A radar for Europe needed

"Geophysicists, archaeologists and computer specialists have discovered a well-preserved Roman gladiator school just outside Vienna -- without even lifting a shovel. Instead of digging they used a special radar to map the site in stunning detail."
Der Spiegel

If only the same special radar could be used to locate some real political leadership in Brussels - and the capitals of the EU member countries!

Greece announces huge solar energy project - paid for by EU taxpayers

Is this the future for Greece - and the European Union?

Greece is de facto bankrupt, in spite of  the huge sums of money provided by the EU countries and others. Still, there seems to be no end to the enormous waste of  EU taxpayers´ money:

The Greek word for sun is the name of a proposal for a large scale solar project George Papaconstantinou, the Minister of Environment, Energy and Climate Change of the Hellenic Republic introduced on the first day of the EU PVSEC 2011 in Hamburg.
Against the background of the massive public depth and the suffering economy in Greece, the initiative is seen as an opportunity to generate economic growth in the economically battered EU-country which enjoys about 300 days of sunshine per year. Supported by EU-funds to stabilize the Greek economy the country, the plan includes the installation of 3-10 GW of solar power in the country, covering an investment volume of roughly 20 billion Euros and the interconnection of mainland electricity grids with the multiple islands.
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While Papaconstantinou admitted that the project will not be feasible without EU-support, he also pointed out that HELIOS offers the possibility for other EU-member states to fulfill their national renewable energy goals set by the European Commission in the so-called 20-20-20 plan. The regulations allow allows statistical transfers of energy (?), joint projects and joint support schemes, which all could be realized within HELIOS.

Read the entire article here

The Greeks have apparently not learned anything from the Spain´s solar and wind power policy failure:

Government support of renewable energy production does not provide long-term employment and in fact destroys jobs.
In the Spanish example, we found that each renewable job cost the Spanish taxpayer between $752,000 and $800,000. Even more troubling is the fact that diverting these critical resources cost the Spanish economy 2.2 jobs for every job created. Further, the jobs created in Spain were temporary — two-thirds of them were in installation.
All signs point to a fatally flawed idea. Developing these jobs on a reliable and consistent basis requires ever-more subsidies. It’s a never-ending cycle to keep a bubble inflated, which as Spain discovered costs billions in public funds. Even before Spain’s investment bubble began bursting, the massive investments in renewable energy companies were producing disappointing results.
What’s more, the subsidization of these inefficient sources of energy has led to significant economic hardship on the macro and micro levels. As of 2008, when our study was conducted, the Spanish government had committed approximately $36 billion to renewable energy subsidies; since then the resources committed have grown exponentially and are now well over $100 billion, an amount equivalent to more than 10% of Spanish GDP.

Read the entire article here

Or, more probably, the Greek government is well aware of these facts, but it does not care, because it is not their money, but the money provided by EU taxpayers, that is wasted. The time, when the German and other EU taxpayers will put a stop to the insane "renewable" energy/climate change policy both in Greece and elsewhere, cannot be too far away. Otherwise the entire European Union will go broke - and be transformed into a Green Hell.

Europe is burning - Top EU leaders busy promoting failed carbon price scheme in Australia

European stocks tumbled 4 per cent, with banks plumbing a more than two-year low, as worries about public deficits in Greece and Italy and a regional election rout for Germany's ruling party cast fresh doubt on the euro zone's ability to tackle its debt crisis.

link

Europe is burning, but that does not seem to bother the un-elected top eurocrats, who have their own strange priorities: Instead of dealing with the soon to explode crisis at home, EU Commission president Jose Manua Barroso and commissioner Connie Hedegaard are busy in Australia propping up PM Julia Gillard´s crumbling election campaign:

Joining Ms Gillard on a news briefing on Monday, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso urged the Australian government to continue what it has started on its planned carbon pricing scheme, which he said only highlighted the country's commitment as a responsible member of the international community.

"Australia's decision to put a price on carbon emissions is, in our view, an important step both environmentally and economically," Barroso was quoted by ABC as saying.

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Also, EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard praised Ms Gillard for integrating her carbon pricing schemes with the basic dynamics of the market as she met with members of the Australian Parliament led by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.

"I can only say that our experience in Europe is to have a market-based system that works and we saw during the crisis when demand for allowances dropped, so also did the price," Hedegaard recalled in giving her approval to Ms Gillard's efforts to work her political solutions through existing local market conditions.

Read the entire article here

PS

Barroso and Hedegaard should perhaps be a little bit careful when lauding the EU "carbon price system". The picture they paint of it has very little in common with reality:

Emissions trading scheme is a 'failure'
The EU Emissions Trading Scheme is like a cargo ship stranded on a beach. Expected to play its vital part in an international carbon economy, it is grounded on the hard economic realities facing Europe. It sits there looking lonely and pointless thanks to the failure to secure an international deal. Instead of lucky locals picking over crates of consumer goods, there are big businesses and financiers making handsome profits at the expense of poor consumers. Instead of an insurer picking up the bill, families get higher electricity prices. Too many manufacturing workers play the role of the crew, and will be looking for a new job.
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There is a lot of money in the ETS for special interests. ArcelorMittal has enjoyed €1bn worth of surplus allowances in the last two years as steel production has fallen in the recession. Energy companies have made billions in windfall profits as a result of getting valuable allowances for free.
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Even criminals are making a fortune. Europol announced, in December 2009, that governments had lost €5bn to carousel fraudsters - using the ETS. And, more recently, the whole market had to be suspended for a while thanks to repeated thefts. The price is paid by consumers – residential and business – stood at €15.6bn in 2010. For consumers, in the UK for example, the burden was about £75 a family. And that is just for a rotting failure of an ETS. At the medium term target price of £30, that cost would be more like £175 a family for the same emissions. The cost to families is tough enough. It hits the same poor and elderly families - who depend most on benefits and, therefore, makes it harder for governments to control public spending.

Read the entire article here

Reuters´ Chrystia Freeland and Perry´s "faith-based approach"

Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters Digital is doing her part in the Obama re-election campaign:

What does Obama really stand for?
To his critics on the right, the president is a socialist with dangerous foreign antecedents. To his critics on the left, he is a waffler with no real point of view and a craven desire to be liked.
Krueger’s nomination points to an entirely different explanation: The president is an empiricist. He wants to do what works, not what conforms to a particular ideology or what pleases a particular constituency. His core belief is a belief in facts.

Freeland then goes on to compare the great scientific "empiricist" Obama with the Rick Perry and other Republican candidates with a "faith-based approach" (read: Christian anti-science simpletons):

But as the presidential campaign begins to heat up, starting with the Republican primary race, the empirical worldview that Obama embodies is taking a beating. The candidates who have made the strongest start are those with a proudly faith-based approach. According to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week, Governor Rick Perry of Texas is the Republican front-runner. He spoke at a Christian religious rally on the eve of entering the primary contest last month and has questioned the science of evolution and climate change.
The Republican Party has its own evidence-based candidates, and they are struggling to respond to the faith-based worldview that Perry so powerfully embodies. One of them, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., is playing up his credentials as the right’s empiricist. He has said he thinks climate change is a fact and warned Republicans against becoming the “anti-science party.”
Mitt Romney, who was the front-runner before Perry blazed onto the scene, has been more ambivalent. Romney’s business background puts him squarely in the camp of the empiricists: it is hard to make millions in private equity without appreciating the power of data. But Romney knows who votes in Republican primaries, and last week he hedged his previously explicit position on climate change.

Read the entire blog post here

There is something almost sinister in the way Freeland and other Obama supporters are trying to portrait Christians who - together with thousands of scientists - are critical of the science of human induced global warming, as being anti-science. But expect more if it, when the election campaign intensifies. 

Whether we will hear more about the great scientific "empiricist" Obama, remains to be seen. So far, it is rather difficult to find proof for Freeland´s claim that "His core belief is a belief in facts."

An affluenct Californian lady they all are chasing

What do Greenpeace, Al Gore, Obama, WWF, the Democrats and the marketeers of luxury products have in common? Answer: they are all doing their best to empty the purse of this person:

An affluent Californian (preferably from San Francisco) lady, who believes that human caused global warming is real and happening, supports and votes democrat, drives a Prius and spends thousands of dollars on "green" luxury products and services.

Here is some background information about this "Super Green" lady:

An analysis of eight years of data from Gallup's annual environmental poll found that greater numbers of women tend to believe the body of science on climate change and be concerned about how warming will affect the planet.

Read the entire article here

 Today, the consumer looking to go green is increasingly likely to be an affluent professional woman wearing an eco-friendly and animal-free Stella McCartney suit and satin shoes. And if you want her dollars and her loyalty, you need to pay attention to the priorities she finds important when making her selection of luxury goods and services.

Read the entire article here

"In all of the green issues that Unity Marketing studied, women popped as being much more concerned than men. This is an important signal for luxury marketers to sit up and take notice, as women are often the major shoppers for a family, making the primary decisions about the products and services the family will purchase. For luxury consumers, an increasing number are looking to a company's environmental practices before making a purchase."

Read the entire article here

The New York-based consumer lifestyle market research firm defines the Super Green sector as adults who engage in more than 10 environment-friendly activities regularly, such as recycling, using rechargeable batteries or re-using grocery store bags.
The Super Green accounts for five percent of the entire U.S. adult population, and are mostly found in the northwest portion of the country.
San Francisco, the most sustainable city in the world according to a study commissioned by Siemens Corporation, has the most number of “Super Greenies.” At least 17 percent of San Francisco adults engage in 10 or more eco-friendly activities on a regular basis.
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As to their spending habits, the Super Green sector are more likely than the average adult to spend upwards of $500 yearly on products like cosmetics, clothing, and fine jewelry. They are 49 percent more likely to buy a luxury vehicle in the coming year, and 77 percent more likely to spend upwards of $45 thousand on new car purchases in the household.


On voting patterns, almost half (42 percent) of the Super Greens are Democrats, while an additional 20 percent declare themselves as independents with Democrat-leanings. Republicans and independents with Republican leanings account for a combined 16 percent, or less than one fifth of the sector.

Read the entire article here

There are thousands of  academic studies related to (bogus) global warming/climate change. However, it is apparent that one important study is missing: Shouldn´t somebody try to find out why women - particularly affluent women - are more easily than men ready to accept the global warming hoax?


Knowing the realities of the politically correct, alarmist academic establishment, such a study is not very likely to appear. Therefore one can only speculate about the reasons for womens´credulity.


Women are often perceived to be more soft and caring than men, which often is a good thing - but not always. There is a danger that this soft and emphatic side in women also makes them more inclined to believe in all kinds of snake oil sellers (including the global warming doomsday scaremongerers). The Super Green ladies are thus an easy prey for Greenpeace, Gore and the rest.

Thank God, that the Queen of Denmark is not one of them!

German professor on the euro: "a bad solution for a nonexistent problem"

The eminent German economic historian Hans-Joachim Voth (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona) has specialized in financial markets, long-run economic growth, as well as political risk and macroeconomic instability. That is why his views on the current euro crisis are of particular interest:

SPIEGEL: Why can't the euro survive?
Voth: Even bad economic arrangements can be kept going for a long time. But the real questions are: Whom does that help? How long can one stand the pain? And what's the use? The euro can technically survive, but so can the never-ending attacks on the bond markets that are increasing the pain. But that just exacerbates the fundamental problem: that the main shock absorber has fallen away in the countries with very rigid labor markets …
SPIEGEL: … because these countries can no longer manipulate the values of their currencies to meet their individual needs.
Voth: Before, if Spain had gotten stuck in the kinds of difficulties it has today -- unit labor costs are too high, growth is too low, and there is enormous unemployment -- the peseta would have simply been devalued by 20 percent. In those days, Spain only had to change a single price -- that of its currency -- in order to make itself competitive again, and the market would generally help out as well. Cars could keep on being built in Pamplona and Seville. Houses on the Costa Brava were still affordable. There were no forced wage cuts in Spain, and prices remained stable. That's it.
SPIEGEL: Why do you think the euro was a dumb idea?
Voth: Because, at its core, it is a bad solution for a nonexistent problem -- a political object of prestige with massive economic disadvantages. Everyone thought the common currency would cause all of the structural differences in the euro-zone countries to automatically disappear. But, after 2000, the low interest rates in the euro zone artificially fuelled growth in the weaker countries and caused real estate prices to skyrocket. This kind of speculative bubble is fun while it lasts. But every party comes to an end eventually. And then comes the rude awakening: Growth slows down, and unemployment rises. Since the banks have given out too many loans, they become a brake on growth. This causes an increase in the structural divergences that were actually supposed to decrease. The euro can't survive for long without having much more redistribution between richer and poorer member countries or much more flexible economies. And neither of those things is politically feasible.
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SPIEGEL: Wouldn't abandoning the common currency sound the death knell for the entire EU project?
Voth: I believe that the consequences of ending the euro have been overstated. Not every dumb economic idea needs to be defended to the bitter end. Europe is infinitely more than the European Union, and the European Union is infinitely more than the euro.
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SPIEGEL: You give the euro another five years -- what will Europe look like then, in your opinion?

Voth: I can imagine a world where there will a left-over euro: with France, Italy, the Mediterranean countries, perhaps Belgium as well. Apart from that the old Deutschmark zone will return, comprising Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, perhaps Denmark as well, perhaps Finland, which have no problems conducting the same monetary policy as Germany. We had a similar system during the European Exchange Rate Mechanism ERM. That was the optimal system, and then we gave it up for the euro.

Read the entire interview here

PS

It is not difficult to agree with what professor Voth says. Sooner or later, the European political leaders - if not the current, less than brilliant ones, then the next generation - will make the same conclusions. Let´s hope it will be sooner rather than later.

Game over for the IPCC? - Railway engineer Pachauri now building a canal in India

Railway engineer Pachauri is now helping to build a canal

We all know that IPCC chairman R.K. Pachauri does not have a degree in anything close to climate science - he is a railway engineer. But now it turns out that Pachauri is also an expert on shipping and the construction of canals:

An expert team, led by Dr R K Pachauri, Chairman of Inter-governmental Panel on climate Change, has visited costal Dhanushkodi and neighbouring areas to analyse the possibility of finding an alternative site for Sethusamudhram Shipping Canal Project.

Officials said the team after visiting the area yesterday, also interacted with Coast Guard officials at Mandapam.

The panel was formed following the direction from the Supreme Court to find a solution to the problem.

The sources said one proposal suggested was digging part of land near Dhanushkodi to connect Palk Straits and Gulf of Mannar.

SSCP proposes linking Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar between India and Sri Lanka by creating a shipping channel through the shallow sea and a chain of islands known as ‘Ramar Sethu and Adam’s Bridge.

Read the entire article here

PS

The fact that Pachauri now concentrates on other things than the IPCC and the global warming hoax, should be seen as a positive development. It shows that the game is over for the UN climate circus - and the Nobel laureate is turning his attention elsewhere.

It also appears that Pachauri has lost his personal belief in global warming. Why should he otherwise participate in the construction of a canal, for which there would be no need, if the alarmists´ predictions of a huge rise of the water level were true?  

Should Pachauri like to return to the railway business, there are, of course, plenty of opportunities. Here is just one: The Indian railways are looking for an Assistant Station Master in Mumbai. Filling the application form should not be too difficult:  

02 The candidate's Name, Address with Pin Code, Date of Birth, Father's Name and nearest Railway Station should be written legibly in English in bold capital letters, even if the candidate fills up the application form in Hindi.

03 Photographs: One recent (not earlier than three months from the date of application) colour passport size photograph with clear front view of the candidate without cap and sunglasses should be pasted on the application form in the space provided.

(image by wikimedia)