WHILE THE BAND PLAYS ON…

WHILE THE BAND PLAYS ON…

A cold sun shines on the parade.

Lots of people have yet to grasp the difference between climate and weather, but oddly there seem to be many who can’t even tell the difference between truth and lie. While eastern Europe struggles to wrest itself from the icy grip of a particularly fierce winter, Ontario is experiencing an oddly balmy spell and both are just weather. Even those Germans who understand that may be subconsciously more susceptible to the truth put forth in a new book called “Die kalte Sonne” (The Cold Sun); there is just something about freezing one’s buns off which banishes the threat of Global Warming from thought.

We are grateful that in Germany the Pied Pipers of Green seem to be changing their tune. Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, had an epiphany similar to that of many other IPCC report reviewers; the IPCC dismissed his concern over the hundreds of errors he pointed out. Vahrenholt decided to author this climate science skeptical book with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. In his 2008 book “The Deniers” Laurence Soloman compiled stories of many reputable scientists who were similarly disenchanted with climate science tampering.

Marching to a different drummer

The fact then that Germany’s main stream media seem to have debarked that particular green bandwagon is actually more remarkable than the current “news” itself. Germany’s national tabloid Bild (circulation 16 million) recently published an article entitled, “THE CO2 LIE” prominently placed, half of page 2, and will follow it with a series. Phrases such as, “Renowned team of scientists claim the climate catastrophe is fear-mongering by politics“ and “The phenomenal prognoses of heat from the IPCC are pure fear-mongering”, seem to herald a return to fact-based if not less sensationalist reporting.

Germany’s flagship weekly news magazine Der Spiegel also featured a 4-page exclusive interview with Vahrenholt. When asked why Hoffmann & Campe decided to publish “such a book”, the spokesman for that highly regarded publishing house simply answered that the time is right – and there’s a real audience for the book. Apparently just not in the rarified atmosphere of University of Osnabrück, which dis-invitied Professor Vahrenholt who was scheduled to give a speech there. The University claimed that Vahrenholt’s skeptical views were “provocative”, perhaps oblivious of the fact that the Professor is more a “warmist” than a skeptic.

Wheels fall off the bandwagon

The main stream media seem to be fading from the wind and solar lobbyist chorus at a time when the wheels of industry are falling off the green bandwagon. A recent survey of 1,520 firms by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce found that 86% were very concerned about energy, and in the industry sector, 10% had shifted capacity out of Germany and 8% had plans in place to do so.

Michael Limburg (translation Pierre Goslin) writes from Germany that:
“We published this very comprehensive study from our author Dr. Günter Keil (Dr. Keil was a scientific employee at the Technical University of Munich / Fraunhofer Society, as well as Project Support at the Federal Research Ministry)entitled, ”Germany´s Green Energy Supply Transformation Has Already Failed”. (http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/news-cache/germanys-green-energy-supply-transformation-has-already-failed/)

Dr. Günter Keil’s report focuses in detail on the amazing absurdities of Germany’s Renewable Energy Feed-In Act and the country’s utopian Energy Transformation. The government, through intrusive meddling and ballooning bureaucracy, has maneuvered Germany’s energy supply system into a vicious death spiral: the more the government intervenes, the greater the mess becomes. And the greater the mess becomes, the more the government intervenes! Dr. Keil concludes:

“Germany’s energy transformation has already failed. For Germans, the outlook is bleak. …the planned mismanagement is heavily damaging the economy and will fail spectacularly some years later because its economic and social costs will have become unbearable. The question remaining open is how many billions of euros will have to be destroyed before a new energy policy (a new energy transformation?) picks up the shattered pieces.”

Spinning like a Broken record

This all sounds dreadfully familiar to Ontarians, not because our media has kept us fully and accurately informed of the European experience with the ‘new’ renewables but sadly because we are already, thanks to equally irrational policies and even more insane subsidies, experiencing many of those economic and social costs. Germany’s weather-dependent and sporadic energy supply is starting to wreak havoc on Germany’s power grid, threatening to destabilize power grids all across Europe. In desperation, old inefficient coal plants have been brought back into service and not a single coal or gas-fired power plant has been taken offline despite the highest installed renewables capacity in Europe.

Ontario has tried unsuccessfully to build the essential grid-balancing gas plants in urban centres where they are most needed, potentially adding to the inevitable and massive transmission costs which are pending should we continue placing generators out in the hinterlands.

The Ontario Auditor General found that:

“Although the Ministry consulted with stakeholders in developing the supply-mix directives, the LTEP, and the Green Energy and Green Economy Act, billions of dollars were committed to renewable energy without fully evaluating the impact, the trade-offs, and the alternatives through a comprehensive business-case analysis. Specifically, the OPA, the OEB, and the IESO acknowledged that:

• no independent, objective, expert investigation had been done to examine the potential effects of renewable-energy policies on prices, job creation, and greenhouse gas emissions; and
• no thorough and professional cost/benefit analysis had been conducted to identify potentially cleaner, more economically productive, and cost-effective alternatives to renewable energy, such as energy imports and increased conservation.”

Such a scandalous revelation should have had all our media in full voice, clamouring for an immediate halt to the spreading dementia and demanding the striking of a Select Committee on Energy to call witnesses to account for the wasted BILLIONS….

Energy Minister Bentley’s reported response to whether the ongoing FIT review will scale back on renewables was a presumptive, “not a chance” that leaves us all dancing closer and closer to the brink, when the music inevitably stops and we all fall down.