German Daily Writes Climate Summit-Hosting Germany Embarrassing Itself As Its Own Emissions Rise!

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Daniel Wetzel of online German daily Die Welt here writes Germany is hosting 1200 experts from 93 countries at its Foreign Affairs Ministry in Berlin to discuss reductions in global “climate gas” emissions and “climate protection”.

But there is one small, highly embarrassing problem with the event: host Germany has not been able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions over the past 8 years, despite tens of billions invested in green energy. Last year German CO2 emissions in fact rose by some 6 million tonnes, from 902 million tonnes in 2015 to 908 million tonnes.

Die Welt’s Wetzel reports that the timing of the news “couldn’t be worse” and that it is “embarrassing” for host Germany which was once considered a shining example of how to transition over to a clean energy economy.

The reality id that most of Germany’s reductions since 1990 resulted from the shutting down the filthy communist-run industries in former East Germany — something that was achieved by modern industry. Very little progress has in fact been made since 2000, when the renewable energy drive began in earnest — despite the now over 1 trillion euros committed thus far.

German skeptic site Science Skeptical here presents Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 tonnes since 1990, when german reunification took place:

German greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 equivalent in millions of tonnes) have not fallen since 2009. Source: Science Skeptical, German Office of Environment, UBA

Die Welt’s Wetzel not only writes that Germany’s progress in reductions is embarrassing, but that the country will also surely miss its 2020 reductions target of 40%. Currently Germany has cut reductions by 27.6%, and that has not gone anywhere since 2009. Again, the lion’s share of reductions came from shutting down East German communist-run industry.

The Berlin climate summit will be joined by leading German federal ministers from Angela Merkel’s government, such as Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Economics Minister Brigitte Zypries and Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks, all from Merkel’s coalition SPD socialist partner. There’s no mention if any minister from Merkel’s CDU party will bother attending.

Wetzel writes that if the global community wishes to meet its 2050 targets, the rate at which renewable energy gets installed will have to increase 7-fold!

As Science Skeptical writes that is likely not going to happen as the planet continues to gallop from one emissions record to another.

Global emissions set a new record in 2015. Source: German Office of Environment, UBA.

The claim by climate activists that the world can wean itself off fossil fuels is nothing more than a pie-in-the-sky illusion.

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March 21, 2017 at 02:53AM

Will Trump And Pruitt End America’s Biofuel Nightmare?

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

America’s biofuel mandates occupy that rare policy sour spot, where they look horrendous no matter how you look at them.

Regular readers will be well acquainted with this nightmare at this point, but here’s a quick run-down: the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) started as a Bush-era regulation required U.S. refiners to blend increasing quantities of ethanol into their fuel, and the Obama administration dutifully carried out this regime during its eight years. During that time, we learned that these quotas were: raising global food prices and starving the world’s poor; costing Americans billions of dollars every year at the pump; wreaking havoc on the environment; opening up new avenues for shady Wall Street chicanery; and making business a lot more difficult for American refineries. So what will Trump do about this mess?

It’s a difficult question to answer, because corn country was part of the reason President Trump was elected. Like many candidates before him, Trump backed ethanol quotas on the campaign trail as he worked his way through Iowa and the midwest. But one of Trump’s advisors, the billionaire magnate Carl Icahn, has been pushing for Trump and the new EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, to drop this support and walk away from these quotas. Bloomberg reports:

Scott Pruitt, who got the EPA administrator job, seemed to agree that the rule should be changed, Icahn said last week in an interview at his New York office. Icahn was disappointed with what he considered Pruitt’s scant knowledge of the issue during their first meeting, in November, but said he was satisfied after another meeting and additional phone calls.

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via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 21, 2017 at 01:58AM

Corona Hole, Cloud-forming Cosmic Rays Set to Hit Earth

via Current News – Principia Scientific International
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A huge hole in the magnetically hot corona of the sun in the coming weeks will lead to a powerful solar wind and initiate hefty polar lights in the earth’s magnetic field. This will be a brief pause in the solar activity slumber that has taken hold over the past year and thus allowed cosmic rays to penetrate almost freely into the earth’s atmosphere.

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via Current News – Principia Scientific International http://ift.tt/1kjWLPW

March 21, 2017 at 01:53AM

Australia’s Energy Crisis Worse Than Expected

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Not until Josh Frydenberg came to be energy minister did the Commonwealth start to understand the extent of the disaster. Prime Minister Turnbull and Frydenberg have taken the first step in overcoming the problem with the Snowy pump hydro scheme, but it is only a small step and will take two or three years to be effective.

Here is what some of the best energy engineers in the country tell me:

• Without urgent action residents of NSW, Victoria and South Australia have a 75 per cent chance of blackouts next summer if the Hazelwood power station shuts on April 2. Those blackouts will cost the nation tens and tens of billions of dollars in the food, medicine and processing industries.

• Without government action gas supply might, repeat might, be sufficient in this year’s (2017) winter but there is no doubt there will be major shortfalls in the 2018 and 2019 winters;

• The Gladstone venture, in particular the Santos consortium, in effect “shorted gas” — i.e. signed contracts to sell gas they did not have while Shell has gas in the Bowen Basin but it is proving more costly to extract than expected Australia’s energy mess to spark our own Trump revolt.

• All industries and consumers will experience much larger energy costs from the network — but to be safe must also consider spending vast sums to be prepared for the power and gas shortages. This is third world.

• We have a power grid that has not been engineered for the decentralised sources of power that we are now generating led by renewables; many billions must be invested to make it efficient and that will have to be paid for by power users. The knowledge of how best do this is not held within the state or federal governments.

• The Snowy will help longer term but it won’t overcome the short-term crisis and many more Snowys are required.

So let’s go through some of those conclusions step by step and look at the causes and options

Blackouts are coming

Residents of NSW, Victoria and South Australia have a 75 per cent chance of blackouts next summer.

In the summer just past it was very hot in NSW and Northern Victoria, but cooler in Melbourne. We had blackouts in South Australia and went close to blackouts in Victoria/NSW when several NSW generators hit technical problems. If the wind and solar generation units installed to replace coal fail, as occurred in South Australia, there is not sufficient backup both in raw capacity and in network design.

To lock in the likelihood of blackouts for next summer the Victorian government is encouraging and allowing the closure of Australian’s largest generator: Hazelwood. Without Hazelwood, if it is simultaneously hot in Sydney and Melbourne blackouts are certain unless there is also a lot of wind in the right places and the network can get the power to the capitals. Answer: subsidise Hazelwood’s continuation at least until a clear plan is engineered to replace it (maybe NSW generators need to be boosted; certainly totally new back-up systems to solar and wind must be devised and implemented).

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via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 21, 2017 at 12:27AM