The Gospel According to the TV Professor

When a prominent public television scientist steps down from the cosmos to lecture elected politicians, the script in Germany is reassuringly predictable. Harald Lesch, astrophysics professor at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University and a familiar face on ZDF, has issued another public admonition. His target this time is Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of the AfD, who had dared to describe the recent summer as quite normal. In an interview with Die Welt, Lesch demanded an immediate outcry from the scientific community, insisting that politicians like Chrupalla must be bombarded with facts. After all, Germany had just experienced its second warmest summer on record.

Yet Lesch did not stop at temperature charts. Moving swiftly from atmospheric physics to national energy strategy, the television scholar declared nuclear power a completely outdated technology. In his estimation, nobody in their right mind builds nuclear power plants today. To substantiate this verdict, he pointed west across the Rhine, where France had to shut down several of its 57 nuclear reactors during the summer due to water shortages. In a Europe facing less overall rainfall alongside sudden torrents of heavy precipitation, cooling nuclear plants is, by his logic, an untenable proposition. Instead, state policy should pivot toward water storage projects and infrastructure adaptation.

What makes this crusade intriguing is not merely the technical verdict, but the explicit call to political arms. Lesch openly scolded his academic peers for remaining unpolitical while populist movements threaten parliamentary democracy. Because research is funded by taxpayers' money, scientists allegedly bear a direct responsibility to intervene in public debates. Staying quiet in such times is, he warned, fraught with extreme danger.

It is a short step from defending objective facts to endorsing political platforms. Lesch made that leap without hesitation, identifying Alliance 90/The Greens as the only political party in Germany that took natural science findings seriously from the very beginning. While distancing himself from some of their social policy choices, he aligned himself firmly with their climate agenda—all while claiming that his only real party membership card is the Basic Law itself.

When science claims the moral high ground to preach policy and endorse specific parties, it risks becoming indistinguishable from the political establishment it purports to advise. Lesch paints a grim picture where climate projections fall short of an even worse reality—glaciers melting, permafrost thawing, and oceans warming beyond the most pessimistic models. Whether writing off reliable energy technologies while demanding total societal transformation is a sign of sober scientific reasoning, or simply another chapter in Germany's troubled energy discourse, remains an open question.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com