this lesson, one might just have a look at the French Bastille or the many empty palaces in Austria, Russia, Italy, Greece and so on.
While the IPCC and a number of key political figures such as Merkel and Obama are stubbornly staying the course, the smart money has already started to react. More and more lifeboats can be seen leaving the ship. The giant Desertec project aiming at producing solar energy for Europe in the Sahara desert is virtually dead in the sand. Spain is severely cutting back on its “renewable” subsidies. The German solar sector is in free fall, with big players such as Siemens and Bosch closing shop at a loss. Wind energy seems to be more robust, but even the market leader, Danish company Vestas, is experiencing severe headwinds. And last but not least, some governments such as those of Czechia and Australia prove their common sense by throwing useless “renewable” policies over board. As soon as this trend will have gained enough momentum, one might expect to see a new generation of scientists emerge producing nice colorful computer charts proving beyond doubt that CO2 is beneficial for plant growth and thus for feeding our populations.
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“…we humans are evolving far too slowly on an intellectual level.”
—
How can humans evolve at all when success and intelligence are punished with taxes, and failure and idiocy are rewarded with government subsidies? In today’s world, intelligence does not give you a reproductive advantage. On the contrary, the lazy and stupid are subsidized with higher welfare payments for breeding more prolifically.
Indicators of the purposeful “dumbing down” of the general population have been in sharp relief since the late 70’s.
This is probably a mostly purposeful ploy by many western governments, especially the USA to prevent another loss of control or a rise in “people power” that was demonstrated at the height of the Vietnam war.
Their succsess in the process has now resulted in a polling booth tame welfare state in what was once “The land of the free”.
Asia is not saddled with such a myopic single phase manifesto.
as you sow, so ye shall reap..
Thank you for the article!
I hope that the crash of the green movement does not follow follow the path of the failure of the Weimar Republic. It was a very bad path that had very bad consequences!!
General update, internet still broken.
Since one day after the US government “shut down”, out of the blue while I was browsing, the internet per my Earthlink dial-up experience suddenly became normal sites, sites that load slow in short bursts followed by long stretches of nothing, to sites that don’t load at all.
Here’s are pattern examples:
Breitbart-dot-com and about a fourth of the other sites linked on Drudge Report: Strongly anti-current US Administration, completely dead. Also foreign sites like The Register, Telegraph (UK), Times (UK), etc.
WUWT and half the sites linked on Drudge Report: have a record of “questioning the wisdom” of the current US Administration, slow load, no style sheets, ten minutes or more downloading for a somewhat-readable mess.
Google, Huffington Post, Yahoo!, and others: normal. Includes debian-dot-org and -dot-net, updates are fine. Strangely enough, both Google management and HuffPo are strong supporters of the current occupier of the White House. Drudge Report, the page, loads fine, but the images which are coming from elsewhere often do not. Of course, Drudge being down would be the sure sign of the Final Liberal Apocalypse Takeover having begun, arm accordingly.
The “Is the site down or is it just me” sites when I can verify a non-working site is really up? Absolutely dead.
Amazon, which harbors examples of anti-current US Administration thought, is good or slow, on-site search is bad, otherwise hit-or-miss. Hosted-dot-ap-dot-org, source of any direct-linked AP story, which was completely dead, works as of today. Newegg and Allrecipes were slow, better today.
I have been several days fighting with the off-shored tech support (India? Pakistan?), as they repetitiously work down the “It’s always the user’s fault” checklist. Different computers, Debian Linux or WinXP, Firefox or Iceweasel (Debian FF rebranding) or Epiphany (Debian browser) or the just-installed Chromium (Debian-approved “free” Chrome version), internal modem or external USB modem, different access numbers, same thing. Dynamic DNS, manual Earthlink DNS’, no difference.
I have read “Earthlink does not support Linux” so often I think the chat “people” believe Earthlink is like Compuserve or AOL, unusable without their Windows access software.
After a one-hour phone call yesterday, as a next-level live tech person wrapped their brain around the concept of a user who wasn’t helpless and could do their own local troubleshooting and has already shown multiple times that the problem really isn’t on his end even though tech support can’t see a problem on the ISP end, it got bumped higher. I am to expect a response “within 72 business hours”. Space it out, it could be two real-world weeks until I hear something.
In other words, after the “shutdown” should be ended and the low-level NSA-related persons can get back to legally monitoring potential US terrorists who communicate with anti-US government foreigners like DirkH, Lord Monckton, and Richard S Courtney, someone from Earthlink will email to ask if my internet is working again.
To any of the assemblage of tech-savvy WUWT denizens who may be able to help, tracert (WinXP or Linux version) shows the blocked sites die at the third hop at user-38lcmg5.dialup.mindspring.com. On WinXP, ipconfig /purgedns didn’t help.
And I still don’t see Chrome as an improvement over Firefox. It’s usable, not better.
I think you’ve found the key piece of evidence. From that, I’d expect mindspring engineers ought to be able to reproduce and diagnose the problem. Unless they actively suppress the traceroute messages.
One problem with trying to get a sense about how well things are working by visiting well known sites is that they tend to have all sorts of crap and references to completely different sites that can be slow.
One thing you might try on Linux is reading individual URLs with wget, preferably pages written by some troglodyte who writes web pages as though it’s still 1995, e.g.:
That just gets the main page, it doesn’t get any images (there’s at least one there) and other glitz. You can experiment with bigger pages, problematic sites, etc. and maybe learn a bit more.
If you have wireshark installed (and sort of know how to use it) you can get a wealth of information that may or may not be useful.
FWIW, I can ping and run traceroute to user-38lcmg5.dialup.mindspring.com fine.
Feel free to Email me questions or trace samples, I can mostly explain what they mean.
Here’s another downside to solar panels that I hadn’t considered before.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/02/firefighters-alarmed-by-dangers-posed-by-rooftop-solar-panels/
If they have to let a building burn because it’s too dangerous to put it out, will the fire release more CO2 than the solar panels saved?
“Indicators of the purposeful “dumbing down” of the general population have been in sharp relief since the late 70′s.
This is probably a mostly purposeful ploy by many western governments, especially the USA to prevent another loss of control or a rise in “people power” that was demonstrated at the height of the Vietnam war.
Their succsess in the process has now resulted in a polling booth tame welfare state in what was once “The land of the free”.
Asia is not saddled with such a myopic single phase manifesto.
as you sow, so ye shall reap..”
I can’t make any sense of this comment except that you appear to want to drop the blame of the CAGW fraud on the United States doorstep by stringing together unrelated nonsensical observations.
The “people power” of the 70’s anti-war crusaders are largely the same anti-industry crusaders pushing CAGW. Your desire to deify the former and vilify the latter is nothing more than cognitive dissonance.
The U.S. is a player in CAGW fraud but compared to Britain, Germany, Australia and many others they are minor. You can’t swing a dead cat in most of Europe right now without hitting a windmill. Which then causes the last point to fall flat of blaming the U.S. for leading the cause with a political philosophy based on a phrase that you and nobody else has decided is the philosophy of the U.S. I’m sure you could blame the worlds problems on “Asia” (A continent with quite a variety of politics) by making up another phrase if you really try.
Haven’t read the article yet. But, I’m wondering who is the drummer boy from Illinois
My son. The drummer for “Harmonic Movement” – http://www.reverbnation.com/harmonicmovement
The article is a good effort, but in parts hit and miss. It doesn’t mention the insurance industry as a stakeholder in green alarmism and the money being pulled out of chasing the mirage of carbon capture and storage.
On the other hand, it is incorrect in saying that unit costs of “green” energy were no reduced by government subsidies. German subsidies single-handedly created China’s solar industry that has reduced installed costs out of sight. In Australia, solar PV is approaching breakeven for domestic applications purely in replacing grid import.
I think you will find break-even in Australia is only true WITH the “gift” of other taxpayers money on substantial subsidies. If it was up to the individual homeowner who has to make a long term commitment, it simply wouldn’t happen.
I will check with a friend in Perth who has installed panels connected to the grid and he will have a very detailed ROI spreadsheet to reference his experience.
Gunga Din says:
October 6, 2013 at 1:32 pm
“If they have to let a building burn because it’s too dangerous to put it out, will the fire release more CO2 than the solar panels saved?”
What’s more interesting, will they sue the homeowner for the dioxins released?
From Ric Werme on October 6, 2013 at 1:31 pm:
Earthlink = Mindspring. A Liveperson™ chat person said it was escalated to a server tech. Maybe the next step is an Earthlink network tech.
Note the NSA-type “requests” to ISP’s came with solid gag orders. Amazingly during 57 minutes of “thoughtful silences”, many reiterations of what I had already said in chats and an email (which had included traceroutes), and my “requested participation” was logging off of Earthlink email on Linux where I was, disconnecting, switching to the Win partition on another machine, reconnecting, and logging on to Earthlink email which showed to the tech that I could access the internet, plus running that Win DNS-cache purge, I somehow got the feeling I was getting the run-around.
Result:
2013-10-06 17:04:40 (44.3 KB/s) - `contact.html' saved [1410/1410]
Also:
$ traceroute wermenh.com
traceroute to wermenh.com (38.113.1.97), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 acn04.pa-philadel0.ne.earthlink.net (209.165.107.195) 173.387 ms 182.651 ms 250.623 ms
2 209.165.101.193 (209.165.101.193) 234.847 ms 209.165.101.161 (209.165.101.161) 244.074 ms 209.165.101.193 (209.165.101.193) 239.302 ms
3 user-38lcmg1.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.1) 281.910 ms user-38lcmg5.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.5) 286.748 ms user-38lcmg1.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.1) 294.476 ms
4 bor02.asbnva16.ne.earthlink.net (209.183.100.194) 321.211 ms 335.440 ms 359.662 ms
5 user-2injrgh.dialup.mindspring.com (165.121.238.17) 379.164 ms 399.023 ms 417.363 ms
6 97.67.236.162 (97.67.236.162) 431.331 ms 181.750 ms 97.67.236.152 (97.67.236.152) 223.075 ms
7 97.67.236.140 (97.67.236.140) 233.886 ms 244.374 ms 253.586 ms
8 * * *
9 vb2002.rar3.washington-dc.us.xo.net (207.88.13.162) 278.523 ms 397.593 ms 411.496 ms
10 te-3-0-0.rar3.nyc-ny.us.xo.net (207.88.12.73) 345.939 ms 365.049 ms 383.018 ms
11 ae0d0.mcr1.cambridge-ma.us.xo.net (216.156.0.26) 307.259 ms 314.422 ms 416.287 ms
12 216.55.5.134 (216.55.5.134) 169.749 ms 221.081 ms 229.622 ms
13 ip38-113-1-97.yourhostingaccount.com (38.113.1.97) 283.808 ms 301.636 ms 288.639 ms
Is it supposed to be this circuitous? Traceroutes seem to keep looping around and back to the same domains and sub-domains many times. Is this efficient?
Me too, since it's always the third hop. ;)
And yet Merkel just got voted back with an increase of votes for her party. I think you are being overly optimistic in your view that the renewable energy market will just fold because it is too expensive.
There is a mentality amongst doomsayers who, lets face it, have already bought into this massive fraud and are therefore not the most discerning people on the planet. On one side they have excess confidence in the doomsday scenarios purveyed by Al Gore and co and on the other side they have excessive confidence that in the long term a renewable answer will be found. I can already hear some of my ex-colleagues spouting the “but renewables (meaning solar and wind) are getting cheaper every day” line – even some people who otherwise have a solid grasp on reality.
You can use logic as much as you like, but they will remain unprepared to give up on the utopian dream of an endless supply of power from non-polluting sources. And to some extent I think we should be taking some of that seriously though not to in the manner that is currently happening.
As someone who routinely works in the energy and mining sectors, I can assure you that conventional sources of energy are massively wasteful, polluting and inherently finite. The vision of finding energy sources and efficiencies that can reduce our reliance on these forms of energy is not without merit.
You are somewhat dismissive of the fact that 600MW won’t keep the nation’s standby lamps glowing – but you make no mention of the fact that supplying energy to standby lamps is just energy p****d down the drain. In fact that entire argument is really just an argument for trying to find a base-load form of renewable energy (geothermal perhaps) or a means of balancing energy
through storage when there is an excess. Finding means of achieving either of those two things efficiently would have to be high on any nations energy strategy.
And then there are the efficiencies that should be achievable if we just had the willingness and governments had the b***s to require them.
Anyhoo – sorry for the rant – In case you didn’t get it, I agree that the utopian view of achieving high level utilisation of renewables through solar and wind is a travesty. However, I also think that using this failed experiment as an excuse for returning to business as usual is also misguided. Wattsupwiththat is full of comments from people who are clearly very intelligent. How about harvesting some of that massive brainpower to considering how we might achieve an energy future that includes an increasing amount of real renewable (and non-polluting) forms of energy and also includes reductions in personal/industry energy consumption through smart methods.
M Simon says:
October 6, 2013 at 2:58 pm
“My son. The drummer for “Harmonic Movement” – “
Sounds great! And, I know you are proud of him. But, you do know the drummer boy from Illinois to whom I was referring was in prison doing the “crash, boom, bang”?
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 6, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Well, that’s pretty long for dealing with incompetance, but not unheard of. Uttering “Linux” throws them off script and gets tham all flustered.
So, easy stuff works. Try URLs from sites you’re having trouble with. You’re probably really having trouble with sites referenced within, that’s where network traces become useful.
I tried
wget -O foo -p http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-and-notes/
which should have loaded the page and all the images and other components, but I think the page is too complex for wget to figure out.
It’s not unreasonable. It’s not that circuitous, a lot is working up routers at Mindspring/Earthlink to get to a backbone (xo.net), then I’m surprised my Web ISP’s servers are so close to the backbone. It’s 16 hops for me through Comcast, cogentco.com, and a couple others. But less than 100 ms.
I’m a bit surprised at the variations in latency, you might have some other random traffic going on and it’s showing up in the dialup link. However, that likely isn’t affecting you.
My guess is that others customers are having similar problems.
It could be that Mr Rabbit is just leaving the RET out there at 20% to support his dam building plans.
Anyhow, govt subsidies ARE Renewable! Each year, i pay tax. They hand it to Greens to destroy, then i pay more tax again. Renewable!
To make it all worse, natural gas is being used for backup purposes. It’s a huge waste, to be using a fuel that is very practical for vehicle fuel for stationary fuel.
When the vehicle fuel reaches its limits, its going to mean mass starvation. Natural gas is used to make fertilizer. Liquid fuel is needed for tractors – and they don’t just roll, like on a road – they are pulling a heavy load, all day. It would require batteries the size of large trucks. Or lots of serfs.
– However much vehicle fuel there is, there’s a limit.
– Fracking is great, without recent oilfield tech improvements, electricity costs would be worsening much faster. But those wells are relatively short lived, high producers. They taper off quick.
In other words, the fracking boom is papering over the stupidity – and meanwhile, ever more Nat gas fired generators are replacing coal & nuclear (they can be spun up faster , so they’re less wasteful as backup generators for solar & wind)
In North America certainly, and likely other areas as well,the wholesale price of electricity is used to regulate the power grid. When supply is high, prices drop, and at times even go negative, ensuring that the grid does not burn out due to over supply. When demand is high, the opposite occurs, wholesale prices skyrocket, ensuring that the grid due not brown out due to over demand.
The problem with feed in tariffs and other guaranteed price mechanisms is that they bypass the wholesale price of electricity that is used to stabilize the power grid. This is not “sustainable”. As the portion of the grid given to renewables grows, the grid will fail under the present regulatory mechanism.
Thus a new mechanism will be required to stabilize the grid, which cannot be based on market forces unless the feed-in tariffs are abandoned. Either large numbers of civil servants will be required to mandate which power companies can produce power, and which consumers can consume power, or the governments will eventually tear up the feed-in tariffs regardless of long term agreements and the matter will be decided by the courts.
Goldie says:
October 6, 2013 at 5:56 pm
In fact that entire argument is really just an argument for trying to find a base-load form of renewable energy (geothermal perhaps) or a means of balancing energy
through storage when there is an excess. Finding means of achieving either of those two things efficiently would have to be high on any nations energy strategy.
========
the market already takes care of this. if companies can make money balancing or storing energy, they will. the problem comes when governments start to believe that they an do a better job than the markets. the temptation then is to pick winners and losers for political reasons, not economic reasons. the end result is an inefficient economy, which is not sustainable in a global economy. eventually the inefficiencies collapse under a mountain of debt, bringing down governments, nations and empires alike.
From Ric Werme on October 6, 2013 at 7:49 pm:
Slow loading:
$ traceroute www.washingtontimes.com
traceroute to www.washingtontimes.com (38.118.71.70), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 acn04.pa-philadel0.ne.earthlink.net (209.165.107.195) 169.590 ms 178.348 ms 231.087 ms
2 209.165.101.193 (209.165.101.193) 216.364 ms 209.165.101.161 (209.165.101.161) 221.163 ms 209.165.101.193 (209.165.101.193) 226.025 ms
3 user-38lcmg1.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.1) 239.926 ms user-38lcmg5.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.5) 244.642 ms user-38lcmg1.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.1) 250.266 ms
4 bor02.asbnva16.ne.earthlink.net (209.183.100.194) 300.714 ms 313.014 ms 335.864 ms
5 user-2injrgh.dialup.mindspring.com (165.121.238.17) 352.151 ms 371.109 ms 390.472 ms
6 97.67.236.152 (97.67.236.152) 402.063 ms 97.67.236.162 (97.67.236.162) 179.782 ms 232.417 ms
7 97.67.236.148 (97.67.236.148) 204.515 ms 97.67.236.140 (97.67.236.140) 220.891 ms 241.527 ms
8 * * *
9 10gigabitethernet5-1.core1.atl1.he.net (216.66.2.81) 302.480 ms 307.235 ms 311.979 ms
10 10gigabitethernet16-5.core1.ash1.he.net (184.105.213.109) 276.754 ms 281.775 ms 293.725 ms
11 red-4g-wholesale-llc.10gigabitethernet15-6.core1.ash1.he.net (216.66.70.26) 316.620 ms 322.323 ms 152.589 ms
12 * * *
[repeats]
30 * * *
There’s also a curious discontinuity in accessing this site, between straight URL and wordpress “real” URL:
$ traceroute wattsupwiththat.com
traceroute to wattsupwiththat.com (72.233.2.59), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 acn04.pa-philadel0.ne.earthlink.net (209.165.107.195) 166.490 ms 176.552 ms 227.456 ms
2 209.165.101.193 (209.165.101.193) 211.790 ms 209.165.101.161 (209.165.101.161) 221.111 ms 209.165.101.193 (209.165.101.193) 216.348 ms
3 user-38lcmg1.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.1) 248.809 ms user-38lcmg5.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.5) 260.264 ms user-38lcmg1.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.1) 253.878 ms
4 bor02.asbnva16.ne.earthlink.net (209.183.100.194) 294.236 ms 316.208 ms 336.210 ms
5 user-2injrgh.dialup.mindspring.com (165.121.238.17) 353.155 ms 370.259 ms 389.671 ms
6 97.67.236.171 (97.67.236.171) 401.592 ms 174.859 ms 240.422 ms
7 97.67.236.169 (97.67.236.169) 204.887 ms 218.854 ms 97.67.236.172 (97.67.236.172) 258.196 ms
8 66.194.203.109 (66.194.203.109) 271.187 ms 273.597 ms 288.587 ms
9 64-129-238-118.static.twtelecom.net (64.129.238.118) 263.354 ms 315.950 ms 323.063 ms
10 xe-8-2-2.edge1.Atlanta4.Level3.net (4.53.234.17) 302.633 ms 297.779 ms 310.933 ms
11 vlan51.ebr1.Atlanta2.Level3.net (4.69.150.62) 338.093 ms 351.579 ms 366.379 ms
12 ae-63-63.ebr3.Atlanta2.Level3.net (4.69.148.241) 210.284 ms 210.861 ms 193.819 ms
13 ae-7-7.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.134.21) 244.999 ms 270.585 ms 309.027 ms
14 ae-63-63.csw1.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.151.133) 325.766 ms ae-83-83.csw3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.151.157) 289.504 ms ae-93-93.csw4.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.151.169) 350.084 ms
15 ae-2-70.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.145.72) 334.584 ms ae-3-80.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.69.145.136) 359.545 ms 364.896 ms
16 LAYERED-TEC.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.71.170.6) 374.375 ms 369.658 ms 376.709 ms
17 * * *
18 59.2.233.72.static.reverse.ltdomains.com (72.233.2.59) 386.360 ms 186.751 ms 173.739 ms
$
$ traceroute wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
traceroute to wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com (192.0.81.250), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 acn04.pa-philadel0.ne.earthlink.net (209.165.107.195) 169.137 ms 178.587 ms 228.495 ms
2 209.165.101.161 (209.165.101.161) 217.377 ms 209.165.101.193 (209.165.101.193) 212.675 ms 209.165.101.161 (209.165.101.161) 222.128 ms
3 user-38lcmg5.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.5) 249.241 ms user-38lcmg1.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.1) 261.464 ms user-38lcmg5.dialup.mindspring.com (209.86.90.5) 254.232 ms
4 bor02.asbnva16.ne.earthlink.net (209.183.100.130) 294.296 ms 307.843 ms 330.328 ms
5 user-2injrgh.dialup.mindspring.com (165.121.238.17) 348.088 ms 365.908 ms 385.246 ms
6 97.67.236.152 (97.67.236.152) 397.062 ms 191.925 ms 252.255 ms
7 97.67.236.140 (97.67.236.140) 220.416 ms 230.823 ms 97.67.236.148 (97.67.236.148) 267.660 ms
8 * * *
9 vb2002.rar3.washington-dc.us.xo.net (207.88.13.162) 283.507 ms 358.224 ms 337.452 ms
10 ae0d0.cir1.ashburn-va.us.xo.net (207.88.13.61) 308.729 ms 318.073 ms 343.703 ms
11 xe-1-2-0.er1.lga5.us.above.net (64.125.13.249) 362.902 ms 373.832 ms 367.866 ms
12 xe-9-0-0.cr1.lga5.us.above.net (64.125.21.78) 228.538 ms 231.591 ms 177.652 ms
13 xe-3-2-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.26.101) 234.274 ms 247.576 ms 264.858 ms
14 * * *
[repeats]
30 * * *
The high correlation between expressed political beliefs and how problematic it is to reach a site, and how sites are “clearing up” as if someone is de-listing “false positives” like AP and Newegg, is troubling. I wonder how much internet I’d have left if I was running WinXP and IE with the Earthlink software like a good little mindless drone.
Note how if I was on high-speed like virtually everyone else, the slow-loading pattern (approx 1/6 on, 5/6 off) wouldn’t be much noticeable.
***
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 6, 2013 at 12:06 pm
***
kadaka, I feel your pain. Dial-up here until a yr ago. I had to do everything possible to speed up page-loading, even disabling pictures.
I note that w/Firefox & DSL, the add-ons Ghostery and No-script and a big Hosts file (a list of blocked sites) greatly speeds up page-loading.
This is just a side note and food for thought on renewable energy. Germany was the first great solar and wind market and dominated global demand for years. They installed it when costs for both sectors was many times higher than today. As leader of the pack they will also see the need to replace all of this renewable energy capacity sooner than the U.S. and a lot of other late comers. That replacement need will roughly coincide with the shutdown pledge on its nuclear industry, adding to the total energy cost. Granted the replacement costs will be lower than the original investments, but subsidies will also be gone and the country will have endured years of uncompetitive energy as inputs into exports and domestic cost of living. As for Desertec, it was grand and unstoppable like so many other EU endeavors until the costs and country risk were factored in.
Now the nuclear powerplants especially in France and Czech republic go 100%, while Germany trades its wind/solar grid overload capacity to other countries as Austria for hydro using third countries grids – all must help Germany keep up with their green plans. The grid is overloaded and the operators periodically warn almost every month it will not work like that long time and the blackouts are imminent.
In 2011 Germany announced with great PR ovations, that they already produce even 12.1 GWh a day by sun (if it shines well), all that was built for unbelievable money in decade of pressurized subsidies.
That is 0.0069 of the 1730 GWh, Germany consumed that time daily.
From – then – working nuclear, the Germany produced 23% of electricity.
0.23/0.007 = 32.85 times the 10 years of the promising solar development….
It would Germany take just little over 328 years (until year 2339) – if the subsidies continue at same pace and sun shines well – to substitute by solar just for the power from closed nuclear powerplants (by the gas pipeline Nordstream tycoon, then prime minister Schroeder who in 1999 pushed through mandate, which will close all nuclear plants in Germany by 2021 and by his successors).
So far so good, but in Germany in 2011 they also produced 46% of electricity from coal.
But there will be no coal in 2323 in Europe, nor in whole Eaurasia, nor in whole world long before the 2323 if the consumption continues just as in 2011.
A question at hand: If they phase-out nuclear, how they substitute that 46%? (796 GWh/day in 2011) By the wind?
Policies may be changing, but one of the subversive tricks that were played on conventional plants is that they were reduced to de facto low cost backup to renewables. Power from renewables is purchased first, at full price with conventional plants in effect bidding to be low price supplier of the rest. This has bankrupted many, and is unsupportably by any. But since in fact renewables cannot be counted on for base power, the conventional plants are still in reality needed full time, all the time.
The fecal icing on the cake is that most are not suited to ramping as fast as renewable vary, so equipment suffers and efficiency plummets.
Forcing renewables to play by the same rules is being pushed in Germany and elsewhere, out of necessity, but is fundamentally unacceptable to their operators; they need the “special satus” to survive.
So the end game is that all plants of all types go broke. That will literally be a Dark Day.
typo:
satusstatus