I think there's a few reasons the politicians push so much for green solutions. First, they are mostly very stupid people when it comes to technology. They believe all the lies and can't even begin to understand the technical issues at hand. They couldn't even tell you how a toaster works.
Second, among them are many true believers. They really do believe the earth is "burning up." I don't mingle with politicians, but I see this in my U.S. big tech company. Otherwise very smart people have bought 100% into the climate fear mongering. So among the political class, with whatever shred of honesty they have left, they think they must push the green agenda "for the future" or whatever. It offers them a saintly aura when all the rest of their lives is sleazy pole climbing and money grubbing.
And third, of course, many are on the payrolls or invested in the "green" companies that, in turn, get government subsidies in a legal, circular bribery scheme. Pushing "green" is in their financial interests. And I don't know how it is in Germany, but in the U.S. it's astonishing how cheaply you can buy a politician.
"They couldn't even tell you how a toaster works."
This is an important thing to understand about politics in general. Most of the Very Smart People I met during my short career in academia were like this. They don't know how anything works, at all. I got into arguments with them regularly about the feasibility of their green views. They genuinely thought existing solar/wind/battery technology could be used to replace all fossil fuels. They refused to believe me that, .e.g. you can't run 7500kw industrial electric motors on a big battery.
Very much my experience! In my nearly two decades as a contract lecturer in the business program, I found that most of the faculty were not only unable to change a light bulb, they seemed to share a mild contempt for those who could. This is the group that seems cursed with an utter lack of knowledge or understanding as to where their food comes from, or how, and from what, their clothing is made, or how electricity or water gets to their residence, how, or where, their sewage and garbage goes.
And they are determined to destroy all of those systems - in the interest of "green" politics. Sad.
It's a total lack of humility. They don't know what they're talking about, should know they don't know, yet they keep talking. And on top of it all, they're impervious to counterevidence!
I had a similar experience. The lack of discernment is stunning, they are so eager to believe whatever nonsense is handed down to them. The only thing more surprising is their disdain for questions.
People who have 0 experience building/fixing things in the 3D world are totally lost. They're like small children with their understanding of what's possible.
> It’s an important question, why the Scholz government in general, and Habeck in particular, can’t seem to moderate their agenda, and have chosen instead to fire a cruise missile like the GEG directly at a central pillar of their political support.
Because they look like fucktards, the longer they've been screaming that the sky is falling, and the longer it doesn't.
Only an idiot wouldn't notice the weather has changed the last 20 years. Buffalo hasn't had a solid, snow-laden winter since 2004...
However, these hyper-finance capitlist joos pushing these policies care nothing about the weather; they are seeking to further squeeze our living standards, to temporarily increase the profit margins of the system.
In the meantime, China pollutes more than all the first-world countries combined and is building more coal power plants this year than exist in all of Europe...
"Buffalo hasn't had a solid, snow-laden winter since 2004..."
Indeed, in 2004 it snowed 109", a goodly amount. Only it snowed almost as much in 2007 (104"), snowed more in 2011 (112"), more in 2014 (130"), more in 2015 (113"), more in 2018 (112"), more in 2019 (119"), and more in 2023 (134"). (See for yourself: https://www.weather.gov/buf/BuffaloSnow )
So your subjective views of the weather aren't necessarily reality. We all thought summers lasted forever when we were kids, but they're always exactly the same number of days. And your weather impressions change as you age, too. To say nothing of the media environment, which has changed drastically and it's hard to be immune from the non-stop noise.
In any case, even if it hadn't snowed as much since 2004, that 20 year gap would mean absolutely nothing. There are cycles. We have wet winters, dry winters, cold winters, warm winters. And indeed the weather patterns of the earth do change, but it's because of natural processes (changes in solar radiation, changes in cloud formation, long term ocean cycles, the orbit and tilt of the earth [a MAJOR factor] and so on).
Anyway, I totally agree with you on the rest that the people pimping all the "green" policies don't care at all, witness them all taking private jets everywhere and buying coastal properties and having gigantic mega-mansions that use huge amounts of electricity.
In many places, there’s an unholy alliance between the NGOs that need to fund raise and the companies they don’t really want to do the hard work/undertake the cost of true measurable environmental protection (clean water, fewer real air toxins like Nox and sulfites etc). They have invented a surrogate issue with phoney milestones, a matter of faith into which they park their energies and channel those of others, away from the pocketbook/economic wealth distribution issues.
I don't think that being very smart, in general, is a very good predictor for being right, especially when it comes to heavily politicised tribalised issues.
I think it was Michael Shermer who stated that intelligence has nothing to do with knowing facts. The intelligent are just better at making their views sound, well, intelligent. Doesn't mean they are right though. The intelligent are just as guilty of believing things for the wrong reasons as anyone.
Anybody who believes in something as being black v. white is definitely not doing a good job of critical thinking. Every issue is nuanced and until you accept this you wont realize that most things are shades of grey.
The problem ultimately isn't really one of being right or wrong anyway, because the "skeptics" are not really sincere.
Any moron can see the reason people oppose climate policies is not because they sincerely think they have some silver bullet against the whole scientific hypothesis. Put twelve LSWMs in a room and they give you thirteen contradictory arguments for why we don't have an actual problem. I see some LSWMs argue it's due to the sun, others claim there is no actual warming, yet others insist it's actually the fault of China/Africans/whatever.
They claim there is no problem, because they're unwilling to do what it takes to solve it.
For me it's very simple: Nature is the only indisputable message left behind for us by God. If I have to freeze during winter and eat mud-cookies to preserve God's message, I would be honored to do so.
But most "right" wingers want to hang onto post-WWII era democratic liberal humanism in which mankind is deified, while the left consists of morons and charlatans who come up with increasingly far-fetched ways for us to have our cake and eat it too.
There are actually plenty like Monbiot out there, who are in favor of nuclear power.
I'm not convinced nuclear power is really economically viable at the scale that would be necessary. And if you could somehow electrify our whole electricity grid overnight, that would only address 30% of our energy needs, as the other 70% don't involve the use of electricity (industrial processes, transportation etc).
In fact, electricity and heat production together, are estimated at just 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions:
In other words, if you could snap your fingers and produce an emissions-free nuclear electricity grid overnight through magic, you would have solved 25% of the problem.
Hence why I don't see a solution other than very rapid degrowth.
Degrowth is a non-solution. What you are talking is total economic collapse which will mean desperate people will rape and pillage nature like nothing we have ever seen before, they will kill everything for food, and kill each other. A Dystopian nightmare. An insane idea.
And in the end some population somewhere will formulate an industrial civilization out of the rubble you would create, and then dominate the entire World in a matter of a few decades, and we would be right back where we started a hundred years ago. A stupid an unnecessary waste of a century. Degrowth is a crazy idea.
What makes you think nuclear power is just for electricity? And transportation can be electrified. Nuclear is a heat source. Small high temperature modular reactors are pretty simple minded, they've been built since the 1960's. The PTB don't want competition for their oil, gas & coal so they aren't used commonly. Easy to supply building heat & hot water with nuclear, and it is done in many locations. Heat for desalination, cracking of water into H2, synthetic fuels which replace fossil, cement kilns, industrial process heat is all entirely doable with nuclear, and at lower cost. And essentially unlimited in resource, at least for millions of years. Here is one example of what can be done right now if the PTB cared (hint: they don't):
Energy Future Unveiled! THORIUM Molten Salt Reactors, Copenhagen Atomics:
I might question the 70% of energy use not using electrical power. But the real assumption relates to "green house gasses" and CO2. Water vapor is the largest GHG and is a vital part of the water cycle.
Nuclear + hydrogen powered vehicles would be helpful in reducing the CO2 loading but we aren't doing enough R&D on those solutions. Oddly we think EV's helpful when in total they harm more than help. Then wind turbines are also harmful. Solar might help once the storage issues are resolved.
And human CO2 emissions are only 3% of the total, so there isn't a bloody thing we can do about it no matter what. I only offer nuclear as an option because it's *more* efficient than solar or wind, and significantly less environmentally damaging.
Are you actually aware of what the temperature of the planet was during the Eemian Interglacial, and what the effects of that on planetary vegetation were? Because at the .13 - .14 K increase per decade we've been seeing of late means we still have three centuries to go before we get that warm, and I, for one, think the endless Siberian wheat fields will be quite useful for feeding the species at that point, especially since we should be well established in space at that point. Assuming the doomsday cultists don't destroy western civilization for their millennialist religion.
Anything is possible. I was suckered into it too, until I started to look at the evidence myself. Most people do not.
For example: between 1977 and 2019 I have physically seen my favourite glaciers in New Zealand shrink at a fast pace. So man-made global warming seemed plausible. Until I found at that the end of the last Ice Age has been happening for the last 20,000 years (a mere blink of an eye in climate terms) , that Scotland and most of Europe was covered by glaciers quite recently, and therefore we can expect the earth to continue warming - whatever we do about it!
We are not Gods, we are merely witnesses to natural forces that we do not yet understand. But we like to think we know everything. Actually we know nothing, this is all arrogance and vanity.
We don’t know much about how this works. The action of the sun - the heater in the “greenhouse effect” is still a mystery, even though some of the finest minds have spent their lives studying it.
“Climate change” is babyishly simplistic. Maybe it is true.
Even if it is, is the problem as bad as the media say? Given that they deliberately and demonstrably lie and exaggerate, the answer must surely be “no”.
And even if it is true and as bad as they say, do the “solutions” work?
Similar to that, many very smart people buy into 'vaccines are safe and effective' mantra simply because they never look under the hood and never examine their belief, at least not until something bad happens. If/when they are compelled to take a deep dive most of the smart people come out the other end by stating 'am not giving my child another vaccine/I'm not getting another vaccine, ever'. They don't become more intelligent, just better informed.
Yep, I know any number of Very Smart People who took the gene therapy so they could go on holiday, or such like. Most, though not all, had no scientific background. They are still asleep.
I think most people will not “look under the hood” of these things until they are forced to. In that way, the covid vaccine accelerated that process. But we have a ways to go.
I’ll guarantee none of these “Very Smart People” have ever studied or practiced Geology. We’re in a brief interglacial and will return to a colder global climate by dint of natural cycles at an indeterminate time in the future. It’s written in the rocks. Frankly, the ignorance of the non-scientific pontificators and decision makers that envelop us astounds me.
I have listened to many talks. 450 or thereabouts parts per million CO2 today is much, much less than 000's ppm pre industrialisation and it rises after temp. rise, not before.
Of course. Warmer atmospheric temps warm the oceans, though it takes a very long time (centuries). The oceans are the great reservoirs of CO2, and the warmer they get, the more eager they are to get rid of it. A warm soda can that is shaken slightly will tend to explode vigorously if it is opened, while a colder one exposed to the same shaking will have a much more sedate reaction. Warming causes the oceans to release their CO2, with peaks following temperature peaks by ~800 years. It's why Algore's fictional disaster film "An Inconvenient Truth" did not plot CO2 concentration and global temperature on the same graph... they used two separate graphs stacked vertically, so the viewer could see at a glance that there was a correlation between global temps and CO2 concentration, but not that the temperature changes had preceded the CO2 concentration changes.
The whole global warming industry is full of things like this. It has things like the climate "scientists" on a discussion list at East Anglia discussing how to hide the medieval warm period, as its existence contradicted their theory (really more of a hypothesis) about mankind driving climate change.
NASA has also been caught doing this. For decades, NASA has collected and published global temperature data. In the days of old, this was done with ink and paper, but now we are in the digital age. If you go to a library and find one of those printed copies, you will see that the data they reported for, say, the 1970s was warmer than the same data (supposedly) for the 1970s are now. The same peaks and valleys are evident, but the entire graph has been pivoted, so that the farther you go back, the greater the cooling effect that is reported in the modern data vs. the old data.
After the data have been massaged, with the past being cooled incrementally each year, they get to say that this year is the warmest on record.
In science, if the observed data do not fit the theory, you change the theory. In climate "science," if the observed data do not fit the theory, you change the data.
Once you see that happening, you know that you are being taken for a ride, and that science and objective truth are not on the menu. If they are using fraudulent means to push their hypothesis, nothing they say can be believed... and certainly they cannot claim that their conclusion is completely cut and dried scientifically, so certain that no debate is necessary.
There never was a debate, though. One day they just started claiming the debate was over and they'd won, and now that "everyone" agreed, as they assured us was the case, it was time for action, not debate. It's much easier to win a debate if you skip the actual part where people debate things (the bit where you might lose) and just declare yourself winner... kind of like how they run elections, actually. A lot like that!
No, Very Smart People tend to be specialists, which means their ability to reason outside their field is extremely limited. Very few professional thinkers are good at reasoning in general, and they have little experience problem solving in the real world (as opposed to the world of ideas). As a person who has worked in the trades and professional philosophy, I can say that the absence of immediate, physical results to proposed solutions blinds people to whether their ideas actually correspond to reality. This effect can be seen most prominently with the people who've tasked themselves with taking the earth's temperature.
this very true, there's a sweet spot for green politics that lies around banning plastic straws and subsidising cool new e-vehicles. comprehensive attempts to implement their full vision seem like they'll just end in political disaster.
I have solar panels and both our cars are electric - but whilst nice to have, they are really just a hobby - we still rely on burning gas to heat our home, and that is by far the largest consumer of domestic energy.
If it were not for generous UK government subsidies, neither of these technologies would make financial sense.
Unfortunately those hobbies are an eyesore (solar panels) and an inconvenience (EVs). The rich dilettantes will never be able to charge their inefficient electric cars from their ugly, space-taking solar panels and enjoy a 5-hour drive.
Aesthetically, solar roofs are no different, better or worse than thatched roofs, turf roofs, or tiled roofs. But they are great for charging my electric car and running the fridge and washing machine. so at least I make some of my own solar power - actually enough to drive my car about 10,000 miles a year. Nor am I rich: I am a carer for my son, on carers social benefits, modest pensions, and some part time low-paid work. Of course I use any government grants available: well so do many businesses, so this is not a scrounger mentality.
Actually electric cars are HUGELY more efficient than petrol cars, in converting energy into motion: at least twice as efficient.
And I've driven over 100,000 miles in them, with no bother. My own car can drive five hours or more easily on one charge, at 50 mph.
The thing is that people will still believe that it's super important to do sth "for the climate" but just not exactly now and not in this harsh way. So it could be a forever topic like social justice coming back every election, especially when there was some prosperity so that people think "now we might afford a bit more". So the GEG might be a tactical win against the climate totalitarianism but not a strategic one (the EU is also doing a similar regulation and there is not much interest or resistance since nobody cares about the EU)
The public reaction to many of these initiatives is telling. Here in New Jersey the government banned the use of plastic straws in restaurants a few years ago. The plastic straws disappeared for a few months. But as of now I am routinely offered a plastic straw with my ice water at all of my favorite local establishments.
All scams do, the question is, will there be anything left when it does? Or will our cities look like European cities in 1945, with no America to help rebuild?
The October timing is perfect, heading into winter. There's a pipeline that will never carry gas, the Germans shut down their remaining reactors, and have said the people will not be allowed to burn wood for heating this year. They can heat their homes with hopes and wishes. And btw, GDP is directly tied to energy consumption.
Thank you for, as ever, an interesting and well-researched post.
Here in Blighty (UK that is) a proposal like the GEG would be catastrophic, considering that a vast amount (I forget the exact figures) of Britain's housing stock is pre-WWII, never mind even pre-1900. All the retro-fitting in the world of 'smart' devices cannot make these old houses any better in terms of energy consumption for heating. And most modern insulation methods do not work well with old houses, which tend to have solid walls not cavity walls, or are even counter-productive, like cement render instead of breathable lime render... I could bore you for ages, because about 15 years ago I was quite active locally in investigating and promoting sympathetic eco-friendly upgrades, sympathetic to old houses that is. The upshot is that two things tend to get completely forgotten by the Eco Evangelisers, namely:
a) one size does not fit all, as said above, and older houses need older solutions, and
b) most importantly older houses (old things generally) carry a huge amount of embodied energy with them.
Embodied energy is the stumbling block the advocates of new, better, shinier eco-fascism trip over quite happily. Most of the carbon footprint of a building comes from the time of its construction. Newer buildings are more carbon-intensive than older buildings. A building that has stood for decades if not centuries has stored up all the energy that was used long ago in its building materials, its construction methods, basically its carbon footprint. The older the house, the more likely all the material to build it was sourced locally. My 1850s house being a case in point: solid rubble stone walls sourced from a quarry up the hillside less than 50 metres away, lime for the mortar from limekilns less than 5 miles away, timber from ballast used in (sailing) ships coming back to Britain from Scandinavia. If you do the maths so beloved of the modellers (like our friends the eco climatics or epidemiologists), you can make an argument that the sheer amount of embodied energy sat in your pile of bricks and mortar, or stone and mortar, far outweighs any carbon output through fossil-fuel based heating for the next century.
For these reasons embodied energy tends to be left out in the calculations presented by the climate hysterics. It would be interesting to see if whatever 'science' underpinning the GEG proposals has also left out embodied energy.
Geez--wonder if you are in Glenside Montgomery Cty (quarry there, lime kilns near)---! My 1828 (+ 1840, 1880, 1910, 1991depending on which room you are in) house is also rubblestone, hair plaster, lime from local limekilns
Thank you.- The reason why we have such diversity, to use a buzzword, of building styles across the globe is that back in the day before experts told everyone what is best for them, local people had quite happily worked out for themselves what kind of materials and construction methods are cheapest, most durable, keep you cool/warm as appropriate etc.
Nice to know that your area across the Pond also retains some older houses. I’m in South Wales, Britain, where we have lots of rocks and coal but very little sun. There is still plenty of coal, but we don’t mine for it anymore (because Thatcher, competition, environment). We could build a lovely tidal barrier across Swansea Bay which would generate copious electricity for a century, but for some bizarre reason that project keeps getting g shelved for all sorts of reasons. Instead we are encouraged to plonk solar panels on our roofs, even though we have little sunshine.
Grew up in New England--all old houses were wood (never stone), and rarely any before 1820's (town founded 1669). Moved to Phila area--all old houses built of stone, many still from early 18th C. Reason? (in my estimation)--tons of stone in glaciated New England, but no lime. Forests abundant--so building from wood. And wood burns--so oldest houses destroyed. In Pennsylvania, lots of stone--but lime abundant. Stone doesn't go up in flames even when cooking done on open fireplace. So old houses remain. Probably also earliest settlers came from stone-building culture. My particular area heavily Welsh (see it in street names, township names....)
Youngest house I ever lived in was built 1928. Others were 1896, very late 18th C, 1928, 1828 (current for last 36 yrs). So all houses but one had hard plaster walls, all had wood floors (had to rip up nasty wall-to-wall carpet in two of them). We are careful to keep our old, original wood windows.
Daughter lived in Tongwynlais for several years while husband was pastor there.
Not to seem mean-spirited but I was hoping Germany would push through with its climate lunacy. The rest of the world needs a shining example of where solar panels, wind turbines and other such nonsense completely falls on it's face in both extreme cost and flat out not working. Blackouts and bills of thousands per month in Germany would be difficult for the rest of the world to ignore and perhaps heads of the people responsible on pikes wouldn't be a terrible thing either.
Certainly if politicians understood there were consequences other than simply falling short of the goal (which might actually be the real goal) then maybe they'd stop actively working against the good of the people.
Yes, NY says to all you suckers - "hold my beer!" But just like New York State's "first in the US, Excelsior Vaccine Passport!" its moronic green initiative will collapse from noncompliance. NYS is ruled by dumbasses, mass murderers, narcissists and grifters.
I too was sort of hoping to see Germany pleading with the French to send over some nuclear energy via really long extension cords, lol. Just as a lesson to every other country.
Oh, dear. I must confess the same, Bob. Germany is held up as the "model example" by my spouse. Every seeming technical advance is cheered on or gloatingly volleyed at me whenever I express some heretical doubt over the climate agenda (pounced on with the same viciousness as was done with my heretical "anti-vaxxer" sentiments).
No, Germany can do no wrong. Germany is "leading the way" and "showing the world".
Bla, bla, and bla.
All I can imagine is our beautiful country scabbed over with solar panels, and our vistas scythed through with bird-killer turbines. All for a blip of unpredictable "substitute" power. No thanks. It's Quixotic in the extreme, given that the climate's gonna climate, no matter what.
The quicker Germany crashes and burns (sorry, Eugyppius), the better. I don't see any other way, sadly. Or maybe it will be lucky and do some drastic self-correcting. Either way, accompanied with some suitable mea culpas would be nice, but I won't be greedy.
Does your hubby know that Germany has some of the highest electricity rates in the world with not much to show for it when it comes to lowering CO2 emissions? Energiwende is considered a failure by everyone who's actually paying attention.
Some very interesting stats and links in that, thanks, Bob. Of course, for us in South Africa at the mo ment, it's a moot point to try and compare! We have had relentless loadshedding for years now. Escalating to daily in the last few months. Sometimes two or three times a day for anything from two to four hours at a time. We watch Germany and its disabling of its nuclear plants in disbelief. Well, those of us who haven't swallowed the climate "crisis" lie, at least.
The poor chap hasn't been initiated into the sleight-of-hand ruses and malfeasance that has permeated our world these last few years. Or at least, refuses to see it. He is deep into confirmation-bias thinking and "our government wouldn't lie to us or harm us" fairy stories. He would brush this off as "it's the price we've got to pay for future green pay-offs". Trust me, I am well-trained in anticipating all of his contorted reasoning! 😂 I survived being labelled a "right-wing, science-denying, Trump-loving, Putin-supporting, white-supremacist conspiracy theorist" during the "pandemic". Adding "climate-denier" to that list is just par for the course. I made a half-hearted attempt to discuss the whole CO2 and warming cycle with him (ocean warming, lag effects, pre-industrialisation etc), but got slammed down so hard that I couldn't be bothered now. He must just suck on the fear straw and ride the renewables unicorn now. Maybe one day he'll wake up when Europe regresses to rubbing sticks together. 🙄
So has Delaware. EV mandate by 2035 - no more gas vehicles sold. Net zero by 2050. All flowing through the Assembly like a hot knife through butter. The Senate is Democrat also, so just hoping that body has a bit more sense, though I doubt it. It's in the news, but the voters do not seem to care to stop this madness. The poor devils are being led like sheep to the slaughter and they don't seem to care.
Bob, they've understood the consequences since at least 2013, and yet they've forged ahead. Here's an article from 2013: High Costs and Errors of German Transition to Renewable Energy - DER SPIEGEL
"This year [2013], German consumers will be forced to pay €20 billion ($26 billion) for electricity from solar, wind and biogas plants -- electricity with a market price of just over €3 billion. Even the figure of €20 billion is disputable if you include all the unintended costs and collateral damage associated with the project."
with out even trying a green agenda, many areas of the planet are already suffering -
could you imagine what a few couple dozen really strong cars, indoor plumbing, better roads, actual electricity would do for so many in South America? Africa? many many very sad poor nations. Those people that can, come rushing to civilized nations to get a better life, only to find now, those things are now being cut. How many documentaries have you watched of the life of some of the poorest areas of the planet are? They dance and sing when some fat cat donates a few old Toyota land cruisers down their way just to they can share and trade with other impoverished places. ... bikes are great but...
No, the powers that be would rather focus in and punish the workers in developed countries to play their stupid games.
Many thanks for this article - an excellent summary of the salient points in the discussion, and the analysis, as ever, is acute.
I agree the Green agenda is the regime's Achilles' Heel. Unlike the vaccine harms, the numbers potentially affected are very large indeed: at least a plurality of the population, if not a majority.
Unlike the lockdowns at their height, the fear necessary to accept real hardship does not exist outside a fringe of lunatics. The urgency simply does not exist.
Finally, and very importantly, as you say: this agenda promises to end prosperity altogether. One of the biggest reasons for widespread acquiescence in the lockdown madness was generous handouts. The Green agenda would not, in its full flowering, permit this.
These policies seem likely to trigger a generalised reaction. I don't believe the regime has the capacity to deal with that. Calling smallish numbers of people with horrific vaccine injuries nasty names is easy.
Handling an enraged mob in a socio-economic system in meltdown - which is the result of the regime's own policies - requires real ability, which the regime has amply demonstrated it lacks.
Perhaps they will change course in time to save their own system. Based on their behaviour to date, I am not so sure. Your comments on the maximalist attitude of many regime operatives is insightful and highly relevant.
Incompetents on a power trip are likely to make a terrible mess before they are stopped.
Incompetents on a power trip--I don't believe they are capable of seeing that they are on the wrong path--so when 'outcomes' are not what they expected, they just go for more. Oh well, I have been seeing this among the soi-disant Progressives for several decades.
The Greens probably didn’t write the legislation- I’m sure they want to “punish” fossil fuel users like they do people who drive cars with poorly timed lights, turning off/on the engines/ turning streets to pedestrian zones, no parking, etc... But the words of the legislation might be from shady groups in the background and corporate interests. That is how the legislation is drafted now in the US. Congress drafts nothing, their corporate owners draft everything and then it is shoved through how Pelosi stated- you have to vote on it to know what’s in it! I think slowing down that process and having the German public realize the true weight of the legislation on every day lives will be a real eye-opener. The Greens were greedy after shoving everything through during Covid and like when Obama shoved through his healthcare mandates (all written literally by health insurance and hospital interest groups).
Interesting--and suddenly makes Pelosi's dumb comment make sense. Sort of. Congressmen still have the moral responsibility to read a bill before voting on it. IMHO.
The leaders of the house and Senate shove through the bills they want to the front of the line suddenly and no one has the time or energy to read the 1,000 + pages, plus, they have to stay in line with Mcconnell’s game of chits and political favors/riders. The Senate in particular, is completely captured by special interests groups, both sides of the aisle.
I wonder why our ruling class is hiding the fact that there were soccer moms driving gas-guzzling SUVs all over Europe in the 1700s? I mean, that's the only explanation for such severe weather.
I'm a former Green enthusiast and activist. Well, that's not quite true, I still believe in clean air, clean water, and reducing our use of burning coal and oil. But the unthinking belief that we are heading for a man-made climate catastrophe has now been replaced by hard reality - sometimes the sun don't shine, sometimes the wind doesn't blow, and sometimes our hydro dams dry up. I don't think the hard evidence stacks up well enough to force human beings to become paupers or freeze in the dark - we need a far better managed transition to new and clean sources of energy, including nuclear. Actually Robin Harper, Scotland's first Green MSP and leader, agrees: he spotted this problem a decade ago and opted for nuclear as the only possible interim energy source.
And we would probably have more than sufficient nuclear today, if that very same crowd of illiterate political clowns hadn't panicked over immaterial burps like Three Mile Island.
I strongly believe in clean water, air, soil, and food. I am supportive of safe, well-designed nuclear technology to fill our energy needs gaps. Low-cost energy is what makes society prosperous. (So long as society is also moral and not corrupt.)
"....transition to new and clean sources of energy, including nuclear..."
I would correct that phrase to "the only clean source of energy we have is than can replace fossil fuels is nuclear fission". Hydro and geothermal can be good but they can't compete with nuclear and have nowhere near the resource potential to replace fossil.
People need to wake up to reality. Nuclear energy is the only viable replacement for fossil fuels. Thinking anything different is a dangerous delusion.
In places that have pushed for more renewable energy, as that happens they discover the wind doesn't blow, the sun doesn't shine as needed. And battery storage at utility scale remain in development. In order to meet demand natural gas generators are needed but gas pipelines are needed for heat as well, so gas must be backed up by that nasty stored on-site oil. So the cheap renewable ends up costing more to the users. So odd that over time we built an electrical system delivering relatively cheap reliable energy. We are discovering that changing that causes complications along with higher costs. Our politicians can do group think even when they are wrong.
If you believe Nuclear energy is clean you are a fool . EVs cannot be run for 10000 miles/year on a few rooftop solar panels . And as usual Green Think allows one to disregard production , disposal , and many operational limits of current EV technology !
Nuclear is clean, cleaner than any energy source we have on Earth. Even humans as an energy source produce a lot of smelly shit, not clean. Name an energy source that is cleaner than nuclear?
There are 195 countries on earth. Only 13 believe in tenets of the green ideology. The rest of the world is building coal/gas/nuclear plants as quickly as possible and don't give a damn about the environment. China alone generates more pollution of all types than the U.S., the EU, and Canada combined. So, these "green" policies are not about the climate. As the late, great Vaclav Havel said, the environmentalists are the new communists. These policies are designed to destroy the western market-based systems.
I actually think there is hope for the vaccine awareness exactly because of this recent divide in enviro extremism; especially when people realize that their injured children were because of a safe and effective vaccine. The enviro extremism has always been a flawed logic and science. If it can be cracked...albeit extraordinarily later than ever expected...then perhaps this medical hegemony can be cracked as well...in time...
unfortunately i think the best chances for a divided establishment over vaccines would require a vaccine disaster of some kind, even worse than with Covid. that may happen, as they're all emboldened now and eager to roll out novel vaccines for RSV and every new Covid variant and who knows what else.
I think the vaccine harms are just small enough of an issue that they can pretend it isn't happening.
It will be interesting to see whether the noticeable rise in the death rate and the collapse in the birth rate has any impact on the discussion in the medium term.
For now, they are all in far too deep to admit any mistakes
Although that's the strategy they're relying upon, I am not sure it will work. Back before the early 1980s, in the U.S., if you drove drunk the worst that happened is the cop would drive you home. If you killed someone, well, you were drunk, you weren't responsible. People victimized by this state of affairs were looked upon with sympathy, but the overall attitude was that you couldn't really do anything about it and you couldn't hold drunks accountable. And then the wrong kid got killed, and that kid's mother would not be silent, and she traveled the country giving impassioned speeches, and MADD was born, and she single-handedly got the laws changed nearly everywhere. That's all it's going to take. Just that one kid, the child of an articulate and determined parent, and this whole house of cards will burn to the ground.
There is good reason to hope. Remember it took 40 years before bigtobacco ws finally nailed - but before that there were plenty of Doctors actually extolling the health benefits of smoking.
The RPTB will lie, deceive, cancel and threaten but I believe Joe Public is gradually waking up, most people know friends/family who have becime very sick or died before their time and that number increases by the day.
Agreed. Once they roll out more mRNA versions of common vaccines then I'm betting/hoping people (people who've missed the boat of the obvious thus far) will begin to connect the dots.
My morning thought today was this: RFK Jr. got into the vax vs autism business because so many mothers had come to him, describing the personality change/degradation in their children right after vax. The mothers knew their child's personality (to which you reply, "Well, of course!" ). But now, HepB injection is given on day of birth. No mother can know her baby's personality within hours of birth. Thus, any vax damage is well hidden. (Very concerning to me, as daughter gave birth to twins 3 wk ago today).
In Canada, climateers are still focused on impoverishing politically weak resource-producing parts of the country, so an elite split will more likely come as a secession crisis.
Perhaps Germany isn't seeing this dynamic because the east emits less GHG than the dominant west?
It's much worse: he is an idiot who is trying to pull a mean move using a made up argument of saving the planet. I really do think that meanwhile he understands how moot all their efforts are in terms of effect on the climate, but he simply cannot admit it because it would nullify his whole career. This is a special type of self-made hell
I really don't believe these creeps care about the climate. They are Degrowthers, anti-human, Malthusians. Climate change is just a convenient cudgel that they are using to beat down the population, whom they consider are serfs. They are elitists, Club of Rome types. Do as I say not as I do.
Looking forward to my very small part in reducing the size of the Gruensozialistische Einheitspartei in Hessen. No bone they throw our way before then will change my mind.
I will never forget or forgive covid. What they are doing now is adding insult to massive injury.
And the massive injury is becoming increasingly clear even to the normalos. I'd say not more than 20% believe in the competence and the sincerity of the uniparty in germany anymore. Covid was a scam and they pulled it like complete rookies. It is sad, but people seem to like brutal, smart and successful criminals. At least nobody likes mean stupid sadists, and that's precisely what the greens and their entourage (SPD + considerable majorities in CDU and FDP) are. They are toast, and are tripling down in panic moves to get around it somehow. We all will stand to lose a lot in the process, but at least I believe they will not be able to install the soviet style totalitarian EU they are dreaming of.
It's so easy to blackmail, in one way or another, those who might want to look into and report actual facts. We saw that during the Plague Era where only a very few people were able to leave their traditional jobs when their Substacks took off astonishingly well.
So reporters are all going to stay in line even if they might not want to. Older ones nearing pension time usually have plenty of family obligations to consider. Younger ones want to get or stay hired and they can't afford to develop troublesome reputations.
Perhaps slow careful cultivation of intelligent reporters will bear good fruit in a generation. Asking people in private, neutrally-toned conversations:"Why do you believe [such and such]?" And then point them to good data disproving what they've been conditioned to accept as proven.
Good people become troubled when they realize they are promoting dangerous propaganda. Perhaps they still can't speak out loud. But they will perhaps start to reconsider who they vote for. That's a beginning. All change must start somewhere. Building a smarter public is done person by person, because everyone has a circle of relatives and contacts. Building a smarter public requires introducing skepticism and awakening thinking skills.
I think there's a few reasons the politicians push so much for green solutions. First, they are mostly very stupid people when it comes to technology. They believe all the lies and can't even begin to understand the technical issues at hand. They couldn't even tell you how a toaster works.
Second, among them are many true believers. They really do believe the earth is "burning up." I don't mingle with politicians, but I see this in my U.S. big tech company. Otherwise very smart people have bought 100% into the climate fear mongering. So among the political class, with whatever shred of honesty they have left, they think they must push the green agenda "for the future" or whatever. It offers them a saintly aura when all the rest of their lives is sleazy pole climbing and money grubbing.
And third, of course, many are on the payrolls or invested in the "green" companies that, in turn, get government subsidies in a legal, circular bribery scheme. Pushing "green" is in their financial interests. And I don't know how it is in Germany, but in the U.S. it's astonishing how cheaply you can buy a politician.
Excellent summary of the cast of characters running the West:
a. Idiots
b. Lunatics
c. Crooks
May I add vainglorious narcissists?
That would be A and B.
Might I add...d. Incompetents?
To quote from an old saying : ' overpaid and over here'.
"They couldn't even tell you how a toaster works."
This is an important thing to understand about politics in general. Most of the Very Smart People I met during my short career in academia were like this. They don't know how anything works, at all. I got into arguments with them regularly about the feasibility of their green views. They genuinely thought existing solar/wind/battery technology could be used to replace all fossil fuels. They refused to believe me that, .e.g. you can't run 7500kw industrial electric motors on a big battery.
Very much my experience! In my nearly two decades as a contract lecturer in the business program, I found that most of the faculty were not only unable to change a light bulb, they seemed to share a mild contempt for those who could. This is the group that seems cursed with an utter lack of knowledge or understanding as to where their food comes from, or how, and from what, their clothing is made, or how electricity or water gets to their residence, how, or where, their sewage and garbage goes.
And they are determined to destroy all of those systems - in the interest of "green" politics. Sad.
It's a total lack of humility. They don't know what they're talking about, should know they don't know, yet they keep talking. And on top of it all, they're impervious to counterevidence!
Having worked IT at a university, I can sum it up with the phrase, "*I* have a *Ph.D.*!"
To which my response, on occasion, was: "Your Ph.D is in *biology*, so how about you *shut the fuck up* regarding the configuration of the firewall?"
As a society, we need to say this more often to our "leaders".
PhD….Pretty hard Dick
I had a similar experience. The lack of discernment is stunning, they are so eager to believe whatever nonsense is handed down to them. The only thing more surprising is their disdain for questions.
Technical matters are beyond the ken of most MBAs and lawyers.
People who have 0 experience building/fixing things in the 3D world are totally lost. They're like small children with their understanding of what's possible.
Not forgetting there are no large batteries.
> It’s an important question, why the Scholz government in general, and Habeck in particular, can’t seem to moderate their agenda, and have chosen instead to fire a cruise missile like the GEG directly at a central pillar of their political support.
Because they look like fucktards, the longer they've been screaming that the sky is falling, and the longer it doesn't.
100% correct
Only an idiot wouldn't notice the weather has changed the last 20 years. Buffalo hasn't had a solid, snow-laden winter since 2004...
However, these hyper-finance capitlist joos pushing these policies care nothing about the weather; they are seeking to further squeeze our living standards, to temporarily increase the profit margins of the system.
In the meantime, China pollutes more than all the first-world countries combined and is building more coal power plants this year than exist in all of Europe...
"Buffalo hasn't had a solid, snow-laden winter since 2004..."
Indeed, in 2004 it snowed 109", a goodly amount. Only it snowed almost as much in 2007 (104"), snowed more in 2011 (112"), more in 2014 (130"), more in 2015 (113"), more in 2018 (112"), more in 2019 (119"), and more in 2023 (134"). (See for yourself: https://www.weather.gov/buf/BuffaloSnow )
So your subjective views of the weather aren't necessarily reality. We all thought summers lasted forever when we were kids, but they're always exactly the same number of days. And your weather impressions change as you age, too. To say nothing of the media environment, which has changed drastically and it's hard to be immune from the non-stop noise.
In any case, even if it hadn't snowed as much since 2004, that 20 year gap would mean absolutely nothing. There are cycles. We have wet winters, dry winters, cold winters, warm winters. And indeed the weather patterns of the earth do change, but it's because of natural processes (changes in solar radiation, changes in cloud formation, long term ocean cycles, the orbit and tilt of the earth [a MAJOR factor] and so on).
Anyway, I totally agree with you on the rest that the people pimping all the "green" policies don't care at all, witness them all taking private jets everywhere and buying coastal properties and having gigantic mega-mansions that use huge amounts of electricity.
In many places, there’s an unholy alliance between the NGOs that need to fund raise and the companies they don’t really want to do the hard work/undertake the cost of true measurable environmental protection (clean water, fewer real air toxins like Nox and sulfites etc). They have invented a surrogate issue with phoney milestones, a matter of faith into which they park their energies and channel those of others, away from the pocketbook/economic wealth distribution issues.
>Otherwise very smart people have bought 100% into the climate fear mongering.
Could it be that these "otherwise very smart people" bought into it, because they're smarter than you?
Is it possible that they are right, while you are wrong?
I don't think that being very smart, in general, is a very good predictor for being right, especially when it comes to heavily politicised tribalised issues.
I think it was Michael Shermer who stated that intelligence has nothing to do with knowing facts. The intelligent are just better at making their views sound, well, intelligent. Doesn't mean they are right though. The intelligent are just as guilty of believing things for the wrong reasons as anyone.
HardmoneyJim's Law: The smarter the rationalizer, the "better" the rationalization.
Anybody who believes in something as being black v. white is definitely not doing a good job of critical thinking. Every issue is nuanced and until you accept this you wont realize that most things are shades of grey.
The problem ultimately isn't really one of being right or wrong anyway, because the "skeptics" are not really sincere.
Any moron can see the reason people oppose climate policies is not because they sincerely think they have some silver bullet against the whole scientific hypothesis. Put twelve LSWMs in a room and they give you thirteen contradictory arguments for why we don't have an actual problem. I see some LSWMs argue it's due to the sun, others claim there is no actual warming, yet others insist it's actually the fault of China/Africans/whatever.
They claim there is no problem, because they're unwilling to do what it takes to solve it.
For me it's very simple: Nature is the only indisputable message left behind for us by God. If I have to freeze during winter and eat mud-cookies to preserve God's message, I would be honored to do so.
But most "right" wingers want to hang onto post-WWII era democratic liberal humanism in which mankind is deified, while the left consists of morons and charlatans who come up with increasingly far-fetched ways for us to have our cake and eat it too.
> The problem ultimately isn't really one of being right or wrong anyway, because the "skeptics" are not really sincere.
Neither are the doomsday cultists, since they claim the issue is CO2, and reject nuclear power.
There are actually plenty like Monbiot out there, who are in favor of nuclear power.
I'm not convinced nuclear power is really economically viable at the scale that would be necessary. And if you could somehow electrify our whole electricity grid overnight, that would only address 30% of our energy needs, as the other 70% don't involve the use of electricity (industrial processes, transportation etc).
In fact, electricity and heat production together, are estimated at just 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions:
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
In other words, if you could snap your fingers and produce an emissions-free nuclear electricity grid overnight through magic, you would have solved 25% of the problem.
Hence why I don't see a solution other than very rapid degrowth.
Degrowth is a non-solution. What you are talking is total economic collapse which will mean desperate people will rape and pillage nature like nothing we have ever seen before, they will kill everything for food, and kill each other. A Dystopian nightmare. An insane idea.
And in the end some population somewhere will formulate an industrial civilization out of the rubble you would create, and then dominate the entire World in a matter of a few decades, and we would be right back where we started a hundred years ago. A stupid an unnecessary waste of a century. Degrowth is a crazy idea.
What makes you think nuclear power is just for electricity? And transportation can be electrified. Nuclear is a heat source. Small high temperature modular reactors are pretty simple minded, they've been built since the 1960's. The PTB don't want competition for their oil, gas & coal so they aren't used commonly. Easy to supply building heat & hot water with nuclear, and it is done in many locations. Heat for desalination, cracking of water into H2, synthetic fuels which replace fossil, cement kilns, industrial process heat is all entirely doable with nuclear, and at lower cost. And essentially unlimited in resource, at least for millions of years. Here is one example of what can be done right now if the PTB cared (hint: they don't):
Energy Future Unveiled! THORIUM Molten Salt Reactors, Copenhagen Atomics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27IntvWo4mo
I might question the 70% of energy use not using electrical power. But the real assumption relates to "green house gasses" and CO2. Water vapor is the largest GHG and is a vital part of the water cycle.
Nuclear + hydrogen powered vehicles would be helpful in reducing the CO2 loading but we aren't doing enough R&D on those solutions. Oddly we think EV's helpful when in total they harm more than help. Then wind turbines are also harmful. Solar might help once the storage issues are resolved.
And human CO2 emissions are only 3% of the total, so there isn't a bloody thing we can do about it no matter what. I only offer nuclear as an option because it's *more* efficient than solar or wind, and significantly less environmentally damaging.
Are you actually aware of what the temperature of the planet was during the Eemian Interglacial, and what the effects of that on planetary vegetation were? Because at the .13 - .14 K increase per decade we've been seeing of late means we still have three centuries to go before we get that warm, and I, for one, think the endless Siberian wheat fields will be quite useful for feeding the species at that point, especially since we should be well established in space at that point. Assuming the doomsday cultists don't destroy western civilization for their millennialist religion.
Agreed.
High intelligence does not necessarily imply either good judgment or goodwill.
But someone who has all three is better placed to advise and decide than someone who has only one or two of the three.
Also interesting to wonder how far educational “attainment” is any longer a good proxy for general intelligence anyway…
Anything is possible. I was suckered into it too, until I started to look at the evidence myself. Most people do not.
For example: between 1977 and 2019 I have physically seen my favourite glaciers in New Zealand shrink at a fast pace. So man-made global warming seemed plausible. Until I found at that the end of the last Ice Age has been happening for the last 20,000 years (a mere blink of an eye in climate terms) , that Scotland and most of Europe was covered by glaciers quite recently, and therefore we can expect the earth to continue warming - whatever we do about it!
We are not Gods, we are merely witnesses to natural forces that we do not yet understand. But we like to think we know everything. Actually we know nothing, this is all arrogance and vanity.
We don’t know much about how this works. The action of the sun - the heater in the “greenhouse effect” is still a mystery, even though some of the finest minds have spent their lives studying it.
“Climate change” is babyishly simplistic. Maybe it is true.
Even if it is, is the problem as bad as the media say? Given that they deliberately and demonstrably lie and exaggerate, the answer must surely be “no”.
And even if it is true and as bad as they say, do the “solutions” work?
Nope.
So either way, I am not buying
Similar to that, many very smart people buy into 'vaccines are safe and effective' mantra simply because they never look under the hood and never examine their belief, at least not until something bad happens. If/when they are compelled to take a deep dive most of the smart people come out the other end by stating 'am not giving my child another vaccine/I'm not getting another vaccine, ever'. They don't become more intelligent, just better informed.
Yep, I know any number of Very Smart People who took the gene therapy so they could go on holiday, or such like. Most, though not all, had no scientific background. They are still asleep.
This! 🎯
I think most people will not “look under the hood” of these things until they are forced to. In that way, the covid vaccine accelerated that process. But we have a ways to go.
I’ll guarantee none of these “Very Smart People” have ever studied or practiced Geology. We’re in a brief interglacial and will return to a colder global climate by dint of natural cycles at an indeterminate time in the future. It’s written in the rocks. Frankly, the ignorance of the non-scientific pontificators and decision makers that envelop us astounds me.
I have listened to many talks. 450 or thereabouts parts per million CO2 today is much, much less than 000's ppm pre industrialisation and it rises after temp. rise, not before.
Of course. Warmer atmospheric temps warm the oceans, though it takes a very long time (centuries). The oceans are the great reservoirs of CO2, and the warmer they get, the more eager they are to get rid of it. A warm soda can that is shaken slightly will tend to explode vigorously if it is opened, while a colder one exposed to the same shaking will have a much more sedate reaction. Warming causes the oceans to release their CO2, with peaks following temperature peaks by ~800 years. It's why Algore's fictional disaster film "An Inconvenient Truth" did not plot CO2 concentration and global temperature on the same graph... they used two separate graphs stacked vertically, so the viewer could see at a glance that there was a correlation between global temps and CO2 concentration, but not that the temperature changes had preceded the CO2 concentration changes.
The whole global warming industry is full of things like this. It has things like the climate "scientists" on a discussion list at East Anglia discussing how to hide the medieval warm period, as its existence contradicted their theory (really more of a hypothesis) about mankind driving climate change.
NASA has also been caught doing this. For decades, NASA has collected and published global temperature data. In the days of old, this was done with ink and paper, but now we are in the digital age. If you go to a library and find one of those printed copies, you will see that the data they reported for, say, the 1970s was warmer than the same data (supposedly) for the 1970s are now. The same peaks and valleys are evident, but the entire graph has been pivoted, so that the farther you go back, the greater the cooling effect that is reported in the modern data vs. the old data.
After the data have been massaged, with the past being cooled incrementally each year, they get to say that this year is the warmest on record.
In science, if the observed data do not fit the theory, you change the theory. In climate "science," if the observed data do not fit the theory, you change the data.
Once you see that happening, you know that you are being taken for a ride, and that science and objective truth are not on the menu. If they are using fraudulent means to push their hypothesis, nothing they say can be believed... and certainly they cannot claim that their conclusion is completely cut and dried scientifically, so certain that no debate is necessary.
There never was a debate, though. One day they just started claiming the debate was over and they'd won, and now that "everyone" agreed, as they assured us was the case, it was time for action, not debate. It's much easier to win a debate if you skip the actual part where people debate things (the bit where you might lose) and just declare yourself winner... kind of like how they run elections, actually. A lot like that!
"Is it possible that they are right, while you are wrong?"
uh.... NO.
No, Very Smart People tend to be specialists, which means their ability to reason outside their field is extremely limited. Very few professional thinkers are good at reasoning in general, and they have little experience problem solving in the real world (as opposed to the world of ideas). As a person who has worked in the trades and professional philosophy, I can say that the absence of immediate, physical results to proposed solutions blinds people to whether their ideas actually correspond to reality. This effect can be seen most prominently with the people who've tasked themselves with taking the earth's temperature.
> Could it be that these "otherwise very smart people" bought into it, because they're smarter than you?
Statistically speaking, that's *incredibly* unlikely.
I've said that I believe the climate scam will collapse under its own weight.
this very true, there's a sweet spot for green politics that lies around banning plastic straws and subsidising cool new e-vehicles. comprehensive attempts to implement their full vision seem like they'll just end in political disaster.
I have solar panels and both our cars are electric - but whilst nice to have, they are really just a hobby - we still rely on burning gas to heat our home, and that is by far the largest consumer of domestic energy.
If it were not for generous UK government subsidies, neither of these technologies would make financial sense.
Well put - this is stuff that a rich society can afford as "extras" provided the real power comes from somewhere else...
Unfortunately those hobbies are an eyesore (solar panels) and an inconvenience (EVs). The rich dilettantes will never be able to charge their inefficient electric cars from their ugly, space-taking solar panels and enjoy a 5-hour drive.
The solar farms are so ugly. Ruin the countryside.
Aesthetically, solar roofs are no different, better or worse than thatched roofs, turf roofs, or tiled roofs. But they are great for charging my electric car and running the fridge and washing machine. so at least I make some of my own solar power - actually enough to drive my car about 10,000 miles a year. Nor am I rich: I am a carer for my son, on carers social benefits, modest pensions, and some part time low-paid work. Of course I use any government grants available: well so do many businesses, so this is not a scrounger mentality.
Actually electric cars are HUGELY more efficient than petrol cars, in converting energy into motion: at least twice as efficient.
And I've driven over 100,000 miles in them, with no bother. My own car can drive five hours or more easily on one charge, at 50 mph.
er, please see my comment below, you are simply wrong on all those facts.
We shall see how this all pans out.
Or, in other words, without scumbags stealing money directly out of your pocket to pay for these things, they wouldn't exist.
Regarding electric cars I wouldn't encourage them.
This is silly. Electric cars have always been around: in fact they were around WAY before the Internal Combustion Engine. You just didn't notice them
The reason nobody noticed them was that almost nobody bought them.
Battery storage was a limiting factor until we could develop Li-ion technology. Battery weight was a key.
The thing is that people will still believe that it's super important to do sth "for the climate" but just not exactly now and not in this harsh way. So it could be a forever topic like social justice coming back every election, especially when there was some prosperity so that people think "now we might afford a bit more". So the GEG might be a tactical win against the climate totalitarianism but not a strategic one (the EU is also doing a similar regulation and there is not much interest or resistance since nobody cares about the EU)
mostly agree, the EU rules are even more terrifying in many ways than the proposed GEG changes.
I don't think prosperity is coming back: demography plus Green agenda means no money.
But you're right: it's a slow burn moron policy which will only go away if it is actually implemented and fails utterly catastrophically.
Even then, it will probably be like its close cousin Communism, and survive just waiting to be "tried properly"...
agree "slow burn moron policy"
Everyone will be poor, broke, eating chemicals.
I have to admit, living in this time is hilarious. What a bunch of nutty people
The public reaction to many of these initiatives is telling. Here in New Jersey the government banned the use of plastic straws in restaurants a few years ago. The plastic straws disappeared for a few months. But as of now I am routinely offered a plastic straw with my ice water at all of my favorite local establishments.
Lucky you. I hate paper straws.
I cannot recall the last time I used a straw. God knows how Civilisation can survive without them.
I am doing my small part in making sure this happens.
All scams do, the question is, will there be anything left when it does? Or will our cities look like European cities in 1945, with no America to help rebuild?
Broadly speaking, Europe would have managed just fine on its own.
M'kay.
The October timing is perfect, heading into winter. There's a pipeline that will never carry gas, the Germans shut down their remaining reactors, and have said the people will not be allowed to burn wood for heating this year. They can heat their homes with hopes and wishes. And btw, GDP is directly tied to energy consumption.
They could huddle together for body heat but that might spread covid.
ROFL!
Thank you for, as ever, an interesting and well-researched post.
Here in Blighty (UK that is) a proposal like the GEG would be catastrophic, considering that a vast amount (I forget the exact figures) of Britain's housing stock is pre-WWII, never mind even pre-1900. All the retro-fitting in the world of 'smart' devices cannot make these old houses any better in terms of energy consumption for heating. And most modern insulation methods do not work well with old houses, which tend to have solid walls not cavity walls, or are even counter-productive, like cement render instead of breathable lime render... I could bore you for ages, because about 15 years ago I was quite active locally in investigating and promoting sympathetic eco-friendly upgrades, sympathetic to old houses that is. The upshot is that two things tend to get completely forgotten by the Eco Evangelisers, namely:
a) one size does not fit all, as said above, and older houses need older solutions, and
b) most importantly older houses (old things generally) carry a huge amount of embodied energy with them.
Embodied energy is the stumbling block the advocates of new, better, shinier eco-fascism trip over quite happily. Most of the carbon footprint of a building comes from the time of its construction. Newer buildings are more carbon-intensive than older buildings. A building that has stood for decades if not centuries has stored up all the energy that was used long ago in its building materials, its construction methods, basically its carbon footprint. The older the house, the more likely all the material to build it was sourced locally. My 1850s house being a case in point: solid rubble stone walls sourced from a quarry up the hillside less than 50 metres away, lime for the mortar from limekilns less than 5 miles away, timber from ballast used in (sailing) ships coming back to Britain from Scandinavia. If you do the maths so beloved of the modellers (like our friends the eco climatics or epidemiologists), you can make an argument that the sheer amount of embodied energy sat in your pile of bricks and mortar, or stone and mortar, far outweighs any carbon output through fossil-fuel based heating for the next century.
For these reasons embodied energy tends to be left out in the calculations presented by the climate hysterics. It would be interesting to see if whatever 'science' underpinning the GEG proposals has also left out embodied energy.
Geez--wonder if you are in Glenside Montgomery Cty (quarry there, lime kilns near)---! My 1828 (+ 1840, 1880, 1910, 1991depending on which room you are in) house is also rubblestone, hair plaster, lime from local limekilns
I do like your 'embodied energy' explanation.
Thank you.- The reason why we have such diversity, to use a buzzword, of building styles across the globe is that back in the day before experts told everyone what is best for them, local people had quite happily worked out for themselves what kind of materials and construction methods are cheapest, most durable, keep you cool/warm as appropriate etc.
Nice to know that your area across the Pond also retains some older houses. I’m in South Wales, Britain, where we have lots of rocks and coal but very little sun. There is still plenty of coal, but we don’t mine for it anymore (because Thatcher, competition, environment). We could build a lovely tidal barrier across Swansea Bay which would generate copious electricity for a century, but for some bizarre reason that project keeps getting g shelved for all sorts of reasons. Instead we are encouraged to plonk solar panels on our roofs, even though we have little sunshine.
Yes, the term I know is "vernacular architecture"
Grew up in New England--all old houses were wood (never stone), and rarely any before 1820's (town founded 1669). Moved to Phila area--all old houses built of stone, many still from early 18th C. Reason? (in my estimation)--tons of stone in glaciated New England, but no lime. Forests abundant--so building from wood. And wood burns--so oldest houses destroyed. In Pennsylvania, lots of stone--but lime abundant. Stone doesn't go up in flames even when cooking done on open fireplace. So old houses remain. Probably also earliest settlers came from stone-building culture. My particular area heavily Welsh (see it in street names, township names....)
Youngest house I ever lived in was built 1928. Others were 1896, very late 18th C, 1928, 1828 (current for last 36 yrs). So all houses but one had hard plaster walls, all had wood floors (had to rip up nasty wall-to-wall carpet in two of them). We are careful to keep our old, original wood windows.
Daughter lived in Tongwynlais for several years while husband was pastor there.
Thank you - that is a very useful argument.
Not to seem mean-spirited but I was hoping Germany would push through with its climate lunacy. The rest of the world needs a shining example of where solar panels, wind turbines and other such nonsense completely falls on it's face in both extreme cost and flat out not working. Blackouts and bills of thousands per month in Germany would be difficult for the rest of the world to ignore and perhaps heads of the people responsible on pikes wouldn't be a terrible thing either.
Certainly if politicians understood there were consequences other than simply falling short of the goal (which might actually be the real goal) then maybe they'd stop actively working against the good of the people.
California has entered the chat.
And New York!
Yes, NY says to all you suckers - "hold my beer!" But just like New York State's "first in the US, Excelsior Vaccine Passport!" its moronic green initiative will collapse from noncompliance. NYS is ruled by dumbasses, mass murderers, narcissists and grifters.
https://narrowpath.substack.com/p/nys-vaccine-passport-another-one
I too was sort of hoping to see Germany pleading with the French to send over some nuclear energy via really long extension cords, lol. Just as a lesson to every other country.
Oh, dear. I must confess the same, Bob. Germany is held up as the "model example" by my spouse. Every seeming technical advance is cheered on or gloatingly volleyed at me whenever I express some heretical doubt over the climate agenda (pounced on with the same viciousness as was done with my heretical "anti-vaxxer" sentiments).
No, Germany can do no wrong. Germany is "leading the way" and "showing the world".
Bla, bla, and bla.
All I can imagine is our beautiful country scabbed over with solar panels, and our vistas scythed through with bird-killer turbines. All for a blip of unpredictable "substitute" power. No thanks. It's Quixotic in the extreme, given that the climate's gonna climate, no matter what.
The quicker Germany crashes and burns (sorry, Eugyppius), the better. I don't see any other way, sadly. Or maybe it will be lucky and do some drastic self-correcting. Either way, accompanied with some suitable mea culpas would be nice, but I won't be greedy.
Does your hubby know that Germany has some of the highest electricity rates in the world with not much to show for it when it comes to lowering CO2 emissions? Energiwende is considered a failure by everyone who's actually paying attention.
https://www.electricrate.com/data-center/electricity-prices-by-country/
Some very interesting stats and links in that, thanks, Bob. Of course, for us in South Africa at the mo ment, it's a moot point to try and compare! We have had relentless loadshedding for years now. Escalating to daily in the last few months. Sometimes two or three times a day for anything from two to four hours at a time. We watch Germany and its disabling of its nuclear plants in disbelief. Well, those of us who haven't swallowed the climate "crisis" lie, at least.
The poor chap hasn't been initiated into the sleight-of-hand ruses and malfeasance that has permeated our world these last few years. Or at least, refuses to see it. He is deep into confirmation-bias thinking and "our government wouldn't lie to us or harm us" fairy stories. He would brush this off as "it's the price we've got to pay for future green pay-offs". Trust me, I am well-trained in anticipating all of his contorted reasoning! 😂 I survived being labelled a "right-wing, science-denying, Trump-loving, Putin-supporting, white-supremacist conspiracy theorist" during the "pandemic". Adding "climate-denier" to that list is just par for the course. I made a half-hearted attempt to discuss the whole CO2 and warming cycle with him (ocean warming, lag effects, pre-industrialisation etc), but got slammed down so hard that I couldn't be bothered now. He must just suck on the fear straw and ride the renewables unicorn now. Maybe one day he'll wake up when Europe regresses to rubbing sticks together. 🙄
He loves Big Brother.
Yep. Despite having read Orwell, he can't see it in front of his nose.
Climate's gonna climate--love that
Alex Berenson started it with his "virus gonna virus" mantra, so I reckon we can extrapolate that to any fabricated crisis scams that come our way! 😂
Like a kind of Great Leap Forward for the 21st century…
The amazing thing is, there seems to be a real resistance to learning anything with these people
So has Delaware. EV mandate by 2035 - no more gas vehicles sold. Net zero by 2050. All flowing through the Assembly like a hot knife through butter. The Senate is Democrat also, so just hoping that body has a bit more sense, though I doubt it. It's in the news, but the voters do not seem to care to stop this madness. The poor devils are being led like sheep to the slaughter and they don't seem to care.
I live for the day when virtue signaling is punished appropriately. People don't learn unless they feel the true consequences of their actions.
Texas tried to be that shining light two winters ago.
I think there was enough confusion about the circumstances that nobody really knew who to blame.
Bob, they've understood the consequences since at least 2013, and yet they've forged ahead. Here's an article from 2013: High Costs and Errors of German Transition to Renewable Energy - DER SPIEGEL
"This year [2013], German consumers will be forced to pay €20 billion ($26 billion) for electricity from solar, wind and biogas plants -- electricity with a market price of just over €3 billion. Even the figure of €20 billion is disputable if you include all the unintended costs and collateral damage associated with the project."
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html
with out even trying a green agenda, many areas of the planet are already suffering -
could you imagine what a few couple dozen really strong cars, indoor plumbing, better roads, actual electricity would do for so many in South America? Africa? many many very sad poor nations. Those people that can, come rushing to civilized nations to get a better life, only to find now, those things are now being cut. How many documentaries have you watched of the life of some of the poorest areas of the planet are? They dance and sing when some fat cat donates a few old Toyota land cruisers down their way just to they can share and trade with other impoverished places. ... bikes are great but...
No, the powers that be would rather focus in and punish the workers in developed countries to play their stupid games.
Many thanks for this article - an excellent summary of the salient points in the discussion, and the analysis, as ever, is acute.
I agree the Green agenda is the regime's Achilles' Heel. Unlike the vaccine harms, the numbers potentially affected are very large indeed: at least a plurality of the population, if not a majority.
Unlike the lockdowns at their height, the fear necessary to accept real hardship does not exist outside a fringe of lunatics. The urgency simply does not exist.
Finally, and very importantly, as you say: this agenda promises to end prosperity altogether. One of the biggest reasons for widespread acquiescence in the lockdown madness was generous handouts. The Green agenda would not, in its full flowering, permit this.
These policies seem likely to trigger a generalised reaction. I don't believe the regime has the capacity to deal with that. Calling smallish numbers of people with horrific vaccine injuries nasty names is easy.
Handling an enraged mob in a socio-economic system in meltdown - which is the result of the regime's own policies - requires real ability, which the regime has amply demonstrated it lacks.
Perhaps they will change course in time to save their own system. Based on their behaviour to date, I am not so sure. Your comments on the maximalist attitude of many regime operatives is insightful and highly relevant.
Incompetents on a power trip are likely to make a terrible mess before they are stopped.
Incompetents on a power trip--I don't believe they are capable of seeing that they are on the wrong path--so when 'outcomes' are not what they expected, they just go for more. Oh well, I have been seeing this among the soi-disant Progressives for several decades.
The Greens probably didn’t write the legislation- I’m sure they want to “punish” fossil fuel users like they do people who drive cars with poorly timed lights, turning off/on the engines/ turning streets to pedestrian zones, no parking, etc... But the words of the legislation might be from shady groups in the background and corporate interests. That is how the legislation is drafted now in the US. Congress drafts nothing, their corporate owners draft everything and then it is shoved through how Pelosi stated- you have to vote on it to know what’s in it! I think slowing down that process and having the German public realize the true weight of the legislation on every day lives will be a real eye-opener. The Greens were greedy after shoving everything through during Covid and like when Obama shoved through his healthcare mandates (all written literally by health insurance and hospital interest groups).
Interesting--and suddenly makes Pelosi's dumb comment make sense. Sort of. Congressmen still have the moral responsibility to read a bill before voting on it. IMHO.
The leaders of the house and Senate shove through the bills they want to the front of the line suddenly and no one has the time or energy to read the 1,000 + pages, plus, they have to stay in line with Mcconnell’s game of chits and political favors/riders. The Senate in particular, is completely captured by special interests groups, both sides of the aisle.
https://www.pascalbonenfant.com/18c/geography/weather.html
This might interest everyone here; a compilation of weather events in the UK from 1700-1849.
Note- droughts, floods, storms , heatwaves and freezing cold winters....🤔🤔
I wonder why our ruling class is hiding the fact that there were soccer moms driving gas-guzzling SUVs all over Europe in the 1700s? I mean, that's the only explanation for such severe weather.
if you read carefully, all fatalistic weather stories focus on just the last 20 years.
The biggest Hurricane in 20 years
The worst tornado since 1994!!
The heaviest snow since 2013
or The warmest winter since 1984
Tony Heller deliciously shows newspaper clippings of heat/cold from 19th C. Frequently.
Thank you!
I'm a former Green enthusiast and activist. Well, that's not quite true, I still believe in clean air, clean water, and reducing our use of burning coal and oil. But the unthinking belief that we are heading for a man-made climate catastrophe has now been replaced by hard reality - sometimes the sun don't shine, sometimes the wind doesn't blow, and sometimes our hydro dams dry up. I don't think the hard evidence stacks up well enough to force human beings to become paupers or freeze in the dark - we need a far better managed transition to new and clean sources of energy, including nuclear. Actually Robin Harper, Scotland's first Green MSP and leader, agrees: he spotted this problem a decade ago and opted for nuclear as the only possible interim energy source.
And we would probably have more than sufficient nuclear today, if that very same crowd of illiterate political clowns hadn't panicked over immaterial burps like Three Mile Island.
TMI was deliberate.
A Green take down?
No, likely the Malthusian Bankster Club. They have always had a hard-on for nuclear energy since it blows away their scarcity agenda.
I strongly believe in clean water, air, soil, and food. I am supportive of safe, well-designed nuclear technology to fill our energy needs gaps. Low-cost energy is what makes society prosperous. (So long as society is also moral and not corrupt.)
"....transition to new and clean sources of energy, including nuclear..."
I would correct that phrase to "the only clean source of energy we have is than can replace fossil fuels is nuclear fission". Hydro and geothermal can be good but they can't compete with nuclear and have nowhere near the resource potential to replace fossil.
People need to wake up to reality. Nuclear energy is the only viable replacement for fossil fuels. Thinking anything different is a dangerous delusion.
In places that have pushed for more renewable energy, as that happens they discover the wind doesn't blow, the sun doesn't shine as needed. And battery storage at utility scale remain in development. In order to meet demand natural gas generators are needed but gas pipelines are needed for heat as well, so gas must be backed up by that nasty stored on-site oil. So the cheap renewable ends up costing more to the users. So odd that over time we built an electrical system delivering relatively cheap reliable energy. We are discovering that changing that causes complications along with higher costs. Our politicians can do group think even when they are wrong.
If you believe Nuclear energy is clean you are a fool . EVs cannot be run for 10000 miles/year on a few rooftop solar panels . And as usual Green Think allows one to disregard production , disposal , and many operational limits of current EV technology !
Nuclear is clean, cleaner than any energy source we have on Earth. Even humans as an energy source produce a lot of smelly shit, not clean. Name an energy source that is cleaner than nuclear?
There are 195 countries on earth. Only 13 believe in tenets of the green ideology. The rest of the world is building coal/gas/nuclear plants as quickly as possible and don't give a damn about the environment. China alone generates more pollution of all types than the U.S., the EU, and Canada combined. So, these "green" policies are not about the climate. As the late, great Vaclav Havel said, the environmentalists are the new communists. These policies are designed to destroy the western market-based systems.
Danny Huckabee
I actually think there is hope for the vaccine awareness exactly because of this recent divide in enviro extremism; especially when people realize that their injured children were because of a safe and effective vaccine. The enviro extremism has always been a flawed logic and science. If it can be cracked...albeit extraordinarily later than ever expected...then perhaps this medical hegemony can be cracked as well...in time...
unfortunately i think the best chances for a divided establishment over vaccines would require a vaccine disaster of some kind, even worse than with Covid. that may happen, as they're all emboldened now and eager to roll out novel vaccines for RSV and every new Covid variant and who knows what else.
I think the vaccine harms are just small enough of an issue that they can pretend it isn't happening.
It will be interesting to see whether the noticeable rise in the death rate and the collapse in the birth rate has any impact on the discussion in the medium term.
For now, they are all in far too deep to admit any mistakes
Although that's the strategy they're relying upon, I am not sure it will work. Back before the early 1980s, in the U.S., if you drove drunk the worst that happened is the cop would drive you home. If you killed someone, well, you were drunk, you weren't responsible. People victimized by this state of affairs were looked upon with sympathy, but the overall attitude was that you couldn't really do anything about it and you couldn't hold drunks accountable. And then the wrong kid got killed, and that kid's mother would not be silent, and she traveled the country giving impassioned speeches, and MADD was born, and she single-handedly got the laws changed nearly everywhere. That's all it's going to take. Just that one kid, the child of an articulate and determined parent, and this whole house of cards will burn to the ground.
And we now have Children's Health Defense all set up and ready to go--even with its own presidential candidate.
There is good reason to hope. Remember it took 40 years before bigtobacco ws finally nailed - but before that there were plenty of Doctors actually extolling the health benefits of smoking.
The RPTB will lie, deceive, cancel and threaten but I believe Joe Public is gradually waking up, most people know friends/family who have becime very sick or died before their time and that number increases by the day.
This is definitely not impossible, but it is also not happening any time soon… as you suggest to be fair!
Agreed. Once they roll out more mRNA versions of common vaccines then I'm betting/hoping people (people who've missed the boat of the obvious thus far) will begin to connect the dots.
If any of us make it...
unfortunately good point
My morning thought today was this: RFK Jr. got into the vax vs autism business because so many mothers had come to him, describing the personality change/degradation in their children right after vax. The mothers knew their child's personality (to which you reply, "Well, of course!" ). But now, HepB injection is given on day of birth. No mother can know her baby's personality within hours of birth. Thus, any vax damage is well hidden. (Very concerning to me, as daughter gave birth to twins 3 wk ago today).
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/07/06/oil-giant-shell-warns-cutting-production-dangerous-and-irresponsible/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/were-finding-out-the-price-of-net-zero/
https://www.netzerowatch.com/wind-industry-blackmails-the-uk-more-subsidies/
The madness has us in itsgrip here as well.
The costs, both socially and economically ,are staggering, but the Blob is still in charge.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/01/pylons-forced-on-public-net-zero-goal-environment/
Activists now dominate just about every area in this country and spineless craven politicians go along with the entryism.
In Canada, climateers are still focused on impoverishing politically weak resource-producing parts of the country, so an elite split will more likely come as a secession crisis.
Perhaps Germany isn't seeing this dynamic because the east emits less GHG than the dominant west?
Would that be Alberta and Saskatchewan--low population density, high production of grain (cultivation of which created civilization, as I understand)
"Green Minister of Economic Affairs"? Isn't that something of an oxymoron?
He's an idiot. His only experience is in studying languages. Zero technical or economic knowledge.
It's much worse: he is an idiot who is trying to pull a mean move using a made up argument of saving the planet. I really do think that meanwhile he understands how moot all their efforts are in terms of effect on the climate, but he simply cannot admit it because it would nullify his whole career. This is a special type of self-made hell
I really don't believe these creeps care about the climate. They are Degrowthers, anti-human, Malthusians. Climate change is just a convenient cudgel that they are using to beat down the population, whom they consider are serfs. They are elitists, Club of Rome types. Do as I say not as I do.
Favourite oxymorons:
NetZero +Open Borders
A woman can have a penis
Sustainable development
COP 26 -(Glasgow witnessed a significant rise in emissions ofevery kind)
Looking forward to my very small part in reducing the size of the Gruensozialistische Einheitspartei in Hessen. No bone they throw our way before then will change my mind.
I will never forget or forgive covid. What they are doing now is adding insult to massive injury.
And the massive injury is becoming increasingly clear even to the normalos. I'd say not more than 20% believe in the competence and the sincerity of the uniparty in germany anymore. Covid was a scam and they pulled it like complete rookies. It is sad, but people seem to like brutal, smart and successful criminals. At least nobody likes mean stupid sadists, and that's precisely what the greens and their entourage (SPD + considerable majorities in CDU and FDP) are. They are toast, and are tripling down in panic moves to get around it somehow. We all will stand to lose a lot in the process, but at least I believe they will not be able to install the soviet style totalitarian EU they are dreaming of.
It's so easy to blackmail, in one way or another, those who might want to look into and report actual facts. We saw that during the Plague Era where only a very few people were able to leave their traditional jobs when their Substacks took off astonishingly well.
So reporters are all going to stay in line even if they might not want to. Older ones nearing pension time usually have plenty of family obligations to consider. Younger ones want to get or stay hired and they can't afford to develop troublesome reputations.
Perhaps slow careful cultivation of intelligent reporters will bear good fruit in a generation. Asking people in private, neutrally-toned conversations:"Why do you believe [such and such]?" And then point them to good data disproving what they've been conditioned to accept as proven.
Good people become troubled when they realize they are promoting dangerous propaganda. Perhaps they still can't speak out loud. But they will perhaps start to reconsider who they vote for. That's a beginning. All change must start somewhere. Building a smarter public is done person by person, because everyone has a circle of relatives and contacts. Building a smarter public requires introducing skepticism and awakening thinking skills.