Greenpeace défend l'éolien offshore

L'ONG plaide pour une interconnexion des parcs installés en mer du Nord. Elle permettra, selon l'ONG, de stabiliser l'offre d'énergie verte et sa fiabilité.
Jeudi, étape belge au port d'Ostende pour le "Rainbow Warrior" dans le cadre d'un périple sous le signe de l'abandon du charbon. Le bateau mythique de Greenpeace est en route vers Poznan (Pologne), où se tiendra début décembre la conférence internationale sur le climat. L'escale belge ne vise pas à dénoncer des coups de griffes dans l'environnement, mais l'ONG environnementaliste entend promouvoir le développement notamment des éoliennes offshore, en particulier l'interconnexion des parcs éoliens installés en mer du Nord. "L'interconnexion des différents parcs éoliens en mer du Nord (français, hollandais, allemand, danois, etc.) permettra de stabiliser la production européenne d'énergie renouvelable et de garantir sa fiabilité. Il faut aussi penser à l'interconnexion des parcs avec la production d'électricité d'origine hydraulique de la Norvège, elle peut compenser les périodes de vent faible où les éoliennes tourneront en bas régime", dit Fawaz Al Bitar, responsable de la campagne climat/énergie de Greenpeace Belgique.

Il salue le projet de C-Power dont les six premières éoliennes offshore (sur une soixantaine à installer au total) sur le Thornton Bank au large des côtes ostendaises seront mises en service d'ici décembre.

Funny to see Greenpeace pay a friendly visit to a project owned by French State-owned, largely-nuclear EDF... and financed by me.


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

The End by Michael Lewis  

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital--to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn't the first clue.

(...)

When I sat down to write my account of the experience in 1989--Liar's Poker, it was called--it was in the spirit of a young man who thought he was getting out while the getting was good. I was merely scribbling down a message on my way out and stuffing it into a bottle for those who would pass through these parts in the far distant future.

Unless some insider got all of this down on paper, I figured, no future human would believe that it happened.

I thought I was writing a period piece about the 1980s in America. Not for a moment did I suspect that the financial 1980s would last two full decades longer or that the difference in degree between Wall Street and ordinary life would swell into a difference in kind. I expected readers of the future to be outraged that back in 1986, the C.E.O. of Salomon Brothers, John Gutfreund, was paid $3.1 million; I expected them to gape in horror when I reported that one of our traders, Howie Rubin, had moved to Merrill Lynch, where he lost $250 million; I assumed they'd be shocked to learn that a Wall Street C.E.O. had only the vaguest idea of the risks his traders were running. What I didn't expect was that any future reader would look on my experience and say, "How quaint."

All his books (and columns) are worth reading.


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Just recently two senior British politicians have been pontificating about the contribution of the blogs, the contrast is instructive;-

Guardian - Hazel Blears MP(Labour) - Nihilistic New Media

let me say that we are witnessing a dangerous corrosion in our political culture, on a scale much more profound than previous ages, and the role of the media must be examined in this context....

But mostly, political blogs are written by people with a disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy.

Unless and until political blogging adds value to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.

Telegraph - Michael Gove (Con) - Barack Obama's campaign makes UK politics look antiquated

There are powerful lessons from the Obama campaign for politicians here. The first, of course, is, the technology, stupid. The internet and blogosphere are powerful tools but they change the relationship between politicians and the electorate, forcing us to work harder. Used properly, the net can allow direct communication with voters. Several colleagues of mine have followed the lead of the Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps, who keeps his constituents informed about his actions every week through a formidable e-mail network.

But it is also true that citizen journalists can use the net to expose political hypocrisy faster, and challenge the spin which the mainstream media have accepted.[....]

effective organisations must be decentralised if they are to combine agreed purpose and fast, effective and adaptive action among large numbers of people.

That last paragraph is an interesting one for me as I've long speculated that the Blair-ite fetish for message control meant that Labour cou;dn't possibly harness the internet as the Democrats have done. Indeed some discussions I had with Migeru showed that the Lib Dems simply didn't get the idea of de-centralisation. It was all about top-down message control : Which is against the entire purpose of the lessons of dKos etc

keep to the Fen Causeway

Op-Ed Columnist - Bailout to Nowhere - NYTimes.com

Granting immortality to Detroit's Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it. It crosses a line, a bright line. It is not about saving a system; there will still be cars made and sold in America. It is about saving politically powerful corporations. A Detroit bailout would set a precedent for every single politically connected corporation in America. There already is a long line of lobbyists bidding for federal money. If Detroit gets money, then everyone would have a case. After all, are the employees of Circuit City or the newspaper industry inferior to the employees of Chrysler?

It is all a reminder that the biggest threat to a healthy economy is not the socialists of campaign lore. It's C.E.O.'s. It's politically powerful crony capitalists who use their influence to create a stagnant corporate welfare state.

Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.

Think Progress:

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr. Sarkozy told Mr. Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia's Government. According to [Sarkozy's chief diplomatic adviser, Jean-David] Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. "I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls," Mr. Putin declared.

Mr. Sarkozy thought he had misheard. "Hang him?" -- he asked. "Why not?" Mr. Putin replied. "The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein."

Mr. Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: "Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?" Mr. Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: "Ah -- you have scored a point there."

Grabbing what you can, as John Ruskin said, isn't any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists.

At one point today 86p would have bought you €1!!!!!!  

Money is a sign of Poverty - Culture Saying

... I said that cash for trash wouldn't be enough to address a solvency crisis if there was an effort to avoid over-paying for the trash, and that since we can't trust the Bush administration, we needed safeguards to make an equity infusion from the bail-out unattractive to firms that can muddle through on their own.

Well, I saw Senator Dodd on Countdown last night complaining about bail out funds being used to buy up healthy firms, executives getting bonuses and deferred compensation, and continuing to pay dividends.

NAILED IT

Recall that the three strings attached to Senior Preferred shares in my proposal were: M&A activity approved by the resolution trust, a cap on executive compensation payment of 10x median personal income, and no dividends on equity junior to the preferred shares.

Under a system of the strings turning off when the four most recent preferred dividends have been paid, they would automatically be in place for at least a year, and would kick back in if the financial institution ever was in a position of being unable to meet the preferred dividend.

Also posted at the Open Thread at Agent Orange ... there, the Open Thread Comment list is called "Recent Diaries".

Utsukushikereba sore de ii

Roll a joint, pour a glass of wine, dim the lights, and enjoy.

I love the smell of roast chicken in the morning!

This is as good an open thread as they go.

No?

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

It's also Monet's birthday today - a reminder of summer heat and the beauty of the ordinary:

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

Over at DKos, they are having a cow about Hillary being Secretary of State.  I hope she gets it.  Not because I like her foreign policy ... policies.  I don't like Obama's either.  But because we have had someone who knows something about Russia in the job for years, and our relationship with Russia has sucked.  I'm hoping someone who knows nothing about Russia besides what Yeltsin's favorite potato chips were will change everything.  And I think, if we have to be enemies, Hillary and Putin would be a great match up.  

Anyway, everyone in Chicago knew she was meeting with Obama last night - it was on the local news.  This is like the only instance ever in which the tv people got the story 24 hours before the bloggers.  In the same news episode, and a fraction of a second was devoted to the economy.  Reporting on the economy now is like being a weatherman in Antarctica.  What's the point?  Weather sucks and you already know it.  No, the majority of the news was devoted to...

Obama's favorite pizza place.  Pizza is like sports teams here - everyone is a rabid fan of their favorite.  So they were reporting live from the pizza place. Back in the studio they played Super Obama World on the computer and waited for the pizza to be delivered.  Then they sat around and ate Obama's favorite pizza on camera.  

This was the evening news.  Not the silly morning news that always has gimmicks.

This is all truly weird.  I mean, I love it!  But I don't think it is normal.  How even bad journalists are supposed to act.  But they love Obama too.  No one will pretend not to.  It's madness.

Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.