Just some quick words on Germany and its manufacturing industry: Germany is now third behind the US and Russia in world wide arms sales.

http://www.thebeginner.eu/europe/181-the-german-arms-industry

Senior Victorian, it must be nice for you, & Julia Brown to take the broad picture, "It will all be OK in a year or so", if you are nicely secure. Not so nice for a worker, with a big mortgage, & a couple of kids at school.

We've had a rash these ratbags being something of the year, & they all seem to be anti CO2, & believers in global warming. Well, what do you know, when our PM is trying to gather supporters for her fool policies, the band wagon riders get covered in confetti.

The problem is the way we are going, Greece, & the rest of Europe bar Germany, here we come.

Europe, except Germany, is a perfect example of a tertiary service economy, & anyone with half a brain can see, they don't work. Sooner or later everyone runs out of money to pay for their washing, if no one actually produces something. Hell, we're even importing our washing machines.

Yes I know it's hard for our academics & dreamers to believe, but it is only when you produce something, that you generate wealth. Teaching teachers is all well & good, but someone has to pick up the bill. Currently without our miners we'd all be starving.

With our wealth of minerals & coal, we should be the steel & aluminum producer for all Asia, not a rapidly failing bunch of public servants, flogging off our dirt.

Leave the conspiracies for Arjay. Hasbeen hates any thing to do with an alt; source of energy. He is just going to get used to it.
Alcoa has been in its last throws for years. It's no surprise for the workers. The plant is old and inefficient. People are not buying local cars like before. So local use of aluminium alloy's is limited.

Roses1

Germany has nothing like 20 per cent power from alt energy - 10 per cent is closer - and certainly not in winter. The PV panels which are a feature of its alt energy program have been buried under snow for weeks. SA may get 20 per cent.

But to prove that those alt energy projects are anything but useless you'd have to show that they actually save carbon. Bear in mind that wind farms have to be built virtually in addition to the fossil fuel plant network (the Australian Energy Market Operator has declared the capacity factor it will allow for wind farms and it is very low), and that their use on the network will require major changes in the way it is operated and the mix of conventional plants it will use. There is also the question of additional spinning reserves that have to be kept handy when there is more wind power on the system.

All of those points greatly reduce the carbon savings from those projects, possibly to nill, and a lot of carbon has to be generated to manufacture them in the first place. The savings the green industry sometimes claim for those things are assumed savings. they don't take any of hidden penalties into account.

This has all been discussed many times, in this forum and elsewhere. The wind farms - actually there is no PV in Aus apart from the rooftop stuff - are useless. They are there to make the greens feel better, and increase electricity prices. They have no other use.

Dream on 579.

I'll dance on the grave of global warming, & I hope the gravy train is in it, when I do.

I really hope people like you are investing in those wind farms. Promoting the fraud as you do, has probably cost thousands of dollars of other peoples taxes.

HasBeen what has it got to do with global warming. Coal and oil are getting dear these days.
The big smelter in WA is running its power on Gas, a better option at least. There was a hold up with the gas pipe line, but that has been overcome. Of course Abbott accused the Carbon Tax for the hold up, but that was debunked by Alcoa.
An other day of negativity from the opposition, nothing new there, they can not bring them-self to be curious about the economy at all.