F Minus for the GroKo

OK. I've been away. Recovering from my jet lag I came across this. The video not only shows that our German friends have a truly wicked humour it also shows that they are becoming pig sick of the fatuous and failing Energiewende and their coalition government that promotes it. The video is subtitled and starts slowly but persevere. After two minutes it is a truly wonderful cutting satire.

Love & kisses
Billo

Dead Germans Don't Count

At least not to the German Government or the Green lunatics who call the tune over there.

Angela Merkel caused a flurry when she buckled to Green lunacy and ordered the safe and boringly reliable German Nuclear fleet to be shut down.

Consequently she is going to kill a lot of Germans.

When asked how they were going to make up the shortfall from closing the nuclear plant the German government just mumbled and looked at their shoes. Then we found out that their grand plan involved building 5800 MW of Lignite burning coal plant.

That's right. They are building Lignite burning coal plant to replace nuclear....

A German government minister enthused that the new coal plant would be easier to throttle than older coal plant so could be used in conjunction with wind and solar.....

No I'm not making this up. (honest)

But there is also another 12.2 GW of nuclear yet to close. I expect a lot more mumbling and shoe viewing from the German government in the near future.

Anyway, back to the main thrust of this post.

How many Germans are going to be killed by this madness?

Well, Professor Hansen of the Goddard Space Research Center (one of the most respected scientists in the world) has calculated how many respiratory deaths have been averted by nuclear power. The number is currently 1.85 million (and rising).

But of course, you can always work the figures back the other way and figure out how many people you will kill by replacing nuclear plant with dirty Lignite burning coal plant.

Professor Hansen in his paper (HERE) references another peer reviewed paper by Markandya &  Wilkinson (HERE) and particularly this table.

Notice that for every TW/hr of nuclear you replace by Lignite you kill an extra 32.6 people per year. You also cause 298 cases of severe cardio-vascular distress and over 17000 lesser illnesses.

These Lignite burning monsters are new. So their capacity factor should be around 70%.  So we get about 36 TW/hrs of power in a year from them.

Every year, this madness (so far!) is killing (32 x 36) 1150 people and causing 11,000 more serious respiratory illnesses. Minor illnesses come in at over half a million. That is EVERY YEAR.

AND that is just these few new stations that do not even make up the current deficit from closing the 8 nuclear plants in 2011 !!

The German nuclear Fleet is/was 20GW in total. Replacing that lot is going to need a helluva a lot of Lignite. And a mountain of dead Germans.

Clearly, it will not just be the German Nuclear Industry that will have it's name followed by the initials R.I.P. in the near future.

Wind and Solar Renewables:- The German Experience

This is about a shocking German report from RWI Essen – the leading German economic research institution

The link to the report (in English) is  Here
The English version of the RWI-Essen website is Here
The wikipedia page on RWI Essen is Here

Why is this foreign report important to us?

In the UK we are at a point of crisis regarding future electrical energy generation. Decisions that should have been made 20 years ago have been avoided.  Arguably, whatever is now decided comes too late. Nothing short of a miracle will now prevent power cuts within the next 10 - 15 years. But unbelievably there are still people in government who, either for reasons of self interest or political advantage, still seek to pursue the current insane renewables agenda. If these people are allowed to prevail then the power cuts, economic dislocation and the consequential casualty list will be considerably worse.

Politicians, green zealots and other assorted wishful thinkers have there heads firmly buried in the sand. In Germany it has been even worse. That is why this German report is so important.

As part of the unending Green propaganda, we continually  bombarded with how Germany have embraced wind and solar. It is well worth cutting though the bullshit and picking up on exactly what the real experience is.

The above RWI-Essen document is a highly reputable study regarding renewables in Germany. This report is now three years old. Nothing has improved. It is (even for me) a shocking expose of the cost and waste of the German experience. I'll quote a few items from it below, but perhaps the concluding paragraph from the executive summary say it all.

[quote]
Although Germany’s promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in
the media as setting a “shining example in providing a harvest for the world” (The
Guardian 2007), we would instead regard the country’s experience as a cautionary
tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic
and environmental benefits.
[unquote]

From the Abstract:

[quote]
To the contrary, the government’s support mechanisms have in many respects subverted these incentives, resulting in massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security.
[unquote]

Some more quotes from the Executive Summary

[quote]
Currently, the feed-in tariff for PV is more than eight times higher than the wholesale
electricity price at the power exchange and more than four times the feed-in
tariff paid for electricity produced by on-shore wind turbines.
Even on-shore wind, widely regarded as a mature technology, requires feed-in
tariffs that exceed the per-kWh cost of conventional electricity by up to 300% to
remain competitive.
[unquote]

[quote]
In the end, Germany’s PV promotion has become a subsidization regime that, on a
per-worker basis, has reached a level that far exceeds average wages, with per worker
subsidies as high as 175,000 € (US $ 240,000).
It is most likely that whatever jobs are created by renewable energy promotion
would vanish as soon as government support is terminated, leaving only Germany’s
export sector to benefit from the possible continuation of renewables support in
other countries such as the US.
[unquote]

[quote]
Claims about technological innovation benefits of Germany’s first-actor status are
unsupportable. In fact, the regime appears to be counter productive in that respect,
stifling innovation by encouraging producers to lock into existing technologies.
[unquote]

Clearly, the German experience should serve us as a dire warning rather than an example. Already their energy prices are only second to Denmark. Luckily (so far) for Germany, their industrial base built up from the second world war has enabled them to indulge in this fiasco.  Only a fool would take us down the same debilitating path.

Unfortunately we have no shortage of fools in Westminster.

The End of the German Solar Dream

So far the Germans have invested approximately 130 billion Euros in household and industrial solar power. (Roughly the same as the recent Greek bail-out)   See Here

Over a year solar now provides around 3% of their electrical requirements. (See Wikipedia Here)

Of course this solar power is only effective during the daylight hours and then only when the sun is shining. During winter the output is usually as close to nil as makes no difference.

The headline solar installation capacity is (for 2011) 24.8 GW. If that was really the effective output it would amount to 30 medium/large Nuclear or fossil fuel power stations (assuming a typical capacity factor of 80%).

Sounds impressive.

Unfortunately the claim is deceptive, if not down right fraudulent.

This is a snippet from the above Wikipedia article

When you do the sums you find that the actual yearly solar output is just over 8% of the much heralded maximum.

The actual energy produced by these 130,000,000,000 Euros worth of solar averages over the year at less than two and a half Nuclear or CCGT or coal power stations power stations, each rated at 1GW with an 80% Capacity factor.

Even then, the solar output is of course intermittent. Not only due to the the obvious night time limitation of solar, but due to variable solar intensity due to time of year and the inevitable periods of cloud.

The net result of this is that the 130,000,000,000 Euros worth of solar does not displace anywhere near 2.5 GW of fossil or nuclear plant.

Let us be kind and throw caution to the wind.

Lets say that this 130,000,000,000 Euros worth of solar saves carbon emissions from 3 coal powered stations each rated at 1GW.

That averages out at over 43 billion euro per coal plant shut down. Hardly an economic or environmental miracle is it?

Let us do a comparison here.

A CCGT gas plant produces less than 40% of the carbon emmissions of a coal plant. So to save the same amount of carbon as this expensive solar plant (but in a reliable and on-demand way) all you need  to do is replace 5, 1GW coal plants with 5, 1GW CCGT plants.

A 1GW CCGT plant costs around 600 million Euros so you can do the same thing  (but also produce reliable dispatchable and on-demand electricity all the year round) for about 3 billion Euros. Or just over 2% of the cost of solar. The running costs of the gas  plant would also be considerably less than the feed in tarif payments of 10 billion paid annually for the solar plant.

Of course if the Germans coiuld get over their collective phobia regarding nuclear then you could save the same amount of carbon by replacing 2.5 Coal plants with 2.5 modern Nuclear plants

Even using the ludicrously inflated figures from the anti nuclear lobby the  cost would be only 7.5 Billion Euros or 5% of the solar cost (actually the real figure is about 3%)

Like the rest of Europe, Germany is sitting on an ocean of shale gas. Germany also has the technical expertise to exploit 3rd and 4th generation nuclear as well as cutting edge nuclear such as MSR or LFTR nuclear plant.

If they had avoided the quasi-religious dogma that forced them down this solar blind alley, they would today be reducing their carbon emissions. instead they are about to massively rise as they replace nuclear with coal.

Instead of a dynamic, low carbon and cutting edge power generation network, the Germans now have their self indulgent and next to useless solar money pit, plus their equally hopeless wind farms - all backed up by dirty coal.

No wonder some German politicians are running scared. ( See Here ) ( and Here )

E-Coli: A Tragic German Double Standard

So, now it looks like it really was the beansprouts (see guardian here) Those Spanish cucumbers were innocent after all.

Thirty-one dead. Three thousand infected (and rising). Many left in need of kidney transplants. A terrible catalogue of tragedy which, unfortunately, is far from closed.

It also looks like it was all too predictable. Beansprouts were responsible for a similar outbreak (though this time Salmonella) in the UK in 2010. In fact between 1973 and 2007 Beansprouts were responsible for no less than 37 major outbreaks of food poisoning from either salmonella or e-coli across the world.  (See Here).

That number of course, excludes the UK outbreak or the latest German disaster.

Uncooked "Organic" bean sprouts:- The symbolic food of the Green movement.

I bet nobody told you (before now) that they can harbour E-Coli not only on the outer extremities but also internally. Washing them for a week may not remove the infection. See Here

Compared to other vegetables, uncooked bean sprouts present a significant health risk (See Here - "Minimising your Risk"). This risk is particularly severe to the young, old and vulnerable.

Beansprouts require scrupulous hygiene from seed to plate. Clearly, in Germany this hygiene regime was seriously compromised somewhere early on in the chain. But nobody actually knows where yet.

All over the world, and especially in Germany, environmentally concerned parents have been feeding raw bean sprouts to themselves and to their kids. They then probably wash them down with some unpasteurised "Whole" milk. (another fad). Meanwhile these same parents have been panicking over nuclear incident, on the other side of the planet, that killed no-one and resulted in a few vegetables getting a barely measurable dose of radiation.

Double standard? I think so.

Beside cooking, there is another way you can ensure uncooked bean sprouts are fit to eat. You can irradiate them with Gamma rays. ( See Here )

Actually this process is quietly used by many hospitals to reduce the risk of patients getting secondary infections from poorly cooked food.  To quote from the above link:

[quote]
"Food irradiation for a number of produce items would give us not just a marginal increase, but give us probably the Grand Canyon increase of safety.
[unquote]

It was touted as a method for wholesale treatment of vegetables in the 1980's but in the UK it was rejected.

To be fair is is a bit OTT for most fruit and veg.

It's appeal to the food industry was that it would significantly improve shelf life. The fact that it would also protect consumers from a low risk of food poisoning was, at the time, just a bit of useful propaganda.

But never the less, if these bean sprouts had been irradiated they would not have been poisonous.

Thirty one people would not have died.

By the way don't think that the bean sprouts would have become radioactive either. To make something radioactive you need a Neutron source not a Gamma ray source.

Maybe there is an opportunity here for some adventurous German bean sprout producer:

 Ship your sprouts to Holland.

Get them irradiated and them sell the back in  Germany as guaranteed E-Coli free.

Just don't mention that they have been irradiated. The German irrationality over everything nuclear would guarantee certain bankruptcy.

The Cucumbers are Innocent OK?

Germany: Strain O105 E-Coli.

25 dead. Approaching 3000 infected. 800 very seriously ill.

Billothewisp admits he got it wrong. The Spanish Organic cucumbers were not to blame. They were infected with the wrong strain of E-Coli. That is of course assuming that there is a right strain of E-Coli in the first place.

But whatever.

It would appear that the cow shit sprayed onto these wronged veggies held the wrong version of the E-Coli infection. Basically the E-Coli outbreak has, as yet, not been pinned down.

But we do know where it is. We also know what it has done so far.

So, is this a not a major disaster? Should we indulge in a little hysteria? Maybe spread some fear and panic?

So here goes. Panic And Fear Mode ON:

Already 25 are dead with 800 whose lives are seriously compromised.

Even with the 3000 lesser infections: How many of these in future years will develop cancer or other fatal illnesses?

How many more infections will there be?

How many will die now?

But more importantly, how many will die later?

How many are so mildly infected that they do not even know thay have been infected?

We know millions of will die in future years from cancer and other illnesses. Can anyone say with certainty that these deaths were not triggered by a mild unreported dose of E-Coli?

How many more will die because they stopped eating healthy vegetables and then develop cancer (in later years) from the junk food they subsequently indulged in?

In fact, should we not evacuate the German state of Saxony-Anhalt until the emergency is over?

Perhaps we need to draw a 20Km exclusion zone around the centre of the outbreak.

We could forcibly re-locate the people into shelters and school halls until the emergency is over.

Perhaps we should spend billions "decontaminating" Saxony-Anhalt, so even the smallest possibility that any form E-Coli benign or otherwise, is eradicated.

You know, Just in case.

After all, if it is good enough for Fukishima, where no one died and barely anyone was "infected", surely we need to adopt similar draconian tactics to stop this E-Coli outbreak in Germany.

If you live in Saxony-Anhalt then maybe you should be afraid. Very afraid.

Panic And Fear Mode OFF:

So. Are you panicked? On the verge of Hysteria? Did that hit the mis-information spot for you?

Besides the body count (Saxony-Anhalt: 25 Fukishima: 0)  the main difference between The Saxony-Anhalt Disaster and the Fukishima Disaster is the tsunami of self serving hysteria from the press that surrounded Fukishima.

While there is obviously a great deal of concern over the E-Coli outbreak, the press, so far, have avoided the incoherent feeding frenzy of fear that accompanied the difficulties in Fukishima.

In years to come, the "Fukishima Disaster" that killed no-one, and injured maybe 20 workers will still be held up as a item of fear and dread.

While a preventable toxin, produced in bovine effluent that killed dozens and crippled hundreds, leaving many in need of a transplant, will be quietly forgotten.

Nobody will remember the Saxony-Anhalt Disaster. Except maybe those left bereaved or on dialysis.

Worse still, you can guarantee that sometime, somewhere in the world the Saxony-Anhalt Disaster will be repeated again, and again, and again.

But (sensibly) we won't stop eating vegetables.

---

p.s. I just read on Google News that it may have been the Cucumbers all along. See News Report Here

Dare I say: Cucumbers  are obviously intrinsically unsafe. Maybe they should be be banned?

You know it makes (non)sense

Spanish Cucumbers, and English Hydroponics.

I don't want to make light of the terrible events in Germany concerning the E-Coli outbreak, but I do think a little acidic evaluation is necessary.

What would you rather eat?

An English cucumber, grown under glass, in a bug free environment, with artifical mineral nutrient fertilizer, using soil-less Hydroponics?

Or a Spanish "Organic" cucumber grown "naturally" in the ground and regularly sprayed with a mix of piss and cow shit.

I understand E-Coli is only spread by "faecal matter" (i.e. cow shit). As I tend to be a bit squeamish about eating faecal matter I would tend to go for the untrendy, Oh-so-unnatural English cucumber.

I might well miss out on that little extra taste added by the fresh cow doo-da, but that is just one of my many failings.

As it is, I find I have to eat enough shit from  those who rule over us, so missing out on that little extra something, and avoiding E-Coli as well seems OK by me.

Of course I could alternatively go for some condemned Japanese Spinach, which committed the crime of being grown near Fukishima. Condemned it may well have been. But (even mildy) radioactive it was not.

Would I rather a plateful of hysterically denounced Fukishima "Glow in the dark" spinach or a bovine excreta flavoured cucumber?

Hmmm, I think it would have to be Popeye's choice food for me.

How about you?

The PIIGs: Who is Next?

Robert Peston may have a funny way of speaking but he does seem to have a good grip on the Euro crisis. He is very pessimistic about the long term outcome. See Here

From the look of it, Portugal is already on the slide with bond yields already at 7% (Irish bond yields are still at over 8% and that is after the bailout package). Obviously those who buy bonds are none too confident that their money is safe and the rate has been cranked up to appeal to their greed rather than common sense.

So at what point do the Germans chuck their hand in?

They, after all are the only reason the whole thing has not collapsed already. Greece and Ireland are the smallest of the sick men of Europe. It has been difficult enough as it is.

God help us all if (say) Spain or Italy went down. If Portugal fails to make it through the next two weeks without holding the begging bowl out I cannot see the Germans continuing to issue blank cheques.

Going back a few months, when this crisis first broke out I picked up a report that Germans were closely examining their high denomination Euro notes. Evidently you can tell which country printed what. The report stated that the rattled Germans were only accepting notes printed in Germany.

I don't expect anything has changed.

Germany Wins?

My dear depressed, disconsolate and despairing English compatriots.
It was not to be.
It might have been legitimately 4-2 but it was never going to be a victory.
We played crap.
Never mind. It was only a game.

Although one more important than life and death.

But look on the bright side.

At least we do not have to pay for the Greek spending extravaganza.

Or the Spanish.
Or the Portuguese.
Or the Irish
or the Italians.

I dare say that there are many in Germany tonight who would happily trade in their football victory for an indemnity against their Euro liability.

But tempting though such a deal would be, I suspect us grieving English losers would rather count the pound coins in our pockets, smile sweetly and walk away.

Love & kisses

Billothewisp

Ten things you did not know about Germans

My dear degraded demonised and dirty little Englander mates. As you undoubtedly know, tomorrow we play the Krauts. That is the Germans to any politically correct plonkers who are just wafting by this blog in a state of shock and horror.

In order to whip you all up into a state of hysteria (well, at least for the duration of the match) I thought I would detail to you ten reasons the German nation en-masse should be regarded with distain and derision.

However before I do this I should inform you that this list was actually formulated and agreed during a brief encounter with a rich blonde German women in the back of a 1972 Mercedes pillar-less coupé in the summer of 1975.

I named the pillar-less coupé Helga. But only because she so closely resembled her owner.

Helga was elegant, sophisticated, drank like a fish and was very, very fast. I hope you appreciate why the name was shared.

Dare I say this, but, my dear mucky English mates, that night, in the back of that car, I had experiences that I am still trying to come to terms with 35 years later.

A bit like post traumatic stress disorder but in reverse. Anyway as part of our fun and games we built a list of the ten most derisory characteristics of the English and the Germans.

Out of shame I will not mention the English characteristics.

But hey! Its the world cup so the Germans are fair game. I have modified the derogation on Germany to be a little to be more contemporary. In fact I had to do this because I simply couldn't remember all the original ones.

Here we go.

10 things to You Need To Know about Germans:

1.Luther was a German. Consequently all Germans are ex-communicated. Which means that all German marriages are null and void. This means that for the last 500 years all Germans have been born out of wed-lock. Consequently all Germans are Bastards.

2.Before they bought Rover group BMW could not build a good 4x4. After they acquired the intellectual property of Land Rover, all of a sudden, they could build X5's. Consequently all Germans are Plagiarists.

3.Greece is virtually bankrupt. Things are so bad there have even been calls for Greek doctors to stop fiddling their taxes. The Germans have been calling for the Greeks to get their house in order before giving them yet more money. The simply show that all Germans are Control Freaks.

4.The PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) are all upset that they are going bust.
This is solely down to the bloody Germans who are only grudgingly paying for other peoples profligacy. But the Germans are doing OK. This must surely prove that all Germans are thieves.

5.On a more personal note, have you ever noticed that it is only the bloody Germans who lay claim to the deck chairs with their towels? All Germans are secret colonialists and empire builders.

6.All Germans are decadent perverts. Not only that, their beer is a tasteless fizzy chemical concoction the colour of urine.

7.Why do German women not shave under their arms? It is disgusting. A veritable crime against common decency. All Germans are all fashion criminals.

8.Helga (the car) was a masterpiece. But it should also be remembered that the Germans gave us the Trabant. Germans are inconsistent.

9.If Germany wins tomorrow it will because of one simple fact; All Germans are cheats.

10. Finally. It must be said. Germans, generally speaking, even with their hairy armpits, tasteless beer and sexual perversions are hard working and productive. It can only be assumed then that they must be Satan's Slaves.

Have a good game. Remember it is fun. A laugh. A jolly Wheeze. But if they win... see item 9. If we win, well, it just proves all of the above!

Whatever the outcome, after the game, we should be kind to our German colleagues. They are, after all, keeping the rest of the Euro-Zone in the nationally unaffordable state of luxury they have become accustomed to.

Love & kisses

Billothewisp