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Germany

Eurovison Contestants 2015: Germany

Germany has had a hard time choosing its artist for the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Ann Sophie will have the honor of representing her country, but she was not the singer elected by the audience during the final rounds of Unser Song für Österreich (Our Song for Austria), the German contest to chose who would run for them in Vienna this year.

Andreas Kümmert, the winner of the third season of The Voice of Germany, was originally chosen by the audience to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. In the end, he withdrew his song from the show and Ann Sophie, as the runner-up, got the opportunity to be Germany’s contestant.


She will perform a love song called “Black Smoke”, which talks about everything she has left of her failed relationship. Even though the theme is not very joyful, Ann Sophie shows great energy on stage, clearly determined to forget about her former boyfriend !

Our vote:

Does it make you want to visit that country? 1/10

Was there enough glitter? 2.25/10

Ok to quit your day job? 3/10

OVERALL AVERAGE: 2.1/10

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Green

The Problem With Always Blaming Climate Change For Natural Disasters

Climate change is real, but a closer look at the science shows there are many factors that contribute to weather-related disasters. It is important to raise awareness about the long-term impact of global warming, but there's a risk in overstating its role in the latest floods or fires.

People on foot, on bikes, motorcycles, scooters and cars navigate through a flooded street during the day time.

Karachi - People wade through flood water after heavy rain in a southern Pakistani city

Xinhua / ZUMA
Axel Bojanowski

-Analysis-

BERLIN — In September, thousands of people lost their lives when dams collapsed during flooding in Libya. Engineers had warned that the dams were structurally unsound.

Two years ago, dozens died in floods in western Germany, a region that had experienced a number of similar floods in earlier centuries, where thousands of houses had been built on the natural floodplain.

Last year saw more than 1,000 people lose their lives during monsoon floods in Pakistan. Studies showed that the impact of flooding in the region was exacerbated by the proximity of human settlements, the outdated river management system, high poverty rates and political instability in Pakistan.

There are many factors that contribute to weather-related disasters, but one dominates the headlines: climate change. That is because of so-called attribution studies, which are published very quickly after these disasters to highlight how human-caused climate change contributes to extreme weather events. After the flooding in Libya, German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described climate change as a “serial offender," while the Tageszeitung wrote that “the climate crisis has exacerbated the extreme rainfall."

The World Weather Attribution initiative (WWA) has once again achieved its aim of using “real-time analysis” to draw attention to the issue: on its website, the institute says its goal is to “analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events." Frederike Otto, who works on attribution studies for the WWA, says these reports help to underscore the urgent need for climate action. They transform climate change from an “abstract threat into a concrete one."

In the immediate aftermath of a weather-related disaster, teams of researchers rush to put together attribution studies – “so that they are ready within the same news cycle," as the New York Times reported. However, these attribution studies do not meet normal scientific standards, as they are published without going through the peer-review process that would be undertaken before publication in a specialist scientific journal. And that creates problems.

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