Der Tagesspiegel am 13.7.2022:
Berliner SPD-Chef Saleh kritisiert Wirtschaftsminister: „Habeck will Kostenexplosionen von bis zu 500 Prozent auf Verbraucher abwälzen“
Wirtschaftsminister Habeck warne nur, statt zu handeln, sagt Saleh. Der Bund müsse arme Menschen mit Mehreinnahmen stützen. Kritik kommt auch aus Brandenburg.
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Daily Mail am 14.7.2022:
Think it’s hot now? How Britain roasted in TEN-WEEK heatwave during summer of ’76: Temperatures hit 36C, criminal trials came to a halt, towns were plagued by swarms of insects and water was rationed as country faced worst drought in 250 years
–In the summer of 1976, there were 15 consecutive days that saw temperatures of 89.6F (32C) in the UK
–Overall, there were ten weeks of blazing heat that saw widespread drought and mass standpipe use
–The murder trial of the notorious ‚Black Panther‘ had to be paused after woman in public gallery collapsed
–The heat also caused ladybird invasion with numbers so high they were often unavoidably crushed underfoot
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Quillette am 14.7.2022:
Germany’s Energy Catastrophe
If Russia permanently cuts off natural gas exports to Germany, it will likely send the country, the world’s fourth-largest economy, into a severe recession.
Germany may be the only nation that has based its energy policy on absolution.
Germans call it Energiewende (“energy transition”), and they aim to decarbonize their economy and lead the world by replacing their fossil fuel and nuclear plants with renewable energy. Germany is the first major nation to undertake such an effort, and, as hoped for, their early adoption of renewables has catalyzed a spectacular drop in costs for those technologies. A reporter summed up German attitudes towards the Energiewende, writing, “Germans would then at last feel that they have gone from being world-destroyers in the 20th century to world-saviors in the 21st.”
The Energiewende gained legislative support in 2010, and Germany spent nearly 202 billion euros on renewable energy projects from 2013 to 2020. Since 2010, the share of German electricity generation that has come from solar and wind power has risen from 8 percent to 31 percent, no small feat.Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has laid bare critical weaknesses in German energy policy. Before the war in Ukraine, Germany received 55 percent of its natural gas imports from Russia. While that percentage has fallen since the war began, the European Union chose not to ban Russian gas imports because gas is so crucial to EU nations like Germany. Unsurprisingly, Putin has been using Russia’s gas flows to exert influence over Germany and the EU. Russia recently cut flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which connects Germany and Russia, by 60 percent, an action that coincided with the leaders of Germany, Italy, and France visiting Kyiv.
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NYU Tandon School of Engineering:
True or false: Studying work practices of professional fact-checkers
Online misinformation is a critical societal threat. While fact-checking plays a role in combating the exponential rise of misinformation, little empirical research has been done on the work practices of professional fact-checkers and fact-checking organizations.
Existing research has covered fact-checking practitioner views, effectiveness of fact checking efforts, and professional and user practices for responding to political claims. While researchers are beginning to investigate challenges to fact-checking, such efforts typically focus on traditional media outlets rather than independent fact-checking organizations (e.g., Politifact). Similarly, such research has not yet investigated the entire misinformation landscape, including the dissemination of the outcomes of fact-checking work.
To address these shortcomings, a team including Nasir Memon of NYU Tandon and Nicholas Micalleff of NYU Abu Dhabi interviewed 21 professional fact-checkers from 19 countries, covering topics drawn from previous research analyzing fact-checking from a journalistic perspective. The interviews focused on gathering information about the fact-checking profession, fact-checking processes and methods, the use of computation tools for fact-checking, and challenges and barriers to fact-checking.
The study, „True or False: Studying the Work Practices of Professional Fact-Checkers,“ found that most of the fact-checkers felt they have a social responsibility of correcting harmful information to provide „a service to the public,“ emphasizing that they want the outcome of their work to both educate and inform the public. Some fact-checkers mentioned that they hope to contribute to an information ecosystem providing a „balanced battlefield“ for the discussion of an issue, particularly during elections.
The interviews also revealed that the fact-checking process involves first selecting a claim, contextualizing and analyzing it, consulting data and domain experts, writing up the results and deciding on a rating, and disseminating the report.
Fact-checkers encounter several challenges in achieving their desired impact because current fact-checking work practices are largely manual, ad-hoc, and limited in scale, scope, and reach. As a result, the rate at which misinformation can be fact-checked is much slower than the speed at which it is generated. The research points out the need for unified and collaborative computational tools that empower the human fact-checker in the loop by supporting the entire pipeline of fact-checking work practices from claim selection to outcome dissemination. Such tools could help narrow the gap between misinformation generation and fact-check dissemination by improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and scale of fact-checking work and dissemination of its outcomes.
Paper: Nicholas Micallef et al, True or False: Studying the Work Practices of Professional Fact-Checkers, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (2022). DOI: 10.1145/3512974
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Einen Vortrag zur Energieversorgung Deutschlands von Dr. rer. nat. Meinhard Stalder gibt es hier.
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Study unveils intrinsic upper-ocean temperature variability in tropical Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) is an irregular oscillation of sea surface temperatures in which the western Indian Ocean becomes alternately warmer and then colder than the eastern part of the ocean.
IOD has been widely studied as the dominant mode of sea surface temperature anomalies over the tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) because it plays an active role in regional and global climate on the seasonal and interannual timescales. The air-sea coupling processes associated with IOD are modulated by the upper-ocean thermal structure.
Recently, researchers from China and the U.S. conducted a series of studies concerning the subsurface variability and further identified an inherent oscillation with a quasi-regular period around 15 months in the TIO subsurface temperature, which forms the baseline of the IOD variability.
The researchers conducted deep analysis of the peak phases in this equatorial oscillation that is characterized by a subsurface east-west dipole pattern called subsurface Indian Ocean dipole (sub-IOD). Most sub-IOD events co-occur with a surface IOD in autumn. However, some sub-IOD events still can develop in winter-to-spring independently from the surface IOD. These sub-IOD events are closely connected to the western-type Central Pacific El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
„These results may advance our understanding of the interactions between the surface and subsurface, as well as the remote influences from different ENSO events on their occurrence, and improve future projections of the IOD and its effects on the Earth’s climate,“ said Song Ge from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, lead author of the study.
Related results were published in Journal of Climate and Geophysical Research Letters.
Papers:
Ge Song et al, Basin-Wide Connections of Upper-Ocean Temperature Variability in the Equatorial Indian Ocean, Journal of Climate (2021). DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0419.1
G. Song et al, Linking the Subsurface Indian Ocean Dipole to Central Pacific ENSO, Geophysical Research Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1029/2021GL096263
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Leserpost von Dipl. Ing. Martin Krohn:
Betreff: Tichys Ausblick
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
im Blog vom 16. 07. 22 wurde ein sehr interessantes Video von Tichys Ausblick mit Immobilienunternehmerin Silke Schröder, Fritz Vahrenholt und dem Landwirt Jan Holst-Oldenburg eingeblendet. Die Diskussion der Teilnehmer war sehr interessant und brachte eine Reihe von aktuellen Problemen klar auf den Punkt. Herr Holst-Oldenburg beklagte, dass landwirtschaftliche Flächen aufgrund von Vorgaben der Politik reduziert werden. Außerdem erwähnte er Photovoltaikparks, welche in die Landschaft gestellt werden, jedoch die landwirtschaftlich nutzbaren Flächen reduzieren. Was er nicht erwähnt hat ist der geplante Ausbau der Windenergie, welcher ebenfalls landwirtschaftliche Flächen reduziert. Er erwähnte dabei auch, dass wir in Deutschland landwirtschaftliche Artikel aus ärmeren Ländern (Afrika) importieren, wobei diese Artikel dann in den Erzeugerländern fehlen und dort zu Hunger führen. Insofern halte ich den unsinnigen Ausbau der Windenergie für eine absolute Fehlplanung.
Fritz Vahrenholt sagte, dass unter den aktuellen Energieproblemen die Schließung der letzten 3 deutschen Atomkraftwerke ein völliger Irrsinn ist. Aufgrund der Gasknappheit kann es Anfang 2023 zu großflächigen Stromausfällen kommen. Außerdem warb Herr Vahrenholt dafür, das in Deutschland vorhandene Erdgas zu fördern. Das im Erdreich befindliche Gas würde für 30 Jahre die Versorgung in Deutschland sichern. Ich finde es geradezu verlogen, dass die (insbesondere Grünen) Politiker Fracking in Deutschland ablehnen, jedoch auf diese Weise gefördertes Gas gerne importieren. Das gleiche gilt für Atomstrom, der in Deutschland nicht weiterlaufen soll, Atomstrom aus dem Ausland jedoch gerne abgenommen wird.
Von Frau Silke Schröder kamen Aussagen, dass die Politik Kosten der Mieter (z. B. Energiekosten) auf die Vermieter abzuwälzen versucht. Auf der anderen Seite wird von Wohnungsknappheit gesprochen. Doch welcher Unternehmer würde investieren, wenn durch die Politik die Rendite massiv eingeschränkt wird? Es geht nicht um Wuchermieten, doch es sollte doch auch für die Vermieter ein auskömmliches Geschäft übrigbleiben.
Fritz Vahrenholt erklärte, dass unter der derzeitigen Politik der Wirtschaftsstandort immer unattraktiver wird. Einige Industrieunternehmen wandern ins Ausland ab. Das kostet Arbeitsplätze und wird den Lebensstandard in Deutschland herabsetzen.
Allgemein wurde die Frage in den Raum gestellt, weshalb die Politiker die Probleme, welche sie mit ihren Gesetzen erzeugen nicht erkennen. Ich sage es einmal brutal: Die Politiker sind anscheinend zu dumm!
Es war ein sehr interessantes Video.
Viele Grüße
Dipl. Ing. Martin Krohn