Elon Musk criticises Bitcoin for its enormous energy consumption of fossil fuels. Without further ado, he drops it as a payment option at Tesla, whereupon the Bitcoin price falls rapidly. Musk is mostly right about the greenhouse gas emissions involved in Bitcoin mining, but he is mostly wrong about the trend. Creating and destroying values…
The German right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) criticizes the refugee policy by Angela Merkel in Germany. In a press release from April 2019, Chairman Alexander Gauland claimed: Migrants drive up the crime rate in Germany. Especially now with the federal election upcoming, the AfD still holds this position – even though the refugee crisis is…
At the end of March, the Croatian Minister of Tourism and Sports, Nikolina Brnjac, when asked about tourism in Croatia, stated that “there are fewer bookings than in previous years, even for Easter, but more is expected from the end of May and in June, for which there is more interest by tourists.” Even though…
On March 31st, the Croatian Minister of Tourism and Sports, Nikolina Brnjac, declared that Croatia is fully prepared for the upcoming tourism season: “Croatia is fully ready to start tourist movements and that is the message we are sending to our emitting markets.” When looking at the preparations made by the Croatian Ministry of Tourism…
Donald Trump’s Twitter posting on 9 July 2020 establishes a correlation between the corona tests performed in a country and the confirmed Covid-19 cases in that country. Explicitly, he claims for the USA: “For the 1/100th time, the reason we show so many Cases, compared to other countries that haven’t done nearly as well as…
German politician Sahra Wagenknecht (The Left) has criticized the reform of the German labour market by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, called “Agenda 2010”. She makes this reform responsible for one of the largest low-wage sectors in Europe. Some of her numbers are correct but not all of them.
In a Brexit Party rally in April 2019, Nigel Farage claimed according to the Daily Mail: “What we are now fighting for is much, much, bigger than Brexit […] what we are now fighting for is for the survival of the very principle of democracy in this country.” This statement refers to a conceived lack…
During the US election campaign in 2016, many false messages were spread on Facebook. Also in Germany the distrust of information in social networks is high: According to a study by the European Commission in February 2018, around 60% of all Germans surveyed do not trust news and information in social media. Facebook responded to…
During a public hearing of a committee of the German parliament, Marc Bernhard of the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) criticized the German strategy for climate protection. To his mind, reducing national CO2 emissions is not effective. In this fact check we show that Bernhard uses correct numbers but interprets them in a misleading…
In March 2019, the German Teachers‘ Association approved of the decision of the EU Parliament to abolish the time change. However, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the association, thinks there is a health risk for students if a country switches to summer time permanently: The probability of sleeping and learning problems, depression and diabetes has…