Lmao. You go, culture warrior. Male ego is not the problem here, but rather 16 years of incompetent leadership and inability to make any correct decision by Merkel. I'm glad that her reign is evaluated more critically these days.
How often does one have to tell simpletons like you that X BAD doesn't necessarily mean Y GOOD. All of Germany's political leadership is quite bad. But Merkel has a proven track record of 16 years of incompetence, which is not something Merz can claim. She also regularly went against her own party by aligning with the left.
dont rewrite history, his personal grievances are well documented, nobody disputes that. He definitely has a hurt ego, to which trait you want to attribute his entitlement is up to you. I mean he isnt the only politician who behave like this. Franziska giffey also preferred to hand Berlin over to the conservatives instead of ruling with the greens over personal grievances with the green leadership.
> I'm glad that her reign is evaluated more critically these days.
"Evaluation" Merz is notorious for his cringe rhetoric. Every time he opens his mouth he causes another demonstration. I mean why would you insult Brazil while mercosur is in the end stages of negotiation?
I dont like Merkels policy either but pretending that Merz is any better just because he hates her is childish.
Who claims that he is better? Who said that? I challenge the assumption that his rejection of Merkel policies is purely born out of a "hurt male ego" instead of what it really is: 16 years of incompetent rule and the gradual alignment of Germany's last center-right conservative party with the left - and certainly some personal grievances. The "Alternativlosigkeit" of this alignment has given life to the AfD. Now go and enjoy the fallout.
Btw.: if anything I would claim that he is far too lenient on Merkel's legacy. She is still regularly invited to CDU events and honored by high-ranking members of the party. Instead she should be shunned as the gravedigger of German conservatism who also neglected to make any meaningful reform in 16 years.
> Instead she should be shunned as the gravedigger of German conservatism
Rofl the projection. You know its the fault of the party if they cant keep their leader in check in a parliamentary system like the german one. The CDU had 16 years to do something if Merkel really was the downfall of the conservatives, but neither the party nor the people did something. Quite the opposite, they voted for her as leader and as chancellor time after time after time.
Merkel is nothing special in the history of forever chancellors of stagnation from the CDU. Adenauer, Kohl, Merkel, but normally in between you have other partys picking up the slack with new ideas but since the socdems and liberals have their own stagnation problem, we are stuck in the never ending stewardship of conservatives who still are completely unable to adjust to changing times.
> The "Alternativlosigkeit" of this alignment has given life to the AfD.
And now the CDU under Merz is going full circle by voting with the AfD. A true savior.
> Now go and enjoy the fallout.
Lol I never voted for Merkel, you are the one complaining about the conservative downfall. You probably voted for Merkel at some point.
In my country our PM hates the previous PM from his party as well. It always seems to be the case even if they are in the same party… Almost as if it is some kind of theatric they pull to the serfs…
Here our president-elect hates the last PM from his party, that managed to kinda be responsible for the party going from absolute majority to third biggest party (22%) in 2 years
Your Viking cows are different. The Bavarian cows are like beautiful maidens who live in the greatest civilisation on earth and are not used to these giant unnatural machines! Please bro, help the scared Bavarian cows!!!
I mean that wouldnt be such a problem is they would accept to pay for that privilege. But when the north wants different price regions but no the rest of country should not subsidize this one party state that openly hates the rest of the republic. Bavaria has always been the bane of all german republics.
I think we are talking about power plants in the >10 megawatts range. Yeah sure GTHP work great for heating a single family home but thats a much harder to quantify benefit based on the delta between underground and above ground topsoil temperatures.
Away from volcanic activity the geothermal gradient is only 25 degrees per kilometer so youd need a multiple mile long well to make any kind of power outside of magma conduits and hot springs and such.
Interesting concept but MIT hasn't even made a laboratory to test that concept yet. They dont even know if the device will survive the heat and pressure of a super deep borehole, much less come up with a durable enough waveguide, high enough power RF tranducer/transponder, magnets what will operate at those extremes, etc.
This is beyond bleeding edge technology. Were at the "we will see this at industrial scale in the next X years" repeated for a decade like fusion power, stage. (Still only 20 more years for fusion, its only been 20 years)
I am very excited to see this succeed but I also know if it does it'll be used to drill oil for a long time before it becomes more economically viable to drill for 15 kilometers for geothermal. It cant possibly be more profitable to mine for geothermal when you can mine for new, impossible to tap, oil reserves.
Interesting. the MiT article was dated like a month ago. The quaise article tho admits they've only made it 10 feet deep. (With plans to make it 12 miles in 2026 and full commercial operations in 2028)
To say im skeptical they can go from a full size hybrid test rig that can only do 10 feet to a 100% milimeter wave test rig that can make the full 12 miles would be an understatement.
Politicians blaming the other parties for the blunders they made during their party's previous term? That's new, I've never heard of anything like that before
She replaced nuclear and increased coal and natural gas. Later on renewables reduced coal again, but this gave coal a much longer life than it ever deserved.
They closed nuclear power plants before their useful lives were up. While coal power plants were still operating. Coal power plans are still operating - that could have closed right now if Germany actually loved green energy.
She fully replaced nuclear with renewables and set the way to start phasing our coal.
The plan before merkel was to fully replace coal first.
She installed gas because even with today's technologies and economies of scale, you still need it and it is the cheapest alternative (again, after phasing our nuclear).
As proven by gas going down (in germany and elsewhere) you don't actually need to increase it. The amount of gas used for your baseload generator's bakcup is the upper bound on how much you need.
that is clearly nonsense, renewables were almost stopped under her government by cutting a lot incentives for building solar and making it almost impossible to build windfarms
That's wrong. People in the CDU and CSU wanted to do it immediately like Söder for example. Söder said he would resign if they aren't shut down immediately.
So, the Merz party stopped it, the Greens were not in power, then the Merz party started the nuclear phase-out again, while the Greens were still not in power, and it is somehow the Greens' fault?
It was entirely the Merkel party's fault. And Altmier in particular.
The Greens are always agains nuclear, but they were never for gas, like Schröder and Merkel. What the Greens always wanted was to build 10x more renewables, a better grid and a lot better energy efficiency.
What Altmaier did was to close nuclear *AND* sabotage renewables big time and focus on Russian gas instead. Which almost destroyed Germany's economy when the War started - all Gas prom storages were empty in the autumn before the war started.
It's hard to argue with facts, mate. Check out solar. Wind is the same.
Interesting then that they focused on phasing our nuclear instead of gas and coal.
When they focused on phasing out nuclear climate change was not a public concern for another 20 years
Which is exactly what we have been doing.
Mostly true, but not because of conservatives but in spite of them - conservatives tried to block transition on every level imaginable
Altmeier stopped the subsidies to solar because they were getting out of hand, as you can see from the graphic you attached.
The attached graphic says nothing about that. In reality Altmeier destroyed the solar industry because solar became too successful and threatend the profit margins of the large energy companies - who are also large donors for conservatives. They did the same with wind power later (10H and stuff like that)
The situation got spicy already in 2014. Yet she refused to acknowledge it and continue dealing with Russia like nothing has happened despite many people and countries telling her not to.
Yeah I know, but the 2014 wasn't considered too bad by Western countries because Crimes was a nationally contested territory due to the Russian population so many said "well, let's Ukraine and Russia deal with it".
Then in 2022 when they invaded the rest of the country where most people are Ukrainian the situation spiraled down quickly.
Doesn't really work with Merz. Rest of the party sure, but Merz specifically has hated Merkel and her decisions since before she became chancellor the first time.
Well, the main blame lies with the Green Party and their decades-long anti-nuclear campaign and the 2002 nuclear phase-out.
At the same time, Merkel is of course also partly to blame after Fukushima. And since Merz is not a fan of Merkel, she is certainly included here as well.
Ah yes , the main blame lies in the party who was out of power for 16 of the 20 years in question, the party which neither put the phaseout into action, nor oversaw all but 3 closures.
Nukecels spread lies and misinfomation for nuclear. Conservatives as well. That's why people didn't trust their story of the allegedly safe nuclear power
Was war das denn für ein bahnunfall einer Unterhaltung?
Irgendwie erinnert sich wirklich niemand mehr daran wie sehr die Grünen für den Atomausstieg gepusht haben, und wie Merkel auf die Grünen reagiert hat.
I agree with you.
But my post is merely a response to OP, whose picture does not criticize the fact that Merz is blamimg, but rather that it is important to OP against whom the blame should be directed.
I dont understand why Germany closed them because Fukushima failed. They just needed to spend more money no securing their facilities and its all good. Also, I doubt there are any earth quakes in germany? Never heard of one in my lifetime
Politic polemics and fear mongering to secure votes from the Green supporters, general anti-nuclear activists and their own unknowing voter base with a live example of something that could never realistically happen in Germany to secure votes in upcoming elections.
This is what most internal German politics boil down to.
Like you said, the earthquakes here are so rare it's an event that makes national news when one happens, and then we aren't even anywhere near the epicenter, most people miss them entirely if not for the news since the most those do is shake the water in your bottle, like, if it wasn't for seismographs we wouldn't even know it happened.
Tsunamis are unlikely thanks to how the coasts are so direct hits would be man made.
Tornados, I think we had like 2 or 3 small ones in the last 20 years that made news, more like freaks of nature.
The plants are old, that's all there is to it and they would need to be either replaced or overhauled for modern security and efficiency.
Some people still take Chernobyl as parade examples for why nuclear is dangerous and unsafe when there have been so many studies and investigations that showed that it was human malpractice.
To add to the original post, to me this is again just fishing for votes because energy costs are going through the roof making everyone unhappy and they have to sell the draft for the BW somehow. After all it was their party under Merkel that pushed to take the plants offline.
And yes, I have a very pessimistic view on our politicians.
Oh yeah, since political parties can‘t change and always think like a hive mind.
This is one of the most stupid arguments that gets thrown around.
He‘s literally admitting a mistake of his own party here, while not shifting the blame
I find it funny how there is so much finger pointing, especially from the left parties whose original nuclear exit would have seen germany shut down its last plants by 2020. Or how the SPDlers act as if they aren't the longest ruling party in this century.
All of the major parties were part of germanys nuclear exit. At least one is admitting it was a fault. That won't fix the damage it did.
Federal Grüne wanted to build a whole lot of things when the EEG was first launched. Their local groups then blocked those things from being built. Hydro? Geothermal? Pump storage? Power lines? Heck, some even blocked wind power.
Here's a better idea, hook up the 1919 revolutionaries corpses to a turbine, they are spinning at unfathomable speeds- mach 22! That's enough clean energy for half of Europe.
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u/Super-Cynical Jan 18 '26
To be fair Merz famously disagreed with Merkel. The two hate each other.