No more underwater cabinet meetings in the Maldives. The darling of the international AGW cultists, Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, resigned today following weeks of sometimes violent public protests over his controversial order to arrest a senior judge:
It marked a stunning crash for Nasheed, a former human rights campaigner who defeated the nation's longtime ruler in the country's first multiparty election. Nasheed was also an environmental celebrity, traveling the world to persuade government's to combat the climate change that could send sea levels rising and inundate his archipelago nation. Nasheed fell out of public favor after he ordered the military to arrest Abdulla Mohamed, the chief judge of the Criminal Court. The arrest came after the judge ordered the release of a government critic, calling his arrest illegal.
The end of another major failed EU (and UN) project is also getting closer:
“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”
That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book – one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure. This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.
Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow."
The final failure of the political euro project is getting closer day by day. And it is not only the eurozone countries that are being hurt:
A eurozone recession could almost halve Chinese growth this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The IMF forecasts China's economy will grow by 8.2% this year - but warns that a recession in the eurozone could cut this to 4.2%. It said Beijing should get ready to inject billions of dollars into the economy to fend off any downturn. China's economy grew by 9.2% in 2011, but growth was slowed by Beijing to avoid over-expansion.
Romania's prime minister quit on Monday after a series of at-times violent nationwide protests against budget cuts and declining living standards, as deepening political turmoil fueled by Europe's prolonged economic crisis spreads across the Continent. Thousand of Romanians have taken to the wintry streets of Bucharest and other cities in recent weeks to vent their anger at the center-right administration of Emil Boc, who has implemented tough austerity measures in an effort to shore up state finances.
Neighboring Slovakia, also hit by Europe's downturn, was shaken on Friday by the largest protests since the end of communism there in 1989, as people demonstrated against alleged government corruption against a backdrop of cuts to health care, transportation and other state services.
Such upheavals are increasingly calling into question the longer-term political viability of the kind of austerity programs prescribed by the European Union and International Monetary Fund for Europe's struggling and indebted nations.
In Greece, whose debt problems have dragged on the entire euro zone, politicians on Monday struggled to reach agreement on a set of painful steps required for the country to avoid default with a second, large international bailout package.
But the leader of the most powerful - and succesful - eurozone country, Germany, still keeps on repeating her mantra: "There is no crisis of the Euro itself, there is a debt crisis."
Frau Merkel - and her assistant M. Sarkozy and almost all other minor EU leaders - refuse to recognise that there would NOT be a euro/debt crisis of the kind we are now experiencing without the euro. But sooner or later they - or at least their successors - have will have to. And that will be the end of a failed political project.
This Air China plane - rightly - refuses to pay! (image by Wiki)
The Chinese government has made a very rational and wise decision:
China said on Monday it was forbidding its airlines from joining a European Union carbon emissions scheme to protect the climate. The companies now face fines or may even be barred from landing at EU airports. The dispute comes as the EU is looking to China to help tackle the euro debt crisis.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement on its website that the rules "contravene the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and international civil aviation regulations." Since January 1, all airlines are required to buy certificates for the carbon dioxide they emit through landings and takeoffs in the European Union. Airlines that fail to comply face fines and may even be banned from landing at airports in the EU. The China Air Transport Association (CATA) estimates that the EU scheme will cost Chinese airlines some $120 million in the first year alone, and that the amount could triple by 2020. The dispute comes at a sensitive time for the EU, which is wooing China, a major holder of foreign reserves, to invest in bailout funds to help tackle the euro debt crisis. Chinese and EU leaders are due to hold a summit next week.
This is a fight that the European Union will lose. However, as there seems to be no limit at all for the stupidity of the EU decisions makers, it may take some time before the Europeans will be forced to withdraw their empty threats.
No wonder that opposition against the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is growing, both in Russia and internationally. The former third rate KGB agent has more blood on his hands than most of his contemporary "colleagues":
No one knows exactly how many people have already died. The UN estimated 5,400 in December, then stopped counting as the fighting intensified. Thousands more have been beaten, tortured and jailed. I heard the horror stories myself, visiting Syria a few weeks into the uprising.That December death toll had doubled since early October, when Russia and China first vetoed a UN resolution threatening sanctions against the regime. On Saturday, these two autocracies – both wary of foreign intervention given their own problems with restless minorities – combined forces again to prevent a watered-down resolution being passed. In actual fact, opposition was led by Russia. --- But although the former KGB comrades running the country have good cause to worry about their own protest movement, their support for al-Assad is far more cynical. Syria is the biggest importer of Russian weapons in the Middle East – so the odds are that bullets aimed at the heads of children and shells setting houses aflame in Homs are Russian-made. It takes an incredible 10 per cent of Russia’s global arm sales. Just last month, a Russian cargo ship laden with ammunition arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus, while the two nations signed a £420million deal for military aircraft. Russia has refused to bend to diplomatic pressure to stop fuelling the violence and volatility. Little wonder its flag has been burned in cities at the centre of the uprising. Additionally, as Russian oil revenues dwindle it has spent heavily in Syria, drilling wells and building a gas processing plant – investments valued at £15billion. When I visited Syria, I was told there were also Russian computer experts helping hunt online opposition activists. Read the entire Daily Mail article here
David Hearst, writing in the Guardian, thinks that Putin has completely misread the situation:
Not for the first time Putin's political antennae are failing him. If he calls the white ribbons Russian protesters were wearing "condoms" and if he continues to believe that the extraordinary domestic protest he is facing has all been staged by the US state department, there is little chance of him seeing the turmoil in Syria differently. Putin's deadly enemy is the isolation in which he lives.
This Al Jazeera report also includes some footage of the much smaller Kremlin-orchestrated pro Putin demonstration
The opposition against the criminal Putin regime in Russia is growing fast now:
Their frozen breath rising in the brutally frigid air, tens of thousands of protesters marched through downtown Moscow on Saturday to keep up the pressure on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin one month before a presidential election that could extend his rule for six more years. The protesters have few illusions that they can drive Putin from power now, but for the first time in years Russians are challenging his control and demanding that their voices be heard.
Wrapped in furs or dressed for the ski slope, as many as 120,000 people turned out for the third and perhaps largest mass demonstration since Putin's party won a parliamentary election Dec. 4 with the help of what appeared to be widespread fraud.
The preparations for the 2012 Earth Hour are in full swing. The Earth Hour website wants people to
"find out what’s happening around the world and hear some inspiring stories from countries and territories that have already taken Earth Hour Beyond the Hour".
However, for some strange reason the organizers have chosen not to include the most succesful "inspiring story" from the country that already for decades has "taken Earth Hour Beyond the Hour":
North Korea's capital faces its worst electricity shortages in years just as a new leadership takes power in the impoverished state and pushes ahead with lavish building projects to celebrate the centenary of its founder's birth.
The Pyongyang-based diplomat, who asked not to be named, said the city of 3 million and home to the leadership elite, has seen daily power supplies almost evaporate as freezing winter temperatures bite.
"Embassies and others with generators are using them most of the time to compensate both for poor quality and cuts, and I can tell you that power problems are a main issue of discussion," said the diplomat, one of a small number of foreigners allowed to live in the country.
"We certainly assess that there is more darkness on the streets and in the residential blocks in the evening than before/during the mourning period (for Kim Jong-il)."
The North is also struggling with chronic food shortages, with United Nations' food agencies estimating nearly 3 million people will need food assistance this year. Media reports this week said that the North's main ally China sent food shipments after Kim Jong-il's death to stabilize the new leadership under his son.
With the extreme warmist Chris Huhne gone as energy secretary, it appears that more rational forces are gaining ground in UK politics:
A total of 101 Tory MPs have written to the Prime Minister demanding that the £400 million-a-year subsidies paid to the “inefficient” onshore wind turbine industry are “dramatically cut”.
The backbenchers, joined by some MPs from other parties, have also called on Mr Cameron to tighten up planning laws so local people have a better chance of stopping new farms being developed and protecting the countryside. --- Critics say wind farms are inefficient because the wind cannot be guaranteed to blow at times of greatest energy demand. They are also said to be unsightly, blighting the landscape. Wind farms are also accused of forcing up energy bills while swallowing disproportionate amounts of taxpayer-funded subsidies. The Tory MPs, including several of the party’s rising stars as well as former ministers, say it is wrong that hard-pressed consumers must pay for the expansion of onshore wind power. In the letter sent to No 10 Downing Street last week, which has been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, the MPs say they have become “more and more concerned” about government “support for onshore wind energy production”. “In these financially straitened times, we think it is unwise to make consumers pay, through taxpayer subsidy, for inefficient and intermittent energy production that typifies onshore wind turbines,” they say.
Read the entire article here
According to a Downing Street spokesman, the Government is proposing "a cut for onshore wind subsidies to take into account the fact that costs are coming down", but the same spokesman still clings to the Cameron government´s stupid green mantra: “We need a low carbon infrastructure and onshore wind is a cost effective and valuable part of the diverse energy mix".
The fact is, as the economist Ruth Lea, recently pointed out in a report, "there is no economic case for wind-power" - neither is there an environmental case.Maybe somebody should send Dr. Lea´s report to Downing Street?
“This is how they greeted me in Delhi", wrote the Terminator on his Twitter account
Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday gave a keynote speech at the "12th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit" in Delhi, organized by R.K. Pachauri´s TERI institute. In his speech the former California governor praised the green economy in his home state:
"The measures taken in California have brought the state in the forefront of green movement in the US. Green economy is booming with 10 times more jobs in green sector and 40 percent more energy efficiency."
However, the Terminator appears to have a rather selective view of the "booming" California economy. Here are some facts which he chose not include in his keynote speech:
In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream. -- Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development. -- Job training programs intended for the clean economy have also failed to generate big numbers. The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.
PS
Maybe the Terminator was actually thinking about a new kind of "booming" green economy waiting to become reality?:
Last week, more than 200 prisoners at California’s notorious San Quentin State Prison turned out for a “green jobs” fair. The soon-to-be-released felons were greeted by representatives from several nonprofit groups and training programs, all offering advice and information about the ecologically friendly employment opportunities that supposedly await the men beyond the prison's gates. The inmates of San Quentin also took part in psychobabble discussion groups. An examination of the topics presented included growing your own food will save money; watching plants grow will develop patience; gardening will teach tolerance toward plants and people; and another that literally promised, “smelling the plants changes behavior.” -- The way utopian-minded non-profits like Planting Justice and Insight Garden Program see the world is, if we’ll just give an ex-con a bag of vegetable seeds upon release, he’ll grow his own food, save money, be more patient and tolerant, his overall behavior will forever be altered, and his criminal ways will be a distant image in the rearview mirror of life.
If only it were so easy.
Forgive me for being cynical, but my antenna is way up. Seems to me, if anything, Planting Justice and the Insight Garden Program may be unknowingly preparing some of these prisoners to become master growers of marijuana and poppy plants.
The deep freeze has already claimed over 200 lives in Europe, with the death toll raising to 100 in Ukraine only. Forecasters are warning that the cold weather will tighten its grip at the weekend.
Luckily, German climatologists at the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research have found out the reason for the extreme cold: Global warming!
Their study has been published in the scientific journal Tellus A:
Even if the current weather situation may seem to speak against it, the probability of cold winters with much snow in Central Europe rises when the Arctic is covered by less sea ice in summer. Scientists of the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have decrypted a mechanism in which a shrinking summertime sea ice cover changes the air pressure zones in the Arctic atmosphere and impacts our European winter weather. These results of a global climate analysis were recently published in a study in the scientific journal Tellus A.
We can be assured that these innovative German scientists will be able to "decrypt a mechanism" showing that even the coming of a new ice age is due to global warming!
When it is really cold - and the need for gas is at its greatest - do not count on deliveries from Russia´sGazprom!:
RWE AG (RWE.XE) unit Supply & Trading is getting around 30% less gas than usual from Russia, an RWE spokeswoman told Dow Jones Newswires, after national operators in Poland and Austria reported declining delivery volumes from gas giant OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) amid severe cold weather. In Germany, a spokesman for Wingas--the country's second-largest importer of gas and a 50-50 joint venture between German chemicals giant BASF SE's (BAS.XE) Wintershall unit and Gazprom--said earlier Thursday that there were noticeable reductions in Russian deliveries, but that these are hard to quantify. He also said that Gazprom had previously notified customers that there may be reductions in deliveries during the cold weather.
"I want to tell you: The euro has strengthened Europe," Ms Merkel said in a speech at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one of the country's leading academic institutions, which functions as a think-tank for the government. "This is not a crisis of the euro, it is a debt crisis and a crisis of different levels of competitiveness," she said.
At the same time the IMF has warned that the recession in Merkel´s "strengthened Europe" will slow the global economy this year: The 17 nations that share the euro will shrink 0.5 percent this year.
However, we should always remember Merkel´s rule number one: Even if Greece and a couple of other euro countries would go bankrupt, it is NEVER the fault of the eternally excellent, political euro.
Whether Frau Merkel was able to convince her Chinese hosts, remains to be seen.
After a brief stop in New York the new Greenpeace mega yacht is now on its way to the Caribbean
Just as we expected, the new Greenpeace yacht Rainbow Warrior III is joining all the other mega yachts in Florida and the Caribbean for the winter months. The Greenpeace yacht is now - after a brief stop in New York - on its way to Fort Lauderdale and St. Petersburg. From Florida the global launch tour continues to the blue and sunny waters of the Caribbean, and from there on to Brasil. (The Rainbow Warrior will probably not make it to the Rio Carnival, which opens already on February 17th this year, but there is Carnival all year round in the "world´s party capital"!)
No wonder, that the "activists" on board are excited. Here is the account of one cruise participant:
What a huge privilege to be aboard the ship and for the Atlantic crossing no less! Gazing out at the hills and islands of Grand Canaria slip into the distance with Penny, the bosun, she explained that it’d take about two weeks to cross the Atlantic (our deadline to get to NY is Jan 29th), spend a few weeks in the US and then head on to Brazil. It was encouraging to hear the timeline and confirm I’ll head to Brazil with the ship!
And now I’m in my bunk, freshly haven taken a hot shower in my own cabin and about to head to bed–the prospect of 9 hours of sleep sounds amazing. I’ve felt a bit lightheaded all day and wondered if it’s exhaustion or seasickness but I’m feeling pretty confident it’s just exhaustion and probably a bit of dehydration from all the traveling. On a similar note, I realized my lunch today was the first proper meal I’ve eaten since last Wednesday night in Madison. I’m still in amazement that I’m here. Penny pinched me earlier to confirm it was real.
In other blog posts the happy Greenpeace activist relates pleasant encounters on the way to New York:
Dolphins! We watch as eight dolphins jump, glide and dart mere feet in front of the bow, playing in the momentum of our forward motion and the early morning light. After ten minutes about twenty dolphins had rendezvoused at the bow while another dozen jumped in crescent shaped arches to our starboard. A beautiful sunrise, dolphins and sailing on the ocean–a pretty fantastic way to start the day!
--- I was in the perfect place when Lila came out from the bridge pointing to port and exclaiming that there were whales.
Dan slowed the ship and made an announcement over the PA so the rest of the crew could partake in such a treasured and rare occasion. For the next twenty minutes or so we watched the whales occasionally surface and blow air creating huge swaths of glassing rings on the water in their wake. How beautiful and magnificent!
Oh boy, it´s tough to be a Greenpeace activist these days!
The once great BBC again shows its true colours. The overall narrative in a new documentary series on Russia is slanted towards the country´s corrupted - and according to many observers criminal - dictator Vladimir Putin. No wonder, because the main consultant to the series, former BBC Moscow correspondent Angus Roxburgh, worked for three years from 2006 as an adviser to the Russian government:
Angus Roxburgh is well known to the British public as a former BBC Moscow correspondent. Much more relevant is the fact that Mr Roxburgh was a public relations consultant to the Kremlin for three years between 2006 and 2009. I have no doubt that he is a man of integrity, but it is profoundly shocking that the BBC should even have considered using him, given the nature of his previous employment. Just imagine the outcry if the BBC were to employ President Ahmadinejad’s former spin consultant when making a film about Iran, or a former Tory central office type when making a film about David Cameron in a British election year. So why is Roxburgh acceptable? I have been hearing very sad and alarming accounts about the BBC’s coverage of Putin’s Russia for over a decade. Those wanting to learn more can read an article written by the former BBC producer Masha Karp in Standpoint magazine in November 2010, which tells how her programme about the death of Alexander Litvinenko was suppressed by the World Service. There are other such stories. As The Guardian correspondent Luke Harding records in his recent book, Mafia State, “the BBC Moscow bureau in particular is extremely reluctant to report on stories that might offend the Kremlin”. The elections on March 4 are of huge importance. If he wins, Vladimir Putin can look forward to a further 12 years in power, making him the longest-serving Russian leader since Stalin. Some good judges believe that this outcome might plunge Russia into a new dark age. How fortunate for Putin that he has a useful idiot in Jonathan Powell and a fearful news organisation like the BBC to make life easy for him.
The deadly deep freeze in Eastern Europe continues:
RESCUE helicopters have evacuated dozens of people from snow-blocked villages in Serbia and Bosnia as the death toll from a severe cold spell in Eastern Europe climbed to 83.
Temperatures fell to -32C in some areas, parts of the Black Sea froze near the Romanian coastline and rare snow fell on Croatian islands in the Adriatic Sea. In Bulgaria, 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records began 100 years ago as four more people were reported dead from hypothermia. In central Serbia, choppers pulled out 12 people, including nine who went to a funeral but then could not get back over icy, snow-choked roads. Two more people froze to death in the snow and two others are missing, bringing that nation's death toll to five. ''The situation is dramatic, the snow is up to five metres high in some areas, you can only see rooftops,'' said Dr Milorad Dramacanin, who participated in the helicopter evacuations.
Two helicopters were also used to rescue people and supply remote villages in northern Bosnia. Some villages have had no electricity for days and crews were working around the clock trying to fix power lines. Ukraine alone reported 43 deaths, mostly homeless people.
The extremely cold weather also continues in Finland, with the coldest day of the year in northern Finland:
Yet another cold record for this winter was set in Kiutaköngäs near Kuusamo, where the temperature plunged to -38.7 degrees Celsius on Wednesday morning.
And this is only the beginning. For the weekend temperatures over - 40 degrees are forecasted in northern Finland! PS
It cannot take long before we hear the first reports by AGW warmists that this coldspell is all happening because of global warming.
The Robert Amsterdamwebsiteis one of the best sources of information about Russia. The interview with German businessman Franz J. Sedelmayer, who knows Russia and Putin better than most Europeans, is another proof of that:
In this exclusive interview, German businessman Franz J. Sedelmayer discusses his decades-long dispute with the Russian government, challenging Russia’s sovereign immunity, and the link between state corruption and the current environment of civil unrest in Russia.
Well there is a nice phrase that describes what happened to Putin: “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” When I worked with Putin, he was known for two things: being honest and being loyal to his boss, who at that time was Mayor Sobchak. Putin would do absolutely anything for Sobchak, including covering up his corruption – and it was incredible, he did a very good job at it. It was this type of display of loyalty that eventually landed him his first top job in Moscow, and I think essentially that was the role he was originally expected to play by Yeltsin and his family. If Putin would really be reelected as president in March 2012 he will, in order to stay in control for the whole duration of his term, restrict the freedom of the Russian people even more harsh; possibly to rival the situation as it has existed under the communists in the 1970’s. The Russian people are fully aware of that danger! -- The crisis in Russia is not just limited to Putin the person, but the people who work around him. By nature, a dominant and charismatic personality like Putin is not going to surround himself with very capable people. That actually describes the whole situation in Russia today, whether you are talking about the FSB, the bureaucracy, or the nachalniki that control the cities and regions. These are not exactly the brain surgeons and rocket scientists of Russia – these are people who jumped on the bandwagon of Putin’s party, just like the same type of people who jumped on the bandwagon of the Communist Party for decades.
Sedelmayer on foreign investment in Russia:
Look, the truth is that Russia’s image as a destination for foreign investment is terrible, and I don’t care about all the positive things that any Western government, including the United States, has to say about how great the country is, how it is moving in the right direction, etc. And the American “reset policy” in particular has failed miserably in bringing any progress to Russia that continues to fail to protect people’s property and freedom. A normal businessperson today would not invest a dime in Russia. The only companies that are able to invest are multinational corporations of the size that they don’t care if they lose their investment. On the one hand, the investment is either relatively small in the terms of the company’s overall portfolio, and on the other, they don’t care if they lose the money because it is not their money but rather that of the shareholders. These guys can go out there and take all the risks, and then worry about handling the disputes among shareholders and auctioneers in the event that they lose the investment, but in no case are they making any investment that would cause the end of company. It seems strange some shareholders have not woken up to that reality, yet! But when you talk about small and mid-sized companies, there is no way they would take the risk to invest in Russia when there is no way to recover debts.
Sedelmayer on stability in Putin´s Russia:
It’s a complete myth that Putin’s Russia is stable. The lack of control over the country is the same as back in the Czar’s days – “the heavens are high and Moscow is far.” It is sheer logistics that do not allow a vertical line of power from the Kremlin to all the cities and the villages in the faraway regions, requiring Moscow to relinquish wide ranging discretion to locals. What Putin has done essentially is to strike a deal with anybody in the regions that doesn’t step on his feet and or on the feet of the federal government, and then this or that governor or mayor is allowed to fill his own pockets without any oversight from the federal government. But the moment that they mount an opposition to the center, no matter how small it might be, Putin and his people will do anything possible to break it up.
There is no economic case for wind power. Neither is there a case for cutting CO2 emissions by using wind power. These are the two main conclusions in a new study ("Electricity Costs: The Folly of Wind Power") by the renowned economist Ruth Lea, published by the independent think tank Civitas.
These are the inconvenient facts about wind power that both the British government and other European governments so far have chosen to ignore: Onshore wind looks relatively competitive on the MM (engineering consultants Mott MacDonald) data. But MM exclude the additional costs associated with wind-power. When allowance is made for these additional costs, the technology ceases to be competitive for both near-term and medium-term projects. Offshore wind (even before allowing for additional costs) and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies are inordinately expensive. Nuclear power and gas-fired CCGT are therefore the preferred technologies for generating reliable and affordable electricity. There is no economic case for wind-power.
Wind-power is also an inefficient way of cutting CO2 emissions, once allowance is made for the CO2 emissions involved in the construction of the turbines and the deployment of conventional back-up generation. Nuclear power and gas-fired CCGT, replacing coal-fired plant, are the preferred technologies for reducing CO2 emissions. (Chapter 3) Wind-power is therefore expensive (chapter 2) and ineffective in cutting CO2 emissions (chapter 3). If it were not for the renewables targets set by the Renewables Directive, wind-power would not even be entertained as a cost-effective way of generating electricity and/or cutting emissions. The renewables targets should be renegotiated with the EU.
Some additional facts about why wind power is not effective in cutting CO2 emissions:
At first glance it could be assumed that wind-power could play a major part in cutting CO2 emissions. Once the turbines are manufactured (an energy-intensive business in itself) and installed then emissions associated with the electricity could be expected to be zero - as indeed for nuclear power. But, as pointed out in chapter 2, wind-power is unreliable and intermittent and requires conventional back-up plant to provide electricity when the wind is either blowing at very low speeds (or not at all) or with uncontrolled variability (intermittency). Clearly the CO2 emissions associated with using back-up capacity must be regarded as an intrinsic aspect of deploying wind turbines. This is all the more relevant given the relatively high CO2 emissions from conventional plants when they are used in a back-up capacity. As energy consultant David White has written: "…(fossil-fuelled) capacity is placed under particular strains when working in this supporting role because it is being used to balance a reasonably predictable but fluctuating demand with a variable and largely unpredictable output from wind turbines.
Consequently, operating fossil capacity in this mode generates more CO2 per kWh generated than if operating normally." "…it seems reasonable to ask why wind-power is the beneficiary of such extensive support if it not only fails to achieve the CO2 reductions required, but also causes cost increases in back-up, maintenance and transmission, while at the same time discouraging investment in clean, firm generation."6 In a comprehensive quantitative analysis of CO2 emissions and wind-power, Dutch physicist C. le Pair has recently shown that deploying wind turbines on "normal windy days" in the Netherlands actually increased fuel (gas) consumption, rather than saving it, when compared to electricity generation with modern high-efficiency gas turbines.7,8 Ironically and paradoxically the use of wind farms therefore actually increased CO2 emissions, compared with using efficient gas-fired combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) at full power. (image by wikipedia)
