lampenrad

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May 29

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If Germany is a "corrupt country", than what‘s the rest of Europe?: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/koyyv5/european_pub...

Comment · 4 years ago

That is not the case. Otherwise, with regards to the war in Ukraine, Germany wouldn’t get this singled out when it comes to criticism.

In fact, one of the biggest domestic criticisms of the government right now is their terrible communication strategy.

English is the lingua franca and as such Anglo media has an incredible amount of power in shaping opinions in the West.

And frankly, the reporting, particularly from Anglo and Eastern European media, has had a heavy anti-German bias for weeks now. (Up from the usual moderate bias)

Comment · 4 years ago

The whole argument hinges on the claim that 35% of electricity in Germany is generated by gas. This seems very high and I couldn‘t find a source for this claim in the article.

According to [1], it‘s 14% (for consumers). This includes a large number of CHP (combined heat and power plants), which produce district heat and cannot be replaced with nuclear power.

Then there‘s 36% of industry usage , of which 1/5 [1] is used for power generation in industry power plants. I‘d assume that quite a few of these on-site power plants do other things too, like CHP, and cannot be replaced with nuclear power. Ignoring this, it’d be

14% + 36%*21% = 21,56% of total Gas used for power, in reality, much less would be replaceable with nuclear.

The EU economic think tank Bruegel claimed [2]:

A technically and politically difficult decision to delay the closure of German nuclear power plants in operation until the end of 2021 could free up another 120 TWh of gas

Germany used 945,3 Twh in 2020[3], of which 94,8% was imported[4] That’s 816,14 Twh.

In 2020 55,2% of the imported gas came from Russia [5], so 494,7 Twh. So, according to Bruegel, a respected European think tank, Germany could replace 24,3% of the Russian gas it imported in 2020, if it managed to re-open its power plants closed in 2021. (the ones put out of use years earlier are being demolished[6]

[1] https://www.springerprofessional.de/erdgas/produktion---prod... [2] https://www.bruegel.org/2022/01/can-europe-survive-painlessl... [3]https://www.weltenergierat.de/publikationen/energie-fuer-deu... [4] https://www.bveg.de/die-branche/erdgas-und-erdoel-in-deutsch...

[5] https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/unternehmen-verbraucher/id_...

[6] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_D...

edit: corrected an error

Comment · 4 years ago

In 2021, Germany got 55% of its gas from Russia (the rest from other European countries). Depending on how much overall consumption can be reduced, European suppliers might be able to cover most/all of it.

Comment · 5 years ago

Previous discussion from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22247292

Comment · 5 years ago

>As of October 2020 Tesla comprised 18% of 2020's global market [1]. Still the clear leader, and almost the only contender in the US, but globally other automakers are threatening their lead.

Worth noting that VW owns Audi and Porsche, so according to those statistics, VW made up 12% of the EV sales last year. They’ve been catching up quite a bit.

Comment · 5 years ago

This article is very US-centric and self congratulatory.

The vaccine is called BNT162b2, because it was fundamentally developed at Biontech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tozinameran

>Tozinameran[1] (INN), codenamed BNT162b2 and more commonly known as the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, is a COVID-19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and manufactured and distributed by Pfizer

https://www.thelocal.de/20201110/biontech-four-things-to-kno...

>While global headlines tend to lead with Pfizer's involvement, Şahin insisted to Spiegel: "It is our technology."

It bothers me how Americanized the Western media has become. If Biontech was a US company and Pfizer was European, exactly 0 US media would call it the „Pfizer vaccine“. Yet most European media outlets have adopted the US-spin and now call it „Pfizer Vaccine“ (or „Pfizer-Biontech“ at most).

> In a series of interviews over more than seven months, senior Pfizer executives and other managers shed new light on how the vaccine project took shape.

Reading the article, it doesn’t look like the spoke to anyone at Biontech.

> BioNTech simply plugged the genetic code for the spike protein into its software. On Jan. 25, BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin designed 10 candidates himself.

Ah yes, the Germans simply plugged it into their software. Disregard over a decade of fundamental research done by hundreds of scientists with hundreds of millions of Euros in funding. Now let‘s focus on all the hard work American pharmaceutical Managers did.

>To assemble its mRNA production network, Pfizer used its own money and didn’t take any from the federal government. Executives said they didn’t want to give agencies outside the FDA more leverage over the design of the trials.

Yes, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tozinameran

>In September 2020, the German government granted BioNTech 375 million euros ($445 million) for its COVID-19 vaccine development program at a time when Pfizer funded its portion of development costs without government funding.[20] BioNTech had also received 100 million euros ($119 million) in financing from the European Commission and European Investment Bank in mid-2020.[21] Also: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/pfizer-va...

And speaking of „Operation Warp Speed“: Coincidentally, „Light Speed“, the name Biontech gave its vaccine development effort, started in mid January. A time when almost nobody had even heard of the virus. Operation Warp Speed wasn‘t announced until April 29, three and a half months later.

Comment · 6 years ago

Thank you for the correction. I trusted a news article without carefully reading the source myself. My bad. I added a different survey.

Comment · 6 years ago

Edit: Someone corrected me, I quoted the survey wrong. But here‘s another source (YouGov survey, 2012), saying that 43% had a real tree and 17% an artificial one: https://statistik-dresden.de/archives/5195

> Also, I don't know anybody here who has a fake plastic tree - these aren't really a thing here, basically people either don't have a tree at all, or they get a real one.

Plenty of people in Germany have plastic trees. According to an Emnid survey from 2017, 1/3 preferred an artificial tree: https://presse.vonovia.de/de-de/aktuelles/171220_kuenstliche...

Comment · 6 years ago

I went through this today. In German there‘s a really great Podcast „Coronavirus-Update“: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html

30 min/weekday a science journalist talks to Christian Drosten, a world-renowned expert on Coronaviruses, who explains things in a very concise manner. Yesterdays episode was „We have to protect the elderly“, where Drosten talked about the high risk for the sick and elderly and trying to fully get this point across to his own father over the weekend. He also mentioned that we should work on hopefully achieving a broader societal awareness of this over the next week or two.

I talked to my mother and father a bit first, sent my mother a link to this episode and told her to put me on speakerphone. We then listened to it together and discussed it a bit afterwards. I found this to be really helpful.

My mother was in denial until 2 weeks ago, when she went a bit hysterical for a day and has been concerned (but okay) since. My father was mostly in denial until today. He also bailed out soon after the podcast ended, because it was a bit much for him. But overall he took it quite well and is taking it more seriously now.

Overall I am very happy with the way this went. Sorry, this isn‘t very helpful if you don‘t speak German. But maybe you are able to find a similar thing in your native language.

Comment · 7 years ago