By P Gosselin on 28. May 2022
Unsustainability in the name of “sustainability”
Lately we’ve been reporting on what many people are calling one of the greatest environmental felonies in Europe: the deforestation of the 1000-year old Reinhardswald, known as the “fairy tale forest”, in order to make way for largescale industrial wind parks to produce “green” energy. Proponents claim the wind parks will save our environment and climate. Clearing the forests has already commenced.
We reported on this environmental crime here, here and here.
Only wind parks count
At the Swiss NZZ daily, Christian Saehrendt writes on the “absurdity” of clearing one of Europe’s last remaining intact forests to make way for monster wind parks.
In the Reinhardswald, which covers an area of around 200 square kilometers, there are centuries-old oak trees, a highly developed natural biodiversity that is home for example to rare wild cats and populations of white red deer – a balance which has taken 1000 years to establish. But now it’s all being industrially raped, gangbang-style, by crony, greedy bastards under the guise of environmental virtue. It’s a grand swindle that in normal times would have everyone enraged.
But these are not normal sane times. The NZZ reports: ” Yesterday, trees were planted as climate savers; today, only plastic rotor blades count.”
“To free Germany from Russian energy imports”
The Swiss daily adds: “This spring, the authorities in northern Hesse approved the construction of a wind farm with at least eighteen 240-meter-high wind turbines in the middle of this forest area, causing widespread consternation.”
The densely wooded and rural region around Kassel, where the Documenta world art exhibition is being held again this year, has actually traditionally relied on tourist marketing as “fairy tale country” and is served by the “German Fairy Tale Route,” In the past, this has also gone down well with overseas tourists, especially Asians,” writes the NZZ. ”
Wind park proponents defend the deforestation of one of Europe’s remaining virgin forests by claiming that only sick areas of the forest are being cleared away and that the turbines will “free Germany from the clinging grip of Russian energy imports”….and save our climate for generations to come.
“The Federal German Ministry of the Environment recently permitted the construction of wind turbines in natural reserve areas. In addition, species protection is to be weakened,” the NZZ accurately reports. “The initiative ‘Windpark-Reinhardswald-dagegen’ declared: ‘The so-called treasure house of European forests – is ruined for decades. We are horrified.’”
Not to worry…let them go to fake forests
“While the real, historically grown fairytale forest outside the city is being cut down, artificial substitutes are being created within the city. For example, Kassel’s civic society has been fighting for months over the redesign of the Brothers Grimm Square, which is conceived in the form of a “fairy tale forest” of pine trees and shrubbery – whereby at best a light miniature forest on a traffic island can emerge.”
The NZZ adds: “In Kassel’s Grimm Museum – the ‘Grimmwelt’ – which will again be a Documenta site in the summer, an artificial forest has already been built in, its thorn hedge atmosphere created by those green and vertically arranged brushes familiar from car washes. Even in these local events, a mega-trend of our time becomes visible: the desensualization and media filtering of our experience. Nature is increasingly staged and unreal. City groves instead of primeval forests, artificial worlds instead of nature, while the landscape outside becomes more and more inhospitable and loses its face.”
The excess / wasted cost of die Energiewende
Look at those numbers.
A few hundred billion here, a few hundred billion there, before you know it you are talking real money.
Just to look, it seems as if Germany is the richest country on Earth.
The ability to correctly predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence.
Our scientific predictions on Climate are infinitely more accurate than the mainstream narratives, which have been false and baselessly alarmist to date.
https://correctpredictions.ca/
In 2002 and 2013 we published the best (earliest and most accurate) predictions on climate and energy:
1. There is no real global warming crisis.
2. Green energy is not green and produces little useful (dispatchable) energy.
3. Climate is INsensitive to increasing atmospheric CO2 and the burning of fossil fuels.
4. Climate at the century-scale IS sensitive to small changes on solar activity.
5. Earth will start natural solar-driven cooling by ~2020 or sooner.
6. Grid-connected green (wind and solar) energy will prove a huge failure circa 2020.
The Global Warming and Green Energy issues that the greens fret about are not relevant and not even real.
The real issue now is natural global cooling and imminent food and energy shortages, exacerbated by the Ukraine War. Global famine is possible.
By the end of 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 consecutive times. At 60:40 odds for each prediction, the probability of that being mere random ignorance is 1 in 13 quintillion; at 70:30 the odds are 1 in 13 septillion.
Epilogue:
“Save the trees – Repurpose them – Hang a green from each one.”
– The Ents
I found a website with the electricity data for Germany along with a site that gives the past weather
conditions for cities globally, which may be useful to see how production may have been affected by
the weather. The map attached shows the wind potential for Europe & it shows the best area in
Germany’s along the coast. Green areas in Europe N of the Alps get a lot of precip/clouds/fog so
they’re poor areas for solar as is the NE US quadrant & SE Canada. From what you posted, the
capacity factor for offshore wind is the best, with wind second & solar being a paltry 11%- a total
waste of $$$$!!! They do get ~2GW from “evil” hydro & ~5GW from the tubocharged-CO2-polluting
biomass. (+33% more CO2 due to chipping), the two most reliable non-24/7 solar sources.
They have ~39 GWh storage from pumped hydro & ~4.5 GWh from battery, with 80% being
residential. They also have 40GWh in EVs, so it totals ~1.3 days of power. Sadly, this is >> the US
or the UK!!! A 10-day stretch beginning a month ago were low solar & wind days that would’ve
left Germany in the dark, which may be what they need to “see the light”! As someone else noted,
having your EV powering the grid is the latest excuse to miss work!
https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electricity-data/chart/power_generation/26.05.2022/29.05.2022/today/
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/omaha/historic
https://probidenergy.com/2022/03/21/residential-segement-continues-to-drive-german-battery-storage-market-but-grid-scale-could-see-comeback/
“so it totals ~1.3 days of power. Sadly, this is >> the US or the UK!!!”
BIG OOPS– “~1.3 days of power” S/B “~1.3 hrs of power”- definitely suicidal!
I haven’t calculated the US/UK storage with EVs but I know it’s suicidally pathetic, too!
along the same lines
https://www.newsmax.com/larrybell/germany-green-energy/2022/05/27/id/1071811/ng
Let me see here…..
The time line.
1) Germany commits to Russian energy.
2) President Trump tells Germany this is a bad idea. Not the least because Russia is a competitor and potential military adversary. Trump also feels that the US has a legitimate concern because of the US underwriting of NATO, especially with regards to Germany.
3) The Germans do not like it, telling the president to mind his own business. The Germans ignore the warning, and carry on.
4) Germany embarks on a program to destroy a 1,000 year old resource in order to free themselves from Russian dependence. They choose to implement a plan which will not work in any event.
5) Germany has shown it has grown fat, lazy and stupid under the cover of the US strategic umbrella, as have a few other NATO countries.
Gosselin illustrates the point made many times on this blog that the green mob really doesn’t care about the environment. It’s all about political power. In this case it’s, “See, we can cut down your precious forest and you can’t do anything about it.”
This fits in here IMO
A “You better bloody well better watch this” IMO
Finance, banking, central government & etc.: “The rich get richer ….” They make no pretense of bettering the lot of common man.
They are creating the conditions for revolutions around the world. This will not end well.
Thank you Ian – an excellent, accurate video. A stated below, Mark Carney’s first successful career as Governor of the Bank of Canada was built on the success of the Alberta oil sands – Carney did little of note but rode the prosperity of the oil sands, which allowed Canada to weather the 2008 financial crisis better than any other country. Prime Minister Stephen Harper maintained a steady hand, although he failed to push through much-needed pipelines to the East, West and Gulf Coasts and allowed Canada to be gamed for more than a decade by green saboteurs.
The last politicians who made significant contributions to the Canadian economy and North American energy security were Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Minister of Justice Anne McLellan, way back in the mid-1990’s. Canada is still the 4th largest oil producer in the world and the largest foreign supplier of energy to the USA, but much-needed energy growth has been stalled for a decade or more.
There is now no doubt that the world is cooling dangerously, as we predicted in 2002. The harmful impact on world crops is alarming, food inflation is a reality and global famine is increasingly probable. The global warming hypothesis is disproved, as atmospheric CO2 increases while temperatures fall. See electroverse.net for evidence of cooling and crop failures. The global warming hypothesis is a fifty-year-old fraud – told you so 20 years ago.
Our economies have been further savaged by the Covid-19 lockdown-and-vaccine fraud. There was no increase in all-cause total deaths in Alberta and Canada to 1July2020 – that means there was no real pandemic – there was a virus that killed the very elderly and infirm – average age of Covid-19 death in Alberta was 82. All we needed to do was over-protect the very elderly and get everyone back to work and school, as I published on 21March2020 (see the ~identical Great Barrington Declaration published 4Oct2020). The Covid-19 vaccines have proved expensive, toxic and ineffective and will kill and injure many more than the virus – probably already have.
Are Mark Carney and his ilk really that stupid in their Climate-and-Covid falsehoods, or are these scams the core of a move to destroy the economy, depopulate humanity and make way for global governance? My hypothesis is that no rational person or group could be this wrong, this obtuse, for this long – they know what they are doing: Crimes Against Humanity!
Regards, Allan MacRae in Calgary
https://energy-experts-international.com
Pierre Poilievre vs Mark Carney: A heated exchange on pipelines – YouTube
Mark Carney rode the wave of my/our achievements in the oil sands that built his career, but did little to actually help Canada.
I am primarily responsible for three of the four major initiatives that turned-around the Alberta oil sands industry. These initiatives were new Income Tax and Crown Royalty terms, and increased production at Syncrude that reduced operating costs from $18 to $12 per barrel. The fourth major contribution was SAGD technology, initiated by others. I incorporated these initiatives into a Strategic Plan for Syncrude that was adopted and made Canada the 4th largest oil producer in the world. Canada became the largest foreign energy supplier to the USA and the strongest economy in the G8 countries. Investments in the oilsands exceeded $250 billion and over 500,000 jobs were created across Canada. The successful careers of Stephen Harper, Ralph Klein, Mark Carney and many others were enabled through my efforts.
Since I moved away from the Canadian petroleum industry in 1996, little of substance has been accomplished that these four achievements did not initiate. Much-needed oil pipelines were blocked and even Stephen Harper and colleagues sleep-walked through this decade+ debacle, riding on the success of the past achievements of others but doing little to add value during their years In power. If our politicians had been competent, they would have forced through the Energy East pipeline, another oil pipeline to the West Coast, and pipelines such as Keystone XL to move our oil to Houston. These are monumental failures by politicians and industry that are now being swept under the rug. They should have done much better and Canada and the USA would be much more secure and prosperous.
It’s Grimm
But that’s the hallmark of the green way. Totally joyless
The pseudo-environmentalists running wild, destroying forests in order to save the planet, are so obviously focused on some agenda, like political control, that one can only hope the voters eventually figure this out. I am not hopeful about this, however, as the left’s policies have empowered them to automatically get the votes they need to continue. This mess is getting worse.
In the aftermath of the recent Australian election the Socialist/Green voice is in full cry Calling for all manner of “save the planet schemes”. Forget the science, common sense or cost benefit the save the planet lunatics want to feel good and to hell with anyone or anything that gets in the way. German Green idiocy has global reach.
Having spent more than a half-century in an automotive engineering career at US proving grounds, I would describe them all as mostly tree-free zones. Most everywhere on them, if you spin out of control from any test track you will find yourself on tree-free safety zones. You will also find yourself in trouble with the track administrators.
In Germany, you are likely to find yourself wrapped around a tree. On my first visit there (somewhat before the CAGW frenzy), I was quite surprised to find trees everywhere. Not only were there few such safety zones, in some cases we even had to dodge trees to stay on the proper routes. I asked my guide why there were so many trees there.
His reply was simple: “We must get permission from ‘the authorities” to be allowed to cut down any tree. The permission is seldom given”. Apparently, the safety of trees was higher on their list than the safety of test drivers. It was simply: “Drive at your own peril”.
Somehow, it appears that trees are still likely more important than test drivers, they’re obviously less important than wind turbines.
I think yhat it’s the case that one of the causes of high death tolls on French roads, about 2.5x the rate in the UK, apart from the standard of driving is the number of trees along each side of the road. Napoleon ordered the lining of roads with Plane trees (and other tall trees like Ash, Elms and Chestnuts) to provide ample shade for his marching troops.
Good for marching troops not so good for crashing cars.
you are way out of date.
Most of those roads are now lined with crash barrier armco.
Sadly that’s what bikers call another great french invention “the guillotine”, for what happens when they come off at speed and slam themselves into it.
I also have to recommend to you the German bikers who come willingly to Alsace’s bends and mountain roads.
Being as it forbidden to do what they do in the nearby black forest on the other side of the border, they come to collect a Darwin award in France instead.
So, stop blaming the frogs will you?
They have speed bumps, roundabouts and a 19th century 80km/h speed limit to cope with now…
it’s “the others are the xxxxxx…. as Sartre called them.
Not the ones in the Limousin before lockdown
Years ago our street was lined with Plane trees.
6 year old niece asked what sort of trees we had.
Told her Plane trees.
She asked – “couldn’t you afford the Fancy trees?”
Couldn’t those Plane trees be coaxed to fly out of the way?
Perhaps more stringent testing for drivers? Can hardly blame those trees for running out on the highways.
Compare with accident/death rates in Norway. There it is very low and the cost/time/effort to get a license is high. The roads are narrow and twisty with lots of cliffs to fall off.
Trees don’t bribe politicians, wind turbine manufacturers & wind farm investors do.🌳💵
Just looked at my local wind park 400 square metres per pylon.
If they are putting 18 in 200 square kilometres that is .0036% of the area. Hardly deforestation.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, that 200 square km contains villages, farms, roads electricity pylons and all manner of other obstacles as well as forested areas. Because of the other obstacles, its primarily the forested areas that are being targeted for destruction as they are the only areas that can be cleared for building these things on. Also bear in mind that these won’t be planted in nice neat rows, they will be placed wherever they can find an area to clear, maybe 1 or 2 together with access roads. All in all, most of the remaining forested area will be cleared.
Best I can tell, it’s the forests on 400′-1100′ hilltops that are being cleared as the farms &
towns are mostly in the river valleys below. As I’ve written b4, why would you want to live or
vacation where you’d be forced to look at UNNECESSARY UGLY WIND GENERATOR
MONSTROSITIES covering beautiful hilltops like in the picture below?
https://rettet-den-reinhardswald.de/
You will learn to love paying high energy prices and looking at visual blight, the same as you will own nothing and be happy.
Mostly untouched.
https://www.google.com/maps/@60.344557,13.9373063,9360m/data=!3m1!1e3
“Mostly untouched.”
You need new glasses! There’s very little solid dark, green tree areas, with a tower
~0.3 miles along the loop road. (W Sweden) The trees may be a bit stunted as they
are in northern climes.
So you are trying to illustrate your point about forest clearance in Germany by showing an area of Sweden that has been cleared of tall trees and other obstacles, with the only ground cover being short immature softwoods and scrub? Apart from the fact that you are trying to compare apples with oranges, how is this actually helping – you can see for yourself in Sweden how little ground cover there is, the extensive network of access roads and cleared ground just for a very small number of wind turbines.
The environmentalists condemned the Alaska pipeline even though it only affected a tiny, tiny port of Alaska land area. Now they are changing their story. Anyone surprised?
Wrong, moron. Proper spacing for operational efficiency would require an area of roughly10% (20 sq. k). Further, there would be access roads and other structures required for the building and maintenace of such useless beasts blighting the landscape.
Moron! There are nine in about 3 sq km mostly untouched.
https://www.google.com/maps/@60.344557,13.9373063,9360m/data=!3m1!1e3
Wrong again, moron. Next time, maybe do a little research, troll.
Did you even look? Do you deny there are nine in 3 square km?
Germany already has an entire grid worth of renewables, 1.6x load (only need 1.3x with reliable generation to have a reliable grid like we have here in Alberta) installed, and that 160% is spread widely across Germany, even so it only provided 40% of MWHRs last year.
Even doubling it to 260% makes no difference because the wind resource is the wind resource, when the wind blows they already have too much, and the rest of the time they get none.
Unless you dramatically increase the amount of “Germany” to expand the wind resource area you won’t get any more power.
And they haven’t been making any new “Germany” since the early 1940s, lest we forget.
Funny how you people cannot grasp the basics.
It doesn’t matter if they have 500% installed, they likely cannot get past 50%, without the magic batteries, which don’t exist.
If it’s not that big of a deal, then let’s go ahead and cut down ancient forests for oil rigs and natural gas wells!
Oh wait, it’s okay to cut down forests just so long as it’s for the “right” reasons.
Moron!
Would you feel the same about the same area being cleared for a fracked gas well head for example?
Ben, that’s a very good question. I don’t know a lot about the destructive footprint needed
to put in fracked oil/gas wells. I do know the wells are << treetop level. Do they need to
clear a swath for a pipeline as it’s as visible as one for a powerline? Are there other areas
that can be done first? What will the end result look like & how much will it actually affect
the forests as it’s already been cut up by towns & farms in the river valleys below?
In W TX by Midland, the wells were in a square grid pattern probably due to regulations
vis-a-vis concentration & location of a well within a lease. How close do these wells have to
be to its “maximum” production area to be “in the zone”? For me, it would be a case by
case basis dependent on necessity*, among other factors. A lot of questions would need
answers, many of those not necessarily black or white!
* Wind generators are TOTALLY UNNECESSARY!!!
18 is just the initial number of windmills. There’s no limit to how many will be added later. Therefore, no limit to the amount of deforestation that will occur.
The initial 18 they are proposing will not even put a dent into their energy needs if Germany is to have any hope of “transitioning” from Russian natural gas. They will need to build 10’s of thousands more of these things in order to have a noticeable effect. These 18 are just the camel’s nose under the tent. If they can get the German public to accept destroying “a few” trees to “save the planet” and to help “wean” them off of Russian natural gas, then surely a few more, and then a few more will also not be a problem. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, they will be told. By the time the public notices the forests are all gone, it will be too late.
But you will be happy, Paul.
Well, the Germans, and MANY others, fell for the ‘mask’ gambit, which proceeded to the ‘shutdown’ gambit, which proceeded to the ‘don’t visit your ailing grandparents’ gambit, which proceeded to the ‘take the jab’ gambit…. All “sacrifices for the common good”…
They appear to be trying to “wean” the German public off trees.
“Hardly deforestation.”
Deforestation -the act of cutting down and clearing away the forests of a region or a tract of land.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1g8b8Csg-mDOeMzbLHUQ4kkZMGe05c4uc&ll=51.590871656027474%2C9.530649805465838&z=12
I suspect that the environmentalists are also being driven by fear. Fear makes people irrational and deaf to truth or fair arguments. Sadly fear is driving so many these days. It is far from healthy.
” Fear makes SOME people irrational and deaf to truth or fair arguments.” I, and many others I know, did NOT abandon our Critical Thinking skills, from the very beginning of the Flu ‘scare’.
Fair point Sturmudgeon
Eco-fascism is out of control and will destroy everything, tree’s, birds, bats, you name it, and reek untold disruption to a unique natural environment.
All that for 18 windmills that could easily be erected in the back gardens of the idiotic politicians who have gotten Germany into this mess in the first place.
“only sick areas of the forest are being cleared away”
“Sick areas”? What are sick areas in a forest? There are typically areas that get affected by wind, flood, blight, etc. But eventually these areas do recover. It may take a long time to recover but forests don’t usually “die” from small areas being affected by nature. Things *do* die from from deforestation, not just trees. Anyone remember the Spotted Owl?
Perhaps the California redwoods are next.
Typical FAR LEFT ideas, the results are OPPOSITE of the intended outcome. These people should be hung up to dry, or they will do it to us first.
They ARE ‘doing it’.
A green world and Green blight cannot coexist. A Choice… yeah, that “Choice”, will have to be made to deem a viable preference.
Typical one sided propaganda, claiming that 18 wind turbines will destroy an entire forest. Not saying this is a good project, or bad. But actual facts are always necessary to consider.
Each of the 18 turbines has a developed footprint area of 2 sq km. The project developers claim that the turbine locations were selected to utilize areas that are already clear of major tree cover due to old bark beetle infestations. They further claim that a total of only 250 existing trees will be taken down for the project . To put that in perspective that is only enough trees to cover maybe 2 acres of a typical dense hardwood forest.
The Reinhardswald covers 200 sq km. So the tree cutting amounts to 1.25 trees per square km. A difference no human could ever visually perceive. The developers also pledged to replant trees for every tree cut down, so no net loss of trees anyway. It’s not as if they are killing an entire forest to put up a new subdivision or an oil refinery.
What is interesting here is that this controversy pits one group of greens – forest preservationists – against warmunists. This is unusual, because most wind farms are not developed on virgin forest lands, but more typically are placed in cow pastures, deserts, and treeless plains. So this project certainly does not represent any kind of anti-turbine poster child as WUWT has been propagandizing.
“So the tree cutting amounts to 1.25 trees per square km. A difference no human could ever visually perceive.”
Ever thought of going into politics? you’d go far with that sort of thinking.
While arguing the minutiae about the siting of wind turbines, Duane, we overlook the core issue –
Green is dumb!
Who greased who’s palms to allow this travesty to happen? As a famous ex-president once said, “follow the money”. No truer than in this case.
Also show the actual depth of caring for the environment of the forest…zip.
gee, why not put those wind turbines in wealthy neighborhods- no doubt those rich sophisticated Europeans will love having these items in their ‘hood to help save the Earth
that is not a virgin forest
the rule of thumb is: if while walking in a forest you can reliably see more than 2 meters in front of you it is not “virgin”, it is a tree farm or a park
I’m tired of the “virgin forest” meme, in Europe the crazies are trying to take over forests planted in the 1950s under the pretext they are “virgin”