Reblogged:Can Germany Nuke General Winter? Will It?

[Gus Van Horn blog]

For at least the second time (that I know of) since the start of the "hot" phase of Putin's War, Germany is "reconsidering" its foolish decision to shutter its nuclear plants. This comes about after Russia used a transparently false declaration of force majeure to excuse itself from honoring its agreements to supply natural gas to Germany, which it started breaking a month ago.

John Sexton of Hot Air notes a peculiar mirror-image excuse by Green apologists in Germany for why nuclear wasn't adopted the first time:

[T]he pushback to this view is that Germany's problem isn't a lack of electricity it's a lack of heat. Even if you kept the nuclear plants operating all winter, unless every German home has electric space heaters to replace the gas they usually rely on for heat, it's not going to matter.

Image modified from work by Louis Bombled of La Petite Journal, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain due to publication date.

All you need to know is that the same people making that argument are the ones who pretend that replacing gasoline in cars and trucks is a simple matter of switching all of them to electricity -- while at the same time trying to put generation sources for said electricity that are actually reliable, cheap, and plentiful off-limits -- and while also complaining that windmills kill birds and solar panels ruin views.

Greens are at best catastrophically unserious people.

Sexton is not unaware of the irony:

In the end it's almost a mirror image of Russia claiming there's a technical problem when really there's a political problem using a technical problem as a fig leaf.

Indeed. On top of that, while an unprofitable infrastructure would have to be built to support electric cars, space heaters -- the technology to alleviate the gas deficit -- can be readily supplied by even Germany's semicapitalist economy.

Anyone with a grain of sense can tell that Russia -- with the aid and comfort of the environmental movement -- is using Germany's energy dependence as a weapon, diabolically reassigning General Winter from his erstwhile defensive duties.

Germany may have time to step back from the brink of a winter catastrophe, but I am no expert on resurrecting mothballed or retired power plants. Either way, Germany will learn that Green energy policy is deadly. Whether that is a lesson learned just in time or too late at at the expense of German lives remains to be seen.

I hope they change their minds and that they still have time to act.

-- CAV

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