Good bye, Audi R8 - you don't deserve the end

For years it has accompanied us in the simulation, it graces our last info brochure, gives me fun when I get to chase it through the Alps again with Audi driving experience at the beginning of July... and that's it now?

Audi has decided not to develop the R8 and TT any further. I don't care about the TT, I never really liked it, but the Audi R8 is cult for me!

I know you shouldn't swim against the mainstream because you run the risk of sinking, but I am sick to my stomach when I see how we sell our technological edge, our economy and turn a blind eye to facts.

We build the most efficient, cleanest engines in the world and then sacrifice them at the age of alleged green sustainability. Physics has long since ceased to play a role. And whether our energy transition concepts work out, we'll see. When I talk to experts from research, from DLR, from Fraunhofer, from the universities, they all agree that it won't work. But no one opens their mouths in public. It's just not green, mainstream, sustainable and whatever.

Our children are bombarded with horror scenarios that the world will soon end and YouTubers get millions of clicks when they convey their view of the world, which does not necessarily stand up to scientific scrutiny in all respects. So what, it's not important. Suddenly all climate researchers agree that the earth has a fever, the world is coming to an end and everything has never been as bad as it is now.

The ancient Romans had a saying: Cui bono, who profits? Clearly, a climate researcher who gets millions in research funding because the climate is supposedly tipping will not undermine his business model. Fear has always been a good way to make money. But he also doesn't say that his predictions are based on the average of simulation results that can't even begin to represent the formation of clouds, and that his research covers only a very small time period.

Well, and if one dares to at least question the horror scenarios, then one is a right-wing populist, a denier, a heretic or whatever.

That researchers, who come to other results or question the mainstream, are stigmatized, get no money and are torn apart by the media as unserious, nobody dares to say.

Why can and may I have a say in this? I know about simulation, I've been doing it for over 30 years. I am familiar with common sense and logic. I am also good at arithmetic. Well, and before I forget, I'm not a coward.

I'm not saying that everything is fine and we shouldn't and don't have to deal with environmental or climate issues, but please be scientific and logical.

For example, I ask myself the following questions:

Why did the world not collapse 300 million years ago, although the CO² content was 20 times as high as today? (Prof. Wolfgang H. Berger from the University of California San Diego), Figure 3.

How can it be that the world had ice-free polar caps in cycles? Presumably, it was perhaps somewhat warmer then than today?

Might it have something to do with the passage of our solar system through the arms of the Milky Way, and the associated influence on cloud formation, as the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark suspects? (Figure 4)

How do the works of the head of the laboratory for space research of the main observatory Pulkovo near Saint Petersburg, Khabibullo Abdussamatov, fit into the picture, who claims to have observed also on Mars a strong temperature increase analogous to the Earth temperature? Has perhaps also the sun an influence?

I would like to be allowed to ask these questions, without being torn for it immediately.

I cannot check everything, but I want a reasonable and fair discussion, in which the result is not already determined from the outset.

And, which brings us back to the Audi R8, I love not only the environment, but also technology, the ingenuity of engineers who have always come up with solutions, and I want us to address meaningful issues to make the earth a better place.

What I don't like are politicians who don't have visions anymore but try to please everyone and only look for majorities, business managers who lack long term company goals and who run around that can be scary and media who think that only bad news is good news. Yes, and sheep who believe everything the media tells them, I don't like either, of course.

There are sensible concepts for the car of the future that will also safeguard our jobs and at the same time our excellent economy. I would like to present these in one of my next blogs.

So, now I feel better again and I can still decide if I really put the article on my blog... but I think, knowing me, already ?

I look forward to your feedback, even if it is critical this time, I can take it.

Your Stefan Merkle