Yahoo Whopee Shit. He came down on windpower's side, calling for a continuation of the Production Tax Credit and some other green goodies. No, not Al Green, he wasn't singing last night.

But he also said some things which make me cringe. Some speech highlights after the jump (fall?).

CH knows he's supposed to preparing for his next birthday, but he's had so many already that they tend to blur. So he goes back to how he began in wind. 1974, met the man who became one of my mentors, who introduced me right then to the idea of floating wind.

The Captain is no longer with us, but he would be amazed that it's finally beginning, and amazed that it's taken this sick civilization so long.

EdP has installed a normal Vestas machine on a floating tripod, just in time to make a splash at Offshore 2011.   Read it here

The austerity mongers might miss the significance, but here's a big step for a Portugal which used to rule the waves. And this tripod floater design was first diagramed for me at a backroom beer fest of the Netherlands contingent at the very first EWEA Offshore event, Brussels 2002. It's reality now. (I still have the placemat, unless i gave it to the Captain.)

His were different, but the thought was the same. Here's the cover of an early National Geographic.

Today (11 September) is the six-month anniversary of the beginning of the meltdown, caused in part by the "can't happen here" combination of giant earthquake and tsunami. I wish everyone, pro and anti alike, would try to take some time to reflect on the capabilities of this civilization we live in.

front-paged by afew

‎"Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?"
- Will Rogers

Coupla weeks since we turned to the disaster in Japan. Being good media children.

Spin's in overdrive. CEO of Germany's biggest energy "whatever" calls Frau Merkel an "eco-dictator." Nuclear Plants are virtually carbon free. And economically viable.

"Melt through" sounds so much more benign than your average "meltdown," though experts tell us its worse. the scarcity of facts scares me the most.

Perhaps this is the place to begin another debate on nuclear power?

frontpaged - Nomad

Nothing changed really, so there's not much to report. In fact, the SPD has remained in power since the last war ended. The past few times with Greens. Sure, Bremen's broke, but who isn't? Not much noteworthy, 'cept a few historical wrinkles, so no need to read on.

Making fun of the Rapture appears in comments on several recent threads, if not throughout the known internet. In fact, there's a facecrack site which has hundreds of thousands of people signing up for "looting," which of course is why these small minded idiots will not be doing much flying. Check it out, the group is awaiting the reply from 387,445 lost souls.

I've learned a great deal about global economics by being here, which has made me a worser person. Not particularly devilish, exactly, but even evil eye recoil at the mocking laughter heaped on those privy to insider tips. Perhaps the prejudging is premature.

Perhaps you should consider some of the results from the series of test runs we performed at the behest of the Old Trinity.

This is worse than an LQD. This diary is simply a question.
What is the influence of atmospheric nuclear detonations, greater than 2,000, AND the sum total of accidents (accidents?), on measurement of background radiation?

... even if the media is getting tired of it (and its repercussions.)

To sum up, we've got:

•  Stray neutron beams unaccounted for, what?
  
•  How did such hot water get in the turbine halls?
  
•  The situation in Japan seems to highlight the many loose threads left over from Chernobyl, which had of course fallen under the radar.
  
•  A growing understanding that this is a very big deal, about which we have very little understanding.

We are just beginning to fathom what this means to Japan, and the rest of us. But here's a place to continue to report and dissect news as it happens.

Put this here because the other thread is getting filled.

Front-paged by afew

Der Spiegel   SPIEGEL alert  has an article in english regarding a new plan to coordinate EU economies, reminiscent of Wolfgang Schäuble's two-speed Europe proposal years ago.

She was interested in a productive atmosphere for talks because she wanted to win over Barroso for a far greater plan. It is a plan that has evolved slowly -- Merkel had to warm up to the idea herself -- and she knows that it won't appeal to the head of the Commission. Dubbed the "pact for competitiveness," the plan that Merkel has in mind could permanently change the structure of the European Union.

The idea, which the chancellor conveyed to her guest in English, calls for closer cooperation among the member states of the euro zone. It would entail more closely harmonizing their financial, economic and social policies. Merkel hopes that this would prevent the economies of the euro countries from diverging as much as they have over the past few years. If fully adopted, it would take European cooperation to a whole new level.
....
But now she intends to fundamentally change things. With her plan, the chancellor wants to do more than just go on the offensive politically. She has also set out to rectify the weakness that the former long-serving Commission President Jacques Delors considers a basic "design flaw" in the monetary union: Although there is a common currency in Europe, there is no corresponding common economic policy.

The Merkel pact aims to remedy this shortcoming, at least in part. According to the plan, the euro-zone countries would coordinate their economic policies far more closely in the future, thus playing a leadership role within the entire EU. What Merkel has in mind is essentially nothing other than the "two-speed Europe" that her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, similarly proposed many years ago.

The "plan has been developed in secret, and is to be presented to the EU summit leaders on Friday. It was presented to Barroso last Tuesday. Thought this should have it's own diary for discussion, since it echoes themes already under discussion here.

frontpaged - Nomad

We are good at finding fault with the results of unbridled predatory capitalism, perhaps less good, or less evolved, at proposing solutions. In a front page diary yesterday about Daniel Cohn-Bendit's recent remarks, he said:

So, we are saving, not just banks, but a system that is in itself a system of bankruptcy, a political system... It's the failure of neoliberalism and of deregulation...

to which Miguel responded:

European Greens Party: Financial Crisis

In this context, the EGP puts forward the following propositions for consideration:

In the short term, Governments have no other choice than to take action in order to prevent the collapse of the banking system by providing state guarantees or injecting capital, using taxpayers' money. Because at the same time, Governments find billions to save banks that are responsible for their problem, while they can't find the funding needed to fight starvation, unemployment, environmental degradation, the loss of biodiversity and to fund development aid, this rescue is not legitimate if not counterbalanced by a number of measures

<sigh>

I replied:

The document is from October 2008; perhaps Green economic policy has matured in the intervening two years.
Further, as you didn't highlight, "this rescue is not legitimate if not counterbalanced by a number of measures," so we should first investigate the counterbalancing measures.

So let's look at the underlying measures, and see if the European Greens have something to offer, below the fold.

Recognizing bread and circus isn't the hottest topic around these parts, not to mention baseball (there, a mention), the david Giants meet up in the 3rd game of the best-of-seven series against the philadelphia cheese steak goliaths.  first pitch at the civilized time for Yurpeens of 10:19 in the evening.

each team has won one, but tonight is the first back in San Francisco, in the world's most beautiful bread and circus arena, for the next three games. some of us are pretty jazzed even to be in this situation.

As debt financing for the Pennant Project is not yet in place, the Giants (or Jints, as they were called when still fighting against the Yankees in Nueva York), are forced to reshuffle their lineup, now stacked with right-handers in a nod to Yurpeen politics. this is the most powerful lineup the Jints can field, but pales against the mighty phillies, who are illiterate rednecks who make signs asking Giant players to fix their teeth.

as there's still over an hour to go 'til first pitch, and the writer has discovered ants and poisonous spiders on his butt and can't sit still, he's decided to offer a screed to the gods of baseball, who are far more worldly and forgiving than most of the other gods running amok around the planet.

A friend turned me on to the concept of Global Dimming.  While i'd been through some of the accompanying literature a bit, and while i've read some about the effect of jet contrails, i'd never seen it put together like this. Yet i have no idea of where this science stands.

I'm sure there are people at ET who are far more familiar with this research. I'd like to get a handle if there is any validity here. I'm using a BBC show from 2005 as a base for discussion, but have no idea of where this research has gone over the past five years.

NARRATOR: Instead we have to take urgent action to tackle the root cause of both global warming and Global Dimming - the burning of coal, oil and gas. We may have to make very difficult choices, about how we live and how we generate our electricity. We have been talking about such things for 20 years. But so far very little has been done in practical terms. The discovery of Global Dimming makes it clear that we are rapidly running out of time.

One wonders if what follows isn't the beginning of a good, even powerful, film. Hiawatha is a tale about the real people who brought an end to the cycle of revenge which permeates human culture. Who created a lasting Great Peace.

*How strange to learn that much of it became Avatar.*

(This edition of the script is the dumbed down version, at 6th grade level, so beloved by Ivy League-educated Hollyweird execs. Where the most important value is the amount of blank space on a page.)

Despite healthy deals, it was never made, as the CH would not accept Johnny Depp or Val Kilmer as Hiawatha, and held out for an all native cast.

Back when Deutschland experienced Das Sommermärchen, the fairy-tale 2006 FIFA World Cup, the Gobal Village Idiot wrote a piece for Der Spiegel (the mirror) on what englisch-speaking tourists would find in German.  In the spirit of Mark Twain, who wrote:

"In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has."

Sparked by something Fran posted in the Salon, i give you, through the time tunnel, a cursory understanding of the German language, if you want to call it that.

In the first hard news I've seen that life will also be tough for one of the main industries which should survive well in the economic meltdown, LM Glasfiber announced up to 20% cuts in its workforce.  LM is the largest independent rotor blade manufacturer around the globe.  (Many manufacturers produce much of their own blades, but not all.)

Wind turbine blade producer LM Glasfiber has announced that it is to fire one fifth of its Danish workforce in what is being called the biggest domestic firing-round of recent times.

While I do believe this is a significant event, I do not believe it is strictly related to the meltdown.  More below.

Our global digital spiderweb is momentarily on hyperactive overdrive, chronicling the demise and dying dinosaur thrashing thievery of Anglo capitalism. Sharing the billing is the public pharce masquerading as the US elections, where the ideals of the Founding Fathers wallow trampled beneath the steamroller of media inanity and megabucks.  The airwaves and cables are filled with the latest event, as many begin to forget what happened but a few hours previous.  We're watching the 200 year Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the time span of reality TV, 500 channels of analysis, or rather spin, included.

Thankfully for the powers that be, economic meltdown allows us to forget the daily trickle of global warming catastrophe looming even larger in the background.  But there's something even more lost, missing in the miasma that's become the media and blog discussions of the meltdown and its attendant thievery by the ruling class.

Human beings.

This is going to hurt, folks.  Let's remember that.  I've got something to say that doesn't need any graphs.

The Crazy Horse was writing a screenplay about the shipyards in San Francisco, so he took a job there.  Among other things, he had to work refitting an oil tanker.  What occurs below the fold comes straight from the unpublished real-time novel on which he was experimenting at the time.  He didn't know what blogs were, though the novel might have made a fine blog of those delirious dot.com days.  At least he knew something about windpower, and this evidence of what windpower was trying to replace.

Here's the part about seeing the reality about oil: beyond intellect, beyond politics, beyond power and insanity.  This is how it gets to your tank.