German riot police clear protesters for coal mine expansion (opens in new tab)

> In the last months of 2022, about a third of power production came from coal. In 2006, about a third instead came from nuclear plants.

You are misrepresenting the data here, implying that coal production somehow has increased over that time period but in 2006 coal stood for about 60% of the power production. Coal usage is trending downwards, but during 2021 and 2022 it has gone up as a direct result of shutting down the nuclear plants and the reduced gas input.

That's not ironic. A coalition government — something American readers may not be too familiar with — governs with a set of agreed upon policies decided during the formative stages by the participating parties. By necessity, those policies will differ from what the individual parties would want were they to rule alone, but represent instead a compromise.

So a coalition government where greener parties represent 50% of the governing coalition would likely be greener than one where they only have 25%, but to do everything according to their own party programme they would need to have a majority vote to be able to govern without forming a coalition.

Sometimes participating in a coalition government means the government takes actions the individual party may not find desirable, but they accept these because they do get to have their say on other topics. And sometimes local branches of a party have a differing opinion on some topics.

This is overall a good system though. It means you can vote for a party closest to your ideals, and even have a chance that they can govern (e.g., as part of a coalition), or at least have them represented in parliament.

The real irony is that a Green Party is opening new coal mines because Gerhard Schröder, former leader of the SPD, allied of the Green in this government, and former German chancellor lobbied for Gazprom and because Die Grünen lobbied to shutdown nuclear plants after Fukushima.

> The only energy source that can provide green energy reliably going forward is nuclear

This simply isn't backed by real life experience. A not too small factor about Germany producing more power is that France for years now always has problems producing enough energy, because they have to put down their nuclear plants for various reasons. In these situations nuclear power plants typically still require energy.

France put all its eggs into nuclear, like pretty much no other country, and doesn't produce enough energy to even cover its own energy demands. And not just now, but the topic goes through the media at least once a year. Nobody denies that, it's just a fact.

Reality just isn't that simple.

No one at the top wants stable and reliable.

It's so much easier to profit and seize control during periods of volatility.

I don't know, I think everyone is aware that storing excess energy surplus from renewables is an unsolved problem and you are moralizing and making the debate by choice of strong words (lie, slavery) unnecessary emotional.

> The biggest scam of renewables is not the viability of the technology itself, but the lie by omission that all renewables require baseload power which always happens to be non-renewable. The massive expansion of gas peaking plants in Germany, Europe and the rest of the developed world is the prime example of the lie

Peaker plants are not baseload power. Baseload power means constant output, peaker plants are by definition variable output. You should also take into account that renewables+peaker plants replace coal plants in Germany, the emissions are reduced compared to before.

I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make? This isn't some kind of big coverup. Pretty much everyone is aware of the fact that most renewables suffer from intermittency issues. These issues can be somewhat smoothed out over larger geographic areas (e.g. there's always wind somewhere), but until we can build better storage systems, there's no panacea here. Or anywhere else.

We're also quite keenly aware of the downsides of other energy sources. You could equally argue that there are many lies of omission related to fossil fuels or nuclear.

> Statistics are presented about the benefits of renewables, which seemingly never include the environmental destruction of the gas peaking plants propping them up.

There are quite some ways of providing backup for wind and solar: ordinary hydro power and geothermal energy for base load, pumped storage hydro power, hydrogen conversion and tidal power for peaks. And even gas plants aren't that problematic either - assuming you only need them for peaks instead of, like now, replacing broken-down French NPPs, you can fire them with bio-gas gathered from farm animal dung or bio-waste.

> If you counter with 'what about batteries', the lie by omission shifts from environmental destruction to child slavery. Battery supply chains cannot escape the contaminant that is child slavery.

Of course they can, it is only a matter of money and oversight over governments.

Maybe before charging high taxes to cover up large scale political mistakes they should start making good decisions and giving people back their money’s worth in public services. And by good decisions I mean: put ideological wishful thinking a side and do some math and make a plan.

UK just looks like a crazy show from outside. Weirdly enough it was put up for a vote and people went for it with the Brexit.

With the leftist government for another 3+ years in Germany, the chances for Germany to get back on track are nil. And if Germany sh*t its pants it’s not rosy for the EU either. UK gone, France not exactly outpacing everyone and the South on the brink of financial collapse.