The difficulty is that many of the threatened nuclear power stations are in the south, situated conveniently for the big energy users like the cities of Munich and Stuttgart and manufacturers like Volkswagen.Well, that'll certainly keep the next Bavarian tsunami from causing an ecological disaster.
If these southern nuclear generators are decommissioned, the idea is that wind farms in the north might take up the slack. But that implies new high-voltage cables with very high pylons to match.
How wind turbines are supposed to supply the grid of a heavily-industrialized country is never fully explained, but it doesn't need to be. Wind power is not based on reason, but faith: These aren't generators, they're prayer wheels for New Age iBuddhists.
If you look at the pictures of the protesters, you'll see the graying, tie-dyed remnants of the KGB-funded Cold War European antiwar movement. In the absence of any more Pershing missile bases, it seems that they'll reflexively chain themselves to the gates of anything that smacks of progress...
I just had this charming mental image of a protester chaining himself to a trubine blade...
ReplyDeleteI suspect the absence of clean, cheap energy will prove a greater threat than a Pershing missile base ever was.
ReplyDeleteThen again, this is Europe... I guess cheap energy is better read as tax subsidies to the free crap army.
NO NUKES! will be the battle cry here as well.
ReplyDeleteWe are so stupid.
Lanius,
ReplyDeletePerhaps, but that the KGB directly financed and influenced the Western European peace movement during the Cold War is an indisputable fact.
Judging books by their covers (and their authors' histories), it seemed the Sowell book and other I sent recently would be addressing this issue...that euros will adopt or allow to be adopted for them, any cause that amounts to one apology for existence after another. Yes?
ReplyDeleteOf course what will actually happen in this case as well as in Japan and elsewhere is that they will all go to the well to replace those lost nukes...the oil well that is, creating even more demand and competition and excuses for price hikes for us to deal with.
Which is why one of the key planks is whatever Zero alternative platform gets built for '12 had better be ANWR as well as a push to ease the path for adding capacity for the glow-in-the-dark industry.
AT
WV: Dreadd
ReplyDeleteIt's what's for breakfast anymore.
God help us all if the red zombie hippie complex becomes even more immortal...Undeader?
"Well, you know what they say about people from Stuttgart..."
ReplyDeleteStuttgart is Germany's answer to Cleveland or Yorkshire. They're merciless with Stuttgarters.
Germany just can't seem to find Aristotle's "Golden Mean," can they? Either they're mad with nationalistic gluttony, or they're apoplectic with self-loathing.
gvi
WV: rebuorni - those Italians not destined to be "Left Behind"
Hey, I love it. The Hun caused more trouble than he was worth last century. Keeping him unindustrialised seems like a good plan to me.
ReplyDelete"At your feet or at your throat".
ReplyDeleteHave they launched their 99 Red Balloons yet? Funny thing, though. Every time someone in the U.S says to the VolksRepublik that it's time for the U.S. Military to pull out of Deutschland, because that Cold War thing ended 20+ years ago, the HerrenVolk have a Hissy and beg us not to leave. Guess the only things the Greens don't have a Hatred for is the U.S. Dollar.
ReplyDeleteHmmmmm, a German Peace movement that was originally funded by the Russians, now crying for 'No Nukes' and happy about all the German nuclear power plants going away in a few years. Another article notes that after this, Germany will have to start importing even more power from neighboring countries.
ReplyDeleteThe Russian Oil and Coal conglomerates will be laughing all the way to the bank - after they get done dancing in the streets. I wonder how you say, "Shortsighted, Naive, Sucker," in German?
99-red balloons was a ploy to get laid and a rip off of the original French sentimental kid-flick. German socialist never invented anything worthwhile besides pick-up lines at disco.
ReplyDeleteGermany is a recent fiction, finally hammered together by Bismark and his no-nonsense Prussian kraut-junkers - cabbage princes with wealth from pickled cabbages and sugar beets forced what was a bunch of erstwhile malcontents Fifes, some Rheinlander hippies, and the dull as dishwater Baltic Platts (Gunter Grass and his fishes, anyone?).
But they got mashed-up together with the southern Texas Bavarians coming in late. They had their own country first, too.
North to South they hardly even had a common language, in places not even as close as the British and Americans -- who could at least understand each other. Ever try speaking "German" with an old Plattedeutscher? "Hoch Deutsch" had to be invented first, for the disparate parts of the country to begin to even get the monolithic "Big" picture.
Algore Schickelgruber rode hard on the idyllic 19th Century fantasy of romanticism and forgotten togetherness. Goethe and Schiller were the origional Emo kidz: who can forget "Young Werther" who shoots himself in his yellow vest, Hugo Wolf knee-deep in the morning dew, "Gott, was hab ich denn getan, Daß ich ohne Lenzgespan,
Ohne einen süßen Kuß, Ungeliebet sterben muß?. Sheesh, it just drips mascara.
But Schickelgruber used a potent mix of anti-semetism as cement among serial tribal backstabbers and wanderers who could wander no more. The tribes who beat Agustus went back to beating on each other as soon as the dust and blood cleared - unless there was a common enemy to unite them. He found one.
See how fast they bifurcated when the Soviets rolled in? Besides the non-aggression pact, it wasn't just T-34's and steel-boots that broke a country famous for its own hobnail footwear into two pieces but competing Tribal ideologies and identities. Tito had it worse but not by much.
These southern cities of which they speak, the ones supposedly set to shut-down the equipment of life, might embrace the return-to-nature aspects of healing herbs and old witches, or reject them - they are ripe for their own taste of Europia and maybe even freedom (cue 19th Century Romantic music) - but as far as I care, may the whole damn edifice fall apart once again.
Would the norther wind-farms send the zip-zaps south? Or would then just send them into the industrial inferno of the Rhurgebiet again...?
I wonder if there's a Harry Dexter White behind this 21st-century self-imposed Morgenthau Plan.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeletePerhaps, but that the KGB directly financed and influenced the Western European peace movement during the Cold War is an indisputable fact.
They're still funding 'peace' movements. When the latest in US tech boondoggles.. the vaunted anti missile radar was supposed to be built around here, they paid useful idiots so they could demonstrate more.
@Ed
Europe, fold?
You are deluded. If you run the numbers, EU is
a) a bigger market than the US
b) probably has less consumer debt
c) has no runaway MIC
d) is about four times as efficient at GDP per energy unit consumed
e) is 'friends' with Russia which means fuel. At least Germany is, and they count a lot in EU
f) could likely achieve self sufficiency in natural gas via modern gas extraction techniques
Germany is a sad case, but countries such as France or Czech Republic are planning to expand nuclear energy. And once the rolling blackouts start, Germans will see sense and vote the greentards out.
As for the urban Euro, forgive the crudity, but fuck them. Sociopathic parasites who will be getting what they deserve from their first taste of reality.
Well fuck you buddy.
I don't know where you got the fucking idea that everyone I know is a sociopathic parasite who deserves a dose of reality. I have no idea what all the M.D.'s in my family (no mercs, being a doctor is less paid then being a taxi driver) did to piss you off.
But we'll survive better than most Euros. I truely expect war, starvation, and misery from Paris to Kiev, probably accompanied by the expulsion of most Moslems as a scape-goat. And I don't think the U.S. will be doing much this time, other than watch the Euros commit social suicide.
Wanna put money where your mouth is? Maybe some cities like Paris or Berlin will burn a little, but most EU cities are fairly sane, clean and pleasant places to live.
Tam's comment section, the only blog posts that spawn more little wars than an Arfcom post. (albeit, with about a 40% higher IQ margin)
ReplyDeleteBut Tam! What about the millions and billions of people that were killed as a result of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island? Surely these one-off accidents from however many aeons ago are still relevant in a world where our safety procedures actually work?
ReplyDeleteEurope is failing. It's demographics. Europe is below the replacement rate for births if you take the unassimilated immigrants out of the mix. The wealthy europeans will flee, and take their assets with them.
ReplyDeleteThe cathedral at Notre Dame will fall in our lifetimes. Bulldozed by idiots who don't even know how to build bulldozers.
I predict that Germany will stop shutting down reactors when they find out the cost of keeping a reactor shut down is about the same as operating the thing.
ReplyDeleteThat, and wind power doesn't capture energy from the wind; electricity is generated by burning government subsidies. Once that bites them on the butt -- and oil and natural gas prices continue rising in spurts -- they may choose to live with the nukes, or maybe do what needs to be done everywhere, and live using less energy.
Somewhere in Hell, Henry Morgenthau Jr. is smiling.
ReplyDeleteI like how they picked a date far enough in the future to just forget about the whole thing and let somebody else deal with it.
ReplyDeleteI had a vision of the entire northern hemisphere becoming un-inhabitable.
ReplyDeleteI moved south. Fight off those greenie weenies and then enjoy your demise.
"I had a vision of the entire northern hemisphere becoming un-inhabitable."
ReplyDeletePeyote'll do that to you.
It'll also make you forget that Costa Rica is in the Northern Hemisphere.
Being a Buddhist, a slight correction is needed. We mostly operate in the realm of experience, not faith.
ReplyDeleteLoved the imagery though magery though.
Anonymous 12:54 :
ReplyDeleteShe was referring to iBuddhists, not Buddhists.
These people are too full of themselves to handle Buddhism.
...the idea is that wind farms in the north might take up the slack. But that implies new high-voltage cables with very high pylons to match."
ReplyDeleteShaking my head in disgust.
The staggering ineptitude of those who think this way is overwhelming. Someone has obviously flunked out of high physics at least once.
architect, if they were any good at physics they wouldn't have gotten into public policy in the first place.
ReplyDelete