Reposted from The NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 23. October 2021
Political energy mismanagement in Germany now risks inflicting tremendous pain on citizens as energy shortages intensify and prices skyrocket. Coming winter of discontent?
Energy prices going through the roof
By Fritz Vahrenholt, first published at Tichys Einblick
(Translated/edited by Pierre Gosselin)
Prices for natural gas, coal, oil and electricity have been rising massively since the middle of the year. The price of a kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity has almost tripled to 13 euro cents per kWh on the Leipzig wholesale electricity exchange.and the price of natural gas has increased fivefold.
Politics in Germany are not entirely uninvolved in the development of prices. The reasons are:
– Coal power phase-out between 2017 and 2021 throughout Europe and especially in Germany
– Tripling of CO2 certificate prices since 2020 from 20 to over 60 euros per ton of CO2. This also affects gas-fired power generation
– The switch from coal-fired power to more expensive gas-fired power
– Global increase in demand for gas as a result of the post-pandemic economic recovery
– Extremely weak German wind year from January to September 2021
Although Russia has delivered exactly the volumes of gas as ordered by gas importers, obviously not enough gas has been ordered, as even Chancellor Merkel admitted.
Electricity prices are also shooting up
Electricity prices for industry have tripled, and household electricity will rise from 31 euro-cent/kWh to around 40 euro cent/kwh. Well over half of the electricity price is taxes, surcharges and levies. There would be plenty of opportunity for the German government to reduce costs.
There won’t be electricity to power electric cars
Another serious problem will soon be the shortage of secure power generation because of Germany’s nuclear and the coal phase-out, which has already begun. Not only is this driving up prices. There will be risks of power supply outages during the winter, with possible targeted or involuntary shutdowns to keep the grid from collapsing.
By 2030, there will be neither power for a single additional electric car nor additional CO2-free power for industry. Never mind the heat supply.
Here is the original article’s title in German, “Die Energiepreise gehen durch die Decke.” Interesting that the original in German is “ceiling.”
“Roof” is more accurate 😀
Indeed. Mostly it’s misleading to translate an idiom of a foreigen language word by word. Every Britain knows “It’s raining cats and dogs”. If one would it tranlate to German word by word the people would be very …insecure. 🙂
It’s not unusual,
What Germans use in general 😀
It’s pouring like a bucket
it’s raining strippers
it’s raining twine
It’s pissing
it’s raining young dogs
Just checked…7:40pm GMT and no Griff posts yet…
Griff, please complain about how the price debacle is all fossil fuels fault. Must include a detailed synopsis on what pricing would have been with no fossil fuel in the mix.
Once when watching 2 Liga football on a sports channel I actually heard the commentator say ‘Es regnet Katzen und Hunden’.
Gerry, the correct wording in German would be: “Es regnet Katzen und Hunde”. Don’t ask why, the plural of “Hund” is “Hunde” and the plural of “Katze” is “Katzen” German is as tricky as English. 🙂
If energy prices go through the roof will that destroy the solar panels on the roof? Another unforeseen consequence of allowing emotive greens to play at engineering?
Outdoors prices go ‘sky high’
But the Green Blob will insist on doubling down on wind and solar, because. . .?
Because it delivers high energy prices.
Barack Obama: “Under my plan of a cap and tiirade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. (January 2008)”
He talked like it was a good thing too!
First time in US history that a presidential candidate talked like that & not only didn’t get called out on it, got elected and then re-elected.
Amazing how he managed to pull that off too. Or maybe that was the trial run for Biden. Wonder how they dropped the ball in 2016, however.
Told you so – 8+ years ago.
We are governed by scoundrels and imbeciles.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/blind-faith-in-climate-models/#comment-1130954
AN OPEN LETTER TO BARONESS VERMA, OCTOBER 31, 2013
By Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng.
[excerpt]
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, Baroness Verma, then you and your colleagues on both sides of the House may have brewed the perfect storm.
You are claiming that global cooling will NOT happen, AND you have crippled your energy systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected “green energy” schemes.
I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Britain will get colder.
I also suggest that the IPCC and the Met Office have NO track record of successful prediction (or “projection”) of global temperature and thus have no scientific credibility.
I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the UK as cooling progresses.
I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality, the British rate of which is about double the rate in the Scandinavian countries, should provide an estimate of this unfolding tragedy.
As always in these matters, I hope to be wrong. These are not numbers, they are real people, who “loved and were loved”.
Best regards to all, Allan MacRae
“Turning and tuning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer…” Yeats
Post Script
MacRae’s 2013 Open Letter was verified in 2021, with extreme cold winter forecasts and a green-energy-crippled electrical grid in Britain and Germany:
EUROPE IS SWITCHING BACK TO COAL TO SURVIVE BLEAK WINTER
My latest paper is temporarily published here:
“SCIENTIFIC COMPETENCE – THE ABILITY TO CORRECTLY PREDICT”
by Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., October 2021
http://correctpredictions.ca/
(excerpt)
The ability to correctly predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence.
Following are the correct predictions of Allan MacRae and colleagues on two important subjects:
– GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM
– COVID-19 LOCKDOWNS AND ”VACCINES”
Our scientific predictions on both these subjects are infinitely more accurate than the mainstream narratives, which have been false and baselessly alarmist to date.
Tsk tsk Mr. MacRae,
Nitpick:-
” …. to predict correctly” …. . not ” …. to correctly predict …. “
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
– Yogi Maharaj Mahadev Berra, Tantric philosopher, baseball catcher
Seadog barks at Gene Roddenberry. Set phasers on “Stun”.
“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Good hint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNb41CUhQDs
with Nash The Slash, 2010
or the original 1976
For those liking Cameron Hawkins from Canada, 2nd song, Phasors on Stun, Nearfest 2006, follwing LP “Black Noise”
Yes, Mr. MacRae, but that is a split infinative as well and doesn’t make the syntax correct.
Brilliant paper from you, though.
What Are Split Infinitives? | Lexico
What’s wrong with split infinitives?Some people believe that split infinitives are grammatically incorrect and should be avoided at all costs. They would rewrite these sentences as:
She used secretly to admire him.
You really have to watch him.
But there’s no real justification for their objection, which is based on comparisons with the structure of Latin. People have been splitting infinitives for centuries, especially in spoken English, and avoiding a split infinitive can sound clumsy. It can also change the emphasis of what’s being said.
Used in a sentence:
This very attractive girl used to drop over to my place and ask me to split her infinitive.
…and split infinitives are something up with which we will not put.
An oldie but goodie. Throw the cow over the fence some hay.
Where is the infinitive?
“Sometimes splitting the infinitive gives the statement a bit more punch, i.e.,”To boldly go where no man has gone before….”
I suspect witches will be blamed.
They might decide to blame us skeptics….
Double, double, toil and trouble, we might be for sure.
We also predicted this outcome in more general terms, way back in 2002.
Another excerpt from my latest paper:
CORRECT CLIMATE AND ENERGY PREDICTIONS FROM 2002
The perfect Trifecta – my work here is done.
In 2002 co-authors Dr Sallie Baliunas, Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian, Dr Tim Patterson, Paleoclimatologist, Carleton, Ottawa and Allan MacRae published:
1. “Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
2. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Allan MacRae published on September 1, 2002, based on a conversation with Dr. Tim Patterson:
3. “If [as we believe] solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
MacRae modified his global cooling prediction in 2013:
3a. “I suggest global cooling starts by 2020 or sooner. Bundle up.”
See electroverse.net for extreme-cold events and crop losses all over our planet.
This global cooling is primarily solar-induced, driven by the end of very-weak Solar Cycle 24 (SC24) and the beginning of very-weak SC25, as I published in 2002 – one year before Theodor Landscheidt’s famous 2003 global cooling prediction.
I agree. Solar cycle 25 is failing. The sunspots have been shrinking in size and as the magnetic field strength of the flux tubes that rise up to form sunspot groups on the surface of the sun decreases.
There is going to be high latitude cooling and there will be the start of cyclone storms in the winter, fall, and spring. High levels of GCR cause changes in the ionosphere which cause cyclone storms in the spring, winter, and fall. Cyclones also form about geomagnetic anomalies.
The Greenland Ice cores show a cyclic tenfold increase in dust from the Sahara desert when there is a cyclic abrupt cooling event. The cyclic abrupt cooling events correlate with solar changes are followed by drops in the geomagnetic field strength.
Re-occurring regular and long duration, cyclone storms are required to cause mountain glaciers to expand and to create the continental glaciers.
The geomagnetic field strength was dropping at 10% per century. It is now dropping at 10% per decade, in strength. The drop in field strength is caused by the sudden reduction in the geomagnetic field in the Southern Hemisphere.
http://news.yahoo.com/earths-magnetic-field-weakening-10-times-faster-now-121247349.html
“Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now
…Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.
Floberghagen hopes that more data from Swarm will shed light on why the field is weakening faster now….”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X17303138
“One of the striking characteristics of the present geomagnetic field is a region denoted the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), where the total field intensity is unusually low. There, the field intensity reaches less than 60% of the field strength at comparable latitudes.
The location of the minimum has moved from Southern Africa to South America over the last 300 yr (Mandea et al., 2007; Hartmann and Pacca, 2009). The total dipole strength has diminished by 9% from 1840 to 2015, although the field decrease occurs non-uniformly over the globe.
Australia will be following Germany closely behind. Hallelujah!
Does Australia follow the Enron Spot-price scam?
How does it smell, Australia?
But at least the Antipodes has time to react, with the seasons being about 6 months out-of-phase with Europe. We are just entering Spring here, with slowly warming temperatures I am sure most of us look forward to Global Warming, every year!
No, crikey!
Is that a hockey stick in your pocket, or…
Al Gore says he has a huge chakra.
Once some people become enamored with hockey stick shapes, they want to see them everywhere.
I wonder what psychology would make of this?
Have Lewandowski & Cook had a paper published about hockey stick fixation?
lewinski?
Close, but no cigar!
Lewandowski is a psycho-climatologist who helps out his buddy, John Cook, with snake-oil and climate propaganda.
Lewandowski is not a climatologist
The first part of the word may be accurate
Of course he’s not a climatologist. I know exactly who he is and how he has become involved with the whole fraud. I was trying to be facetious.
He’s a quack government paid psychologist with pretensions of an intellect. He specializes in character assassination and gas lighting anyone who is not a fully paid up member of the AGW cult. Take a good look at his face and you’ll see the face of true insanity.
From 5 years ago …
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/27/intellectual-yet-idiotic-the-sad-case-of-stephan-lewandowsky/
“In a very recently published paper Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines the “intellectual yet idiot” as a bureaucrat paid by the taxpayer who “pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited.”
The discussion is also very enlightening.
The truly amazing thing is that other governments around the world will not look at what’s happening in those countries that have rabidly pursued the Green Energy scam. They are all afraid of being left behind in the Great Transition. I think being left behind when others are screwing themselves up is an excellent position, but that’s very much a minority viewpoint with Green Energy.
France is looking strongly what happens in Germany and are far of following the German silly way.
Both France and Britain are going more nuclear.
I hope so. a year ago it was all ‘phase out nuclear completely’ in both countries…
not true
France is 70% nuclear and happy with it, exporting to many other countries and earning $
.gov.uk white paper “powering our net zero future” page 58 (etc) published Dec 2020 20% Nuclear target and more funds for growth etc.
or did you mean that it was an unattributed quote in the media somewhere
Yes Germany is still intending to shut its last 6 remaining nuclear plants by the end of 2022-just over a year away. Madness!
Not true – Putin identified precisely the problem – see post above. China also. I wonder who will actually attend the witches choir COP26?
Its amazing that any politician that has followed the ongoing Developed/Developing country debates would choose to attend a guaranteed political failure like COP26. I can only assume they have come up with some schemes to paper-over the obvious disconnects. The rub, however, is that Russian and Chinese leaders won’t attend and India has already told the West to stuff it.
Maybe “Weekend at Brandon’s” will promise money the U.S. Congress will never appropriate? Maybe Australia will be coerced into a (false) Net Zero 2050 pledge? The possibilities are endless.
But, despite MSM spin, COP26 will be an obvious failure to most observers. The “leaders” will even preen in response to their sycophants’ blandishments, not realizing that most people can see the Emperors’ have no clothes.
Voters will sort it out in the coming years: “… you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Hard reality always wins out; it is the amount of pain involved that is unknown.
Dave,
“Voters will sort it out in the coming years: “… you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Hard reality always wins out; it is the amount of pain involved that is unknown.”
Well, it does depend on whether the poor voters get offered a choice, or just three or four varieties of watermelon, which we, in the UK, now appear to have.
Auto
Vividly aware that the Blond is not a Tory, even if he won the last election, but only because more souls voted against his opponent – the unloved Corbyn.
The leaders and their green handlers must be insanely stupid, or so drunk on their own ‘koold-aid’ they can’t tell the difference from reality on their own political crap.
Wouldn’t any sane eco-leftist, knowing that there is nothing to be done with COP26, just cancel it and blame it on the most recent COVID numbers, or some such? Are they so desparate for a free luxury junket that they don’t care how much tax payers’ money they waste?
And in general, if the eco-nazis were smart about pushing an energy transition, that they would push for a natural gas – nuclear base, while turbines and solar panels, and batteries continue to develop? They must be so brainwashed, they don’t know right from left and think that the green tech can just be legislated into existance, even if it would violate laws of physics.
The beauty of the Left is that they always push too far. They mistake their ability to “fool all of the people some of the time” with the validity of their ideology.
Collectivist ideology destroys it’s host society. Only with overwhelming force can that be imposed and maintained for awhile. That is not possible over time in a nominally democratic society.
The only question is how long the ideology can be papered-over before the wheels fall off. It took 70 years for the Soviet Union to collapse because they were ruthless in suppressing dissent. I’m not sure Western militaries will be so compliant.
Never be the first lemming over the cliff……
No major surprise, of course! It’s a pity the MSM turns a blind eye to anything that goes against its fake “climate emergency” and “renewable energy” narrative.
The laws of physics & thermodynamics will have the last laugh over our incompetent and frankly dangerously ignorant political class. Unfortunately, people will die from epidemic of stupidity.
You are correct. Thermodynamics is clear that CO2 does care about IR otherwise there would multiple columns in specific heat tables listing energy required. One without IR and one with.
Thermodynamics says the energy can be in “any form”.
“does NOT care”?
Let’s celebrate Green Dream Policy /s
Hockey sticks everywhere.
The fashion statement at COP26 will be hockey sticks emanating from behinds.
They’ll blame excess winter death on COVID and individual failure to boost, vaccinate, lockdown and wear masks.
“Extremely weak German wind year from January to September 2021”
Blame it on climate change! :-}
Not enough wind turbines, build more!!
/sarc
Please don’t joke., That is precisely what a Telegraph columnist (was paid to?) write…
Writers of the Telegraph should better called Clowns.
Krishna,
True, mostly.
And the Torygraph is a right of centre rag in the UK.
Sometimes, it even gets things right-ish.
Auto
It never ceases to amaze me the complete lack of economic understanding people have. The laws of supply and demand are even more immutable than many hard science laws. Price is the intersection of the supply and demand curve. All Germany is doing is shifting the supply curve left (restricting supply), which causes the intersection (the price) to go up.
From distributor’s point of view they are now removing some forms of energy sources, thus moving the demand curve right for other forms of energy (duh) which causes the intersection (the price) to go up. (Funny how this happens) This is exactly what the apparatchiks want – the rest of us to pay higher prices while everything is free for them.
There is more to it – see TASS link above…
Bill is correct. Germany’s ‘new’ energy sources have not been able to meet demand while many ‘old’ energy sources were closed due to govt policy. Most Energy requirements are inelastic therefore causing a price surge with a modest decrease in supply
“Another serious problem will soon be the shortage of secure power generation because of Germany’s nuclear and the coal phase-out, which has already begun. ”
Like starving to death . Malthusian idiots !
Partly right. Whilst nuclear in Germany is due to be completely phased out by the end of 2022 (next year!) the coal plants currently will only be fully phased out by 2038.
I don’t understand. Isn’t this what they voted for? Why are they complaining?
“Extremely weak German wind year from January to September 2021”
Never heard about “butterfly effect”?
Here, somebody build a lot of wind resistance through new “windmills” and then asks “why the wind is not blowing”.
Why should it?
The windmills have a direct climate effect: they do change the global wind patterns.
I find it extremely dangerous!
All these windmills can only produce electricity by taking the energy out of the wind. Given this, it is not surprising that the UK is suffering a “wind stilling”. The question is: is this a small effect which will be not enough to worry about over time, or has a “tipping point” (that position beloved of climate alarmists) been reached which means that the wind velocity will continue to decrease. If the latter, this means that no matter how many extra windmills you put up, you will never get any more power from them than you do now.
So back to coal, and we in Australia have plenty of coal to sell to you – at a decent price.
Rather like the alarmist, who views everything through his 70-year lifespan, without reference to the happenings over the previous x millions of years of Earth’s existence. Most engineers understand that it is merely a matter of scale!
“Wind stilling” there is no such thing as renewable energy. That pesky thing call entropy get in the way.
Prices for natural gas, coal, oil and electricity have been rising massively since the middle of the year. The price of a kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity has almost tripled to 13 euro cents per kWh on the Leipzig
___________________________________________________________________________
An increase of 0.09 cents will result in a cost of about 90 euros per month, if usage is 1000 kWh, and it’s probably less than that. While as much as 90 euros isn’t chicken feed, it’s affordable and isn’t going to cause the proverbial shit to hit the fan yet. That will happen when electricity is shut off and other alternative energy shortages are legislated out of existence.
The banning of natural gas, oil and coal coupled with a refusal to employ nuclear power will finally wake people up, but by then it will be too late and the Marxists will be dancing in the streets as their stated goal of “The destruction of western civilization and capitalism” will have been finally achieved.
Steve Case,
Boris Johnson and his government are to host the imminent CoP.
They are not Marxists. They are members of the same political party as Margaret Thatcher who – for reasons of personal advantage – elevated anthropogenic global warming (AGW) from an obscure scientific hypothesis into an international political issue.
Richard
Leftist submarine 😀
Krishna Ganz,
I wish you were right that Boris et al. were a “Leftist submarine”. Sadly. the ‘left v right’ contest on AGW is confined to the USA and almost everywhere else AGW is supported by politicians of all ideologies.
AGW is a bandwagon that can be used to support almost any political desire.
People join a bandwagon that is going in a direction useful to them. No conspiracy is required for people to join nor for them to stay on a bandwagon. And a bandwagon is powered by the self interest of each person and each organisation riding on it.
Richard
It wasn’t a very serious comment as it’s followed by a 😀
Kristina Gans,
I accept your comment was not intended to be serious but whatever your intention it was potentially very serious.
Opposition to AGW can only be effective if it addresses the nature of support for AGW. Establishing a ‘fight’ between left and right wastes resources that could be used to oppose support of AGW which is being provided from both left and right. Indeed, I often suspect attempts to establish the ‘fight’ are a deliberate disruption provided by people ‘waving a false flag’.
Richard
In no particular order:
_____________________________________________________________
“Shutting down the whole economy is the only way of limiting global warming to 2°C” Yvo de Boer head of the UNFCCC
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.
George Soros
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” –
Maurice Strong, Chairman – World Economic Forum
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” – Christiana Figueres, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary
“We’ve got to go straight to the heart of capitalism and overthrow it.
George Monbiot April 12, 2019
_________________________________________________________
There are others that are more circumspect in what they say, but they’ve been with us since the October Revolution and they’ve been working very hard to achieve world domination. More than a few of them have probably started to pick out their dancing shoes and ballet slippers.
“The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.
George Soros”
Now Biden’s in charge, Soros has unintentionally got it right
Soros is still upset that the US won the cold war.
Paranoia, Steve, paranoia; if your list of people (or others) ever got together to effectuate their conspiracy, they would wind up killing each other off because of ideological differences. One cannot share power and hope to control the outcomes.
Actually they will wind up killing off most of humanity before they turn on each other.
Great Selection !
AGW was a convenient device for Maggie at the time to demonize coal and deligitimize unionised coal miners for political cover.
She later outed herself as an AGW heretic.
The unionised coal miners delegitimized themselves.
Mr. Anonymous,
No, as I said,
“Boris Johnson and his government are to host the imminent CoP.
They are not Marxists. They are members of the same political party as Margaret Thatcher who – for reasons of personal advantage – elevated anthropogenic global warming (AGW) from an obscure scientific hypothesis into an international political issue.”
Her political party, the Conservative and Unionist Party (aka the Tories) went along with it because they blamed the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) as scapegoats for the collapse and defeat of the incompetent Heath administration.
If you want to know why and how she created the AGW scare then read this
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/richard-courtney-the-history-of-the-global-warming-scare/
Also, as I say in the discussion below my article at the link,
“Yes, Mrs Thatcher was a politician and she used AGW as a political ‘tool’.
I suspect she was shocked to discover she had acted as ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ and her political ‘tool’ had grown out of her control. Lord Monckton can provide a fuller explanation of how she reacted to that discovery than I can.”
Richard
PS I, too, would not have put my name to so unconsidered a comment as yours.
Whoa Richard.
Settle down mate.
Step away from that lectern.
Set them hackles back down to horizontal.
I agreed with you.
Pro tip – whenever you roll out that old “MT was an adherent to the AGW religion” bit, you need to supply the rider that once out of politics, she called it for what it was – bullshit.
Mr Anonymous,
I addressed your misunderstanding below in a reply to Mark W who had stated the same mistake.
The matter is important because it demonstrates the AGW scare has been a political issue – n.b. not a scientific issue – from its inception by Lady Thatcher who created the scare for purely personal reasons.
Richard
except Margaret in her memoirs wrote the AGW stuff and Houghton’s reading of it all was basically extreme hyped bollox!
pigs-in-space,
Your comment has no relationship to anything down here on planet Earth,
I repeat to you what I said to another in a comment above.
“If you want to know why and how she created the AGW scare then read this
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/richard-courtney-the-history-of-the-global-warming-scare/ ”
Richard
The party has drifted far to the left since Thatcher’s day.
AGW was far from an obscure hypothesis in Thatcher’s day as well.
MarkW,
Historical revisionism is one of several practices of political extremists.
Historical reality was as I said in the article I have twice linked above, i.e.
“The hypothesis of man-made global warming has existed since the 1880s. It was an obscure scientific hypothesis that burning fossil fuels would increase CO2 in the air to enhance the greenhouse effect and thus cause global warming. Before the 1980s this hypothesis was usually regarded as a curiosity because the nineteenth century calculations indicated that mean global temperature should have risen more than 1°C by 1940, and it had not. Then, in 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher (now Lady Thatcher) became Prime Minister of the UK, and she elevated the hypothesis to the status of a major international policy issue.”
A few (notably Bert Bolin) tried to make AGW into a scare before Thatcher did it but they were ignored because prior to her success Global Cooling (together with ‘acid rain’) was the alarmist’s climate campaign.
Richard
Richard
You are of course correct, however it is the left that has taken this and turned it into a bludgeon to scare people into giving up their freedoms. The left takes and turns everything to their purpose, which nothing less then total submission of all people to their way. As i have said to you many times before, socialism can work just fine if you get a group of like minded people together that agree to live as a collective group, it can function inside the umbrella of a free market system just like any corporation can do, but “socialist always gravitate to political power and forcing everyone to live by their rules, why? I trust you and respect you, as a socialist please explain why I have to live by your rules?
Craig
The Merkels and BoJos of this world are self hating globalists. They appear to support the goals of Soros and Schwab which will ultimately result in the demise of Western society.
At some point the people who voted for the Merkels, Bojos, Morrisons and Bidens will be gobsmacked by the realization they can’t afford to heat their homes, cook their food or get to work with electricity produced by unicorn farts.
Steve, it appears to me that you have let paranoia overwhelm both your powers of observation and critical thinking skills: 1) With the media, if it bleeds it leads; “affordable” has nothing to do with it. 2) Voters will not accept unneeded privation; opportunistic politicians will zero-in on that. 3) No governmental entity (nor conceivable combinations thereof) has/have the ability to ban gas, oil and coal; reality always rears its ugly head. 4) Marxism requires total control and force to prevail. 5) Marxism’s excesses always lead to its destruction.
” …you have let paranoia overwhelm both your powers of observation and critical thinking skills…”
__________________________________________________________
Let’s just say I don’t see a rosy future. I can only hope that you will turn out to be right.
I can barely afford the electric bill as it now, and I’m in nuclear/hydro rich Ontario. How is doubling my bill affordable? How is increasing the price of electricity – which will then increase the price of everything else made or supplied in the economy going to be OK and affordable?
Germany’s gone from paying “only” three times as much for power, to paying five times as much as I do in Florida.
…and I was shocked to find out the Euro has dropped so much versus the dollar. It’s down to 1.16:1.
Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas!
Keep voting for the ecofanatics and financial ruin is what you get.
Putin accurately identified the problem at the Sochi Conference – Spot-Pricing instead of long-term contracts.
Gas under long-term contracts 4 times cheaper for EU than spot contracts — Putin
https://tass.com/economy/1352739
Who in the Ranch at the Crooked EU imposed the discredited Enron model, the Ranch at the Crooked E of Houston TX infamy? Everyone knows how this played out?
Free-market Milton Friedman ideology knows no bounds. Problem this ideology is worse than COVID19, all parties are infected, and masks do not work.
So, a toxic combination of green intermittent energy AND radical free-market ideology has produced pricing fireworks!
A vaccine does exist, and long term contracts are better than ventilators!
Your TASS article clearly states that the switch to spot prices was a result of “gas market regulation”, that is, a non-market decision by eurotechnocrats for whatever belief.
Anyone who read/understand Friedman will never think he was a champion of “market regulation”…
The Cabinet Minister was laughing.
They decided that everyone who attends COP26 had to be driven around by an electric car.
But so many people are coming they’ve realised they haven’t enough charging points.
So they’ve been scrambling to find diesel generators to help boost the capacity.’
A second Cabinet Minister was struggling to find the funny side.
I’m sick of it. Every time I do a speech, they try to slide some more COP nonsense into it.
Something about telling people to do less washing-up, or eat less meat. It’s ridiculous.’
DAN HODGES: Save the planet, Boris, by axeing a farcical summit (msn.com)
Popcorn time folks!
Look, chi’drens, this ain’t rocket surgery or brain science. The only “renewable” energy sources are oil, gas, coal, hydro and nuclear. Wind mills and solar are utter failures, precisely as leftards intended them to be. Destroying energy production, and along with it agriculture/manufacturing/transportation, has always been the ultimate goal of the political left. Anything else they say is a f**king lie.
Some, like Mr. Morano, are warning about coming Climate Lock-downs. Well, back in Britain this appeared :
Deleted Report: Corona Shows Public Have ‘Deep Set Reverence’ for Govt But Hate Elite Hypocrisyhttps://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/10/22/report-corona-shows-public-have-deep-set-reverence-for-govt/
It looks like COVID policy is being used by behavioral psychologists to ‘nudge’ people into accepting an imposed breakdown in the economy. Britain’s BIT, Behavioural Insights Team, is on the job. As Obama brought this stuff into the White House for Obamacare, some who claim they are ‘in sync’ with D.C. likely believe in the same stuff.
So the NUDGE has become PUSH to SHOVE, not so polite. Davos must be completely desperate.
I’m wondering why a lockdown would be necessary in order to fight climate change. How would that work? You can’t leave your house because of CO2?
Drop energy use so the price should go down, at least according to “supply and demand” dogma. Already there is legislation to limit EV charging hours. Other countries are bracing for blackouts – behavioral response is sure to ‘lock-down’.
As the german greens would put it: wind power is already generating 70 gigabyte(!) of electricity (quote: Cem Özdemir), which is stored in the grid(!!) (quote: Annalena Bearbock), so there will be little need for batteries requiring “Kobold” (!!!) (quote: Annalena Bearbock).
And these science sorcerer will be part of the coming gouvernement… unbelievable
That is hilarious, if it were not so destructive, but the most toxic element, ìntoned by almost all parties, is the irrational belief in Spot-Pricing, from the Enron scam in 2001. This is taught as economic dogma free-market theory in the hallowed halls of academia!
The witches brew of boil-and-bubble, has always a warlock running the show.
I’m surprised that there isn’t a post about the Gore Effect at COP26! They are forecast for well below normal temps and SNOW! The bloviating snake oil salesmen will have to have their planes deiced.
If only it were true. My weather reports have the lows in the mid 40’s. So no snow and no deicing either.
The Met Office has it at 9-11 celsius during copfest; somewhat warm perhaps. It would be interesting for them to have to deal with a few inches of snow as well.
Suggest you visit WeatherbellAnalytics and watch Joe Batardi’s current Saturday Summary video.
You have to hand to the EU in its orderly processes and regulations leading up to the chaos. Don’t call them haphazard or asleep or blundering Uncle Joe style. They are determined to drive this situation in the wrong direction and blame winter and a tiny virus for their “unprecedented” problems.
Sooner there is some form of collapse the sooner their warming theories will collapse
You’re welcome from Happy Valley, Pa. /s
Redistributive change, affirmative discrimination, and lowered expectations. What did people expect?
I can see in this UK winter, with gas shortages, high prices, a series of rolling blackouts when a high pressure system moves over the UK, an interconnector from the mainland Europe fails. With only 3 days of gas in reserve, our gas powered electrical generation would be stopped immediately to conserve gas and keep homes warm (ish).
Our nuclear electrical generators will be running maxed out providing power homes and offices perhaps one day power week. (Since nuclear only provides about 20% of the total in normal conditions).
With heavy industry shut, we would scrape through with empty fridges and freezers for a week or two.
Then the wind blows and its all back to normal! Phew.
Of course, when you are blacked out, your gas fired heating system does not run. Oh dear!
They will soon be urging people to unplug their refrigerators and freezers. No sense wasting the electricity just to keep a smidgen of food cold. And if you do need refrigeration, set a pail of water out at night, let it freeze, then put it in the fridge. Bring back the old fashion iceboxes.
Might be a good time to research how people lived a hundred years, or so, ago, when the electricity was turned off every night.
You are assuming that the pumps providing water to homes will still work in a black out.
Now I finally understand the Butterfly Effect. A simple turning up of the thermostat in a Congressional meeting room in 1988 before James Hansen testified lead to untold misery thousands of miles away and across the globe. More importantly, you can’t stop it now can you Boris or Ursula?
It should be called “the Propaganda Effect”.
This landed in an email just now….
I Am Not Trying Nor Have ANY Wish to Derail This Thread
but – just look at the similarities between what he’s talking here (Covid) with Climate Science & Energy Policy
(My high-lighting)
Quote:”Covid expert Dr. Peter McCullough stated in a lecture to a large audience in Michigan on September 24 that “We’re in the middle of a major catastrophe.” In his lecture, he said “there has been an injection of a substance into half of Americans’ bodies and there’s yet to be a report to America on safety.” Noting that every industry has high standards of safety, he said it’s “beyond astonishing” that there is no independent safety monitoring system for this situation. “We never let the company decide on the causality of a problem. We never let a company tell us if a product is safe,” McCullough said, and “Not having a Data Safety Monitoring Board will go down in history as a colossal misstep in public health.”
…………what is really going on in this world right now………..
Morano is right – climate lock-downs loom, bevioral psyhology at play – see post..
My family is directly responsible for being recipients of 6 of the 6.8B global vaccine tests with no ill effects. My Brother died for the disease before the vaccine was available. I have nothing bad to say about the shot…except…it should but doesn’t prevent you from getting the virus. (So not a true vaccine) I couldn’t imagine the Polio Vaccine considered successful if you could still get and pass on Polio after getting the vaccine.
What is the German for ‘schadenfreude’….😉
Just capitalize the first letter, Kumpel.
Tell me what the English transltion is 😀
‘Boris Johnson.’
Who was it that said you may not turn back in Stalingrad, keep fighting no matter the cost?
Goebbels sent Christmass Trees by airlift when the soldiers begged for heavy winter garments. This kind of unbelievable cynicism seems to be still in play…
Cynicism? It just depends on the point of view.
Instead of heavy winter garments he sent them CO2 neutral heating material!
Stalingrad is a very good analogy for this
It just occurred to me here in Californistan that the push for green (lack of) energy and the push to eliminate gas powered vehicles in favor of all the now well known eco-damage/slave labor supporting consequences of electric battery vehicles does make sense: As soon as we all have electric cars and trucks they will ration the little electricity available and thereby accomplish what they always have wanted, which among other things is for almost everyone to stop driving and to control when and where we do drive. The government crazies out here are quite calculating, and while I thought their heads would explode trying to deal with the truth about battery manufacture and waste on the one hand, and elimination of fossil fuels on the other hand, I now see they go hand-in-hand with a much longer view to their ultimate goal of travel restriction, housing density, government transit control, HVAC control, and etc. for the hoi polloi. Wow. Clever. Diabolical.
The California government was been seizing more power and we have allowed them to do this.
Things could be worse. We could have nonprofits seeking funds for gain of function research and rogue nations testing nukes and ballistic missiles. I hear Scotland is just beautiful this time of year.
The EU are going to be stuffed if China decides to pay a visit. How can govt officials be so stupid.
Because these govt officials have been practicing for years after weeding out many of those with some degree of sense. The whole EU setup has not rewarded the intelligent, just those stupid people who don’t rock the boat.
According to the EIA site, Germany has imported almost 300% of the amount of coal from the U.S. than it did in 2020; the Netherlands up over 45%, and Great Britain up over 37%.
What I’m curious about is why did the coal-fired powerplants in China allow their stocks of coal to get so low? This seems to be a problem across the nation, so it’s not just the fault of poor planning on an individual powerplant supervisor’s part. It must have been as a result of an order of some kind from higher authorities. But ordering your coal-fired powerplants to run short of coal doesn’t any sense.
Banning the import of Australian coal for a year has probably forced their stocks of coal to be used up. As they import more coal than any other country, that is an awful lot of coal suddenly required from elsewhere. Other large importers such as Japan and India probably have secured long-term supply contracts at fixed price, so only relatively small amounts may be available to purchase on the open/spot market.
The wonderful benefits of a centrally-controlled society.
That’s what it sounds like.
Has anybody heard anything from the people formerly responsible for coal policy in China?
They’ve ramped up internal production of coal about as far as they can go for the moment, but they’ve been building more coal plants than they have coal to supply them with. With the moratorium on imported Australian coal, they’ve been burning through their reserves faster than they can be replenished.
Bringing coal to Newcastle is now established as a good (and necessary) thing. Thanks to Maggie Thatcher?
Oh my . . . another hockey stick graph! . . . big difference is that this one is real.
… and it was caused by “climate change” 🙂
When elected ‘progressives’ flaunt their unassailable superiority in knowledge and analysis of ‘climate change’ and predictions of the future, then apply these noble principles to governance of their fellow citizens, it takes more than one application of the real world to wake them from their upper-class dream. We’re seeing the first real-world application in these skyrocketing German prices and plummeting German access to any electrical power at all.
For every action an equal and opposite reaction: those German citizens now irrevocably facing extortionate pricing and negative availability of power will precede their arrogant government in waking up in outrage, and their temporary ‘progressivism’ will fall off like melting sheet ice. The next elections could become the Grand Oustings of the Century.
“next elections” in Germany will probably be several years away, since Germany just had a federal election, in which the Greens secured a position in the putative government coalition. The Greens have long campaigned against fossil fuels, and against the new Nordstream 2 pipeline in particular.
Schaden Freude will enjoy an interesting and amusing time for the next few years watching the Greens justify their policies to the public as they try to avoid freezing in the dark..
I suspect the German people will not agree that they elected a government bent on freezing and impoverishing them. What methods are there in Germany for legally removing elected officials?
I rarely know what “price” for electricity is being discussed in such articles. For example, when discussing “40 euro cent/kwh it is easy enough to convert euro cent to US cents, but just what is the number? Is it the price of electricity delivered to the home meter or is it the price of electricity alone, without the delivery charge, taxes and fees. Here in Southern Maryland, for example, I pay about 6 cents/kwh for just the electricity and another 6 cents/kwh for delivery, taxes and other charges – a total of 12 cents/kwh on my bill.
It appears you live in an area that allows you to buy electricity from any utility that will sell it to you, even Renewable energy. When you purchase electricity that way the company that has the wires and distribution system that connect your home to the “grid” can charge you their cost for delivering your electricity to you. Your real cost of electricity is the sum of the two. Usually, a utility that offers this “service” is selling electricity at competitive rates to the others that you can buy from if/when you consider that you may be getting Renewable and the home utility does not.
All I know is that Germany, for example, has some of the lowest wholesale prices for electricity in Europe and also some of the highest retail prices. As others stated earlier more than half the domestic electricity price is taxes and surcharges (largely to subsidise unreliables).
Can Germans even afford to run a refrigerator or a freezer at that cost? Years ago, when I no longer had a real need for a freezer I got rid of it. My electric bill decreased by over $7.00 a month, and that was at 6 cents (US) per kwH. The government efficiency tag on my refrigerator says it will cost me ~$100 /year at $0.06/kwH. That means even a refrigerator is going to cost over €80 – 90 per month ion Germany.
You may want to save the plastic milk bottles, fill them with water and set them out to freeze each night. Then swap out the ones in your fridge each morning/night.
Please note – ONLY THE UBER RICH CAN AFFORD THE MYTH OF RENEWABLE ENERGY.
Blame it on the chip shortage and COVID19–the climate communications consultants team says so.
The more I see of these kinds of things, the more I am reminded of an overdone pot of gravy that is starting to both stick to the pan and boil in the middle, because the pot is not being stirred adequately.
Something is going to come out of all of this turmoil. I have plenty of popcorn and butter, but I’ll have to go get more soft drinks, ham and whole grain bread and Dijon mustard and pickles, and potato chips and make a big pot of this ultra-wonderful veggie/beans/sausage soup to go with it all. And cheesecake — gotta have cheesecake!
It’s almost like watching some thing trying to decide whether to erupt and spew goop everywhere, or just slink away into a dark corner and sulk. And it’s everywhere.
Curiously at this moment on U.K. gridwatch we are exporting more than a GW to France, rather than the other way around. What’s the story there? Are the Germans leaning on France to shut down nuclear like they have with the Belgians?
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
Quite high nuclear generation in the U.K. just now at about 5 GW, second highest contributor after wind (but stable and on-demand so worth more).
I suspect but am not sure that the UK grid wants to have 40% of its energy from big spinning generators to maintain frequency. With excess wind they either curtail it or sell it for almost nothing to the European grid.
I might be wrong but I conclude this after examining several tears of data from the UK grid.
Several decades ago, when Germany started its ENERGIEWENDE towards wind, and solar, and tree burning, and closing nuclear plants, I thought they were of-the-charts nuts.
The chickens are finally coming home to roost, aided and abetted by RE-idiot bureaucrats in Brussels, who know not their belly buttons from a hole in the ground; I trying to stay polite.
EXCERPT from:
HAVING FUN WATCHING WIND AND SOLAR FAILING TO STEP UP TO POWER THE WORLD ECONOMY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/having-fun-watching-wind-and-solar-failing-to-step-up-to-power/edit
INTRODUCTION
Europe is seeing major increases in the SPOT prices of gas/1000 m3, coal/metric ton, and oil/barrel.
This will have an adverse effect on prices at the pump, etc. The price increases happened due to several reasons.
Serbia, Hungary and Turkey had recently signed long-term contracts with Russia at about $3/million Btu.
Those countries were vilified by EU bureaucrats and the handmaiden Media.
Subsequently, SPOT prices of gas started to increase, and the three countries are smiling.
EU SPOT prices of gas increased to about $40/million Btu
US SPOT prices increased to about $5/million Btu, much less than Europe, due to an abundance of domestic gas. See below image.
The EU SPOT price surge is entirely the fault of EU bureaucrats in Brussels, which have urged EU countries NOT to sign long-term gas supply contracts with Russia, because it would send a “the wrong signal regarding fighting climate change”.
NOTE: Often prices are stated as $/1000 m3 of gas
1000 m3 contains 1000 x 35.315 ft3/m3 x 1000 Btu/ft3 = 35,315,000 Btu
$3/million Btu would be 3 x 35.315 = $105.94/1000 m3
$40/million Btu would be 40 x 35.315 = $1412.6/1000 m3
REASONS FOR SPOT PRICE INCREASES
1) EU bureaucrats had urged EU countries not to sign long-term gas supply contracts with Russia, because electricity from wind, solar, etc., would increase, and signing long-term contracts would “send the wrong signal”, plus it would give “evil” Russia more clout in EU energy markets.
2) However, EU bureaucrats did not take into account the vagaries of wind and solar. In that regard, they are far from unique.
From April, 2020, to the present, there has been significantly less wind than in prior years.
Even though more onshore and offshore wind turbine capacity, MW, was installed in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, that did not result in as much of an increase in wind electricity as predicted, due to less than average winds.
3) As a result, the shortfall of wind electricity had to be made up by burning more gas and coal, which rapidly increased SPOT prices of gas to $40/million Btu, and also increased the SPOT prices of coal.
4) Then, people became aware, the EU winter storage of gas was very low, compared to prior years, which meant energy markets began to bid up the SPOT prices of gas for future, i.e., winter, delivery.
5) At first, EU bureaucrats tried to hide their lack of planning ability, and blame the shortfalls on market manipulation by Russia.
However, Russia proved, with gas system operating data, it had been transmitting gas to the EU, IN EXCESS of long-term contract requirements; in case of Ukraine, the excess transmission was 10%. Various EU countries, that receive a steady supply of low-cost gas from Russia, chimed in to support Russia. See Note.
NOTE: If the Ukraine gas transmission had been any quantity less than per contract, Ukraine would have cried “Russia is using gas as a weapon” to its EU, US, and NATO protectors.
Ukraine does not buy gas directly from Russia. Instead, the gas flows through a transmission line, and Ukraine takes some of that gas for its own use.
Ukraine calls that gas “a reverse-flow supply”, as if it came from EU countries, i.e., a charade.
Ukraine pays these EU countries about 20 to 30 percent more, than if Ukraine had bought the gas directly from Russia.
Because of Ukraine’s habit of not paying for Russian gas in the past, Russia requires Ukraine to pay for a year’s supply, up front, in cash.
Ukraine could not be such a bad commercial actor with regard to the EU, as otherwise, it would never be admitted to NATO and the EU.
https://tass.com/economy/1350397
Didn’t Germany close most of its nuclear power plants in response to Fukushima?
Don’t blame the government and let the citizens off the hook. “Green” policies have had very strong support from the populace for decades.
Now is the time to point at them and laugh, not to try to help them.
Yes, they closed most of their nuclear power plants already. There are only 3 powerful ones remaining (still providing 10% of energy supply) but also those are already scheduled for shut-down on 1.1.2023.
Not really wanting to be so negative, but the German people have massively voted for the Socialist and Green parties this fall. In democracy one gets the Government that one chooses, and deserves. If one can’t think rationally, then the result finally is to have to learn the hard way. They’ve barely avoided having a Green Chancellor who talked about “Kobolds” (instead of “Kobalt”) in electric vehicles. The German Government is absolutely incompetent, be it health, energy, defense, commerce, you name it. It’s insane.
I’m sorry to say it, but the Germans have recently massively voted for the Socialists and the Greens. They get the Government they deserve and will have to learn reality the hard way.
Ecocide, the destruction of ones economy through energy policy.
Poland has a few questions about that these days.