Former German Green Party Spokesman Calls for Re-evaluation of Nuclear.

[NNadir]

Shit-for-Brains NY Times columnist Tommy Freidman is not my favorite guy, especially since he bought, without even a trace of critical thinking, the Bush-Cheney rationale for the war in Iraq, hook, line and sinker. Moreover Shit-for-Brains Tommy Friedman has indeed, while pawning himself off as a "foreign policy expert," continued to speak of said war as if there were a shred of a rational issue in the entire fraud. Usually I can't bear to read any of the tedious crap he writes, but in my research on the climate for nuclear energy, I stumbled across his column from a few days ago.

My personal contempt for Shit-for-Brains Tommy Freidman aside, he reports something interesting in that column about a (presumably former) member of the German Green Party, its spokesperson in Saxony, who has joined an energy company and called for a re-evaluation of nuclear energy. (Apparently Tommy's taking time off from looking for weapons of mass destruction.) Of course, irrespective of being reported by a shit-for-brains, and being an article for a person who recently advocated the shit-for-brains German nuclear "phase out" that has resulted in new orders for coal plants, the article points out that even people with shit for brains can come to their senses.

European Green parties have tended to wrap their environmentalism in a very high-minded tone that was always more moralizing than strategic. For instance, Europe’s Greens led the global campaign against genetically modified crops, which will be critically important if we want to grow more of our fuel — à la corn ethanol or soy biodiesel. The Greens in Germany also forced the previous government to agree to phase out Germany’s nuclear power plants by 2021. That would mean uninstalling 30 percent of Germany’s energy capacity. It would be great if it were all replaced by wind or solar power, but it will most likely be replaced by coal.

Jürgen Hogrefe, who was spokesman for the Green Party in Lower Saxony, Germany, in the 1980s, is today a senior executive with EnBW, a German energy company with nuclear plants.

“The Green Party has been extremely important for German society,” he said, helping to transform the post-Nazi society into a more liberal domain. But an antinuclear stance has been at the core of the party, and now that the German mainstream has embraced a green agenda, the Greens need to rethink nuclear energy. “The Green Party should redefine itself,” added Mr. Hogrefe. “In some fields they are very modern party. ... But concerning nuclear energy and ecology they are stubborn, not open enough to see what is happening around the globe.”

Of course, I don't think that in general, many Green Parties around the world are elitist organizations for consumerist brats with weak thinking skills - the political arms of the luddite denial that characterizes the Greenpeace School for Clowns and Acrobats that has somehow become confused with environmentalism by many media organizations. (In so noting I remark that our own Green Party put up a consumer activist to mutter stupid banalities in 2000, thereby helping the world end up with the freak George W. Bush, who, as it turns out, was not quite the same as Al Gore.)

Nor do I think that Tommy has a clue when it comes to issue of energy. (Witness his remarks about biodiesel).

Still, the article referenced, in the case that Tommy Freidman has accidentally found himself reporting the truth, would seem to suggest that even if you're as dumb as a German Green Party member, you can, if hit over the head hard enough, face reality.

By the way and off-topic, I suspect that his claim about the relevance of the the German Green Party overstates its influence in helping Germany overcome its Nazi past, but that's hardly relevant to the matter at hand. One should always expect a member of a "Green Party" to be more than a little deluded and self-important.

Hopefully there will be a sea change in the German "Green" commitment to choke us with more coal because of something they heard on TV about nuclear power. I personally expect the German nuclear "phase out" to set a modern European record for the shortest lived "nuclear phase-out" in history, but serious damage has already been done, since the Germans are building coal plant capacity like there is no tomorrow - which, because of the coal, there may not be.

Should one be interested, one may wade through Tommy's tortured prose and pixilated reasoning at the New York Times website or here: http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/14000538.html

[greenparty]

1. hey look its angry guy

laughing.you seem to need to convince people that nooklear is all that will save the world.Why is that?
Someone got u on a payroll?

[NNadir]

2. It's reward enough for me to fight ignorance. A noble calling no?

;-)

What it's really about is that I am so fucking warn out with rote thinking that I'm angry. As I have two children, it's reality important that I address pernicious myths that if allowed to fester, will most likely place them in great danger. It's not easy. People have a certain attachment to their ignornance.

[greenparty]

3. kids huh?

Thats fuckin scary.For them.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. Offer solutions.

Hey, you're the one who said it.

But every post I've seen with your name on it is a piece of insult-filled juvenilia.

You don't like NNadir? You say it's a personal thing? Fine. Take it to e-mail, then.

You don't like "nookoolar" or "nucklaar" or "nuKKKlear" or however you've decided to mis-spell it today to flaunt your opposition to it? Fine, too. Offer solutions.

Leave the junior high school rhetoric to the Republicans. They're much better at it than you are. That's not a reflection on your intelligence -- it's simply that they have a lot more practice at it than you do.

Supporting nuclear power does not make someone a "scary" parent. Similarly, supporting nuclear power doesn't imply liking the music of Lawrence Welk, wearing polyester clothing or a mullet hair-do, or owning a picture of Elvis Presley painted on black velvet. If you want to make an insult, at least put a little work and creativity into the effort.

--p!

[greenparty]

13. LAUGHING

Have you even looked at that freaks posts?
before you go to protect your own why dont you take a look at those posts.Look at the responses to others.
What did you find?







Sorry,unfair request,i know you wont look.Takes effort devoid of emotion.
and if i actually try to insult someone,trust me you will know it.Anyway why would i waste good stuff on an emotionally unstable mental patient?

[Dead_Parrot]

14. Both Pidwideon and NNadir...

...have been posting on E/E for as long as I care to think about, and I'm sure they're perfectly aware of each others posts. And whilst NNadir is a grumpy old fart, he does know more about nuclear energy than you ever will. While you are pissing your time away trying to get your centralised A/C working from PV, he's more worried about what the other 6.5 billion people without that sort of cash are going to do.

As a bonus, he doesn't have a pathological fear of capitalisation or the space bar.

So, laughing boy, what is your solution to the climate/energy problem? Gas water heating and solar A/C for everyone, right?

[greenparty]

16. In all that time

Has he himself reduced one Watt of power that comes from coal plants?Sequestered one Kg of carbon from the atmosphere?In all the talk here has he singlehandedly forced the opening af any new nuke plants in the united states?NO <space> <space> (and btw grammar king,capitalisation is spelled with a Zee) tee-hee!
Laughing but i guess what both of you have is a patholigical fear of actually making a diffrence because your solution is just sating emotional needs by venting on a chat board.
Do you think if you sit here and talk,for even 150 years that you will promote some sort of change in regards to nuclear power?Any at all?
When you die will you say well, i tried to be a good person so i TALKED about good things?But didnt accomplish anything?
Honestly i dont care if people go to renewables here i just came in really to see if democrats were using them yet and if they were viewed as a weapon.
I dont shit on people who dont use it on or try to sell product.I help those that want to get offline or reduce with info and use myself as a case history. For those that cant afford or are on the fence about solar,i fully respect it because at least they are willing to look at other options.However i will shit on people like you who dont use them because you are trying to parrot industry line(without acknowledgment) and then rail against those who are actually fighting the industry.
If either of you were about anything real other than personal comraderie or ego stroking,you would really be saying,yes using solar is a good interim way to reduce grid load and take operating capital away from the coal industry.But all you do is try to get across that nuke is the only answer.Know what you are selling?Hopelessness.That all people can do to solve the energy scam is to sit back and wait for the next nuke plant to open.Maybe you can protest and send in letters to your congressman to make yourself feel better about doing nothing...till then just stay indignant and angry with us.

Im not trying to save the world,just clean up and facilitate progress in my part of it.I posted it elsewhere but i deny coal 1,200$ a year in revenues.That was due to the very simple decision to install and use solar panels.I reduced my gas usage by 35-40% by installing a flash water heater.It was my only option,if it wouldnt have cost 5k to remodel the house to install passive solar WH,i would have used it.The other 125's(125W solar panels) im making will take the a/c offline.Done in feb/march.
I compost and i live in suburbia.No lawn waste goes to the landfill,i use the mulch to cover bare spots on the lawn.
I use mostly cfl's where i can stand the light which has saved almost 500W in power.
I have a roof solar fan that replaced a non working ac unit that pulled 350W and did zero,the solar fan works like a champ and is absolutely stand alone.
For outdoor and deck lighting i use solar spotlights that use led's.
My lawnmower is electric and im converting my vehicle as soon as i can find a dc motor that has enough power and will fit.Also have to figure alternative transportation while i am converting. Gotten a ton of great info from evconvert that basically will make it possible as i can ask questions if i get stuck.
So yeah,thats what i do.Will it save every single energy problem in the united states?Hell no but its not meant to.Its meant to solve ME contributing to the problem.You know,dont be part of the problem but be part of the solution?
Now think if all others felt this same way.Grid demand would be nothing.
Whats happening now is a wave of laws requiring BIPV(building integrated photovoltaic) in new construction.This stuff will be getting to congress in 07',that furthers the scope of what will be permanently taken offline.Businesses are starting to see that if they reduce their energy expenditures it means more profit for them by releasing themselves from city or county power.
Wont just be residential.
So keep talkin nuke and all the other useless shit but remember this one thing,for anyone of these guys that has unscrewed a lightbulb and replaced it with a CFL-in that one act- has done more than you have done in 40-50-80,000 posts here to fight against coal and oil.And oh so renegade of you,pimping nuke.That reduction of 40W just took .005 cents from the local coal plant and reduced a part of the carbon load hitting our skies.
You?Have talked alot....about stuff.Who cares if you know the nuke industry down to the molecule if it is resource inaccessible to consumers?
So knowing the matrix has you and the fact that i no longer link war with morons,heres a simple link i posted elsewhere from NREL.
You can spend hours pouring over it,looking for ways to credit nuke over it or just ignore it and say whatevs..nuke is the answer! but the fact is if we implemented wind and solar and realized all of the potential that goes absolutely unused everyday,nuke,coal and gas could be eliminated.

http://www.nrel.gov/wind/wind_potential.html
oh shit im posting two im a liar now.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/07/offshore_wind_c.php

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Oh dear...

Has he himself reduced one Watt of power that comes from coal plants?
Yes. But knowing that would require reading his posts, so I don't expect you to learn that any time soon.

Sequestered one Kg of carbon from the atmosphere?
What, like hiding a bag of charcoal in a disused tin mine? What a weird thing to say.

In all the talk here has he singlehandedly forced the opening af any new nuke plants in the united states?
No. Have you single-handedly installed a GW of PV?

(and btw grammar king,capitalisation is spelled with a Zee)
Well, let's see. Either you're too ignorant to know that most English-speaking countries usually use an 's', or just not bright enough to realise that includes me. You choose. ;)

tee-hee!
Indeed.

...that both of you have is a patholigical fear of actually making a diffrence...
Actually, you're right, but not for for the reasons you think. I don't want to make a difference to the atmosphere, which is why I haven't driven anywhere for 4 months and use plantation wood to heat my water.

Do you think if you sit here and talk,for even 150 years that you will promote some sort of change in regards to nuclear power?Any at all?
Well, I can hope. If humanity spends the next 30 years waiting for TWh-scale storage for renewables, and then wonders why the Amazon is a desert, at least we can die smugly saying "told you so". Some people are bright enough to listen.

When you die will you say well, i tried to be a good person so i TALKED about good things?But didn't accomplish anything?
No, I'll say "At least I gave my spare cash to people who needed it, rather than pissing it away on toys."

...all you do is try to get across that nuke is the only answer
Actually, no. Neither of us has that idea, but again you'd have to actually read our posts to understand that, rather than making a rather spectacular jump to the wrong conclusion. We both want as much renewable power as possible, but we want people to understand that is not going to be enough in the time we're got left. Vague projections like "40% renewable power by 2040" are too little, too late: The only means of producing lots of power without CO₂ that we have are nuclear and hydro. You need to understand that if we're going to make any impact on climate change, we need to use all the tools at our disposal.

solar is a good interim way to reduce grid load and take operating capital away from the coal industry
No, solar is a good eventual way of getting off fossil fuels, when we've sorted the storage and brought the price down. Nuclear is a good interim way of getting off - it works at night and produces similar amounts of power to coal.

Im not trying to save the world,just clean up and facilitate progress in my part of it
Fair enough, you're in a position to do that. But consider, for a moment, the rest of the world that can't take your route: Would you keep them in poverty? pay for their PV panels? or might you consider an alternative?

You give a list of things you've done and are doing, and it's a nice list (although I might suggest digging up your lawn and growing your own veg, and using a bike or public transport. Nice and easy, and you don't need to worry about charging it up.) Although from an environmental viewpoint, you probably got it backwards - I think the car should have been first, then the water-heater, then the rest of the house. A good solution for off-grid independence, though.

Will it save every single energy problem in the united states?Hell no but its not meant to.Its meant to solve ME contributing to the problem.
Quite so. But this is a global problem that requires a global response: Multiply your costs for all of this by 6,500,000,000 and you'll see why that horse just won't run.

anyone... that has unscrewed a lightbulb and replaced it with a CFL-in that one act- has done more than you have done in 40-50-80,000 posts here to fight against coal and oil.
More spectacularly wrong conclusions. sigh.

the fact is if we implemented wind and solar and realized all of the potential that goes absolutely unused everyday,nuke,coal and gas could be eliminated.
Yes... If we could use it. Go look at your back-up batteries. Then go look at a freight train using 10MW, or a decent-sized aluminium smelter using ~3GW, 24x7, and try to imagine the batteries you'd need to keep them running overnight, or on a windless weekend. That's why we need nuclear or hydro: Efficient homes help, and self sufficient homes help a lot, but it's not going to solve the problem by a long way: And that's without a major shift to hydrogen or electric transport, which - at the current pattern of usage - would double the generating requirements. This is where NNadir's energy chart comes in handy - If you would consider looking at it, that is.

Or, as mentioned earlier, come up with an alternative...

[Dogmudgeon]

20. Too hip for the room, huh?

Enjoy your stay.

--p!

[Odin2005]

4. Go away troll.

I used to be anti-nuclear, then I got a brain.

[greenparty]

5. and i bet you

use absolutely zero renewables.Is your local power co using nuke or coal?Probably dont know or care just want to sit and parrot that nuke will solve everything in the world.The maverick democrat pimping nuke.It would be funny if it wasnt so stupid.
That i am against nooklear as a one solution approach and show that renewables are a viable alternative and am called a troll for it is awesome.
Thanks cheney jr..Sr.-el nadir is proud of you.
Keep paying power bills and continue sitting in darkness when the failing grid of ours leaves you sucking your thumb when the inevitable storms CO2 is creating blow the grid to pieces.

[Porcupine]

6. Thanks and welcome to DU!! Swat the "toxics for profits" idiots....

for me a few more times will you. Of course there is nothing that is more toxic than plutonium.

Nuclear power is the production of toxics for everybody to deal with for the profits of the few. Nothing more.

Distributed power generation is cheaper, cleaner and more affordable but General Electric cannot control the profits. Given the profit motive involved it is clearly feasable for a company like GE to pay somebody to troll the larger discussion boards and post a never-ending chain of pro-nuke posts. I wonder who that person is?

[NickB79]

7. So you live off the grid?

"Keep paying power bills and continue sitting in darkness when the failing grid of ours leaves you sucking your thumb when the inevitable storms CO2 is creating blow the grid to pieces."

The only way you could justify that statement is if you lived off the grid, since then you wouldn't be affected if the power grid goes down.

How many solar panels and wind turbines do you own on your land?

[NNadir]

8. Um, you know something about Democrats too, Nader-boy?

Is there some reason you feel qualified to remark on what Democrats should think?

This thread is about the amazing (and rare) incidence of a Green Party member who has perceived reality. Such an occurrence is so rare that it has to be reported in the New York Times, of course.

Of course, the total ignorance that one associates with Green Parties on the subject of energy reality is international legion, but here in the US, we have an even more graphic demonstration that one must have, at best, a loose grip on reality to be a Green. Almost as dumb as Green Party confusion about energy is the confusion about politics. We had a Green Party candidate, a quasi-Repuke, announcing to the world in 2000 that "Bush is the same as Gore." This same candidate, who got rich on embezzlement and Union busting, has the temerity to attempt to say what Democrats should be.

http://www.discussanything.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5506&page=5

http://kneedeepinmud.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_kneedeepinmud_archive.html


And Ralph Nader would like to thank you for your support.

Yes, the same man who rails against corporate welfare - because it coercively takes money from taxpayers and funnels it to corporations - has set up a rather ingenious, if underhanded and manipulative, way of coercively taking money from college kids - and funneling it to Ralph Nader.

The PIRG scam is short for "Public Interest Research Group," and there are well over a hundred chapters of the organization spread out across the country. The scams vary from campus to campus, but it basically works like this:

Each time your kid registers for classes, the local PIRG chapter has arranged with the school to tack a fee on to his/her tuition. On most every campus, the PIRG chapter has made attempts to make this "contribution" as secretive and misleading as possible. Just how secretive and manipulative the method depends on how much resistance each chapter has met in trying to get the scheme implemented. At most schools, they first attempt to make the fee both mandatory and nonrefundable. If that doesn't work, they lobby for as underhanded and sneaky a scheme as the school will allow.

This has been going on for twenty-five years.

I think the world knows the reality of the Green Party's representations about who is and is not "the same as Gore."

In a way, it's almost sad that Ralph Nader never got to sit in the White House except, maybe when he went there to pick up a check from Karl Rove for all of his hard work. Given the general intellectual level of his supporters, were Ralph elected President, we could hope for an undated version of the classic National Lampoon cover originally used for Gerald Ford, but that would have certainly appropriate for a putative President Nader (It would certainly suit even Nader's pal, George "same as Gore" Bush, as well obviously.)



Man, I would love to see a Nader version of that picture!

We Democrats all know that the Green/Repuke alliance for Dem-bashing is a fraud by rich people for rich people of the worst kind: The kind who steal. No wonder Ralphie and Bushie are so cozy!

Personally, I don't mind Green/Repuke trolls here though. Every time they open their mouths they tell us what they are and the poor quality of their minds. In fact, I note that your grammar is particularly freeper like. Apparently the similarity between the Repukes and the Greens extends farther than puffing up the international criminal George W. Bush. It extends to language itself.

[phantom power]

9. I own three Hummers, which I fuel with oil rendered from baby seal fat.

*yawn*

[mainegreen]

12. *snort*

:rofl:

[NNadir]

15. How many dead baby seals can you get in each hummer?

I'm thinking of joining Greenpeace and feel that I must have a Hummer like yours to drive to meetings to share renewable strategies.

[phantom power]

18. Not enough seals to keep them running. I must have them trucked in.

I had to get a city variance for the seal-clubbing platform and the rendering cauldron. Tempe bent the rules a bit by allowing seal stockyard on property zoned for horses.

Relations with my neighbors have been tense. But goddammit, I will endure, to promote the cause of biodiesel.

[NNadir]

19. Well I think you should recognize the renewable energy potentiail of horses.

If you have large native deposits of horses, you can place them in vats and subject them to supercritical water oxidation obtaining lots of biodiesel and ethanol.

I will look around the internet to find a picture of a bench top horse rendering unit and a Volkswagen diesel Jetta and thereby prove that global climate change can easily be solved by horse rendering.

Or you can use the horses to pull your plow to farm the Arizona corn fields or switchgrass fields or whatever. Or you can harness the seals to tow your Hummer to California and go to Arnie's hydrogen station.

[mainegreen]

11. Tommy Freidman=Shit-for-Brains?!?!?!

Tell us how you really feel!
:rofl:

It's funny because you rarely are so direct like that about someone!