By Thomas Lifson
Nothing could better symbolize the deflating bubble of green madness that gripped Germany than the following from Lawrence Richard of Fox Business:
A German energy company is dismantling a wind farm to allow for an adjacent coal mine to expand its operations, officials said.
The German coal mine Garzweiler, operated by energy company RWE, admits the situation appears to be “paradoxical” — sacrificing one energy source for another — but defended the decision as necessary to strengthen supplies amid the ongoing energy crisis, Oilprice.com reported.
“We realize this comes across as paradoxical,” RWE spokesperson Guido Steffen said in a statement. “But that is as matters stand.
It’s not “paradoxical” at all, it is practical. Germany needs reliable energy now that the comfortable reserve capacity supplied by massive Russian natural gas imports is no longer available to pick up the slack when the wind isn’t blowing, or is blowing so hard that the windmills need to shut down.
The practical necessity of hydrocarbon-based power (I like to call it “organic power,” not “fossil fuel” because it is based on organic chemistry) is obvious now that freezing to death is in prospect for huge numbers of Europeans this winter. Dr. Johnson’s immortal epigram could be updated to substitute freezing to death for hanging”
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to freeze to death in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
Fox Business continues:
The expansion comes in tandem with a plan to temporarily return three of RWE’s lignite-fired coal units to the market, a decision that was approved by Germany’s cabinet. The units were previously on standby.
,RWE (originally Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk) is a giant among public utilities, ranked as the 292nd largest publicly-owned company in the world in 2020. It serves the most populous and most densely-populated German state, Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine Westphalia), which includes Western Europe’s fourth-largest metropolitan area, the Rhine-Ruhr.
So far, no one has bothered to estimate how many birds’ lives will be saved by taking down the bird blenders masquerading as somehow green. Wind farms are located on the path of the wind currents that migrating birds follow, making them especially deadly for our avian friends.
Owing to Germany’s fanatical embrace of the green religion, RWE already is Europe’s third-largest producer of renewable power… at least until more wind- and solar-powered installations are dismantled.
Reality bats last.