Global Warming?

[SPYDERLK]

Going "Green"

I ride my bike to work. It seems so pure.

We're constantly urged to "go green" use less energy, shrink our carbon footprint, save the Earth. How? We should drive less, use ethanol, recycle plastic and buy things with the government's Energy Star label.

But what if much of going green is just bunk?

"It's simply not possible," says Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy." "Nine out of 10 units of power that we consume are produced by hydrocarbons coal, oil and natural gas. Any transition away from those sources is going to be a decades-long, maybe even a century-long process. ... The world consumes 200 million barrels of oil equivalent in hydrocarbons per day. We would have to find the energy equivalent of 23 Saudi Arabias."

Bryce used to be a left-liberal, but then: "I educated myself about math and physics. I'm a liberal who was mugged by the laws of thermodynamics."

[[Bryce mocked the "green" value of my riding my bike to work:
"Let's assume you saved a gallon of oil in your commute (a generous assumption!). Global daily energy consumption is 9.5 billion gallons of oil equivalent. ... So by biking to work, you save the equivalent of one drop in 10 gasoline tanker trucks. Put another way, it's one pinch of salt in a 100-pound bag of potato chips."]]

How about wind power?

"Wind does not replace oil. This is one of the great fallacies, and it's one that the wind energy business continues to promote," Bryce said.
[[The problem is that windmills cannot provide a constant source of electricity. Wind turbines only achieve 10 percent to 20 percent of their maximum capacity because sometimes the wind doesn't blow.

"That means you have to keep conventional power plants up and running. You have to ramp them up to replace the power that disappears from wind turbines and ramp them down when power reappears."]]

Yet the media rave about Denmark, which gets some power from wind.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, "If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark."

"Friedman doesn't fundamentally understand what he's talking about," Bryce said.

Bryce's book shows that Denmark uses eight times more coal and 25 times more oil than wind.

If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products.

Even with subsidies, "renewable" energy today barely makes a dent on our energy needs.

Bryce points out that energy production from every solar panel and windmill in America is less than the production from one coal mine and much less than natural gas production from Oklahoma alone.

But what if we build more windmills?

[["One nuclear power plant in Texas covers about 19 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Manhattan. To produce the same amount of power from wind turbines would require an area the size of Rhode Island. This is energy sprawl." To produce the same amount of energy with ethanol, another "green" fuel, it would take 24 Rhode Islands to grow enough corn.]]

Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?

"Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be."

There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, "Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they're within reach of the average family."

That was in 1915.

In 1959, The New York Times said, "Electric is the car of the tomorrow."

In 1979, The Washington Post said, "GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical."

I'm still waiting.

"The problem is very simple," Bryce said. "It's not political will. It's simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There's no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It's a conspiracy of physics."

[[This suggests that, If youre a left liberal turned conservative you might be an idiot.]]
[[This shows disregard for system improvements
... The rest of the story is that those power plants are run at reduced power saving fossil energy. This supply sharing has spawned improvement of the turbines serving as the prime movers at the energy plant so that they maintain virtually flat efficiency from 20 to 100% power, and can ramp extremely quickly to respond to changes in power demand. Thus green has acted as a catalyst for technological advance while reducing use of fossil fuel. There is no down side to this.]]
[[This is wrong in focusing on a dumb energy source for comparison. Net PV available from 19 square miles by todays tech is around 7 GigaWatt hrs per day. Divide that by 24 = 292MW average output. Thats 1/3 the output of a nuclear plant. Rhode Island is about 60 times that size]]
larry

 

[Dustier]

If I wanted America to fail,

Awesome post, Rob.

It doesn't take a college degree to see that we, as citizens, can never allow a return to what was pre-2001, but then, why would we want to? Distractions serve only to delay the inevitable and intensify what we cannot escape - mostly because those with the power to make change will continue to reject change until its too late.

Ultimately, there will be a "new world order", but it will be predicated on a Darwinian evolutionary process of unimaginable misery decades into the future.

 

[Rob-D]

Going "Green"

I ride my bike to work. It seems so pure.

We're constantly urged to "go green" use less energy, shrink our carbon footprint, save the Earth. How? We should drive less, use ethanol, recycle plastic and buy things with the government's Energy Star label.

But what if much of going green is just bunk? Al Gore's group, Repower America, claims we can replace all our dirty energy with clean, carbon-free renewables. Gore says we can do it within 10 years.

"It's simply not possible," says Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy." "Nine out of 10 units of power that we consume are produced by hydrocarbons coal, oil and natural gas. Any transition away from those sources is going to be a decades-long, maybe even a century-long process. ... The world consumes 200 million barrels of oil equivalent in hydrocarbons per day. We would have to find the energy equivalent of 23 Saudi Arabias."

Bryce used to be a left-liberal, but then: "I educated myself about math and physics. I'm a liberal who was mugged by the laws of thermodynamics."

Bryce mocked the "green" value of my riding my bike to work:

"Let's assume you saved a gallon of oil in your commute (a generous assumption!). Global daily energy consumption is 9.5 billion gallons of oil equivalent. ... So by biking to work, you save the equivalent of one drop in 10 gasoline tanker trucks. Put another way, it's one pinch of salt in a 100-pound bag of potato chips."

How about wind power?

"Wind does not replace oil. This is one of the great fallacies, and it's one that the wind energy business continues to promote," Bryce said.

The problem is that windmills cannot provide a constant source of electricity. Wind turbines only achieve 10 percent to 20 percent of their maximum capacity because sometimes the wind doesn't blow.

"That means you have to keep conventional power plants up and running. You have to ramp them up to replace the power that disappears from wind turbines and ramp them down when power reappears."

Yet the media rave about Denmark, which gets some power from wind.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, "If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark."

"Friedman doesn't fundamentally understand what he's talking about," Bryce said.

Bryce's book shows that Denmark uses eight times more coal and 25 times more oil than wind.

If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products.

Even with subsidies, "renewable" energy today barely makes a dent on our energy needs.

Bryce points out that energy production from every solar panel and windmill in America is less than the production from one coal mine and much less than natural gas production from Oklahoma alone.

But what if we build more windmills?

"One nuclear power plant in Texas covers about 19 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Manhattan. To produce the same amount of power from wind turbines would require an area the size of Rhode Island. This is energy sprawl." To produce the same amount of energy with ethanol, another "green" fuel, it would take 24 Rhode Islands to grow enough corn.

Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?

"Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be."

There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, "Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they're within reach of the average family."

That was in 1915.

In 1959, The New York Times said, "Electric is the car of the tomorrow."

In 1979, The Washington Post said, "GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical."

I'm still waiting.

"The problem is very simple," Bryce said. "It's not political will. It's simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There's no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It's a conspiracy of physics."

No question we have been spoiled by the energy density of oil, spoiled to the point of rampant waste.

We can no longer equate our energy to fossil fuel.... unless we are willing to accept the environmental destructiveness of fossil fuel, the constantly rising cost an the fact that we must fight wars to maintain our supply of it. We have to look atthe total package... he's not.

Someone walking around constantly with an oxygen mask on his face can very likely do more, maybe even feel better, but his situation is artificial. We can't say look at the fact that pure oxygen is several more times potent than the air we breath, we have to weigh all the factors, where does the oxygen come from, what does it take to produce it, what's its affect on the normal air we breath, etc.

Historically, since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, we have used massive amounts of energy that took millions of years to develop. Now we are fighting wars to hold on to it because industrialization means energy and the country with the energy has world power.... maybe. We are like the man with the oxygen mask and at some point that mask has to come off. We will leave this planet to generations and as much as some people would like to put forth the theory that fossil fuel will last indefinitely the simple answer is that the planet won't. Does anyone here believe the planet will last at the rate we are consuming and destroying it?

We should all care about the legacy we leave to future generations because the land we inherited was left to us by past generations.

I think a big part of the problem is that most people don't understand what the environment means to us. We go to a fast food chain and eat fake food made to satisfy our taste buds. We don't ask if it is clogging our arteries or if the beef grazes on cleared rain forest. We don't ask because we have lost the connection with the food we eat and the land that sustains us, the massive energy required to raise the cattle, the transportation costs from around the world, the fuel to cook it or the environmental damage and waste of the total process.

Our complacency and the oil that has spoiled us will surely be our downfall. Mr. Bryce is looking at energy myopically. He, like to many others, is evaluating energy on the oxygen from his mask believing it will never have to come off.

In the last couple of hundred years we have been riding in a car with our foot to the floor, those days are over Mr. Bryce, time to get back on your bike and stop looking at physics with blinders on.

Rob

 

[Rob-D]

Awesome post, Rob.

It doesn't take a college degree to see that we, as citizens, can never allow a return to what was pre-2001, but then, why would we want to? Distractions serve only to delay the inevitable and intensify what we cannot escape - mostly because those with the power to make change will continue to reject change until its too late.

Ultimately, there will be a "new world order", but it will be predicated on a Darwinian evolutionary process of unimaginable misery decades into the future.

Thanks!

 

[Cat_Driver]

When are the Gullible Warming Cults going to use their own brain for research. I mean seriously.

This just in, gullible scarists, THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT contrary to what others are saying.

In a 1974 Time article, Dr. George J. Kukla said the earth was in crisis because his research indicated the earth was headed into an Ice Age! Time reported: “The trend shows no indication of reversing.” Sound familiar? But in the 1981 article: “Evidence is Found of warming Trend,” Kukla said: “We have found within the general pattern a warming element in the right place and in the right season; it is just where we expected it from the theory, it fits nicely.”

The UN jumped on the environmental issue at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, at Stockholm, Sweden. It was organized and led by Canadian, Maurice Strong, the Secretary-General of the Conference. During this conference, the UN Environment Programme was born, which has worldwide jurisdiction over UN environmental matters. The first Executive Director of UNEP was Maurice Strong.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31319

OOOOOOPPPPPPPPSSSSSIIIIIEEEEE

For 30 years the UN has fomented worldwide hysteria based upon the premise of global destruction by CO2, and a large percentage of the population reacted just as HL Mencken predicted: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The science of global warming has been unraveling for years, but one of the most glaring revelations came in 2007, when a UK High Court judge considered the science behind the 2006 Academy Award winning movie “Inconvenient Truth.” The judge ruled the movie contained nine significant errors and ruled it was a “political” movie, not a science movie.



"All available evidence indicates that man-made global warming is a physical impossibility, but if the predicted warming could be induced it would probably provide net benefits. However, there is a widespread imagined risk of the warming and politicians are responding to it. Responses to imagined risk are often extreme and dangerous. For example, somebody with a fear of mice may see a mouse and as a response try to jump on a chair causing damage to the chair and injury to himself. There is no point in telling the injured person that mice are harmless because fear is irrational so cannot be overcome by rational argument. "

The History of the Global Warming Scare

Also, some global warming proponents are accepting a good financial income from the global warming scare and have become global warming propagandists to promote their interests. These include some researchers who obtain research grants and some environmental organisations who need donations. They are making a living by promoting fear of man-made global warming. Their behaviour is similar to that of the 壮nake oil salesmen in the nineteenth century. Snake oil salesmen sold snake oil that did not require real snakes to make it. Global warming propagandists are selling fear of man-made global warming and that does not require real man-made global warming to make it.

The success of the global warming propaganda has induced some observers to argue that a conspiracy has created the imagined risk in the publicç—´ perception (e.g. B?tcher, 1996). But consideration of the origins of the global warming scare deny the existence of any such conspiracy. Interests coincided and supported each other. And a coincidence of interests usually has a more powerful effect than a group of conspirators. The origins of the scare are political and have resulted in political policies that now threaten serious economic damage for the entire world.


PLEASE I beg you use your own mind for once in your life.

Both Peter Dietze and Onar Am dispute my statement that "man-made global warming is a physical impossibility", but Peter Dietze indicates that he recognises my meaning. I am pleased to clarify the matter. I did mean that man-made global warming would be much smaller than natural fluctuations in global temperature and, therefore, it would be physically impossible to detect the man-made global warming. Of course, human activities have some effect on global temperature. For example, cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas. Similarly, the global warming from man's emissions of greenhouse gases would be too small to be detected. Indeed, for reasons I have repeatedly reported, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected. If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a real existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection). Perhaps I should have been pedantic and said "Real man-made global warming is a physical impossibility".

It's all a scam, fro Gullible Tree Huggers.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming.html

 

[Rob-D]

When are the Gullible Warming Cults going to use their own brain for research. I mean seriously.

This just in, gullible scarists, THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT contrary to what others are saying.

In a 1974 Time article, Dr. George J. Kukla said the earth was in crisis because his research indicated the earth was headed into an Ice Age! Time reported: 典he trend shows no indication of reversing. Sound familiar? But in the 1981 article: 摘vidence is Found of warming Trend, Kukla said: 展e have found within the general pattern a warming element in the right place and in the right season; it is just where we expected it from the theory, it fits nicely.

The UN jumped on the environmental issue at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, at Stockholm, Sweden. It was organized and led by Canadian, Maurice Strong, the Secretary-General of the Conference. During this conference, the UN Environment Programme was born, which has worldwide jurisdiction over UN environmental matters. The first Executive Director of UNEP was Maurice Strong.

UN subterfuge…the global warming hoax

OOOOOOPPPPPPPPSSSSSIIIIIEEEEE

For 30 years the UN has fomented worldwide hysteria based upon the premise of global destruction by CO2, and a large percentage of the population reacted just as HL Mencken predicted: å…¸he whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The science of global warming has been unraveling for years, but one of the most glaring revelations came in 2007, when a UK High Court judge considered the science behind the 2006 Academy Award winning movie 的nconvenient Truth. The judge ruled the movie contained nine significant errors and ruled it was a �olitical movie, not a science movie.



"All available evidence indicates that man-made global warming is a physical impossibility, but if the predicted warming could be induced it would probably provide net benefits. However, there is a widespread imagined risk of the warming and politicians are responding to it. Responses to imagined risk are often extreme and dangerous. For example, somebody with a fear of mice may see a mouse and as a response try to jump on a chair causing damage to the chair and injury to himself. There is no point in telling the injured person that mice are harmless because fear is irrational so cannot be overcome by rational argument. "

The History of the Global Warming Scare

Also, some global warming proponents are accepting a good financial income from the global warming scare and have become global warming propagandists to promote their interests. These include some researchers who obtain research grants and some environmental organisations who need donations. They are making a living by promoting fear of man-made global warming. Their behaviour is similar to that of the 螢ｮnake oil salesmen in the nineteenth century. Snake oil salesmen sold snake oil that did not require real snakes to make it. Global warming propagandists are selling fear of man-made global warming and that does not require real man-made global warming to make it.

The success of the global warming propaganda has induced some observers to argue that a conspiracy has created the imagined risk in the public逞ｴ perception (e.g. B?tcher, 1996). But consideration of the origins of the global warming scare deny the existence of any such conspiracy. Interests coincided and supported each other. And a coincidence of interests usually has a more powerful effect than a group of conspirators. The origins of the scare are political and have resulted in political policies that now threaten serious economic damage for the entire world.


PLEASE I beg you use your own mind for once in your life.

Both Peter Dietze and Onar Am dispute my statement that "man-made global warming is a physical impossibility", but Peter Dietze indicates that he recognises my meaning. I am pleased to clarify the matter. I did mean that man-made global warming would be much smaller than natural fluctuations in global temperature and, therefore, it would be physically impossible to detect the man-made global warming. Of course, human activities have some effect on global temperature. For example, cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas. Similarly, the global warming from man's emissions of greenhouse gases would be too small to be detected. Indeed, for reasons I have repeatedly reported, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected. If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a real existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection). Perhaps I should have been pedantic and said "Real man-made global warming is a physical impossibility".

It's all a scam, fro Gullible Tree Huggers.

The Global Warming Scam

Who is Richard Courtney? Where is his body of research and data? Your other link, the one with the herbs to regrow hair, nobody gullible there!

Did you see my links to factual erosion of land from permafrost melting? The one where a town was displaced?

Cold is a result of GW that's why CC is the correct term.

Please show factual data disproving the permafrost melting.

Again, name calling is equivalent to shooting blanks. It only diminishes your argument.

And let's talk about world pollution, the accepted cause of CC. Think we can live with the massive pollution we are creating in the world from fossil fuels? Dispel - scientifically - the effects of world pollution.

The floor is yours, hopefully sans the name calling.

Rob

 

[Gator6x4]

Great article Rob. But we all know we can't let facts stand in the way of our unsupported opinion. After all when the great day comes, we will apoint a committe to investigate, and another to determine, "What The Government Knew And When". We will then say, "But I Wasn't Told", "Or No one Explained It To Me".

 

[Short Game]

I thought that when the "great day" came, 166,000 of us would be burning infinite amounts of carbon based fuels in Heaven forever, while heathen greenies would be left here to starve and burn up with the rest of the biosphere.

 

[crash325]

Anti-Hype In Lithium-Ion Batteries Foretells Doom For Electric Cars

Despite billions of dollars in private investments and public subsidies, lithium-ion battery technology has progressed at a snail's pace for years and battery developers have recently started to emphasize the importance of baby steps. For the first time in memory, anti-hype is becoming a dominant theme in stories about lithium-ion batteries.

Examples from this month include:

An interview with Wards Auto where the business manager of the DOE's Kentucky-Argonne Battery Manufacturing Research and Development Center explained that it takes about ten years to put a battery innovation into production and all of today's EVs are powered by technologies that were developed at least a decade ago.
An article from National Defense which predicts that lithium-ion battery research will soon hit a brick wall because batteries can only be as small and lightweight as their materials allow and immutable laws of physics and chemistry limit the number of electrons that can be stored in a given mass of battery material.
An article in Nature that discussed ways nanotechnology can improve battery performance by increasing surface area, but took pains to explain that nano-materials must be produced in carefully controlled environments and the high cost of manufacturing nano-materials usually outweighs the benefits derived from using them.
An article in Design News that focused on the harsh reality that battery development is hard, slow work because batteries require a wide variety of costly materials to work together as a system; there are limitless ways that things can go wrong; and throwing loads of money at research can't make progress happen overnight.
An article in Waste Management World that explains the complex technical and economic challenges that must be overcome before lithium-ion battery recycling can progress beyond a few pilot plants and become a cost-effective industrial reality, as opposed to a hopium-laced talking point.
An article in the MIT Technology Review that reads like a premature obituary as it discusses the triumphs and tragedies at A123 Systems (AONE) and their ongoing search for strategic alternatives.

My personal favorite is a strategy memo from the National Alliance for Advanced Technology Batteries that focuses on the problems at A123 Systems and the failures of Ener1 (HEV) and International Battery. It's classic spin control that ultimately blames the debacle on government policy. Since the irony is so rich, I'll annotate the last three paragraphs by highlighting text that I find particularly entertaining in bold type and adding some observations [in brackets].

"If criticism intensifies, which is likely, it will be important to communicate an important point: Government funding of new energy technologies is meant to support those technologies, not the companies that develop them [or the investors who bought the hype that's part and parcel of government support]. The failures of Ener1 and International Battery, and the troubles of A123 Systems, are business failures, not technology failures. Companies come and go. Corporate assets get bought, sold and reorganized [while investors lose their shirts]. None of that should matter to taxpayers. What should matter is whether the technologies that A123 and Ener1 owned at the time they received their grants has been advanced and pushed closer to commercialization [while politicians promised cost-effective products]. Indications in both cases are that they have been [but unsubsidized demand hasn't materialized].

If the FOA-26 program can be criticized for anything it is that the program focused on funding immediate deployment of advanced automotive battery technology rather than its longer term development. Many pointed that out at the time [and we were lambasted as neo-luddites]. The [entirely predictable] problems at A123 Systems and the failures of Ener1 and International Battery are powerful testimony to the fact that the market for that technology in 2009 was critically immature [just like the underlying technology]. A better use of the funds would clearly have been investing them in the development of new, next-generation battery technologies that could facilitate the development of a market for advanced automotive batteries in the future rather than cater to one that did not fully exist.

In fairness to the Department of Energy, the emphasis on immediate deployment and å*µetting shovels in the ground was a political directive motivated by a critical economic crisis, not a considered policy decision. As a consequence, DOE funding of advanced battery technology over the past three years has not been as efficient as it might have been. But that is not to say that it has been a failure. Steady progress on increasing energy density, decreasing battery cost and improving battery system management continues to be made [at a snail's pace]. The market we hoped for in 2009 is not here yet and some of the original players in the market may not make it to the finish. But that market is substantially closer than it was three years ago, and by that fact the success or failure of the FOA-26 program is more properly judged."

The core message of this new anti-hype campaign is clear. The promised improvements in lithium-ion battery technology have not materialized and they're not likely to evolve from existing technology and architecture. We may see a doubling of energy density over the next decade, but the six- to seven-fold gains that Energy Secretary Chu has called for are not possible with current technology. The dream of quantum leaps in performance accompanied by precipitous cost reductions is not in the cards, or for that matter on the horizon. Breathless promises of cost-effective electric cars that will clear the air and deliver us from the tyranny of oil dictators are snake oil cures that will enrich the hucksters for a time, but end in tar, feathers and a ride out of town on a rail.

Battery mythology developed for the sole purpose of supporting electric car mythology. Battery developers tried mightily and failed. Now battery developers are seeking shelter from the backlash that inevitably comes back to haunt companies and industries that promise more than they can deliver. The next dominoes are companies like Tesla Motors (TSLA) that can't possibly build cost-effective electric vehicles without better and cheaper batteries. Tesla may survive for a time by making toys for the ideologically committed and mathematically challenged rich, but the congenital birth defect that's doomed every generation of electric cars to the scrap heap remains.

The electric car industry can't survive without a thriving and profitable battery industry that can make products that meet or exceed expectations. The battery industry is on record saying they can't meet the ambitious goals they embraced in the recent past. Things might change in my lifetime, but the change is not going to happen in the next decade. Meanwhile the real auto industry is digging into its toolbox and rapidly implementing technologies that weren't cost-effective in another economic era but are today.

Anti-Hype In Lithium-Ion Batteries Foretells Doom For Electric Cars - Seeking Alpha

 

[crash325]

Dark Clouds Threaten German Clean Energy Ambitions: Global Implications

During the fourteen years that I've lived in Switzerland, the Germans have been the world's staunchest supporters of green power and alternative energy. Their aggressive development of wind power was breathtaking, as was their warm embrace of photovoltaic power. Over the last few weeks, however, there has been an ominous change in the mainstream German media's tone as the political class finally comes to grips with the unpleasant reality that rooftop solar panels are worthless on short, gray winter days and "For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity." Three recent and highly negative articles from Der Spiegel Online include:

Solar Subsidy Sinkhole; Re-evaluating Germany's Blind Faith in the Sun;
Solar Subsidy 'Insanity' Will Cost Consumers; and
Solar Energy Row is an 'Undignified Spectacle'

As recently as last year, articles like these would have been unthinkable. Today they're viewed as reasonable discussions of critical issues as the laws of thermodynamics and economic gravity assert their absolute primacy.

The Germans have been trailblazers in all things green since the emergence of the Green Party in the 1980s. In fact, it's hard to name an alternative energy technology that Germany hasn't welcomed with open arms. When it comes to green power and alternative energy, the Germans have been on the far left of the technology adoption curve for a very long time.

1.24.12 Tech Lifecycle.png

If the tone of the recent Der Spiegel articles is a reasonable indicator of public sentiment, the innovators are getting ready to throw in the towel on green panacea solutions and get down to the serious work of conserving energy instead. They're weighing the costs and benefits, and reaching an entirely predictable conclusion that it's impossible to depend on variable and inherently unreliable power sources as the backbone of an industrial economy. As Germany goes, so goes the world.

If the world's standard-bearer for green power and alternative energy abandons the quest and chooses a more sensible path of conservation and energy efficiency, the backlash against the solar power industry will be immense and risks to the wind power industry will skyrocket. After all, it's hard to argue the merits of "One for the Price of Two" power solutions; which is exactly what you get when wind and solar power have to be fully backed up by conventional power plants. If the solar and wind power dominoes fall, they'll almost certainly take out the emerging electric vehicle industry that demands huge amounts of money and natural resources to simply substitute one fuel source for another.

Currently all eyes are on Germany as the epicenter of European efforts to restore fiscal balance in an age of profligate and unsustainable government spending. The apparent German surrender on green power and alternative energy may just be an unfortunate victim of that broader effort. Until the dark clouds dissipate and we have a clearer view of the landscape, I'd minimize my exposure to solar, wind and electric drive and focus instead on less costly energy efficiency technologies that work with the laws of thermodynamics and economic gravity instead of fighting them.

Dark Clouds Threaten German Clean Energy Ambitions: Global Implications - Seeking Alpha