Protests against German electricity grid extension as a new social movement? A journey into the areas of conflictt - "Among the major players in German energy politics, a broad consensus exists that one important condition for the transition to renewable energies is to expand the electricity transmission grid. More than 7000 km of new or extended power routes are planned, generally as overhead lines. Mainly because of local protests, many projects, however, lag behind their original timetable. The protest initiatives are often supported by concerned municipalities and districts, environmental organizations, and scientists... Ecologists (e.g., Friends of the Earth Germany and sections of Left Party criticize the extension plan as opaque as well as undemocratic and because it would perpetuate the centralized energy system, which faces increasing competition from small wind parks, solar panels, and biomass. Others demand that the plans for expansion be scaled back because the additional capacity would enable fossil-fuel power plants to stay in operation although there is enough renewable energy available. Apart from this discussion on the systemic consequences of grid extension, there is another contested topic: the question of the effect of electromagnetic waves which are emitted by the power lines. Individuals who live nearby are afraid of health issues caused by them. Moreover, these people are concerned about negative effects on nature and their homes losing value
Clearly, the grid is going to be ready in time
German farmers protest against green energy grid expansion - "Hennies explained that the problem with the power cables was how they affected farmland because laying them destroys soil structure. An underground cable connection consists of eight cables, which are driven deep into the ground a few metres apart. Hennies believes that an area of at least 50 metres is required for this. “The problem is that the soil can’t be repaired as quickly afterwards as it has a long memory. When taking measurements of the areas concerned, we sometimes found 30% yield losses,” Hennies said. He added that the problem of heat from the cables was also unpredictable, as they would prevent the deep frost needed by the soil to regenerate. Moreover, certain plants, such as asparagus, can only be planted on the electricity lines with permission... many citizens’ initiatives across Germany are attempting to block the construction of these large power lines, instead calling for underground cables that cannot be seen. A further problem of expanding the grid is that operators have to provide compensation when extending the routes and also provide land elsewhere... The German Farmers’ Association (DBV) is now calling for “intergenerational justice” and a corresponding amendment to the proposed legislation, which still does not provide for regular payments. The farmers calculate that the German federal government would have to invest around €1 billion in compensation payments across the country for this."
Farmers are in revolt and Europe’s climate policies are crumbling. Welcome to the age of ‘greenlash’ - "Ursula von der Leyen surrendered to angry farmers last week faster than you could shake a pitchfork or dump a tractor-load of manure outside the European parliament. The European Commission president, expected to announce her candidacy for a second term heading the EU executive next week, told lawmakers that the commission was withdrawing a bill to halve the use of chemical pesticides by 2030 and would hold more consultations instead. The proposed measure was a key plank in the commission’s European Green Deal and its Farm to Fork strategy, intended to make the EU carbon-neutral by 2050, make agriculture more environmentally friendly and preserve biodiversity. Von der Leyen’s sudden U-turn on one of her signature policies was not just an attempt to defuse a spreading continent-wide rural revolt over rising fuel costs, burdensome environmental regulations, retailers’ price squeezes and cheap imports. It was also a sign of growing panic among the EU’s mainstream parties over the seemingly inexorable rise of far-right nationalists ahead of the June elections... EU leaders tried to take another contentious issue off the table by agreeing in December on a long-stalled migration pact that includes stricter external border controls, faster procedures for processing asylum seekers and expelling those whose applications are rejected, and sharing the burden of the refugee crisis among EU countries. But populists such as the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, continue to rail against being forced to choose between admitting unwanted migrants and paying for other countries to take them in under the new system. I have seen unpublished opinion polling conducted for the European parliament in January that showed Eurosceptic, sovereigntist or populist parties have taken the lead in eight of the 27 EU members, and are in second place in four more. Moreover, the countries where the far right is polling most strongly include those with the most seats in the legislature – Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Romania and the Netherlands. This is getting scary, and events such as the farmers’ furore are playing into the hands of populists such as France’s Marine Le Pen, Germany’s Alice Weidel and Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, who thrive on grassroots grumbling against the metropolitan elites... In the Netherlands, farmer discontent over curbs on nitrogen emissions led to the sudden rise of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, a party that came from nowhere to win the most votes in regional elections last March. Many of those protest voters have since switched to Wilders’ Freedom party, which topped the poll in a general election in November and has gained more ground since then... Indeed, abandoning green policies at the first sign of trouble is only likely to embolden opponents of other aspects of climate protection policy such as replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, building windfarms and solar parks, limiting polluting vehicles in cities or taxing carbon at the petrol pump or on home energy bills. Ironically, the party that seems likely to suffer most from the farmers’ fury is the Greens, who are not even part of the coalition of mainstream centre-right, centre-liberal and centre-left parties that dominate the commission and the parliament. Recent polling suggests that the ecologists are set to lose up to one-third of their 72 seats in the 720-member legislature due to the “greenlash”."
Elites complain about "populism", blame the hoi polloi for their ignorance and say democracy must be destroyed to save democracy
Grinding the grid: Contextualizing protest networks against energy transmission projects in Southern Germany - "In Germany, citizens’ initiatives have opposed the construction of new high voltage power lines for more than fifteen years. This paper presents a qualitative case study of the Franconian region, where the opposition is especially strong and radical. In contrast to classic single point protests, these activists are well-networked and articulate energy and climate political issues – like decentralized energy transition - that transcend local contexts. Based on scientific expertise, they challenge the official grid extension plans that the federal government and transmission system operators advocate"
Thread by @JohnLeePettim13 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Documents filed by Xcel Energy for it’s Nobles Wind facility, 134 turbines. The wind turbines lasted 12 years. Cost to decommission $85,533,609. Cost to refurbish $204,000,000. But wait, let me show you how this scam works. #GreenEnergy thread 🧵
Repowering wind projects allows them to requalify for the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC), a lucrative federal subsidy that expires after the first 10 years of a project’s life. It should come as no surprise, then, that data from the U.S. Department of Energy shows that the wind facilities repowered in 2021 ranged in age from 9 to 16 years old with the median age being 10 years. In essence, the lucrative federal subsidies paid to wind turbine operators are creating a perverse incentive to prematurely refurbish or replace wind projects long before the end of their useful lifetimes, including the Nobles wind project in Minnesota. As Warren Buffet said, "For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit." You see while the wind production tax credit make many rich, it's harmful for taxpayers and energy consumers. How the #GreenEnergy scam works."
Terence Corcoran: Stop China’s neo-Marxist EV trade war - "Historically, the spectacular world-changing technologies of the past were developed and brought to market by bottom-up inventors and entrepreneurs — airplanes, printing presses, automobiles, telephones, electricity, semiconductors, computers, television, the internet, steam engines. As British writer Matt Ridley put it, ”Innovation is a bottom-up phenomenon.” The EV industry is the opposite, a top-down phenomenon that attempts to overthrow that free market model. Today, the self-appointed modern masters of technological invention are politicians and climate powercrats who have decided to impose their version of a technological revolution on the world’s population. Instead of letting inventors, investors and ordinary consumers decide the future of electric vehicle technology (electricity failed to trump gasoline a century ago), governments everywhere are seizing control of vehicle electrification in the name of climate change. The rapidly emerging reality is grounded in massive state subsidies, regulations, mandates, increasing tariff barriers, and expanding trade controls, creating an unprecedented global economic structure and a foundation for economic turmoil and crises. Importantly, the launch pad for an emerging EV global trade crisis is China, the world’s bastion of neo-Marxist dictatorship under Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. As far back as 2001, Chinese officials began to target electric vehicles as a perfect wedge market for auto exports. EVs would allow China to enter the otherwise impenetrable global market dominated by combustion-engine carmakers in Europe, Japan and North America. Now, after massive subsidies and state support, China is threatening the Western auto industry... Under what economic trade principle would the U.S. and Canada impose tariffs on China? Surely it cannot be because of government subsidies, given the Biden administration’s cash floodgate to the auto industry and the billions Ottawa and local governments are now showering on EV production, mineral development and battery plants. The U.S. has also brought in trade rules that interfere with Chinese trade... The same statist approaches to economic management of EV development are the norm in the West, with Canada deploying its own version of Marxist-Nationalism, deemed essential in the pursuit of a fossil-fuel-free world. There is an alternative. End the West’s neo-Marxist EV plans and let China’s lower-cost EV products into Canada and the U.S. to help speed up the transition away from fossil fuels, if that’s the real plan. Let China test the market — including the lack of availability of charging stations, electricity production limits, range issues, and possibly limited consumer enthusiasm. Instead of micro-managing the EV innovation process, leave it in the hands of investors and consumers. It’s been done before."
Meme - "This is a Lithium leach field. This is what your Electric Car batteries are made of. It is so neuro-toxic that a bird landing on this stuff dies in minutes. Take a guess what it does to your nervous system? Pat yourself on the back for saving the environment."
The Quality of New Cars Is Declining, These Brands Are Currently the Least Problematic - "while hybrid vehicles reported 191 incidents per 100 cars, plug-in hybrids had 216, and purely electric models reported 256 problems."
The dose-response effect is telling
Meme - "INTERNAL COMBUSTION *Internal Combustion Engine car*
EXTERNAL COMBUSTION *Tesla*"
GUNTER: Guilbeault road gaffe shows Grits’ disdain for 90% of Canada - "the federal environment minister said, “Our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure … there will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network.” No adding lanes to freeways or extending existing freeways beyond their current locations. “The analysis we have done is that the (existing) network is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have,” Guilbeault insisted. The problem is most of the environmental analysis done by Ottawa, either by its own bureaucrats or by environmental activists posing as consultants — is so one-sided it’s largely useless for projecting an accurate picture of the future... Guilbeault confessed for the first time, “We must stop thinking that electric cars will solve all our problems.” Frankly, I think that deep down Guilbeault and the Liberals have a hidden agenda. They have pushed EVs despite suspecting that electrics will never be affordable for about a quarter of the population. In the future, the Liberals expect millions of Canadians to be without cars and to be forced into cramped spaces in city cores. That’s truly why Guilbeault and his extremist buddies in the eco movement think Ottawa can stop helping cities and provinces build new roads. There are currently around 20 million car, SUV and pickup owners in the country. However, as expensive EVs become the only light-duty vehicles available, perhaps five million drivers will be forced by family economics to give up their SUVs and pickup. Then — presto! — traffic congestion solved and fewer roads needed. Let’s call this Amish Enviro-think: Back to the horse and buggy for you, Canadians. Indeed, Guilbeault told the transit conference that Ottawa is enthusiastically supporting active transportation (biking, walking and rollerblading), public transit and “densification” of neighbourhoods as the best ways to combat climate change. And maybe that’s possible in about six or eight large Canadian cities. However, it is impossible for about 90 per cent of our land mass... Guilbeault spoke like a pretentious, clueless, upper-middle-class urbanite, not as someone who is seeking to shape policy for all Canadians across the entire country. The reaction to Guilbeault’s remarks was swift and angry. It must have taken Liberal strategists by surprise. By Wednesday the minister was backpedalling. No, no, no, that’s not what I meant; I was misinterpreted, he told reporters. Unfortunately for him (and the Liberals), there were lots of cameras and witnesses, and he was revealed first as an out-of-touch eco-cultist and then as a someone who thinks the rest of us are dumb enough to believe his excuses. Guilbeault and his road-construction ban, along with his EV mandate and net-zero power grid, shows the Liberals only care about Montreal and Toronto, maybe Ottawa and Vancouver. That’s it."
John Ivison: The moral preening of Steven Guilbeault grows as insufferable as bicycling in January - "Robin Lindsey, CN chair of transportation at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, said the decision to invest in roads should depend on many considerations, ranging from population growth to fuel prices and beyond. “A blanket decision not to invest in road infrastructure across all of Canada seems ill-advised,” he said. “Cities may vary in population growth and density, traffic congestion, pollution problems and public transit services (as an alternative to driving). Policy should not be one-size fits all.” Lindsey pointed out that the eventual advent of autonomous vehicles (AVs) will have an impact on road capacity. Demand may increase, he said, because as passengers, people are able to make better use of their time and won’t mind taking longer trips. “AVs may not come in soon but since roads last for decades, investment decisions should be made with a long time horizon in mind,” he said... Guilbeault boasts that he bikes 12 months a year. That suggestion had Conservative premiers frothing at the mouth. Alberta’s Danielle Smith said Guilbeault needs to understand that not all Canadians live in downtown Montreal. “Most of us can’t just head out the door in the snow and rain and walk 10 kilometres to work each day. Can we return to the real world, minister?” she asked. Ontario’s Doug Ford said Guilbeault “doesn’t care that you’re in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I do. We’re building roads and highways with or without a cent from the feds.” Guilbeault’s moral certitude might have worked a few years ago when his government articulated the aspirations of many more voters. But all the signs point to Canadians being tired of being lectured to by a government that appears so out of touch with their daily lives it is telling them to get on their bikes in mid-winter."
Joe Oliver: Liberals need to ditch Steven Guilbeault’s radical activism - "In Montreal, he proclaimed that existing road infrastructure “is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have” — “perfectly adequate” not being a phrase Montrealers customarily use to describe their potholed streets, which are chronically under repair. Reasonable people can debate whether Ottawa should continue to finance major road projects. But to pretend our roads are adequate demonstrates an appalling indifference to Canadians’ daily challenges, the dreadful state of our transportations systems and the rising pressure from massive immigration and subsidized EVs. Then again, Guilbeault’s hidden agenda may be to deindustrialize Canada, which even he must understand is a sure vote-killer. Add to his green wish list: 15-minute cities, limitations on agriculture, restricted diets, criminalization of actions and advocacy that deviate from ordained climate narratives and of course the deliberate and calamitous elimination of the fossil fuel industry... The World Economic Forum wants us to “give insects the role they deserve in our food systems” by offering an environmentally friendly solution to an impending food crisis. In the 1970s, the Club of Rome forecast mass starvation, too. Spoiler alert: it didn’t happen. As long as we are not all forced to eat from a prix fixe menu catered by entomologists, I say chacun à son goût , although I doubt the prime minister is gorging on grasshoppers, termites and mealworms at Rideau Cottage. The alarmist-in-chief and his boss keep telling us what we must do to avert global calamity, but the effort is futile, as people increasingly understand. Two thirds of emissions come from countries clearly hellbent on using fossil fuels to develop their economies and raise their people up from dire poverty. The other third is from already developed countries where popular resistance is forcing rapid retreat from net-zero promises... Seeing this social tsunami coming, the corporate sector is starting to withdraw from policies that disadvantage their investors. Last week, JPMorgan Chase and institutional investors BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors (with over $12 trillion under management) announced they are quitting or scaling back involvement in a huge United Nations climate alliance. There is no good ethical or pragmatic reason to: upend society, damage the economy, hurt the poor, weaken our international standing, deny sales of energy to our allies who need it, or become more vulnerable ourselves in an increasingly dangerous world. According to a Nanos poll conducted at the end of January, a pitiful three per cent of Canadians believe Justin Trudeau leading it is the best way to increase the Liberal Party’s chances of winning the next election. A mere six per cent believe it should continue with its current policy priorities. Canadians are obviously fed up with autocratic socialism."
Robert Lyman: Steven Guilbeault's counter-intuitive war on cars - "If the objective really is to limit urban sprawl, Minister Guilbeault may wish to have a word with his colleague, the minister of immigration. The country’s population and its housing needs are being driven by immigration, which the government projects will total 1.5 million through 2026. Every major city is experiencing the impact of this influx on residential development outside its urban core. More people means more people using roads. Maybe the government is confused about that, as well."
I'm sure saying that you're not going to build new roads doesn't mean that you want to control people and force them to only live in cities, and not let them drive. That would be a paranoid far right conspiracy theory
Meme - "WHEN DAVID SUZUKI IS SAYING "PIPELINES WILL BE GLOWN UP" AND EXTINCTION REBELLION IS SAYING POLITICIANS WILL "BE KILLED" MAYBE THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT HAS GONE A LITTLE TOO FAR.
SOURCE: Vancouver Sun, November 23, 2021"
Extinction Rebellion defends David Suzuki's pipeline comments | Vancouver Sun - "“Not only will pipelines be blown up, but we can be certain that world leaders will be put on trial for treason or worse — be killed,” said National Action & Strategy Coordinator Zain Haq. “Although Extinction Rebellion activists are non-violent, we cannot control the actions of those outside of this movement who may commit acts of violence... the David Suzuki Foundation distanced itself from his comments"
Climate minister 'on resignation watch' over government move to scrap 'boiler tax' that would fine manufacturers for missing heat pump targets - "From April this year firms are due to be required to match at least four per cent of all sales with heat pumps, or face fines. However, manufacturers have already responded by raising their prices by up to £120 and there are concerns about companies merely passing on the costs to consumers."
Obviously the solution is price controls to stop greedy companies passing on the costs to consumers!
Analysis:With solar industry in crisis, Europe in a bind over Chinese imports - "Europe's green energy transition is stuck between a rock and a hard place. A flood of cheap Chinese solar panel imports is driving record solar energy installations. But those same imports are crushing Europe's few local solar manufacturers. Governments and industry are split over how to respond. Europe just had a bumper year for green energy. European Union countries installed record levels of solar capacity, 40 per cent more than in 2022"
Weird. We were told there would be tons of green jobs
When prices rise due to intermittency, the left will blame greedy companies
‘Unprecedentedly few’: ‘2021 had the fewest global hurricanes in the satellite era’ & 2nd fewest strong hurricanes since 1980 - "Globally, 2021 had some of the strong hurricanes in the satellite era (1980-2021) Did you see that reported anywhere? With 16 strong (Cat 3+) hurricanes, 2021 was the second-lowest strong hurricane year since 1980... When measured by total energy (Accumulated Cyclone Energy), 2021 was the 9th weakest year Did you see that reported anywhere? Hurricanes in 2021 were weak and exceptionally few But we heard lots about North Atlantic hurricanes Conveniently, North Atlantic is the only basin where hurricanes are stronger"
Damn science deniers!
Oops, Scientists May Have Miscalculated Our Global Warming Timeline - "By analyzing strontium to calcium ratios in these sponges, the team could effectively calculate water temperatures dating back to 1700. The sponges watery home in the Caribbean is also a plus, as major ocean currents don’t muck up or distort temperature readings. This data could be particularly useful ,as direct human measurement of sea temperature only dates back to roughly 1850, when sailors dipped buckets into the ocean. That”s why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses 1850 and 1900 as its preindustrial baseline, according to the website Grist. “The big picture is that the global warming clock for emissions reductions to minimize the risk of dangerous climate change has been brought forward by at least a decade,” Malcolm McCulloch, lead author of the study, told the Associated Press. “Basically, time’s running out.” The study concludes that the world started warming roughly 80 years before the IPCC’s estimates, and that we already surpassed 1.7 degrees Celsius in 2020. That’s a big “woah, if true” moment, but some scientists are skeptical. One such scientist, speaking with LiveScience, said that “ it begs credulity to claim that the instrumental record is wrong based on paleosponges from one region of the world… It honestly doesn’t make any sense to me.” Other experts expressed wanting to see more data before completely upending the IPCC’s climate goalposts, which say the Earth is currently hovering at a long-term temperature change of around 1.2 degrees Celsius."
They need to be fired for questioning "settled science" and spreading misinformation!
The cult of Greta Thunberg - "This week Greta Thunberg turned 21... Will she now put away childish things? For years we’ve been terrorised by her infantile rage. Everywhere you looked there was her jabbing finger of adolescent fury. ‘You have stolen my dreams!’, she’d wail, in the melodramatic fashion of a teen who’s just experienced a minor inconvenience. Normally, though, it’s only the teen’s poor parents who must suffer their tantrums – Greta foisted her moodiness on the entire Earth. Every time I heard her I thought of Kevin the Teenager, Harry Enfield’s stroppy, hormonal comedy creation. ‘I HATE YOU!’, Kevin would bellow at his long-suffering mum and dad. ‘HOW DARE YOU!’, Greta yelled at us all. ‘You’ve ruined my life’ is the pained cry of the teen who’s been told they can’t get their nose pierced or go to a Lizzo gig. ‘You have stolen my childhood with your empty words’ was Greta’s more eloquent equivalent. Imagine the flashbacks parents of difficult teens must have had when they switched on the news and saw teary-eyed Greta tell adults everywhere: ‘We will never forgive you!’ At times it felt as though we were all hostages to her angst. Just as parents walk on eggshells lest they accidentally upset their ungrateful grunt of a teen son by saying the wrong thing, so no one really knew how to respond to Ms Thunberg’s fits of pique. There she was at Davos, at the UN, in the UK parliament, on her fucking boat, always holding forth on the End of Days us stupid humans are bringing about. And the grown-ups would just sit there, nervous, still as glass. I think it was only partly because they agreed with her apocalyptic baloney – it was also because every middle-aged person knows the best thing to do with a fuming youth is to let them tire themselves out. It was Greta’s curse to live her tantrum years in the public eye. The histrionic displays of unreasonable grievance the rest of us carried out behind closed doors Greta was damned to enact before the clicking cameras of the world media. What happened is that her perfectly natural teenage tendencies – self-involvement, irritability, an arrogance entirely out of proportion to one’s intelligence – merged with the religion of climate-change alarmism to create something of a monster... That was always the central problem with the Cult of Greta – not Greta herself, but the use and abuse of her by the globalist elites. They marshalled her political naivete, even her emotionalism, to the cynical end of scaring the populace witless about climate change. It was Greta’s very artlessness, her moral immaturity, that made her attractive to elites who had long ago tired of engaging with the irritating adults of the electorate. How much easier it is to march a moralistic teen to the global soapbox where she might cry about the world being ‘on fire’ than to gather facts and make arguments to try to sway stubborn, sceptical adults. Greta’s teen fury was weaponised by political operators to circumvent democratic discussion, to impose their punishing eco-ideology by emotional fiat rather than consent. What they loved about Greta is that she was so black and white. All teens are. It’s in their nature to be blind to shades of grey. To love their parents one minute, hate them the next. To flit between thinking everything is fine to fretting that MY LIFE IS OVER. Who can forget when the gold-collared superclass of Davos lapped up Greta’s stern rebuke of the old-fashioned adult belief that life is complicated. ‘You say nothing is black or white. But that is a lie. A very dangerous lie’, she said. Climate change is ‘as black or white as it gets’, she continued. ‘There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.’ No grey areas. This wasn’t just your typical climate-change hysteria, where we’re meant to believe our only choice is between a violent reduction in fossil-fuel use and the literal heat death of the planet. It was also a teenage reprimand to the entire premise of adult life, to the foundations of public life itself. Which is the understanding that things are complex. That competing interests exist. That binary moralism benefits no one. That democratic contest is preferable to autocratic, religious or, indeed, teenage diktat. I, for one, am delighted that in the years since Greta thrilled the anti-democrats of Davos with her childish moralism we have seen farmers, truckers and other workers in Europe drive a juggernaut of grey through these fantasies of black and white. These people are furious at the impact the cult of emissions cuts will have on their ability to earn a living, make food, deliver stuff. They represent the complexity that Greta and her powerful cheerleaders wish to chase from public life. A revolt of the adults, if you like, against the juvenile hectoring of the elites... Hell-bent on forcefielding elite consensus opinion from the masses’ vexing queries, the Guardian and others were drawn like moths to a flame by Greta’s pure, innocent moralism. And so they made her into a secular Dalai Lama, a child-god who could never be questioned... And now Greta is 21. Has she discovered that life is, in fact, awash with ‘grey areas’? I fear not. Witness her recent embrace of the ‘Palestinian cause’, where her posturing seems to be informed by the very same black-and-white moralism she so frequently displayed in her eco-tantrum years. Israel oppressor, Palestine victim, yada yada. My concern is that Greta-style moralism is now par for the course in political life. Gretamania wasn’t a blip, it’s what passes for politics in the 21st century. It’s time for the adults to come back into the room"