By P Gosselin on 6. September
Germany needs an energy Marshall Plan
Consumers are now having to endure the excruciating economic pain of the country’s intensifying energy crisis – brought on by decades of botched green energy policy and heavy reliance on Russian gas.
Gas bills have already multiplied
According to Blackout News here, 21 million German households heat with natural gas and are now “threatened with exorbitantly high additional payments for their gas, already most bills have multiplied.”
German households having to pay hundreds of euros monthly for gas are the new nightmarish reality. Many are facing poverty for the first time.
“In recent days and weeks, some households have received notices for new installment payments that amount to seven to eight times the previous price. From October, they will now be fleeced by the state with its botched gas levy,” Blackout News reports further.
And there’s no relief in sight. Russia has made clear it will no longer deliver gas to Europe until the West lifts its sanctions against Moscow. The euro has since fallen below 99 cents for the first time in 20 years. A weaker euro adds further to the risks of even higher inflation, which is currently pummeling Europe.
Not only consumers are being severely impacted, but so are companies across Germany.
“As of September 2022, as many as 16% of them have completely shut down or drastically reduced production because they cannot pass on the gas prices to their customers, including the steel giant ArcelorMittal, which is shutting down production completely at two German plants,” reports Blackout News.
German needs an energy Marshall Plan
Germans have been spoiled by cheap, plentiful gas flowing from Russia for many years. But these carefree energy days are over as the country continues to shut down coal and nuclear power plants, thus contributing massively to the already acute energy shortage. The country’s dogmatic lunge to green energies included relying heavily on gas from Russia to fill in the energy supply gaps caused by volatile wind and sun.
Now the green energies scheme is disintegrating. Germany needs an energy Marshall Plan.
Plenty of warnings…”screwed up energy policy”
They were warned. At a UN General Assembly in 2018, then President Donald Trump warned Germany of a potential supply disaster from relying so heavily on Russia, but German leaders in attendance smirked, berated and ridiculed the US President.
German leaders smirking in response to Trump’s warning of relying heavily on Russian gas. Image cropped here.
Moreover, a vast array of skeptics and critics also had warned for years that Germany’s “Energiewende” was heading for disaster. They too were ridiculed and dismissed.
The disaster has arrived, as Trump warned, and my how the bill is coming due. Blackout News reports: “Consumers with the smallest CO₂ footprint are now paying the most for past mistakes – at least relative to their incomes. […] These people are now paying relatively the most for the screwed-up energy policy.”
Political gross negligence
Blackout News summarizes: “This redistribution is grossly lacking in solidarity. […] The burden could not be distributed any more unfairly.”
We’re talking tens of millions of Germans – and Europeans. If history is anything to go by, there’s a high risk of things getting really ugly this winter if leaders don’t get pragmatic and get their act together real soon.
You may want to choose the cheapest gas supplier… (prices are per month)
https://www.computerbase.de/forum/attachments/9a20c356-8c91-4704-9171-6391968675f0-jpeg.1255391/
Perhaps it’s time for Germans to order small electric room heaters and burner plates
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Electric+room+heater&crid=37XQABS255Q9F&sprefix=electric+room+heater%2Caps%2C1183&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
small electric heaters even at 1000kw are utterly uneconomical to run- better off with an electric blanket/hot water bottles n rugs. and maybe the newfangled induction hotplates. really airfryers probably the better cooking option,as well as crockpots and pressure cookers
Not much use if there’s no electric !!!
In Switzerland, our energy “Minister” recommended that we stockpile candles for lighting. Flashlights and batteries weren’t even mentioned … Obviously, piano playing and energy economy are two different kinds of things …
Isn’t there a meme with a son and a father where the son asks, “what did we have before candles?” and the father replies, “electricity”
Too bad the windmills don’t burn, they could prove useful this winter.
Apparently, they do. All the time. 🙂
It might be somewhat difficult, if there is no electricity. On top of that current is no cheaper than gas, with prices trading up to 1 Euro / KWh, and ~50Cent on average (that is excluding taxes).
But just yesterday green “journalist” Ulrike Herrmann presented a solution. If Germany shrinks its economy by 50%, thereby reducing its energy needs equally by 50%, everything should work out fine.
She then went on to state the GDP (per capita) had doubled since 1978. And (West-) Germany was doing fine in 1978. So why not?
Ironically this touches an earlier project of mine in forensic econometrics. Without diving deep into the subject, I can tell you GDP growth over the last decades is nothing but an statistic artefact. Growth has seized long ago, at least in most of Europe. There are certain benchmarks like real wages, that are no higher today then back then. Or VAT revenues that constantly decline relative to GDP, pointing out the eroding tax base.
People have been cheated on economic performance for a long time. I assume the “climate change” agenda is one of the instruments to get out of this lurking problem. If growth is bad, then who cares it never took place?
I was surprised to discover, through a friend in business in Germany, that there is a large off-the-books economy there, something brought about by high taxes on everything. I was taken aback by the sheer size of his “cash sales” business, which he kept in a safe.
About half the Italian economy is off the books, and they have a high VAT rate. Mozambique was charging 24% VAT and only capturing maybe 1/3 or less of the sales value. When they dropped the rate to 12% and enforced it, the border guards all looked glum because they were the ones out of pocket. Revenues increased for government. Laffer curves and alla that.
We do not really have any clear idea what the impact will be in the economy of Germany or Italy because we do not really know what the economy does, only what it officially does.
Will limiting gas and electricity force more of the economy underground and off the books? Or into visibility? Who knows? It never happened before.
“that there is a large off-the-books economy there”
No, there is not. Well over 15% of German (official) GDP is made up of imputed shadow economy. It is just one of the means to bloat the otherwise lacking economic performance. Btw. the magnitude of this imputation is strict state secret in Germany, but there are ways find out anyhow.
In reality shadow economy is a lot smaller.
Australian Energy Market Operator has advised that Australia will have many more electricity supply disruptions on a regular basis beginning with South Australia followed by Victoria and then New South Wales within three years.
The new Socialist Oz Federal and State governments have committed to the closure of all coal power stations. They are spending billions more on unreliables that got us into this mess in the first place, thinking that is how to close the gap. Having seen what is happening to Germany, their moronic response is “we want some of that”. What could possibly go wrong?
Yep we warned Nick Stokes he is going to find it harder to post in years ahead … looks like Griff is already struggling 🙂
Griff’s busy figuring out how he can emigrate to the US where, at least for the time being, we have relatively affordable energy.
Can Griff swim? If he can, tell him to fly to Mexico and take about $10,000 with him. When he arrives he should give the money to the Cartels and then they will let him swim across the Rio Grand river into the United States, where Joe Biden will welcome him, and Governor Abbott of Texas will provide him a free bus ride to a destination of his choice such as New York City, or Washington DC, or Chicago.
Gosh, I wonder why it starts in South Australia?
The article takes a tone that I believe is mistaken. Germany’s energy crisis wasn’t caused by Russis cutting off gas. It was caused by the EU and German governments biting the hand that feeds them, i.e. placing severe sanctions on their major energy vendor. Given the difficulties with Nord Stream 1, their problem could have been easily and completely solved by turning on the switch on Nord Stream 2. I don’t think this is still a option.
I only see two ways this is remotely understandable. 1) The EU and German so-called leaders are stark raving bonkers, or 2) Germany and the EU aren’t sovereign territories but are wholly controlled by the US, who gets advantages from their coming crash but bears few of the costs.
This was a long time in ‘arriving’. People discussed this trade deal with Russia going back to the 1970s. Each year, they added another percent to the purchased gas. All of them could go to fracking and wreck the Russian domination in a matter of two years, but they are so freaked out over the destruction of the Earth ‘gimmick’ that fracking is currently not an option.
Options can change remarkably fast when one’s wallet comes under threat.
Or when one’s fingers are too stiff from cold to extract said wallet.
Greens – anti nuclear anti fracking, pro renewables children of the CND…run by the KGB and then the FSB.
USSR may have collapsed, but AgitProp just kept on going.
And East German communists apparatchiks got to set Germany’s energy policy.
Everyone seems to have forgotten Merkle’s knee jerk response to Fukishima when she began the shut down of their Nuclear generation.
They are using the logic of PETA. Don’t eat animals because they are so cute.
Except no other organization on Earth hates animales more than PETA, they, by their own manifest on plain sight and written objectives (in their official website), want the extintion of every circus, farm, working or companion animal as they find them unnatural AND opressive. They only have the animal-love in their business cards. Their policies reflect that. They kill almost every animal in their “shelters”.
The war or invasion of the Ukraine and related trade sanctions against Russia and involving the supply of gas from Russia has become a convenient distraction from the collapse of the transition to wind and solar political foolishness, and climate hoax based.
Dennis, yes it does. Convenient, isn’t it? Almost too convenient, some might say.
The real problem was Energiewende and its unattainable objectives. Yes, the Russia thing is very very convenient for the Energiewende exponents, but hopefully they won’t get away with it this time.
Don’t be stupid. That’s conspiracy nutjob territory
Where’s my tinfoil hat?
Science says tinfoil ear plugs provide all the electromagnetic protection you need.
For a mere $100,000 I’ll create a study that proves it.
I don’t know where your tinfoil hat is, where did you have it last?
Answer me one question.
Why wouldn’t Russia fund and supply the Greens with the money and the propaganda necessary, and bribe the politicians to render Western Europe dependent on Russian gas?
One good thing about being a nutjob conspiracist … I don’t have myocarditis.
Me either.
No commie China Virus pseudo vaccines for me or my wife. After almost 2 years traveling the US, we both caught the China virus so are now naturally protected.
BTW, doctor Rand Paul caught the virus early on and never got it again. Never got a vaccine. The Brandon family 4 times jabbed BOTH caught the virus.
They are much too stupid to come up with such a plan and actually make it work. It is just luck on their part that their idiotic plan failed just as Russia started using it to turn the screws.
the first para is totally true.
sanctions were an obvious disaster for two reasons;
1)germany didnt realise they worked both ways,and they couldnt dictate how putin respinded, and, worse
2) how to get rid of them? when putin negotiates with zelensky, z has no power over sanctions..
Peteturbo: “when putin negotiates with zelensky, z has no power over sanctions..”
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I am wondering if Zelensky even calls any of the shots besides which t-shirt to wear each morning. Solely my opinion, but it seems to me that Ukraine is a wholly owned money laundromat subsidiary of the US CIA, both houses of Congress, and the Executive branch.
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Zelensky does as he is told or else a “stray Russian rocket” will somehow tragically, miraculously hit exactly where he is standing, regardless of where he is standing. (How the Russians got rockets marked ‘Made in USA’ will remain an unsolved mystery.)
They import them from Afghanistan.
Or bought them on the black market fro Zelensky
Ah yes, if I don’t like it, the CIA did it line of thinking.
but sometimes the CIA did do it, and I do like it.
On the odd occasions when it isn’t the CIA the US State Department is in the frame! Btw isn’t it Homeland Security that has the black helicopters?
Mark… 2014 Color Revolution, Burisma, 10% for the Big Guy, Pelosi and son (and others) braving Russian artillery and airstrikes to visit Zelinsky in Ukraine, fired prosecutors… little niggling bits that lead me to my opinion. YMMV.
No. Putin is not a good guy. Zelensky is not a good guy. There are no good guys to be found anywhere in this mess. If you are looking for a good guy, call the Maytag repairman. He’s a good guy.
The Maytag man is now employed by the Chinese.
You forgot scare quotes around “thinking”
‘Solely my opinion, but it seems to me that Ukraine is a wholly owned money laundromat subsidiary of the US CIA, both houses of Congress, and the Executive branch.‘
Close, but as Ukraine didn’t work out very well for the previous head of the Executive branch, you need to add a proviso that it is wholly owned by those officials who are affiliated with, or sympathetic to, the Democrat party.
“Germany and the EU aren’t sovereign territories but are wholly controlled by the US, who gets advantages from their coming crash but bears few of the costs.”
I don’t see how the US gets any advantage in this. Thanks to Biden killing pipelines, fracking on Federal lands, and doing all he can to kill oil, unlike when Trump was President, the US has no extra gas to sell them. Our fuel costs are rising and that will continue, especially, with gasoline.
Biden is raising taxes and doing all he can think of to destroy US business and manufacturing. Pretty sure none of the German manufacturers who shut down are coming to the US to do business. Heck, with Biden, after touting his EV rebates courtesy of US taxpayers and all the jobs it will create, this happened.
GM Is Moving Electric Car Manufacturing Jobs to Mexico After Biden Praised Them Over Tesla
https://bit.ly/3QjakQN
9/7/22
During this year’s State of the Union speech, for example, Biden said, “GM is making the largest investment in its history — $7 billion to build electric vehicles, creating 4,000 jobs in Michigan.” He didn’t mention Tesla once. [Tesla has numerous factories in the US.]
That’s not going to be a good look now that GM announced its latest investment in electric vehicle production will be south of the border.
On July 18, CNBC reported, GM announced that the all-electric version of the Chevrolet Blazer will be manufactured at the automaker’s plant in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico…”
I’d really appreciate it if you could explain your reasoning as to how Biden is hurting Europe to benefit the US. If so, as far as I can tell, it would be the first time he acted in the interests of the US.
I would think it is China that will benefit. They have lots and lots of coal plants for manufacturing and we all know that China’s CO2, even though they are the biggest emitters on the planet, doesn’t contribute one bit to AGW. /Sarc
It could be India or other places where China is building lots of coal plants, I guess. The emissions for the coal plants China is building around the world have China’s special kind of CO2 that doesn’t contribute to AGW, either, apparently.
The ‘Elites’ emit the same special kind of CO2 when they fly around the world to lecture us lower mortals on how bad we are for the planet because we produce the wrong kind of CO2 !!
The US gets to sell its (much more expensive compared to Russian NG) LNG to Europe for inflated prices.
THe US doesn’t have the ports to ship LNG and Europe doesn’t have ports to receive LNG. Just how is the US supposed to get this gas to Europe?
UK has the ports and the pipelines to supply US gas to Europe. And currently it is. US doesn’t have the terminals to export it.
I read that a proposed terminal was just killed by the Biden administration.
The US must have ports to ship LNG and the EU must have ports to receive LNG because they’ve been doing exactly that for a few years now, when the Asian markets aren’t as high. I suggest you might want to look up Cheniere’s existing Sabine Pass facility or the new one they’re building at Corpus Christi. There are 28 large scale LNG terminals in the EU and Turkey, as well as 8 smaller ones; getting the LNG from the US to the EU is not a problem; getting the LNG in the US in the first place is often a problem.
We could react it with steam to create hydrogen, and then send it over in the Hindenburg?
MIC earning usa billions for weapons, and what gas is being sold from usa is at huge prices and then the lendlease debt accruing by ukies
Oznevershutsup, I look forward to the day when we hear that you’re in a Chinese forced labor camp. I’m sure you’ll be convinced that the US benefits from the Chinese invasion of Australia.
GM has many more facilities and employees in the US than Tesla does.
Point 2 is speculative.
pls upvote gazillions
Birds of a paranoid feather, and all that
Lots of speculation based on not much, if any, evidence.
It seems even skeptics are not immune to some conspiracy theories.
I guess it all depends on what one’s particular bias is. People accept what confirms their bias, and reject what does not confirm their bias. They are less skeptical of what confirms their bias.
“It seems even skeptics are not immune to some conspiracy theories.”
Thanks Tom that made my day…..
You see, Simple Simon “thinks”that any doubt about Climastrology dogma is by definition a conspiracy theory.
Laughing at you Simple!
I’m merely agreeing with Tom. There have been more than a few conspiracy theories shuffle on through this site recently. It’s good Tom acknowledges it. And no I don’t think being a climate skeptic means you have to lower yourself to conspiracy theories, but many do sadly.
More fundamentally, the crisis was caused by poor science and poor administration of scientific hypotheses.
If authorities had taken the trouble to do elementary things like validation of predictive computer models for global warming, where they would see future problems, they would not have present problems.
The recovery is a very simple plan. Scrap further “renewables” assist forthwith and return to free market conditions that past experience has amply shown is best done with nuclear (as in France) and fossil fuel dominance.
These are not big, risky steps.
Reversion to the mean is a known way to progress in math and economics.
Geoff S
Even more fundamentally, subsidizing students and science brought in marginal students and scientists who couldn’t handle STEM fields. The wokies saw the opportunity and flooded colleges and science with marginal studies in marginal fields.
That’s a brilliant observation!
Virtually everything government does is counterproductive. Less government is the solution to many problems. The ones that can’t be solved by less government mostly cannot be solved by more government, only by free markets with government staying out of the way.
Does Germany have 20 year contracts with wind companies like they do in Ontario? Can force majeure be used to cancel long term contracts in this unexpected situation?
Putin underestimated the stupidity of EU politicians.
When the hand that feeds you decides to invade sovereign nations, you can let them, or you can stand up to them. You appear to be for the first option, while the EU is for now of the second option. Their real problem was depending on Russia for gas so they could pretend they were green and not develop the abundant gas supplies they have. After Russia invaded Crimea, they should have begun development of their gas resources and not continued to turn off coal and nuclear power plants. They will shiver in the dark for a winter or two.
And sadly that is the only way they will take the lesson. More sadly, there’s a high probability that they still won’t learn.
It was caused by years of fantastical thinking about saving the planet.
One feature of the coming German energy crunch is that the morons at BMW designing and building 2,440kg behemoths dubbed iX BEVs will realise they might be on the wrong track.
If middle class German’s cannot afford energy to stay warm, then the privileged few who can indulge themselves with the expensive crap on 4 wheels will attract considerable unwanted attention.
You have reminded me about a trade week of exhibitions in the Los Angeles Conference Centre California 1980s, one of the business contacts I spent time with when the trade show was not open drove an old Ford coupe that looked well worn and somewhat battered from collisions, at home in a wealthier suburb far away he had a couple of family cars including his personal almost new Ford Mustang limited edition model that he said would attract too much attention if he drove that vehicle into LA.
Those behemoths are for customers outside Germany, indeed they are built exclusively in US and also get sent to middle East , China and previously Russia.
How can so many people be so stupid? When you find yourself in a hole stop digging. How those bottom feeders they call leaders stay in office is mind boggling. The only ones dumber than the leaders are those who allow the leaders to continue on this self destructive course.
Others have pondered the same question. Here’s one answer.
Excerpt:
“Carl Jung noted that ‘the wolf inside’ man was far more a threat to human existence than external forces,” “When mental forces become so toxic as to harm our overall well-being on an individual and collective level a ‘psychic epidemic’ can result.”
Indeed, Jung himself warned that modern society was prone to collapse due to a pandemic of “delusional ideas.”
“Greater than all physical dangers are the tremendous effects of delusional ideas, which are yet denied all reality by our world-blinded consciousness,” Jung wrote. “Our much-vaunted reason and our boundlessly overestimated will are sometimes utterly powerless in the face of ‘unreal’ thoughts.”
It’s what grasshoppers do when they turn from gentle, mind-their-own-business little insects into a humongous swarm of ‘eat and destroy everything‘ locusts.
It’s powered by Serotonin in their brain – in turn released/activated when they are threatened by starvation.
We have the exact same stuff inside our brains.
Modern Doctors, practising quackery akin to the GHGE, imagine that low levels of Serotonin are wrong/bad/must be fixed.
And so they do, try to fix at least, in order for us to be ‘happy’ ‘content’ ‘satisfied’
What if they are wrong. Why does Serotonin have diametrically opposite effects in grasshoppers as it does us?
Do grasshoppers practice mendacity and junk science?
“Modern Doctors, practising quackery akin to the GHGE, imagine that low levels of Serotonin are wrong/bad/must be fixed.”
Very recent studies say Serotonin levels do not affect mood and increasing them does not alleviate depression, so they may well be wrong.
Don’t be so bloody stupid. You’re making a fool of yourself.
And you have a downvote option. Why not use it instead of being rude to Peta?
Thanks for all the pal reviewed science backing up your comment.
Mr. Peta: Only the progressive grasshoppers.
They aren’t stupid….They have an agenda so outrageous that most of the proletariat cannot see it. See Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
in the sixties , we used to sing a protest song : waist deep in the big muddy and the Big Fool says to push on . might be time for a reprise .,
People stay stupid in this case for two reasons:
1) They are convinced they are on the side of “good”, caring for the planet and that the expense is the cost of saving billions of people from climate disaster. Until they actual deaths from the policies outweigh the projected deaths from climate change, it’s still better to stay with ‘green’ policy.
2) They are convinced they are smart. They’ve been told for years that scientists agree on climate and that the people that don’t agree are ignorant and evil. They don’t want to admit they were wrong, because it might mean admitting they are dumb. That’s hard for anyone, but near impossible for liberals with degrees.
At this point the only way to stop the climate scam without massive deaths or an alien invasion is to develop an out so that people can walk away from their belief without shame. Possibly blaming a natural cause that was unable to be detected previously.
They need a Messmer plan along with the Marshall plan.
Why is it the backwater yanks are always having to save the butts of the oh so superior and erudite Europeans?
When your neighbours are Canada and Mexico you can have , let’s say, little problems
Try asking your politicians
They don’t need Airstrip One but they’re still here
Why?
Because you yanks wanted it set up that way. Britain’s done a lot of saving the oh so superior and erudite Europeans butts over the centuries for very little reward and now it is your turn to see what it’s like. Yeah, not so great really, is it?
The girls running Germany laughed and said they didn’t understand President Trump’s WARNING about Russian energy dependence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CvQmWoog18
Who’s laughing now, girls?
Only because fracking freed US from having to spend decades kissing the hand and ring of the various Saudi kings
Canada has almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia but Biden went begging to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela & RUSSIA. Canada? Nope and our Prime Minister didn’t care. Albeit he focused on Central Canada and doesn’t give 2 hoots about the CDN Prairies.
there wasnt a problem till usa stirred russia up, intentionally.
and then stole tradefund money and the rest.
throw in truly dopes refusal to return turbines
voila
no gas
serves the eurocrats right
Another moron joins the conversation. Hello dickhead.
Anything at all constructive to contribute?
And you insult others……….
I think he forgot “, my name is” after Hello.
Then again, neither did ozspeaks up.
Russia stirred up Russia, the US policy is and has been a disaster but Putin was on this track anyway, he wants to rebuild the soviet union pure and simple. not every problem in the world is caused by the US and its incompetent policy, by the way the EU is 10 times worse.
The actual concept is Russkiy mir, not soviet union. In practice, there is little difference I suppose.
And once again, we find out that the US is the source of all evil on the planet.
Agree partly.
“there wasnt a problem till usa stirred russia up, intentionally”
Yep, by electing Brandon as pres., and he immediately set about the crush the US oil and gas industries to reduce output and increase the ability of other nations to increase oil and gas profits.
SO, the election, manipulated by the deep state and US oligarchs lead to the invasion. That I agree.
BUT, the rest of the world, including Aus. have been creating the new “oil embargo” by 0damaging their own industries, making fossil fuels more expensive to the benefit of Russia, Iran, etc., so are ALL equally responsible.
Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014 when the Sun King was president of the US. Hardly a time when we were stirring up the Ruskies, We basically gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. History does not agree with your interpretation.
she was wrong enough that they made her president of europe . just what the elites were looking for
Germany needs an energy Marshall Plan or someone like JRM
“Jacob Rees-Mogg, who once blamed high energy prices on “climate change alarmism”, has been appointed energy secretary in Liz Truss’ new cabinet to the widespread dismay of environmental campaigners.”
https://apple.news/AbdJ9yEOkSiWoyZRiZCDutQ
Gummer isn’t at all happy!
A tiny bit of good news in the UK. But it is actions that count If he gets rid of the CCA2008 and NetZero and starts fracking, then we will know he is doing something good.
When did we last have a bit of a laugh?
Quite some time ago
Not just one bit of good, much of the cabinet I have seen so far have a voting record of opposing climate change initiatives, including Suella Braverman who is vocal in her opposition to it.
And let’s face it, if they don’t upset the greens no one’s getting out of this other than by socialism. So I guess Truss may as well be hung for a sheep than a lamb.
We shall see.
dont even need to frak just use the coal you have plenty of
We don’t have the mines or the coal fired stations to capitalise on coal.
Almost all shut down. We can’t even buy coal for a domestic fireplace.
you can buy (smokeless) coal for a domestic fireplace.
We have (almost) no economically viable coal. Red herring
Fair comment. I know what I believe to be the Moggster’s psyche, and the ‘Liz Triaßic Park’s’ psyche, and I have met with more than one politician and I know broadly how the game is played.
I believe, temporarily and on a purely ad hoc basis, that the Moggster is in fact honest, and sincere, if not always right. And Triassic Truss, is a tough cookie, and a little bit less corrupt than the usual establishment zombie..
BUT To achieve anything in government you have to be in government.The Tory party may be rooting for Big Business, but it relies on Little England for it’s vote.
So what I suspect will happen is carefully controlled ‘policy leaks’ about ‘binning net zero’ and ‘defunding windmills’ which will be admitted to being ‘under discussion’ but ‘not policy’ (yet).
If the public’s reaction is favourable they will happen. If not they wont.
My yardstick for the government is to say ‘what, in their place, would I do?’ and frankly, I would play it exactly the way its being played. Rush where its an emergency, test the water’s where it is not. And quietly prepare the ground for the long term vision.
So I am reasonably hopeful of some progress, at least, being made.
So I am reasonably hopeful of some progress, at least, being made.
But FIRST the must END THE BBC.
Yep. John Selwn Gummer aka Lord Deben is Chairman of the Climate Committee and, as it happens, he is Chairman of his family owned CC Consultancy company!! Of course, there is no conflict of interests/sarc.
Did he actually receive a grant of £800k from the government to research CC??? If so, is it widely known?
I was introduced to Justin Time in the late 70’s when I got into electronic engineering.
He seemed to have everything going for him. Nobody seemed to need to keep any sort of stock/product on the shelves/spaces of warehouses any more.
Anything you wanted could be delivered when you wanted it, to the place you wanted it, in the twinkle of an eye.
Then: everybody was better off.
Because no large stock or inventory was needed any more, going old, gathering dust and running up interest charges at the bank.
Justin promised much more choice and The Exact Component you wanted, when you wanted it, simply by picking up the phone.
Thus = Saving Everyone Large Amounts of Money.
Me, being of farming extraction, was to familiar with and used to getting what I wanted in the way of supplies and spares by visiting the local merchant and bringing whatever home there and then.
[Was it Henry Ford?? who commented about farmers:
They buy at retail prices, sell at wholesale prices and pay the haulage both ways]
But it worked
But what’s happened here to Europe, Germany esp, was the reliance on Justin via the spot-market, for their gas supplies.
And lookee there, Justin has tripped over and fallen.
Even from 40 years ago, it was obvious to me that ‘Nothing Else Could Possibly Happen‘
Take care peeps, Justin has his fingers in every pie you now consume.
Esp food. It may look like there’s huuuuuuge amounts of stuff in your average supermarket.
Therein lies the skill of the shelf-stacker.
Just the the GHGE, it’s all an illusion – there is never more than 3 days worth of average sales/supply in your typical supermarket.
And when it runs out, Serotonin swamps your head and you enter into ‘a consensus’ – just as locusts do.
Inventory turnover in Australia’s largest supermarket has achieved 17X per year so longer than 3 days on average. But most fresh stuff and bakery goes in a day or two. Dairy a few days.
Toilet paper could not be found on shelves after an hour two from stocking when Covid came along.
Local Dutch specialty store here in Melbourne Australia was saying she has had trouble getting supplies out of The Netherlands. Her siblings still in The Netherlands are concerned about getting through the coming winter.
funny that! I met Justin Time when doing electronics assembly
and learnt to loathe him fast!
non arrival of parts vital to complete work meant layoffs as far as my boss was concerned
I pointed out we could simply build them, as many, and as far as possible to keep us employed and then spend a day or so putting in the missing chips n bits.
lucky for my mortgage he saw sense;-)
” there is never more than 3 days worth “
One need not go “full survivalist mode” but prudent stockpiling of food, water, and batteries is a good idea.
A woman in Florida, when learning a hurricane was approaching, filled drinking glasses and cups with tap water. Never heard of a large jug, I guess. A person also ought to have water to flush a commode. These are simple things, and a survivalist web site can add details.
When a hurricane warning came to for us in Virginia in the 60, my mother filled the bathtubs as full as possible.
No loss of power or water, so down the drain it went.
I never got that “fill the bathtub with water” thing, personally. First, I never met a tub drain plug that didn’t let the water slowly leak out, thereby leaving you with precious little to nothing when you actually need it. Second, because you couldn’t get enough of the water out of the tub into a big enough container to flush the commode even if it didn’t leak out.
I find 5 gallon pails filled with water far more useful. They don’t leak out and can provide the ‘critical mass’ to flush the commode.
The pails can be placed in the tub if that makes one feel better though.
The usual error. The problem is not financial, and no conceivable Marshall Plan is going to fix it. Its a supply problem. There is not enough energy to cover the current activities which use it. So many of them are going to have to stop.
The mechanism will be a rise in prices until demand reduces to the level of supply. This will certainly lead to great hardship in some parts of society and to a deep recession. Depending on the policy measures taken in response this may be exacerbated into a systemic financial crisis.
Already Deutsche Bank is talking about the UK possibly needing an IMF bailout. Sweden is finding it necessary to shore up energy companies. Centrica in the UK is known to be negotiating emergency credit arrangements.
The only solution is to increase supply, and the only supply its possible to increase short or medium term is electricity, and the only way to do that is build coal fired power stations. Well, there is fracking too, but the problem is, gas is a global market. And in the short term, what is going to happen is lifestyle changes big enough to reduce demand.
What politicians are currently talking about, price freezes, levies on the energy companies, none of that will work. The fallacy is to think that by some kind of financial magic laws can be passed that will let everyone just carry on as before.
No, that is not going to happen. And if its persisted in we will see a combination of events which will just take any country trying it into a full scale financial crisis complete with debt defaults both on government and private debt and large scale bankruptcies and unemployment. Think 1970s but in spades.
Other fantasies that crowd this area of policy are the crazed idea that we can all carry on living as we do now, shopping, commuting, taking holidays, while just switching to electric cars. Or the idea that we can (and should) move our power generation to wind and solar, while having no plans to remedy their unreliability and intermittency.
Its time to get away from Post Modern politics and economics and start facing the fact that reality will not adjust to what we want it to be, and that countries are going to be a whole lot poorer than they thought they were. Going to be tough to explain this to the young who have, as the poet says:
We’ve fed the heart on fantasy
The heart’s grown vicious from the fare
Interesting post from Paul Homewood on this subject who suggests that the plan may be to cap and reduce the price of gas. This would have the consequence that the current huge payments to wind and solar suppliers would be reduced or eliminated. So maybe in the particular legal and contractual situation in the UK this could have a case, at least in the very short term.
The weird way payments to wind and solar are calculated in the UK mean that this would probably be the cheapest way of subsidizing households, whereas to simply abolish the subsidies would lead to all kinds of legal challenges and outrage.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/09/06/liz-truss-to-cap-the-wholesale-price-of-gas/
What happens when worldwide gas prices continue to rise but the UK can’t afford to pay them due to caps?
I think the objective is fracking, PDQ.
One company has promised that if it gets the go ahead now it can begin to deliver fracked gas by January. That won’t help the global market price much but might alleviate the UK’s cost’s depending on the deals struck.
Better hope the Greens see the light of day and aren’t there protesting the day after the project is announced.
I rather hope they are – they are increasingly likely to cross the line in their arrogance and it’ll provide just the excuse necessary to shut them down.
Quite. It is just kicking the can down the road. What happens is the underlying situation has not changed except you are out of money for a second round. The bond vigilantes refuse to buy, at which point you have to call the IMF, and they do unto you what they always do, that is, austerity.
And not austerity as under Osborne, this is austerity as in 1950. The real thing. Get on your bike because you can’t afford a car, and if you could, you could not afford the gasoline. This is shuttered store fronts all across the country.
The right course is an immediate income tax rise plus targetted relief to the poor so they can survive the winter, and this will allow the market to match supply and demand while minimizing suffering.
‘The right course is an immediate income tax rise …’
That’ll work. /sarc
Well, that’s how bolshiecrats in the USA expect to control inflation….
Tax rise in the teeth of an approaching recession. Great idea!
We need to open up and stimulate the economy and the only way to do that is to reduce taxes.
We have been alleviating the poor’s problems since I began working in the 1970’s, and they are still poor.
How long does it take people to realise that productivity and employment with a growing economy is the only way out of any national or global crisis.
I know people even today in the UK without any sort of pension provision other than the state. One of the worst things the country ever did was to introduce a state pension. The other was to introduce an unrestricted NHS, it was introduced with the best intentions and was an example to the rest of the world for a short while until it became the main political pawn once nationalisation ended. It’s now a financial black hole no other country emulates because of the waste.
There is no provision for any NHS hospital to charge people for treatment so immigrants, legal or otherwise, just pitch up and get treated for everything absolutely free.
Actually, I wasn’t entirely truthful, I know of two countries that do the same, Cuba and N. Korea.
The answer to both your own point and the earlier one by Frank is simple. There is no money for what you want to do.
Either raise taxes, or find yourself unable to borrow and calling in the IMF. There is no magic money tree. No-one has to buy your bonds.
Raising taxes entering a recession may be bad. But its a reflection of economic reality, and its a lot less painful than calling in the IMF.
There is no third way. Accept the financial reality and choose the least bad alternative.
We will see what Truss announces tomorrow. If she tells us she’s going to freeze energy costs then there obviously is money available.
This IMF nonsense has been made up by the left as yet more fear porn and you’ve bought it.
Raising taxes entering a recession isn’t just bad, it’s disastrous. Then we go crawling to the IMF. That’s the economic reality.
The least bad alternative is to adopt a long term objective of prosperity rather than heading into a socialist condition of a state funded economy. Lower taxes immediately when the cost to the country is least felt and work to retain businesses instead of allowing them to go down the sink under the burden of energy prices and increased taxes.
Decreased taxes on businesses is felt immediately as is decreased taxes on consumers. Rising prosperity and tax receipts will at least help to pay for the energy freeze in parallel.
Increase tax and businesses will go to the wall and consumer spending will dry up. Just one business goes down and numerous individuals are unemployed reducing tax receipts and throttling consumer spending.
‘There is no third way.’
If ways 1 & 2 involve increased borrowing or taxation to subsidize high energy prices, I’d suggest a 3rd approach, which would be to get Russian gas (and oil) back on the market through negotiations.
And Canada, which has universal health care as the single largest national public expense while still having the average Canuck paying an arm and a leg for all the peripherals that isn’t covered due to vast inefficiencies in a public only health care standard. Probably similar to NHS.
“Think the 1970s but in spades.”
That’s better than what I’m thinking which is the 1930s only, maybe, even worse.
Yes.
No, there is plenty of energy available.
There has not been a massive increase in demand, not has there been a systemic reduction of supply.
It is not a supply problem.
It is a stupidity problem.
Idiot politicians have decided that it is not permissible to purchase natural gas from the lowest cost provider that also has the infrastructure necessary to provide it.
The infrastructure necessary to replace that lowest cost supplier with alternate supplies from other suppliers is either entirely inadequate or non-existent (e.g. not enough LNG terminals). And the other suppliers are higher priced.
It is a stupidity problem.
Nail on head.
Unfortunately there seems to be an infinite supply of stupidity.
Then we need to design a generator to run on such a fuel and they will build statues to us as the providers of cheap abundant power!
I notice that the ENSO meter has dropped again , further into La Nina territory and wondered what that meant for those of us in UK and Europe given the looming energy shortfalls.
I am not sure if I have understood correctly what the UK Met office is saying , but it seems that La NIna has minimal impact on our side of the Atlantic and if anything should result in a warmer and wetter winter and a mild spring.That would ease the winter heating problems in northern france , germany and UK. Is this correct?
https://www.severe-weather.eu/long-range-2/fall-2022-weather-forecast-update-la-nina-seasonal-usa-europe-fa/
More than we ever wanted to know about it!
Michel thank you for that . it looks as if Germany will be spared a very cold winter , but that we in the UK will have possibly a warmer winter than average (thank goodness) but ,as usual, will be affected by the details of what happens in the North Atlantic.
Being spared a very cold winter isn’t really the point. When temperatures head down to 10ºC people demand heating as it gets uncomfortably chilly and, frankly, the elderly and vulnerable begin to die if they have to choose between heating and eating.
Come January/February even if temperatures don’t dip below zero and we don’t have snow, it’s still dangerously cold for those who can’t afford heating.
If bills are restricted to £2,500 annually (average cost for heating a home) that’s £200 a month just for energy. The State Pension is around £650 a month, so a third of a pensioners income is wiped out for energy.
If bills are kept to £2,500 people on better incomes won’t forego heating their homes so demand will rise which means we will hit the buffers in terms of supply and there will be blackouts to alleviate demand.
The most common search term in Germany is, apparently, firewood. I don’t know what it’s like in Germany but people in the UK have largely blocked up fireplaces in older houses. Those that haven’t have probably never lit a fire in their house in their life. We are liable to get a number of people killed by the build up of noxious gases from fires lit in houses that are sealed up with double glazing etc.
One of the beauties of Victorian houses were they were draughty. Cold air entered the building through gaps in doors/windows/between floorboards etc. and encouraged a roaring fire to exhaust fumes up the chimney. That’s just not the case any longer.
There are going to be a lot of unanticipated consequences spilling from this crisis.
Anyone who follows energy usage in winter or does basic sums knows that ambient temperature is very much the point.
UK settings vary – I set my house at 17°C and use solid fuel wood to make parts warm. I need to wear a woolly. Many young people want their house at 21°C which is ‘scandinavian triple glazed’ style warmth.
A warm winter is well above freezing in the 8°C-15°C range. so an average of 11.5°C. My usage will reflect heat lost across 6.5°C.
A cold winter which averages about 5°C will double my heat loss and hence oil bill.
For the snoflakes, they will in a warm winter have a loss proportional to 9.5°C and in a cold one 16°C – an increase of around 55%.
That is a phenomenal weather dependent ratio.
In very cold weather under an anticyclone, Britain exports electricity to Europes mainland. Gas saves the day, because we have plenty of gas terminals to import.
Renewables do not, because if the solar panels aren’t covered by snow, the thin northern sunlight is usually obscured by clouds and the short day makes them useless.
And the windmills, when the blades aren’t iced up only turn by electricity to keep the bearings from golng eccentric. There is no Eurpean wind power at all.
The nightmare scenario is a dull windless anticyclone with polar air at or below zero flopping across NW Europe for a week.
NIMBY (not in my back yard) is the default plan of eco warriors who preen and lecture the masses on their improbable “green” Utopia. As long as Germany (or California or Colorado or New York) isn’t mining icky fossil fuels it’s okay. They get them from their neighbors–Russia, Nevada, Utah, Pennsylvania—or have their neighbors burn the fossil fuels and send them the electricity. Their sanctimony about “leaving it in the ground” in their own state comes, as sanctimony always does, with a heavy cost. They become deeply dependent on their neighbors to support their righteous facade. A self-imposed slavery, really. Predictably, it is turnng out badly for them.
In Kali yesterday we had a flex alert, we will have another today, and again tomorrow. On the ISO there is NO wind, but imported energy is roaring.
Hence my point above. If the nation follows or is forced to follow their shining example of stupidity, we’ll all end up freezing and starving in the dark.
It seems the best way to expose the green lunacy is to cut their connections to out-of-state power so that they can no longer conceal the complete fallacy of “green energy” being remotely feasible.
It has long been German policy to persuade Russia to supply gas, doing so allowing them to pander to Green fantasists across their nation that wanted to shutdown their nuclear and coal plants. Russia was often doubtful, including a reluctance to build Nord Stream 2 given changeable attitudes towards their own country, but Chancellor Merkel met with President Putin and won him over. Germany is responsible for their own situation, only they can solve it.
This is entirely down to russian political action… which admittedly might have been foreseen – but there is no way German renewable policy contributes other than in the positive sense it supplies 50% of German electricity.
Russia isn’t the only source for oil and gas….
Except for Germany. doh
It was in the pipeline long before Russia did anything you disingenuous, ignorant twat.
Renewables supply 50% of German Electricity…25% of the time
You missed the capacity factor
Actually, they produce 50% less than 1% of the time. Even when producing, wind and solar rarely produce faceplate power.
And rarely when needed…
You struggling with power Griff your stupidity post count is down.
Griff
You are a blind fool and the people like you have condemned millions to suffering.
I won’t call you stupid on this as that suggests a lack of intelligence. I do think you have some consistent delusion or blind spot that prevents you from forming logical thoughts about the subject. It’s either that or you are completely dishonest.
Or perhaps “all of the above” – delusional, dishonest AND stupid.
Griff:
You left of part of that last sentence. FIFY.
” … supplies 50% of current German electricity, or about 45% of actual demand.”
The good news is you can get renewables to supply an even larger percentage of German electricity simply by shutting down other generation sources, as they already plan to do with their remaining nuclear plants.
50%??? Not even close.
Once again griff looks through the data finds the single 5 minute stretch where renewables max out, and then pretends that renewables are providing this amount for the entire year.
Why not do something useful and go fight on the eastern front in Ukraine? You could at least provide target practice for Russian artillery while erecting windmills on the front.
With the money spent on ‘renewable’ energy, Germany could have built enough reliable power plants and fuel sources to provide 100% of their energy.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/someone-who-is-good-at-the-economy-please-help-me
Candles can’t be the problem, they provide most of my light.
Liz Truss’s cabinet is stuffed full of climate sceptics. We all know Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch have vocalised their scepticism, but Jacob Rees-Mogg terrifies the greens. When he debates in the HoC he’s savage, but always devastatingly polite and smiling.
According to the Guardian Reese-Mogg has stated that ““climate alarmism” is responsible for high energy prices and that it is unrealistic for scientists to project future changes to the climate because meteorologists struggle to correctly predict the weather.”
Matthew Sinclair, her new chief economic adviser “is the author of a book called Let Them Eat Carbon, which challenges whether policies to address climate change are worth the cost to living standards, and papers including The Case Against Further Green Taxes.” (Guardian).
So far, I can’t find any who fully support climate action or even robustly oppose fracking.
The clown, Cop26 chair Alok Sharma who, as I recall, cried tears of happiness at the event is notable by his absence.
This is all shaping up rather well.
Alok Sharma is still in there.
It needs to be remembered that each round of absurd climate change legislation, from the CCA through to the Net Zero lunacy, has sailed through Parliament with minimal opposition. It won’t be enough for the government to start seeing the light (or seeing the lights go out, perhaps?), for there to be any significant change will require a lot of MPs to change their tune. And then there’s the House of Lords, stuffed with eco-loons and no doubt determined to resist any watering down of ‘green’ legislation. For MPs to change their tune will need pressure from voters.
I suspect that these politicians will change their tune PDQ once their constituents are hungry and sitting in dark, freezing homes.
The usual suspects will declare that renewables aren’t at fault. The power problems are being caused by evil capitalists and that the only solution is for government to take over everything.
The media will immediately start to echo the charges and amp them up.
50% of the population will believe it and the country takes another couple of steps down the road to hell.
Get rid of the BBC first.
Use 100% of the political power of the new PM to do that and you will eliminate the propaganda machine that supports the left.
Trudope gave the CBC millions of $ to guarantee their support. Wasted money in my opinion, since he already had their support, but it was other people’s money.
Yep, sadly Sharma is still there. He wasn’t announced when I posted I don’t think.
A lot of back benchers have joined Steve Baker’s Net Zero scrutiny group “This group, which has called on the government to reverse its net zero ambitions, has claimed to have 58 members, although according to Conservative Home at least 100 Conservative MPs are believed to be sympathetic.” (Engineering & Technology)
Alok Sharma is still in there all right – Truss stuck him with the fallout of COP26 after he thought he’d escaped. Now if there are problems Truss has got Sharma right there, ready to be thrown to the wolves.
‘So far, I can’t find any who fully support climate action or even robustly oppose fracking.’
Just wait till they start implementing actual policies.
I call this the “Obamacare Effect”. The US Senate was full of Republicans who regularly voted to repeal Obamacare right up to the moment when it would actually have an effect. It’s a pity politicians can’t be charged with consumer fraud for fundraising on promises to do what they have no intention of actually doing.
That is why so much of the US political establishment hate TRUMP!, he actually tried to keep his promises, and showed that you could fix things.
The status quo of always having a “border crises” to run on will end once the full boarder wall is completed, and deportations of illegal entry immigrants and visa overstaying immigrants starts.
Mexican illegals go home to visit relatives, etc., because they know they can easily get back into the US. I know this from personal knowledge.
As to overstaying visas, simple solution, limit the number of visas per country and stop issuing new visas until that country gets it’s own citizens back home, including the rich and business travelers. What number? Start with the total number currently issued minus the number of those who are in the US on overstayed visas. No increase in the number of visas allowed until ALL the overstayed visitors are gone.
No smirks now. But no apologies ether, as these self righteous ideologues continue to behave as if they did nothing wrong.
We know who they are……..
“By early September, most swallows are preparing to migrate. They flutter about restlessly, and often gather on telegraph wires. Most leave the UK during September, with early broods of youngsters being the first to go” (https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/natures-home-magazine/birds-and-wildlife-articles/migration/migratory-bird-stories/swallow-migration/ )
All our swallows went 3rd week in August, earliest we’ve seen.
Geese usually begin arriving in mid-September, with the main body arriving around 1st two weeks of Oct … but this year …
We’ve seen 1,000s of Geese over the last few weeks ~ 4weeks early !!
What do they know that we don’t ??? a hard winter maybe ???
Being a bit of a word person, I looked up “telegraph wires” and found the system was phased out in the UK in 1982. In the USA, leaded gasoline was gone in 1996 so many drivers have never encountered it. Yet the fueling stations still claim their gas is “unleaded”. We show our age.
il_794xN.774632321_qs0d.jpg (794×538) (etsystatic.com)
Germany doesn’t need a Marshal plan. What they need is a new Government and new elections. Maybe this time, the people will see through the propaganda and stop voting for the green unicorns …
But they have to freeze to death first.
Will the greens accept a return of whale-oil lamps?
First line in the above article:
“Germany needs an energy Marshall Plan”
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II.
Germany instituted its Energiewende program of its own free will. And as the above article clearly points out: they were warned by many intelligent people about the risks this policy posed to the nation.
No, the United States is in no way obligated to set up the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to bail Germany out of a energy crisis of their own making.
I don’t understand. Isn’t this what the Germans voted for? Why are they upset now?
This is more of a problem in sweden than germany, germany has mild winters for it’s latitude just like UK. They will survive but the question is what happens to scandinavia during a cold spell, we get 20% of our energy from wind farms.
“mild” is relative, it gets more than cold enough to cause a problem.
Mild is Cairo
Answer: Get in line for help from Norway like the rest. Yes, the Norway that quietly benefits from oil and gas while touting everything other than that.
You will get it instead from Norwegian hydro and Finnish nuclear
…”but German leaders in attendance smirked, berated and ridiculed the US President.”
Look who’s laughing now. Don’t send them a nickel or a deflated Euro.
We already know how this will go, they will blame Putin and the media will assist in trying to ensure no one blames their own politicians.
If i was a green scientist or green technology advisor to these governments, i’d be looking for a place to hide and working on my alibi.
Because the politicians are going to simply state they were “following the science” and the technical advisors who stated that the green energy transition was possible.
I wonder if they even see the bus they are going to be thrown under, which then will go forward and backward as many times as needed until the mob is satisfied that people have paid?
Ltes hope there is an Energienacht where good Gremans burn all the windmills and smash their neighbour’s solar panels
The “Energienacht” is what will result if they continue to pursue expansion of wind and solar as non-solutions to the imaginary ‘climate’ non-problem.
As in, being plunged into darkness…
Might this be called a reckoning(partial) for sins of the past?
“Consumers with the smallest CO₂ footprint are now paying the most for past mistakes – at least relative to their incomes. […] These people are now paying relatively the most for the screwed-up energy policy.”
On the other hand, that’s where the votes are. So … gooder and harder. Maybe (?) your politics (including quasi-religious doctrine) should include keeping your politics out of practical problems and then also not overwhelming practical solutions with your politics either. As it is, the statists are doing both on false moral grounds while those hardest hit are lapping it up.
The avalanche has already begun; it is too late for the pebbles to vote. – Ambassador Kosh, Babylon 5.
“Germany needs an energy Marshall Plan
Consumers are now having to endure the excruciating economic pain of the country’s intensifying energy crisis – brought on by decades of botched green energy policy and heavy reliance on Russian gas. “
***********
More and more these days, I find myself admiring many of the quotations of H. L. Mencken as I presume many others here at WUWT do.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out….without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.”
–H. L. Mencken
TOP 25 QUOTES BY H. L. MENCKEN (of 926) | A-Z Quotes (azquotes.com)
Mark Twain also had a good observation: “America has no indigenous criminal class, except for Congress. “
Re: the comment system problem (see other comments). This is being tested on the latest version of MS Edge. Here, no problem with the text box – but NONE of the formatting tool buttons are showing their images. (Testing italic here. Seems to work, so long as you select it by tooltip, not the image.)
Serves ’em right to suffer.
“German(y) needs an energy Marshall Plan”
Except this time the in no Harry Truman, not even close, and there is no George Marshall. There is no money either. They already blew trillions on a scam.
After much hesitation, French commentariat still insists BREXIT is a disaster, as evidenced by the fall of the British currency, lol.
Also, French commentariat: “British economic disaster from BREXIT was stopped by the COVID crisis“.
I don’t understand what the elites were thinking. There is a heirarchy of electricity needs
1) Universal Access (the rest doesn’t matter if you don’t have a power line)
2) Reliable (the rest doesn’t matter if the line is dead)
3) Cost
4) Pollution (i.e. mercury, lead, arsenic…)
5) More cost
6) CO2
The only reason we could work on CO2 was that the first 5 were basically solved. However, places like Germany (and California) have made a system that is extremely brittle. Texas has managed the same levels of emissions reductions (almost) but with a system that is much more resilient even in the face of demand growth (a pressure that Germany and California don’t have).
For Texas please keep in mind that if the power demand this year was only as high as any of the previous all time peaks there would have been no concerns about the grid at all. The problem is that capacity growth isn’t as fast as demand growth. Those pesky conservatives chased out of New York and California keep seeking refuge in Texas and turning on more Air Conditioners!
When Germany was being bombed day and night during WW2, the people had lights and heat. Now, as one of the most prosperous countries on the planet they cannot.Why? Because they have completely surrendered to the Green Mafia. How many people have to freeze to death before they figure out that Greens care less about actual people than they do about virtue signaling? The elites of the government bureaucracy class and the WEF will not be sacrificing- only the ‘useless mouths,’ the average person. This is the exact attitude that led to the French Revolution.