I was going to post this tomorrow, but what the hell…
ATTENTION GERMAN READERS: 21:05 mark has a rather damning observation about Germans in general. So why is it Germans are so damn pessimistic?
Does it have to do with all the alarmist scientists out here at places like the PIK, AWI and MPI, to name a few? Why is pessimism viewed as intellectually superior to optimism? The best thing Germany could do would be to start deporting all the top pessimism spreaders. Just imagine how quickly and how much better the country would get.
And if you haven’t already, also read Ridley’s view on why wind energy is going to flop.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-wind.aspx
I’ve stopped talking about climate to my colleagues. It’s like carrying owls to athens. No one is pessimistic about climate. It seems to me that almost no one of them is pessimistic at all. I think the impression of germans being pessimistic is like seeing the smoke coming out of a chimney and conclude that the inhabitants of that house hate their furniture and therefore burn it.
Often conversations start by complaining about climate, politics, teachers, health care and so on. That seems to be pessimistic. But it is one way to tax your opposite. To start on very low level, pessimistic if you want, and then climb to higher levels until the summit of optimism is reached.
I never experienced conversations remaining stuck in pessimistic mood. The talks always reached the sunny summit.
Might be I live in a parallel world?
a) Talking about the climate to German colleagues: Yes, suddenly none of them has ever believed in Global Warming. They’re still staunchly anti nuclear, anti GM, anti radiatively sterilizing food, though; everything Greenpeace propagates.
b) If you want to see 2 million barking mad pessimist Malthusians go live in Hamburg. Berlin is probably similar, I had some migrants from Berlin working in Hamburg as well. I’m no longer there. Oh, and they’re strong socialists as well.
The big cities in Germany are the true madhouses, and that’s where the media people are as well. I had a real card-carrying Greenpeace member boss there, one of the last true Warmists.
It’s the local crowdedness of those places that makes them mad. A study has found recently that the amygdala of people living in crowded, noisy cities is enlarged. That’s the brain centre responsible for panic and fight-or-flight response.
If I am not completely mistaken, the guy asking “the German question” at 21:05 is Dr. Oliver Marc Hartwich (who features regularly at Die Achse des Guten and is affiliated with the Centre for Independent Studies)
http://www.oliver-marc-hartwich.de/
so the remark is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But it does reflect everyone’s daily experience: everybody around you is not particularly concerned about Armageddon, but the media, the curriculum, the soapbox pontifications and the omnipresent pundits and gurus…
I did notice a German accent, so I wondered about that. You’re right.
From my experience I know that no one of them (Germans) says what really thinks about the climate, green politics etc. No inconvenient opinions, no troubles. 😆
You’re in the South.
Indeed I was living in the South for many years. Now, I’m living in the NRW.
A pessimist is a well informed optimist.
Many Germans have been written out of the unemployment statistics trying to get an income with at least 3x 400 Euro jobs.
70% of the workers at Opel in Bochum earn around 10 Euro’s per hour.
They can buy home, hell they even can’t buy a freaking Opel.
And the group of short contract workers is growing like a wild fire while companies export jobs abroad.
In the mean time the deficit triggered by the EU bail outs has doubled.
In NRW for example communities have to loan the money to pay for rebuilding the East while their own roads are full of pot holes and libaries, swimming pools and other public facilities are closed down because they’re out of money.
Now try again to explain why many Germans are pessimistic.
The reality is that many Germans are pessimistic but even a bigger number is coping with depressions.
They hear every day thing are going swell, tax income is growing, exports are booming but the reality of the day looks a whole lot different for many Germans.
That’s why you see the protests in the street. They finally want some more money in their pockets to pay for the higher prices for groceries, electricity and gasoline.
Well, and the people in NRW know where they can get it…. Elect Red-Green, they will find some rich guy to plunder… You say what, Opel pays badly, funny, that’s Government Motors of the American Social Democrat president, right? Funny how this social democrat success story works out.
Maybe the voters in NRW should discover their own sanity first. Stop voting for the Greens who want to block fracking if you want jobs. NRW has rich shale gas deposits (well, who hasn’t?).