GWPF Newsletter - Green Mega-Flop: Germany’s Solar Industry Crashes And Burns

Germany Economics Minister: Green Energy Subsidies To End Soon

In this newsletter:

1) Green Mega-Flop: Germany’s Solar Industry Crashes And Burns
P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 21 April 2018
 
2) Germany Economics Minister: Green Energy Subsidies To End Soon
Handelsblatt, 18 April 2018

 
3) ‘Time To Reset The Climate Change Debate’: Philipp Lengsfeld
William Powell, Natural Gas World, 19 April 2018
 
4) Climate Euphoria, Climate Hysteria: Insights from the German Political-Media Complex
GWPF TV, 23 April 2018 
 
5) Corals Can Withstand Another Century Of Climate Change
Pacific Standard, 19 April 2018
 
6) Polar Bears Not Starving, Says Wildlife Manager
Geoff Bartlett · CBC News, 21 April 2018
 
7) Earth Day: 18 Spectacularly Wrong Eco-Predictions, Expect More This Year
Mark J. Perry, AEIdeas, 21 April 2018

Full details:

1) Green Mega-Flop: Germany’s Solar Industry Crashes And Burns
P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 21 April 2018

Almost every single major German producer of solar systems has gone insolvent. Investors are flocking away in droves because of cancelled subsidies. New additional installations are hardly taking place. The first installations are now being taken offline and the share of solar power in Germany has fallen below 6 percent.

Michael Kruger at German skeptic site Science Skeptical here writes about how solar energy indutry in Germany has disintegrated spectacularly.

What follows are 4 charts that show us some shocking trends, and how in reality the German solar industry has seen a bloodbath that can be rated as one of the worst in a long time. The reality is that Germany’s green revolution is far from being a model for the world.

Solar share of electricity falls

The first chart shows solar energy as a share of gross electricity production:

 
Share of German electricity produced by solar power fell in 2016. Chart: Statistica

The chart above shows the share of solar energy of total electricity production peaked in 2015 and the trend has since levelled off.

Subsidies and investments get slashed

In the next chart, the rate of the addition of new solar power production systems has plummeted. In 2012 over 7000 megawatts of new solar capacity were added.


German solar boom crashed into a wall. Chart: Bund der Energieverbraucher.

But in 2012 the boom ended abruptly as new laws on feed-in rates were enacted in order to keep the solar energy supply from going out of control. In 2017, only 600 megawatts of new capacity were expected to be added. That’s a 90% drop! […]

The solar jobs bloodbath

Finally the fourth chart depicts the number of jobs (Arbeitsplätze) in the German solar industry. Here we clearly see a bloodbath.



Full post
 
2) Germany Economics Minister: Green Energy Subsidies To End Soon
Handelsblatt, 18 April 2018

The energy transition is expected to cost Germans two to three trillion euros by 2050. Most of it paid by consumers via levies for many years.  The new economics minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) met with open ears when he announced on Tuesday that he expects an end to government support for subsidies in four to five years.



That makes sense, industry and economists say. But they warn at the same time that should the government take such a step without the necessary framework it would risk the collapse of the entire industry. And this would happen while the industry is on its way to full competitiveness.

Full story (in German)
 
3) ‘Time To Reset The Climate Change Debate’: Philipp Lengsfeld
William Powell, Natural Gas World, 19 April 2018

The proper boundaries between industry, politics and science have become blurred, preventing a rational debate about energy policy and climate change, according to a scientist and former German member of parliament Philipp Lengsfeld. The public, whose interests they would normally serve, therefore instead finds itself caught in the middle, passive not active.


Dr Philipp Lengsfeld and Lord Lawson, House of Lords, 18 April 2018

The old distinctions have been eroded as lobby groups and special-interest non-governmental organisations have become too influential. The result is a toxic mix of claim and counter-claim tinged with a religious aura and fear that the climate is irreversibly damaged, as floods, droughts and hurricanes dominate the front pages.

Addressing an audience at the Palace of Westminster, London, April 18, Lengsfeld, the former Christian Democrat Union MP for Central Berlin but now in industry, said that there was a “huge moral and political authority behind the scares: the prospects are bleak and surrender is not an option.” But he said it was time to call the bluff of the prophets of doom. “Man is not evil by nature, needing to be educated by an enlightened elite,” he said.

“Climates were never constant, and the concepts underlying the mean temperatures needed challenging,” he said.

It was an economist who came up with the 1.5% limit on acceptable global warming, which was intended as a target for a political discussion; but that has become now an accepted scientific law, he said. That acceptance is behind the Paris Agreement; behind the vast amounts of money spent on decarbonising – “although carbon dioxide means life” – and also behind the notion that oil companies will not be able to produce all their reserves without raising the temperature of the earth and causing irreparable damage. […]

His solution to the heavily polarised argument was for the three spheres of life to co-operate in an arms-length and mutually respectful relationship. Scientific data should be robust and reproducible but never treated as Gospel. It must be checked, challenged and criticised, he said, rather than a self-fulfilling prophecy: “We have policy-driven evidence-finding.”

The event was organised by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, whose director, Benny Peiser, introduced Lengsfeld by quoting approvingly the remarks from Germany’s economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier. Altmaier had told an energy conference in Berlin April 17 that Germany would not phase out coal soon; that subsidies for renewable energy had to stop; and the Energiewende would fail unless it were global. Peiser said the CDU politician was repeating the arguments of Lengsfeld, presented in a paper a year ago.

Full story (subscription required)

4) Climate Euphoria, Climate Hysteria: Insights from the German Political-Media Complex
GWPF TV, 23 April 2018 



Interview with Dr Philipp Lengsfeld (click image to watch full interview)
 
5) Corals Can Withstand Another Century Of Climate Change
Pacific Standard, 19 April 2018

Heat-tolerant genes may spread through coral populations fast enough to give the marine creatures a tool to survive another 100 years of warming in our oceans.

Coral reefs are facing no shortage of threats including ocean acidification, overfishing, plastic pollution, and rising temperatures. Sea surface temperatures have been climbing on average for over a century, and ocean heat waves—which can trigger coral bleaching events—are becoming more common and severe. Scientists have long worried that as coral-killing spikes in temperature become more frequent, corals won't have enough time to recover between bleaching events and will ultimately go extinct. But a new paper, published today in PLoS Genetics, suggests that corals might be able to adapt to another century of warming….

The team built a model that took into account the coral's genetic diversity and the distance that coral larvae travel before settling down, to predict how quickly heat-tolerant genes might spread. The model suggests that A. millepora has enough genetic diversity to survive another 20 to 50 generations—a timespan of 100 to 250 years.

That doesn't mean corals aren't still in a lot of trouble, according to Matz. "What we're seeing right now is the adaptive mechanism of last resort, just like digging into your retirement savings to buy your next meals," he says. But it is some rare good news for marine ecosystems.

Full story
 
6) Polar Bears Not Starving, Says Wildlife Manager
Geoff Bartlett · CBC News, 21 April 2018

One of the people who oversees an Indigenous hunt of polar bears says the population is doing well, despite heart-wrenching photos online suggesting some bears are starving.

Every year, the Nunatsiavut government awards polar bear licences to Inuit hunters living in the northern Labrador settlement area.

The Inuit set a quota of 12 polar bears this winter. Nunatsiavut wildlife manager Jim Goudie said all 12 were taken within the first seven days of the season.

A 2007 study showed that there were roughly 2,150 bears in the Davis Strait region, which was nearly 1,300 more than previously thought. A new study is currently underway to determine if that trend has continued.

Goudie said it’s just the latest evidence that polar bears are on the rebound in northern Canada — a trend he said officials have been recording for years. […]

Healthy numbers, misinformed public

Goudie said prior to a 2007 survey, it was estimated there were about 880 polar bears in the northern Labrador and northern Quebec regions.

However, the study actually found 2,152 animals, a significant increase over the earlier estimate.

Researchers are now two years into a new study, and Goudie said word of mouth indicates the population is continuing to rebound.

“I think our polar bear population is very, very healthy,” he said. “The Davis Strait polar bear population is probably one of the most healthy in Canada, and certainly in the world.”

Goudie said while there are a few different polar bear groups that are in trouble, the majority are thriving.

He said despite that, most people have no idea and — from what he sees online — many seem to think that polar bears are in trouble and in decline globally.

Goudie points to one post he saw recently from National Geographic that showed what appeared to be a starving polar bear, but in reality was an animal that was sick.

“It’s an easy story to put out there, that polar bears are in massive trouble. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue or keep my fingers off the keyboard when I see those social media posts,” he said.

Full post
 
see also: Susan Crockford: State of the Polar Bears Report 2017 

7) Earth Day: 18 Spectacularly Wrong Eco-Predictions, Expect More This Year
Mark J. Perry, AEIdeas, 21 April 2018

Here are 18 examples of spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started.



Sunday, April 22 is Earth Day 2018 and time for my annual Earth Day post…..

In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day.

In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article. Well, it’s now the 48th anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 18 years ago:

How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey.

Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

Full post

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.