By P Gosselin on 6. March 2026
CO2 is thinning the atmosphere, causing solar warming, CDU politician Manuel Hagel explained to schoolchildren.
He got an “F”
The southern state of Baden Württemburg is holding state elections this coming Sunday, March 8, and CDU candidate Manuel Hagel (37) recently made an ARD televised campaign stop at a school.
The stop could not have gone worse for Hagel, having since become the target of significant public ridicule and criticism.
The gaffe: Hagel attempted to explain the greenhouse effect to a class of elementary school children – on national television – but wound up showing the audience that he fundamentally didn’t have the first clue about the subject.
While standing at a monitor, Hagel explained to the onlooking students that the greenhouse effect worked as follows:
Between the earth and the sun is the atmsphere. And as this gets increasingly thin, the sun gets hotter and hotter. And the reason for this is CO2 emissions and and and. And that is the greenhouse effect.”
Confused candidate
Scientific critics and social media users quickly pointed out that the greenhouse effect is actually caused by gases like water vapor, CO2 and methane trapping heat within the atmosphere, and not by the atmosphere getting thinner and the sun getting hotter.
Even the teacher seemed stunned after Hagel’s expalantion, shaking her head and sarcastically saying: “Wunderbar. Bin beeindruckt.” (Wonderful, I’m impressed.)
It’s not certain if Hagel confused the greenhouse effect with the ozone-hole and other scientific phenomena. One thing is sure: he ‘s very confused about the subject.
The incident particularly gained traction because candidate Hagel was positioned as an authority figure educating children, and the fact that he taught them incorrect information and didn’t know wwhat he was talking about is particularly embarrassing. He’s the person who should lead one of Germany’s largest states, home to Mercedes Benz?
What a load of traditional old-fashioned mythology…
Correction
What a load of traditional old-fashioned
mythologyhogwashCorrection
Correction
What a load of post modernist hogwash
Well, kids should learn early on that politicians don’t know what they are talking about.
Wikipedia does not provide any data on Mr.Manuel Hagel’s educational background. It only informs us that Hagel was born 1988 and, in his early life, served as an altar boy in a local church. This was very likely his level of competence and he should not have abandoned that important position. However he decided to enter CDU in 2006 and made his political career, accordingly. With such EU policy makers, there is no wonder that we now enjoy the “Green Deal” and other similarly funny things.
School teachers should explain atmospheric gases mathematically. Proportions, percentages and effects.
Milankovitch cycles, Schwabe cycle, Hale Cycle, Gleissberg Cycle, Eddy-Bray cycle and others.
You’re assuming that the teachers themselves are competent and informed. I’m not so sure of that. Note that the teacher described him as Wunderbar “wonderful”.
“Scientific critics and social media users quickly pointed out that the greenhouse effect is actually caused by gases like water vapor, CO2 and methane trapping heat within the atmosphere, and not by the atmosphere getting thinner and the sun getting hotter.’
“Scientific critics“?
How can we teach the complexities of climate if we don’t teach the fundamentals?
Heat is never trapped. 2nd Law.
If we’re discussing science, let’s be scientific.
If schoolchildren were given the choice between living on an Earth completely free of greenhouse gases or on an Earth with greenhouse gases, what would schoolchildren choose?
Here is the effect of greenhouse gases on the Earth’s climate:
Without greenhouse gases (GHGs), Earth’s average surface temperature would drop to approximately -18°C (0°F). This is a decrease of about 33°C from the current average global temperature of roughly 15°C (59°F).
There needs to be video material, produced by qualified scientists who thoroughly understand these cycles, made available to teachers.
He got his fairy tales mixed up. No biggie.
For me as a lover of fairy tales it is a biggie.
In the original fairy tale I was told that Mars(despite its 95% co2 atmosphere ) is so cold BECAUSE the atmosphere is so thin.
But a thinning atmosphere makes sun hotter on earth ?
The second thing is that co2 makes the atmosphere “thicker” .
By about the 0.01% we are being blamed for .
The only fairy tale that matters is Hansen and Greta,
The Grimms.
Hansen swung his hockey stick at the witch, and Greta stamped her foot and said “how dare you”!
Wait, that was Mann. Now I’M getting my fairy tales mixed up.
Depending on the ages of the kids, I can understand trying to dumb it down a bit. He should have just said “the greenhouse effect helps plants grow”, or maybe “the air keeps heat from going out too quickly”, again, tailoring for the audience. But I can’t see a way out of his Kamala-esque word salad.
This is probably a better explanation than most politicians provide:
https://youtu.be/P-yDzHApXiw?t=510
He sounds very convincing & I hadn’t done physics, I’d be convinced, especially as the con is reinforced by the media 24/7/52.
“1/4 inch to 1/2 inch”
Is the prick talking about the diameter of his brain or the length of his cock ???
A lunatic allowed to preach to children.
Exactly what one can expect in the Epstein era.
But at least he ain’t a tranny.
you sure?
Maybe he identifies as a woman who identifies as a man.
I self identify as a black woman lesbian.
An idiot politician with an insane grin stands up in front of an audience & teaches them he knows nothing about anything … so he’s destined for great political office !!!
Years ago, Michel Rocard (François Mitterrand’s fourth prime minister, from 1988 to 1991) said roughly the same thing. The Earth was going to become a “frying pan” if we kept sending CO₂ into the atmosphere.
The illustration chosen for this article reminds me of the ending of George Lucas’s film THX 1138. We will really have to worry when we hear the St Matthew Passion descending from the sky against a backdrop of a blazing sunset. For the more cinephile-minded, there will be a post-credits scene where Al Gore and DiCaprio are seen clinking glasses with their feet in the water, while Guterres flips some nice juicy cuts of meat on his “Hell Doors” brand barbecue.
Poor Bermany. Who needs enemies when led by such asses. It’s almost as bad as an Aussie minister for energy proclaiming that you should recharge your EV at night using solar energy.
This is an excellent example of – “If you can’t make it in the real world, there’s always politics.”
Stand before a blazing campfire on a chilly evening.
Lift up a blanket between.
Cooler or warmer?
Drop the blanket.
Cooler or warmer?
That’s what Earth’s atmosphere & albedo produce, cooler not warmer.
That is not a GHE.
GHE says w/o it Earth becomes -18 C ball of ice.
Clearly wrong.
No GHE, no GHG warming, no CAGW & $E12 global scam instantly unemployed.
Aristarchus of Samos posited that Earth orbited the Sun in 300 BC.
So, what happened?
The Catholic church consensus which did not accept the heliocentric model until 1822, enforcing the geocentric model, i.e. over 2,100 years of suppressed science.
Bruno was drawn & quartered. Galileo was threatened, forced to recant & isolated.
Sound familiar?
Well….no….with no gases, then outgoing LW at 287 K and emissivity of .95 would be 365.7 instead of current 242.7 that balances solar input….so the planet would get cooler, so yes there is a GHE and GHG warming in about the amounts shown on the following graphs…
So many factors to consider… like what about the side that is not facing the sun at that moment? The problem is too complicated for short bomments.
TFK_bams09
To radiate 160 W/m^2 as a BB requires a system temperature of 278 K.
If the kinetic energies of 17 sensible & 80 latent come into play the resulting 63 LWIR would require a 183 K or 95 C cooler.
The kinetic processes control the temperature, radiation just rides along.
Your campfire analogy is a complete misinterpretation. A better one would be that you are in a tent that has a say 500 watt heater….The tent shields the heater from radiating to the cold nightime sky…instead radiating to a 20 C tent surface. Inside you feel warmer with [Heater+Tent surface] making you toastier than [Heater+Cold Night sky]….The heater would be analogous to the surface releasing its daytime absorbed sunlight.
The tent stifles the kinetic processes per Q = 1/R A (Thot – Tcold)
Temperature is function of the kinetic processes, radiation a function of that temperature.
The radiation to the sky is what’s left over after the kinetic processes do their thang.
Emissivity is a measure of that ratio.
BTW my experiment demonstrates how this works.
Earth radiates but not as a black body instead at a temperature determined by the kinetic processes.
Greenhouse is an unfit analogy, except for a few aspects that stop making sense when you consider other aspects.
Blanket analogy also works for a few aspects then stops making sense when you consider other aspects.
Very little of the energy being emitted by the sun is in the wavelengths absorbed by CO2 or H20.
A much higher percentage of the energy being emitted by the earth is in those wavelengths.
The kids should learn , first of all , that they , like every bite of food they eat , like all life , are built on Carbon from CO2 .
And that is why our added molecule per 10,000 air is so spectacularly & undeniably greening the planet and increasing crop yields .
Not sure why this is newsworthy.
Al Gore has been proselytizing with similarly accurate tales of scientific nonsense for decades, gaining tens of million dollars without any negative consequences. The list of others doing essentially the same thing and profiting mightily from it is long.
And what would you expect from potential leaders of a country that pursues self-destruction with the support of a majority of voters?
It takes a long time to destroy centuries of philosophical and scientific gains. I think the germans will recover from this too.
Professional politicians (this guy has been one for 20 years now) think that they know every thing about every thing–don’t u know???
The more confused they are, the better the left likes them and the better it can exploit these useful idiots.
It’s leftists like this that are responsible for the distortions and omissions we can find in many public school science curriculums.
When methane is burned, one molecule of NH4 combines with 2 molecules of O2 to create one molecule of CO2 and 2 molecules of H2O. 3 molecules become 3 molecules.
How exactly does that cause the atmosphere to thin?
Gas law. Atmosphere cannot thin or thicken unless there is a change is in gravity or incoming solar energy.
So, the reason why Mars has almost no atmosphere is because it lost it’s gravity?
Heat is not trapped in our atmosphere. Continuing to repeat that nonsense is ridiculous. The retention of heat energy is increased but it still escapes to space.