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Germany Sets New Solar Power Record
An anonymous reader sends this quote from a Reuters report:
"German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour — equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity — through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said. The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022. ... The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed."
What percentage is generated at midnight?
It's just gigawatts, not gigawatts per hour.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
That's awesome! For summer...
I don't know how many of you have been to Germany, but it has a LONG winter, with heavy clouds going well into spring. Some places on earth it makes sense to try to fall back so heavily on solar, but Germany is not that place. They are SCREWED come the next long winter. They are either going to be paying out the nose for France's nuclear power, or having quite a lot of rolling blackouts...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is no such thing as GW/hr. Maybe they hit 22 GW of solar power. For how long? How much energy was actually delivered?
Unless there is a way of storing the energy generated, the capacity of solar plants cannot be included in the calculation of capacity to meet peak demand. In other words, even if the solar at peak could meet all your needs, you still can't retire any of the old plants, because the solar capacity is useless when the sun isn't shining.
And by the way, hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage media... meaning it could very well be used to store solar energy.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I would like to know how much of Germany's energy needs can be met with just renewables.
Maybe they mean Gigawatt hours, rather than gigawatts per hour
The best case performance doesn't determine success, worst case does. How well do they perform when, for example, they have a month of overcast skies?
As I understand it, Germany's Feed In Tariff on green energy is almost the retail price of power (they buy energy produced by solar panels at hugely subsidized prices and charge consumers the tariff to cover it).
Oh, and combine this with other generation systems? Good luck with that; taking half your generating capacity offline for an hour or two (but not every day, and not always half) is a major problem.
Talk to me in December when the sun is low on the horizon and there is a a major storm passing through Germany. How is that different than the quoted article?
1. Sun being lower produces less solar power.
2. Storms block most of the sun decreasing output of solar power plants
3. Snow accumulation can completely stop solar power production.
4. Winter causes higher demand for electrical heat.
5. Darker skies cause more use of lighting.
Taking the increased usage and decreased production into account power production from solar plants could easily drop from 1/3 or requirements to 5%. Instead of touting the optimal power output on a clear sky cool day they need to look at the worst case scenario. The issue with solar power is that you can not turn it on when you need it and that will never change.
Its the rate at which they installed new power generation capacity. Those Germans are demons.
Seastead this.
Not just Fukushima... the combination of that and upcoming state elections was what made Germany (or to be exact, the then pro-Nuke governing party) decide to abandon nuclear power. They had to do that so that their party wouldn't lose too many votes -- and one official even admitted it during a private dinner -- but they lost to the Greens anyway.
I don't read German, but Google Translate does. Looks like energy costs have gone up by 57% in the past decade; taxes on energy have gone up 1000% in the last 15 years.
http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/kostenexplosion-merkels-strompreisluege-seite-all/6663536-all.html
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
exceptionally hot and sunny the last two days..
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
you have storage. What is needed is to push electric cars that plug-in and give back. To really do that, they should have capacitors, not batteries.
In addition, a very smart move is to have cheap batteries and thermal storage. With thermal storage, you can change excess electricity into heat (alabit at a loss of efficiency), and then convert again back to electricity as needed. The real advantage is that Natural Gas (including coal converted to methane) can be burned on those days when AE and the storage does not meet demands. In fact, the ideal situation is if you have days in which you KNOW ahead of time that it will likely need extra energy (such as hot days to run ACs), you heat the thermal at night and use that as well as the NG.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...against tsunamis? Think of all the children who might be exposed to toxic chemicals should one of them fall over!
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Surely I am not the only person who noticed the journalist
measured energy in kw/h.
AC need is a big draw and when it's dark out you don't need it as much.
Subsidising biofuels reduces carbon emissions, and add international peace
on top of that.
we built a network of superconductors between the sunniest deserts and the cold places where all the work is done...
Safety of nuclear power plants is not about the risk of being affected by any concrete type of disaster. It is about what happens when something occurs that causes malfunctions of everything in such a plant. Nuclear power plants have the disadvantage that they need active cooling, even when they are shut down. This is due to the short lifetimes of chemical elements that were produced by the chain reaction while the reactor was running. The decay reactions due to these elements cause an enormous amount of heat output and if the active cooling is not functional you will get a problem.
An inherently save nuclear power plant would not rely on any active functionality.
don't confuse them both.
There's a huge difference between france and germany.
France is encouraing cheap and wasteful electric HEATING. This is plain crazy. At best, you get a 30% efficiency considering the rankine cycle (whatever the heat source) and distribution loss. in the middle of the winter, the french grd is vry overloaded due to this (even more lossy), and french nuclear power can't keep up : THESE BASTARDS FROM EDF THEN ARE MASSIVELY BUYING COAL ELECTRICITY FROM GERMANY ! this coal should be in a much better use for direct heating, with 80% efficiency (2,5x the heat for the same coal quantity).
Germany, on the other side is pushing hard on many things :
- wood heating
- modern and very good home isolation standards (mandatory)
- penalizing electric heating (too bad efficiency)
- building all kinds of renewables like no other country except dennemark
A next-gen grid like Germany is aiming to have will be able to move power from sunlit areas to cloudy areas and from windy areas to calm areas. A large distributed power grid capable of smart utilization in addition to these smart devices adjusting their usage will go a LONG way. Too many people forget completely about the significant gains that can be made simply by having intelligence applied to grid for the 1st time.
Power storage is not as huge of an issue as people like to make it into-- promoted as an excuse for not doing anything until everything is completely solved and costs less than the current prices for traditional power (which will continue to rise and never include all the hidden costs either...)
If you build it, they will come. New power storage systems will be created to meet the increased interest and demand. The best solution may be localized battery units (distributed;) minimizing the need to import power. A simple per-minute pricing system for the grid would lay the groundwork for a distributed market of power storage solutions. BTW, nissan is already close to having their cars double as power storage.
Heating/Cooling is the largest power user. The two could be virtually eliminated just by using the building code regulations.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Sort of.
I'd rather say, Americans have got a strong commitment to the appearance of freedom, and thus, to implement most real world policies they have to jump through so many hoops that the resulting freedom is actually less than with a straight forward solution and costs more. And people are actually proud of that. I'd call it the "freedom theatre", akin to "security theatre".
"Ra ra" is not an argument, by the way, because by this logic USSR was certainly the best place to live (hint: it wasn't, even though there were some good things).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You mean "Deutschland über alles!!!".
I'd rather say, Americans have got a strong commitment to the appearance of freedom, and thus, to implement most real world policies they have to jump through so many hoops that the resulting freedom is actually less than with a straight forward solution and costs more. And people are actually proud of that. I'd call it the "freedom theatre", akin to "security theatre".
I think you are being excessively cynical/pessimistic. Americans *do* have greater freedom. They have *much* greater freedom of expression than many other countries (for example, "hate speech" legislation is unconstitutional in the USA, as it should be everywhere), have greater freedom of religion (which is good), freedom to homeschool (which is a very important freedom), freedom to bear arms (I have no strong opinion on this one), and their tax burden is quite smaller than in Scandinavian countries. And American politics is much more decentralised (not as much as it should be, but still better than elsewhere). This means that each state's laws reflect the values of the people of that state. It also means that you can easily change states if you don't like the laws of your state. Depending on your beliefs, you can live with rugged tea partiers in Texas, or you can live with more-leftist-than-Herbert-Marcuse-himself Massachusetts/California. This freedom to choose the laws that will govern you is absolutely awesome.
"Ra ra" is not an argument, by the way, because by this logic USSR was certainly the best place to live (hint: it wasn't, even though there were some good things).
I did not get that. Maybe because English is my second language. Could you rephrase it for me please?
Regards,
It's funny you mention Russian natural gas, because it was when Russia shut down the gas pipeline that runs through the Ukraine to Germany and the rest of Europe that the Germans decided they needed to get real about renewable energy in a hot hurry. Now, the Russians did it to mess with the Ukraine, not with Germany or anyone else, but the collateral damage to the latter was considerable. Wonder how good an idea the Russians think that monkey business was now, with the rest of Northern Europe coming to see their gas supplies as a strategic vulnerability?
Anyway Germans shutting down their nuclear plants started when the Greens became a significant player in the coalition government. They've been anti-nuclear for 30-40 years, so when they got power they got busy immediately realizing their heart's desire. Fukushima is quite a recent development, but far from the only thing driving Germans to go to green power.
I'm curious to see what shifting their economy to local solar, wind, and biomass power will do for their overall competitiveness. Will they lure back even more manufacturing when future oil/gas/fossil fuel shocks hit other major economies?
If not us, who? If not now, when?
22 GW of power produced during very favorable periods. I would be MUCH more interested to find how much the MEAN power over the course of a full year is, and how large a fraction of 22 GW is. I imagine a pretty goddam small fraction. For half of every day, solar power is zero. For many days of the year that are completely overcast, solar power is reduced to a very small part of nominal noonday.
I.e., annual solar energy production is a much more meaningful measurement than PEAK solar power production.
As opposed to US politics, there is a consensus in German politics. Namely that politics is for the benefit of the people and society. Business is a part of that society, not the other way around.
No, it is not that. It is just that Americans have a strong commitment to freedom, while certain European countries
sacrifice freedom in order to reach a higher (by material standards and measured by HDI) standard of living.
That is why homeschooling is generally legal in America, while in Germany there is a Nazi-era law
that persecutes homeschoolers as if they were rapists. In Germany, the freedom to teach one's own
child is less important than the benefit of having ideological uniformity in the nation, making for a stronger
society. Another example is "hate speech" legislation that makes politically incorrect ideas verboten.
Yet another example is the excessive tax burden of Scandinavian countries, which amounts to
a violation of property rights.
Even if the USA didn't have the world's fourth highest HDI (behind only the Netherlands, Australia and Norway),
and the world's most advanced science/technology, it would still be the best place to live due to political decentralisation
(state's rights) and a strong liberty-protecting Constitution (specially the First Amendment).
Freedom trumps all.
(posting again because some dishonest moderator moded my original post down)
A GWh not a 22 gigawatts per hour, 22GWh. 22 giga joules per hour would have made sense though :)
Reducing *oil* consumption is the key.
Oil comes from very oppressive and aggressive places - Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran. By buying oil we fund a future Jewish genocide. We engage Israel's enemies militarily (thus enlarging the already excessive US military, and feeding anti-Americanism) with our right hand and throw bags of money at them with our left hand. This is *extremely* counter-productive; it would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic. The government should overtax gas-guzzlers (including SUVs!), subsidise economic/flex-fuel cars and lift the barriers on Brazilian ethanol. All the money for solar subsidies should instead go to biofuel.
(posting again because some dishonest moderator modded me down).
Someone moderated me "Troll". This is dishonest. The above post is intellectually honest, fact-based and respectful.
That is why homeschooling is generally legal in America, while in Germany there is a Nazi-era law
that persecutes homeschoolers as if they were rapists. In Germany, the freedom to teach one's own
child is less important than the benefit of having ideological uniformity in the nation, making for a stronger
society.
Actually, it's largely because we assign rights differently. In the US, it seems that parents have more rights than their children, so you see home-schooling as the expression of a parent's right to educate their child as they see fit. Within Europe, we're very keen on childrens' rights, and thus it's more important that every child is guaranteed access to a good standard of education, and we feel that home-schooling isn't sufficient for that. It's nothing to do with idealogical uniformity, it's about protecting children from parents that don't really know how to teach.
Calling this a Nazi-era persecution law just shows an ignorance of European cultural values.
I have lived in both countries.
There is more freedom in Germany than in the US of A. Like drinking beer in public, having sex at 14, saying "shit" in public, being naked in public, not getting sued for everything and anything, being free of religion.
That "Land of the free" BS is part of your indoctrination.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
In the US, it seems that parents have more rights than their children, so you see home-schooling as the expression of a parent's right to educate their child as they see fit.
It is not that "parents have more rights than children". It is just that parents are, except under rare and extreme circumstances, the best people to protect their children's rights. It is like the concept of national sovereignty: the U.N. shouldn't, except under extreme circumstances, meddle into a country's internal affairs. This is not because "national governments have more rights than their citizens", it is just that national governments are better suited to protect their citizens rights than an international government. In fact, the national government should normally defer to the local government, and so on. By the way, this is another area where Americans have greater liberty: their political system is more decentralised, with each state having its own laws. This means that the laws of each state better reflects its population's values. It also means that you can easily change jurisdictions and find one that matches your beliefs. You can choose to live among rugged tea-partiers in Texas, and the corresponding laws, or among the more-leftist-than-Herbert-Marcuse-himself of Massachusetts or California. This freedom is awesome.
Within Europe, we're very keen on childrens' rights, and thus it's more important that every child is guaranteed access to a good standard of education, and we feel that home-schooling isn't sufficient for that. [...] , it's about protecting children from parents that don't really know how to teach.
Wrong. If the point was about good standards of education, they would simply mandate periodic exams, and send low-scoring kids to the regular
school system.
It's nothing to do with idealogical uniformity
It has everything to do with ideological uniformity.
From Wikipedia:
The European Court endorsed a "carefully reasoned" decision of the German court concerning "the general interest of society to avoid the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions and the importance of integrating minorities into society."[52]
In other words, they won't allow significant portions of their society to have unauthorised philosophical convictions.
In January 2010, a United States immigration judge granted asylum to a German homeschooling family, apparently based on this ban on homeschooling. This was damn right.
Calling this a Nazi-era persecution law just shows an ignorance of European cultural values.
Wrong. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
And Universal Human Rights transcend cultural borders.
I am JOrgePeixoto. I created tis accounted to overcome the 50-comment limit (yes, I'm an addict)
Well, in germany we try to differentiate beetween prooven historic facts and freedom of speech.
That way Günther Grass was able to publish his critically acclaimed essay about that israel is threatening the world peace, and not being prosecuted.
Freedom of speech does not protected him against the shitstorm that broke out.
If you make a statement that the mass murdering of 6 Million people didn't occured in public you are prosecuted, and not for being politically incorrect, but for denying a crime to facillitate hate against other groups. Those guys which try to counter that it didn't happen, well even modern nazis just use those to facillitate hate speech against certain groups, most newnazis know that the crime happend, but before that specific law those historic researchers were presented at every newnazi conference, just to troll.
Saying that one is PI has the tendency of making yourself appear to be the prosecuted one, and that way making it hard to argue against, or would it make look like the other one is at fault, because he is one of the prosecuters.
For example your "homeschoolers" and "rapists" that is a typically PI tactic for labelling one to be concived as the ill-prosecuted. Why not just write that "homeschoolers are prosecuted in Germany because in Germany there is a law which states every kid shall attend school to the age of at least 14 (Schulpflicht)"
That would be just the facts, because in germany not only hoomschoolers and rapists are prosecuted so are thieves, fraudsters and even speeders.
And by the way, combining PI ideas with the german word "verboten" (=forbidden) is a very clever tactic, as this word is widely understood, even when the reader does not speak german. This term is known to those, because of movies about the nazi-era and that way has a bitter taste as it's connected to certain emotions for you to be concived as the prosecuted one, even if you would be possibly a nazi, and catch22 those legislation is targeted at nazi-people.
Colourfull example:
Nazi1 to Nazi2: "You are a Nazi because you nazied away my freedom of speech, to say that the hollocaust didn't happen. You bad Nazi Nazi Nazi."
Nazi2: "Now I see, my dear Nazi how could I be so wrong to nazi away your freedom of speech to say Nazi things and shit on 6 Million dead jews, 1 Million dead sinti and roma(gipsy people) and 500000 politically prosecuted people. I must have been a real Nazi"
Do you find the Nazi in the story ?
Btw. what was it about ?
Nazi wind turbines !
Naz solar panels !
"Rah Rah" is something cheerleaders say; some people call cheerleader rah rahs. The GP is basically saying that cheerleading is not an argument.
If you don't think governments (including the US) already have control over power generation then you're delusional.
I suspect you missed the point. I think free market just cannot solve this problem, and state planification and is required. But at the UE level, you just have a free-market obsessed bureaucracy that is not held accountable by citizen. UE member state cooperation is required here, but that can be done without UE bureaucracy.
Take it to North Korea communist freak. America is built on free markets. If those free markets are a problem for Israel: too fucking bad.
Even if we forget our compassion to the Jews, don't you think that economically smothering Israel's enemies would make the region safer,
thus allowing the US Armed Forces to be shrunk, thus decreasing the tax burden?
The US spends a ridiculous percentage of its GDP on the military.
There is more freedom in Germany than in the US of A. Like drinking beer in public
I am not actually American. Is drinking beer in public illegal? I have never heard of that.
Having sex at 14
Doesn't compare. The freedom to express one's ideas is far more important than the claimed right of young teens to have sex.
, saying "shit" in public
Perfectly legal in the US.
being naked in public
Again, doesn't compare. The freedom to express one's ideas is far more important than the claimed right of showing off one's genitals.
being free of religion.
By which you mean, having the government restrict religious freedom.
So how much is it when it is raining or cloudy?
It seems like 90% of this thread is arguing either for or against the notion that we shouldn't use solar power because it isn't always available. Rather than just mindlessly shouting about the relative price and reliability of solar vs. nuclear and the statistics about what times of day and times of year we have peak power usage, can we just examine this premise for a short moment?
We have a plentiful energy source which is sometimes (regularly) available to us. You are saying we shouldn't use it? Really? Your basis for that argument is that we can't use it all the time. This means we should never use it? I feel I must politely disagree with you there. Would you advise farmers not to grow seasonal vegetables because they cant grow them in winter? Would you advise people in a desert not to collect rainwater because it doesn't fall much in the desert? Would you advise me not to socialise with my friends because sometimes they have to work?
The article is about how an industrialised nation has demonstrated that it is economically and industrially feasible to harvest significant amounts of energy from the sun. Anyone want to talk about that? No? Well I do. I think this is great news. Good work everyone involved. Hopefully we can look forward to power bills going down in the future but what is money compared to the future habitability of the world? If a country like Germany can do this with the climate they have, this bodes very well for equatorial countries. Germany also has significant amounts of wind power, which also works at night and during the winter. Perhaps it would have been a better idea to start shutting down the coal plants first and the nuclear ones after. That debate on that has raged on this site for many pages, I myself am unsure about the answer. I want to see both phased out. Another important question is: How can we generate more clean, fuel independent energy? More solar farms and wind farms seem like a good idea. Geothermal and hydroelectric are nice for base load although hydro can be affected by weather as well. Osmotic power seems like an interesting variant, and Tesla's old idea of generating power from temperature gradients in the ocean seems worth a second look and maybe one day between the earths atmosphere and space, generation of electricity that is fuelled directly by global warming and works as a direct counter to it. I am getting too far into the possible future though now. The scientists have been doing good work though so far with solar and wind and I have every confidence in their abilities. Let's enjoy the good news for once, shilling for the nuclear power industry can wait till the next thread, and the next, and the next...
How is the freedom to express one's ideas restricted in Germany?
And by being free of religion I mean being able to say that I'm an atheist without being looked at askance, without religion dominating a large part of politics, etc.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
How is the freedom to express one's ideas restricted in Germany?
Let's say that someone had the opinion that the Nazis weren't the worse human beings to ever walk the face of the earth.
What if someone believed that the Holocaust didn't kill 12 million people and instead only killed 8 million people?
Expressing those ideas in modern Germany are expressly forbidden. Despite what other problems there may be, and there are a metric fuckton of them, restricting ideas is not something we're very fond of in the US.
Hm. I've been to Germany. And to the US. Guess which one involves me getting felt up on entering?
I'd rather say, Americans have got a strong commitment to the appearance of freedom, and thus, to implement most real world policies they have to jump through so many hoops that the resulting freedom is actually less than with a straight forward solution and costs more. And people are actually proud of that. I'd call it the "freedom theatre", akin to "security theatre".
Who has established that these "real world policies" should be implemented? An expedient government doesn't result in a freer society (and I'd say that the couple of centuries since the US Constitution was developed support that claim).
Alternatively, freedom is a lack of restraint on personal actions. Those "straight forward solutions" can easily increase such restraints and hence, don't mean that freedom has increased. As you note with your USSR example, to the contrary, it can result in an tyrannical government.
I have lived in both countries. There is more freedom in Germany than in the US of A. Like drinking beer in public, having sex at 14, saying "shit" in public, being naked in public, not getting sued for everything and anything, being free of religion. That "Land of the free" BS is part of your indoctrination.
Umm... It's perfectly legal in the US to have sex at 14. What will get you in trouble is having sex with a 14yo, provided you are over the age of 16 or so, with the exact age gap varying by state.
Freedom trumps alles... except for townships, which trump freedom in a sort of sick paper-rock-scissors game of political grandstanding.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
For over 18 Deloreans...
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
In short:
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
You are not actually America but know for a fact that it is the most free country?
Have you actually ever lived there?
Let's enjoy the good news for once, shilling for the nuclear power industry can wait till the next thread, and the next, and the next...
I could have replied to one of a hundred threads here, but I happen to agree with 99% of what you say so this is probably a good place to complain without being seen as a whatever-shill. As intelligent as your reply was, it ended with just that implication. If you don't agree, then you are a shill. I happen to agree, so let's get that out of the way right now.
The summary quoted a Reuter's article as saying:
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour — equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity
They don't go so far as to say it, but a very reasonable thing that someone may conclude from this is that 20 nuclear power stations are no longer necessary. Well, no matter how much I like renewable energy, I know that is wrong. You know that is wrong. But your average Joe Blow reading a newspaper sees that and *really does* think, "Wow, we can generate that much power. We don't need nuclear! Hurray!"
When you see others posting and saying, "Oh but what happens when the sun isn't shining." quite a few of them are intelligent people. They are responding to the implication that we no longer need 20 nuclear power plants.
They are being trolled. And they fell for it. On the opposite side, who *actually* believes that if we have, say, 30% base load generation from nuclear that we can simply switch them off because we had a day where we generated 30% of our need from solar? OK, there are some pretty ignorant people in the world, but I submit that they are rare around here. Nobody really believes that. So we get all huffy when people imply that we do.
And here's the saddest part: We've got one side calling the other essentially ignorant, tree-hugging bafoons and in response we call them evil, earth hating shills. All because some asshole at Reuters decided to troll the world in order to get eyeballs. I have seen some incredibly informative and insightful conversations on Slashdot. There are some incredibly smart people around here. But it is all nullified because we just bicker about... Solar providing 100% of our energy needs??? (Almost) Nobody believes that.
Maybe someone thinks nuclear is a good option for base load generation. Maybe someone thinks that we should prioritize research and development in other potential energy sources. There are points for and against each side. Reasonable people can argue about this. Each side can learn something useful from the other. But responding to these trolls just kills any ability to have a reasonable discussion. Calling the other side names does the same. Even imagining that there *is* another side is kind of crazy. We may differ on what method we prefer, but aren't we all interested in having electricity?
So that leads you to the conclusion that Germans have fewer liberties than Americans? Thank you.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Americans *do* have greater freedom. They have *much* greater freedom of expression than many other countries (for example, "hate speech" legislation...
Yes...and no. The US government might not be able to put you in gaol but your US employer can fire you. My experience of living in the US was somewhat surprising. I certainly expected to find it as a place where people were far more free to express political ideas and beliefs.
However freedom is a two-edged sword: while you are free to express your opinions your employer is free to fire you because of them and society is free to exclude you. The result is that, outside of some socially accepted areas e.g. religion, I would say that the US has far less freedom of expression - but that lack of freedom comes from society itself not the government (at least when it's following its own constitution).
Well, in germany we try to differentiate beetween prooven historic facts and freedom of speech.
I understand the reasoning behind it, but it's a dangerous precedent when the government decides "official" history that can't be questioned. In the US, the neo-Nazis are marginalized and anybody denying the Holocaust is considered a hateful, fringe lunatic. They are not, however, put in prison for their views. The same goes for 9/11 "truthers" or cranks that think the US didn't go to the moon.
I wonder, by the way, what German law thinks about a site like Wikipedia that discusses the issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial
And Valhalla will burn, the Tenth Avatar of Vishnu will appear and destroy the wicked, and "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift sword against nation and they will no longer study warfare"...
Yeah, yeah! Show me practical nuclear fusion first...
The German magazine "Spiegel" mentions that the GW are not a measurement, but a number extrapolated from the total of registered solar plants and their expected performance. The Reuters article mentions government support for the German solar industries, but neglects to mention that financial support was recently cut, leading to a series of bankruptcies. -- http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/solarzellen-liefern-leistung-von-20-atomkraftwerken-a-835417.html -- http://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Weitere-deutsche-Solar-Pleite-article6262036.html
Whether the cutting edge of nuclear is viable or not Germany is not going to be putting up the cash for it. What they have is old plants that cost a lot to run, so their announcement to "phase out nuclear" a little while back was really a "do nothing" option - shut down the old stuff when it costs too much to fix and not spend vast amounts of capital in huge chunks to build new stuff.
It's a very simple argument and it's not even solar vs nuclear - it's things with very small capital cost and very short lead time (a few panels at a time or tiny little turbines running on natural gas) versus things with a large capital cost and very long lead time (nuclear or solar thermal - huge amounts of steam and theoretically low price per MW but huge installations that take a long time to build to get that economy of scale).
The German decision was about putting a "green" front on what they were going to do anyway for purely economic reasons. Consider Margret Thatcher's action on nuclear power in the UK for an example without the window dressing.
The most amusing part of this argument is that the laws against holocaust denial in Germany date back to the time when the USA was running the country (or, at least, the part of the country that this law is inherited from).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There isn't actually a ban on homeschooling in Germany: they just require the teacher doing said homeschooling to be certified. The German couple apparently was unable to achieve the teachers certification so they went elsewhere. You're welcome to have them.
The EU court decision was about a different item, dealing with the integration of minorities in society (assimilation). While this is certainly a hot debate, the US does not do it all that different. The bombing of MOVE in Chicago and the attack on the WACO campus being a case in point. The Black Panther party, the FBI's COINTELPRO operations against anyone suspected of not agreeing with the official POV, the Japanese internment camps during WW2... all point to a less than rosy picture about your freedoms in the USA as an unpopular minority. And I won't be mean and discuss the treatment of Mexicans and LBGT people over the past 20 years.
The EU decision basically said: a member state has the right to prevent a minority from setting up an alternative state (competition to their own power). Said right already existed because the member state has the military might to prevent it. The EU just confirmed that you can make laws preventing people from separating themselves from the rest of their country because they don't like the general consensus. Choices you have are: you participate in changing consensus, OR you conform to them, OR you leave. You don't get to retreat into a sulk and close the doors like some angry teenager.
In the EU people are more free for everything that matters in practice: free from hunger, free from extreme poverty, free from disease, free from persecution for having the wrong ideas, free to do whatever you want in private. In the USA you're free to pursue some theoretical freedoms but for everything that matters you're out of luck. Except when you're rich. The USA has more freedoms for rich people than the EU. But most people aren't rich.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
It is just that parents are, except under rare and extreme circumstances, the best people to protect their children's rights.
Says who? Did they receive formal training in doing so? Why should they be better at it than someone who has?
As a father who loves his daughter dearly and would do whatever it takes to make sure she has the best life possible; I will gladly concede that I am not necessarily the best person to help her under all circumstances. I allow the state to take some of the responsibility (while keeping a very large chunk of it myself) and, with every other member of society, keep an eye on the state to make sure it's correctly doing the job that we've asked of it.
My daughter is a human being with her own rights, and even if I wanted to, I should not be allowed to limit those rights beyond what society has deemed is acceptable for her own well being.
By the way, this is another area where Americans have greater liberty: their political system is more decentralised, with each state having its own laws.
So does Germany. Just our Federal laws here tend to be broader in scope than those in the US. We do however also have State laws (in each of our 16 states), so something allowed here in Lower Saxony might for example be disallowed in Bavaria, or vice-versa.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Could relying too much on solar energy be a national security threat, since solar energy is weak against weather modification techniques ?
While the irony/hypocrisy is duly noted, there's a lot of ways in which the US does not or has not lived up to its ideals, but that doesn't make the argument wrong.
States' rights are one of the most puzzling pieces of doublethink in American political thought. On one hand Americans like you are distrustful of the "Government" (which is actually understood to include Congress and all federal institutions), on the other hand they support local politicians, who cannot realistically be any less crooked than those in Washington, DC.
But, the weirdest thing is how states' rights are propped up to have anything to do with personal freedom. States' rights are the lousy excuse with which the most obnoxious attacks on freedom itself were justified: slavery was justified not just with that century-old collection of mediocre fantasy novels known as the bible, but also legally from the standpoint that hey, it's Alabama's right to decide whether blacks are people too. The same gig was later used as well to maintain unjustifiable segregation laws and poll taxes. I cannot really find an instance in history when states' rights actually have been successfully used to promote freedom.
I was at a conference in Austin, TX some years back, and walking around the city I found this monument to confederate soldiers at the Austin capitol, and I was appalled at reading the inscription: "Died for states' rights, guaranteed by the US constitution..." It is a bit like finding a monument to the SS in Berlin or to Vidkun Quisling in Oslo. These lousy moochers fought for slavery and they get a monument? And, solemn offence, they are sold as freedom fighters now?
States should not have any goddamn rights. People have rights. States are institutions that serve the people. If they don't serve them well, they might just as well be set aside.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Well, I for one prefer the energy think tanks being renewable. You don't want to be stuck with old think tanks after a few years, right? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
He means, the country that started World War I and World War II, and probaly will start the next, World War V.
So who will start World War III and World War IV? And why will World War V be started before III and IV?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
As opposed to US politics, there is a consensus in German politics. Namely that politics is for the benefit of the people and society. Business is a part of that society, not the other way around.
No, it is not that. It is just that Americans have a strong commitment to freedom, while certain European countries
sacrifice freedom in order to reach a higher (by material standards and measured by HDI) standard of living.
That is why homeschooling is generally legal in America, while in Germany there is a Nazi-era law
that persecutes homeschoolers as if they were rapists. In Germany, the freedom to teach one's own
child is less important than the benefit of having ideological uniformity in the nation, making for a stronger
society.
Actually the argument against homeschooling is that the freedom and rights of the child have to be protected even against the rights of the parents. The children have the right and freedom to be educated about science, sexuality other religions etc. even if the parents belong to some religious sect or the other, which oppose these ideas. I find it ironic that the ones shouting the loudest against abortion, and about the rights of the unborn child, are also the ones most strongly opposed to legislation for protecting the rights of born children, because essentially their premise is that children are the property of their parents, which they should be allowed to education whichever way they please (including beating with a stick).
Another example is "hate speech" legislation that makes politically incorrect ideas verboten.
Even if the USA didn't have the world's fourth highest HDI (behind only the Netherlands, Australia and Norway),
and the world's most advanced science/technology, it would still be the best place to live due to political decentralisation
(state's rights) and a strong liberty-protecting Constitution (specially the First Amendment).
Freedom trumps all.
Well, if we use the inequality adjusted HDI the USA suddenly falls back to the 23rd place. So it's not really such a great place to life. Also about technology and science, I doubt that every time I sit in an american train.
And about the liberty-protecting Constitution, how's that working for the detainees in Guantanamo?
Where I live now (in California), it even illegal for two 17 year olds to have sex. Yes it's only a misdemeanor but it's still illegal.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
being naked in public
Again, doesn't compare. The freedom to express one's ideas is far more important than the claimed right of showing off one's genitals.
It is amazing that you can't see the inherent contradiction in your statement. Is being naked in public not an act of self expression?
Your post is so full of ideological cant it's breathtaking. Freedom means absence of constraint. Anything that twists freedom into something that involves stealing from someone (e.g. free from hunger) is abuse of the English language.
That single sentence shows that you have no concept of the meaning of "right", and invalidates your whole post. Repeating the ages old maxim, "Might does not make right."
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Feeling in not an adequate replacement for thinking.
In the US, largely due to union power, leftist courts, and cowardly/bent administrators, government schools are of poor quality and getting worse. There are two alternatives available for those able to take advantage of them: private schools and home schooling.
Children's rights have to be considered in the context that they are slowly maturing. Failure to do so leads to absurd and harmful results.
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Not only that (which is bad enough), but we're also depleting the world reserves of very valuable chemicals used in all kinds of manufacturing, like plastics, medical drugs, etc... Burning this valuable stuff just to get some energy is extremely short sighted.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Most German nuclear reactors are located along the Rhine River Valley (Rheingraben), and that's the region with the highest seismic hazard. Sure, it's far from the San Andreas Fault, but it's not entirely without risks.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Trains are one of the biggest electricity consumers in Germany.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
"22 gigawatts of electricity per hour"
Power is energy per unit time. Did they mean "22 gigawatts of electricity every hour for X hours"?
Can't Reuters get these things right?
Homeschooling is considered child abuse in Germany because it doesn't make sure that your child is getting a proper education and definitely prevents them from getting the necessary graduation certificates to enter higher education and have a shot at a good job. It destroys the career chances of your child for no good reason. Parents aren't qualified teachers and even if they are teachers by trade they will not be able to cover all the subjects that are part of the school curriculum up to eighth grade (which is the minimum school length and even that only qualifies you for jobs on the level of burger flipping).
If you don't like the way public schools are run feel free to put your child into a private school. If you want homeschooling for crazy reasons like teaching your religious beliefs in place of history then get lost. I hear the US offers asylum to people like that.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
So in the USA you have freedom to send your kids to a school where thy are searched for weapons on entering.
You have the freedom to get them there in a school bus but they have not the freedom to ride there with a bike.
You have the freedom to be poor and as a rich guy you have the freedom to not pay to health insurance, so the poor guys can not afford it.
You have the freedom if you are of the wrong colour someone may shoot you without trial.
You have the freedom with the wrong colour you are convicted to death while a similar crime by a white would give him 5 or 7 years.
Granted: the USA have a lot of freedoms, I still prefer Europe.
In he USA a federal prosecutor is not even obliged to reveal the truth, he is going for convictions instead. If obviously the defendant is innocent the federal prosecutor is still trying to get him executed. That is a huge freedom!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well, in germany we try to differentiate beetween prooven historic facts and freedom of speech.
First: many times in History scientists have been wrong. Forbidding the spread of ideas because they
have been "proven wrong" is absurd. Also, forbidding Holocaust denial is stupid and counter-productive,
as it allows the anti-semites to say "historians may largely agree about the Shoah, but only because
dissent is forbidden". Note: I in no way dispute the Shoah.
Second: I was not thinking about German anti-Holocaust denial laws, I was thinking of "hate speech" legislation
that exist in countries such as the UK (an possibly Germany, but I don't know). Censoring "hate speech" is a violation
of human rights. You may think that it is awesome to censor a guy who says "sodomy is wrong", because he is such
a moronic bigot, but how would you feel it the situation was reversed? How would you feel if conservative governments
censored people for saying "abortion is OK", claiming that to be hate speech against unborn babies?
For example your "homeschoolers" and "rapists" that is a typically PI tactic for labelling one to be concived as the ill-prosecuted. Why not just write that "homeschoolers are prosecuted in Germany because in Germany there is a law which states every kid shall attend school to the age of at least 14 (Schulpflicht)"
That would be just the facts, because in germany not only hoomschoolers and rapists are prosecuted so are thieves, fraudsters and even speeders.
Throwing people in jail and abducting their children because they disagree with the ideology taught in public schools is a totalitarian act.
And it was in fact instituted by Hitler, because he wanted every kid to learn Nazism.
Choosing the education of one's children is a human right according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I don't believe a sane person finds any difference in germany (or europe) to express their own ideas in relation to the USA.
If you believe otherwise you are mistaken.
The rest of your arguments "don't compare".
Ofc it is relevant that an semi adult can have sex with 14. In what retarded backyard medieval society do you live to think otherwise?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
German law thinks nothing about that.
Obviously a web site is not a person standing on the streets shouting: "germans did not kill jews! Its a jewish conspiracy!"
If you had read the web site, you linked, you had noticed it does in fact supports the german stand point ^-^
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
(I am the original poster, I am anonymous to avoid hitting the 25-comment limit)
True. I am usually against government intrusion in the economy, but for the reasons
I exposed and for that which you exposed, I support government action to
curb oil burning.
Homeschooling is considered child abuse in Germany because it doesn't make sure that your child is getting a proper education and definitely prevents them from getting the necessary graduation certificates to enter higher education and have a shot at a good job. It destroys the career chances of your child for no good reason. Parents aren't qualified teachers and even if they are teachers by trade they will not be able to cover all the subjects that are part of the school curriculum up to eighth grade (which is the minimum school length and even that only qualifies you for jobs on the level of burger flipping).
If that was the reason, the authorities would simply mandate periodic exams, and low-scoring kids would be sent to the regular school system.
But, as I said in two different posts elsewhere, the government persecutes homeschoolers because they don't want people holding wrong
philosophical convictions. This is a totalitarian act.
I have never seen any real logical argument against homeschoolers.
You have the freedom to get them there in a school bus but they have not the freedom to ride there with a bike.
That does not compare with freedom of expression/religion or political freedom.
You have the freedom to be poor and as a rich guy you have the freedom to not pay to health insurance, so the poor guys can not afford it.
Except that the USA has Medicare, Medicaid and other programs, so you are either bald-faced lying or extremely deluded.
You have the freedom if you are of the wrong colour someone may shoot you without trial.
You have the freedom with the wrong colour you are convicted to death while a similar crime by a white would give him 5 or 7 years.
In your wild imagination.
I don't believe a sane person finds any difference in germany (or europe) to express their own ideas in relation to the USA.
If you believe otherwise you are mistaken.
When complaining about European countries censorship, I was thinking about the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United_Kingdom
The tebagger interpretation of "free market" as a market without regulation is either a tautology or an oxymoron, but I'm not sure which.
UE is fond of free and undistorted competition. This is how free market must be understood in the UE context. This is almost unregulated: there are antitrust rules so that competition thrives
Why don't you read up how many death penalty convicts are sitting in jail in in the US?
And why don't you check the colour of their skin?
Medicare or other new health insurance programes are Obamas success ... and "everyone" hates him for that.
In relation to the USA, europe is full with news from US. You seem never to get any news from us, except via /. so your opinions are fare from objective.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why don't you read up how many death penalty convicts are sitting in jail in in the US?
And why don't you check the colour of their skin?
What is your point? If the prison population is disproportionally black, that does not
mean there is racism. Another explanation is that the crime rate is higher among blacks.
You are accusing the USA of racism without any good evidence.
Medicare or other new health insurance programes are Obamas success ... and "everyone" hates him for that.
No, these programs are old.
it has been mentioned that solar power is bought with state intervention - however, without state intervention there obviously would be no nuclear power, either, and I didn't hear many conservatives complaining then.
I have every right you have and quite a few you don't depending on which state you live in. That includes the right to homeschool my children.
At least in Germany, homeschooling is verboten. This happens in some other European countries as well.
I can protest without being placed in free-speach zones.
I remember seeing European anti-globalization protesters being kept
away from the World Economic forum.
I can depend on a social safety net for me and my children should things go wrong. This allows me to experiment and try things I would never try if a string of bad luck would mean my family would not get cancer treatments.
Also exists in the USA. A bit smaller than in the EU, but poor Americans do have a lot of help.
German law thinks nothing about that. Obviously a web site is not a person standing on the streets shouting: "germans did not kill jews! Its a jewish conspiracy!"
You think the laws only consider somebody ranting on the street versus published material framed in an academic setting? That's just not true.
If you had read the web site, you linked, you had noticed it does in fact supports the german stand point ^-^
In what way? The website I linked to was Wikipedia. It is an encyclopedia which describes the major claims of the deniers, the history of denialism, and the reactions and criticism to it, including laws against it as well as attempted legislation against it that was struck down.
States' rights are one of the most puzzling pieces of doublethink in American political thought.
You missed the point. It is not that states have more rights than their citizens, it is that states are better suited to protect their citizens rights than the federal government. Just like the U.N. should not intrude into the American sovereignty without strong reasons, the federal government shouldn't intrude in Texas or California without good reason. A local, smaller government is easier to check, and it better reflects its citizen's values. Compare the laws in Texas with those of California - the laws are different because Texans are different from Californians, and this is good.
If a state is upholding slavery, then we can argue that it is a human rights violation and a higher level of government can intervene.
But if you don't like the fact that (say) marijuana is partially legal in California, you shouldn't ask for federal intrusion.
People keep bringing slave-holding Confederate states, but they forget that many times, free states _resisted_ federal mandates
to capture fugitive slaves and send them to slave-holder states. People also forget that the greatest atrocities in human History
were perpetrated by uncheckable centralized governments - Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, etc.
As an aside, the federal government currently presses state governments to set the legal drinking age at 21. This is an example of
absurd federal intrusion.
slavery was justified not just with that century-old collection of mediocre fantasy novels known as the bible
And you conveniently forget that churches in free states were actively anti-slavery.
Except the child's freedom to not be helpless when they turn 18 and haven't received a decent education. Children aren't humans until then (they are self-propelled dolls for their parents whims), so their freedoms don't matter.
If the point was to ensure a good education, the state would simply mandate periodic exams and send low-scoring kids
to the regular school system.
There is absolutely no logical justification to forbid homeschooling, other than the totalitarian desire to ensure ideological
uniformity.
Yes...and no. The US government might not be able to put you in gaol but your US employer can fire you. My experience of living in the US was somewhat surprising. I certainly expected to find it as a place where people were far more free to express political ideas and beliefs.
If your boss fires you for being politically incorrect, you can still get another job.
If the national government arrests you for being politically incorrect, you are hopeless.
Try to say "I plan to kill the President" in the US and see what the fuck happens to you.
There are always things that are illegal to say.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
How is the freedom to express one's ideas restricted in Germany?
When I touched the topic of of religious freedom, I was actually thinking
about the UK and its odious "hate speech" legislation. If you read my original
post, I was speaking about Europe in general, and brought Germany because
of its anti-homsechoolers persecution.
And by being free of religion I mean being able to say that I'm an atheist without being looked at askance
Atheists are better treated in the USA than practicing Catholics or Evangelicals are treated in Europe
, without religion dominating a large part of politics, etc.
First: secularists are huge hypocrites. When the Episcopal church or some Lutheran church promotes abortion
and homosexualism, the secularists like it. But when some Evangelical/Catholic/Eastern Orthodox Christian
condemns abortion and homosexualism, then the secularists scream day and night about the imminent danger of
a theocracy.
Second: a healthy, free secular country must not restrict freedom of speech or freedom of religion, which are
two human rights. But when a religious person advocates some law, he should he heard just like an atheist should:
with neutrality.
So, if Christian John demands heresies to be censored, and atheist Karl demands the Bible to be censored,
both should be disregarded, because human rights (of speech, of religion) are not negotiable. Here we agree.
But if Christian John demands abortion to be banned and atheist Karl demands abortion to be legal,
then both should be heard, in a free society. Because there is a huge difference between healthy secularism,
which is neutral to religion, and anti-religious oppressive secularism, which is biased against religion.
...but what about sustained power generation during rain?