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Monday, May 7, 2018

What a Waste

Being terribly rich, as many nations are, means you can waste an awful lot, especially when it is someone else's money. This is a Theme of modern economies, industries, governments and even charities. We do get some seriously wealthy people occasionally rubbing shoulders with the hoi poloi in the bars here but I try to get them to tone down a little and not embarrass the rest of us who 'manage to get by'. But the message doesn't get through to the mobs of charlatans and crooks kept at bay by our tall hedges. Out there are Mammon worshippers and we see their Monoliths on the hill tops turning your money in the wind.

And it is your money out there, not theirs. 

It seems on the surface such a good idea to generate electical power by wind and solar. Wind is free, isn't it. The sun is free. 
Why not use it. 

I have nothing against a chap having a wind generator on his roof or in his garden for his own needs, Even sharing with his neighbour.  Solar panels too. I even, at one time, in an exotic land far away, had a  barrel thingo on my own roof to heat water.  I paid for it. 

It saved a bit of my heating bills every years, paid for itself in less than a year and cost very little to make and put up. Not so with the monstrosities we have all over the place that supposedly make us less reliant on fossil fuels.

They cost me and you a great deal. And it is a great deal for the 'owners' who rob us blind with the help of their mates in government. 

Those mates deliver our money: the windmills and acres of solar panels on otherwise prime agricultural land deliver profits, from more of our money, coerced from our wallets at gun point. 

What they do not often deliver is a nett power benefit.

Our Government looks at other nations that have invested their folks' monies and copy them without regard for the effect. 

WASTE.

It was busy in the P&B: a lot of disgruntlement going down. Jo Nova and Lawrence Solomon had a few things to say:
Bloodbath in the German solar “industry” — 
without subsidies 80,000 solar jobs are gone
Climate Worriers have the most terrible luck. All the runes were lined up for Solar power — it is nearly free, pours from heaven, and millions of people seem to need energy “pretty often”. 
Plus universities and governments have gifted twenty years of free advertising about its Glorious Wonderfulness.

  Solar power is also used by the Celebrity Saints of Gaia thus filling fashionable, spiritual and tribal needs. On a good day, it fills some megawatt needs too.
Despite all this, without forced payments from unwilling and unwitting non-users of solar power, investors are fleeing and the solar industry in Germany is collapsing. How can that be?!
You may like to chase up Jo's note about the German 'Green' industry here:


Lawrence Solomon asked: 
Are solar and wind finally cheaper than fossil fuels? 
Not a chance
After the German government decided to reduce subsidies to the solar industry in 2012, the industry nose-dived. By this year, virtually every major German solar producer had gone under as new capacity declined by 90 per cent and new investment by 92 per cent. Some 80,000 workers — 70 per cent of the solar workforce — lost their jobs. 
Solar power’s market share is shrinking and solar panels, having outlived their usefulness, are being retired without being replaced.
Wind power faces a similar fate. Germany has some 29,000 wind turbines, almost all of which have been benefitting from a 20-year subsidy program that began in 2000. 
Starting in 2020, when subsidies run out for some 5,700 wind turbines, thousands of them each year will lose government support, making the continued operation of most of them uneconomic based on current market prices. 
To make matters worse, with many of the turbines failing and becoming uneconomic to maintain, they represent an environmental liability and pose the possibility of abandonment. 
No funds have been set aside to dispose of the blades, which are unrecyclable, or to remove the turbines’ 3,000-tonne reinforced concrete bases, which reach depths of 20 metres, making them a hazard to the aquifers they pierce.
On the plus side, 80,000 Germans can now do something productive.
Funny thing, something similar happened in Australia in July 2014:
Broken Hill: Broken economi

Suddenly 97 percent of Australian renewables investment dried up without subsidies:
We’re told “clean” energy is a viable and cost effective. 
But cut the government subsidies, and 97 percent of investors vanish (in Australia it’s collapsed from $2.6b annually to $80m).
In Australia this brief lapse into something resembling a free market was due to policy “uncertainty” at the time. The dead hand of Government. Certainty has since returned to pick the losers winners.
And all of this stems from the biggest intellectual con of the age. Global Warming Climate Change.  (Watch this term space).

Our best brains in Universities and weather forecasting, environmental sciences, marine sciences, cosmic sciences indeed any 'science' that can muscle in and get a Grant (and that might incluse gender studies, homoeopathy, ant & termite-colonial studies et al), and they all tell us loudly that we are roooonin' the planet. Well, just the rich and middle class white folk are.  It is we who get money reefed from our wallets to pay for the Grants. And we must do somefink about it. Somefink that will hurt our wallets (but not theirs). 

And you can trust their dispassionate warnings. Shirley?

Hmmmm. Do I hear disagreement? Skepticism? 
Veteran Meteorologist talks of culture of intimidation — 
skeptics hide at National Weather Service, NOAA
CFACT has a report from a 40 year career meteorologist who alleges that skeptics are silenced through intimidation and threats at the National Weather Service (NWS). He also says data is “altered for political purposes” and that he was advised nearly forty years ago that he could find fame and fortune with CO2.
““When I was a graduate student I had a professor come up to me, and he said in the late 1970s ‘If you want to make a name in the field, want to be famous, CO₂ is the place to go.’ There is a lot of money to be made, authority and control over people’s lives at stake.””
A whole generation of meteorologists and climate scientists have been raised with these incentives, and a culture of fear:
Meteorologist allegedly assaulted by NWS Director Uccellini
No fishing for Facts

Adam Howser, CFACT
“I was giving a talk to fellow NWS staff about the jet stream flow in the upper atmosphere [in 2014]. What it showed was large amplitude waves in both the northern and southern hemispheres. I explained that the only way the jet stream could get to be high amplitude is if the atmosphere was actually cooling.”
“Right at the bathroom break, the Director of NWS, Louis Uccellini, put a hand on my chest and pushed me up against the wall and said ‘Don’t ever mention the word cooling again.’ He did not mean it in a ‘joking’ way, he absolutely violated my personal space and was dead serious.”
The whistleblower, who spoke to CFACT on the condition of anonymity, described a culture of fear and ostracism at NWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) against those who dissent from the “global warming” narrative.
The accused NWS Director Uccellini, has responded through a spokeswoman, and claims that “this alleged incident never happened”, and that Uccellini “encourages open discussion on all science issues…”. 
The whistleblower disagrees saying that the incident described above was not isolated and according to CFACT “describes a culture of fear at the agency in which experts are silenced through intimidation“.
“One coworker who is a fellow ‘skeptic’ and I have to be careful about what we talk about at our desks or the break room,” the NWS employee explained. “We can’t let the word get out that we aren’t buying into the whole ‘the climate is warming’ narrative.”
“It is an almost Orwellian, nasty-type society.”
Read all of it at CFACT --  the meteorologist also describes problems with climate models, says the NWS and NOAA is a “well oiled propaganda machine”. 
He referred to a study that took ocean buoy data and recalibrated it with measurements taken in ship engine intakes, even though everyone knew that the ocean bouys were more accurate.
Taxpayers' monies can be well spent on essentials and needed items, things and matters. Especially on things that matter.

But heck, why not be creative. It is a huge amount we can put in the national piggy bank each year, and we can always borrow more. There are schemes and plans and cons and scams, 


and they all can do wonders with YOUR money.

I pulled pints and pondered on what Jo and co had to say.

Perhaps you might too.

Drink up.

Its free here. Indeed, it pours down from above.

Pax 





5 comments:

  1. It's all encapsulated here:

    "Suddenly 97 percent of Australian renewables investment dried up without subsidies."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And here am I, a chap who has no great problem with taxes subsidising the building of power infrastuctures that is totally reliable and used by everyone. Ongoing subsidies are a rort. And just what constitutes a subsidy needs a look-at. Handing over monies has to stop. Reducing taxation on materials I can handle. Even a reduced local government tax. But the idea that My and Your money is just handed over to the sort of crook who would pull out if they didn't get it just has to stop.

      Personally, I would make it a criminal offence for any politician involved. Mandatory ten year jail.

      Delete
  2. The same thing is happening in the States. Wind farms are popping up all around our town, almost every day trucks pulling blades or the supports are seen driving down the road. It is well known that without the subsidies, wind power is destined to be unsustainable. Our state realized they lost out on a lot of revenue by giving tax breaks to wind power companies and now unsiightly turbines are popping up. Some even interfere with low level flight routes commonly flown by our military aircraft, thereby hindering their ability to properly train. All-in-all, these turbines do nothing to “save” the environment. In fact those who choose to use “renewable” energy from the power company pay more for it than those who use traditional power sources. Interesting isn’t it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They not only interfere with aircraft but with birds too. I don't have the figures at hand but the dead-bird count runs into the millions. And it is not as though 'energy' is increased by those turbines. Have you seen how they are made and erected? The energy cost far exceeds the energy that they generate. Its a nett LOSS. Then there is the issue of the rare minerals used in them. Mainly sourced in China (a very small thank goodness) the mining operations are an environmental disaster.

      Delete
    2. Yes they are definitely a danger to birds and very anti-green. Funny how it’s touted as environmentally friendly because we don’t see the pollution generated in their production. Absolutely a net loss.

      Delete

Ne meias in stragulo aut pueros circummittam.

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The Tavern gets rowdy visitors from time to time. Some are brain dead and some soul dead. They attack customers and the bar staff and piss on the carpets. Those people will not be allowed in anymore. So... Be Nice..