Why Germany’s energy blunders offer others a stark economic warning
German thoroughness was once applied to antisemitism, with disastrous results. It has now been applied to another political fad, global warming -- again with disastrous results. They have thoroughly destroyed their economy in pursuit of a Green chimera
Since the 19th century, the phrase “Made in Germany” has denoted quality and reliability in manufacturing. This reputation, and the exports that have flowed from it, has enabled Germany to build the fourth-largest economy in the world - sometimes described as the enginehouse of the eurozone.
But in recent years some of Germany’s most famous brands have moved their manufacturing offshore, and the head of the German Industry Federation, Siegfried Russwurm, has warned that energy prices are so high the country risks losing many of its companies altogether.
Entering a recession in the first quarter of this year, Germany’s recovery has been slower than expected. The Federation of German Business recently found that 16 per cent of businesses surveyed are already in the process of leaving the country, with another 30 per cent planning on following suit. Tesla has halted plans to build factories near Berlin, and the European Commission predicts Germany will be one of the slowest-growing economies this year.
Of course, the factors contributing to this economic decline are complex, but one key policy decision made in the mid-2000s appears to have played a pivotal role. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that during her tenure as chancellor, Angela Merkel embarked upon a decision that would prove to be one of the greatest policy mistakes ever made.
A decade ago, Germany had 17 nuclear plants in operation and sourced around one-quarter of its energy from nuclear energy. Although the nation has always had a vocal “dark green” environmentalist movement that advocated for “degrowth”, Merkel originally resisted calls from anti-nuclear advocates, describing their policy preferences as “absolutely wrong”.
But that all changed in 2011, in the wake of Fukushima. The New York Times reported at the time that Merkel “reached the momentous decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022 after discussing it one night over red wine with her husband, Joachim Sauer, a physicist and university professor, at their apartment in central Berlin”. It would prove to be a monumental mistake.
Earlier this year Germany shuttered the last three of its remaining nuclear plants, to the celebration of local Greens and anti-nuclear activists. However, environmentalists outside Germany were aghast. And even Greta Thunberg observed it was a mistake. Data from 2022 indicated that the use of coal had increased by 8.4 per cent on the preceding year, and that coal remained Germany’s dominant power source.
Despite the hundreds of billions spent on renewables (that’s billions not millions), Germany’s carbon emissions persist at double the rate of neighbouring France and nearly triple the rate of Sweden. The country also grapples with electricity prices three times the global average.
As Judith Sloan wrote earlier this week, the disappointing situation in Europe provides a stark warning to Australia.
While in Germany recently, Anthony Albanese signed on to the “Climate Club”, a group of nations with lofty decarbonisation ambitions. But Germany should not be offering lessons on how to achieve decarbonisation – on the contrary, its example should be seen as a cautionary tale.
One economic analysis of Germany’s nuclear phase-out estimates that the nuclear phase-out has cost the country at least $12bn, and has contributed to thousands of preventable deaths from the air pollution generated from the burning of coal. Germany’s spot on the Yale Environmental Performance Index has slid backwards, and analysts note its electricity grid is the third-most carbon-intensive in all of Europe.
Since embarking on the Energiewende, Germany has experienced escalating electricity costs tied to feed-in tariffs and instability during periods of low wind and solar energy generation. Integrating fluctuating renewable energy sources into the power grid has plunged it into uncertainty, creating a volatile mix of surplus and shortfall.
On the other hand, nations boasting the lowest carbon emissions in Europe have not staked their fortunes on wind and solar power alone. Sweden, for instance, charted a course toward nuclear energy in the 1970s, and now emits a mere 3.42 tonnes of carbon per capita compared to Germany’s 8.09 tonnes. Over the past two decades, Sweden’s economy has thrived, boasting a growth rate twice that of Germany’s.
Given the energy intensity of an industry such as manufacturing, it is not entirely surprising that energy policy blunders have precipitated the German economic malaise.
Rather than transforming the country into a renewable energy superpower, Germany’s Energiewende has created a rust belt.
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Finland’s New Reactor is Already Lowering Electricity Prices
It has been a while since a new nuclear reactor was built in Western Europe; 16 years since the last reactor came online in France. At least that was the case until April of this year.
The day after the final shut down of Germany’s last three operating reactors, April 16th, Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) a 1600 MW European Pressurized reactor (EPR) began regular power output to the grid. There is an irony in Germany’s once 17 reactor fleet pittering out the same weekend that Europe’s largest reactor ever is brought up to commercial power. As Germany ensured its future energy insecurity, Finland was ushering in a newfound security in electricity production.
This new reactor is a big deal both because of the long gap in new nuclear construction in Europe, and it is also important because it’s a new type of reactor. This is the first EPR built in Europe, with the first two units anywhere having been built at the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in China in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Reactors of this design are currently planned in both France and the United Kingdom.
The Olkiluoto 3 project has not been all sunshine and roses, though. Construction on the project began in 2005, and the initial plan was to have the unit operational by 2009. The initial budget set out for the project was 3 billion euros, but by completion 8 billion had been spent, and the project was 14 years late. This is a major cost overrun, but when the 60 year projected lifetime of the reactor is considered, along with the significant size of its output, there is less sticker shock when it comes to the price.
This unit alone supplies 14 percent of Finland’s electricity demand, while the three Olkiluoto reactors provide a combined 30 percent of the country’s electricity.
But despite the costs and the time it took, the project is starting to pay off for the Finish grid already. After significant electricity price spikes following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Finland’s banning of energy imports from the country. The threat of electricity shortage had begun to loom during that period, as it did across much of Europe.
Spring floods and their concomitant hydropower production coupled with the capacity of the new 1600 MW nuclear reactor have caused the average monthly retail cost of electricity to come down considerably. Spiking at 261.53 Euros per megawatt-hour in August of 2022, the price was sitting at 26.52 Euros per megawatt-hour in May of 2023. The last time the price was that low was July of 2020, and the figure is below any of the pre-pandemic 2019 prices.
Now that price reduction is not solely due to the addition of the nuclear plant, the price was already back into the 70 Euro per megawatt-hour range in the early months of 2023; but the addition of so much new capacity has certainly contributed to both the price improvement, and to a newfound sense of energy security.
Finland has also recently finished construction on the world’s first geologic repository for spent fuel, further solidifying the future continuation of its nuclear fleet.
This new reactor coming online is a good sign for both energy costs in Finland, and the country’s energy security and independence. It is especially worthy of note given the very different reality for energy elsewhere in Europe as Germany has voluntarily hobbled its own energy independence. For a country as small as Finland, a single new nuclear reactor, especially one of this size, can make a huge difference in the energy economy.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2023/07/12/finland-reactor-lowering-electricity-prices/
*************************************************Warming in Antarctica?
Only using ‘creative’ statistics
Much has been written in the tabloids, and repeated by the fashionable, about it being very hot through June – even in Antarctica. Really, I wondered. Is Antarctica melting?
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has measured air temperatures at the Mawson weather station in Antarctica since early 1954 – this is one of the longest continuous surface temperature records for that part of the world. The Russians did not establish the more famous and isolated Vostok weather station until 1957. The satellite temperature record doesn’t begin until 1979.
The Bureau makes very few adjustments to the temperatures as measured at Mawson that oscillate within a band of some few degrees – mostly below freezing. These same temperatures show no statistically significant long-term warming trend, at least not since 1954. There are longer proxy temperature series, based on ice core records, and they show an overall cooling trend, considering the last 1,900 years. Here, again, I am referring to data from published studies, for example, the temperatures of East and West Antarctica were reconstructed by a team led by Barbara Stenni including scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division, British Antarctic Survey, and Russian Antarctic Research Institute. It is only remodelled proxy series that show warming over this same period.
Last month (June 2023), Antarctica was reported as ‘hot’ in various publications including Vox.com. Yet the average maximum temperature for Mawson was minus 12.6 degrees Celsius, which is not quite as cold as the long-term June average for all years since 1954 which is minus 13.5 C. When the June maximum temperatures for Mawson are ranked highest to lowest, June 2023 comes in as the 29th hottest, and 42nd coldest – suggesting temperatures in Antarctica were not particularly newsworthy and rather cold.
Yet the tabloids, and fashionable, are claiming June 2023 as hot – even in Antarctica. It is all nonsense.
Some of these claims have their origin in the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations. So, they represent a remodelled average. Indeed, there is not a single place where anyone, can measure the average temperature of the Earth – or Antarctica. Rather, when it is announced that it is the hottest it has ever been, reference is made to a statistic.
This average temperature is necessarily a number that has been derived from other numbers. There will perhaps have been some measuring done here and there, and then some adjusting, and then some adding up and some adjusting again. This is how it is with the calculation of regional and global average temperatures – whether from satellites, tree rings, ice cores, or thermometers. To be sure, every year we are told it is getting hotter, and back in the late 1980s, this was achieved for the globally averaged thermometer record by dropping out some of the colder weather stations. This had the effect of increasing the overall average global temperature, at a time when temperatures at many individual sites were dipping somewhat.
Those who have followed the politics of measuring temperatures may also remember the infamous line in the Climategate emails, whereby the globally averaged temperatures based on tree rings, which also show a decline after 1980, are ‘corrected’ by substituting the globally averaged temperature from thermometer records – never mind that the dip in that record had already been ‘corrected’ by removing data from a great many high latitude Canadian and Russian weather stations.
Drawing from this sordid history of calculating global and regional temperatures, I can think of a large number of ways that the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer could possibly generate a higher-than-average temperature for Antarctica and especially the Earth. Indeed, the larger the geographic area covered, the more opportunity for creative accounting, for which corporates using similar techniques would go to jail, while climate scientists are more usually promoted.
The solution is to perhaps give up on believing the nonsense news headlines, especially when there is no reference to a specific weather station, like Mawson. Or do away with a random selection of weather stations and focus instead on a simple index based on a good sample of well-sited weather stations with long histories, like Mawson.
Such a concept could be based on the Dow Jones Averages or the S&P 500. No one ever tries establishing an impossible-to-define ‘average stock price’ — including many stocks of doubtful provenance — and nobody cares. Rather the solution is to have a pre-selected index of certain representative stocks, that are then followed over a long-time span. So why not have an index of agreed weather stations?
The only problem is, the tabloids and the fashionable, might then have nothing to talk about – should they limit reporting to the same weather stations and with temperatures reliably measured, which will require some modification to current methods and of course, no subsequent adjusting.
There may be no catastrophe to report at least not when it comes to weather as a measure of climate, for which the lack of reliable measures, and the great number of potentially creative solutions, are currently being exploited over and over to justify rather large expenditures on all manner of things.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/warming-in-antarctica
***************************************The hottest day
Ian Plimer
In my lifetime, the hottest days I have enjoyed were in Jeddah (55°C), Adelaide (47°C), and Death Valley (46°C). For some strange reason, these were in summer in a dry climate.
The atmosphere is a natural air conditioner that modulates air temperature by the evaporation and precipitation of water. The adiabatic heat of the evaporation of water shows that to vaporise water, energy must be taken from the air, soil, plants, lakes, rivers, and seas. This is why your skin feels cool when wet. To precipitate water from the air as rain or snow, heat is given out.
Townsville and Mount Isa are at almost the same latitude. Air in Townsville is humid and contains about 4 per cent dissolved water vapour, the main greenhouse gas. Summer temperatures rarely exceed 28°C. At Mount Isa where the air contains less than 2 per cent water vapour, summer temperatures often exceed 42°C. Winter nights in Mount Isa are freezing whereas in Townsville they are quite balmy.
Both Mount Isa and Townsville have the same atmospheric carbon dioxide content. The only variable is water vapour as humidity and clouds which modulate temperature. It is humidity and rain that stops the planet from having an excessively high air temperature, runaway global warming, or any other concocted crisis on the catastrophist climate menu.
When the news cycle is quiet, people are away on summer holidays and, if there are a few warm summer days in a row, then it’s time to scare people witless. Tell them it’s the hottest day for the last 10 years, since Wimbledon started, since records were kept, or for the last 125,000 years. Make sure the colour of the background on temperature maps is changed to fiery red.
This is aimed at keeping the climate gravy train on the rails with the implication that the alleged hottest day must be a result of human activities. If record winter lows in the other hemisphere are ignored, then the narrative is enhanced. This is fraud and the media perpetually promote such climate disinformation.
If asked whether the planet is heating or cooling, the only answer to give is ‘Yes’. For the last 50 million years, planet Earth has been cooling. We have warmed up at least 10°C since the cold dry Younger Dryas 12,900-11,700 years ago, a time when no fossil fuels were used by humans. Since the peak of the current interglacial 7,000-4,000 years ago, there has been a long-term cooling trend with spikes of cooling and warming.
If told the planet has warmed, then the reply must be ‘Since when?’ We have cooled since Roman times, warmed since the Dark Ages (535-900 AD), cooled since the Medieval Warming (900-1300 AD), and warmed since the Little Ice Age (1300-1850 AD). What would you expect after the Little Ice Age? Bitterly cold times or warming. The unsolved scientific question is: which part, if any, of modern warming is of human origin? To talk about warming or hot times without discussing climate cycles is misleading and deceptive.
How do we measure temperature? Is it by mercury thermometers which have been used for a couple of centuries? Is it by the homemade secret thermal probes used by the taxpayer-funded Bureau of Meteorology? Is it by infrared probes? Is the measuring station correctly located? What is measured at the measuring station? Is the spot maximum temperature or the average maximum temperature over time used? Has the measuring station been moved over its history? Have buildings, airports, roads, and air conditioning units encroached on the measuring spot? How has the urban heat island effect influenced the measurement?
Do we get told that the bulk of global ground measuring stations are in the US and EU giving a very biased land measurement record? Not all measuring station data is used. Why not? Those in extreme climatic and remote areas are being closed, especially in Russia. The Bureau of Meteorology ignores the long-term record of rural land-based stations. Some 70 per cent of the planet is covered by water yet most measuring stations are on the land. The average temperature from an irregularly biased array of measuring stations cannot be calculated. As soon as the words average global temperature are used, you know you’re being conned.
Atmospheric temperature, mainly above the land, has been measured from the millions of weather balloons released year in and year out. Over the last 40 years, the 24/7 measurement of atmospheric temperature in 3D up to the stratosphere of the planet has been measured by satellite. Satellite is the most accurate measurement of temperature but is not used. It does not give scary data hidden away by some taxpayer-funded institution and is much harder to ‘adjust.
To compare the measurement of modern temperature with less accurate temperature deduced from proxies is invalid. Modern temperature measurements with an accuracy of ± 0.1°C are combined with older measurements with an accuracy of ± 0.5°C and then it’s claimed that the 20th-century average has risen by 0.86°C. A school child educated 60 years ago learned that every measurement must be accompanied by an order of accuracy and they could have shown that the claimed 20th-century average temperature rise is invalid. It is doubtful whether an ‘educated’ teenager today could see the flaw.
Proxies have an order of accuracy of 0.1-0.5°C, depending upon which proxy is used and how far back in time it is applied. A great diversity of proxies have been used to determine the past temperature record. The geological record shows us that the hottest days ever were 600, 500, 400, 200, and 100 million years ago. They were Thursdays!
Over the last 500 million years, the temperature has been up and down many times between numerous hothouse and icehouse conditions. As a result of cooling for the last 50 million years, we are currently living in one of the coldest times on planet Earth for 300 million years.
If Antarctica would just break up into microcontinents or move away from the South Pole, we would reach the planet’s normal wet warm greenhouse planetary conditions with a high sea level. Antarctic rift valleys and 150 sub-glacial geothermal areas and volcanoes show that the fragmentation has started.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/the-hottest-day/
***************************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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