Like hermit crabs, climate alarmists scramble to find new ways to hide, when put in a box
Guest essay by Dennis M. Mitchell and David R. Legates
As children playing on the beach, we discovered a fascinating behavioral pattern among hermit crabs. Place a dozen in a cardboard box, and within minutes the crabs exit their shells and try to occupy another. This mild stress-induced response probably reflects their life-long drive to continue growing by repeatedly commandeering larger shells, to protect their vulnerable soft bodies.
Similarly, climate alarmists are now scrambling to find new shelter from the stress coming from a public that increasingly realizes their doom-and-gloom predictions of climate chaos are based on shoddy data, faulty computer models and perhaps outright deception. The alarmist scientists have put themselves in a climate cataclysm box, and are desperate to protect their reputations, predictions and funding.
Despite the absence of warming in actual measured temperature records over the last 16 years, and near-record lows in hurricane and tornado activity, they still cry “wolf” repeatedly and try to connect every unusual or “extreme” weather event to human emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide. (Actually, people account for only 4% of all the CO2 that enters Earth’s atmosphere each year.)
Alarmists used their predictions of climate catastrophe to demand that the world transform its energy and economic systems, slash fossil fuel use, and accept lower living standards, in response to the politically manufactured science. Even as growing evidence conflicted with their dogma, the money, fame and power were too good to surrender for mere ethical reasons.
The impact on energy prices, national economies, jobs and people’s lives has been profound and negative. For example, in response to the unfounded alarmism, Germany moved aggressively toward wind and solar energy over the past 15 years – both politically and with taxpayer and investment spending. It also shied away from more nuclear power and saw its economy contract and energy-intensive companies shed jobs and threaten to move overseas. Now Germany is burning more coal and building new coal-fired power plants, in an attempt to reverse the economic disaster its “green” and “climate protection” policies unleashed, but its actions are still sending shock waves at investors around the world.
In Spain, every renewable energy job the government’s climate alarmist policies created was offset by two jobs lost in other sectors of the economy that were punished by soaring electricity prices. The demise of a Spanish economy so committed to wind and solar power finally caused reasonable people to reevaluate why these decisions had been made, and the renewable subsidies were slashed, just as they have been in Germany.
How does Brazil’s future look with biofuels? As reality finally overcomes media bias and political correctness, the naive excitement of a few years ago – when anything “green” was portrayed as lower cost, clean and superior in every technological sense – has given way to more rational thinking. Brazil is now going more for oil and gas, via conventional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, onshore and offshore.
Why are so many countries deciding to abandon or diminish the fools-golden eggs of green-tech? First, green technology power has been grossly oversold on reliability, cost, capacity, job creation and environmental impacts. A stable economy requires all of these power characteristics. Second, speculative alarmism about CO2 has been exposed by the hard data of the past couple decades.
The NIPCC Climate Change Reconsidered-II report presents the facts, so that even non-scientists can appreciate the relevant range of the climate components – and the ways people have been conned into believing we faced a manmade climate Armageddon that hasn’t materialized and was never a threat.
Nevertheless, insisting that “climate chaos” was real, former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson wailed that her agency would need at least 240,000 new EPA employees (each making some $100,000 per year, plus benefits) that she said would be needed just to administer new carbon dioxide regulations – and control nearly everything Americans make, drive, ship and do!
EPA currently employs some 20,000 people at an annual budget of over $8 billion. The new hires alone would cost taxpayers another $24 billion annually – plus hundreds of billions of dollars in economic pain, manufacturing shutdowns and new job losses that EPA’s CO2 regulations would inflict.
Year after year, alarmists have changed their protective shells for more absurd answers regarding where the Earth has mysteriously stashed all the energy that greenhouse gases supposedly trapped. For years, alarmists said ocean waters were storing the missing energy. But when the ARGO project demonstrated that the heat was not in the ocean, at least down two kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the surface, one prominent alarmist responded, “We are puzzled at the results.” We are not puzzled.
When the data consistently conflict with their hypothesis, reputable scientists revise the hypothesis. Five-alarm climate scientists desperately seek new shells, and new excuses.
The “puzzling” facts triggered the predictable alarmist tactic of attacking the data and claiming the heat was hiding in the really deep ocean. Ignoring the physics of the problem – how the asserted heat was transferred from atmospheric carbon dioxide, through the sea surface, and beyond the first mile of ocean waters, without being detected – they expect us to believe that fluid thermodynamics is akin to magic.
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has released its 2013 report Climate Change Reconsidered II. The world finally has a chance to see the actual science – not the kind that’s hidden, massaged and filtered through alarmist shell games.
Unencumbered by political pressure and mega-lobbyists, this 1,018-page review by 50 serious and highly accomplished scientists has exposed the alarmists’ fraud. These real scientists have also exposed as illusory the alarmists’ mystical “tropical hot spot.” This sacred cow turns out to be as fanciful as planetary warming hidden in the deepest ocean, or the infamous hockey stick of Michael Mann’s hidden data and secret computer codes.
Have we forgotten that 1998 was to be the “tipping point,” after which Earth would warm uncontrollably? The 1988 hearing in Washington one hot summer afternoon was dominated by the always sly James Hansen, who wiped his brow furiously, in a room made stifling by Senator Tim Wirth’s cheap trick of turning off the air conditioning. Politics, theatrics and manipulation had replaced honest science.
Because Al Gore switched his CO2 and temperature curves to make it look like rising carbon dioxide levels caused planetary temperature increases – when in fact increasing temperatures always preceded higher CO2 – shouldn’t he have corrected his mistake, returned his ill-gotten millions, and shared his 2007 Nobel Prize and money with Irena Sendler, who should have gotten it for saving 2,500 Jewish children during World War II? Shouldn’t his accomplice, IPCC director and pseudo-Nobel Laureate Rajendra Pachauri, be held accountable for trumpeting made-up stories about melting Himalayan glaciers?
But when you’re an alarmist, being wrong, lying, cheating, misleading the public and killing jobs simply does not count against you – even when the alleged human-caused global warming stopped in 1996.
We literally laughed aloud at a so-called “documentary” that’s about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public. It’s called “Do the Math: Bill McKibben and the Fight over Climate Change.” For McKibben and his comrades, “doing the math” is really a matter of “counting the cash” the alarmists rake in.
The serious money has always flowed to alarmists, guilt-ridden environmentalists and control-seeking regulators, whom the world’s taxpayers are generously and unwittingly funding. That’s also the real meaning of the “green” movement and “green” energy.
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Dennis Mitchell, CPA/QEP has been professionally involved in environmental and tax compliance, monitoring and education for over 40 years. David Legates, PhD/CCM is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware and has been studying climate and its changes for 35 years. A version of this article originally appeared in the 10/18/2013 Investor’s Business Daily.
Funny you should mention seashells – as they are responsible for the huge chalk layers in the Earth, the largest CO2 sinks known to man. Imagine all that Carbon was once in the atmosphere.
An excellent summary in a concise form that exposes the myth.
Now can we get back to lamenting the end of the world, the doom that +2 degrees will cause, the extinction of humanity by 2030, etc …
But Global Warming will cause the hermit crabs to grow so big they will take over our houses! We’re doomed.
fantastic summation of the reality of the situation. the lie of thermageddon in a nutshell,or crab shell in this case.
Class action lawsuits against all of them, and the crooked politicians who wasted our taxes.
Faster
Global warming is now a classic “deteriorating paradigm,” as philosophers would describe it. In a nutshell this means that the thing has taken on ever increasing complexity — and indeed deception — to cover its fundamental lack of explanatory power.
CO2 used to lag temperature, when the amount of CO2 in the sum of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere was constant. It was a positive feedback mechanism for climate changes caused by other causes, such as the Milankovitch cycles. Now atmospheric CO2 is increasing because people are adding to it. Nature is currently a net sink of CO2, not a net source. http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/global-carbon-budget-2010
Damn, I need one of them jobs! A lot of millionaires – government types.
Deep in me is a growl about what the Global Warming Fraud has done to honest, trusting and gullible people. If I ever let it loose it will erupt a veritable volcano of Purple Prose that will make this fine essay look mild mannered.
However, for the time being, this essay is excellent. Thanks.
Donald L. Klipstein says:
Where is any evidence that CO2 increase in the past has a net positive feedback associated with it or is a driver of positive feedback? I agree that the recent CO2 rise likely has a significant human cause. It matters not if nature is presently a net sink of CO2 (and I agree it likely is), if you have no evidence that it significantly matters for temperature variations. What do you make of the last decade plus of flat to dropping temperature in the presence of the fastest rising CO2 level? While CO2 alone is a greenhouse gas, water vapor and clouds dominate the Earth system, and it seems negative feedback (probably due to clouds), along with the random variations from long period ocean currents, and other possibly unknown effects, dominates the actual temperature variation.
Donald L. Klipstein October 18, 2013 at 5:22 pm
How can you be sure the current increase in CO2 is not mainly caused by the rebound from the Little Ice Age?
“are desperate to protect their reputations, predictions and funding”
Particularly their funding.
“How does Brazil’s future look with biofuels? As reality finally overcomes media bias and political correctness, the naive excitement of a few years ago – when anything “green” was portrayed as lower cost, clean and superior in every technological sense – has given way to more rational thinking. Brazil is now going more for oil and gas, via conventional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, onshore and offshore..”
——————————————————–
Although I agree with the body of this paper, the statement above is misleading. Significant oil reserves have been found in Brazil over the last decade, primarily in the offshore sub-salt play, but it wasn’t driven by some failure of the Brazilian bio-fuel program. It was driven by concerted worldwide exploration for new reserves. State of the art geologic & geophysical prospecting technology & state of the art engineering technology led companies, both Brazilian (Petrobras) & international (Repsol, Galp, BG, Sinopec, Chevron, etc) to Brazil & led to significant discoveries. What it didn’t have to do with was the domestic biofuel program.
While I applaud the effort of this paper to debunk alarmism, it should be done in a way that is completely defendable & the paragraph above isn’t really defendable.
If you are a watermelon then anything is defendable. I am not a watermelon but I will give it a shot.
“The Brazilian government did a study and realized that even though their biofuels program was going reasonably well they were running out of land to grow sugar. So they commissioned the oil companies to search for new reserves so they were not reliant on biofuels.”
There done
Al Gore make amends?
18 Oct: Bloomberg: Mike Dorning: Gore Says Money Influence in Politics Hacked Democracy
Gore, 65, a Democrat who won a Nobel Prize in 2007 for his efforts to raise awareness of climate change, said special interests also have contributed to the “pathetic performance” of the U.S. in addressing global warming.
“We are paying the cost of carbon and global pollution now,” he said in advocating putting a price on carbon emissions…
Business Interests
Since then, Gore has transformed himself from a politician to a successful businessman with a net worth that may exceed $200 million. A partner at venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Gore is also on Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s board and a senior adviser at Google Inc. (GOOG), according to his website biography. He’s spent recent years advocating “sustainable capitalism.”
His holdings also include investments in Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), EBay Inc. (EBAY) and Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) through his Generation Investment Management US LLP.
Gore this year sold his Current TV network to Al Jazeera, the cable channel funded in part by oil-rich Qatar. The sale was announced in January with a price tag of about $500 million…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-17/gore-says-money-influence-in-politics-hacked-democracy.html
“Nations MUST” – LOL. and so the talkfests look set to continue…forever!
18 Oct: Bloomberg: Matthew Carr: U.S. Wants Nations to Justify Global Climate Treaty Commitments
The U.S. said nations must be ready to explain their emission-reduction pledges as it unveiled proposals on how countries should conduct climate negotiations before a global treaty in 2015…
“Each party will need to be prepared to justify their commitment to the world,” the U.S. said in a submission published on the website of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn. Countries should submit draft pledges early in 2015 so consultations can extend through that year…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-18/u-s-wants-nations-to-justify-global-climate-treaty-commitments.html
Excellent. I agree completely. Problem is obuma and kerry do not have a clue,
Watts up with that got a compliment from FoxNews.com where they respond to Dana Nuccitelli and John Abraham comments about Fox.
Balance is not bias — Fox News critics mislead public on climate change
I don’t think I’m going to worry about this stuff, anymore. When the full width, depth and breadth of the Obamacare fiasco actually starts to have real effects in a month or two, CAGW will be the least of anybodies’ worries.
Engineer is right, consider the seashells. But not only the chalk, think about the limestone, marble, coal, gas and oil deposits. All these constituents of the earth contain carbon. In the chalk, limestone and marble the carbon dioxide is locked up in the shells of the various diatoms and foraminifera as carbonates – probably other animals/plants as well, that extracted carbon dioxide from the sea surface which took if from the atmosphere. The coal, oil and gas took the carbon from the various plants which grew on the surface, directly extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
All this was in the atmosphere at one time or other, and the earth’s surface temperature was not so high that plants and trees would not grow, nor so high that oceans boiled. Much of the rock and fuels we can never extract. Hence, no matter how much carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, we can never put as much back as was once in the atmosphere, and we have no reason to fear a catastrophe.
Al Gore predicts a “carbon bubble” and urges disinvestment in fossil fuel stocks:
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/al-gore-carbon-bubble-going-burst-avoid-oil-121707563.html
Meanwhile, USA surges past Saudi Arabia to become world’s Number 1 oil producer:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-oil-pira-idUSL1N0I51IX20131015
…I kinda think Al is gonna lose out on that one! Thank goodness he sold his cable channel to Al Jazeera, in the nick of time (before everyone disinvests from oil stocks!!)
Polinesia? It’s this sort of slap-dash error that gives the uncommitted and hostile every excuse to reject a decent summation of the current situation out of hand. You just can’t get the help nowadays.
Donald L. Klipstein says:
October 18, 2013 at 5:22 pm. On a geological timescale, atmospheric CO2 has always been constantly changing. The present readings of c 400ppm are just above the minimum necessary to sustain plant life.
Hi,
I’m a German and I don’t belive in Global warming. I’m also somehow angry about the tendency of the media to sell it by ignoring the real facts.
But there are also some wrong statements here in this post. Germany isn’t loosing jobs or production through the “Energiewende”. All high-energy production is exempted from surcharge for renewable power to have the same energy cost like in the intenational market. Of course, average people have to pay more, but we are not suffering from it. We just use less. Our electricity bill didn’t rise much during the last years.
Germany seem to have the best economy in Europe with growing economy and a low rate of jobless. In my home state Bavaria, which is promoting especially solar energy, the jobless are only 3.6%! There is simply no economic desaster in Germany. There is wealth and welfare for all.
We have even problems to get rid of too much green energy and the prices for eco power went down. The biggest problem is the grid to distribute the power. But, as always in human history, when there is a problem, then there will be a solution.
In this post I see too much white/black thinking. Green energy is not bad, and conventional or fossil or atomic energy is also not bad. It just needs some time to get everything into the right place. Green energy will have it’s place in the energy mix. The global waming hype will calm down. (Actually only one third of the Germans see it as a threat, five years ago two thirds feared it.). But there are other reasons to have Renewable Energy as a part of the power sources.
Still I’m wondering what the Global warming scientists are really believing. Have they already recognized that they are wrong? Are they doubting? Or is their believe driving them to find the facts which are fitting to their angle of view? After all they talk of climate change now instead of climate warming.
To find out the truth – or to get it obvious for all – needs time. Possibly in ten or twenty years we will look back and consider the Global Warming Time as one of the big errors in history.
Here is how skeptics and alarmists make their cases:
Skeptics have facts, alarmists have lies.
Skeptics use rational arguments, alarmists use personal attacks.
Skeptics proceed from principle, alarmists proceed from ideology.
Skeptics want to build, alarmists seek to destroy.
Skeptics care about well-being, alarmists deny a new Holocaust.
The warmist meme may be fading, but der Fuehrer will never give up on it until he is forced to do so – it’s too central to his plan for instituting a totalitarian state. You control carbon -(the EPA) – you control the economy. You control healthcare (Fuehrercare) – you decide who lives and who dies. You control communications (the NSA) – nobody can hide from you. You control the fruits of people’s labor (the IRS) – and you enrich your billionaire crony capitalist buddies.
Re Bloody Mess’s “warning” about oil stocks – any money on B.M. having sold them short and is trying to jawbone the price down so he can deliver at a cost lower than what he paid? And rake in the cash? Seems to me the SEC might want to check this out (but ain’t holding my breath on the Obama SEC doing that).
Say what! Feedback mechanism for climate changes caused by other causes…? You lost me there.
I’m also lost about this “…Nature is a net sink of CO2…” stuff. You need to check your facts. Plant begin to die off with low atmospheric levels of CO2. You can google your own version of that level, but I last read it as being 160-180ppm. At 250-300ppm, some plants may have been struggling to respire efficiently. An issue highlighted by greenhouses that are taking advantage of plant response by elevating CO2 levels within greenhouses. Higher CO2, then think about those nice red tomatoes groceries sell still attached to vine strands.
There never is nor was a ‘constant’ level of CO2. Atmospheric CO2 has been reducing for eons as the oxygen content rose. The high atmospheric oxygen content is one reason why mammals are so successful right now. A situation that would quickly change if CO2 levels ever drop below plant requirements.
ATheoK says:
October 19, 2013 at 12:04 am
I’m also lost about this “…Nature is a net sink of CO2…” stuff.
Of course nature is a net sink for CO2:
Humans currently add 9 GtC (~4.5 ppmv) per year. The measured increase in the atmosphere is ~4 GtC/year, thus nature is a net sink for ~5 GtC/year:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
The historical CO2/temperature ratio over the past few million years, since the recurrent ice ages started is about 8 ppmv/K, based on ice cores and foramins.
Some 60 million years ago, the earth’s CO2 levels were much higher and started to decrease since then, leveling at about 20 million years ago around the temperature fluctuations. Except in the past 160 years, which is visible in ice cores, firn and direct measurements:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr_large.jpg
together with a decreasing 13C/12C ratio, both in lockstep with human emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
There is a theoretical sideway that humans may not be responsible for the increase in the atmosphere (but still nature as a net sink), if there was a huge increase in CO2 circulation through te atmosphere (currently estimated at around 150 GtC in and out per year), about a threefold, in lockstep with human emissions, but that violates about all known observations like residence time, 13C/12C and 14C/12C ratio,…
Besides that, in the article stands:
Actually, people account for only 4% of all the CO2 that enters Earth’s atmosphere each year
That is a non-argument. All natural CO2 is removed by natural sinks + a part of human emissions. Thus the natural CO2 is simply circulating through the atmosphere. The 4% human emissions are additional…
“But when you’re an alarmist, being wrong, lying, cheating, misleading the public”
And themselves….
wiki
“Roger S. Pulwarty is a scientist from Trinidad and Tobago and contributed to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 jointly held with Al Gore.[1][2] He is the director of the US National Integrated Drought Information System at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado.”
In reply to:
Johannes Herbst says:
October 18, 2013 at 10:45 pm
Hi,
I’m a German and I don’t belive in Global warming. I’m also somehow angry about the tendency of the media to sell it by ignoring the real facts.
But there are also some wrong statements here in this post. Germany isn’t loosing jobs or production through the “Energiewende”. All high-energy production is exempted from surcharge for renewable power to have the same energy cost like in the intenational market. Of course, average people have to pay more, but we are not suffering from it. We just use less. Our electricity bill didn’t rise much during the last years.
William:
You are confusing ‘facts’ with myths. You appear to be implying that wasting money on green scams is the reason for the low employment in Germany which is not true. Germany’s low unemployment has nothing to do with the green scams which are called “Energiewende” in Germany.
Germany has exported its unemployment to the rest of Europe. If Germany had kept the mark and the other countries in the EU had kept their own currencies, due to trade imbalances the mark would have increased in value, making Germany goods too expensive which would have moved production to other countries in the EU. Germany economic success comes on the backs of the other members of the EU. Logic to support that statement is the record unemployment in the EU as a whole, the stagnant economic growth in the EU as whole. The EU is failing. One of the reasons the EU is failing is the high cost of energy in the EU and irrational policies such as the banning of fracking and the anti nuclear movement. Those pushing the extreme AGW agenda have hidden the engineering and economic reality concerning green scam energy. Wind and solar are intermittent sources. Intermittent power sources require energy storage to significantly reduce CO2 emission (beyond 10 to 15% reduction) which will increase the cost of “green” energy by an order of magnitude, if CO2 emissions must be reduced by say 50%. Ignoring engineering reality does not change engineering reality.
To significantly and actually reduce CO2 emissions on a world basis (say 50%) would require a massive change to nuclear power and wartime like reductions in standard of life and wartime like restrictions, such as the end of air travel for tourism, the end of private homes, and so on.
The other fact that has been hidden is the developing countries (China, India, the African countries, and so on) have demanded that developed countries pay for their cost to build an economy using the mythical zero carbon energy source. The developed countries are deeply in debt, are running yearly deficits, the developed countries do not have surplus funds, cannot pay for their current programs, and hence cannot send funds to developing countries to construct nuclear power plants.
Actual reduction of world CO2 emissions by say 50% would require the threat of military action and a massive worldwide bureaucracy to enforce the madness.
When it comes to the Global Warming Industry and the likes of the IPCC and the EPA, we must never forget these organizations are parasite bureaucracies only interested in their own self-perpetuation and growth.
And, therefore we should never, never forget:
The Seven Rules of Bureaucracy:
Rule #1: Maintain the problem at all costs! The problem is the basis of power, perks, privileges, and security.
Rule #2: Use crisis and perceived crisis to increase your power and control.
Rule #3: If there are not enough crises, manufacture them, even from nature, where none exist.
Rule #4: Control the flow and release of information while feigning openness.
Rule #5: Maximize public-relations exposure by creating a cover story that appeals to the universal need to help people.
Rule #6: Create vested support groups by distributing concentrated benefits and/or entitlements to these special interests, while distributing the costs broadly to one’s political opponents.
Rule #7: Demonize the truth tellers who have the temerity to say, “The emperor has no clothes.”
Completely off topic but it is amusing.
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/beachcomber/436712/96-years-old-and-STILL-completely-chilled-out
Ferdinand Engelbeen says: October 19, 2013 at 1:43 am CO2 concentrations
Thank you for the graph at http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr_large.jpg
The sudden lift off about year 1800 is perplexing. First, the flat CO2 before 1800 (if ice cores are accurate) does not correlate with population growth reconstruction.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/human_pop/worldpop.jpg
I have a concept that for centuries, people cooked, used fires to keep warm and so on. Before 1800 one might expect there to be a CO2 increase in proportion to global concentration, but there seems no graphical evidence for it. Presumably, human emissions before 1800 (and their continuation after 1800 if they used the same fuel mix), would not affect existing patterns of isotopes of carbon very much.
After 1800, the old carbon with its isotope signature appears, (does it?). The rise seems greater than the population shift. This is understandable, given the greater availability of energy derived from fossil fuels. I would have expected an increase, but not nearly as large as your graph shows.
Seems to me that you have to admit to the possibility of a fundamental, natural change in CO2 behaviour about 1800. How to investigate it? Pretty hard to separate natural CO2 cycles from man-made ones. People don’t even seem to agree on CO2 residence time in the atmosphere.
“Why are so many countries deciding to abandon or diminish the fools-golden eggs of green-tech?”
Because it does not have the political value of yesteryear. As sad as simple.
The analogy in the article is quite delicious. Well done.
(Are hermit crabs edible like the soft-shell crab you get in restaurants, or are they more crunchy?)
“Germany’s Green Energies Lead To Skyrocketing Electricity Prices – Feed-In Rates Increase More Than 10-Fold!”
The future is German?
“Germany’s Green Energies Lead To Skyrocketing Electricity Prices – Feed-In Rates Increase More Than 10-Fold!”
http://notrickszone.com/2013/10/18/germanys-green-energies-lead-to-skyrocketing-electricity-prices-feed-in-rates-increase-more-than-10-fold/
The future is German?
Excellent article. I believe it’s really this bad, and perhaps worse.
To the guy who says Germany isn’t losing jobs, please realize that Spain claimed much job growth in their economy because of “green” energy. Germany may actually have some job growth, but it’s less growth than would have otherwise happened, because resources were committed to unproductive use. If you can’t understand that, well, watch the U.S. economy in the next few years in the health care sector to see how unproductive thrashing and spending on political correctness ends up costing jobs and harming overall productivity.
page488 says:
October 18, 2013 at 9:49 pm
I don’t think I’m going to worry about this stuff, anymore. When the full width, depth and breadth of the Obamacare fiasco actually starts to have real effects in a month or two, CAGW will be the least of anybodies’ worries.
=====
unfortunately, I think you’re right
I visted the beautiful Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick recently, between 6 am and noon the temperatures rose from -2C to 17C, and the tide rose 7.5 meters. All the local residents and visitors took it in stride, yet in tne nearby schools children are being told that 2C and 30 cms of sea level rise will be tragic over the course of decades. How do we explain that the 7500 cms of sea level change in 6 hours is normal and related to the moon, yet 30 cms in 30-100 yrs is deadly and related only to a trace gas? Also the 19C rise in temp. In 6 hours was due to the sun, but the deadly 2C change in a century is due to the same trace gas. If you see children looking at us like we are idiots, this might be one reason.
Attack-of-the-crab-monsters — one of my favorite B-grade sci-fi movies of the 50s.
http://classicscifi.blogspot.com/2008/09/attack-of-crab-monsters.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/19/steven-schneiders-1992-argument-against-balance-in-science-reporting/#comment-1083265
A Lovell says: September 20, 2012 at 12:09 am
More quotes from politically motivated CAGWers.
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html
_______________
Thank you A. Lovell – well worth reading, along with http://www.green-agenda.com
_______________
I really dislike conspiracy theories, but the above references provide overwhelming evidence, in the words of the co-conspirators, of their objectives, strategies and tactics.
Their objective is political power; global warming alarmism is their strategy; and viciously smearing any dissenters and enforcing media bias are their “green-shirt” tactics.
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, provides a history of the rise of eco-extremism, below. Moore says that the far-left political movement effectively annexed the green movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when pro-Soviet groups were discredited and needed to find a new power base for their far-left political agenda.
The extremists have obviously succeeded. Governments, academia, the media and large corporations are all cowed into submission. Leading scientists have been ousted from their universities for speaking and writing the truth. Only a few tenured or retired professors and the occasional renegade dares to speak out, and many use aliases for fear of retaliation.
When this worm turns, and it will, we can expect the RICO (anti-racketeering) laws will be put to good use.
As we confidently stated in 2002 at
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist “
Earth has not warmed for 10-15 years. Continued absence of global warming or global cooling will finally put an end to global warming hysteria, after trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered…. and then the wheels of justice will begin to turn… Watch for early signs of climate rats leaving their sinking ship.
__________________
http://www.greenspirit.com/key_issues/the_log.cfm?booknum=12&page=3
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
• It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth. The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
• It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tradgedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
• It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are critisized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
• It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is adsurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
• It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are sucessful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
• It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
• It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
Michael Hart,
I made the awful mistake of eating hermit crab, an appetizer in Japan. It tastes like Playdoh, unbelievable, never do it!!! The body has no shell of its own of course, which is why they must appropriate shells from other creatures.
Non-native English speakers: there is no such word as “defendable.” Let’s try “defensible” please.
Can the reforestation of the Northern Hemisphere be causing the increase in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Maturing forests should become net carbon emitters the amount of biomass respiring and decomposing must be huge. A huge amount of agricultural land is being turned back to forest, even suburban plots are becoming forested with a canopy over time.
John says:
October 19, 2013 at 7:26 am
Can the reforestation of the Northern Hemisphere be causing the increase in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Maturing forests should become net carbon emitters the amount of biomass respiring and decomposing must be huge. A huge amount of agricultural land is being turned back to forest, even suburban plots are becoming forested with a canopy over time.
==========
I don’t think that is a significant contributor, however, I think deforestation in South America and Indonesia (for coconut farms) is a significant contributor. Conversion of forest to agricultural uses has all kinds of climactic effects, change in wind patterns, increased regional temperatures, more CO2 released into the atmosphere, changes in atmospheric water content, etc, etc. Benjamin Franklin did some writing about the conversion of the American forest in the colonies to cropland and the effect he observed on local weather/climate.
Geoff Sherrington says:
October 19, 2013 at 3:28 am
Seems to me that you have to admit to the possibility of a fundamental, natural change in CO2 behaviour about 1800. How to investigate it? Pretty hard to separate natural CO2 cycles from man-made ones. People don’t even seem to agree on CO2 residence time in the atmosphere.
The d13C decline is either from the increasing use of fossil fuels or from vegetation (more decay/use than growth), all other sources (oceans, rock weathering, volcanoes,…) have a d13C level higher than the atmosphere. Thus while the use of wood (without replanting) and extra releases of methane from rice fields and cattle did increase with population growth, the switch to fossil fuels for the industry (especially steel manufacturing) and heating increased both CO2 releases and the 13C/12C fingerprint tremendously.
The estimated releases from burning fossil fuels is about twice what is observed as increase in the atmosphere and three times what is observed as decrease in 13C/12C ratio. Which makes it quite unlikely that some natural cause is at work.
To make a comparison: to have the same effect on CO2 levels and d13C changes, one has to burn down about half of all land vegetation without replacement…
C.M. Carmichael says:
October 19, 2013 at 6:01 am
Absolutely agree. But to each CAGW preacher, bringing their attention (by way of simple comparison) to how humans can possibly survive natural tidal flow, the earth’s orbit or daily temperature fluctuation is considered blasphemous. I recently made the innocent mistake of asking a devout tree hugging neighbour (with an obvious vested interest in nailing as many solar panels as possible to his roof) “So, tell me, in percentage terms, just how much carbon di-oxide is up there in the sky?” His answer “a lot, you heretic, and it’s all your fault”. When I pointed out that it was only 0.033912% by volume”, he immediately clasped his ears firmly with both palms and began to chant quite loudly some sort of strange prayer along the lines of “La, la, la, la, la, la”.
Peter Miller says:
October 19, 2013 at 2:50 am
Excellent list. Why stop at just seven rules of bureaucracy?
Rule No. 8
Railroad every costly solution to non-existant problems without any reference whatsoever to joined-up thinking, common-sense, logic or fairness. Act as incompetently as possible.
@ William Astley
I have a young friend named Adam Smith who is considering writing a book concerning national economies. I wonder if you would mind if he borrowed some of your concepts? (just teasin’.)
William, wonderful job of refuting a lazy argument with basic and sound principles.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
At October 19, 2013 at 8:32 am you say
As you know full well, if the 13C/12C change is a “fingerprint” then it exhonerates the anthropogenic CO2 emission as having caused the rise in atmospheric CO2.
The isotope ratio has changed in the correct direction (there is a 50:50 chance that any change would be in the right direction) for it to have been caused by the anthropogenic CO2 emission. However, the magnitude of the isotope ratio change is wrong by a factor of 3.
It is possible to make excuses for why this “fingerprint” does not agree with an assertion that the cause of the ratio change is the anthropogenic emission, and you do. But the most that can be said is that the possibility of such excuses prevents the “fingerprint” from excluding the anthropogenic CO2 emission as being a contributor to the rise in atmospheric CO2.
When most of the ratio change is a result of unknown effect(s) then all of the ratio change could be a result of those unknown effect(s). And the atmospheric CO2 rise could be, too.
Richard
This sentence:
“Have we forgotten that 1998 was to be the “tipping point,” after which Earth would warm uncontrollably? The 1988 hearing in Washington one hot summer afternoon was dominated by the always sly James Hansen, who wiped his brow furiously, in a room made stifling by Senator Tim Wirth’s cheap trick of turning off the air conditioning. ”
Looks odd to me, are we reading about the 1998 El Niño, or the James Hansen’s 1988 Hockey stick presentation to Congress, or both?
Johannes Herbst says:
October 18, 2013 at 10:45 pm
“”Hi,
In this post I see too much white/black thinking. Green energy is not bad, and conventional or fossil or atomic energy is also not bad. It just needs some time to get everything into the right place. Green energy will have it’s place in the energy mix. The global waming hype will calm down. (Actually only one third of the Germans see it as a threat, five years ago two thirds feared it.). But there are other reasons to have Renewable Energy as a part of the power sources.””
Wie gehts, Herr Herbst.
I fully agree with this statement, I agree as long as it is economics and not alarmism or politics that decides which energy sources are used.
Economics, (humans dealing to meet their needs.) will solve most of civilizations woes.
Human compassion will solve the rest.
Richard,
As you know, we have been there before. The “fingerprint” of human CO2 is diluted by the seasonal (and continuous) exchanges of CO2 between the different reservoirs, especially the deep oceans. If these were additional to the human emissions, then the increase in the atmosphere would be 3 times the human emissions. But the increase in the atmosphere is only halve the human emissions, so the contribution of the natural CO2 circulation is only dilution and partly removal, not addition…
One can use the dilution factor caused by the exchanges to calculate how much CO2 is exchanged with the deep oceans, taking into account the isotopic changes at the sea-air and air-sea surface:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
@ferdinand meeus Engelbeen – so you are saying the “anthropogenic” factor of global warming is “diluted” by natural factors?
Can you quantify that? In other words, what is NATURE doing?
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Thankyou for your post at October 19, 2013 at 10:42 am which answers my post at October 19, 2013 at 8:52 am.
Yes, we have “been there before”.
As I said in my post which you have replied
And you have replied
QED
If you want to assume the discrepancy of a factor of 3 is caused by “dilution” then the “dilution” smudges the “fingerprint” beyond recognition. So, it shows what I said and nothing more.
Richard
They remind me more of cockroaches. Shine the light of truth on them and they scurry for cover.
The Engineer says:
October 18, 2013 at 4:22 pm
Funny you should mention seashells – as they are responsible for the huge chalk layers in the Earth, the largest CO2 sinks known to man. Imagine all that Carbon was once in the atmosphere.
This is inaccurate. Chalk is mainly an accumulation of the “tests” of foraminifera which are protists. They are microscopic and while a test might arguably be called a “shell” they are not remotely akin to sea shells. “[Shells]” are worn by molluscs and they are only a minor contributor to chalk and limestone formations. “Forams” are the cause of eyestrain and strange rings around the eyes of micropaleontology students. The rings are caused by falling asleep leaning on the microscope eye pieces late at night while cramming for lab tests.
That “sells” ought to be “shells”.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
October 19, 2013 at 1:43 am
…
That is a non-argument. All natural CO2 is removed by natural sinks + a part of human emissions. Thus the natural CO2 is simply circulating through the atmosphere. The 4% human emissions are additional…
The logic here is faulty. CO2 concentrations prior to any influence by industrial output, still varied with changes in ocean temperature, and are at present at or near the lowest levels of the Phanerozoic. There is no means of being certain that increases in CO2 at present are solely attributable to human action. At best, we can argue that the isotope ratios are being altered by human output, since oil and coal are both depauperate in C-13, so our contribution to the process ought to be seen in a change in dC-13 as you state. That in no way can be used as evidence that an increase in the atmospheric concentration is solely the result human action. In fact, since the end of the LIA occurs in the 19th century, it is fully expectable that atmospheric CO2 must increase as the oceans warm naturally. Also, as a simple philosophical point, it is mistaken to differentiate between “natural” and “human,” unless you are convinced that you show that humans are “unnatural” in some definitive qualitative fashion.
Policymakers in government must be frustrated as hell that after spending billions of dollars and euros on study after study, they still have nothing to nail skeptics “to the wall.”
Johannes Herbst says:
October 18, 2013 at 10:45 pm
“Germany isn’t loosing jobs or production through the “Energiewende”. Of course, average people have to pay more, but we are not suffering from it. We just use less.”
Johannes, first of all hello and welcome. Do you realize what you wrote is an oxymoron?
You have to pay more and average people have to use less… unless you are well-to-do, I’d say that is suffering. For some, it means the difference between eating and be able to heat/cool their home.
Also, just because your employment rate is lower than the rest of Europe doesn’t mean this GREEN agenda isn’t affecting the employment rate. The increased cost of energy means less money for people to spend on non-necessities and therefor means less demand for consumer goods and logically also means employment will be LOWER than it would otherwise have been if energy were less expensive.
Latitude says:
October 19, 2013 at 5:52 am
That is what I have been thinking too. Socialism is here. After O’care, the rest of the economy will fall like dominoes. Then the government can create taxes or raise them with no justification. After we have become England, who will be the world’s banker?
Hi again,
thanks for your response. I think I have to clear someting here.
First, I wanted to point out that talking about a desaster because of green energy in Germany is just a false statement. Nobody here sees the desaster, but we see some difficulties, which can be sorted out.
Second:
Alcheson said:
“You have to pay more and average people have to use less… unless you are well-to-do, I’d say that is suffering. For some, it means the difference between eating and be able to heat/cool their home.
Also, just because your employment rate is lower than the rest of Europe doesn’t mean this GREEN agenda isn’t affecting the employment rate. The increased cost of energy means less money for people to spend on non-necessities and therefor means less demand for consumer goods and logically also means employment will be LOWER than it would otherwise have been if energy were less expensive.”
You should face some more facte here in Germany:
-The Energiewende was supported from nearly all German (more than two thirds), not regarding any political colour. If a nation chooses to go in a certain direction, it should have the right to do so. And if there are difficulties, there is also enough knowledge and willingness to solve them.
-About fifty percent of the Renewable Energy production is in the hand of average people, privat house owners, small scale investors, and cooperatives. It’s also a movement against the energy giants. Some villages are even fully independent from any power supply.
-There is a lot of business around producing, Installing and maintainig RE devices, and to improve the enegergetic balance of houses, and it’s also a part of the economic growth here. So there is the choice to invest in something meaningful to save energy or to buy some meanigless luxury goods from China.
In General, if people would choose not to invest in Renewable Energy, they would possibly save the money for bad times, thus slowing down the economy.
Possibly you also have to get a picture about our culture here. We are just having a different point of view. Amarican seem to demand the right to get energy at low prices and to use as much as they can consume.
Here is the tendency to use less energy for the same purpose. One example from our family: We are seven persons in our family. We live in a house with about 1000 sqare feet living space. We have four cars, but only one income from my wife.
We have invested in one solar thermal system and a top-of-the-art woodburnig central heating. We use timber remains for heating, costing about 200 Euro per year. The walls of our farm house is two to three feet thick, so we need no air condtioner in summer. We have changed lighting to LED lamps, which will last a lifetime and use eonly 10% of the energy of normal bulbs.
we have two 3-Liter VW Lupo Diesel cars, a VW up! Eco fuel, (needing only about 10kg of CNG per tank filling, so we can pay the tanking bill with coins), and a VW TDI micro bus, using about 6 litres per 100 km. The electric energy we get from a green company to prices a bit below the normal rates. If we buy a new electric device, we look for lower energy consumption.
You get the idea? For us energy saving is fun! We enjoy it to save money through intelligent energy use. And we invest in High-Tech for that purpose. This is our luxury. Of course, not all Germany are like us, but we are not the only ones.
And one thing you should consider: We do it withouth beliving in AGW. I think the Idea of good stewardship – using our environment with the lowest impact is also a part of our culture – and being proud to save money and energy.
Yes, we are among the big countries in Europe the one with the best economy (and far better than the US for average people and the low income class). Our state Bavaria has even decided not to add any debts and we have started to reduce our debts.
Okay, still a lot to improve also here. But we will do. Starting this praise of our way of living started with the so-called “German desaster”. I like to point out that every sceptic should check carefully every fact he is telling. If the warmists are telling lies and semi-truth, we shouldn’t do that, should we?
Johannes, you are living in a dream world. The laws of economics are immutable. Some day, probably sooner rather than later, you will wake up to a cold, hard reality.
Meanwhile, enjoy your dream world while you can.
Ferdinand, is your 9 gigatons of CO2 emissions a genuine measurement or is it an estimate subject to considerable uncertainty? I have seen a lot of wildly varying figures all claiming to be a measurement of human emissions, so I am not at all convinced that we are measuring emissions accurately. Not even remotely in fact.
I’m therefore also not convinced that presenting that 9 gigaton figure, and also that nature is a net sink, as an indesputable fact can be so easily defended.
I love reading posts like this one, but guys, you’re preaching to the choir. Meanwhile the coal industry in the USA is being destroyed (only partly by tracking); the EPA is hiring tens of thousands to enforce CO2 restrictions; the media portrays a future of ‘Hurricane’ Sandys; and the official organ of the Establishment, NPR, constantly belittles the ‘deniers’ and drums out the looming dangers of ‘carbon’.
Is it going to take an economic collapse here in the US to wake people up enough to throw out the ideologues in government who mindlessly promote these myths and policies?
/Mr Lynn
Bruce Cobb says:
October 20, 2013 at 4:44 pm
Johannes, you are living in a dream world. The laws of economics are immutable. Some day, probably sooner rather than later, you will wake up to a cold, hard reality.
Meanwhile, enjoy your dream world while you can.
Hi again,
It’s all about culture, how you are brought up and how you see the world. I lived in Germany , England and Africa. Every [society] is different. And [everybody] wakes up from dreams. The Southern Europeans are waking up because they have used the Euro to establish a welfare on lent money. And the American dream seem to be over as well. A lot of poor, some very rich, and the middle class is diminishing. And the US indebted to the Chinese. A lot of strange things are going on. Every nation can decide to live in a certain way. And reality will correct things in the long run.
What I wanted to say in the beginning: There is no good or bad, no black [or] white. left or right. (BTW our conservative Parties CDU/CSU have more leftist ideas than Obama). It’s not only laws of economic. There are a lot of other standards a [society] can set, e.g. social security and welfare for everybody or how to deal with resources, or which kind of energy they use. If something is really bad, it will be corrected. But there are a lot of shades in a system one can use.
To come back to our topic: There is no economic [disaster] in Germany. And the economic [disaster] in some Southern European countries started in the U.S. through Lehman and consortes. And in Germany there will be no economic [disaster] in future through Green power. There will be some corrections, for sure. The pendulum will swing back and forth.
To use the word [disaster] is not appropriate in a discussion about climate and energy. Except one is an alarmist.,