4 ms·

Yes, it seems a bit clickbaity to me... The Germans sold their cheat-cars as long as they weren't detected and even now when their own children protest against

by VvR-Ox 7y ago

Yes, it seems a bit clickbaity to me... The Germans sold their cheat-cars as long as they weren't detected and even now when their own children protest against the political practices regarding climate change they don't really do something serious about it. The sad thing is that this could be as good as the world will come with combating climate change. Nice.

dgellow 7y ago
> The Germans sold their cheat-cars You mean “some German companies”. > even now when their own children protest against the political practices regarding climate change they don't really do something serious about it. Germany is one of the best player in Europe in this domain. The country has ~35% of its electricity generated from windmills and solar panel (average during the year) and it’s in very active development. The main critic from my point of view is the fact that the country renounced using nuclear power, but that’s what people in Germany were asking for. Just look at the most recent European Parliament elections, the Green Party got more than 20% of German votes. I expect to see politics spending more of their time and budget focused on ecological and environmental issues in the future as a way to gain those votes.
- bboygravity 7y ago
  > The main critic from my point of view is the fact that the country renounced using nuclear power, but that’s what people in Germany were asking for. Oh really? Germany held a referendum where the majority of "the people" voted against nuclear? I don't think so. There's no reliable way to know what "the people" really want other than a referendum IMO. I don't believe for a second that "we know" that this is what Germans wanted. As far as I remember Merkel used the (German) emotions during the Fukushima nuclear disaster as an argument to shut down all German Nuclear reactors. The timing: the political campaigns for the next elections about 2 weeks later. The decision to close down Germany's nuclear plants was political. The votes on Merkel (her party) are not equal to German anti-nuclear votes. I don't agree that there is a way to know that "this is what the people wanted". Let's not pretend Germany is a direct democracy... It's impressive that Germany got to 35 % renewable. It's CO2 emissions however have not gone down sufficiently to reach their 40 % reduction goal[1]. In part because "renewable" doesn't mean "no CO2 emitted". Renewables still emit significantly more CO2 than nuclear plants do per generated unit of energy. Solar panels need to be produced, transported, installed and maintained, they are not recyclable, their lifetime is very limited (25 to 50 years efficient production). A similar thing goes on with wind. Renewables are also more deadly per TWH than nuclear. Even when counting all the disasters [2]. Compare France (a nuclear power generation country) to Germany and this all becomes very clear. France has one of the lowest consumer electricity prices in Europe. Germany has the second highest consumer electricity price in the world. Yet, France has significantly lower CO2 emissions per capita. Also, the "wasted CO2 cost" of shutting down nuclear plants prematurely is not 0. Significant amounts of CO2 are produced during installing and "uninstalling" of nuclear power plants. If you close such a plant prematurely it means the tons of CO2 per generated TWH go up. Your clean nuclear plant all of a sudden becomes dirtier. I wasn't able to find or calculate how significant this is however. [1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=germany+reduction+goal&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleanenergywire.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Flarge%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F2018%2F03%2F20180326-uba-german-greenhousegasemissions1990-2017.png%3Fitok%3DZqI2IYHV https://duckduckgo.com/?q=germany+reduction+goal&t=ffab&iar=... [2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
  - dgellow 7y ago
    I don't know how you read in my comment that Germany is a direct democracy.
    - bboygravity 7y ago
      This: "but that’s what people in Germany were asking for."
      - elproxy 7y ago
        Some questions just shouldn't be asked if one is not willing to put in the effort to educate first. A recent poll in France found out that more than half of the people believed nuclear power was bad for the climate!
  - elproxy 7y ago
    Just gonna have to shower your enthusiasm a wee bit on the electricity prices in France: they are rising steeply, but this is mostly for political reasons, as this was to allow the private sector to make money from the public nuclear production in the name of "free and fair competition". It's explained reasonably well here (in french only though): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/March%C3%A9_de_l%27%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9_en_France#Acc%C3%A8s_r%C3%A9gul%C3%A9_%C3%A0_l'%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9_nucl%C3%A9aire_historique_(ARENH) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/March%C3%A9_de_l%27%C3%A9lectr...
    - dgellow 7y ago
      Thanks for sharing, that was interesting to read
    - bboygravity 7y ago
      Even so, consumer electricity prices in France (as far as I know) are still about !45 %! cheaper right now than the German ones at significantly lower CO2 emissions. The Germans couldn't even do that nasty political thing that France is doing even if they wanted to. That's how high their production price (and subsidies through taxes) are. https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/electricity/europe https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/electricity/eur...

by VvR-Ox 7y ago

dgellow 7y ago

> The Germans sold their cheat-cars You mean “some German companies”. > even now when their own children protest against the political practices regarding climate change they don't really do something serious about it. Germany is one of the best player in Europe in this domain. The country has ~35% of its electricity generated from windmills and solar panel (average during the year) and it’s in very active development. The main critic from my point of view is the fact that the country renounced using nuclear power, but that’s what people in Germany were asking for. Just look at the most recent European Parliament elections, the Green Party got more than 20% of German votes. I expect to see politics spending more of their time and budget focused on ecological and environmental issues in the future as a way to gain those votes.

bboygravity 7y ago
> The main critic from my point of view is the fact that the country renounced using nuclear power, but that’s what people in Germany were asking for. Oh really? Germany held a referendum where the majority of "the people" voted against nuclear? I don't think so. There's no reliable way to know what "the people" really want other than a referendum IMO. I don't believe for a second that "we know" that this is what Germans wanted. As far as I remember Merkel used the (German) emotions during the Fukushima nuclear disaster as an argument to shut down all German Nuclear reactors. The timing: the political campaigns for the next elections about 2 weeks later. The decision to close down Germany's nuclear plants was political. The votes on Merkel (her party) are not equal to German anti-nuclear votes. I don't agree that there is a way to know that "this is what the people wanted". Let's not pretend Germany is a direct democracy... It's impressive that Germany got to 35 % renewable. It's CO2 emissions however have not gone down sufficiently to reach their 40 % reduction goal[1]. In part because "renewable" doesn't mean "no CO2 emitted". Renewables still emit significantly more CO2 than nuclear plants do per generated unit of energy. Solar panels need to be produced, transported, installed and maintained, they are not recyclable, their lifetime is very limited (25 to 50 years efficient production). A similar thing goes on with wind. Renewables are also more deadly per TWH than nuclear. Even when counting all the disasters [2]. Compare France (a nuclear power generation country) to Germany and this all becomes very clear. France has one of the lowest consumer electricity prices in Europe. Germany has the second highest consumer electricity price in the world. Yet, France has significantly lower CO2 emissions per capita. Also, the "wasted CO2 cost" of shutting down nuclear plants prematurely is not 0. Significant amounts of CO2 are produced during installing and "uninstalling" of nuclear power plants. If you close such a plant prematurely it means the tons of CO2 per generated TWH go up. Your clean nuclear plant all of a sudden becomes dirtier. I wasn't able to find or calculate how significant this is however. [1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=germany+reduction+goal&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleanenergywire.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Flarge%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F2018%2F03%2F20180326-uba-german-greenhousegasemissions1990-2017.png%3Fitok%3DZqI2IYHV https://duckduckgo.com/?q=germany+reduction+goal&t=ffab&iar=... [2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
- dgellow 7y ago
  I don't know how you read in my comment that Germany is a direct democracy.
  - bboygravity 7y ago
    This: "but that’s what people in Germany were asking for."
    - elproxy 7y ago
      Some questions just shouldn't be asked if one is not willing to put in the effort to educate first. A recent poll in France found out that more than half of the people believed nuclear power was bad for the climate!
- elproxy 7y ago
  Just gonna have to shower your enthusiasm a wee bit on the electricity prices in France: they are rising steeply, but this is mostly for political reasons, as this was to allow the private sector to make money from the public nuclear production in the name of "free and fair competition". It's explained reasonably well here (in french only though): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/March%C3%A9_de_l%27%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9_en_France#Acc%C3%A8s_r%C3%A9gul%C3%A9_%C3%A0_l'%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9_nucl%C3%A9aire_historique_(ARENH) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/March%C3%A9_de_l%27%C3%A9lectr...
  - dgellow 7y ago
    Thanks for sharing, that was interesting to read
  - bboygravity 7y ago
    Even so, consumer electricity prices in France (as far as I know) are still about !45 %! cheaper right now than the German ones at significantly lower CO2 emissions. The Germans couldn't even do that nasty political thing that France is doing even if they wanted to. That's how high their production price (and subsidies through taxes) are. https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/electricity/europe https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/electricity/eur...