Baltic Dry Index. 2756 +288 on the week.
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.
“….the current economic situation is in many ways better than what we have experienced in years. Against that background, we have stuck to the rebalancing scenario. Our central forecast remains indeed quite benign”
OECD Economic Outlook June 2007. (Idiots.)
A picture worth a thousand words. Now comes tsunami wave two of trouble in US mortgage resets.
Next, in the name of saving the planet the global warming Nazis want to pump carbon dioxide under a town near you! Where it will eventually end up, and what kind of consequences it will have for hundreds of years, no one can say, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that this sort of pseudo science solution doesn’t solve any sort of problem facing the planet, let alone an invented one. Below, even the loony leftist German Green Party draw the line at poisoning the ground to save the planet. In Britain the big “Carbon Capture” idea, is the equally stupid pumping it out to sea for release into the ocean.
Operator, give me the number for 911.
Homer Simpson.
Not Under My Backyard
One German Town's Fight against CO2 Capture Technology
By Jessica Donath in Beeskow, Germany 08/20/2010 12:20 PM
The next Chernobyl? A death blow to tourism? Poisoned drinking water? The residents of Beeskow, Germany worry that a planned CO2 storage facility under their town could end in disaster and are fighting the project. Europe, though, hopes the technology will drastically reduce emissions.
The signs are everywhere -- on church towers, on fences surrounding private homes and in storefronts. At first glance, the scenes evoke the large-scale protests against nuclear power that rattled Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. The resemblance is no accident. Residents in the quiet town of Beeskow in the eastern German state of Brandenburg are gearing up for a fight. They fear the pollutants that are about to be pumped beneath their homes could become the next Chernobyl.
"A field trial under our community is not acceptable," says Beeskow Mayor Frank Steffen.
The town's residents are upset about plans by a German division of Swedish energy giant Vattenfall to build a carbon dioxide (CO2) storage facility in a saline aquifer far beneath Beeskow's cobblestone roads. The site is one of a handful across Europe where companies and governments want to test a process known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that proponents say will massively reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants. Instead of belching the emissions into the sky, CCS technology would capture, liquefy and then pump the CO2 into underground storage sites.
CCS has been hailed by advocates as a way to greatly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted by pollution-heavy industry and help countries achieve their goals for limiting emissions of greenhouse gases in order to slow or stop global warming. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that wide-spread adoption of CCS would be the cheapest way to cut emissions by half by 2050, arguing that the technology could contribute nearly 20 percent of those cuts. Critics, however, note that CCS technologies also require significant amounts of energy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that power plants would need between 11 percent and 40 percent more fuel once CCS technology is installed.
Negative Impact on Tourism
The most vehement critics of CCS, though, have proven to be those living near the planned facilities. "They are experimenting with humans," says local vacation home owner Mike Kess, the 38-year-old spokesman for a group of residents that formed to combat Vattenfall's plans. If CO2 leaks from the aquifer, they fear, it could contaminate drinking water -- or worse. Residents are also concerned the facility could negatively impact tourism in the economically volatile region. "Who wants to go on vacation in an area with this kind of stigma," asks Kress?
Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet is expected to approve legislation in September that would open the door to greater CCS research at different sites around the country. The bill is the implementation of a 2009 European Union directive establishing the legal framework for the "safe geological storage" of CO2 to contribute to the fight against climate chage.
-----Although CDU leaders in the area have promoted renewable energies, they also argue -- in contrast to the opposition Green Party -- that coal-fired plants must remain an essential part of the energy mix for the foreseeable future. And even if the number of coal plants doesn't increase dramatically in industrialized countries like Germany, reliance on coal for power is growing massively in emerging economies like China and India. "We have a moral obligation to participate in CO2-reduction on a global level," Bretz says. He feels the country has a duty to develop technologies for cleaner production of coal-based energy that can create a model for other countries and be exported.
In Beeskow, where permission to commence has already been granted by the state, locals are hoping that the national debate over CCS technology will give them the momentum they need to stop Vattenfall's plans. Local officials have filed a petition with the state government in the hope of having the permit revoked. Instead, they are proposing that the site be used for a project to explore geothermics, the generation of heat and energy using naturally occurring heat from far below the earth's surface.
-----At the moment, a number of CCS technologies are being tested in pilot projects in Germany, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and the United States. In Europe, many of the pilot projects are being partly funded by the European Union, which has earmarked more than a billion euros for the test sites.
Researchers from the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) in the town of Ketzin in northwestern Brandenburg, have so far reported success with a similar test facility operating there. They have already injected some 36,000 tons of CO2 at a depth of 650 meters (2,132 feet). Project coordinator Hilke Würdemann recently told SPIEGEL the results have been promising. "The conditions are as we expected."
'An Excuse to Keep Generating Power from Coal'
The site is equipped with monitoring devices that would shut down the system as soon as any leak is discovered. But even if CO2 were to creep into the drinking water despite all the safety precautions taken, scientists say it would merely carbonate the water, not unlike a soda.
CO2 , though, is heavier than air and could become dangerous if mass quantities were to collect at a single location, like in a valley. If CO2 reaches a concentration of 5 percent, it can cause headaches and dizziness. At 8 percent, it can cause respiratory failure. But researchers like GFZ's Michael Kühn argue that those risks are extremely limited. "If you hold your head under water long enough, you will also die," he says with a laugh.
------In Beeskow, opponents believe they have good chances of success for two reasons. In 2009, Kess was part of an effort to prevent Vattenfall from building a new soft coal power plant in Berlin. Under pressure from local residents, the company abandoned its plans. Now, he is determined to repeat this success in Beeskow.
Another historical example also gives them hope. The same year Kess fought Vattenfall in Berlin, German energy company RWE sought to open up a CCS facility in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein -- but ultimately failed. Residents there refused to live on top of large deposits of carbon dioxide -- and their sentiment was backed by the state government, comprised of the CDU and the normally business friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP).
If all else fails in the city's opposition to the CCS project, Mayor Steffen is hoping that the steep price alone will ultimately scare utility companies away. He argues that the technology is "too difficult and expensive to implement." Existing power plants would have to be outfitted with an expensive capturing device, and studies suggest that commercial carbon-capture coal plants would spend €40 to €60 ($50 to $80) for every ton of CO2 they avoid emitting.
Europe has an emissions trading program that provides incentives to utility companies to adopt greener energies, but with certificates currently trading at around €14 ($18) per ton, it may be a long time before carbon capture and storage is attractive to companies on a broad scale.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,druck-710573,00.html
We end for the weekend with more on the collective madness of the United States of Europe. The quicker Britain exits this nonsense the wealthier everyone in Britain will be. Below Gordon Brown’s sick Scots joke on Europe, Baroness Whatsit and her attempt to build a European tower of Babel. In EU la-la land, the unelected, unelectable Baroness is apparently worth £230,702 a year. How the unhappy Greeks must rolling in the aisles at Stalin MacBroon’s joke.
It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.
P.G. Wodehouse.
100 of Baroness Ashton's EU diplomats paid more than William Hague
More than 100 of the European Union diplomats working in Baroness Ashton's new Brussels diplomatic corps will be paid more than William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary.
By Bruno Waterfield, Brussels Published: 9:00PM BST 20 Aug 2010
At least 50 of her 114 senior officials will earn between £157,000 to £171,000 a year, higher salaries than David Cameron's annual wage of £142,500 in the new EU foreign service, which was created by the Lisbon Treaty.
As the EU's foreign minister, Lady Ashton earns £230,702 a year, making her the best paid female politician in the Western world, and controls a budget three times bigger than the British foreign office, despite never having been elected to public authority.
Senior EU figures have told The Daily Telegraph that concerns over the growing cost of creating the European External Action Service (EEAS) are growing at a time when national austerity measures are introducing deep cuts to public spending, including reductions in the British foreign office.
The bill for employing 80 new officials in the start up phase of the EEAS this October will be £7.8 million but European Commission documents express fears that an unknown amount must be set aside next year for spiralling costs of new EU delegations across the world.
A new budget will also include a Brussels building to house Lady Ashton's new EU diplomatic corps, which will employ 7,000 officials by 2013.
-----On top of the, as yet unknown, bill for creating the EEAS is a planned 19 per cent increase in spending on the "European Union as a global player" over the next two years.
The EU's new foreign policy have a budget of £8 billion (€9.7bn) by 2013.
Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.”
A.P. Herbert. Misleading Cases.
Have a great weekend everyone.
GI.
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