09/09/2024 – Climate- Science.press

Hurricane Season 2024

Don’t get me wrong, we can comfortably predict that there will be a hurricane season and it will have tropical cyclones and some of them will develop into hurricanes. But we can’t predict, for the next hurricane season or even the remainder of this hurricane season how many, precisely where or when, nor can we predict where those hurricanes that develop will go.

From Watts Up With That?

Comments by Kip Hansen

There has been a lot of attention paid to this year’s Hurricane Season in the weather media. We even had one re-post here at WUWT — Mysteries Surrounding The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season. CO2 Definitely Not the Driving Factor – from NoTricksZone which itself is a re-post translated from KlimaNachrichten. Not bad, but, to me, not really satisfying – after all, no one could possibly think that the slowness of a single hurricane season could be really driven by changes in CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere.

A sampling from the press, in no particular order:

“Lately, there’s also been chatter of very warm upper levels in the troposphere (at around 50,000 or 60,000 feet) – a byproduct of global warming – that could be making the Atlantic more stable than normal and capping thunderstorm growth despite record-warm sea surface temperatures.”

—

“The Atlantic Ocean is near record warm, and a favorable La Niña climate cycle is developing in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Yet at what is normally the peak of hurricane season, the ocean basin has stubbornly stayed in a deep slumber.”

—

“This hurricane season is confounding experts and defying forecasts. What the heck is going on?”

—

“Hurricane forecasters expect below-normal cyclone activity through September’s season peak….The period of tropical activity from Aug. 12 through Sept. 3 has marked the quietest period in tropical weather development in 56 years. CSU said through Sept. 16, the basin favors either below or near-normal activity with only a 10% chance of above-normal formation.”

And, finally, actually quoting someone who might have a professionally informed opinion:

“If you had told me a month ago that nothing would (develop) after Ernesto I wouldn’t have believed you,” said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane expert and research scientist at Colorado State University. “It’s really surprising.” “Hurricane forecasters, including Klotzbach, were predicting the calendar flip from August to September would revive the season. Many widely used forecast models signaled the same thing. It didn’t pan out.”

We all saw the headlines earlier this year:

NOAA predicts above-normal 2024 Atlantic hurricane season — La Nina and warmer-than-average ocean temperatures are major drivers of tropical activity (May 23, 2024)

—

“Super-charged Atlantic hurricane season poised for intense activity — The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be much worse than last year with 20 to 25 named storms predicted, and experts warn now is the time to prepare before the onslaught of storms and hurricanes begins.”

And then, later in the year, just a month ago:

Highly active hurricane season likely to continue in the Atlantic — Near-record sea surface temperatures and the possibility of La Nina are key factors (August 8, 2024)

That last NOAA press release includes this magnificent night-time satellite image of Hurricane Beryl as it approaches the coast of Texas:

The full high-resolution image is well worth downloading here ]

Phil Klotzbach at CSU even issued a new forecast on August 6^th still predicting an above-average season:

Most readers will know already that the season has thankfully under-performed:

And there we sit, still today on the 8^th of September with the Atlantic Tropical Weather outlook, for the next 7 days:

The orange area represents a weather phenomenon where “a tropical depression could form during the early or middle part of next week while the system moves slowly northwestward to northward over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico.” So, not yet even a tropical depression. The yellow area has this: “Some slow development of this system is possible while the disturbance meanders through the early part of next week, then begins to move west-northwestward across the central tropical Atlantic during the middle to latter part of next week.”

And what might be forming? A Tropical Depression:

“Cyclones are characterized by a circular wind pattern or circulation.

Meteorologists identify the growth phase of hurricanes into three categories of development:

Tropical Depression — wind speeds less than 36 mph

Tropical Storm — wind speeds between 36 mph and 74 mph

Hurricane — wind speeds greater than 74 mph” [ source ]

So, to work its way up to being a hurricane, an area of low pressure with thunderstorms must first produce a circular wind flow with maximum sustained winds below 39 mph. Without the circular wind flow, winds of just below speed would be called a ‘near gale’ – or “A gale is a strong, sustained wind with wind speeds between 39 mph and 54 mph. The word is typically used as a descriptor for maritime weather.”

Note: I have sailed in a full gale, once, accidentally, and I did not like it.

The Seven-Day Outlook means that we will pass the historical peak day of Atlantic hurricane activity (below) without adding to the tally issued on 1 September (above).

From the 10^th September, hurricane activity historically begins to slow down rather sharply by the 1^st of October. After the 1^st of October, probability of a hurricane drops by 40 to 50% compared to the peak. By the 1^st of November, the season is pretty much over but officially ends on the 30th.

If I were still in the Virgin Islands (US or UK), I’d be feeling pretty confident and not running to Salinas, PR, which is the nearest dependably safe hurricane hole. The advantage of Salinas is that it is downwind and a quick easy sail, less than 24 hours, much of which can be accomplished overnight, even being chased by a storm arriving from the east.

Does any of this mean that the islands, the Yucatan, the Gulf Coast, both Florida coasts, the U.S. East Coast or the Bahamas can relax and think they dodged the hurricane bullet for the season? Absolutely not.

As NOAA keeps reminding us, it only takes one hurricane hitting your area to make a disaster.

The questions being asked in the Weather/Climate press are:

What does the obvious hurricane prediction failure mean?

Have we really gotten it that wrong?

Is there still a chance that the season will heat up and make up lost ground?

How did we/they get it so wrong?

Is there something fundamentally wrong with our models?

Those are all good questions and there have been a lot answers and a lot of excuses.

Many readers here are quite familiar with hurricane science and I’d like to read their opinions in the comments.

Here’s my take:

The basic cognitive error that I have identified is a confusion between:

1. Favorable conditions and indicators, learned from the experience of past seasons along with hypotheses about hurricane genesis

and

2. Cause

Hurricane predictions are naturally, quite correctly, made based on the historical past – identifying conditions that seem to have resulted in more hurricanes – and the statistical historical results (such as the Peak Season graphic) These are then coupled with hypothetical causes – things we think ought to cause more hurricanes – to come up with a guess – a prediction – of how activity the coming season will be.

That is a perfectly proper way to make these predictions. Not a piece out of place…..

Except…..

Statistics about the past are not causes.

Hypotheses about hurricane causation (or hurricane genesis) are not causes.

But, but , but….yes, I know. I suspect you are right, if those are not causes – meaning that looking at those non-causes might lead us astray in our prediction – then….

What does cause hurricanes?

Good question! Go to the top of the class.

Can I get an answer? Well, gee, I asked the Windows Copilot and it gave a sort of sciencey* non-answer that contained no causes, only favorable conditions and hypotheses about hurricane genesis.

* – “Appearing scientific without actually being so” [ source ]

We know the favorable conditions, we know the unfavorable conditions, we have some idea of the atmospheric mechanics involved (low pressure, circular wind patterns, etc).

If we knew the true causes, we would just need to look and see if the causes existed (or were likely to exist) and make a prediction.

Oddly, in 1963, David Fultz may have peeked at the answer in his rotating dishpan experiments at Chicago. [ here and here ] Edward Lorenz’s toy climate model, L96, could churn out the underlying chaotic genesis of hurricanes. In both cases, the causes are themselves related to topics in Chaos Theory studies.

If that is true – and I am not drawing a line in the sand here – then hurricane genesis is – buried under all the historic statistics, favorable conditions and hypotheses – basically unpredictable before the fact.

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

I am betting that there are conflicting opinions out there and I’d like to read them.

I don’t usually include graphics in this section, but was taken with this one:

We still might get some hurricanes after all – there have been more than a few (732) cyclones recorded in Septembers past.

Thanks for reading.

Is Australia Deferring 2035 Climate Targets Until After the US Election?

Is the entire global climate movement a political chimera driven by US taxpayer cash? Is the world dancing to America’s tune?

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Does US taxpayer cash drive the global climate movement?

Australia may delay release of 2035 climate target as world awaits outcome of US election

Experts urge Australia not to delay target too long as report by Climate Change Authority identifies six barriers to net zero

Adam Morton Climate and environment editorThu 5 Sep 2024 14.48 AEST

The Australian government may delay the announcement of a 2035 climate target until after the February deadline and beyond the next election, in part due to uncertainty about the ramifications of the US presidential election.

Some big emitting countries are lagging in developing their 2035 emissions reduction targets, which under the Paris climate agreement are due before the UN climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in November next year.

Major investors said they were comfortable with countries delaying target announcements if it meant they did the work to make a commitment that was “aligned with science” and reaching “for the highest possible level of ambition”.

…

Globally, governments are watching the US election before finalising their 2035 commitments. Observers believe Kamala Harris will quickly announce a target if successful but Donald Trump, who has called the climate crisis a “hoax”, has said he would again pull the US out of the Paris deal.

…Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/05/australia-2035-climate-change-target-cca-net-zero

Is the entire global climate movement a political chimera driven by US taxpayer cash? Is the world dancing to America’s tune?

OK probably not the entire climate movement. European nations like Germany have proven entirely capable of shooting themselves in the foot without US help. But Europe is a declining power, their ability to influence global events is crumbling thanks to their demographic decline and their inability to bring down industrial costs such as the cost of energy.

The USA calls the shots with global climate policy, now and for the foreseeable future.

Of course, regardless of the expediency of the hour, Australian politicians are still betting heavily on a Kamala victory. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese picked an outspoken critic of President Trump as Australia’s ambassador to the USA back in 2022, and has repeatedly defended his decision, despite Trump’s climb in the polls.

CO2 Emissions Changes 2022-2023

Of course, “mature” economies grow more slowly than developing countries, and those countries are likely to increase energy use and carbon dioxide emissions as they grow. But it cannot be denied that countries that are growing are doing so by increasing their energy use and that this is, so far, strictly tied to carbon dioxide emissions. It is possible to grow and cut CO2 emissions, but your growth in this situation cannot help but be anaemic.

From Climate Scepticism

By Jit

An update on the ongoing triumphal success of international climate agreements

The other day Robin noted that the 2023 Edgar emissions database had been released. You know me: I like numbers. So I decided to pull together a series of bullet points outlining how CO₂ emissions changed between 2022 and 2023. All data comes from the Edgar spreadsheet, available at the link.

1. Global Emissions

The global total emissions in 2023 were 39024 Mt CO₂, up 777 Mt from 2022’s 38247 Mt.

It is no longer possible to pretend that the pre-Covid high was the global crest. The average increase, year-on-year since 1970, has been ~ 440 Mt CO₂/yr. Last year we added far more than that. One would not be justified in claiming that the international agreements are anything more significant than pieces of paper.

2. Top- and bottom-ranked countries

The countries with the most emissions are largely those that you would expect in the absence of any data. Here are the top ten. (The UK now ranks 19th.)

Country	CO₂ emissions Mt
China	13260
United States	4682
India	2955
Russia	2070
Japan	945
Iran	779
Indonesia	675
Saudi Arabia	623
Germany	583
Canada	575

Regarding increases and decreases, this list shows the CO₂ emissions changes ranked from highest to lowest for every country with more than 1 trillion US GDP (about 30 countries). Slightly more countries in this subset are decreasing emissions than are increasing them, but the net is an increase.

Country	Change in CO₂ emissions 2022-23 Mt
China	733
India	214
Viet Nam	48
Russia	44
Mexico	21
Iran	18
Indonesia	18
Saudi Arabia	18
Philippines	11
Malaysia	9
Türkiye	5
Egypt	2
Bangladesh	1
Brazil	1
Canada	0
Australia	-1
Thailand	-2
Nigeria	-2
Taiwan	-8
Argentina	-10
Netherlands	-10
South Korea	-14
Pakistan	-18
Spain and Andorra	-18
United Kingdom	-25
Italy, San Marino and the Holy See	-27
France and Monaco	-28
Poland	-30
Japan	-65
Germany	-77
United States	-105

3. Per-capita emissions

The usual countries are at the top and bottom of this list, although to the tyro some names might be surprising. Not all are petrostates: there are also tiny Pacific islands.

Top ten per capita emitters	t CO₂/cap
Palau	63
Qatar	44
Kuwait	25
Brunei	21
New Caledonia	21
Bahrain	21
United Arab Emirates	20
Trinidad and Tobago	20
Gibraltar	20
Saudi Arabia	17

Bottom ten per-capita emitters	t CO₂/cap
Madagascar	0.14
Sierra Leone	0.13
Rwanda	0.12
Eritrea	0.12
Niger	0.10
Central African Republic	0.07
Burundi	0.06
Somalia	0.05
Faroes	0.04
Democratic Republic of the Congo	0.04

At the top then we have Palau at 63 t CO₂ per person per year, and down at the bottom, the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 40 kg CO₂ per person per year. That’s a 1500-fold difference. The UK sits in about 70th place in a list of just over 200 countries at 4.4 t CO₂ per person per year.

4. The dragon in the room

China increased its emissions of CO₂ from 12527 Mt to 13260 Mt, a rise of 733 Mt. It is worth comparing this increase in a single year with the UK’s annual emissions of (2023) 302 Mt, down from 327 Mt in 2022. China’s annual increase of 733 represents ~2.4 times the UK’s annual emissions.

Very roughly, China is adding a new UK to the global emissions database every 5 months. Another way of phrasing this is that, if the UK vanished from the globe tomorrow, the gap our absence made in emissions would be made good by our Chinese friends in the space of 5 months.

5. GDP vs CO₂

I have alleged before that the countries that are growing in wealth are growing in energy use and that therefore they are growing their carbon dioxide emissions. Plotting the % change in GDP of the ~30 countries with GDP > 1 trillion US against the % change in their CO₂ emissions is an easy way to illustrate this. The GDP figures are back-calculated from within the Edgar spreadsheet: I divided the emissions by the emissions per GDP, with a suitable correction factor.

Of course, “mature” economies grow more slowly than developing countries, and those countries are likely to increase energy use and carbon dioxide emissions as they grow. But it cannot be denied that countries that are growing are doing so by increasing their energy use and that this is, so far, strictly tied to carbon dioxide emissions. It is possible to grow and cut CO₂ emissions, but your growth in this situation cannot help but be anaemic.

The sceptic does not believe that growth and Net Zero are compatible.

Caveat

The figures do not account for offshoring emissions. As we have discussed before, for the UK, these may amount to 50% of our emissions. Given such an inflation factor, our emissions would not look so flattering.

Previous versions

I showed some statistics along these lines earlier this year (albeit using total GHGs emitted as CO₂ eq). CO₂ is the lion’s share of this, but some 30% is CH₄ etc.

What will become of Volkswagen?

The bad news about Volkswagen does not stop, but neither do the clever tips from politicians. In the process, the strangest things come to light. Lower Saxony’s Minister of Economic Affairs Lies (the state has a 12% stake in VW) knew nothing about the manufacturer’s processes and problems until the press release. He is not on the supervisory board. The state’s Minister of Economic Affairs once sat there, but he was replaced by a Green Minister of Culture.

From KlimaNachrichten

By KlimaNachrichten Editor

So Lies was caught off guard and he also noted in the media that energy prices in Germany are causing Volkswagen problems. It is hard to imagine what would have happened if the state had allowed the two nuclear power plants there to continue to operate, even if this is a decision of the federal government. It is also a bit crazy that energy prices are rising because of the energy transition and the restructuring of the grid. A self-fulfilling prophecy, except for Lies, who wants to solve the problem with new subsidies.

So the consumer is failing, he is buying too few electric cars, for whatever reason. The slump in registration figures does not only affect Volkswagen. They are also declining for combustion engines, which says a lot about the economic situation in Germany. According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, the number of registrations fell by 28% compared to the same month last year. In the case of e-cars, the number even fell by almost 70%. Volkswagen has been told very clearly that there is only one way and that is e-mobility.
Surprisingly, the plants that still produce combustion cars are doing very well.

One reads more and more that the current Green Federal Minister of Economics Habeck stated as early as 2019 that VW would only survive if it produced an e-car model for less than 20,000 euros. The largest proportional cost factor for an electric car is likely to be the battery of a car. In a small car, it is more important in terms of price than in a mid-range car. The battery can account for between 30-40% in a vehicle. If even a small car like a Fiat 500 in the electric version is 30% higher than the price of the combustion version, then the dilemma becomes clear. Battery prices will only fall with mass production and manufacturers are still a long way from that. So it’s the chicken/egg problem. According to T-Online, the manufacturer Volvo, which has Chinese owners, has shelved its plans for 100% electric by 2030.

“The Swedish car manufacturer Volvo has cashed in on its goal of producing only fully electric cars by 2030. However, the company, which belongs to the Chinese group Geely, only revised the target slightly downwards – to “90 to 100 percent”, as it announced on Wednesday. Up to ten percent of new cars could also be hybrid models “if necessary”. Volvo cited the lack of expansion of the charging infrastructure in some markets as the main reason.”

Volvo also does not offer a small car for 20,000 euros. According to Habeck’s prophecy, the company will then probably be doomed.

Climate change is already forcing millions of people to migrate – Bill Gates’ Telegraph Says

More Bill Gates funded propaganda

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

More Bill Gates funded propaganda:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/climate-change-forcing-millions-of-people-to-migrate/

Meanwhile back in the real world, Africa continues to enjoy ever increasing food production, longer lives, record low deaths from malnutrition and steadily growing GDP.

All of this has been made possible by fossil fuels:

https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300858/total-gdp-value-in-africa/

Meanwhile not only has the Sahel along with other regions in Africa been greened by extra CO2 in the atmosphere, scientists say that a warmer world could see a return to the wetter climate enjoyed during the warmer early Holocene era.

In the future, the Sahara and Sahelian regions could experience more rainfall than today as a result of climate change. Wetter periods, termed African humid periods, occurred in the past and witnessed a mesic landscape in place of today’s hyperarid and semiarid environment. Such large past changes raise the question of whether the near future might hold in store similar environmental transformations, particularly in view of the growing human-induced climate, land-use, and land-cover changes. In the last decades.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220301007

Plastic Police: DC City Gov’t has plastic straw cops to enforce ban! – DC urges public to ‘submit a tip’ if business or org. is ‘in violation’ by using ‘plastic straws and/or stirrers’ or ‘foam’ cups, plates, bowls or plastic bags

DC has 3 full-time straw cops on the beat to enforce the straw ban. And of course a tip line. This is a real graphic produced by the district government.

From Climate Depot

By Marc Morano

DC has 3 full-time straw cops on the beat to enforce the straw ban. And of course a tip line. This is a real graphic produced by the district government.

https://t.co/t4dHAKRtJS https://t.co/Nh5okAhv8D pic.twitter.com/0aUXikoDlE

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) September 6, 2024

https://doee.dc.gov/foambantip

Office of the Mayor of the District of Columbia – Muriel Bowser, Mayor

Use this form to submit a tip if you observe a District business or organization in violation of one of the following policies:

Food Service Ware Requirements – Use of:

Foam for food service ware (cups, plates, bowls, take-out containers, etc.)
Single-use plastic straws and/or stirrers (with an exception for plastic straws requested for medical need)
Mixed material items like paper bags with plastic windows and paper-lined foil sandwich wraps

Retail Foam Ban – Sale of:

Foam food service ware (cups, plates, bowls, clamshells, etc.)
Foam storage containers (ice chests, coolers, etc.)
Foam packing materials (packing peanuts)

Utensils by Request (NEW Starting January 1st, 2022)

Submit a tip if you observe that a 3rd party food ordering platform (Uber Eats, Grub Hub, Door Dash, etc.) does not have the option for you to request utensils, condiment packets, and other small disposable food accessory items.
Submit a tip if a food-serving entity included utensils, condiment packets, and other small disposable food accessory items in your order without your request.

Related:

Make it make sense pic.twitter.com/z8DFA86LXK— Declaration of Memes (@LibertyCappy) June 22, 2024

Harris now abandons 2019 pledge to ban plastic straws – ‘Her campaign says that’s no longer her position’

During a CNN town hall in 2019, Harris was asked whether plastic straws should be banned.

“I think we should,” she said. “We do need to ban the plastic” straws, she added, saying that paper straws needed to be improved.

Study claims Paper straws are toxic – ‘Glass or stainless steel straws are the best choices’

Biden admin will ban federal government using plastic cutlery to combat ‘climate change’

Watch: VP Kamala Harris supports bans on plastic straws & offshore drilling – Changes to dietary guidelines to battle ‘climate change, & seeks ‘to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal’

California Considers $1,000 Fine for Waiters Offering Unsolicited Plastic Straws

In Germany, The Energy Transition Situation Only Gets Worse

From Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

Plenty of virtuous places (New York, California, UK, Australia) want to compete for the mantle of “climate leader.” But let’s face it, at least among places with significant population, nobody can top Germany. In Germany, they got started on a massive build-out of wind and solar electricity generation way back in the early 1990s. By year-end 2023, they had total wind and solar nameplate electricity generation capacity of 148 GW, which is about 2.5 times average demand (of about 60 GW) and about 1.5 times peak demand (of about 100 GW). So surely, the days of fossil fuels in Germany must be numbered.

Time for another update on Germany’s progress toward energy nirvana. The bottom line is that, like the Red Queen, Germany is running faster and faster to stay in place. In the meantime, it is destroying its economy.

My last update from Germany was on June 15, and covered the then-latest data for the full year 2023. The news was that Germany had finally surpassed the benchmark of getting more than 50% of its electricity from “renewables.” That news had been excitedly announced at multiple news outlets, including Reuters, which had the headline “Renewable energy’s share on German power grids reaches 55% in 2023.” Did you get fooled by that headline into thinking that the 55% was from wind and solar? Actually, as I noted in the June 15 post, of the 55%, 8.4% came from “biomass” (i.e., wood chips imported mostly from the U.S.), and 3% from “hydro” and “other,” leaving only 43.6% from the wind and solar. The capacity of the biomass and hydro generation facilities, by the way, was only 12.9 GW, meaning that they produced about 25% as much electricity as the wind and solar facilities with less than 10% of the capacity. No surprise there.

Well, now figures are out for Germany for the first half of 2024; plus other related economic news continues to pour in. Let’s check in for an update.

Clean Energy Wire on July 18 has first-half 2024 electricity consumption data sourced from Germany’s UBA (Federal Environmental Agency). The percent from “renewables” has gone up again, now to 57%!

Renewable power sources covered around 57 percent of Germany’s gross electricity consumption in the first half of 2024, preliminary figures published by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) have shown. Generation from renewable sources reached 147 terawatt hours (TWh), rising by nine percent compared to the same period of the previous year.

Once again, of course, they have mixed “biomass” and hydro in with the “renewables.” Should we back those out?

In the first six months of 2024, wind power accounted for the largest share of renewable electricity generation (around 51%), followed by PV (24%), biomass (15%) and hydropower (8%).

So biomass and hydro came to 23% of the 57%, or 13.1%. That leaves at most 43.9% that came from wind and solar, up from the 43.6% for 2023. Basically, the percent from wind and solar was up by a rounding error.

The problem is that in the meantime Germany had added greatly to wind and solar generation capacity. According to a chart at this page, also from Clean Energy Wire and sourced to the UBA, Germany’s solar generation capacity went from 67.6 GW at year-end 2022 to 79.2 GW at year-end 2023 — an increase of more than 17%; and its wind generation capacity went from 66.1 GW to 68.8 GW, an increase of over 4%. That’s rather an enormous amount of additional capital invested in wind and solar to achieve an additional 0.3% market share in electricity generation.

And now let’s look at the big economic picture for Germany. First, how do its electricity prices compare to other places? Here is a very useful chart from the Energy Policy Research Foundation, comparing second-half 2023 consumer electricity prices among EU countries and U.S. states:

There’s Germany way at the top of the list, over 38 cents per kWh, well over double the U.S. average.

Next up, here’s data on German GDP from the St. Louis Fed. The peak was in Q3 2022 at $770.6 billion, with small declines since then. Some might call it a recession, and a rather long one. The most recent quarterly figure (Q2 2024) was $766.4 billion. This is serious stagnation. By contrast, the U.S. GDP in the mediocre Biden-Harris economy has been growing in the range of 2-3% annually. If Germany’s economy had been growing just 2% for the last two years it would now be around $800 billion per quarter, rather than the $766 billion reported.

Let’s say that high energy prices may not be good for an economy known for its large manufacturing sector. You may have seen the recent news about Volkswagen. From Reuters, September 2:

Volkswagen . . . is considering closing factories in Germany for the first time, in a move that shows the mounting price pressure Europe’s top carmaker faces from Asian rivals. . . . VW considers one large vehicle plant and one component factory in Germany to be obsolete, said its works council as it vowed “fierce resistance” to the executive board’s plans.

In related news, a German-speaking friend sends along an English translation of this August 12 piece from Die Welt. The headline is “Germany’s electrical fallacy.” Excerpt:

Clean and cheap electricity was the great promise of the energy transition. It was said for years that there would be a “job miracle” for free. But now demand is collapsing. . . . [In the first half of 2024], the Central Association of the German Motor Vehicle Industry reports a decline of 47 percent in orders for electric cars. A drop of 54 percent in sales of heat pumps, reports the Federal Association of the German Heating Industry. What, on the other hand, is increasing: the demand for combustion cars and oil heaters.

“Will the energy transition now be cheap? Yes. Period,” promised Patrick Graichen, later the federal government’s chief planner and head of the Agora Energy Transition think tank, in an interview with WELT in 2017: “The harvest years of the energy transition are now in sight.” Fossil fuels would soon become unaffordable, while green electricity is becoming cheaper and cheaper. . . . But the narrative that has been circulating for many years is increasingly met with skepticism – and not just by consumers. . . . “The supposed certainties of older forecasts, according to which electrification of the industrial, transport and building sectors are economically preferable and that a constant increase in renewable energies would drive down end customer prices, are now fragile,” says Constantin H. Alsheimer, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Thüga Public company.

“Fragile”? I would say that those old “certainties” have been completely shattered. But maybe that’s just an issue of the translation.

Let me end with the message from Dirk Messner, head of the UBA, as quoted in the July 18 Clean Energy Wire piece (emphasis added):

“It is a success that the share of renewables in electricity production continues to grow,” UBA head Dirk Messner said. However, Germany still needs to accelerate renewable expansion capacity to meet its climate and energy targets, especially in the solar photovoltaics (PV) sector, he warned. Messner called for planning security and for the careful further development of subsidy mechanisms, as well as for a way to keep grid fees in check in areas of high renewable expansion.

Build more and more wind and solar, increase the subsidies yet again, and drive Germany over the economic cliff. It will continue until the voters finally wake up. I have no idea when that will be.

Day: September 9, 2024

Hurricane Season 2024

Like this:

Is Australia Deferring 2035 Climate Targets Until After the US Election?

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