Solar Energy "Ueberalles"

[jpak]

http://www.renewableaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=49058

Even if the skies are often cloudy in Germany, one thing is crystal clear. Solar energy is thriving here. While already making a noticeable impact in this central European country, the story being told at Intersolar 2007 in Freiburg this week is, "You ain't seen nothing yet." And it's being told in at least 30 languages.

The mood at Intersolar, the world's largest solar energy conference and expo, is so upbeat and positive about the future, one gets the feeling that the old guard of energy—coal, gas and nukes—will only be able to watch with envy as the solar industry becomes a major player in the global energy market over the next decade.

So, what's driving this hot market? Increasing internationalization and investor confidence appear to be behind the explosive growth of this dynamic industry at 20% per year globally. According to research by the international consultancy group of Ernst & Young, the investment climate in the solar industry has never been more positive and the current rate of growth will continue for at least the next decade.

"The confidence of the financial industry and investors in the innovative and competitive capacity of German solar companies is high and is just as important as a reliable political framework," said BSW-Solar Managing Director Karsten Koernig in his opening remarks during a press briefing at the conference.

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[Crazy Dave]

1. America so far behind energy-wise

Big cars and lots of other overindulgences take priority here versus the ozone layer and leaving some of our finite resources for future generations. It's the "I need my SUV", "Make everybody else sacrifice, not me" mentality. Being green here in America is currently the new fad diet.

[Dead_Parrot]

15. ...

[phantom power]

2. Mangled German alert: It's "Uber alles" -- "over all"

[Dogmudgeon]

3. A nationalist German slogan. That's gotta inspire confidence.

Any idea on why in the name of the mouldering bodies of the victims of the Third Reich that slogan was chosen to describe a solar power industry PR campaign?

What next? "We're putting OPEC in the oven in our Holocaust On High Energy Prices!"

--p!

[phantom power]

4. Solar -- "The Final Solution"

[XemaSab]

17. Solarnacht

:eyes:

[jpak]

18. The "Only Solution"

:evilgrin:

[NNadir]

5. I'm sure that your last statement might generate some comment on solar powered ovens.

Frankly the reference is about par for the course.

Germany has not produced one exajoule of solar electricity. No one has on the entire planet combined. The solar industry in Germany could vanish tomorrow and not one light would go out, not one. Not one air conditioner would need to be shut down. Not one computer would fail.

The German solar energy program is a failure. One of its architects is now accepting hundreds of thousands of Euros per year from Gazprom. The person who did this - the architect of the nuclear phase out - is hardly comparable to the leadership of wartime Germany, but the fact is that his activities with Gazprom make him one of the least honorable post war German leaders.

Gazprom, the Russian gas company is one of the main promoters and producers of dangerous fossil fuels in Europe - and one of the leading companies in the effort to dump dangerous fossil fuel waste in the atmosphere with no restrictions.

[jpak]

6. More hobbyist nonsense

German PV installations are currently 2500 MW and growing exponentially at 900+ MW per year...

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47322

http://www.solarbuzz.com/News/NewsNACO542.htm

This is hardly evidence for "failure", and more than a few lights, computers and air conditioners would go off if they "vanished".

It is Germany's nuclear program that is a failure.

The German people (under "liberal" and "conservative" government coalitions alike) **rejected** nuclear in favor of renewables, and they have no plans to go back on this decision.

Solar energy - über alles!!!1111

(with props to the Dead Kennedys)

:headbang:

[NNadir]

7. You still can't distinguish between energy and power.

You never will be able to do so, just as you have been unable to learn the rudimentary facts of any form of physics.

German renewable energy is a failure, which is why Germany is building huge coal capacity. You of course, have no intention of acknowledging these coal plants nor the fact that the architect of the German nuclear phase out now being paid more than 300,000 euros per year by Gazprom.

Germany has no plans to phase out fossil fuels. It plans instead to build more fossil fuel capacity. It follows then that German renewable energy is a failure. This is because climate change is a serious matter and the cause of it is dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere. Success would be defined as defeating fossil fuels, not using more of them.

The dangerous fossil fuel waste gases that Germany will be dumping in the atmosphere while you fail to learn the difference between a peak "watt" and a joule will threaten all of humanity.

I feel compelled to say something: Although the only thing you produce here is slogans, I personally find your choice of slogans in this case unfortunate. "Ueberalles" (sic) will be a word that will forever be associated with fascism and cruel industrialized murder. I am sure that no modern German would be so insensitive as to describe their energy policies - failed or otherwise - with such a word. As much as I recognize the level at which you think - and I'm certainly not a fan of yours - I wish that you would rise to a level to understand this basic matter of humanity.

[jpak]

8. More nonsense - and wrong

You cannot lecture me on physics, history or anything else.

Das Deutschlandlied was adopted as the German national anthem in 1922 - more than a decade before the Nazi party came to power. The Horst-Wessel-Lied was the Nazi anthem - not Das Deutschlandlied.

Hobbyists fail to understand this.

Furthermore, *some* German companies have *plans* for new coal plants, and there is fierce local opposition to their construction. If Germany wants to reduce GHG emissions by 40% (their stated goal), they will not be built.

And, according to the German Federal Environment Agency, even if those plants are built, German GHG emissions will decline by 14% by 2020 (by replacing many older coal-fired plants).

Germany will produce 35% of their electricity with renewable energy systems by 2020 - and will attain this goal.

[NickB79]

9. How many exojoules of solar does Germany produce?

You tip-toed around that point, again.

[jpak]

11. A brazillion

to use hobbyist numbers...

:evilgrin:

[Dead_Parrot]

13. 0.009 EJ, for the record.

It's easy to get "a brazillion" and "less than one hundredth" mixed up when you've passed peak reality.

[NNadir]

10. The Ueber alles song nonetheless has connotations that any sensitive human being should recognize.

I feel perfectly justified in confronting what you say.

I don't think very much of your knowledge on any subject, least of all physics. I need only to refer to our last conversation on equilibrium to demonstrate that your understanding of mathematical physics is at best at a very low level.

Your knowledge of history - and sensitivity to it - apparently is equally weak. Right wing German nationalism existed in 1923, although it had not yet assumed actual control of the Government. The "Ueber alles" song has connotations for all victims of Nazism. It was, in fact, banned by the allies.

Here is an example of Hitler himself speaking on the song which you so blithely evoke here:

On July 28, 1922, Hitler declares: "We shall possess once again a true German Reich of freedom and of honor, a real fatherland of the whole German people . . . He who has so taken to heart the meaning of our great song 'Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles,' that nothing in this world stands for him higher than this Germany. .

http://www.raoulfelder.com/articles/germany.html

Actually the song continues to be the national anthem of Germany, but the first and second stanzas, including the "ueber alles" evocation are specifically excluded. Now why would Germany exclude these verses? Could it have anything to do with historical sensitivity??

I can't wait to see your characteristically bizarre interpretation. When the Ueber alles verses are sung, even at sporting events, furious emotions are raised.

Now let's turn to one of your other "skills": Soothsaying.

Your continuous attempts at soothsaying - appealing to crapola predictions about some far off future that will actually experience the consequences of what is done today - have no merit. It is easy to show that similar soothsaying by people in the past, say in 1993, about the energy future have proved to be purely absurd in the actual event.

Of course you must appeal to soothsaying to support your case, since the immediate present does not support your case in any way.

As is often the case, you substitute blithe generalizations like "Germany wants to reduce GHG emissions by 40% (their stated goal), they will not be built." How will they not be built? By reading JPak tracts 15 years from now? If your "renewables will save us" meme has any merit, why then are people arguing about the subject, proposing the plants etc. Shouldn't they just be talking about their swell solar cells?

All the crap about "clean coal" in the grand German future is just apologetics and obviates the nature of your arguments. "Even if..." Even if indeed. Germany will build those coal plants because Germany needs continuous base load power and Germany - in an appeal to appalling ignorance - has foolishly allowed itself to commit to a nuclear phase out policy. Clearly this foolish policy has resulted in financial rewards for its architect Gerhard Schroeder, Gazprom executive.

Coal must be banned, not reduced by some "percent." In a rather bizarre interpretation, you again innumerately evoke "percent" saying that Germany "will reduce it's GHG emissions by 14%." Guess what? Eight-six percent of Germany's current emissions is not enough, not even close to being enough.

If you make statements in a public forum, expect them to be confronted, especially when they are consistently ridiculous. If you don't want to be confronted, mutter your crude aspersions and fantasies in some corner where no one can hear you.

[jpak]

12. Now that's funny - we are entertained by your bizarre interpretations every day.

so please "mutter your crude aspersions and fantasies in some corner where no one can hear you."

[Dead_Parrot]

14. Yeah, Friedrich Ebert was as playful as a kitten

Sure, he helped create the Freikorps with the Ebert-Groener pact, but Himmler, Hess, Bormann and whole bunch more of our favourite historical characters liked to get out at the weekend: Ebert just gave them a organisation where they could swap thigh-slapping yarns about flower-arranging and curtain-making. Well, they might have murdered a few thousand people as well, but not all of them wore swastikas in the 1920's.

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt.

Just a whimsical little ditty. Can't think why Ebert choose it.

After the war, of course, the West German government dropped the first stanza of 'Das Lied der Deutschen' like a hot potato.

Perhaps they could hear it ticking.

[Dogmudgeon]

16. Interesting thing about Germany and Austria

It is not surprising that a "clever" and "ironic" copywriter would use the word(s) "überalles" to promote solar energy. European rightists, German rightists in particular, have long been allied with environmentalists. It was mainly in France and America that tree-hugging would become a popular leftist activity.

In Germany and Austria -- and most of the European nations in general -- their nationalist conservatives and their Greens have formed political alliances over a broad spectrum of "nature" issues. Obstructing nuclear energy is only one item on the list.

A similar coalition formed right after WWI; part of that gave rise to Naziism.

There was a whole raft of "radical" and often pseudoscientific movements active at the time: the Wandervogel, Bible Circles, Bündische Jugend, various free-love movements, Spenglerism, eugenics and "scientific racialism", nudism, vegetarianism, popular enthusiasm for cartoonish versions of Buddhism, Black Magic (before the Crowleyan fad of spelling it with a "k" and the Gardnerian aversion to its color scheme), Hörbiger's Welteislehre, and so on.

In jpak's snark du jour, it was the golden age of the "hobbyist".

Of course, only a few of these hobbyists went on to produce Nazionalsozialismus, but their influence upon the Nazis is well-know. That Hitler was a long-time vegetarian with a mystical fanaticism over nature and wildlife is often puzzling to modern American liberals, but it was a part of his background. Pauwels' and Bergier's Morning of the Magicians was the first popular book to bring this aspect of Naziism to light.

The Nazis, of course, tried to build an atomic bomb. But they had no modern appreciation of nuclear energy cooties. They also developed radar to spy on the opposite side of the inside of the Hollow Earth where many of them believed we lived. And yet, our own beloved CIA recently tried to build a "Gay Bomb".

As those nuke-loving surrender monkeys might say, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

--p!