Re-Evaluating Germany's Blind Faith in the Sun

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 39,00.html

The costs of subsidizing solar electricity have exceeded the 100-billion-euro mark in Germany, but poor results are jeopardizing the country's transition to renewable energy. The government is struggling to come up with a new concept to promote the inefficient technology in the future.

[emordnilap]

The problem is not the inefficient technology but more to do with peoples' excessive energy consumption, coupled with fossil fuel usage creating climate havoc.

What's this Alexander Neubacher's agenda?

[woodburner]

......... coupled with fossil fuel usage creating climate havoc.

In the article it mentions one of the solar PV chemicals as having something like 25,000 times the global warming effect of CO2. I don't know that fossil fuel is creating climate "havoc" to that extent. Not much fossil fuel was used just after the last ice age, but the ice melted never the less. It turned out to be good for us over the last 10,000 years, but I expect there are quite a few species that have suffered. Taking a broad view, I don't consider the human species to be the most important one on the planet. Unless something good happens, like climate havoc, it doesn't seem to be going to die out any time soon, unlike hundreds of other species.

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People certainly waste far too much energy.

Concentrating in just one area - commuting. Many office-based jobs could easily be done from home. Why arn't they? Employers who either don't trust their employees or just want them in the office due to 'power'.

Commuting more than 10 miles or so each way also seem stupid imo, I still find it hard to believe that some people commute 2hrs+ each way everyday - 20mins cycling each way for me!

[kenneal - lagger]

........ Not much fossil fuel was used just after the last ice age, but the ice melted never the less. ....

That was caused by the earth's orbit and inclination to the sun changing on a regular cyclic basis - look up Milankovich cycles. We have just passed peak sunshine and are now going down the graph towards the next peak cold in about 100,000 years. This graph is very interesting
According to the Ice Core Data and the Benthic Forams we are entering a period of cooling climate in the geologically near future. Perhaps we should be saving up all the fossil fuel that we can so that our successors can produce a bit of global warming of their own when they need it more than we do.

If you add in variations in the sun itself shown in this graph and others on that page and
and other information on Solar Cycles such as that used Landscheidt on Hallstatt cycles it points to the fact that we should be entering a colder period not the hotter one we seem to be experiencing.

There is a lot of information that shows that the solar input causes a small variation in climate that is then amplified by CO2 produced by increasing plant life.

There's a couple of doctorates in sorting out all that information. No wonder no one has put it all together yet!

[fifthcolumn]

Unless something good happens, like climate havoc, it <humanity> doesn't seem to be going to die out any time soon, unlike hundreds of other species.

Care to recast that or can I paint you as a wishing-for-humanity's-destruction kind of chappy?