Germany's Freefall E-Book

Hermann Dr. Rochholz

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 528

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

German unique "ideas" are described making legal laws from the gut violating the laws of nature (physics). It provides proof with official figures that none of this can work. Several examples with their pitfalls are explained. Some small calculations are made to show all this (1 page). Because all this can only be done with ideology, the psychology behind it is unraveled. Magazine articles are used as examples to show the enormous effort that goes into manipulating the population in Germany. It is a bit like a textbook explaining how to evaluate "innovations" which are shown as a silver bullet to save the world. In summary, it shows the means by which Germany is systematically being driven to ruin by green ideology. Energy is theorized and education is destroyed. Natural sciences are no longer part of German education. The new democratic censorship is, that journalists modify stories acording their morality. Engineering basics are already missing in all topics. To show one result: "renewables" cannot work in Germany because of the high population density and because of lack of lossless energy storage. Therefore it makes no sense to compare Germany with other countries with different conditions.

Leseprobe

Hermann Rochholz

Germany's Freefall 

How Ideology Destroys a Country a Second Time 

Even if everyone agrees,

everyone can be wrong.

Bertrand Russell

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity.

It's their distinguishing characteristic. 

Oscar Wilde  

 

1stEdition 2021: 2021/09/03 

(coincident to 2ndGerman edition) 

Text and Cover: 

© Dr.-Ing. Hermann Rochholz

Freefall_202109_A1_epubV51 

Typesetting: LibreOffice Writer

Diagrams: LibreOffice Calc 

Cover: LibreOffice Draw 

(epub converter: Calibre) 

Everything’s just fine in Germany, isn’t it?

Everything’s being converted to organic. People want to live healthy, long lives. That’s why all herbicides are being banned from our farmlands. Somehow we’ll manage without them. The fields are being “re-naturalized” through reforestation. Moreover, corn is being planted in order to produce biodiesel. Food will surely come from somewhere.

The climate problem and environmental protection can be easily solved simply by installing wind power plants, expanding photovoltaics and shutting down those coal and nuclear power plants. At the same time, people are protesting against wind turbines, power lines and new storage power stations for the sake of preserving the environment. Electricity will soon be used to charge the batteries in electric cars, produce hydrogen or, better yet, “liquid fuels” – something that should have been done a long time ago. No problemo!

The plastic in the oceans can be dealt with by banning plastic straws, and many “celebs” are campaigning against plastic waste on television. We simply dump our plastic waste free of charge in China in order to explain environmental protection to them. Wow!

Innovators like Elon Musk are promising a wonderful future: Mars flights, “hyperloops” and electric cars will revolutionize life. Just what everybody needs! Artificial intelligence will help – somehow. Air taxis are regarded by visionaries as a future means of transport because in five years’ time we’ll all be surely flying out and about in them. They’ll help us save the world!

Well, a few tiny problems persist. Germany’s railways have punctuality issues with their ICE (Intercity Express) fleet of high-speed trains. The opening of Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport was delayed by nine years in November 2020. There’s the “Stuttgart 21” railway project, the Hamburg opera house, and the Gorch Fock (tall ship) overhaul – all more than 10 times as expensive as estimated. The G36 light rifle shoots around street corners. German ammunition depots only have enough in reserve for one week at most. And the car industry is cheating on its reported 2003 to 2017 emissions figures. Replacement windows cost €10,000 each in public buildings. Refurbishing the federally sponsored swimming pools is taking a bit long at eight years, and big newspaper publishing houses are telling stories that have been completely invented as fact.

But even that’s very easy to get a grip on: The EU simply passes a regulation to ensure that cars produce almost 40% less CO2 from 2030 onward – problem solved! After all, star journalist Claas Relotius was fired. “DER SPIEGEL” magazine is doing proper reporting now. Starting today, Volkswagen is honest once again, as they declare that they only want to build electric cars. Starting today, the managing directors of Berlin Brandenburg Airport LLC are telling the truth as they assure us that the airport will open “by the end of the year”. All problems are solved! Wonderful, isn’t it?

The unemployment figures are as low as never before, and that just happens to always be the case prior to every election. Great!

This is what the “quality” press is reporting. It now boasts a “Fact Finder” that guarantees not to report false stories because it’s a “Fact Finder”, after all; and journalists who find facts can easily judge what is indeed a fact or what’s nonsense due to their excellent technical-mathematical training. Down with the fake news!

We simply ditch all our pesticides and everything’ll be solved! For centuries, farmers only wanted to support the chemical industry and poison the population and, of course, themselves, too. What morons!

You get the feeling that everyone in Germany nowadays carries the surname Baerbock, Habeck (Green politicians) or Longstocking. Mrs. Longstocking is, of course, a Swede, who, as Pippilotta Långstrump, is acting as a certain role model for her young audience.

And never has anyone ever come up with the idea of running transport vehicles in a vacuum before. Elon Musk is certainly the very, very first to do so; and fires have never existed in Australia before: Even 1,000 years ago, the Aborigines had boasted an army of volunteer firefighters who arrived immediately on the scene with their fire flappers and water-filled bladders – or was that an alien fire brigade? I’m not sure anymore.

This is the revision of a book that has not yet been published in the English language. It has been updated and restructured. The introduction was shortened, diagrams were added and, among other things, the chapters “Manipulation Instruments of a Democracy”, “Framing”, “Fact Finder” and “Press” added as well. Calculations were moved to the appendix, which is marked using curly brackets or braces {}. Examples of journalistic reporting are depicted in a magazine that sold fairy tales as facts, and there’s a glossary.

I hereby thank all those people who provided me with material and with constructive criticism. I also thank my Internet discussion partners who opened my eyes. Some “visions” were far beyond what I could have imagined myself as an engineer.

Table of Contents

Introduction 

Evaluating the System 

Opinion versus Facts

The Other Point of View 

Statistics 

Statistical Errors and Statistical Abuse

Imagination 

Consequences

Physics, Technology and Math 

Efficiency 

The Last Percentages – Cutting Losses

Standards and Guidelines 

Technical “Spoilsports” 

Wind Turbines

Electric Scooters

Outer Space Transporters

Carbon Fiber Concrete

Elbow Pads and Citybike Frames

Summary of the “Spoilsports”

Perfection Mania 

“The Good Old Days” 

The Terrible New Times 

Fashion – Perfecting the Body

Delusional Causes 

Religions of the Modern World 

Plastic Waste 

Burning (Plastic) Materials

Consequences

“Side Effects”

Our Luxury Problem: Food and Toxin 

Toxins in Food

Organic – What’s That?

Poison – What’s That?

Psychological Tricks and Manipulations

DDT – Modern Colonialism Included

The Good German Chlorine Chicken

Gene Food

“Superfoods”

Measuring and Detecting Poisons

Arguments… 

Energy and Supply 

Systems 

Unit of Energy 

The Energy Requirement 

Origins of Energy

Energy Demand of Humans

Society, “Devourer” of Fossil Energies

Germany’s Energy 

Power Plant Types 

Nuclear Power Plants

Coal and Gas Power Plants

Renewable Energies

Installed Power and Load Peaks in Germany 

Modern Energy Problems

Fossil Energy – Unanswered Questions 

Population Density 

Mobility 

The Efficiency of Internal Combustion Engines

Electric Cars

Comparing Combustion Engines and E-Cars

Additional Power Plant Capacity for E-Cars

Hydrogen

Network Overload from Electric Cars?

Charging Stations

Positions of Professor Quaschning 

Science and Faith 

Conspiracy Theories and Their Parallels 

Technical (Il)logic

Methods and Psychology of Conspiracy 

Faith or Knowledge 

Modellings

Limits of Knowledge

Knowledge of the Basics

Delusional Believers 

Nuclear Power is Cheap. Safety makes it Expensive.

The Risk is Small, but Present.

Compromises 

Compromises vs. Private Interests

Normal Insanity 

Elon Musk 

Flight to Mars

Starlink

Hyperloop

Electric Air Taxis 

Japanese Trains 

“Carbon Dioxide Fans” 

Rezo’s “Evidence” 

Green Counterproductivity 

Nuclear Power Plants 

Raccoons, Wolves, Beavers and Other Invasive Species 

Dying Bees 

Killing Weeds with Heated Steam 

Grain, Corn and Organic Potatoes 

“Renaturalization” 

Australian Bushfires 

Causes 

Kant Sends His Regards 

Self-Deception 

The Modern Trade in Indulgences 

Implementing Demands

Anti-Logical Psyche 

Cognitive Dissonance

The Addiction to Conformity

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Backfire Effect

Secondary Effects

Creating Personal Truth 

Opinion, Prejudice and Conviction

Affect Heuristics 

Hand-Picked, Universally Valid Standards 

“The Normals” 

Normal Pathological Traits?

The Addiction to Please

Asia 

Europe 

Computers 

Professorships 

Shortage of Skilled Workers 

Real Work 

Non-Knowledge 

Volkswagen (VW) 

Planned or Unplanned Obsolescence 

German Press Strategies 

Manipulated Unemployment Figures

Expropriating the Elderly

Manipulation Instruments of a Democracy 

Pseudo Solutions 

“Coffin Nails” 

The G36 Rifle

Fire Protection at Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)

Soft Skills Are Not Hard Skills 

Insider of German politics 

Education and Training 

Education 

The Education-Suicide Society 

Official Denigration of Science Education

How Do You Come Up With These Ideas? 

Dissemination

Lack of Frustration Tolerance 

The Fun and Happiness Society

Analyses

If You Want It –Then Do It Skillfully! 

The Circumstances

Smartphones and Computers

One-Dimensional System Analyses

Results of this Policy 

Abuse of Education for Political Purposes

Anxiety-“Education” of the Germans 

Germans “Democracy” 

The Error Unculture 

Politically Opportune Lies 

Idealized Frauds? 

Intelligence and Profession 

Pigeonhole Arguments 

Framing

Additional Communication Unculture

“Application Example”: A Discussion about CO2

The World of Politicians 

The World of Journalists 

Framing Manuals

Analysis of Journalistic Opinion Making

Examples of Journalistic Morality

Incompetence at its Finest

The “Fact Finder”s

Democratic Press Censorship

Summary 

Calculations 

Glossary 

Quotes 

Bibliography 

Introduction

How can you spread a doomsday mood when everything’s fine and the quarterly figures of the German Federal Government regularly promise a surplus? Even former East Germany, the GDR, had only disseminated positive things to say about the state. Conversely, people in the west of the republic had mainly heard about the bad things happening in the east. Why should that be any different today? Most facts are freely accessible. However, they have to be interpreted and put into context. It’s not necessary to recount a lot of new material. You have to know, interpret, link and possibly even compare information. Only then can it be evaluated. It was known, for example, that the automotive industry alone intends to lay off at least 50,000 workers in Germany in 2019. “Socially acceptable” this was called to make it sound upbeat. But the jobs are gone. “Economically viable” this ain’t. It’s, after all, the economy that has to bear the burden of a social system that pays the unemployed.

I’m not a clairvoyant – nor am I a futurologist. If that giant volcano erupts under Yellowstone National Park before this book is published, then the predictions made in this book will be false. But that’s unlikely to happen.

Some people think they know what the world will look like in 100 years, wavering between their idea of utopia and dystopia. When I was growing up, one utopia could be found in the book “The Basics of the 21st Century”. The author was Mr. Gustav Schenk. He extrapolated technology and physics to the present century. The approach was a technical-physical one. To him, as a scientist, it was obvious: Any development will follow logic, which it did at the time.

Great famines still existed forty years ago; reports on the “Biafra children” went around the world. This was taken up in the dystopian movie “Soylent Green”, aportmanteau of “soy” and “lentils” – dyed green. It wasn’t veggies but human flesh as it turned out. By the way, nutrition won’t be a problem since a continuous yield increase and yield security could be achieved through the development of highly specific equipment. However, this is being slowly eliminated in Europe now.

The title of the book is “Germany’sFreefall”. When you jump from the 30th floor of a high-rise building, nothing will happen to you during the fall because you’re weightless. It will, however,become “slightly problematic” when you hit the ground. When I predicted the opening of Berlin Brandenburg Airport in 2013 (planned for 2011) to be 2022/23, it merelyelicited a head-shaking response. Unfortunately, I was pretty correct(It was late 2020 now – a 9 year delay). If only 4% of the defectsthere could have beeneliminatedby 2012, then it would havebeencompletelyunrealistic to achieve the remaining 96% by 2013. Mathematics is real and has nothing to do with “pessimism” or “optimism”. 

In mid-May 2019, a headline from the German newspaper “Die Welt” declaring “Why the German Prophets of Doom are Wrong” asked: “Where does this German Angstlust(or “delight in fear”) come from?” The first sentence of the article reads: “The unemployment rate is lower than ever before...” But this isn’t correct: Germany has renamed more than half of its unemployed in a law: All those over the age of 58 who have not found employmentafter one year are to be dubbed the “underemployed”. Why was such a law passed, and why does an article with this kind of information start with the word “unemployed?” Exactly this kind of thing demonstrates that things are going downhill because these sorts of arithmetic gymnasticsshouldnormally not be necessary. In a separate chapter, I will unravel exactly these kinds of statistics in detail because it shows the care used to manipulate them. By the way, this seems to be what Germany does best. Other statistics also reveal that an enormous amount of effort was put into presenting figures in a way that achieves an optimal manipulative effect. 

The above reports, which gloss over current politics with “crookedfigures”, were published justprior to theGerman elections. Nobody cares two hoots about them. In contrast, bogus slogans and pseudo-argumentsto be found in YouTube videos (“Rezo”) “The Destruction of the party CDU”virtually trigger a government crisis. 

When you, like me, predict company bankruptcies (“Cassandra syndrome”) and back these up with the facts (losses in the millions combined with technical incompetence) you aren’t taken seriously. A friend had predicted another bankruptcy with these words: “All he does is jet around the world – that can’t go on very much longer.” The company owner had later declared that he “had trusted the wrong people”. I could have told him that beforehand. I knew some of them personally: managers who just blew a lot of hot air (wind power).

Therefore, you can predict the future with relative certainty when youlook at it from a neutral, critical point of view and without prejudice atthe currenttime. The sense of reality of the people involved doesn’t change. It allows you to conclude how things will continue. Incidentally, this company owner is starting all over again now and is blindly trusting in his Chinese counterparts. People don’t change and, apparently, they can’t be helped. 

I was wrong predicting the insolvency of another company (it occurred 10 years later). Ithad squandered millions in the triple digits. This exacts its revenge when the company doesn’t happen to be Volkswagen. An insolvency at VW could place the German state of Lower Saxony, which holds large blocks of its shares, in financial straits. That’s a risk we know from thebanks: Whenever a company is in really bad shape, the taxpayers have to foot the bill. How big this risk is yet to be carefully assessed. To date, people assume something like this won’t happen – which is what we thought regarding the banks.

“Stupid German money” is making the international rounds. Germans can now be sold all kinds of junk because when you lack the necessary expertise you’re forced to rely on other people. That’s why Germany is increasingly becoming a state of consultants [33]. The stupid thing is that consultants have to sell themselves and, in most cases, deliver (consulting) results that a client exactly wants to hear.

This “fall” is progressing ever faster as follows: Europe and Asia are swapping places. Asians will soon be telling the Europeans what to do. They’re doing so already today, which everybody’s noticing but nobody has fully realized yet. That’s also why the Asian and European systems are being scrutinized. China, by the way, will be the second country to have humanslanding on the moon. They’ve already landed on the dark side of the moon with robots. This was an innovation because any data transmission to and from it requires a satellite to orbit the moon. 

In summary, it is apparent that the system has become unstable. However, the local systems are still stable, thereforethe swap cannot be halted at this point.

When it comes to the facts, this post-factual and quixotic point of view and German politics and industry are all working hand in hand for the purpose of maintaining power. The press uses pseudo-competent reporting to direct the focus onto the wrong things. This is obviously their usual practice and an expression of “political correctness” or “morality”.

The press must sell itself, and problems don’t sell. This word, “problem”, isn’t supposed to be used anymore anyway; it’s a no-no or “No-Go” in new German speak/Denglish. The strategy of the press is to predict a golden future while reporting indignantly about the “idiots” opposed to this future. This allows their readers to feel “educated”. 

Below is a brief analysis ofeducational systems, as the prosperity of any industrialized society is built on qualified education. Nobody seems to have properly understood this yet, although China, in particular, has demonstratedthat its prosperity and food supply have improved significantly through education, despite its rapid population growth. At the same time, I will reference our political system, parliamentary democracy, an open, neutrally informed society and how the thinkers of our time assume that this will all work out in the long run.

The challenges resulting from technical and scientific progress and its associated globalization are mounting like never before.

The issues are manifold: Education (this deficiency is etiological), German notions about the environment (these will get Germany into the biggest trouble regarding its own energy policies and food supply), and liberal do-gooderism (currently dividing society overthe migration issue in the belief in the superiority of one’s own ethical views and economic might). It all interlocks (one system). It’s a vicious circle witha self-reinforcing, escalating effect.

The topics vary in complexity, so let’s start with a relatively simple subject that reveals themindsets and their paradoxical effects. Germans like to be engaged in ecological discussions. Ancient Rome had bread and circuses to keep the populace happy. The “educated” German is more demanding in this regard with endless discussions about bottle and can deposits, glyphosate, dying bees, wicked pesticides, acrylamide and nitrogen oxides. It gets tricky when it comes to wind turbines because these were first touted as the “savior of the system”, but then made the bogeyman as their danger to birds, bats and, finally, insects became apparent. Year-long discussions were the result. The perfect occupational therapy.

Even when you were happy to have despaired and given up early on your science lessons back in school, these days you nevertheless want to join in and express your displeasure about “wicked German industry”. Some may indeed be wicked, no doubt, but they are, in fact, happy about any arguments made at this superficial level because these can easily be debunked. Environmentalists do a disservice to the real environmental sinners. One side effect is that farmers, for example, no longer find it worthwhile to farm in an environmentally friendly manner: They’re pilloried across the board by the media anyway.

The logic from large sections of the population seems questionable. The works council is bribed with hookers. Efficient cars are sold with magnesium tailgates and lead on the rear axle. Entire countries are defrauded on a professional scale. The entire German (and German only) clientele is left out in the rain when an entire series of improperly designed small engines is produced that breaks down in winter while diesel engine technology was being taken down the wrong road for an entire decade. You then commit yourself 100% to electric mobility and – poof – it’s “the good guys” again, i.e. those who’re doing everything right, even when these vehicles are supposed to be charged at 350 kW. Not even the Americans can “manage” something like that.1  

This makes Germany look ridiculous. “Baizuo” (“White Leftist”) is the Chinese derogatory term for a morally superior and naively arrogant white person. 

Notes on my own behalf: 

The book doesn’t primarily deal with climate and climate change. Certainly humans have their fingers in that pie, at least as far as the course of events is concerned because its rapid progression. However, climate change is often used to prove that the move towards alternative energy, i.e. “the energy turnaround”, will work out. Any causality that the move towards alternative energy will work out just because climate change is real, however, is notgiven. Apparently, it’s assumed that a solution is basically available for every problem. That’s certainly incorrect. Moreover, environmental protection first and foremost costs money and must be driven forward with a lot of technical knowledge. There are no “patent solutions” in this regard. Therefore, this book mainly describes subjects that can be evaluated on a scientific basis.

This book will most likelyinclude (a few) false facts as well. If the author knew where to find them, he would have avoided them. But this is no proof that this book is only written with a lot of nonsense. If one were to argue in this manner, as is common practice these days, a person like Immanuel Kant would have been no where in sight: He thoughtto darken his room to keep out the vermin, a common plagueat the time. No one would think of condemning Kant just because of a single weird, erroneous judgment, especially since he had created the Categorical Imperative that we (would like to) employ today (seeKant Sends His Regards). 

When I speak about “the journalists”, for example, the author means the predominant part or their average. Reasonable journalistsexist, too. Who these are can hopefully be assessed by the reader once he or she has read this book. The world is not as simple as it is made out to be. That’s why this book begins with a few chapters on possible strategies in how to evaluate the systems that abound around us.

Evaluating the System

How did I come up with the idea for writing this book? It will probably not sell well because people love positive news. A popular saying is: “The bearer of bad news will be shot!” The author must “somehow” be able to evaluate the systems around him and simultaneously be sure of the truth of these claims. That’s arrogance, too, isn’t it?  

I evaluate the facts here using the laws of nature (see chapter Physics, Technology and Math) When you try to violate these laws, things will go wrong. It’s therefore not arrogant, but pragmatic to use these. Natural laws, to be specific, don’t care about politics. They hold true for all social systems, democracy and dictatorship alike. Incidentally, many laws, rules and regulations are based on the very laws of nature.

Using electric scooters as an example, which have since been approved for road use, I would like to demonstrate the manner used to evaluate systems: First, these must be examinedcarefully. The center of gravity of a scooter is high and its wheelbase short. Furthermore, systems should be transferable as well: We know from bicycles that when you pull the front brake – which is most effective – you’ll roll over. This is where geometry and physics play an important role. A concrete evaluation is possible when you calculate things to make them analogous: deceleration is at 3.9 m/s2. A bicycle brakes almost twice as well at 6-7 m/s2. The conclusion is that e-scooters are unsuitable tocurrent traffic conditions.

So it’s of little use that these scooters are regarded as “innovative” and that you want to save the world with them. They were approved for road use despite that fact that they brake much worse than other means of transport and, therefore, do not correspond to the state of the art. By the way, motor-driven scooters existed 100 years ago already. But that’s no argument: Back thenthe brakes in all means of transportwere miserable by today’s standards. Bicycles had “stamp brakes”. Today they have disc brakes, which are partiallyas good as motorcycle brakes.

In order to evaluate systems (We do this all the time: Is it good? Is it bad?), the ability or art of drawing a plausible conclusion with only limited available information and timeis important. It’s called “heuristics”.

All arguments are essential when makingan evaluation, especially those that are unpleasant – thoseare the most important.

Theyrequire you to consider how to refute them.2 

Even texts without information (thesedo exist) provide clues: Years ago I stumbled across a newspaper article in which a millionaire reported on an airport and its importance. If you looked for any supporting evidence in the article, you would not discover a single argument on the entire half page. That made me wonder: half a page of text without facts and only assertions. That was an indication of his personal stake in the matter, otherwise he wouldn’t have written the article in the first place. If you did your research, you would’ve discovered how the wind was actually blowing: The author was a pilot and owned a small airline with business jets stationed at a different airport that was scheduled to be closed because Russian oligarchs didn’t want another airport in their vicinity in order to be able to fly more convenient to them.

Many things (unfortunately) you “just” have to know. But if you have to know something, you can’t know that you have to know it: If you don’t know, for example, that things like “pyrophytes” exist and that they are particularly commonplace in Australia, you can’t get the idea of finding out about them on the Internet. More on this later.

If someone tries to make knee pads from carbon-fiber reinforced plastic, you have to know that this material is “impact sensitive”. You also have to know that the argument stating that carbon fibers are “stable” is a nonsensical argument because the colloquial word “stable” is unknown in the world of technology. Definitions like “tensile strength”, “pressure resistance” or “impact resistance” exist, but not “stable”. If someone uses it in an argument, you can thus conclude that this person knows next to nothing about technology.

Millions are being invested in “innovative” aircraft having tiny engines, but the engines in commercial aircraft are becoming bigger and bigger. “Propulsion efficiency” is describing the physics behind it. You don’t need to understand that because to do so you must’ve studied the subject. Stated more simply: Everyone (Boeing and Airbus)has been building larger and larger engines for decades now. Suddenly, someone comes along who uses mini enginesandwants to power these electrically. Is somebody smarter than the rest of the world? 

Statements made by people have to be seen in context: A German chancelloronce declared “one does not spy among friends” when accusing the NSA of espionage. Butyou have to know: Twenty-three years earlier, they had bought a new (French) telephone system which recorded all the telephone conversations of the German government and the State Department (using a so-called “backdoor”). Chancellor Helmut Kohl freaked out in that meeting on a friday afternoon. The consequence to be drawn from this is that statements like Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “wir schaffen das” (“we can do it”)cause bellyaches because oneapparently just wants to sit out the problems and never get to their root cause. 

Sometimes one comparison suffices: If two things must look the same but don’t, then an error must be involved.

Nowadays,making assessments is more difficult because everything is international. One of the most difficult questions in this regard is how much sense does it make to do something whenall your neighbors don’t do it. 

One indication of the validity of arguments is also given by examining how things were done in the past and why things were done this way. Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Waldorf Schools, was consistently against the spraying of pesticides. During his lifetime,selective toxic agents did not exist. Heavy metals were used, which contaminated the soil, as they cannot be broken down chemically. At the same time, vegetables hadthemselves contained many more natural stomach poisons (cf. Toxins in Food), which have been bred out longsince then. Thus, 100 years ago he was correct in rejecting the use of pesticides. The question is to what extent this can be transferred to the present day. 

One therefore needs a neutral comparison to evaluate whether and how progress or even any regression looks like.  

The situation is similar when it comes to technical systems: A hydrogen car is good if liquid hydrogen is available. Hydrogen propulsion was propagated 35 years ago. At the time, energy seemed to be readily available in unlimited quantities through nuclear power. But times have changed. Japan istaking the path of nuclear power and is therefore promoting electric propulsion.  

Electric cars are a wonderful means of transport in Sweden and Norway. There, traffic is almost CO2-free because plenty of nuclear and hydroelectric power is available. Now the question arises whether these conditions can be transferred onto a German context.

Last but not least, it’s worth examining the sense of reality people apply to cope with their tasks: Someone who is neither able to make frigates swim, airplanes fly nor guns shoot is certainly not suited to master any future challenges.

Opinion versus Facts

Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in any democracy. So, you may be of the opinionthat when you drink two beers and then two more thatthis totals three. Opinions thus have nothing to do with facts. Nevertheless, when it comes to technical matters, people oftenargue: “That's your opinion, mine’s different!” This is a confusion of terms: Most of the time physics is at fault: If you can demonstrate (usually with mathematics) that something doesnot work, you can have as many opinions as you want: They are irrelevant. 

The Other Point of View

Germany is considered a “high-tech-country”. Everyone has their own view of things, even the author because he is an engineer, and every profession has its own particular point of view. When a non-engineer “stumbles” over a press release reporting that something was not working or that the matter is 13 years behind schedule, then hewill simply accept it. In particular, he can’t evaluate it – how could he anyway?

Then there are those people who want to know what contributed to the failure or the exploding costs becausethe advantage of mistakes normallyis that you can learn from them – both your own and other’s. Nothing is more stupid than repeating a mistake. Unfortunately, it is not possible to learn anything nowadays most of the time because college taught you how you would have done it the right way; or you learned it during the course of your career. The fact is: high-tech is being touted everywhere, but grave mistakes are being made when it comes to the fundamentals. This is a cause for concern because mistakes in the fundamentals are, above all, one thing: extremely expensive. 

That took its toll on my former employer: wherever your looked, all you heard about werethe losses running into the millions. A lot of money had been spent on advertising. Top-level positions were filled by people who distinguished themselves with their incompetence and who had fallen for “pied pipers” who had sold them their visions. Slogans had been bantered abouton how great the company was doing and how great its products were. Critics were sidelined: “We have the Bavarian state as guarantor – nothing can happen to us”, they declared. In hindsight, the company failed because of the sum of all the little things. A few days before the insolvency, the company wanted to rivet 0.8 mm sheet steel to the (aluminum) wings, as the torsional stiffness3of these wings had proven to beinsufficient. Problems were known long beforehand, but had been swept under the carpet over the years, and none had been solved at the root. Peoplehad just “tinkered” with the symptoms. In the end, everything converged upon itself. 

German politics is nothing more than a “flashback”.

Statistics

“Don't believe any statistics you haven't faked yourself” – is the consensus of many people who don’t have a high opinion of statistics. This isn’t surprising since statistics is a branch of mathematics and not very much appreciated. You are more likely to reject what you do not understand. This is human nature. At the same time, you search for arguments in favor of this attitude in order to confirm your own personal prejudices. That, too, is human, but not effective.

However, this doesn’t make any sense because statistics create facts that can be used as evidence. On the contrary, in today’s society you are surrounded by statistics for any items because these are made of materials backed by statistics used to determine their material properties.

The validity of DNA expert opinions is pure statistics. Although a match between two DNA samples can thus never be 100%, it is on the order of 99.999995%, depending on the case; or a probability of 1 in 20 million. When you reject statistical evidence and wish to “argue” polemically, as at the beginning of this chapter, you then become inevitably in favor of abolishing DNA evidence and releasing sex offenders in particular. Does anyone really want that? 

All scientific studies must be evaluated statistically. This is necessary to demonstrate to what extent the results of the study yield any valid results. When a study reveals a statistically significant result, this means that the result is not random but can instead be taken as “evidence”.

In the introduction to one of his books, the biostatistician, Bruce Weir, shows that the statistics of the discoverer of the basic principles of heredity, Gregor Mendel, are too good: The latter had let some “inappropriate” results fall by the wayside. It's indeed possible to validate statistics with statistics.

Statistical Errors and Statistical Abuse

Statistics only provide valid results when they don’t include systematic errors or false basic assumptions. This, in turn, refers to “statistics one has faked oneself” (cf. previous chapter).

Statistics thus open the door to manipulation: If you assume a minor thing to be false, then the statistic is false. If you deliberately assume it to be false, you can then “generate” almost any result using statistics.

An article was published about seven years ago on the drastic increase in the proportion of “grave defects” found in motor vehicles aftercar inspections performed by TÜV (German technical inspection agency). An outcry rippled across the automotive world. You should sit up and take notice to press reports like this because if 1/4 of the inspected cars had exhibited "grave defects” over decades, and 1/3 of these carsexhibited the same in the following year (these are theorized figures), then this would mean a suddenincrease of 32%. That alone is statistically unlikely. The “cause” was to be found elsewhere: TÜV had hitherto distinguished between a “defect” and a “grave defect”. A new regulation had categorized all defects detected by TÜV as “grave defects”.  

German Railways (Deutsche Bahn) has issued instructions to prioritize its express trains over its commuter trains. Doing this would make its ICE (Intercity Express) trains statistically more on time. Commuter trains are not covered by the press. This is something you need to know. You find out about it from the “petty” railway official. Presumably, the salary of the Deutsche BahnCEO is linked to the punctuality of its ICE trains: His contract, for example, would then contain the clause that every percent the ICE is not on time would cost ½ million annually in salary or bonuses. 

How about a more current event[76]? In mid-April, the “Tagesschau” evening news had reported on an “above-average number of deaths in Germany” in its “Corona Live Blog”. They compared the average from the past five years with the average from the year2020. To prove this, they evaluated data between March 23rd and April 12th. Correct: The mortality rate during this period is higher than the average of the past five years. Does this necessarily mean that the mortality rate in Germany is higher due to Corona? Conversely: Is manipulation possible using correct statistics? Of course. You just have to choose the right period: The 2020 mortality rate was lower prior to March 23rd. If you examinethis figurebetweenJanuary 1st and April 12th(January 1stis, of course, arbitrary as well!), then 8,300 fewer people (!) had died by 12 April than the average of the previous years.4Almost exactly 1 million people die in Germany in any average year, meaning 2,750 per day. Early June saw less than 9,000 deaths caused from or with Corona, thus less than 1%, or less than those who normally die in two days. These figures cannot be used to make a valid statistical statement. 

The press is reportingona high share of electrical consumption covered by renewable energies in June of 2020. Electricity consumption has decreased during Corona. So, it isof no surprise that the share of renewable energies is on the rise. 

Reports circulated about “particularly sensitive” medical detection methods with a “high hit rate”. The problem is the “false positives” since these are “particularly sensitive”. Thesehad also recorded hitsin many where they should not’ve done so at all. To put it oversubtly: Had the detection method identifiedallexamined people as “positive”, then it would have resulted in a 100% hit rate. But this is of little use, since it would have identified nobody as negative in this case. 

Another example are the aforementioned unemployment statistics. How exactly this is being accomplished is shownin the chapter “Manipulated Unemployment Figures”. 

No positive proof is possible in principle in individual cases. For example, the televisiontalk show rounds introduced young people who never went to school but still managed to get by in life. We can hence conclude that this kind of lifestylecan work. Nothing more. If one were to invite those 100 people who had never attended school and who are now hooked on the needle or struggling through life as petty criminals, for example, it would immediately become clear that the statistics are being manipulatedhere. School studentslikethese kinds of TV broadcasts. Their obvious interpretation is: “School is redundant”. But they would need the education of a school to realize that they are being badly manipulated now. 

It’s obvious that a “school system” cannot be ideal for every student. It's supposed to help most students receive a good education. A compromise. This, too, is statistics. 

Unfortunately, statistical manipulation is increasingly common in scientific publications, where results can be evaluated only partially and which continues to depict what is en vogue or, in particular, contradict political correctness: Nutritional science is to be mentioned here, but publications on environmental toxins and gender studies are affected by this as well. Sometimes the analyses are even “sound”, but the results are formulated in a way that is “officially desired”. Otherwise, funds are cut off from the institutes. Research at universities is no longer free of charge because they are more and more forced to finance themselves. Due to their dependence on companies, they have to provide “appropriate” results. Politically incorrect results are sometimes not published at all because the journal reviewers either don’t approve or otherwise prevent their publication. Various indirect or direct methods are available in such cases.

Imagination

The human imagination is interesting when it comes to evaluating facts: Much can be imagined, much not. One can imagine traveling to the nearest star in a spaceship. Star Trek provided a taste of this. But this is notpossible. The same applies when it comes to exceeding the speed of light.

In contrast, one cannot imagine the distance of one light year, although the entire solar system is only one light day in diameter. Even one light day (25,900,000,000 km) is unimaginable. This order of magnitude is completely normal to an astronomer. This does not mean, however, that an astronomer can imagine these distances. 

Nobody can imagine a war either, especially since most Germans have never held a weapon in their hands that would provide an indication of the destructive power of a single projectile. To them, war and the terrible suffering it causes is something abstract and not imaginable: A few years ago, a journalist on a TV panel discussion “demanded” a “military intervention” (the positive “framing” term for “war” (see chapterFraming)) in Russia. Mrs. Krohne-Schmalz (a Moscow correspondent) had made this comment with a frozen demeanor. Refusing military service, it seems, makes it easier to call for war. Paradoxical, isn’t it?

When the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) was sent on a mission to Afghanistan, one could not “imagine” that mines would be used there. It's certainly traumatic to see the consequences of this lack of imagination, and frustrating to know that it could have been avoided.

The same applies to power blackouts. If these were to happen, even electric garage doors wouldn’t function, making it difficult to leave your house by car. First, your telephone wouldfail (the Internet is dead), and, after two to four hours, cell phone masts wouldthen start to fail. Failing traffic lights wouldlead to a series of accidents, but no ambulance could be called. Production lines wouldstand still and machines stop producing expensive parts. Milking machines would not work, cattle would die, and oil heaters wouldneed electricity to pump heating oil. If the power were to fail any longer, these same heaters would burst. This is because a blackout would first occur when it’s cold, as more electricity is needed then. This was the case in South America in June 2019 because it was winter there then and many people heat only withelectricity. Hospitals are only able to operate using emergency generators (their real problem is the lack of pure water caused by the lack of electricity). Lifts and cable cars would get stuck. However, no rescue helicopters could be refueled anymore because the kerosene pumps are electric. Since the radio has failed, they wouldn’t be allowed to take off anyway. Therefore, one must assume that people would lose their lives indirectly.

“DER SPIEGEL Online History” reported on the 1977 [41] blackout in New York, where looters and arsonists had roamed the city. This can be expected in social hotspots.5 

The above depicts a few of the consequences involved, not to stir up fear, but to get a practical idea of the consequences. A risk exists and one should consider whether or not to take it. In case of a nuclear accident, this (sensibly) goes without saying, but (senselessly) not in the case of a blackout.

This chapter argues that things should be evaluatedcompletely regardless whether they can be imagined or not since people tend to evaluate things as “wrong” or “not possible” because they cannot imagine them.

One should abandon this approach because it leaves no room for a neutral discussion.

Consequences

One can conclude from the sum of these “trifling matters” in all areas that the shit will hit the German fan.

Iceland had gone through a national bankruptcy that went relatively smoothly because Icelanders have no energy problems due to their hot springs. They grow bananas in greenhouses.

In the event of this kind of a collapse of the energy supply, no catch-allsystem is available, as society isn’t prepared for it. Similar to the just-in-time delivery approach used by the automotive companies: When a small parts supplier fails to deliver a single important screw, all of the assembly lines will come to a standstill. This case isn’t foreseen in the system.

When it comes to energy, the system in Germany is therefore vulnerable, but not so in Iceland. That’s why the effects are difficult to foresee in their entirety.

Physics, Technology and Math

Everything that happens around us is according to “natural laws” that can be used to describe everything around us.

These refer to the physical limits such as the speed of light, which represents the maximum speed at which information can move. Or the absolute zero point. Nothing can get colder than -273.15° Celsius (-459.67° Fahrenheit).

For example, the law of conservation of energy is an immutable law of nature which states that the sum of all types of energy remains the same everywhere and at all times. Another part of the energy theorem states that all processes in nature are subject to losses. However, this energy is not lost but converted into heat. For example, every engine gets warm. 

The laws of nature are interlinked and interwoven into a system. Physics has systematized them in such a way that things can be calculated and thus evaluated.6Humans know many of these laws of nature, but not all. Laws of nature that are still being discovered may not contradict those that are valid today. All laws of nature are the same across the entire universe. 

Since the laws of nature can’t be violated, as is possible with legal laws, they act as the “spoilsports” of visionaries, of whomtwo variations exist:  

The first tries to violate the laws of nature directly, for example, by ignoring the law of conversation of energy.

The second ignores physically predefined efficiencies, which are usually significantly smaller than 100%. I take up this subject in detailon the following page.

First, I use general examples to illustrate the complexity of technical problems. Some of these have little to do with the contents of this book. If I were to discuss the efficiency of hydrogen cars right off the bat, the brains of ahydrogen proponent would then kick into “strike” mode. The “backfire effect” sends its regards (see Backfire Effect). 

Efficiency

Efficiency is the ratio of what comes out at the back to what is put in at the front. Efficiency in all technical processes is less than 100%.7When, for example, an electric motor converts 80% electrical energy into rotational energy (see chapterEnergy and Supply), it is then 80% efficient. The remaining 20% of this electrical energy representstheincurred “losses”. According to the law of conservation of energy, these are not really lost, but converted into another form of energy: heat loss. If this isn’t properly dissipated, the engine will break down. 

When you connect several technical processes in series, you can easily calculate theiroverall efficiency by multiplying the efficiencies (not the losses!) of the individual processes. If, for example, the efficiency of a coal-fired power plant is 40%, i.e. 0.4 (correct on average), the efficiency of the electric motor intended to drive something is then 80%, and the efficiency of the electric gridis then 92% (8% losses). You calculate this as follows: 0.4 × 0.8 ×  0.92 = 0.294. In concrete terms, this means that 29.4% of the combustion energy of coal is converted into the rotational energy of this electric motor. 

Efficiency is close to 100% only in a few technical processes. These are pure combustion processes, electrical processes and processes with incompressible fluids (water).

In all other technical processes (mostly so-called “circular processes”), which have to do with gases or where combustion is associated with a mechanical drive (gas turbine, internal combustion engine), efficiency is significantly below 100%.

This is a physicaland not a technical limit.Improvement is not possible. 

The Last Percentages – Cutting Losses

“Nach fest kommt ab!” (Tightis followed by off!) saysthe German fitter when tightening a bolt. This means nothing else than that anything overdonemakes no senseand is even counterproductive.  

This caneasily be illustrated: When we assume that a large electric motor has a connected load of 100 kW (it needs 100 kW from the electric grid), but the mechanical load is only 50 kW, it will then have 50 kW in losses (which are usually lost as heat). If you want to improve this motor and make it produce 1 kW more mechanical power, then you have to reduce the losses by 1 kW. 1 kW better at 50 kW corresponds to a 2% improvement. In doing so, the losses must be reduced by 2%. This seems simple.

Technical devices are better nowadays, however. Efficiencies are much closer to the maximum achievable value. Assuming that a modern motor with a 100 kW connection load converts 80 kW into a mechanical load, this means 20 kW are lost. If you want to improve this motor by 1 kW, this means a 1.25% improvement. The difficulty here: Any losses have to be reduced by 1 kW from 20 kW to 19 kW. That’s 5%. That’s a lot.

It’s therefore much more difficult to achieve any improvement when trying to optimizesystems that are highly optimized already. Most of the time this kind of thing is associated with a lot of effort. It’s easy to reach an explosion in costs. That’s why you have to find a financially acceptable compromise most of the time.

Standards and Guidelines

You are constantly being confronted with new rules and guidelines. Technicians and engineers have “standards” for this. This is currently getting out of hand. Standards and guidelines aren’t the same in every country since the conditions aren’t the same. The purpose of standards is safety. Roadtraffic regulations are also written for safety’s sake.

In order to draft standards and guidelines, experts convene in order to discuss these. The difficulty is that asthese experts try to prevent accidents, rules must be formulated in such a way that they don’t lead to an incapacity to act. This is even stated in the standards. Expert knowledge is therefore necessary to draft them. By the way, standards must always be adapted to the “state of the art”.

Not every innovative technology is beneficial everywhere. For example, aeronautical engineering is “conservative”, and innovations find their way into the market only very slowly. The failure of a single component can mean hundreds of deaths. That’s why computer-only control of an aircraft is prohibited (every processor is faulty) and why it’s mandatory to install important sensors twice (called redundancy). Electric airplanes designedfor passenger transport are difficult to make because each battery must be monitored individually, since an airplane will crash in case a battery catches fire. Boeing can tell youa thing or two about this after they installed new types of batteries solely to power their instruments, and these had started to burn. The planes were “grounded”, just like the Boeing 737Max today. Even a Tesla car had posed insurmountable problems in Austria for several weeks because it wasn’t possible to transport the burnt-out vehicle wreckage. Electric cars had been approved, but nobody had considered the fact that this kind of a car could catch fire as well. Incidentally, 50 years ago, the German “NSU Prinz” automobile wasdubbed “a lighter on wheels”. The registration authorities do know that cars can burn. 

It took Airbus a long time to obtain the approval for components that weren’t made of aluminum but of fiber-reinforced plastics. Such a thing wasn’t permitted at the time, but was already standard in glider construction. Many tests proved that the components would be able to withstand the imposed loads. Then certification was assured and everything seemed fine. One was astonished to find that these airplanes were becoming heavier and heavier. The reason was that plastics soak up a certain amount of water (~1%), demonstrating that even the experts sometimes fail to consider the little things like this. In this case, it was of no critical importance, but in an airplane with a structural weight of 30 t, 1% also means missing a payload of 300 kg.

All in all, these rules and laws exist to make life as free as possible from any danger. However, these must be written in such a way that the limits are not too stringent in order for any action to be possible at all.

Furthermore, laws mustn’t conflict. For example, measles vaccination has become mandatory in schools. However, if a student refuses to get vaccinated then this means a conflict with Germany’s law of compulsory education.

Technical “Spoilsports”

The following lists examples showing that expertise in the respective area is required in order to be able to report on or evaluate these. Other examples show that supposed trivialities can bring down entire concepts.

Both can only be met with knowledge and competence.

Wind Turbines

This section applies the chapter entitled “The Last Percentages – Cutting Losses” to wind turbines. 

The most efficient wind turbines achieve an overall efficiency of 50% (including all electrical and mechanical losses) at certain operating points. About 59% is the maximum that’s possible, as the scientist Betz had already calculated in 1919. This is the physical limit; more is not possible. Compared to the maximum achievable, these systems thus have an efficiency of 0.50/0.59, which corresponds to 83%. That’s darn good.

The press reports that new wind turbines “which are 2 to 3 times more efficient” have been developed. This means that the engineers who had developed them up to nowwere, according to these journalists and reports, both ignorant and stupid.  

But if up to 83% efficiency is being currently achieved, then “twice as efficient” would mean 166% efficiency. Therefore the authors of these articles report about a perpetuum mobile.  

Electric Scooters

Electric scooters, as mentioned before, are considered to be “innovative”. Some young guy had simply screwed a motor to a scooter and mounted some batteries on it. A few years ago, the marketing newspaper “Brand Eins” had lifted the young “inventor” into stardom. Nowadays, “young” and “innovative” are used synonymously. This kind of thing caters to a certain “pigeonhole thinking”.

When riding a bicycle, you know that it is easy to roll over when you pull the front brake too hard. This is worse on a scooter, asits wheelbase (the distance between front and rear wheel) is shorter. An article about thesescooters can be found in a “Autobild” German car magazine issue from 2019. Ithad commissioned DEKRA, an official German technical authority like “TÜV”,to measure the braking performancein several models: Most electric scooters have a braking distance of 4 meters starting at 20 km/h. The deceleration can be calculated from it, which is only 3.9 m/s2, and is slightly more than half as muchas that of a bicycle.8 Electric scooters therefore do not fit into current traffic conditions, as they do not correspond to the state of the art. 

An article in the German car magazine “ADAC Motorwelt” [63], reporting on these electric scooters on over a three full-page spread, is indicative. It particularly mentions the high accident rate of their riders. The deceleration of 3.9 m/s2, the figure that would establish this relation to the state of the art and represents the main causes, is not mentioned. 

Before making them street legal, you could also have examined the problems that other countries (like Israel) are havingwith them, or you could transferred these problems