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“Environmentalism is a noble cause. It is damaged by propaganda and half-truths.” Camille Pagliapolicies often result in unintended consequences where some political fad causes more harm than good. This is very true of environmental regulation and management. For example, arresting controlled burn of under brush in Australia and California because of protests about the smoke has a much worse consequence when wild fires become so much more intense and dangerous because of the fuel load of the abandoned under brush.Government action of Paris Accord is too tepid to matter to the any warming but if continued will cause untold harm for no benefit to the environment as there is no climate crisis and CO2 is very beneficial for plants and at best a very minor GHG and worse causes cooling as much as warming. We need more CO2 for a healthy environment not less.Switching our energy from fossil fuels to wind and solar is wrong and very costly killing more from heat poverty from high cost electricity than lives lost from road accidents. Also the attack on coal powered energy has no effect on the climate while denying grid electricity benefits to millions in underdeveloped countries.Refusing to do adequate controlled burns in desert forests like Australia and California because of environmental protests about the smoke.[My intent in posting an answer is to provide references and studies that show leading scientists find no climate crisis from CO2. Also to expose the debacle of wind and solar as alternatives to fossil fuels. Also to show studies of the causes of wild fires today and in the past proving that it is “ridiculously inadequate controlled burn of the under bush” not climate change that pushes the fires out of control.]ReferencesThe public are badly mislead thinking wind and solar are the way forward and better than coal and nuclear.In reality wind and solar failing miserable as alternatives to fossil fuels globally. Indeed solar has 0% of world consumption by 2014 notwithstanding huge subsidies. THE KEY PROBLEM IS INTERMITTENCY CAUSING FULL DUPLICATION AND EXPENSE OF RUNNING FOSSIL FUEL BACK UP.HYDRO AND NUCLEAR ARE THE MOST PROMISING ALTERNATIVES TO OIL AND GAS.https://seekingalpha.com/article/3254825-global-energy-trends-bp-statistical-review-2015The hypothesis of a climate crisis from increased but minute amounts of CO2 is false according to these studies and leading scientists.There is no significant man-made Global Warming underway and the science on which the computer projections of weather chaos are based is badly flawed.John Coleman QuotesBelieve it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming... it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. Climate change - it happens, with or without our help.Roy SpencerCamille PagliaAmerican criticDescriptionCamille Anna Paglia is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. WikipediaJust wondering what your thoughts are on the global warming issue. Have you seen the Al Gore movie? Any thoughts on the current debate on climate science?Many thanks,AprilVancouverOh, great, here comes the hornet's nest!As a native of upstate New York, whose dramatic landscape was carved by the receding North American glacier 10,000 years ago, I have been contemplating the principle of climate change since I was a child. Niagara Falls, as well as the even bigger dry escarpment of Clark Reservation near Syracuse, is a memento left by the glacier. So is nearby Green Lakes State Park, with its mysteriously deep glacial pools. When I was 10, I lived with my family at the foot of a drumlin -- a long, undulating hill of moraine formed by eddies of the ancient glacier melt.Geology and meteorology are fields that have always interested me and that I might well have entered, had I not been more attracted to art and culture. (My geology professor in college, in fact, asked me to consider geology as a career.) To conflate vast time frames with volatile daily change is a sublime exercise, bordering on the metaphysical.However, I am a skeptic about what is currently called global warming. I have been highly suspicious for years about the political agenda that has slowly accrued around this issue. As a lapsed Catholic, I detest dogma in any area. Too many of my fellow Democrats seem peculiarly credulous at the moment, as if, having ground down organized religion into nonjudgmental, feel-good therapy, they are hungry for visions of apocalypse. From my perspective, virtually all of the major claims about global warming and its causes still remain to be proved.Climate change, keyed to solar cycles, is built into Earth's system. Cooling and warming will go on forever. Slowly rising sea levels will at some point doubtless flood lower Manhattan and seaside houses everywhere from Cape Cod to Florida -- as happened to Native American encampments on those very shores. Human habitation is always fragile and provisional. People will migrate for the hills, as they have always done.Who is impious enough to believe that Earth's contours are permanent? Our eyes are simply too slow to see the shift of tectonic plates that has raised the Himalayas and is dangling Los Angeles over an unstable fault. I began "Sexual Personae" (parodying the New Testament): "In the beginning was nature." And nature will survive us all. Man is too weak to permanently affect nature, which includes infinitely more than this tiny globe.I voted for Ralph Nader for president in the 2000 election because I feel that the United States needs a strong Green Party. However, when I tried to watch Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" on cable TV recently, I wasn't able to get past the first 10 minutes. I was snorting with disgust at its manipulations and distortions and laughing at Gore's lugubrious sentimentality, which was painfully revelatory of his indecisive, self-thwarting character. When Gore told a congressional hearing last month that there is a universal consensus among scientists about global warming -- which is blatantly untrue -- he forfeited his own credibility.Environmentalism is a noble cause. It is damaged by propaganda and half-truths. Every industrialized society needs heightened consciousness about its past, present and future effects on the biosphere. Though I am a libertarian, I am a strong supporter of vigilant scrutiny and regulation of industry by local, state and federal agencies. But there must be a balance with the equally vital need for economic development, especially in the Third World.Real inconvenient truthsWhat if we are in the beginning of a new Little Ice Age epoch making any concern about the climate getting too hot terrible folly?Brutal record cold winters with massive snowfall contradict the alarmism predictions of what winter should be like if warming is a reality.NewsNewfoundland Snowpocalypse Day Five: Trading Smokes for PepsiOur four key resources now are pop, cigarettes, beer, and chips. Control the corner stores, control the Island.By Drew BrownJan 21 2020, 10:45amA SOLDIER FROM THE 4TH ARTILLERY REGIMENT BASED AT CFB GAGETOWN CLEARS SNOW AT A RESIDENCE IN ST. JOHN’S ON MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ANDREW VAUGHANGentle reader, please forgive these shaky hands; the shoveling has broken my arms. It has been five days since St. John’s first declared a state of emergency after a monster blizzard gusting up to 170 km/h dumped more than six feet of snow on the city in a day. Civilization has ground to a halt under snow drifts 12 feet deep. Snowmobiles blast through uncleared city streets and Holloway Street has been turned into the island’s sickest ski jump. We shiver under the spectre of martial law as Canadian troops patrol the roads with fearsome plastic scoops in search of seniors who need aid. Snowbanks rise like towering mountains from the city sidewalks.http://HTTPS://WWW.VICE.COM/EN_CA/ARTICLE/DYG7VV/NEWFOUNDLAND-SNOWPOCALYPSE-DAY-FIVE-TRADING-SMOKES-FOR-PEPSIDr. Tim Ball: The Evidence Proves That CO2 Is Not A Greenhouse GasSeptember 14, 2018 Pam Barker ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT, Tyranny 0Tim Ball: The Evidence Proves That CO2 Is Not A Greenhouse GasDR. TIM BALL“The CO2 error is the root of the biggest scam in the history of the world, and has already bilked nations and citizens out of trillions of dollars, while greatly enriching the perpetrators. In the end, their goal is global Technocracy (aka Sustainable Development), which grabs and sequesters all the resources of the world into a collective trust to be managed by them. ⁃ Technocracy News EditorThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim of human-caused global warming (AGW) is built on the assumption that an increase in atmospheric CO2 causes an increase in global temperature. The IPCC claim is what science calls a theory, a hypothesis, or in simple English, a speculation. Every theory is based on a set of assumptions. The standard scientific method is to challenge the theory by trying to disprove it. Karl Popper wrote about this approach in a 1963 article, Science as Falsification. Douglas Yates said, “No scientific theory achieves public acceptance until it has been thoroughly discredited.”Thomas Huxley made a similar observation.“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”In other words, all scientists must be skeptics, which makes a mockery out of the charge that those who questioned AGW, were global warming skeptics. Michael Shermer provides a likely explanation for the effectiveness of the charge.“Scientists are skeptics. It’s unfortunate that the word ‘skeptic’ has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it’s just thoughtful inquiry.”The scientific method was not used with the AGW theory. In fact, the exact opposite occurred, they tried to prove the theory. It is a treadmill guaranteed to make you misread, misrepresent, misuse and selectively choose data and evidence. This is precisely what the IPCC did and continued to do.A theory is used to produce results. The results are not wrong, they are only as right as the assumptions on which they are based. For example, Einstein used his theory of relativity to produce the most famous formula in the world: e = mc2. You cannot prove it wrong mathematically because it is the end product of the assumptions he made. To test it and disprove it, you challenge one or all of the assumptions. One of these is represented by the letter “c” in the formula, which assumes nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Scientists challenging the theory are looking for something moving faster than the speed of light.The most important assumption behind the AGW theory is that an increase in global atmospheric CO2 will cause an increase in the average annual global temperature. The problem is that in every record of temperature and CO2, the temperature changes first. Think about what I am saying. The basic assumption on which the entire theory that human activity is causing global warming or climate change is wrong. The questions are, how did the false assumption develop and persist?The answer is the IPCC needed the assumption as the basis for their claim that humans were causing catastrophic global warming for a political agenda. They did what all academics do and found a person who gave historical precedence to their theory. In this case, it was the work of Svante Arrhenius. The problem is, he didn’t say what they claim. Anthony Watts’ 2009 article identified many of the difficulties with relying on Arrhenius. The Friends of Science added confirmation when they translated a more obscure 1906 Arrhenius work. They wrote,Much discussion took place over the following years between colleagues, with one of the main points being the similar effect of water vapour in the atmosphere which was part of the total figure. Some rejected any effect of CO2 at all. There was no effective way to determine this split precisely, but in 1906 Arrhenius amended his view of how increased carbon dioxide would affect climate.The issue of Arrhenius mistaking a water vapor effect for a CO2 effect is not new. What is new is that the growing level of empirical evidence of the warming effect of CO2, known as climate sensitivity, is zero. This means Arrhenius’ colleagues who “rejected any effect of CO2 at all” are correct. In short, CO2 is not a greenhouse gas.The IPCC through the definition of climate change given them by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) were able to predetermine their results.a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.This allowed them to only examine human causes, thus eliminating almost all other variables of climate and climate change. You cannot identify the human portion if you don’t know or understand natural, that is without human, climate or climate change. IPCC acknowledged this in 2007 as people started to ask questions about the narrowness of their work. They offered the one that many people thought they were using and should have been using. Deceptively, it only appeared as a footnote in the 2007 Summary for Policymakers (SPM), so it was aimed at the politicians. It said,“Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”Few at the time challenged the IPCC assumption that an increase in CO2 caused an increase in global temperature. The IPCC claimed it was true because, when they increased CO2 in their computer models, the result was a temperature increase. Of course, the computer was programmed for that to happen. These computer models are the only place in the world where a CO2 increase precedes and causes a temperature change. This probably explains why their predictions are always wrong.An example of how the definition allowed the IPCC to focus on CO2 is to consider the major greenhouse gases by name and percentage of the total. They are water vapour (H20) 95%, carbon dioxide (CO2) 4%, and methane (CH4) 0.036%. The IPCC was able to overlook water vapor (95%) by admitting humans produce some, but the amount is insignificant relative to the total atmospheric volume of water vapour. The human portion of the CO2 in the atmosphere is approximately 3.4% of the total CO2 (Figure 1). To put that in perspective, approximately a 2% variation in water vapour completely overwhelms the human portion of CO2. This is entirely possible because water vapour is the most variable gas in the atmosphere, from region to region and over time.Figure 1In 1999, after two IPCC Reports were produced in 1990 and 1995 assuming a CO2 increase caused a temperature increase, the first significant long term Antarctic ice core record appeared. Petit, Raynaud, and Lorius were presented as the best representation of levels of temperature, CO2, and deuterium over 420,000 years. It appeared the temperature and CO2 were rising and falling in concert, so the IPCC and others assumed this proved that CO2 was causing temperature variation. I recall Lorius warning against rushing to judgment and saying there was no indication of such a connection.Euan Mearns noted in his robust assessment that the authors believed that temperature increase preceded CO2 increase:In their seminal paper on the Vostok Ice Core, Petit et al (1999) [1] note that CO2 lags temperature during the onset of glaciations by several thousand years but offer no explanation. They also observe that CH4 and CO2 are not perfectly aligned with each other but offer no explanation. The significance of these observations are therefore ignored. At the onset of glaciations temperature drops to glacial values before CO2 begins to fall suggesting that CO2 has little influence on temperature modulation at these times.Lorius reconfirmed his position in a 2007 article.“our [East Antarctica, Dome C] ice core shows no indication that greenhouse gases have played a key role in such a coupling [with radiative forcing]”Despite this, those promoting the IPCC claims ignored the empirical evidence. They managed to ignore the facts and have done so to this day. Joanne Nova explains part of the reason they were able to fool the majority in her article, “The 800 year lag in CO2 after temperature – graphed.” when she wrote confirming the Lorius concern.“It’s impossible to see a lag of centuries on a graph that covers half a million years, so I have regraphed the data from the original sources…”Nova concluded after expanding and more closely examining the data that,The bottom line is that rising temperatures cause carbon levels to rise. Carbon may still influence temperatures, but these ice cores are neutral on that. If both factors caused each other to rise significantly, positive feedback would become exponential. We’d see a runaway greenhouse effect. It hasn’t happened. Some other factor is more important than carbon dioxide, or carbon’s role is minor.Al Gore knew the ice core data showed temperature changing first. In his propaganda movie, An Inconvenient Truth, he separated the graph of temperature and CO2 enough to make a comparison of the two graphs more difficult. He then distracted with Hollywood histrionics by riding up on a forklift to the distorted 20th century reading.Thomas Huxley said,“The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a lovely hypothesis by an ugly fact.”The most recent ugly fact was that after 1998, CO2 levels continued to increase but global temperatures stopped increasing. Other ugly facts included the return of cold, snowy winters creating a PR problem by 2004. Cartoons appeared (Figure 2.)Figure 2The people controlling the AGW deception were aware of what was happening. Emails from 2004 leaked from the University of East Anglia revealed the concern. Nick at the Minns/Tyndall Centre that handled publicity for the climate story said,“In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public relations problem with the media.”Swedish climate expert on the IPCC Bo Kjellen replied,“I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global warming.”The disconnect between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperatures continued after 1998. The level of deliberate blindness of what became known as the “pause” or the hiatus became ridiculous (Figure 3).Figure 3“The assumption that an increase in CO2 causes an increase in temperature was incorrectly claimed in the original science by Arrhenius. He mistakenly attributed the warming caused by water vapour (H2O) to CO2. All the evidence since confirms the error. This means CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. There is a greenhouse effect, and it is due to the water vapour. The entire claim that CO and especially human CO2 is absolutely wrong, yet these so-called scientists convinced the world to waste trillions on reducing CO2. If you want to talk about collusion, consider the cartoon in Figure 4.Figure 4″************Original articleDr. Tim Ball: The Evidence Proves That CO2 Is Not A Greenhouse Gas | Europe ReloadedSo-called renewables comprised just over 11% of U.S. energy consumption in 2017. Of the renewable sources, hydro, geothermal, and biomass aren’t going to grow enough to achieve any of the Green New Deal’s goals.Rep.-elect Ocasio-Cortez must be counting on wind and solar to power her plan. Together they supply just 3% of total energy consumed.If we confine the discussion to power generation, wind and solar comprise just 7.6% of the 4 trillion kilowatt-hour total. (Source: What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source?)Renewable energy’s dreadful costs and awful electricityUnreliable capacity and excessively high costs make renewable energy nothing more than a ‘green’ idealogue’s dream12 DECEMBER 2018 - 13:55 ANDREW KENNYWind turbines are not the way to go, says Andrew Kenny, just ask Germany. Picture: THINKSTOCKSA is stumbling towards energy disaster. On top of Eskom’s failures comes the calamitous Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2018, a plan for ruinously expensive electricity. (The IRP 2018, drawn up by the department of energy, plans SA’s electricity supply.) The IRP is mad, based not on the real world but on a fantasy world of computer models.The IRP’s “least-cost option” is in fact the most expensive option possible, which has seen electricity costs soaring wherever it has been tried. This is a combination of wind, solar and imported gas. It was drawn up by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and supported by the IRP. It is a recipe for calamity.It seems strange that SA should forsake its own huge resources of reliable energy and depend on foreign sources. Worse is its reliance on unreliable solar and wind.South Australia actually did implement something like the CSIR’s “least-cost option”. It closed coal stations, built wind turbines and some solar plants, and supplemented them with natural gas, which Australia, unlike SA, has in abundance. The result was soaring electricity prices, reaching, at one point in July 2016, the astonishing figure of A$14,000/MWh (R140/kWh). Eskom’s average selling price is R0.89/kWh. The “least-cost solution” resulted momentarily in an electricity price more than 150 times Eskom’s. It would be worse here because we don’t have much gas.The renewable energy companies and the greens seem to have captured the department of energy (quite legally, quite differently from Gupta capture)It also caused two total blackouts for South Australia. In panic it ordered the world’s biggest battery from Elon Musk. Jaws dropped when people discovered how expensive it was and how inadequate (with 0.5% of the storage capacity of our Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme).The IRP and CSIR refuse to recognise the essential cost that makes renewables so expensive. Here is the key equation: cost of renewable electricity equals price paid by the system operator plus system costs.The system costs are the costs the grid operator, Eskom in our case, has to bear to accommodate the appalling fluctuations of wind and solar power so as to meet demand at all times. The renewable companies refuse to reveal their production figures but I have graphs of total renewable production since 2013, the beginning of renewable energy independent power producers (IPPS) procurement programme. The graphs are terrible, with violent, unpredictable ups and downs.In March 2018, power output varied from 3,000MW to 47MW. To stop this dreadful electricity shutting down the whole grid, Eskom must have back-up generators ramping up and down to match the renewables; it must have machines on “spinning reserve” (running below optimum power), and extra transmission lines. These cause system costs, which can be very expensive. The renewable companies don’t pay for them; Eskom does, and passes them on the South African public.NonsenseThe system costs, ignored by the IRP and CSIR, are one of the reasons their models are nonsense. They explain an apparent paradox. Week by week we hear that the prices of solar and wind electricity are coming down; but week by week we see electricity consumers around the world paying more as solar and wind are added to the grid. Denmark, with the world’s highest fraction of wind electricity, has just about the most expensive electricity in Europe. Germany, since it adopted the absurd Energiewende (phasing out nuclear and replacing it with wind and solar) has seen electricity costs soaring.The answer lies in the green desire for conquest. Nuclear power, as you can see driving past Koeberg, works in harmony with nature. The greens don’t like that. They want to conquer and dominate natureThe renewable energy IPP procurement programme, hailed by renewable companies as a huge success, has forced on SA its most expensive electricity ever — and its worst. Eskom’s last annual report, for the year ending 31 March 2018, revealed it was forced to pay 222c/kWh for the programme’s electricity compared with its selling price of 89c/kWh. But the system costs make it even more expensive.We get an idea how much more from the one renewable technology that does provide honest electricity and covers its own system costs. This is concentrated solar power (CSP) with storage, where sunshine heats up a working fluid, which is stored in tanks and used for making electricity for short periods when required. The latest such plants charge about 500c/kWh at peak times. So the best solar technology, with an award-winning project, in perhaps the world’s best solar sites, produces electricity at more than 10 times the cost of Koeberg and about five times the cost of new nuclear.Carbon dioxide realityAfter the procurement programme proved a failure, Lynne Brown, then public enterprises minister, ordered Eskom to sign up for a further 27 renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs), each lasting 20 years. Malusi Gigaba, then finance minister, endorsed her.Nuclear reduces carbon dioxide emissions; renewables don’t. The Energiewende has turned Germany into the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in Europe, because wind and solar, being so unreliable, had to be supplemented with fossil fuels, especially coal.Two reasons drive renewables: money and ideology. Renewable energy companies make a fortune when they persuade governments to force their utilities to buy their awful electricity.But why do the green ideologues love wind and solar? Not because of free energy, which is actually very expensive. Tides, waves, solar, wind and dissolved uranium in the sea can all provide free energy but, except for the uranium, it is always very costly to convert it into usable power. (Uranium from the sea would be naturally be replenished but it is cheaper to buy it from a commercial mine.)I think the answer lies in the green desire for conquest. Nuclear power, as you can see driving past Koeberg, works in harmony with nature. The greens don’t like that. They want to conquer and dominate nature. They love the idea of thousands of gigantic wind turbines and immense solar arrays dominating the landscape like new totems of command. Wind and solar rely entirely on coercion by the state, which the greens also love (in a free market nobody would buy wind or solar grid electricity).SA NEEDS TO DIVERSIFY ENERGY SOURCES TO DELIVERSA is not taking advantage of the clear lead the country has in solar and wind resources.OPINION 2 months agoThe renewable energy companies and the greens seem to have captured the department of energy (quite legally, quite differently from Gupta capture). If they get their way, the rest of us are going to suffer.Since 1994, Eskom has been wrecked by bad management, destructive ideology and corruption. Because it didn’t build stations timeously, the existing stations have been run into the ground and are failing. Its once excellent coal supply has been crippled. There is massive over-staffing and Eskom is plunging into debt. Seasonable rains threaten another fiasco to match January 2008, which shut down our gold mines.The last thing Eskom needs now is to be burdened by useless, very expensive renewable electricity. Recently, the parliamentary portfolio committee on energy, after listening to submissions on IRP 2018, recommended that coal and nuclear should remain in our energy mix. Perhaps a ray of hope for sanity.• Kenny is a professional engineer with degrees in physics, mathematics and mechanical engineering.Let’s look at the current picture, according to the Energy Information Administration.GREEN MADNESS: THE LIGHTS ARE GOING OUT IN NEW YORK CITYGov Andrew Cuomo’s green obsession is making the Russian roulette blackout game ever more dangerous.Since the five-hour blackout that hit Manhattan on Saturday night, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly attacked Con Ed, the utility that provides electricity and gas to customers in the New York area. He has threatened to strip the utility of its operating license and said the city was playing “Russian roulette” with electricity reliability.That’s pretty rich. Over the past few years, Cuomo has repeatedly made political decisions that have reduced the reliability of New York’s energy infrastructure. Cuomo telling Con Ed that it needs to improve its reliability is like an arsonist telling the fire department to buy more pumper trucks.The most obvious example of the reliability risks facing New York City is the looming closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant, a move that Cuomo began pushing for back in 2011.Next April, one of the two operating reactors at the facility will be shuttered. The other reactor is slated for shutdown in 2021. While the premature closure of the 2,069-megawatt facility may please Cuomo’s friends at Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the New York Independent System Operator, the agency that manages the state’s electric grid, has repeatedly warned about the threat to reliability.Indian Point provides about a quarter of the electricity consumed in the city. Further, it helps assure the stability of the grid. The electric grid runs on narrow tolerances of voltage, which is akin to water pressure in a pipeline. The grid must be continually tuned so that electricity production and electricity usage match and voltage on the grid stays at near-constant levels. If voltage fluctuates too much, blackouts can occur.In 2011, NYISO said that “under stress conditions, the voltage performance on the system without the Indian Point plant would be degraded.”In 2016, the agency reiterated its concerns, saying, “Retaining all existing nuclear generators is critical to the state’s carbon emission reduction requirements as well as maintaining electric system reliability.” That same year, two analysts—one from General Electric and another from consulting firm ICF—provided a presentation to the system operator that discussed a reliability standard known as “loss of load expectation,” or LOLE, an event in which electricity demand exceeds available generation.The reliability standard for grid operators in the U.S. allows for a LOLE of one day every 10 years, or 0.1 days per year. By 2030, the GE-ICF presentation estimated that closing Indian Point will result in the doubling of LOLE in the New York City area to 0.2 days per year.In addition to the premature closure of Indian Point, New York has been blocking new natural-gas pipelines that would help provide cleaner and cheaper energy supplies into the state and into New England. As I show in a recent report for Manhattan Institute, the governor’s appointees at the Department of Environmental Conservation have repeatedly refused to grant permits for new pipelines at the same time the grid has become more reliant on gas-fired generators.Since 2004 gas-fired electricity production in the state has nearly doubled and it will jump again after the closure of Indian Point. In response to Cuomo’s pipeline blockade, the region’s biggest utilities, Con Ed and National Grid, have said they will quit providing new gas connections in their service areas in and around New York City. That, in turn, forces some consumers to continue relying on heating oil, which is more expensive and more polluting.Finally, Cuomo has agreed to implement the Climate and Community Protection Act, which mandates that 70% of electricity consumed in the state come from renewables by 2030 and 100% from carbon-free sources by 2040. Forcing the electric grid to rely more heavily on intermittent sources such as solar and wind will put yet more stress on the grid, particularly during extreme weather.In short, Cuomo is pushing for the biggest changes in New York’s electric grid since Thomas Edison launched the Electric Age on Pearl Street in 1882, and he’s doing so without any understanding of how those changes may affect reliability.Green Madness: The Lights Are Going Out In New York City - The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)No, wild fires are not the result of climate change, far from it. They are natural and research finds the fires are mostly caused by human action EITHER DELIBERATE OR ACCIDENTAL and by “ridiculously inadequate controlled burns.” An excellent reference for this view and analysis of this issue eighty years ago is in the Stretton Royal Commission Report after the horrific loss of life from the 1939 Black Friday bush fire starting in Victoria.After the horrific Black Friday bush fire of 1939 killing many more than 2019 Australia wild fires the government commissioned the Stretton Royal Commission to look into causes and how to prevent future severe bush fires. In CHAPTER II the Commission concluded:“Immediate Causes.—Almost all fires are caused by man.”The 36 page report is available free here and full of useful evidence relevant to the fires of 2019.ref. http://www.voltscommissar.net/docs/Leonard_Stretton-1939_Bush_Fires_Royal_Commission_Report.pdfI urge you to read the whole report in pdf for free here -http://www.voltscommissar.net/docs/Leonard_Stretton-1939_Bush_Fires_Royal_Commission_Report.pdf (http://www.voltscommissar.net/docs/Leonard_Stretton-1939_Bush_Fires_Royal_Commission_Report.pdf)“CHAPTER IIImmediate Causes.—Almost all fires are caused by man. The experience of the past shows that the persons who caused the 1939 fires are to be found among the following classes which are set forth in a descending scale offrequency of responsibility for fire;the manner in and reason for which they cause fireis shortly indicated:—(i) Settlers.—Burning off for growth, clearing or protection.Graziers.—Burning to promote grass growth.Miners and Prospectors.—Clearing to facilitate operations.(ii) Sportsmen.—Neglect of camp¬fires, billy fires.Tourists.—Lighted matches for smoking.Campers.Burning, to facilitate passage through the bush.(iii) Forest Workers.Misuse of fire used for mill operations and for domestic purposes.(iv) Persons using roads.—Neglect of billyfires ; lighted matches; and burning obstructing logs on roadway.(v) Road and Railway Work Gangs.—Billy and camp fires ; careless burning off on railway property.(vi) Locomotives.Defective spark arresters.(vii) Lightning.— Infrequent, as generally followed by rain.Of these classes settlers, miners and graziers are the most prolific fireCausing agents. The percentage of fires caused by them far exceeds that of anyother class. Their firing is generally deliberate. All other firing is, generally, due to carelessness.“Immediate Causes.—Almost all fires are caused by man.”http://www.voltscommissar.net/docs/Leonard_Stretton-1939_Bush_Fires_Royal_Commission_Report.pdfThe report also strongly criticizes the government for “ridiculously inadequate controlled burn.” Sadly the same problems identified by the Royal Commission exist today and are worse with increasing populations, in particular the mismanagement of the land. This key failure of using controlled burns accounts for a lot of the severity of the fires loaded with underbrush. The Aborigines knew this helped and they regularly burned the grass with fire sticks.The Australian Aborigines used control burn going back thousands of years.The Australian soil is enhanced with grass fires from time immemorial and in fact Aborigines have used fire sticks for this purpose. Sometimes controlled burns get out of control.Aboriginal burn practices again used on countryA recent burn conducted at a bush reserve near Wedderburn held significance beyond being a land management tool.Members of the Dja Dja Wurrung community applied the burning practices of their ancestors to Bush Heritage Australia’s Nardoo Hills Reserve, a parcel of land set aside for bush regeneration and conservation.“Our fire management practice, which we call Djandak Wii, is an obligation we have to the land, and we love to see the greater biodiversity it brings, and the gradual return to health it brings to country,” Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation chief executive officer Rodney Carter said.Arson, mischief and recklessness: 87 per cent of fires are man-madeBy Paul ReadNovember 18, 2019 — 12.00amBUSHFIRESThere are, on average, 62,000 fires in Australia every year. Only a very small number strike far from populated areas and satellite studies tell us that lightning is responsible for only 13 per cent. Not so the current fires threatening to engulf Queensland and NSW. There were no lightning strikes on most of the days when the fires first started in September. Although there have been since, these fires – joining up to create a new form of mega-fire – are almost all man-made.About 40 per cent of fires are deliberately lit ... The Hillville fire that destroyed homes last week.CREDIT:NICK MOIRA 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997-2009 confirmed what we had known for some time – 40 per cent of fires are deliberately lit, another 47 per cent accidental. This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were suspected or deliberate arson, and 37 per cent accidental. Combined, they reach the same conclusion: 87 per cent are man-made.Arson, mischief and recklessness: 87 per cent of fires are man-madeAustralian wild fires are not relevant to climate change, but they are part of short term and long term environmental issues. From time immemorial fires have had a very beneficial effect on the Australia and pre European Aborigines engaged in burning grass and the under brush.The Australian Aborigines used control burn going back thousands of years.The Australian soil is enhanced with grass fires from time immemorial and in fact Aborigines have used fire sticks for this purpose. Sometimes controlled burns get out of control.Aboriginal burn practices again used on countryA recent burn conducted at a bush reserve near Wedderburn held significance beyond being a land management tool.Members of the Dja Dja Wurrung community applied the burning practices of their ancestors to Bush Heritage Australia’s Nardoo Hills Reserve, a parcel of land set aside for bush regeneration and conservation.“Our fire management practice, which we call Djandak Wii, is an obligation we have to the land, and we love to see the greater biodiversity it brings, and the gradual return to health it brings to country,” Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation chief executive officer Rodney Carter said.Wild fires spewing smoke and aerosols have a dimming effect on the sun and reduce local temperatures. The fires certainly do not make the climate warmer you will see that for yourself after a large volcanic eruption. I witnessed the immediate cooling effect from the Mount St Helens eruption while living in Victoria.The science of aerosols is proven by observation unlike the alarmism pseudo science demonizing CO2 minute gas as pollution when the evidence is contrary as CO2 has a largely beneficial role for plants and life on the earth.The smoke from California’s deadliest fire is so thick that it’s blotting out the sun and lowering surface temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit (6 Celsius), according to the U.S. National Weather Service.

I'm glad this is worded as what is a 'good' diet and not what is the 'best' diet. However, the rest of the question seems to imply that the answer should include the answer to the second. So let me extinguish the flame of the second question first, before I discuss a 'good' diet.A Call to End the Diet DebatesThere is no 'best' diet. Science has yet to be definitive on any of this and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Part of the reason there is no singular 'best' diet is because genetics can play a significant role in determining what a person can tolerate and what another person can't. For instance, some people tolerate gluten just fine, others not so well, the same could be said for lactose, caffeine, lectins, etc...I believe the field of nutrigenomics will probably advance to a point in the next 20 years where a saliva test can help us mostly determine an ideal diet on an individual basis. Based on genetics this field will reveal that a 'best' diet does not exist. Only an ideal diet for an individual based on their own genetic clues and it won't be a perfect science initially, if ever in our lifetime.The reason is that genetics are heavily influenced by environment and need to be expressed (triggered) in such a way that facilitates a certain outcome. In some cases it is simplistic (like a certain gene being associated with a certain enzyme that breaks down a certain food item, like lactase for instance) but in most cases genetics are far more complex and inter-related. Finding these inter-related components will be the tricky part.Aside from genetics I also believe that the mindset component of eating is huge. If you believe you are sensitive or intolerant of something, the placebo effect is incredibly likely even if scientifically you show no allergy is present.For instance the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Food Allergy Quick Facts) estimates that only 0.6% of the population has a peanut allergy, 0.4-0.5% of the population is allergic to tree nuts, and 2.8% of adults are allergic to shellfish and these are among the most common allergens.However it's important to keep in mind that most of this data is on life threatening allergies. Estimates peg 1 in 5 Americans for having either an allergy or asthma. Despite this, apparently about 55% of Americans that get an allergy test, test positive for at least one allergen.An example of a non-life threatening problem with food (meaning you probably won't die of anaphylactic shock) might be the roughly 1% of the population that is Celiac (most of them undiagnosed), a non-life threatening auto-immune disorder that flattens the villa of the intestine and can inhibit nutrient absorption with the consumption of gluten. A protein for in a variety of grains that often leads to nutrient deficiency and has a high correlation to certain cancers, particularly colon. This needs to be differentiated to gluten sensitivity which is probably not gluten sensitivity but rather an unrelated problem with fructan in some people (over-fermentation in the gut basically).This might be surprising to some who have recently adopted the trendy gluten-free diet. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, certainly for many it can provide a lot of relief, however, like I said the mind is a powerful contributor to this equation. Diet is really not just about what you eat, it's how you eat, why you eat, where you eat, sometimes when you eat and a lot of it has to do with the psychology of eating.Assuming you don't have energy or Gastrointestinal (GI) issues, I'd say assume that you can eat mostly anything at this point, and so there is no need to tweak your diet based on foods you shouldn't be eating, providing you eat with a level of variety.If for whatever reason though, you don't feel great, have energy issues or GI issues you might want to consider talking to your doctor, a naturopath or trying something like The Elimination Diet (disclosure: my blog)With the science not being completely caught up, a service like 23andMe can still give you some genetic insight into a style of eating that might be more appropriate for you. I'm not sure their data set is entirely accurate, but for now we do know the association between some genes and your typical reaction to certain foods, mostly as it pertains to enzyme production (for example the enzymes that help people process caffeine quickly, or something like lactase, the enzyme needed to break down lactose). It also doesn't really fall in line with what we know about genes, mainly that genes express themselves via environment. So you may have a gene closely associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and they recommend you decrease your saturated fat intake, but because you're never exposed to certain environmental triggers (like say exposure to a pollutant or significant weight gain), that gene never expresses itself and you never had to worry about saturated fat in the first place (in some cases even, maybe it's moderate consumption provided some protection against something else).Outside of this, the best you can do is mostly trial and error but where most people make mistakes with this approach is dramatic changes without slow reintroduction. Don't overhaul too much at once. For instance, try removing starchy carbohydrates for a period of time (let's say 2-4 weeks...eat less than 100 g of carbohydrates per day, exclusively in the form of veggies) for instance, gauge how you feel and then slowly reintroduce them starting with post-workout, then maybe try alternative times of day too like morning or evening (carbohydrate consumption releases serotonin, which can improve sleep in some). Unfortunately there are many potential changes like this to make and reading won't generally give you the right answer, you have to go out and experience these changes in small controllable doses and tweak and tweak and tweak appropriately based on the feedback you get (in this case, additional fat loss). If you change too much at each time, its harder to get good feedback and figure out if what changes you're making are contributing to the change.All of that being said, here is what a good diet is to me:1) You have a keen awareness and adherence to your diet (whatever 'it' may be categorized as).Science tells us that adherence to any diet is the most important factor, so if you are presently following a diet you don't believe in or one that you struggle with psychologically to stay on, you'll do worse than a diet you can stick with long term and is easy for you to adhere to, follow and maybe make small manipulations to. Find a strategy that works for you, regardless of whether or not that is Paleo, Vegan, High-Carb/Low-Fat, Low-Carb/High-Fat, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, or 'Flexitarian.' Also define your own guidelines within any so called 'category' of diet, not every vegetarian should or will eat the same things.2) You focus on quality ingredients whenever possible and in adherence with #1.This doesn't necessarily mean only eat grass fed meat, organic vegetables, non-gmo beans/grains, etc...etc... but it can, if that's what you can afford and believe works ideally. The mistake a lot of people make when recommending you increase the quality of your food is that belief is a powerful mechanism, if you believe this food to be pointless, out of reach financially or otherwise, you're better off sticking with the highest quality foods your mind and wallet can tolerate. Just because you don't feel you can't afford organic produce doesn't mean you can't eat more non-organic vegetables (washed in vinegar or another pesticide removing solution as a cheaper option) or fruit.More and more I believe that merely cooking as much of your own food (or having control over what goes into it) increases mindfulness, therefore adherence and the quality of your food gradually goes up. It could also mean finding more affordable solutions to grass-fed meat and fish (which can be expensive to purchase, maybe more cheaper vegetarian options would be ideal under such a circumstance).3) Takes into strong consideration your personal situation.I mention above cost of food and financial situation but you could also consider any of the following:Work Situation (shift work is different from 9 to 5)Emotional Intelligence/Fortitude (willpower, temptation control, etc...)Family Situation (people with kids eat differently than those without)Life Demands (do you work more than one job? do you volunteer? do you live in a particular part of the world?)Income (financial situation)Education (socio-economic status)Climate/Location (sun affects metabolism, eating, and drinking)Environmental Pollutants (your exposure to toxins via job, work, income, life demands, etc...)Time Available (for cooking and/or preparing and/or exercise)Physical Exercise (Time, Quality, etc...)Food Availability (do you live near a quality growing region?)Cooking Experience and knowledgeEtc...I've met many people who diet beyond their mental control (take on too much change at once) and fail. Even when the diet may be perfectly fine on paper, it simply isn't easy to adhere to because it doesn't match their situational needs.4) Helps address nutritional deficiencies (or potential deficiencies).For some this might mean more vitamin and mineral supplementation, but for most others it means getting a variety of quality foods from a variety of sources. Eating a relatively high amount of a variety of vegetables (6+ servings a day), some fruit (1-2 maybe if you choose), potentially some grains (1-3 servings maybe depending on tolerance), lean proteins (roughly 0.7 grams per pound of lean mass, or about 15-50 grams a meal, depending on size/goals; From animal and/or vegetable sources) and healthy fats (roughly 30% of the diet, consisting of a balance [1/3 each] of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fats; perhaps a slight skew to unsaturated varieties, particularly Omega-3 sources). Of course these are generalizations, you can be higher or lower than these recommendations in some cases.5) Helps control energy intake and appetite.Lean protein increases satiability, as does fiber. Fat in some cases makes you feel more satisfied (when used in reasonable quantities; fats are also very easy to over consume) as well. Food should be satiating so as to stave off later binging and hunger. It's important to note that most people do not have a good relationship with their hunger response and tend to eat out of boredom or routine instead of actual hunger. Most people also typically do not eat slowly, knowing that it takes roughly 20 minutes for the body's hormones to signal to your brain that you are full. This is why something like Hara Hachi Bu alone, can be a very effective weight loss strategy.If you're a vegetarian or vegan you're better off finding complementary foods that increase satiability too like rice and beans, squash and beans, potatoes (whole preferred obviously) and if you're the former; Eggs, or dairy, among others. It's been my experience that proteins greatest use might be in this regard and I aim to eat about 20-50 grams with nearly every meal depending on my objectives (though not necessarily in the order of animal protein only) depending on meal frequency (which should also be personalized in my opinion).Fiber is also up there in terms of importance; I have very little doubt that a diet high(ish) in fiber is good (~25–35 grams depending on size/gender). I just think most of that fiber should come from vegetable plant sources as opposed to the Health Canada recommendations of about 6-7 servings of grains (which is considerably lower than even 5 years ago, when they were still recommending 10-11). Although high fiber foods like flax, chia, hemp and other seeds/nuts could certainly be included in the mix with veggies in appropriate doses (1–3 servings per day generally).6) Takes into account environment and mindful eating practices.If you have things in your house, you'll eat them. If you eat things off a big plate, or from a larger container you eat more. If you eat faster you eat more. If you eat while watching TV/movies/etc... or other distractions (like at your desk while trying to work) you are likely to eat more. Learning how to mindfully eat and take control of your environment is a key skill for any recomposition plan.Try a 'Kitchen Makeover' to remove junky foods from your pantry, particularly plan sight. Talk to your boss/manager/co-workers about donuts, cookies, muffins, and other junk foods that often end up in the work place (that although they are nice gestures, they are not great options to have around). Turn off the TV and computer when you eat. Order the small serving sizes when you eat out. Buy 9" plates instead of the standard 11" plates. Start eating with chop sticks. Aim to chew every bite of food 20-40 times. There are many other strategies you could adopt, but hopefully you get the idea.7) Is used in conjunction with appropriate physical activity/exercise.I've known many people to feel that they can exclude physical exercise in a weight loss plan. While exercise alone tends to be shown as a poor way to change body composition, when used in combination with nutritional changes it's like a turbo charger in action. There are all kinds of physiological changes from exercise that interact directly with the physical intake of food. Exercise can help alter things positively like insulin resistance for example.Now...What you need to do for what appears to be your objective should include all this but here are the more specific incremental changes I would make if I were you:Start Exercising 3-6 times a week (even if that means once a week to start and build from there) - specifically learn how to weight train and move properly/safely while training. If you think you're eating pretty healthy but you're not seeing a change it's because you're not forcing your body to make any changes - exercise is one of the best methods for that. Ideally strength/resistance training 2-3 times a week out of those 3-6.Start eating lean proteins with each (or at least most) meal (minimum of 15 grams a serving) - this does not have to be animal protein necessarily, though that is generally an easy source.Increase your vegetable consumption with each meal (roughly 6+ servings per day, each serving is about the size of your fist). Vegetables in truth are very hard to overeat, unless you eat the same vegetable all the time, so stick with some variety and eat a lot of veggies overall.Move your starchy carbohydrate (tubers if you want to go the paleo route, but other grains work too, particularly oats, quinoa and rice) consumption only to days you train, ideally within 2-3 hours before/after a training session. This creates a bit of a carb-cycling effect, which is very effective for this objective (and others).Make sure you consume small amounts of healthy fats daily. Consider eating more fish, or taking a fish oil supplement for the short term to increase your Omega-3 consumption; You could also consider eating more wild or free-range/grass-fed meats too, including organ meat if you can tolerate it. You may also lean towards eating a handful of nuts (Walnuts have a good amount of Omega-3's) on non-training days for energy instead of a starchy carbohydrates. Alternatively 1 TBSP of flax, chia, hemp on non-training days could have a similar effect for Omega-3's though it's harder to convert the ALA found in in plant based sources (except algae) into DHA and EPA which are the more useful of the 3 for human beings. Start cooking more with ghee/clarified butter, olive oil, macadamia nut oil, virgin red palm oil and virgin coconut oil/milk in small quantities - 1TBSP {milk is more per serving obviously...}. The less processed the better, stick clear of 'refined' oils and look for cold-pressed varieties.Take a food log and enter into any number of calorie logging servies for 3-5 days to get a better picture of how much food you actually eat vs how much you perceive to eat. I use logging with nearly every single client to make them aware of their diet, most people tend to think they eat better than they actually do. Use a service like http://myfitnesspal.com or http://fitday.com or similar service to get an idea of the quantities of certain types of foods you eat. I don't view calorie counting as a great long-term solution, but the awareness component can be a good wake up call for most people in helping them realize just how much they actually eat (we all tend to think that we eat less than we do).Work with a coach who can help you make more specific and appropriate tweaks based on your unique needs. Its tough to get good actionable advice without divulging the details of your diet and not the rough outline. I get way more information from my clients via surveys, data tracking, etc...You need more specific information the further away from 'normal' you want to move. Going from 30% to 19% is much easier generally (because the changes you can make are easier to implement) than going from 19% to 12%, which is easier still than going from 12% to 7% depending on the person. Coaches make a world of difference and provide you with much needed objective feedback.

I do not think we can say that the Germans did not try to prepare for fighting again in what was WW2. They were restricted before and during the war by their geographical condition of being a central power and with the majority of their leadership having a geopolitical and warfare land minded way of thinking plus their economical restrictions and the fact that they had lost all their colonies abroad.Germany did have been planning to recover the naval fighting capacity lost when their High Seas Fleet sunk at Scapa Flow after signing the Armistice to end WW1. The last plan, and the more ambitious was Plan Z and was authorized in 1939.State of Affairs after VersaillesThe Treaty of Versailles imposed heavy limitations on the German Armed Forces, in the quantity of personnel and the fighting capacity/quality of their material. The Krieg Marine (KM), had been allowed six old pre dreadnoughts, together with six, also old, light cruisers, twelve destroyers, and twelve torpedo boats. The Treaty allowed the replacement of the pre dreadnoughts when they reached twenty years old. Another clause established a maximum displacement of 10.000 tons for these replacements. No submarines and no fighting air arm allowed. All the planes developed in Germany before WW2 were for sport, transport and fast courier.Germany designed and built the famous “Deutschland” Panzer Schiff class, which Sir Winston Churchill gave worldwide fame as “Pocket Battleships”. They were three vessels (Deutschland, later named Lützow, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee) which carried a main battery of two turrets with three 11 in cannons each and a speed of 34kn. These characteristics gave them better artillery power than what the heavy cruisers of the Royal and French Navies had and more speed than the Battleships. The six Diesel motors and the welding of the hull instead of riveting lightened the structure allowed to reach a range of 19000nm at 10 kn.The German government also established a dummy society NV Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw in Netherland where they returned to designing and building submarines, which together with warplanes they were not allowed to build. This society sold submarines to Turkey and Finland for instance and send a mission to build subs at Japans with German (sorry, Dutch!!) prints. The mission was headed by the future Admiral Canaris.In 1932 the KM obtained the approval through the Reichstag of the first part of a long term vessel construction, this first part covered the period 1932 to 1936 and the second covered the period of 1936 to 1943. In 1933 Hitler became Reich –Chancellor and speed up the rearmament, and in 1935 he signed the Anglo-German Naval Treaty, which gave German a limit of up to 35% of the Royal Navy total tonnage. In 1939 he approved the Plan Z, which surpass that agreement.Operational Philosophies:As from 1920, the KM was planning for a possible war against Poland, which they consider their most probable enemy, and that France would support Poland as Great Britain would stay neutral. So they assumed they needed a coastal navy to support the Army (there was no Luftwaffe then, which was forbidden by Versailles) with the U Boat arm going in support of the surface fleet. And also they believed that the U Boats were not going into a full commerce raiding war but as an assistance arm of the Fleet. The surface fleet was going to be used against the merchant vessels according to the cruiser rules, which is a colloquial term for the Conventions regarding the use of warships against non-armed merchant vessels. This view was the standard orthodoxy till 1930 when Admiral Karl Doenitz became the Chief of the U Boat Arm. He advocated for unrestricted submarine warfare and the adoption of the wolfpack tactics to overwhelm the convoys defenses. He also requested for 300 U Boats as the minimum necessary to defeat, 100 in operations, 100 in transit to/from operational areas and 100 in port for repairs, maintenance and crew rest. He only got between 30 and 40 at the very beginning of the war. The figure of 300 was reached in 1943.On the other hand, as from 1930, Admiral Raeder, KM commander, consider that the future war would involve Great Britain, but he still favored the strategy to using surface raiders against the vital sea routes of the British commerce.The Abwher, the German Intelligence under Admiral Canaris, meanwhile was mounting an organization of several out of Europe operations in support of this thought.These German spy nets counted with the backing of a great part of the German and German descendants living abroad and the German companies which had important investments in each country.My father, which worked for a shipping agency in Buenos Aires told me his experiences during the war in special the ones before and during the Battle of the River Plate, and how the British intelligence worked in Uruguay (even from Punta del Este) and Buenos Aires from the moment the Graff Spee entered Montevideo. He was at Buenos Aires North Basin when Capt. Langsdorff took his life after been sure that all his crew was perfectly taken care.The Abwher also had several radio stations which transmitted the sailing news of the British merchant vessels from Montevideo and also the Argentine ports so as they could be intercepted by the German raiders or the U Boats.These nets among other tasks provided economic support to obtain intelligence and also bought strategic supplies to be carried in the blockade runners and sometimes in Spanish vessels which carried the messages, funds and even these special supplies. In Argentina, Berlin had the support of a significant part of the government Cabinet. Brazil and Chile were also vital pieces of the Abwher organization in South America.One of these blockade runners was SS Ussukuma sank off Ingeniero White (Bahia Blanca Port) after loading commodities to try to Pss through the Royal Navy blockade. She was a 7700 tons steamship taken by the Abwher for service in the South Atlantic, it was a passenger/cargo ship of the Deutsche Ost Afrika Linies, completed in 1921 with a good speed of 14 kn. There are many tales about this vessel as it is commentedThe German concept of mobile support was that a battleship or pocket battleship would always have a supply ship assigned to it. These supply ships moved with the battleship or pocket battleship at all times and were their main source of supply for everything, including food. In the two ships, i.e., the fighting and supply ship, a six months' supply of consumables, except fresh food and fuel oil, was carried at all times. It was distributed as follows: Ordinarily, three months' supply of consumables, such as hardware, cleaning gear, line, etc., stored in the fighting ship and a similar three months' supply carried in the supply ship. Transfers were made between the ships as required. .Ammunition was an exception to the general rule because requirements were indefinite.Admiral Raeder and the KM projected and built a special class of supply ships following this concept. The MV Altmark was an oil tanker and supply vessel, one of five of this class built between 1937 and 1939.which had four Diesel engines giving a range of 12500nm at 15 kn and a maximum speed of 21 kn, the perfect companion for a raider. In particular, this vessel is well known as the Graf Spee “buddy” and the incident in Norwegian waters (then neutral) when the destroyer HMS Cossack under Capt Phillip Vian boarded the Altmark and rescued 300 British prisoners.By 1938, Hitler's aggressive foreign policy made conflict with Britain increasingly likely. He ordered that completion of Bismarck and Tirpitz be expedited, along with six new H-class battleships be expedited. These eight battleships would form the core of a new battle fleet capable of engaging the British Royal Navy. Hitler nevertheless assured Raeder that war would not come until 1948.Raeder meanwhile believed that Britain could be more easily defeated through the surface raider strategy he favored. The initial version of his plan was based on the assumption that the fleet should be centered on panzerschiffe, long-range cruisers, and U-boats to attack British commerce.[11]These forces would tie down British naval power and allow a smaller number of battleships to operate in the North Sea. This first draft was called Plan X; a pared-down revision was renamed Plan Y, and the final version presented to Hitler was Plan Z.[17]Hitler rejected Raeder's proposed construction plan, which led to a more balanced fleet that incorporated the battleships Hitler sought and was accepted on 1 March 1939. Raeder planned to use the battleships and aircraft carriers in task forces to support the panzerschiffe and light cruisers attacking British merchant traffic.(extracted from Wikipedia)THE GERMAN FLEET AS PER PLAN ZThe plan approved by Hitler called for a surface fleet composed of the following vessels, which included all new ships built in the 1920s and 1930s:[11]TypeProjectedCompletedBattleships104Battlecruisers30Aircraft carriers40Panzerschiffe153Heavy cruisers53Light cruisers136Scouts220Destroyers6830Torpedo boats9036The Scouts were Spähkreuzer which was the type name of a planned class of large destroyers or reconnaissance cruisers for Kriegsmarine Battle Groups.The Plan Z construction began in January 1939 but no one of this proposed new vessels were finished nor even begun.So the only resort Germany had at the beginning of the war was to implement Raeder alternative plan of using the raiders. The Deutschland and her sisters went to war. Some time afterward the other capital ships also went raiding on the North Atlantic (Gneisenau" y "Scharnhorst) and afterward the ill-fated Bismarck.The KM then went to use their U Boot, only between 30 to 40 considering the subs training and the coastal types. A figure very far from the one requested by Admiral Doentiz.Also they went back to the other type of vessel which gave some many headaches to the Allies : the Auxiliary Cruiser, the Hilfskreuzer, the Merchant Marine Vessel armed as a Raider. Most of these vessels were in the 8,000–10,000 long tons (8,100–10,200 t) range. Many of these vessels had originally been refrigerator ships, used to transport fresh food from the tropics. These vessels were faster than regular merchant vessels, which was important for a warship. They were armed with six 15cm (5.9 inches) naval guns, some smaller guns, torpedoes, reconnaissance seaplanes and some were equipped for minelaying. these commerce raiders carried no armor because their purpose was to attack merchantmen, not to engage warships. Also, it would be difficult to fit armour to a civilian vessel. Eventually, most were sunk or transferred to other duties. They sunk or if the vessel and/or her cargo was strategic sent them to Germany with a prize crew. The Raiders always were manned by a large crew considering the option of having to operate a prize vessel.Their success was over the cost and what you can expect from an armed merchant vessel, more so considering that the KM sent two waves of six vessels each.Finally, we can say that Germany did plan but did not choose the best option.