Bishop Hill Environmentalists trashing the environment, part 729
Jan 2, 2016 Energy: coal ;)
As greens steadily persuade governments to intervene more and more often in energy markets, the unintended consequences flow ever thicker and faster. In a delightful example today, we read that chemical companies are trying to deal with the steadily increasing price of energy by installing their own power generation facilities, burning ultra-dirty but dirt-cheap lignite.
For example, a power plant operated by Allessa Chemie using pulverized lignite recently entered service at Fechenheim east of Frankfurt, Germany. A similar facility will be completed next year by the WeylChem chemical company in nearby Griesheim. This plant will be capable of firing lignite, natural gas, or “white powder”, an inexpensive biomass substitute. Three truckloads of finely pulverized lignite per day will be supplied from the Rhineland about 200 km northwest near Cologne, with ash returned for mining reclamation.
And if you thought that green hurdles would be put in their way, you would be quite wrong:
An electronic capacity control limits both plants to 19.5 MW operation, alleviating the need to purchase EU Allowances (EUA) for emissions trading. Public hearings are also required only for capacities exceeding 50 MW, and environmental impact assessments per Directive 2014/52/EU above 300 MW.
Well done greens.
Reader Comments (98)
Purely coincidentally, White powder, Green light is a book by James Hawes which even The Guardian reviewed thus
Chris y, so the Green Blob peddle lies, meddle in what they don't understand, and can't even pedal their way out of an energy crisis that they have created.
What is anyone supposed to like about them? Anti Social Behaviour Orders need awarding in place of Nobel Prizes.
In Mayo (God help us!) in the 1950's our house was lit by candles and Calor gas - the height of sophistication. Others had paraffin lamps with incandescent mantles. The wireless ran off batteries (whether wet or dry, I forget). When th'electricity came in the 1960's, we were told that the more you used it, the cheaper it was. "Sure, I'll never have it off!".
richard verney 11:02am ...... what happens then?
More data fiddling?
Blame it on increasing ocean salinity?
Mann's Hockey Stick, will change into a walking stick, with the handle end rounding over, and down.
Three truckloads of lignite per day for 20 MW presumably 24 hours a day. They must be 60 ton trucks. 200 km each way, total trip length 1200 km a day. I hope they run on biodiesel.
Chris y
In my experience, German Greens rarely wash.
So maybe 15 million cyclists ?
O/T (slightly) but here's a very interesting talk of Bill Gates on energy production, from 2012..
Especially his take on our windmills "investing" (at around "35 in the clip) where we could use the money instead on credible R&D should make any greenie cringe while this comes from one of the foremost investor in the world.
also of "interest" are the deluded high paid blondes trying to make themselves interesting in a Q&A with some incoherent waffle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsRlN1oDm60
TerryS,
"Considering I was recalling a 45 year old memory from a school lesson it wasn't a bad guess!"
Great guess! Discussion on this site is usually above my paygrade, so I like to comment when I can (plus I looked it up first to make sure). :)
@Tiny co2
It actually quite easy to live off 100 ~euros a week if you have access to your own rent free land , capital and biomass.
I agree its not for everyone (I have Franciscan leanings ) and I would not dare to force it on people but it is very possible and freedom enhancing .
What makes life impossible however is usury costs on basic goods .
This forces you to speed up (burn more energy in transport)to gain purchasing power.
People losing their home and capital to pay exponential debt is far far worse then your ideal wage slave model.
Better to be a peasant then a serf.
Making your own entertainment .
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAV8q4mnQ-I
It's not better to be a starving peasant than a fed serf. My ancestors were very clear on that which is why they departed Ireland, then Scotland and ended up in places that weren't pretty but were stepping stones to prosperity. Others went to Canada or Australia for their opportunities. My generation live lives that my peasant ancestors couldn't dream of. I doubt they say 'but can you really be happy if you aren't truly free?'
Curiously I'm studying Coventry's rise to success in the medieval era. One half of the city was owned by one of William's Lords, the other side by the Cathedral. The Cathedral took in all the goods and money and then distributed it as each person needed. Initially the Lord's men had the same arrangement but as he needed men for battles he gave land and the right for people to profit from it in exchange for support. The next time he gave away some of those things that we now take for granted like trial by your peers. The church kept its land and the same rights, sure that the people would be lawless, fritter their money and then starve. Guess which side got rich?
It only came to an end when newly set up guilds stopped individuals from earning however they wanted to. While society needs some rules and structure, things fall apart when self appointed do gooders decide that others don't know how to manage their lives.
Peasantry in Ireland and western Scotland were starving because their agrarian economies were tied into the British usury system.
The ancestors of Ran C Nesbitt were much happier living a free life in Glen Pean or somewhere, eating oats and selling their cattle for lifes little luxuries .
Digging a canal through the Scottish version of the great rift was no fun.
Read above again - I stated without usury peasant economies can be rich or at least happier.
Look at Greek or even Irish M 2 money supply vs UK or German M2
Industry is over but they continue to pile on capitalistic costs.
We are now living in the worst of all possible worlds.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/money-supply-m2
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/money-supply-m2
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/money-supply-m2
The problem with many people version of history is that it does not go back far enough.
The western islands and coast was already broken 200 or 300 years ago.
People were proper wage slaves by 1800 ~
Think of the islanders of Muck.
It had both rich land and fishing.
During the Napoleonic wars they worked in the seaweed / gun powder industry.
When that global war was over they were shipped off to Canada , all of them.
They were shipped off because they held no equity in the land.
Tommie Weir of the BBC covered this story in the 1970s.
The inner Hebrides (with the exception of Rhum) has good land in comparison to the mainland.
The Norse considered these islands prized possessions .
It’s like one of those comedy sketches where one guy says to the other ‘Yes, but which of us is truly happy? You with your view of houses and flats, me with my view of raw, natural landscape; you with your slightly cramped but fully furnished home and me with my tiny damp cottage; you with your central heating, me with my smoky lung destroying peat fire; you with modern medicine and dentistry, me with my missing teeth, parasites and diseases; you with your supermarkets, brimful of foods from all over the planet, me with my garden full of rotting potatoes; you with unlimited access to music, entertainment, education, travel, possession, clothes and me with my…. Bible and flute; you with…. It’s you isn’t it? You’re the one that’s truly happy.’
While it's true that we live on a financial edge, I'd never want to live at any time in the past, not even as royalty. Success has always been precarious. I truly think that capitalism has allowed most of us westerners to enjoy better lives than even the most wealthy in the past. It bothers me not that there are others with more than me. Sure, there's a worry that we can't keep this up for forever but it's the best, most fair system we've ever experienced. Even developing countries are significantly better than ever before. The ones ruining it are idealists chosing to destroy rather than accept less than their warped ideas of utopia.
I bloody love capitalism. To Islamists, anti capitalists and warmists alike - you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands!
"It had both rich land and fishing."
Anyone who thinks that making your living in period style farming and fishing, was a good life compared to most of today's jobs needs their head examining. It was hard, horrible and often dangerous. The modern versions are no walk in the park. The descendents of those deportees (assuming they survived) are probably more than happy with their current locations. Stop seeing the past through rose coloured glasses.
osseo
Our house in Perthshire was lit in the same way up to the 1990s I always found the low hiss of the gas light very intrusive. Good preparation for today's tinitus. To this day I have every light in a room on during the hours of darkness, I can't stand the gloom the rest of the family prefer
TinyCO2 DofC
In the Highlands of Scotland, the government referred to the locals as 'aborigines'. They were removed b/c they were only interested in subsistence, not making money for themselves or anyone else. Sheep were more profitable.
Similar arguments were used to justify the Protestant planters in Northern Ireland. They were prepared to work all day for money. In Glasgow, the accusation of Catholic (Irish) fecklessness is still around today as an artifact of sectarian division.
Ultimately, as you say the deportees (or at least their descendants) are probably more than happy with their current locations (North America). the other side is that I used to know a guy who now lives on an island and hunts for his own food. This is the desperation of the landless proletarian to escape wage slavery.
It was dangerous, but it was also beautiful.
You must read some of the residents accounts of the Blasket islands before the money economy swamped their way of life.
(islands with big tides were surprisingly isolated from the British money economy up to the Edwardian Period)
What changed life on the islands was the U boat bounty washed up on shore.
Nobody could consume all of this new surplus.
Money became increasingly important all of a sudden.
That and the rise of the Irish free state ( local usury further concentrated economic activity in Dublin) caused the death of that community.
Modern life (Tudor and beyond)seems easier because we have lost many of the old skills.
We therefore cannot imagine life without modern conviences.
Life was in fact less stressful in the main.
People certainly had better nutrition then for most of the post 1600~ industrial period.
That was the age of rickets rather then "progress"
Modern late 20th century life is over in Greece
(Witness the most recent 2015 crash in money supply)
The Greek depression is now much longer then the American 1930s version.
If debt was wiped out (price of goods cut in half)and equity given people would be able to return to the mountain village.
Industry / ranching is now reverting back to its rickets roots.
It holds no promise anymore.
The illusion of "progress" has been exposed.
And yet people remained trapped in their urban cages
Dork of Cork. This is right up your street and parked outside your house.
From my Monbiot site. http://goo.gl/LH73d5
This is an article from Monbiot's website, a manifesto of anarcho-primitivism . The reference to 'dangerous notion of progress' goes to the heart of ultra conservative deep ecology. 'Dangerous' is an extreme word to describe the achievements of civilisation. It fits perfectly with the concept of anarcho-primitivism
Progress is dangerous
The peculiarities of the Abrahamic religions - their astonishing success in colonising the world and their dangerous notion of progress (now inherited by secular society) - result from a marriage between the universal god of the nomads and the conditions which permitted cities to develop. The dominant beliefs of the past 2000 years are the result of an ancient migration from soils such as xerepts and xeralfs to soils such as fluvents and rendolls.
At Easter, the Christian belief in a permanent resurrection is mixed up with the pagan belief in a perpetual cycle of temporary resurrection and death. In church we worship the Christian notion of progress, which has now filtered into every aspect of our lives. But, amid the cracking of easter eggs and the murmur of prayer, there can still be heard the small, faint voice which reminds us that our ecological hubris must eventually be greeted by nemesis.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/03/22/god-of-the-soil/
What you describe isn't a flaw in the system, it's human nature.
The Greeks are trapped by their own greed. They wanted into the Euro despite not being suitable. They then didn't pay their taxes. They wanted to jump from a lackadaisical country with very little, to be a country enjoying everything hard working, Germany did from good health care to high salaries and pensions. Turned out they couldn't do that. They need to leave the Euro, devalue and stop buying expensive foreign imports. It would be very tough but eventually they'd come out of it.
No system allows people to have something for nothing. Most people/countries fall into that trap. If anything socialism is more guilty of that way of thinking. I don't know any system that stops people coveting things they can't have and making themselves miserable in the process.
"The Greeks are trapped by their own greed. They wanted into the Euro despite not being suitable. "
You REALLY have to differentiate between the people and their gangster politicians who did a dirty deal with Goldman Sachs banksters to get Greece in the Eurozone for the benefit of the banks and the German economy.
Please don't tell me you believe in democracy :-)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt-crisis-how-goldman-sachs-helped-greece-to-mask-its-true-debt-a-676634.html
Goldman Sachs + Greece Panorama !! (but outside production...)
if you're curious....
@esmiff - didn't realise you were a Moonbat fan - good stuff -- he really is a loathsome creature.
tomo
" he really is a loathsome creature."
That's why I promote him whenever I can. LOL !
No true Scotsman!
I love that term
"they did not pay their taxes"
It is not "their " taxes.
I do not know the Greek figures (I suspect its more extreme) but over half of the Irish taxes is not repent within the jurisdiction.
Looking at the money supply figures you can get a fairly accurate picture of the periphery / core dynamic.
@co2
Why devalue ?
When a jurisdiction of the bank devalues its currency what is its goal ?
To export more of its physical wealth to pay exponential interest.
Greece is in no position to give even more to the global banks via this mechanism.
You simply return equity to the people.
For example give a mortgage holder the house / land etc etc.
Reducing capitalistic costs reduces energy requirements .
No need for that car to earn a living etc etc.
GDP growth is now almost entirely a tale of transport growth increase.
(recent Irish GDP / energy data again confirms this in a dramatic fashion)
Its pointless and destructive for most.
@esmif
Not against progress in its widest sense.
If I recall correctly the Basket islanders improved their fishing techniques after a visit from a Englishman during the late 19th century.
I am against the process of capture that the banks engage in under the banner of progress
Almost always there is a loss of redundancy which is exploited in good time.
So Dork - you'd be happy stealing the life's savings of some little old lady or someone else whose pension includes bank shares and giving that money to a millionaire with a multimillion mortgage? Because when you tinker with complex systems it does stuff you never intended (like the article describes). The other day it was calculated that if all of the UKs assets were realised as cash (from land, businesses, shares, jewellery, etc) and divided up, it would amount to £128,000 per person. Which is not a lot when you think we'd all be suddely homeless, pensionless and without a society or infrastructure. Some people would blow the lot. Others would start trying to rebuild their assets. What do you do 10 years down the line when there are again haves and have nots? Do it again? Only by that time there would be a lot less than £128,000 per person.
What we've got works - sorta. There's no magic solution to society's ills. Governments fritter money. Democracy isn't perfect but it's the best way we have to try and curb the worst lunacies of those in power. Socialist countries proved what happens if you plump for the alternative to democracy and capitalism. It wasn't pretty and it caused massive stagnation in human progress. Societies need an element of social responsibility but how much?
Germany and Greece are like two people - one that wants to enjoy the rewards of hard work and puts the effort in and one that wants to kick back, chill but still enjoy the rewards of hard work. At the moment the hard workers are supporting the chilled ones in the shape of a loan but like those who defaulted on their credit card bills they want to just walk away from their debt. You could argue that Germany should never have loaned them the money in the first place but the Greeks wouldn't agree. They want the money without any strings. You can get away with that once but not forever. Greece is benefitting from Germany and the EU's dreams of super statedom. The Europhiles can't admit to themselves that Greece will never change, especially if someone bails them out every time.
It would be nice if people could live simple lives, taking only what they need... but we don't and I'm not sure we'd be human any more if we did. We would be unlikely to be the curious, inventive, striving beings that have achieved so much.
Tiny, Chris y
I thought we could do 250 W? However, I'll go for the 100W figure. If so, Germany could produce 7 GW of cycle power.
Moreover, since the whole population will be cycling, they won't be working, so there's no industrial demand. And they'll be so fit they'll never need to use medical facilities.
This is beginning to sound like a well formed energy policy. I'll pass this on to my mate Sir Ed Davey for energetic consideration.
Capell, I bet it's crossed his mind already. Compulsory gymns for fat people between 4-6pm. Add to the peak time supply and get them thin at the same time. Newsflash 2020 - Ed Davey was electricuted by an angry team of cyclists. After which he was roasted and eaten. The only thing the perpetrators had to say was 'revenge tastes so much better than thin feels'.
Capell, if the whole population was cycling, there would be no Doctors or Nurses to cope with the consequences of overloaded hearts and circulatory systems. Some of the cyclists would have to be dedicated to powering the life support systems in hospitals, for those who failed to produce their required quota of electricity.
Green Blob Malthusians would see the benefits of not wasting resources on those incapable of sustaining their own lives. To give them time to think in this manner, Green Blob Malthusians would require diesel generators, so they did not have to waste time doing something useful, that might benefit another living thing.
Oh Jaysus - the little old lady meme.......
Again I believe in a mix of social credit and agrarian distribution.
This is not socialism .
Some people will always be better off then others.
But as long as there is a industrial surplus there will always be a national dividend.
There is no Germany , no Greece.
These are jurisdictions and not countries.
There is only the bank.
The bank favours Calvinistic worker bees until collapse.
If the ECB collapsed the money supply in Germany to the same extent as in Greece my guess is that Germany would be far worse off.
As at least the memory of village cooperation exists in Greece.
Northern European society beginning in Sweden has been under the influence of central banks for so long now that they have lost all memory.
You confuse the state with the people..
To identity the state with the people is inherently fascistic
The state should only be seen as a modest enabler.
Not a God to be worshipped .
To give (tax) offerings etc etc.
I have a feeling from your writings that you have been completely propagandised by the banking apparatus .
I guess the Dork might have been s big fan of
Eamon de Valers economic and social vision.
Spectator, or Basil d'Oliveira?
"The bank favours Calvinistic worker bees until collapse."
The casual catholics vs the productive protestants as I predicted earlier. It's NI history personified.
Calvinistic worker bees cannot or will not consume their own surplus.
They must export their waste production to offload the high costs of such a endeavour.
In return they receive money which they accumulate .
Its a forever autumn economy of saving the harvest.
In a agrarian economy this food would of course get spoiled.
In industrial economies you accumulate vast costs of depreciation (which is curiously add to GDP)
These costs are subsequently distributed throughout Europe in our modern euro example.
Skoda selling diesels at 0% finance etc etc
Do you know 40% of new Irish cars registered are bought in Dublin !!!!!
Why do these Pale people need a car ?
Some of these are car rentals for the mercantile tourist market (another cost) but even so.
Some of us have travelled Desmond Fennells road and found the world wanting.
http://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/0952258250/
@Spectstor
Nope - it was agrarian distribution without dealing with the ticket system of money.
It was always doing to end in disaster
My hero is Eimar o Duffy.
His social credit trilogy is a must read.
(A combination of Celtic fantasy , sci - fi , bawdy comedy and political satire .)
Of course it is unknown in Jesuit controlled Ireland.
PS Dev actually gave the order to Evacuate the Blaskets.
(By their fruits you should know them , and not their rhetoric)
"I have a feeling from your writings that you have been completely propagandised by the banking apparatus."
No, I just have more than £128,000.
http://hilobrow.com/2014/01/02/king-goshawk-1/
Dork
Why did Dev order evacuation of the Blasket Islands? Was the reason social, economic, health related, education related,
philosophical or because there was no bank or post office on the islands so he state could not pay the inhabitants their pensions, unemployment benefits or what!
@Spectator
Anybody with fluent Irish could get plumb civil servant job in Dublin.
Compulsory Irish actually destroyed the last remaining outposts of the language
In reality this "nationalist " fervour for the language was a thinly disguised bank urban concentration camp experiment.
By the time of the evacuation there was one young boy living on the island surrounded by his elders.
All of the young men and women had vacated the island.
For example the guy who wrote 20years a growing was a policeman up in the Midwest if I am not mistaken
The last remaining boy was known as the loneliest in the world.
Mingulay in the outer Hebrides had a similar history although was evacuated somewhat earlier during the Edwardian period.
"I do not know the Greek figures (I suspect its more extreme) but over half of the Irish taxes is not repent within the jurisdiction.
Looking at the money supply figures you can get a fairly accurate picture of the periphery / core dynamic."
Translation, anyone?
@Dunk.
People do not have enough tokens to pay their debts.
Their real assets get seized ..
Oldest banking trick in their dark book.
"People do not have enough tokens to pay their debts. Their real assets get seized ..
Oldest banking trick in their dark book."
That's how the major banks won America (especially the farms) in the economic war of 1929-1945. The local banks went bust and the big banks bought their assets for pennies.
In terms of thermal efficiency, power stations are about 35-40% efficiency. Using steam to generate electricity, then for manufacturing processes & finally for heating, before being released to atmosphere, yields efficiencies between 85 & 90%, meaning that only 10-15% of the heat is wasted. That's why some companies build their own power plants.
Read this book from 1947.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Efficient-Steam-Oliver-Lyle/dp/B0006ARQ7E
Dork, the pastoralist illusion is so attractive
But still it is an illusion.