Wall Street Journal Headline, 2:10P Friday Germany, at one point, was the #1 nation in the world for 'green' energy. Now, they are in a desperate predicament because Russia plans to cut off their supply of natural gas .  So, Germany's choice is to give in to Putin's political demands or -- on a far worse scale than occurred last winter -- watch its citizens freeze to death.  German man sleeping on outdoor bench last winter.  Credit: DW Imagine if Germany had spent all of the money it spent on windmills and solar (in Germany?!) on nuclear and converting its coal plants to natural gas? They would have hugely cut their carbon footprint while becoming energy independent.  Are any politicians in the USA paying attention? 

...and, only if the wood is available.  This piece is intended to be cautionary: that one should not be dependent on politicians or celebrities for your information about global warming -- especially in an election year. For them, global warming advocacy is merely fashion. To illustrate, every one of these stories was published this week. The reason politicians' and celebrities' exhortations to cut our carbon footprints bother me is because they do not come from a place where they want to   make lives better for the average person.  Many of the advocates I have personally encountered seem to enjoy getting away with the hypocrisy of private jets (by far the most carbon-intensive way of traveling) while eco-economies like Sri Lanka's collapse with great suffering and people are forced to heat their homes with scarce wood this winter.  Please take just a moment to read this brief article about how Germans will have to heat their homes with wood this winter and that the ...

The 2015 Projection: Absurd 2015 headline from "Scientific American" The Reality: Yesterday's headline Friday, I wrote about wind energy operating at less than 9% of capacity during a hot day in Texas. Things have gotten worse since. The Scientific American  article quotes costs of 2¢/mWh. Of course, those are on windy spring days when it is 65° and the power isn't needed. Today, wholesale costs soared to $750 (increase of 3500%).  The reality: Yesterday's headline At one point yesterday, after the Bloomberg story was posted, wind power dropped to  less than 4%  of capacity. Put another way, out of 1000 hypothetical wind turbines, 985 were just standing there. More or less, the same was true at times in parts of Oklahoma and Kansas yesterday.  Is this was we ratepayers have paid billions for? So, I started wondering if we are forced to pay for so much expensive and unreliable wind energy, do they use it in NYC and Washington? If it is the great idea they say it ...

Yet several public [agencies] are under pressure to explain why so many people remained in their homes despite the forecasts of extreme rainfall and flood alerts that pinpointed most of the crisis areas at least 36 hours before the disaster. As indicated above, there are major political repercussions in Germany that pertain to last week's flooding. The story is here .  Evidently, there weather forecasts and storm warnings were excellent. But, there is an insight as to what might have gone wrong buried in the story: Armin Schuster, 60, president of the BBK, said the national warning systems had worked well, issuing more than 150 alerts through the agency’s apps, although they have only been downloaded by about 9 million of Germany’s 83 million people.  What Mr. Schuster is describing is a passive  warning system where warning messages have to be downloaded. That is a recipe for failure. Warnings for tornadoes, tsunamis, flash floods and other urgent life-threatening storm ...