Here’s a disturbing report out of Starnberg, a wealthy suburban town south of Munich, where years of sustainability woo coupled with recently rising gas costs have induced an unfathomable demand for heat pumps.
Between January and June this year in Germany, around 600,000 electric heaters were sold.
Last year, same period, around 450,000 were sold.
So it is not unrealistic to estimate the total number of electric heaters in German homes to be > 10M, as their lifespan is 20 to 30 yrs.
10M electric heaters happily turned on together will require 10-20GW of additional electric capacity, which is around 10% extra capacity compared to the currently installed one.
=> It goes boom !
The question is how graceful or ungraceful the degradation of the grid will happen and how wide and long the black-outs could be. For example would there be whole regions affected but not others, would it destabilize the grid in such a way as to affect other areas/countries, would this cause damages that would take days/weeks to repair etc.
It’s baffling to me that the Scholz government remains in this lame reactive mode, where it’s all about laughable subsidies and regulatory tinkering. They need to be doing everything conceivable to scale back power usage, as electricity is everything. There will have to managed outages, and they should be preparing people for them now. Instead Scholz today announces that he’s confident we’re prepared for winter because our Gasspeicher are near the 85% full target.
this particular crisis is organic, not planned. it is downstream of the war in ukraine, putin’s specific actions, and other contingencies too. also, the “planned destruction” thesis doesn’t account for genuine mitigating steps our government has taken.
If you leave Russians sanctions out of the equation, do you think there would be no energy crisis in Germany?
The UK is in a drastic energy crisis too. This cannot be blamed on the idiot sanctions on Russia as only 5% of UK natural gas is from Russia, and the UK is rich in its own oil, gas and coal under foot.
France also has an energy crisis despite 80% of its electricity coming from nuke - which have run under capacity since they were built and France is a net exporter of electricity. Another 10% comes from hydro and geothermic, only about 7% from gas. Compared to UK & Germany, gas usage is low as piped gas is available only in cities and large towns. Rural France uses electricity, bottled gas, oil. And France traditionally get its gas from North Africa not Russia.
The USA was oil and gas self-sufficient until a year ago, but now there is a crisis.
None of this happened overnight somehow accidentally. What the Russian sanctions have done, inadvertently - the idiots didn’t realise - is move the time-scale forward and make it sudden rather than gradual over the next few years giving us time to get used to a little bit less energy each year amid gradually increasing prices each year.
Britain’s coal mines were closed down because of cost and policy, not because coal deposits were exhausted. There still is plenty, but getting licences to extract it is near impossible.
Substantial shale gas is available but fracking has been banned.
Tax and regulation is preventing further extraction of offshore gas and oil.
Mike is wrong: I'm a planner by trade, and this kind of thing is far too complex to plan: it is a random product of chaos and events: think of a butterfly's wings: people should not imagine that planners are superhuman: we are rubbish.
There are far too many variables, and no precedents or formulas: nobody could have reasonably predicted that Vaccination denial would somehow rise from the swamps of unreason and derision and become fashionable and trendy, for example: but it has. Likewise, Putin joining the Loony Toon army as a blood brother of Adolf Hitler: I didn't see that one coming, and almost nobody did.
-every country had a pandemic preparedness plan, which involved “if you’re sick, stay home”, and nothing else?
-every country discarded said plan & imposed measures, all of which were known to be ineffective yet damaging? WHO report (2019) showed this.
-vaccination could NEVER have worked for a novel respiratory virus. First, the elderly cannot be salvaged this way. Their immune systems respond poorly to pathogens & to vaccines. We knew that ten years of flu vaccination saved no lives. Sorry about that.
-the “vaccines” were designed to be dangerous. This is my field, rational drug design. I’m also a qualified toxicologist.
-their clinical development was fraudulent. Not possible to make a baby in one month using nine women.
-regulatory authorisations were fraudulent. Most of the dossiers are blank.
-manufacturing was fraudulent. The vials contain highly variable amounts of impure materials.
You can choose to deceive yourself.
I know this is a plan. It’s my industry. I’ve worked in no other.
This was Phase I. It’s ending.
Phase II looks like controlled demolition of the modern world.
The endgame involves full digital tyranny.
Then, I think they’ll kill most of us. I’m confident up to the bullet above.
With respect, I have solid evidence of at least 25 years planning.
I don’t mind if you choose to ignore my conclusions.
I’ve spent around 40 years in relevant life sciences / biology.
The huge change for me was realising they’ve rehearsed this 8-10 times since the 1990s. See YouTube Paul Schreyer Pandemic Simulations, preparation for a new era? One hour documentary using only public information.
I don't actually think they plan every minute detail. They just provide the fertile ground and sow the seeds. Nature and chaos will do the rest and they know this. You can't research agenda 2030 and agenda 2021 and then say "none of this is planned", when what is happening and the direction we are most certainly heading matches those agendas almost perfectly. I'm not entirely sure myself how they pull this shit off aside from the obvious controlling the culture through the media and controlling politics via bribes and threats and controlling corporations via owning all of them but then, what else do they need aside from these things to bring about what they want. They referee the game and make the rules, the players will do what they want, but only those playing by the rules ultimately stay on the pitch.
Sorry Rob, but you are demonstrating a lesser form of what the vast majority of ‘normies’ have been doing, namely, not being willing to understand that such evil exists.
As possibly as the pre-eminent expert on the topic, Mike has explained the vax situation.
As for Putin, do you honestly think he woke up on 24th Feb and decided to march into Ukraine? No. This has been a situation brewing since 2014 and probably far longer than that.
And the lunatic green policies? I think most rational observers would agreed that is an agreed agenda based on the fallacy of man-made climate change.
Inflation? $10+T in money printing worldwide since 2020 with supply chains permanently damaged is a good start.
There’s a 2008 documentary on Youtube about the new world order that gives some decent background. Matt Ehret is also a good source.
Long story short, this has been planned for a long while because imposed technocratic communism is their only chance to retain control and get through the inevitable resetting of the global financial system.
I fear nothing else has the slightest chance of altering the trajectory of this monstrous project.
I’ve just been reading about huge advances in facial & other recognition software. We are almost all already prepped & ready to go, because there are many images & voice / gait recordings of us all in their servers.
Digital ID could be imposed against our will.
That ends privacy, the need for money, ID, everything.
I regret that they’ve got ten ways to win & there’s effectively no opposition.
Turning the net off is probably it. It’ll get cold. The alternative is “life” in the New Henhouse.
As someone from the southern states of USA I was surprised to discover by latitude comparison how far north Europe is. Much of it is comparatively north of continental Denver, Portland, Seattle, Fargo, Minneapolis, Ottawa , Calgary, and Winnipeg Canada.
But the climate is much milder, nothing like Fargo or Minneapolis. Even in e.g. Northern Germany where I'm from it rarely goes below freezing in winter (though you still need heat, obviously. Glad I left Europe 30 years ago).
Panoptikon society. The old futurist-modernist dream which Fritz Lang so beautifully showed us for the monstrous techno-fascist cult of the machine it is.
Well, Rob, I see you are on the authoritarian bandwagon. Most of what I have learned in the past 2 years has been from people I was told to "not watch."
Not, I am not an authoritarian: I am just advising you that Katie is a fruit cake. If you wish to continue to eat her sticky offerings, good luck to you: but it will not enhance your wisdom nor your waistline.
What are her qualifications, exactly? Ex reality show contestant?
Couple of quick quotes: and let me assure you that whilst my son has Down Syndrome, he certainly did';t hold back the rest of his mainstream class, nor his older sister's career, who went to the same schools and got a First Class Hons degree and an MA.
"I think you can tell a great deal from a name. For me, there are certain names that I hear, and I think, 'Urgh.' For me, a name is a shortcut of finding out what class that child comes from and makes me ask, 'Do I want my children to play with them?' Katie Hopkins
"A state school class can only learn as fast as its thickest child. Your kid misses stuff, mine has to wait while yours catches up. Katie Hopkins"
I don’t think she’s likeable. But I don’t sed that’s her Schtick at all.
She’s deliberately provocative.
Usually a germ of uncomfortable truth behind her many transgressions.
But I’d listen to her NOW because she’s making sense.
I’ve never understood that notion that if in the past someone’s been unpleasant on purpose, then in a new setting, they’re automatically excluded from debate.
God help us that the smartest person around might have a bit of a mouth on them.
Can they remote control people's smart meters and ration power effectively that way? So everyone gets 15 minutes in every hour or something like that? It would get chilly, but at least people's fridges and freezers keep operating. Of course the washing machine and dishwasher are a bit of a problem.
It seems to depend where you live. Having read lots of negative reports about smart meters on climate sceptic blogs, but not having been consulted by my local power provider here in Seattle, I took the bull by the horns, called them and asked if I had a choice. When they said Yes, I said thank you but no thank you, I'd rather not and that was that.
I refused a smart meter for our home, and at present pay a $6. fee monthly for the power co. to send someone to "read the meter".... as it stands, they "estimate" most months, not sending anyone. I accepted a smart meter for an "upper garden", several hundreds yards up a hill, as we only require power for a water pump in that location, and it is so far distant from our home.
Oddly enough, it is a loaded question: but not a good question.
I trade electricity with the grid already, have done so for the last 9 years: I could trade a lot more, but this is still emergent tech.
If you wanted 50 kWh of power tonight, I could provide it at no loss from my two BEVs as long as I could buy that power back at lower rates in the next few days.
I have the power - I'm happy to share it, for a reasonable consideration.
I don't think smart meters have power relays as components. They would be pretty large to switch > 100amps. Anyway, in the US at least, they can be removed. And short circuited to provide power.
Stealing power is do-able.. It's a black industry in 3rd world.
My home has a smart meter. I also have an automatic-on propane generator that injects power between the SM and the mains breaker box when line power fails.
It's a non-issue. The gov't might remove the meter, resulting in a surge (sorry) in DIY electrocutions, however.
We have electric thermal storage for heat with boxes in the main house (20+ yrs old) and a newer hydronic furnace in another building. These units along with the hot water tanks only receive power at off peak (late night/early morning occasionally maybe short period during the day). The various off peak meters are all, and always have been, remotely controlled. Best always to have a back up plan or two…Located the far Upper Midwest.
I think they can. We have refused a smart meter (I live in France) thanks God! That being said, we can’t use less electricity than we already use unless we unplug the fridge and stop using warm water to shower. Even before this whole mess the bill was really high because of the EU regulations and our “genius in power”, Manu.
Yes, and that is the way forwards for those of us (like me) who already trade with the grid.
I have some solar generating capability, and 110 kWh of battery storage in our two electric cars: I'd be happy to trade back and forwards to help stabilise the grid: on mutually agreeable terms.
Remote disconnection is part of the technical specifications of "Smart Pay As You Go" meters in the Republic of Ireland, although a protocol for suppliers to activate this has not yet been agreed so I don't think it is yet active.
However if the remote disconnection and reconnection capability is built into the meters then it's only a policy choice away from the sort of dynamic load shedding you describe.
What they can control are tariffs, as they currently do, to reduce demand at peak times and shift it to periods of low demand. Appliances have been manufactured with delay timers to use off-peak night time electricity for some time.
Currently there are just two tariffs but introducing additional higher tariffs to control demand is quite possible. And it won’t require a smart meter, just a change on the distribution board.
I think in the ideal world, they would be able to simply limit consumption to each residence. And to take it a step further (from the Houston freeze two years ago) if they could supply power to a single outlet in the house for a small amp restricted heater that would be ideal. But there are no systems like that where the power companies have that much control and infrastructure both electrical and intelligent.
- "garden" solar panels and why the limit of 600W is 600W and not 800W or 2000W for that matter;
- oil and kerozene heaters which provide a de-centralized solution;
- wood heating: has Germany taken ANY measure to produce and/or import more wood ?
- pellet and pellet stove/chimney: idem + why do you need a full blown chimney for pellets stove when the exhaust is < 100 degree (a small ca 1m pipe is more than enough). Urgent simplification to the building code could allow for small size, self build chimneys without any risk.
Trade and craftsmen's associations would join hands with unions and protest so loud it would be heard on the Moon. And they would rapidly be joined by major corporations: anything anyone can do on their own means loss of profit opportunity: both the state, the parties, the corporations, the guilds and the unions need you dependent.
from what I've read and heard, wood is already incredibly hard to come by across the continent and wood burning stoves are sold out with a backlog until at least spring 23.
GHG emissions of wood burning ? A very interesting topic. Let us see...
1. Burning 1 kg of wood releases 1.7kg of CO2
2. 42.5 million homes in Germany (?), all burning 4 x 350 kg (weight of 1RM of dry beech) of wood per year, equivalent to ca 8000KWH (enough in average ?), would therefore result in 72.2MtCo2 being released.
3. Current residential GHG emissions for Germany: 119.2MtCo2Eq, almost all caused by heating.
=> As 72 is smaller than 119, this means that if all houses and apartments in Germany where burning 4RM of beech a year in avg, it would release much less GHG than today.
I am leaving out of this very basic calculation the GHG emissions produced in transportation, harvesting etc, as well as the GHG captured by the tree during its growth.
But it shows that assumptions need to be checked, carefully.
Did you read the recent article in Tichy's Einblick about the weaknesses of the German political system? They aptly described Germany as a kakistocracy where politicians do not have to do any long-term thinking or planning (unlike the hypothetical ruler in a feudal system who would, ideally, take care of it well so as to pass it on to his children), nor is there a way to hold them accountable for anything they've done during their time in office (you can't sue them, exile them, and, obviously, violent revolutions are not part of the system).
This seems to describe the current German government well (and no, Mrs. Faeser, I am not "deligitimizing the state"). As for Scholz, I honestly don't know what he's good for at this point. What it is that he does that entitles him to get roughly 20,000 euros a month?
It is evident that politicians and the Commentariat are unaware of the difference between capacity and output. They do not understand that the Watt (kW, MW) is a unit of energy, whereas the Watt/hour, (kWh, MWh) is the unit of consumption.
So politicians boast of a 100MW wind power facility, ‘enough to power a town the size of……………’ (insert name of suitable sized town/city here.) But what they fail to add, is ‘for about 80 days’ in the year and then not sequentially or whole days and possible long periods in between.
The second failure of understanding is, the grid must operate at 50Hz +/- less than 1Hz or safety relays shut it down. Frequency is important because electricity is transmitted at high voltage AC but used in domestic and industrial equipment usually at low voltage DC. Step down transformers and inverters are sensitive to frequency, and if the frequency is out of spec, it can cause damage or fires.
Fossil fuel and nuke use controllable moving parts - turbines and flywheel mechanical batteries to build inertia into the system. If demand is sudden, or falls, or a power plant drops out, there are numerous spinning wheels in the system to stabilise the frequency. You don’t have this with wind and solar.
In the UK a years or so ago, on a rare day when (Yipee!) wind was supplying 50% of power to the grid, a gas-fired power station faulted and dropped out. This caused a frequency fluctuation which caused a wind farm to disconnect from the grid, which in turn resulted in a greater frequency fluctuation which caused the grid sector to shut down, which had a knock on effect causing other sectors to shut down. This would not have happened had most of the power been coming from fossil fuel/nuke.
It took days to start up the downed sectors. It’s not like flipping a switch. The grid has to be balanced.
As with most things technical and scientific, the political class have no grasp of the details - they leave it to the experts, who always say what their masters want to hear. . And so here we are.
If only the mainstream press would write a proper article on how the grid functions, at least at a sufficient level of details to grasp the key constraints, that would go a long way...
Since you seem to have some knowledge Id like to ask you what role batteries have.
I understand the momentum generated by spinning wheels. And I get that the power generated by solar and wind is too volatile.
I'd think that it would work if you have enough battery storage available to smooth out the fluctuations. Ignoring for the moment the immense cost and sheer impossibility of giant battery storage, of course.
Or are batteries in some other way flawed and they can not keep the correct frequency?
=> That gigantic "battery" is not even enough to heat 350.000 avg dwellings for ONE day.
=> As this is one of the largest such storage in the world (if not the THE largest) and as it is extremely efficient and also not replicable, I have to agree with you that we do not have, and most likely will never have in the near and mid-term, enough battery capacity to cover all electric needs using intermittent electricity production.
Batteries do not give continuous output, they run down. Batteries produce Direct Current and need electronic converters to change it to AC - without flywheels to provide inertia, they cannot provide guaranteed frequency. Frequency just has to be off for a second and the grid shuts down.
I think the other commentator below answers your question in more detail.
But consider this. A battery is a container and just like any container, how much it holds depends on its size/capacity.
To build batteries to store enough useful electricity to back up wind and solar, would be like building a large container to store the Atlantic Ocean.
Battery technology is over a century old. We keep hearing about technological advance, but technology relies on physics not magic. If we could build small batteries with huge storage capacity, we would have done it by now. You can’t fit a quart into a pint pot.
The German Politiburo will have all the fuel and electricity it needs---the people are going to be out of luck. Time for the pitchforks to be sharpened and to light the torches.
I have to wonder what the net environmental EROI, not to mention resources spent in toto is for 10 000 000 electrical heaters being replaced every ten to twenty years. Since they are chinese made, expecting them to last even twenty years with regular use is very optimistic, at least if I base that guess on how my Swedish, British, American and West German tools (powered as well as not) from the 1980s or older perform, when compared to a chinese made tool after just a year or two of regular use.
In 2021 alone, two hammers, one axe and one cramp has broken when in use. Metal fatigue due the tools being made of "steel" which in reality is "chinesium" or stinko-chinko scrap metal alloy.
Whereas my swedish made axe-hammer from before 1850 is still going strong. Wonder what Die Grünen and their looter-capitalist buddies would say about that?
I'm pretty sure the globalists want it to go "boom." And rest assured, the same evil people that created the crisis will be there to "fix" it. And the fix will include the implementation of more authoritarian rule...for the greater good of course. Rinse and repeat throughout history.
It's on purpose. It's been going on too long to be just stupidity. Having said that, the 'on purpose' could have been short term greed too. For example, pipelines from Canada to the US were cancelled partially (it is said) because Warren Buffet owned lots of railroad stock, pipelines would have taken away from his business so all kinds of lobby groups were funded to defeat the pipelines in the name of climate & environment.
Eugyppius comments often on the intelligence of German leadership. President Biden is mid-grade Alzheimer’s. But the bureaucrats behind them are not stupid. At best, we can say they are naive; useful idiots. At worst, they are twisted, demented ideologues.
Biden has definitely got something wrong. I do NOT like the guy at all but I kind of feel sorry for him seeing him like this. I mean it’s humiliating, IMO. How can these people do this to our country?!
I have less than zero sympathy or compassion for Biden. He has been a worthless and untalented government leech for 50 years and has done nothing of note and has lived on taxpayer money his whole adult life. He has never appeared very intelligent, either. He's a pathological liar and a criminal....back when his brain worked better he was, that is. I do think he is being "directed" by radicals behind the scene, though. Biden was just a useful idiot to those who control our government.
China Mitch and Ronna Romney are truly evil. Their PAC monies come with a poison clause- take our campaign monies and you have to agree with open borders and endless wars to please our corporate backers....
After the first hard winter, I'm confident that Germans will tell the Greens to go to hell and start a crash program to refit their generation plants to burn coal, which Germany has plenty of.
If there is one truth in your statement, the great German people can build great things and fast. If they put their minds to it. I'm not confident they will.
Oh, I have no doubt they will . . . eventually. If people are freezing, then those in power will have to decide how much they're willing to risk to continue down that path for the sake of their precious "climate change" narrative. The stakes will be raised with every cold snap.
No, I predict force will be necessary to remove these dimwits from the levers of power. And it will take awhile to convince the populace that this is the new normal, it's not going to improve. Much pain ahead
Not trying to be argumentative, but have they already started bring back coal plans in Germany? I thought I read they have, to some degree. That would prove you are right.
Yes, they have. And it's a simple matter to convert the gas burning ones over to coal. Likely a lot of power plants in Germany have been converted from coal to natural gas. Also likely that some of the plant engineers couldn't bear to scrap the coal-burner hardware, and it's lying around in a nearby lot or warehouse.
Exactly. Green narrative and frostbite or warmth. The choice is an easy one. Images of elites in well heated homes and vacationing in the Mediterranean will not play well to the huddled and freezing masses. Heat banks will become the tinder for civil unrest.
Don’t you see that scenario playing out in all countries that are blindly accepting the green mandates? It’s hard to understand how people don’t know how power gets to that outlet where they plug in their electric appliances and now, cars. For smart people, we are making a hash of our future.
I look at it as a wholesale- out of sight out of mind- export of pollution. They don't see the electrical grids or how they run, or how solar panels are made, maintained, disposed of, or that China/Russia is the only winner in this exchange. Idiocracy is playing out before our very eyes.
It's amazing to me, but yes. Many people I've talked to about electric cars have no idea where electricity to run them is supposed to come from, how much the batteries cost or how long they last or what happens when they're depleted, how much rare material is necessary to make them, the horrible conditions many of the people who mine them work under, etc. They also think solar panels are very efficient, are produced without any pollution, and last forever!
No it won't--it will simply make people more desperate as the governments everywhere swoop in and pretend to save the day. They aren't backing down because their goal has never been the health of the people. Their goal is chaos.
If that's really what their plan is, then they are playing a very dangerous game. The orderly succession of power in the western democracies is what has protected the elites from brutal dictators and popular uprisings.
My understanding is that what appeared to be "democratic" never really was, --the elite have actually been in power the entire time. They'll still pretend, but the power grab is much more blatant at this point. People will be dying as if in wartime. Rising up will prove more difficult than we think when energy, food and water are scarce.
I agree with what you're saying but it's when energy, food and water are scarce that people become motivated: nothing left to lose. My dad used to say that people with full stomachs don't start revolutions so I think the opposite has to be true.
Why are you surprised that people don't know where the juice comes from for their appliances? There are people who don't know where the food comes from that's in their supermarket.
We do, and we have a nuclear power plant and plenty of natural gas turbines. We will have plenty of power as long as fellow Arizonians vote Republican this November.
Water is an issue. That is why we need more nuclear power to support desalinization plants. That is what Kari Lake wants when she wins the governor's seat. Vote Red.
Here in the Central Valley of California we actually could live without heating or cooling, albeit pretty uncomfortable in our hot summers, but it’s doable. My “green”, Bernie supporting neighbors let all their trees and grass die and had solar installed. 😳. People are nuts.
What will it take for the normies to break out of the bubble and make CDU heads roll? They have let the Greens take control- everyone knows there aren't enough Green votes for these types of massive infrastructure changes. If I hear one more time from the German normies - we are all in this together- or Putin man bad.... ugh. The real crimes are agains the pensioners and poor- how can they possibly afford food or heat?
This is all being sold under the guise of 'defending democracy in Ukraine'. If any of you still think of the Kiev regime as 'democratic', I've got some prime land in Florida to sell you.
Hasn't stopped the vaxx from being rolled out to kids in the US, I doubt dead frozen kids will matter elsewhere, the propaganda for Building Back like Bozos is very strong worldwide.
It's been too easy to convince people of propaganda that it wasn't really the vaxx. It's a lot harder to say, no, the extreme cold did not kill your child or parent or grandparent...
The sad consequences of decades of transforming "education" into "indoctrination". Victims do not know where the electricity in that "thing in the wall" comes from. Or care. Which is why they will not understand when the lights go out this winter.
There are still plenty in Britain that maintain the only way to solve the UK's energy crisis is a "Green Dash" to turn our grid over to solar and wind. Strangely very little is said about tidal energy, which is as regular as clockwork . . .
Tidal energy is regular but still intermittent. It just doesn't have a high potential energy. That comes from having a high head, which is why conventional hydro works. Simple truth is tidal cannot compete with nuclear, not even close.
Most of these idiots have never gotten beyond the myopic view that "installing solar can save you a lot of money" and the current price crunch (far worse than Germany btw) is only reinforcing their seemingly bottomless conceitedness.
These are supposed to be the collectivists! And they can't see beyond the spot price of power and their own bank balance.
I own and operate a HVAC company in the US. The green push here is alive as we are required to meet higher and higher efficiency standards with our equipment. The added complexity for more efficiency means more control boards, variable frequency drives, variable speed fans, and increased sensors. I have seen a drastic decrease in reliability, a fan goes down and it takes out the control board plus the variable freq drive. All of it goes in the TRASH when replaced, frustrating me to no end. I don't see how this is "green" when equipment from 10 and 20 years ago is easily fix and refurbished. We were at 92% efficiency and the new "green" equipment is 96%. For a 4% increase, I see a drastic amount of waste not to mention angry customers when brand new equipment goes down.
It feels like the push for energy efficiency doesn't take everything into account. Much like an electric car on the side of the road being charged with a diesel generator.
Unfortunately Scott, that same disease has infested virtually all technologies. We have sacrificed functionality, longevity, and most frustrating of all, reparability on the alter of "greenness".
Over the last decade, our extended family has equipped our ranch with century old tools and machinery, ALL of which is 100% repairable.
I was buying from a manufacturer specifically so I could get the "dumbed" down versions. The EPA has stepped in this year and they cannot even produce such equipment any longer.
Thank you for this valuable information - a reminder that „Greener“ solutions often release hidden externalities that completely negate whatever energy savings you had in the first place!
What a beautiful conundrum! Everyone goes to e-vehicles, and they can't drive anywhere, because there's no "juice" to recharge them! Obviously, the "greenies" can't see into the future past the ends of their noses. And thank you, Angela, for closing all those clean, efficient nuclear power plants. Turn the juice off to HER house first...
I really hope for a massive and sustained blackout in Germany and ideally in most of Europe. Germans have voted for these shit policies and they truly deserve to suffer a lot this winter. Maybe, just maybe, that would cause these stupid sheep to think about the importance of energy. Morons everywhere.
My own mom has voted for the greens for decades. I told her today that she derserves to freeze a bit this winter in her gas heated flat. Obviously, she is still welcome in our oil heated house, though, it's my mom after all.
I've been saying that about NYC and their crappy voting practices- they should stay there and deal with the consequences! Instead, they've been coming over the border to CT and they haven't learned a damned thing.
Sadly, this pain is--and especially WAS--inevitable. Pain is nature's way of instilling deep lessons. The only way to learn the lesson that there's no getting around the Second Law of Thermodynamics is for the catastrophic failure of Green policies. Germany will be Exhibit A in the modern world (see also Sri Lanka), but it is ONLY through the constant blaring of truths as laid out above by eugyppius that the proper course corrections can be made.
It's not enough to just survive this (and subsequent) winter. The zealots behind this insanity need to be exposed, thoroughly discredited, and dismissed from the public square. We all need to make sure that it's crystal clear WHO and WHAT are to blame here--and neither of those is Putin or Russia.
Between January and June this year in Germany, around 600,000 electric heaters were sold.
Last year, same period, around 450,000 were sold.
So it is not unrealistic to estimate the total number of electric heaters in German homes to be > 10M, as their lifespan is 20 to 30 yrs.
10M electric heaters happily turned on together will require 10-20GW of additional electric capacity, which is around 10% extra capacity compared to the currently installed one.
=> It goes boom !
The question is how graceful or ungraceful the degradation of the grid will happen and how wide and long the black-outs could be. For example would there be whole regions affected but not others, would it destabilize the grid in such a way as to affect other areas/countries, would this cause damages that would take days/weeks to repair etc.
It’s baffling to me that the Scholz government remains in this lame reactive mode, where it’s all about laughable subsidies and regulatory tinkering. They need to be doing everything conceivable to scale back power usage, as electricity is everything. There will have to managed outages, and they should be preparing people for them now. Instead Scholz today announces that he’s confident we’re prepared for winter because our Gasspeicher are near the 85% full target.
Surely you appreciate this is a designed, deliberate & relentless demolition of a former democracy?
They don’t intend to fix anything.
They need citizens broke & cold, so as to force them to live communally with gratitude.
Sooner or later, they’ll hand over their houses so that they can stay warm & controlled in the New Henhouse.
See Katie Hopkins latest video on exactly this topic.
this particular crisis is organic, not planned. it is downstream of the war in ukraine, putin’s specific actions, and other contingencies too. also, the “planned destruction” thesis doesn’t account for genuine mitigating steps our government has taken.
Details might be organic. But the entire event from Wuhan to 2030 is planned.
Evidence is copious.
Organic my foot!
If you leave Russians sanctions out of the equation, do you think there would be no energy crisis in Germany?
The UK is in a drastic energy crisis too. This cannot be blamed on the idiot sanctions on Russia as only 5% of UK natural gas is from Russia, and the UK is rich in its own oil, gas and coal under foot.
France also has an energy crisis despite 80% of its electricity coming from nuke - which have run under capacity since they were built and France is a net exporter of electricity. Another 10% comes from hydro and geothermic, only about 7% from gas. Compared to UK & Germany, gas usage is low as piped gas is available only in cities and large towns. Rural France uses electricity, bottled gas, oil. And France traditionally get its gas from North Africa not Russia.
The USA was oil and gas self-sufficient until a year ago, but now there is a crisis.
None of this happened overnight somehow accidentally. What the Russian sanctions have done, inadvertently - the idiots didn’t realise - is move the time-scale forward and make it sudden rather than gradual over the next few years giving us time to get used to a little bit less energy each year amid gradually increasing prices each year.
The UK rich in oil, gas and coal?
Maybe you traveled back in time to the Thatcher Era?
Britain’s coal mines were closed down because of cost and policy, not because coal deposits were exhausted. There still is plenty, but getting licences to extract it is near impossible.
Substantial shale gas is available but fracking has been banned.
Tax and regulation is preventing further extraction of offshore gas and oil.
Got it now?
You're great Eugyppius, but Mike is right here. It pains me that you don't see it. I hope that you will soon.
Mike is wrong: I'm a planner by trade, and this kind of thing is far too complex to plan: it is a random product of chaos and events: think of a butterfly's wings: people should not imagine that planners are superhuman: we are rubbish.
There are far too many variables, and no precedents or formulas: nobody could have reasonably predicted that Vaccination denial would somehow rise from the swamps of unreason and derision and become fashionable and trendy, for example: but it has. Likewise, Putin joining the Loony Toon army as a blood brother of Adolf Hitler: I didn't see that one coming, and almost nobody did.
Did you also know that:
-every country had a pandemic preparedness plan, which involved “if you’re sick, stay home”, and nothing else?
-every country discarded said plan & imposed measures, all of which were known to be ineffective yet damaging? WHO report (2019) showed this.
-vaccination could NEVER have worked for a novel respiratory virus. First, the elderly cannot be salvaged this way. Their immune systems respond poorly to pathogens & to vaccines. We knew that ten years of flu vaccination saved no lives. Sorry about that.
-the “vaccines” were designed to be dangerous. This is my field, rational drug design. I’m also a qualified toxicologist.
-their clinical development was fraudulent. Not possible to make a baby in one month using nine women.
-regulatory authorisations were fraudulent. Most of the dossiers are blank.
-manufacturing was fraudulent. The vials contain highly variable amounts of impure materials.
You can choose to deceive yourself.
I know this is a plan. It’s my industry. I’ve worked in no other.
This was Phase I. It’s ending.
Phase II looks like controlled demolition of the modern world.
The endgame involves full digital tyranny.
Then, I think they’ll kill most of us. I’m confident up to the bullet above.
With respect, I have solid evidence of at least 25 years planning.
I don’t mind if you choose to ignore my conclusions.
I’ve spent around 40 years in relevant life sciences / biology.
The huge change for me was realising they’ve rehearsed this 8-10 times since the 1990s. See YouTube Paul Schreyer Pandemic Simulations, preparation for a new era? One hour documentary using only public information.
I don't actually think they plan every minute detail. They just provide the fertile ground and sow the seeds. Nature and chaos will do the rest and they know this. You can't research agenda 2030 and agenda 2021 and then say "none of this is planned", when what is happening and the direction we are most certainly heading matches those agendas almost perfectly. I'm not entirely sure myself how they pull this shit off aside from the obvious controlling the culture through the media and controlling politics via bribes and threats and controlling corporations via owning all of them but then, what else do they need aside from these things to bring about what they want. They referee the game and make the rules, the players will do what they want, but only those playing by the rules ultimately stay on the pitch.
I totally agree: I mean it was predictable, and predicted, but it was not orchestrated or designed.
Go back to 'Chaos theory' if you need a theory: it ticks every box.
Sorry Rob, but you are demonstrating a lesser form of what the vast majority of ‘normies’ have been doing, namely, not being willing to understand that such evil exists.
As possibly as the pre-eminent expert on the topic, Mike has explained the vax situation.
As for Putin, do you honestly think he woke up on 24th Feb and decided to march into Ukraine? No. This has been a situation brewing since 2014 and probably far longer than that.
And the lunatic green policies? I think most rational observers would agreed that is an agreed agenda based on the fallacy of man-made climate change.
Inflation? $10+T in money printing worldwide since 2020 with supply chains permanently damaged is a good start.
There’s a 2008 documentary on Youtube about the new world order that gives some decent background. Matt Ehret is also a good source.
Long story short, this has been planned for a long while because imposed technocratic communism is their only chance to retain control and get through the inevitable resetting of the global financial system.
Katie Hopkins' video:
https://youtu.be/fZvi8HAhT6U
Thank you. She’s very forward thinking, much more than me.
I agree with her horrifying take.
Is there an alternative take that fits?
Massive social unrest? Revolution… ala France 1789? As an aside Mike Yeadon is my Morpheus, responsible for red pilling me in spring 2020.
I fear nothing else has the slightest chance of altering the trajectory of this monstrous project.
I’ve just been reading about huge advances in facial & other recognition software. We are almost all already prepped & ready to go, because there are many images & voice / gait recordings of us all in their servers.
Digital ID could be imposed against our will.
That ends privacy, the need for money, ID, everything.
I regret that they’ve got ten ways to win & there’s effectively no opposition.
Turning the net off is probably it. It’ll get cold. The alternative is “life” in the New Henhouse.
I didn't know about her previously but looks like a younger version of Catherine Austin Fitts.
I love Ms. Hopkins. Love.
As someone from the southern states of USA I was surprised to discover by latitude comparison how far north Europe is. Much of it is comparatively north of continental Denver, Portland, Seattle, Fargo, Minneapolis, Ottawa , Calgary, and Winnipeg Canada.
https://i.imgur.com/yIe8gWy.jpg
But the climate is much milder, nothing like Fargo or Minneapolis. Even in e.g. Northern Germany where I'm from it rarely goes below freezing in winter (though you still need heat, obviously. Glad I left Europe 30 years ago).
Panoptikon society. The old futurist-modernist dream which Fritz Lang so beautifully showed us for the monstrous techno-fascist cult of the machine it is.
No.
Do not watch Katie Hopkins - ever.
She is an ignorant and cynical sensation-seeker... with no claim to fame apart from her big mouth.
I disagree. Watch the short video and see if your probably correct assessment still holds.
Everything has changed.
Politics is dead. Not to return.
Hmm, maybe too much bevvy has ben partaken, Mike!
Katie is a motormouth, and she has nothing of any merit to say: I find her quite repulsive.
Ad hominem. Don’t argue the message, rubbish the messenger.
EVERYTHING she has spoken about has come true and is Still coming true.
Well, Rob, I see you are on the authoritarian bandwagon. Most of what I have learned in the past 2 years has been from people I was told to "not watch."
Not, I am not an authoritarian: I am just advising you that Katie is a fruit cake. If you wish to continue to eat her sticky offerings, good luck to you: but it will not enhance your wisdom nor your waistline.
What are her qualifications, exactly? Ex reality show contestant?
Couple of quick quotes: and let me assure you that whilst my son has Down Syndrome, he certainly did';t hold back the rest of his mainstream class, nor his older sister's career, who went to the same schools and got a First Class Hons degree and an MA.
"I think you can tell a great deal from a name. For me, there are certain names that I hear, and I think, 'Urgh.' For me, a name is a shortcut of finding out what class that child comes from and makes me ask, 'Do I want my children to play with them?' Katie Hopkins
"A state school class can only learn as fast as its thickest child. Your kid misses stuff, mine has to wait while yours catches up. Katie Hopkins"
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/katie-hopkins-quotes
Too easily wound up, perhaps.
I don’t think she’s likeable. But I don’t sed that’s her Schtick at all.
She’s deliberately provocative.
Usually a germ of uncomfortable truth behind her many transgressions.
But I’d listen to her NOW because she’s making sense.
I’ve never understood that notion that if in the past someone’s been unpleasant on purpose, then in a new setting, they’re automatically excluded from debate.
God help us that the smartest person around might have a bit of a mouth on them.
Can they remote control people's smart meters and ration power effectively that way? So everyone gets 15 minutes in every hour or something like that? It would get chilly, but at least people's fridges and freezers keep operating. Of course the washing machine and dishwasher are a bit of a problem.
OMG your comment is a wet dream for the bureaucrats.... more regulations and control...
Believe me, I view this as a huge reason not to get a smart meter. But, if they have the capability, they will certainly use it.
In the US, I don't think you really have a choice in terms of smart meter. You just wake up one day and it's there. If you don't want it... too bad.
It seems to depend where you live. Having read lots of negative reports about smart meters on climate sceptic blogs, but not having been consulted by my local power provider here in Seattle, I took the bull by the horns, called them and asked if I had a choice. When they said Yes, I said thank you but no thank you, I'd rather not and that was that.
not necessarily. Here in Virginia we were asked if we wanted one, and we said no thanks
I refused a smart meter for our home, and at present pay a $6. fee monthly for the power co. to send someone to "read the meter".... as it stands, they "estimate" most months, not sending anyone. I accepted a smart meter for an "upper garden", several hundreds yards up a hill, as we only require power for a water pump in that location, and it is so far distant from our home.
good question, no idea what their capabilities are.
Oddly enough, it is a loaded question: but not a good question.
I trade electricity with the grid already, have done so for the last 9 years: I could trade a lot more, but this is still emergent tech.
If you wanted 50 kWh of power tonight, I could provide it at no loss from my two BEVs as long as I could buy that power back at lower rates in the next few days.
I have the power - I'm happy to share it, for a reasonable consideration.
I don't think smart meters have power relays as components. They would be pretty large to switch > 100amps. Anyway, in the US at least, they can be removed. And short circuited to provide power.
Stealing power is do-able.. It's a black industry in 3rd world.
PS: In France they are mandatory in new buildings and those who had them installed are stuck with them.
same in DE
My home has a smart meter. I also have an automatic-on propane generator that injects power between the SM and the mains breaker box when line power fails.
It's a non-issue. The gov't might remove the meter, resulting in a surge (sorry) in DIY electrocutions, however.
yes, I think in the US new housing will have them. No question about that.
I really don’t know.
The smart meters they’ve installed here are connected and people who have them have their consumption monitored in real time.
Who knows what’s in these Troy Horses? They’ve been planning this for years.
We'd know by now if the SMs could switch the power off. It would have happened somewhere, and it would have been big news. IMO
Maybe they didn’t want people to know they could do it?
We have electric thermal storage for heat with boxes in the main house (20+ yrs old) and a newer hydronic furnace in another building. These units along with the hot water tanks only receive power at off peak (late night/early morning occasionally maybe short period during the day). The various off peak meters are all, and always have been, remotely controlled. Best always to have a back up plan or two…Located the far Upper Midwest.
Yes, I also store heat and electricity at low rates, and release it during peak rates: this is the future of balancing the grid.
I think they can. We have refused a smart meter (I live in France) thanks God! That being said, we can’t use less electricity than we already use unless we unplug the fridge and stop using warm water to shower. Even before this whole mess the bill was really high because of the EU regulations and our “genius in power”, Manu.
Soon, likely, "the unwashed masses" will be a reality in many more countries in the world.
Yes, and that is the way forwards for those of us (like me) who already trade with the grid.
I have some solar generating capability, and 110 kWh of battery storage in our two electric cars: I'd be happy to trade back and forwards to help stabilise the grid: on mutually agreeable terms.
Remote disconnection is part of the technical specifications of "Smart Pay As You Go" meters in the Republic of Ireland, although a protocol for suppliers to activate this has not yet been agreed so I don't think it is yet active.
https://www.cru.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/CER17279-NSMP-Info-Note.pdf
However if the remote disconnection and reconnection capability is built into the meters then it's only a policy choice away from the sort of dynamic load shedding you describe.
What they can control are tariffs, as they currently do, to reduce demand at peak times and shift it to periods of low demand. Appliances have been manufactured with delay timers to use off-peak night time electricity for some time.
Currently there are just two tariffs but introducing additional higher tariffs to control demand is quite possible. And it won’t require a smart meter, just a change on the distribution board.
I think in the ideal world, they would be able to simply limit consumption to each residence. And to take it a step further (from the Houston freeze two years ago) if they could supply power to a single outlet in the house for a small amp restricted heater that would be ideal. But there are no systems like that where the power companies have that much control and infrastructure both electrical and intelligent.
Indeed. We do not hear much about:
- building insulation;
- "garden" solar panels and why the limit of 600W is 600W and not 800W or 2000W for that matter;
- oil and kerozene heaters which provide a de-centralized solution;
- wood heating: has Germany taken ANY measure to produce and/or import more wood ?
- pellet and pellet stove/chimney: idem + why do you need a full blown chimney for pellets stove when the exhaust is < 100 degree (a small ca 1m pipe is more than enough). Urgent simplification to the building code could allow for small size, self build chimneys without any risk.
- etc. etc.
Trade and craftsmen's associations would join hands with unions and protest so loud it would be heard on the Moon. And they would rapidly be joined by major corporations: anything anyone can do on their own means loss of profit opportunity: both the state, the parties, the corporations, the guilds and the unions need you dependent.
from what I've read and heard, wood is already incredibly hard to come by across the continent and wood burning stoves are sold out with a backlog until at least spring 23.
I think the Greens don't want people to burn wood on account of the emissions.
GHG emissions of wood burning ? A very interesting topic. Let us see...
1. Burning 1 kg of wood releases 1.7kg of CO2
2. 42.5 million homes in Germany (?), all burning 4 x 350 kg (weight of 1RM of dry beech) of wood per year, equivalent to ca 8000KWH (enough in average ?), would therefore result in 72.2MtCo2 being released.
3. Current residential GHG emissions for Germany: 119.2MtCo2Eq, almost all caused by heating.
=> As 72 is smaller than 119, this means that if all houses and apartments in Germany where burning 4RM of beech a year in avg, it would release much less GHG than today.
I am leaving out of this very basic calculation the GHG emissions produced in transportation, harvesting etc, as well as the GHG captured by the tree during its growth.
But it shows that assumptions need to be checked, carefully.
Well said. They have the perfect confidence of Dunning-Kruger exemplars.
Did you read the recent article in Tichy's Einblick about the weaknesses of the German political system? They aptly described Germany as a kakistocracy where politicians do not have to do any long-term thinking or planning (unlike the hypothetical ruler in a feudal system who would, ideally, take care of it well so as to pass it on to his children), nor is there a way to hold them accountable for anything they've done during their time in office (you can't sue them, exile them, and, obviously, violent revolutions are not part of the system).
This seems to describe the current German government well (and no, Mrs. Faeser, I am not "deligitimizing the state"). As for Scholz, I honestly don't know what he's good for at this point. What it is that he does that entitles him to get roughly 20,000 euros a month?
Think you mean https://www.tichyseinblick.de/feuilleton/angekommen-in-der-kakistokratie/
I also enjoyed that one, pretty good.
It seems like governments, if not always, are commonly reactive.
It is evident that politicians and the Commentariat are unaware of the difference between capacity and output. They do not understand that the Watt (kW, MW) is a unit of energy, whereas the Watt/hour, (kWh, MWh) is the unit of consumption.
So politicians boast of a 100MW wind power facility, ‘enough to power a town the size of……………’ (insert name of suitable sized town/city here.) But what they fail to add, is ‘for about 80 days’ in the year and then not sequentially or whole days and possible long periods in between.
The second failure of understanding is, the grid must operate at 50Hz +/- less than 1Hz or safety relays shut it down. Frequency is important because electricity is transmitted at high voltage AC but used in domestic and industrial equipment usually at low voltage DC. Step down transformers and inverters are sensitive to frequency, and if the frequency is out of spec, it can cause damage or fires.
Fossil fuel and nuke use controllable moving parts - turbines and flywheel mechanical batteries to build inertia into the system. If demand is sudden, or falls, or a power plant drops out, there are numerous spinning wheels in the system to stabilise the frequency. You don’t have this with wind and solar.
In the UK a years or so ago, on a rare day when (Yipee!) wind was supplying 50% of power to the grid, a gas-fired power station faulted and dropped out. This caused a frequency fluctuation which caused a wind farm to disconnect from the grid, which in turn resulted in a greater frequency fluctuation which caused the grid sector to shut down, which had a knock on effect causing other sectors to shut down. This would not have happened had most of the power been coming from fossil fuel/nuke.
It took days to start up the downed sectors. It’s not like flipping a switch. The grid has to be balanced.
As with most things technical and scientific, the political class have no grasp of the details - they leave it to the experts, who always say what their masters want to hear. . And so here we are.
Excellent summary !
If only the mainstream press would write a proper article on how the grid functions, at least at a sufficient level of details to grasp the key constraints, that would go a long way...
Wishful thinking I am afraid.
Since you seem to have some knowledge Id like to ask you what role batteries have.
I understand the momentum generated by spinning wheels. And I get that the power generated by solar and wind is too volatile.
I'd think that it would work if you have enough battery storage available to smooth out the fluctuations. Ignoring for the moment the immense cost and sheer impossibility of giant battery storage, of course.
Or are batteries in some other way flawed and they can not keep the correct frequency?
> sheer impossibility of giant battery storage...
Read this : https://electrek.co/2022/08/02/check-out-this-massive-swiss-water-battery-that-can-power-up-to-900k-homes/
Max. capacity: 20M kWh
Average daily need in heating: 66 kWh/dwelling
=> That gigantic "battery" is not even enough to heat 350.000 avg dwellings for ONE day.
=> As this is one of the largest such storage in the world (if not the THE largest) and as it is extremely efficient and also not replicable, I have to agree with you that we do not have, and most likely will never have in the near and mid-term, enough battery capacity to cover all electric needs using intermittent electricity production.
‘Enough battery storage’. What would be enough?
Batteries do not give continuous output, they run down. Batteries produce Direct Current and need electronic converters to change it to AC - without flywheels to provide inertia, they cannot provide guaranteed frequency. Frequency just has to be off for a second and the grid shuts down.
I think the other commentator below answers your question in more detail.
But consider this. A battery is a container and just like any container, how much it holds depends on its size/capacity.
To build batteries to store enough useful electricity to back up wind and solar, would be like building a large container to store the Atlantic Ocean.
Battery technology is over a century old. We keep hearing about technological advance, but technology relies on physics not magic. If we could build small batteries with huge storage capacity, we would have done it by now. You can’t fit a quart into a pint pot.
The German Politiburo will have all the fuel and electricity it needs---the people are going to be out of luck. Time for the pitchforks to be sharpened and to light the torches.
People need to figure out a way to cut off THEIR power as well.
I have to wonder what the net environmental EROI, not to mention resources spent in toto is for 10 000 000 electrical heaters being replaced every ten to twenty years. Since they are chinese made, expecting them to last even twenty years with regular use is very optimistic, at least if I base that guess on how my Swedish, British, American and West German tools (powered as well as not) from the 1980s or older perform, when compared to a chinese made tool after just a year or two of regular use.
In 2021 alone, two hammers, one axe and one cramp has broken when in use. Metal fatigue due the tools being made of "steel" which in reality is "chinesium" or stinko-chinko scrap metal alloy.
Whereas my swedish made axe-hammer from before 1850 is still going strong. Wonder what Die Grünen and their looter-capitalist buddies would say about that?
How many photovoltaics and home battery units have been sold?
I'm pretty sure the globalists want it to go "boom." And rest assured, the same evil people that created the crisis will be there to "fix" it. And the fix will include the implementation of more authoritarian rule...for the greater good of course. Rinse and repeat throughout history.
I'm not endorsing violence, but from a solutions-oriented perspective, Karl Lauterbach would make excellent biofuel:
• "Letter to the German Bundestag" (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-german-bundestag)
It's a Green solution :)
😂
biomass lol
Well, he is some dense matter!
Drop the m and you have it right.😎
you win best comment in thread!
Soylent green even!
Just Klaus Schwab’s pendulous lips and hanging jowls could power Western Europe for nearly a week.
🤣😝
Lauterbach looks like he is all gristle.
🤣
😆 I think Karl will do the job for us by boosting himself into oblivion.
😂
😹
A disaster of your own making. And the US Democrats can’t move fast enough to import this stupidity.
I often wonder, are they really this stupid or is this on purpose?
It's on purpose. It's been going on too long to be just stupidity. Having said that, the 'on purpose' could have been short term greed too. For example, pipelines from Canada to the US were cancelled partially (it is said) because Warren Buffet owned lots of railroad stock, pipelines would have taken away from his business so all kinds of lobby groups were funded to defeat the pipelines in the name of climate & environment.
There's still the matter of the WEF however...
When they claim incompetence, it is because the truth is far worse.
(Not original to me, but I use it so much that I claim a degree of squatter's rights)
We passed 'stupid' years and years ago.
Eugyppius comments often on the intelligence of German leadership. President Biden is mid-grade Alzheimer’s. But the bureaucrats behind them are not stupid. At best, we can say they are naive; useful idiots. At worst, they are twisted, demented ideologues.
Biden has definitely got something wrong. I do NOT like the guy at all but I kind of feel sorry for him seeing him like this. I mean it’s humiliating, IMO. How can these people do this to our country?!
They’re definitely idealogues.
I have less than zero sympathy or compassion for Biden. He has been a worthless and untalented government leech for 50 years and has done nothing of note and has lived on taxpayer money his whole adult life. He has never appeared very intelligent, either. He's a pathological liar and a criminal....back when his brain worked better he was, that is. I do think he is being "directed" by radicals behind the scene, though. Biden was just a useful idiot to those who control our government.
We have a chance to take their power away. Will we?
Not if the RNC has anything to say about it.🤬
China Mitch and Ronna Romney are truly evil. Their PAC monies come with a poison clause- take our campaign monies and you have to agree with open borders and endless wars to please our corporate backers....
Or the DNC, obviously.
So exactly why do we want to make the same mistakes here (US)? Because we are somehow different?? Because it wasn’t implemented properly?
Where have I heard that before? Oh wait, I know.......
After the first hard winter, I'm confident that Germans will tell the Greens to go to hell and start a crash program to refit their generation plants to burn coal, which Germany has plenty of.
If there is one truth in your statement, the great German people can build great things and fast. If they put their minds to it. I'm not confident they will.
My dad thinks Germans are the smartest people in the world. Of course, we are Germans. Lol. We live here in the US. He’s funny.
Smart . . . and stubborn. My ancestors are German immigrants as well.
Mine came over from Germany as well. To Colorado then to California .
Oh, I have no doubt they will . . . eventually. If people are freezing, then those in power will have to decide how much they're willing to risk to continue down that path for the sake of their precious "climate change" narrative. The stakes will be raised with every cold snap.
No, I predict force will be necessary to remove these dimwits from the levers of power. And it will take awhile to convince the populace that this is the new normal, it's not going to improve. Much pain ahead
If people except this as the new normal Hope is lost.
I don’t have a lot of confidence after the covid fiasco, but folks were not freezing.
I am going to pray that this enough to wake people up!!!!
You have a compromised immune system and a compromised living standard. Do you think people will have the energy to fight back? I doubt.
Not trying to be argumentative, but have they already started bring back coal plans in Germany? I thought I read they have, to some degree. That would prove you are right.
Yes, they have. And it's a simple matter to convert the gas burning ones over to coal. Likely a lot of power plants in Germany have been converted from coal to natural gas. Also likely that some of the plant engineers couldn't bear to scrap the coal-burner hardware, and it's lying around in a nearby lot or warehouse.
There is hope.
Instead, fearing for their lives, the German government will relentlessly scapegoat the Russian government and whip up the dogs of war.
Haven't they learned that war with Russia is never a good idea?
Especially in the winter.
Look at history.
This was years in the making, it will not turn on a dime.
Exactly. Green narrative and frostbite or warmth. The choice is an easy one. Images of elites in well heated homes and vacationing in the Mediterranean will not play well to the huddled and freezing masses. Heat banks will become the tinder for civil unrest.
Unless we bail them out......
Don’t you see that scenario playing out in all countries that are blindly accepting the green mandates? It’s hard to understand how people don’t know how power gets to that outlet where they plug in their electric appliances and now, cars. For smart people, we are making a hash of our future.
I look at it as a wholesale- out of sight out of mind- export of pollution. They don't see the electrical grids or how they run, or how solar panels are made, maintained, disposed of, or that China/Russia is the only winner in this exchange. Idiocracy is playing out before our very eyes.
It's amazing to me, but yes. Many people I've talked to about electric cars have no idea where electricity to run them is supposed to come from, how much the batteries cost or how long they last or what happens when they're depleted, how much rare material is necessary to make them, the horrible conditions many of the people who mine them work under, etc. They also think solar panels are very efficient, are produced without any pollution, and last forever!
TPTB put idiots to play in the theatre of politics. Their instructions come from elsewhere.
I believe this will end in the collapse of the greenies and their climate change agenda rather than the collapse of civilization.
No it won't--it will simply make people more desperate as the governments everywhere swoop in and pretend to save the day. They aren't backing down because their goal has never been the health of the people. Their goal is chaos.
The "green" aspect is just the cover story.
If that's really what their plan is, then they are playing a very dangerous game. The orderly succession of power in the western democracies is what has protected the elites from brutal dictators and popular uprisings.
My understanding is that what appeared to be "democratic" never really was, --the elite have actually been in power the entire time. They'll still pretend, but the power grab is much more blatant at this point. People will be dying as if in wartime. Rising up will prove more difficult than we think when energy, food and water are scarce.
I don't disagree with you, but I think the relationship between democracy, law, and power is lot more complicated and dynamic than we imagine.
I agree with what you're saying but it's when energy, food and water are scarce that people become motivated: nothing left to lose. My dad used to say that people with full stomachs don't start revolutions so I think the opposite has to be true.
BINGO
Fossil fuels are terrible... unless they're providing the electricity for virtuous people's cars!!!
Why are you surprised that people don't know where the juice comes from for their appliances? There are people who don't know where the food comes from that's in their supermarket.
I will be watching sadly, from warm and sunny Arizona this winter, as Europe falls into chaos.
My hope is that the European masses reject the Feudalistic plans of the WEFers and choose liberty over serfdom.
I'm not confidant.
Warm and sunny Arizona needs A LOT of power in the summer...
We do, and we have a nuclear power plant and plenty of natural gas turbines. We will have plenty of power as long as fellow Arizonians vote Republican this November.
And water /food...
Water is an issue. That is why we need more nuclear power to support desalinization plants. That is what Kari Lake wants when she wins the governor's seat. Vote Red.
Surprisingly, it's too hot in the Great Smoky Mountains. The temperatures have exceeded 90 degrees most days for the past 3 months.
It is wearisome. It's been so long since I've walked my dogs that they no longer go nuts when I stand up and walk towards their leashes.
Here in the Central Valley of California we actually could live without heating or cooling, albeit pretty uncomfortable in our hot summers, but it’s doable. My “green”, Bernie supporting neighbors let all their trees and grass die and had solar installed. 😳. People are nuts.
I agree. I hate it and all the wind mills all over the land. It’s not pretty at all. It ruins our beautiful land scape.
Replace that with a nice nuclear power plant, and all the birds thrive. Why do the Greens hate birds?
Those are the ugliest! And I have to wonder how much do they raise the ambient air temp around those panels? They are blinding as well.
What will it take for the normies to break out of the bubble and make CDU heads roll? They have let the Greens take control- everyone knows there aren't enough Green votes for these types of massive infrastructure changes. If I hear one more time from the German normies - we are all in this together- or Putin man bad.... ugh. The real crimes are agains the pensioners and poor- how can they possibly afford food or heat?
One winter of no heat.
Remember the justification of lockdowns and all of the misery they caused?
Even if it saves just one life!
This is all being sold under the guise of 'defending democracy in Ukraine'. If any of you still think of the Kiev regime as 'democratic', I've got some prime land in Florida to sell you.
In clown world, lockdowns save lives just like we fight for democracy in the Ukraine.
Speaking from a US POV: We are at an awkward stage--too late to work within the "System" and too soon to start shooting the bastards.
Same here in the US.
Hasn't stopped the vaxx from being rolled out to kids in the US, I doubt dead frozen kids will matter elsewhere, the propaganda for Building Back like Bozos is very strong worldwide.
Despite a big (and reprehensible) government PR campaign, Americans have soundly rejected vaccinating their children.
You would think so, but that was before people seemed to care more about being canceled than the health of their kids.
It's been too easy to convince people of propaganda that it wasn't really the vaxx. It's a lot harder to say, no, the extreme cold did not kill your child or parent or grandparent...
The sad consequences of decades of transforming "education" into "indoctrination". Victims do not know where the electricity in that "thing in the wall" comes from. Or care. Which is why they will not understand when the lights go out this winter.
That would be the one. The thingy you plug things into.
There are still plenty in Britain that maintain the only way to solve the UK's energy crisis is a "Green Dash" to turn our grid over to solar and wind. Strangely very little is said about tidal energy, which is as regular as clockwork . . .
Tidal energy is regular but still intermittent. It just doesn't have a high potential energy. That comes from having a high head, which is why conventional hydro works. Simple truth is tidal cannot compete with nuclear, not even close.
Most of these idiots have never gotten beyond the myopic view that "installing solar can save you a lot of money" and the current price crunch (far worse than Germany btw) is only reinforcing their seemingly bottomless conceitedness.
These are supposed to be the collectivists! And they can't see beyond the spot price of power and their own bank balance.
One wonders what the results would be of large-scale tidal. The Law of Unintended Consequences looms large over such projects.
I own and operate a HVAC company in the US. The green push here is alive as we are required to meet higher and higher efficiency standards with our equipment. The added complexity for more efficiency means more control boards, variable frequency drives, variable speed fans, and increased sensors. I have seen a drastic decrease in reliability, a fan goes down and it takes out the control board plus the variable freq drive. All of it goes in the TRASH when replaced, frustrating me to no end. I don't see how this is "green" when equipment from 10 and 20 years ago is easily fix and refurbished. We were at 92% efficiency and the new "green" equipment is 96%. For a 4% increase, I see a drastic amount of waste not to mention angry customers when brand new equipment goes down.
It feels like the push for energy efficiency doesn't take everything into account. Much like an electric car on the side of the road being charged with a diesel generator.
Unfortunately Scott, that same disease has infested virtually all technologies. We have sacrificed functionality, longevity, and most frustrating of all, reparability on the alter of "greenness".
Over the last decade, our extended family has equipped our ranch with century old tools and machinery, ALL of which is 100% repairable.
I was buying from a manufacturer specifically so I could get the "dumbed" down versions. The EPA has stepped in this year and they cannot even produce such equipment any longer.
Thank you for this valuable information - a reminder that „Greener“ solutions often release hidden externalities that completely negate whatever energy savings you had in the first place!
What a beautiful conundrum! Everyone goes to e-vehicles, and they can't drive anywhere, because there's no "juice" to recharge them! Obviously, the "greenies" can't see into the future past the ends of their noses. And thank you, Angela, for closing all those clean, efficient nuclear power plants. Turn the juice off to HER house first...
She did it under command. The little sign she made every photo-op was not her choice to make. It was her symbol of total obedience.
I really hope for a massive and sustained blackout in Germany and ideally in most of Europe. Germans have voted for these shit policies and they truly deserve to suffer a lot this winter. Maybe, just maybe, that would cause these stupid sheep to think about the importance of energy. Morons everywhere.
My own mom has voted for the greens for decades. I told her today that she derserves to freeze a bit this winter in her gas heated flat. Obviously, she is still welcome in our oil heated house, though, it's my mom after all.
Must be nice to still be in that world where you imagine voting can solve problems.
It is the reign of esau and we are enslaved just as we were in Egypt.
I've been saying that about NYC and their crappy voting practices- they should stay there and deal with the consequences! Instead, they've been coming over the border to CT and they haven't learned a damned thing.
Sadly, this pain is--and especially WAS--inevitable. Pain is nature's way of instilling deep lessons. The only way to learn the lesson that there's no getting around the Second Law of Thermodynamics is for the catastrophic failure of Green policies. Germany will be Exhibit A in the modern world (see also Sri Lanka), but it is ONLY through the constant blaring of truths as laid out above by eugyppius that the proper course corrections can be made.
It's not enough to just survive this (and subsequent) winter. The zealots behind this insanity need to be exposed, thoroughly discredited, and dismissed from the public square. We all need to make sure that it's crystal clear WHO and WHAT are to blame here--and neither of those is Putin or Russia.
No no no, this time it will be different
No no no, Next time it will be different
step and repeat
ad infinitum!
Angela Merkel should have listened to Donald Trump as regards the Nord Stream pipeline
But electricity comes from the hole in the wall?
Indeed it does. Western energy policy has been made at the "Brawndo's got electrolytes" level of cognition for about 20 years.
As far as I know, Mrs. Baerbock believes it's the cobolds that provide it. :-)