This is a general thread for discussing Energy Issues, with emphasis on the EU / UK, but other regions are fair game as well.
Initially I’m going to focus on just one story: France is restarting all their nuclear reactors. You know, the ones with corrosion problems? It will be interesting to see if they are going to fix them all on the double quick, or just going to say “good enough for one winter” and fire them back up.
France’s EDF plans to restart nation’s entire nuclear fleet by early next year
By Joao Vitor Da Silva Marques with AFP • Updated: 04/09/2022 – 22:51
(Note that the date is in Euro format, so that “9” in the middle is September. USA mode it would be written 9/4/2022. That’s why I use “4 Sept 2022” as it is unambiguous.)
France plans to restart the nation’s entire nuclear fleet by early next year. One of the largest producers of nuclear power in the world, state-owned EDF is trying to avoid disruption to its energy supply over the winter at all costs.
The minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, said the company was on board with the schedule.
“As you know, 32 reactors are shut down, some for stress corrosion and others for routine maintenance,” said Pannier-Runacher. “EDF has undertaken to restart all the reactors this winter. We are monitoring the situation closely with weekly updates and we are being especially vigilant to ensure that this schedule is kept.”Ambitious timetable
According to EDF’s projections, 27 nuclear reactors must restart by the end of December, followed by 5 others between early January and mid-February 2023.
However, many question the company’s ability to do it, especially for the 12 reactors stopped for stress corrosion. Repairing them requires long and complex operations. The President of the Nuclear Safety Authority, Bernard Doroszczuk, warned that other problems could also be detected, leading to the new closures.
Sounds like somebody is worried about a long cold winter in the dark.
Perhaps this would be a good time for a bit of a re-think about that whole “shut down gas, coal, oil, and nuclear power” Gang Green Screwed Deal, eh?
https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/wireStory/uk-energy-bills-skyrocketing-happening-88833260
UK energy bills are skyrocketing. Why is it happening?
A cost-of-living crisis in Britain is about to get worseBy SYLVIA HUI Associated Press
August 26, 2022, 2:55 AMUK energy bills are skyrocketing. Why is it happening?
A cost-of-living crisis in Britain is about to get worse
BySYLVIA HUI Associated Press
August 26, 2022, 2:55 AMOn Location: September 5, 2022
LONDON — A cost-of-living crisis in Britain is about to get worse, with millions of people paying about 80% more a year on their household energy bills starting in October.
The U.K. energy regulator on Friday announced the latest price cap, which is the maximum amount that gas suppliers can charge customers per unit of energy. It means people will pay 3,549 pounds ($4,188) a year for heating and electricity.
Scores are already struggling to make ends meet as inflation soared to 10.1% last month — the highest in 40 years — and the rapidly spiraling costs of energy and food are certain to hit the poorest the hardest.
So maybe it would have been a good idea to NOT blow up those coal fired power plants and shut down the nukes, eh?
Chickens, home, roosting.
How about the future? Anything looking better further on after “whatever” gets done to fix this?
Under the revised price cap announced Friday, average household energy bills will jump to 3,549 pounds a year starting Oct. 1. They will go still higher when the price cap is updated again in January, expected to exceed 4,000 pounds.
U.S. bank Citi forecast that the huge energy cost increases could drive U.K. inflation to 18% next year. The Bank of England predicts a recession starting later this year.
Um, nope. Well, just think of it as a Sample Run for the Net Zero crash… /snark;
Germany has put the brakes on shutting down reliable power, at least a little bit:
(I was only going to quote a little, but they put up a few nags about “make an account” to get one more free article; so there’s a high probability that in the future folks can’t “hit the link” to see what I was pointing at. So instead I’ll be quoting very heavily.)
Politics
Germany Keeps Its Nuclear Plants Alive as EU Seeks Crisis Fixes
Germany will keep two plants available in policy shift
EU is working on measures to cap prices, improve liquidity
ByArne Delfs, Ania Nussbaum, and Rachel Morison
September 5, 2022 at 12:00 PM EDTUpdated onSeptember 5, 2022 at 1:15 PM EDT
Germany moved to keep two nuclear plants available this winter in a policy reversal, as European leaders scrambled for emergency fixes to the deepening energy crisis.
Moscow’s move to switch off its main gas pipeline to Europe sent gas and power prices surging on Monday, adding urgency to politicians’ efforts to stem a crisis that risks turning into an economic, social and financial disaster too.
In a hastily arranged call, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron made an energy pact to help each other through the winter, as they forged a united front ahead of EU negotiations later this week on crisis-fighting tools.
So, OK, France is panicked enough to be doing a mad dash restart of reactors, and Germany is halting the shut down of 2 of them. Both are in trouble. So they promise to share their lack of power? Um… how’s that work again?
Were it up to me and I was in charge in Europe, I’d just ask “Why can’t we drop the sanctions WE imposed and just start up Nordstream 2? Call off the crisis??” But it would seem I’m not a very good politician (since I think crisis is something to fix, not something to exploit…)
European Union energy ministers are set to meet on Friday, and the proposals on the table so far include power-demand curbs, measures to boost liquidity in the sector as collateral demands skyrocket and a price cap on gas. In a measure of how the bloc is ready to rip up long-hallowed policies, there’s even a draft proposal to make it cheaper to pollute to reduce the cost of electricity.
Germany’s move to keep two nuclear plants in reserve also marked a policy shift that was a difficult move for Scholz’s coalition government. Economy Minister Robert Habeck insisted that the nuclear exit enacted in the wake of the Fukushima disaster was still in place but two plants will be kept in reserve in case they’re needed — for this winter only.
“I will do everything to ensure Germany’s energy security,” Habeck said. “This way, we can act if worst comes to worst.”
Hours earlier, officials and executives predicted that Germany will struggle to meet its targets of filling up gas storage with Nord Stream shut.With Germany short of gas and France short of electricity as its once mighty nuclear fleet has been hit by a series of issues, the two countries agreed to back each other up through the winter.
France will complete works in the coming weeks to be able to export gas to Germany “each time it’s needed” this winter, Macron said. At the same time, Germany will boost power output to be able to export more electricity to France when demand peaks.
Um, isn’t a lot of their electricity made by burning gas? So if gas is in short supply, how will Germany be able to export more electricity to France? And if the French reactors are not making enough electricity how will France be able to export gas that would be needed in peaking gas turbines?
Somehow this all seems a bit long on “show” and short on “how to”…
I suspect the “power curbs” will be the big “fix”…
Power Mix
Europe gets about a fifth of its electricity from gas
French power prices for the start of next year are about 30% higher than in Germany as Electricite de France SA struggles with its nuclear plants. Usually, a major exporter of power at peak times, France is demanding imports this year — one of the reasons European prices are so high.As Macron called on French citizens to cut their demand by 10%, Habeck said more measures would be needed. Both countries back an EU-wide windfall tax on energy profits, Macron said. Macron also called for oversight of “speculation” on energy prices, and backs calls to sever the link between gas prices and those of power.
Why does this look like a giant FUBAR with everyone promising to borrow from the next one in the circle to make more power? Sort of a “We can all borrow 100 GW from our neighbor and since there are 10 of us, that makes 1000 GW of new power!”…
Or maybe, to quote the Microsoft support site about a bug I was researching “This behaviour is by design”… i.e. someone want’s it broken.
(Also playing the limited “free” articles game:)
Germany’s Energy Crisis Dispels Several Myths
Michael LynchSenior ContributorGermany is undergoing an energy crisis now as severely reduced gas flows from Russia threaten to leave it with a cold, dark winter. Much of its problem is self-inflicted and demonstrates the perils of populist but irrational energy policy.
Many eyebrows were raised when Greenpeace announced that, given the seriousness of the current situation, they would not oppose more coal fired power being brought on-line, although they insisted that hard coal, not lignite, be used. (Greenhouse gas emissions are slightly higher for anthracite, but other pollutants, including sulfur, tend to be much lower.) This serves as an important lesson about climate change policy and public attitudes towards higher-cost but cleaner energy supply.
Oh God! Greenpeace is so stupid they can’t understand that soft coal (AKA Thermal Coal) is better for running a power plant? Or that plants have scrubbers to remove things like sulphur?
The rest of the article is also a bit daft. Not horribly so, just not worth wasting time reading it.
Whatever…
It looks to me like this has the potential to be a great Learning Experience for Europe (and the rest of us). Go ahead, close those nuclear plants. Don’t replace the missing gas. Keep those coal plants closed. This is the goal of the Net Zero and Green Broken Deal, after all.
Just think of it as a small preview of things to come under Green Global Warming absurd policies…
Musings from the Chiefio 
(shrug) I just don’t understand those who excuse invasions and limp wrist responses to them.
But then I don’t understand how politician after politician can look at energy problems and not spend for hedges and fallback sources. Till it hurts.
Only redundancy and excess supply grants reliability.
Russia needs to be beat with a stick. Even if the beater is hurting. So far, I’m not seeing much….
@Taz;
I think you may need a bit more nuance in your view of “invasions”.
The USA invaded Vichy France on D-Day. Was that wrong?
The USA invaded Italy before that, and North Africa. Were they wrong?
The USA has invaded so many countries I can’t keep them all straight. Even dinky ones like Grenada and Nicaragua and Panama and Mexico (“Halls of Montezuma”…) and so many more. Were they all wrong? ( I think many of them likely were… but all?)
Frankly, I agree with you on a lot of the USA invasions of other countries, but some of them not so much. (Like the various islands in the Pacific in W.W. II).
Surely there are good invasions and bad invasions (and maybe even so-so invasions).
Then the question of “Beat with a stick” even “if hurting”. How is it intelligent to do self harm in excess of that being inflicted? Sanctions are NOT hurting Russia (at all, near as I can tell. Just changed customers to China and India) but are doing great harm to the EU and UK citizens. How is that a good thing?
IF you feel compelled to harm Russia, surely there is some better way than self harm via energy self flagellation.
I’m not a big fan of Russia. At best, I tepidly recognize that Putin loves his Russia and has done things to promote it and recover it from the damage of Communism. That’s about it. I largely don’t think about Russia at all unless the news cycle brings it up. But I do recognize that they have a 1000 year history of being invaded from the European Plane, and have some reason for their near paranoia about it happening again. Their history is a rather stark thing… 20 to 30 MILLION dead in W.W.II alone. I think that matters. (Know your opponent and their history if you would predict them. Or to quote Patton “I read your damn book!” about Rommel.) So I can see their POV on events. (Don’t always agree with their POV, but can see it.)
I do care rather a lot about Europe and the UK (as a lot of my relatives are over there… and it’s the ancestral land of all my ancestors, one country or another). I do care about the destruction of Classical Liberalism (more like Libertarian than the Social Liberals that are Socialism Lite) and the Renaissance learnings; now being flushed down the drain by the GEBs. Seeing them break their teeth on Ukraine (or rather break OUR teeth as they watch…) bothers me more than Russia and Ukraine fighting over land.
The simple fact is that the “sanctions” have been one gigantic “Own Goal” after another from the start. They have the potential to bring down the EU. Riots are happening in the streets, and whole countries are balking at them. How does that hurt Russia? Where is the stick? (Or perhaps, who is it really hitting…)
The Columbia Generating Station in Washington State: ” The biennial refueling is an opportunity to add fresh nuclear fuel to Columbia’s reactor core, as well as perform maintenance projects that can be accomplished only when the reactor is offline.”
Note the “biennial” = every 2 years, and “offline for no more than 40 days.” That was in May of 2021.
I wonder what the SOP in France has been.
I saw this post from a friend in the UK on FaceBook.
I have just checked my account page with EDF, the power company I was moved to when First Utility went bump.
They have now published the new rates for gas and electricity from the 1st of October.
F%$K ME!! 😖
Gas is + 100.3%! 😖
Electricity (all carbon neutral don’cha know). is + 85.1%. 😖
Blimey!! 🤬
From £85 per month until 2021, to £207 per month since January this year to what they predict to be £325 per month (at least) from next month.
No choice available (the fixed price tariffs have been removed).
Ball park increase of 300% on the 2021 rates.
@E.M.Smith
Perhaps you are too pessimistic? It takes time for fuel switching to wind down. But once it happens, it’s sticky. Do I believe Russia will enjoy a profitable market for it’s fuels? Depends. Depends on just how badly the world kicks them now that they know the Europeans ain’t buyin.
There’s lots of pain ahead for sure. But maybe that will make Europe tougher? They sure don’t seem to have much of that. They might even learn to regret all the defense spending freeloading they’d done for the last 70 yrs.
Right now the operative word for all Russians is “Gulp, what have we done?” That won’t change for a long time. Probably a few generations? Their invasion wasn’t a good trade. It’s even worse than the trade that idiot Bush made.
How in the hell is it possible for Russia to screw up this badly? When we paid the dues for this mistake?
If you aren’t willing to invade with ALL your people, kill ALL the males of your enemy then take their women – don’t invade.
This was figured out 3000 years ago.
To invade enemy territory when there’s a war on, fine. To initiate a war by invading a country you have a border dispute with, not fine at all. No matter how noble or justified you think you are.
As far as Europe and energy are concerned, here’s the other RK, part of a poem about the Boer War..
Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good.
Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again,
Were all our most holy illusions knocked higher than Gilderoy’s kite.
We have had a jolly good lesson, and it serves us jolly well right!
@rhoda klapp
If we are quoting poetry, how about this one from Rudyard Kipling about 120 years ago
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!
Sounds like something that Joe could have learned from, (and the Russians).
Some recent example above of responses to EMs post remaining orthogonal to the cogent issues he raised. ( Or, from my perspective, lightly touched and poorly brushed off with generalities.)
A concern I have on a desperate rush to restart nuclear and fossil fuel plants is the talent drain. I suspect that one reason productivity has lately declined is just that. Covid, and the Government response gave strong motivation to experienced talent retiring.
Add in a decade plus of Government power and political cultural policy discouraging an industry as evil, and actually reducing it, and a sudden attempt to reverse that and bring what is essentially moth balled power plants on line with lack of talent and supply chain issues, is possibly to invite a comic tragedy of errors and potentially dangerous.
andysaurus, sorry about your accelerating energy costs. It is certainly a man made problem predicted by many for decades now. Just as the Southwest’s water crisis was entirely predictable, predicted, and avoidable. And Covid, both the creation of the virus, and the government response to it, a complete unmitigated disaster, and deeply criminal.
And yes, wars now in the mix facing escalating pressure to expand to no good end, except perhaps to politicians as a distraction from the above criminal incompetence, and to the war machine industry, which like government is a necessary evil. Since we are quoting poetry, to the deep state and GEBs worldwide; “ Of all man’s clotted clay, surely thou the dingiest clot.”
Good thing you are (mostly) out of Cali. We are infected with the same disease as Europe, it’s just taken longer to gather strength.
California officials declared an “Energy Emergency Alert” on Monday as the state ran out of power supplies and was forced to activate four backup plants powered by natural gas.
The California Independent System Operator (ISO) had already issued a “Flex Alert” for the fifth day in a row, as the state struggled to keep up with energy demand in a heat wave. But on Monday, officials declared an energy emergency to prevent potential blackouts — and then extended it:
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/09/05/california-declares-energy-emergency-alert-turns-to-natural-gas-backup/
@David A:
It is just human nature. People conflate “I don’t like it” with “It is wrong”. I’m not sure why, but they do. Perhaps because it often does run (correctly) from “It is wrong” to “therefore I don’t like it”.
But often is run the other way from “I don’t like it” to “therefore it is wrong” – even when it isn’t. Even when from the perspective of The Other it was the only choice they had. Even if in the position of The Other they would do the same. I don’t like hot sauce on eggs, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
FWIW, I learned this in the family restaurant. One day a guy ordered “Runny eggs and hot sauce”. I said something like “Ewwwe” to my Dad. He took the time to explain that preferences were personal, and if someone ordered something YOU didn’t like, you just say “Yes sir, coming right up!” because what YOU like is irrelevant to what THEY like. To this day I name that insight the “runny eggs and hot sauce” point.
From my POV, a lot of folks are just saying “Ewwwe” to something they don’t like without asking what it is like to The Other.
Folks also fall into the binary vs shades of gray trap. There must be one clear answer and not a spectrum of ambiguity. The old “There is always an answer that is simple, obvious, and wrong.” problem. People just do not like “it depends” as an answer, or “well, there’s a bit more to that…”, or worse “both are right, and neither, depending”.
So folks do not like war, therefore all war is wrong. Or “My side is virtuous therefore the other side is evil”. Both simple, obvious, and wrong. All war is horrible, but may be necessary sometimes. Both sides can be virtuous, and evil, and both at the same time, depending on your POV and the POV of The Other.
It takes a great deal of perspective control to maintain “The Martian Perspective”. Yet, if you can “see the other side” you can avoid a great deal of grief. Endless bickering over things that can never resolve since “you argue from different premises”. Finding the “Root Cause” of disagreements is made easier if you can see all the roots…
This all shows up strongly in discussion of the Ukraine war. The West is busy painting Ukraine as virtuous in every way. It isn’t. It is a corrupt government installed by The West, run as a money laundry for all, and intended as a NATO thorn in the side of Russia since Putin is a Nationalist working for Russia not for the NWO / WEF wet dream. Yet they were invaded by a much stronger neighbor who is busy destroying a lot of infrastructure and even more of their military equipment and even more of their fighting age men.
On the other side, Putin is painted as Evil Incarnate, a new Stalin hell bent on the domination and consumption of all nations near. He isn’t. Yet he also isn’t a nice guy you would want to trust with your Thanksgiving Dinner were he hungry… It is clear from his decades of NOT going after Ukraine and from his attempts to “Make Nice” and join NATO (and from his statements about Mother Russia) that he is largely a Russian Patriot first and foremost, working to make Russia a great nation but also working WITH his neighbors. Yet he is a prisoner of his history (and that of Russia). After 1000 years of repeated invasions and massive destruction of Russia from The West, he has good cause too. A KGB agent, he knows the need to sometimes do evil to achieve an end. And clearly the NWO / WEF / GEB types have designs on Russia and wish to destroy him.
So which is he? Evil incarnate or Good Russian with KGB Skilz if needed working for a better Russia (and a better world perhaps too)? IMHO some of each, but with a bias to the latter. Especially in the context of the Evil that has been done by the Western GEBs and the constant advance of NATO on Russia (despite agreements not to…).
It isn’t Good vs Evil. It isn’t Right or Wrong. It just is. Modest Evil vs Modest Evil, both with a valid reason…
IMHO, the best thing for the USA to have done is simply stand aside and watch. This isn’t our fight to be in. But the USA today is run by the same cabal of WEFies / GEBs / NWO Rinos, etc. so we’re sucked into something that’s largely a “Family Fight” between two wings of the Slavs. Kieven Rus vs Muscovy Rus. Because the folks who want us enslaved too (said WEFies, UN, GEBs…) are all for it and presently running the USA. European GEBs vs Russia Writ Large ought not be our fight, but we are in it anyway.
So I end up doing what I all too often find myself doing: Defending the “middle ground” against both “sides”. I’m not “for Russia”. I’m not “Against Russia”. I’m not “For Ukraine”. I’m not “Against Ukraine”. I just see an Evil GEB / WEFie corrupt Ukraine with NATO backing (for evil ends of Russian reduction) vs. a somewhat less corrupt (but still corrupt) Russia that is choosing to “Do Evil to achieve a good end” from their POV (return Ethnic Russians to Russia and recover historically Russian lands – remember, from their POV.)
So I take rocks from both sides. Oh Well, is what it is.
What I find dismaying is just that as long as folks can’t see both sides, the fighting will go on. NATO expansion IS an existential threat to Russia. All The West and NATO needed to do to have peace is NOT crowd Russia. Yet knowing NATO is essentially all Good and Moral they just went ahead and tossed agreements out the window and went rushing up to the gates of Russia. A Stupid or an Evil move (pick one or both). Then Russia, facing an existential threat (from their POV…) thinks they must “Take Action” to fix it. Both poking each other into escalation. NATO can’t see the Russian 1000 years of invasions POV, and Russia can’t see NATO as ‘good”.
You can either see things from The Other’s POV and negotiate in good faith, or you can have conflicts and wars. Your choice…
@Jim2:
Yeah, had lots of “Flex Alerts” when I was living there.
Notice that it is an “Emergency” to turn on Natural Gas Peaking plants… a normal and planned peaking supply choice.
From my POV, it is just “creating a crisis to exploit it”. Nobody would be in a panic or “focused” on the “bad CO2” if they just quietly turned on the natural gas peaking plants scattered all over the State …
Under Governor Gray “out” Davis we had rolling blackouts and sporadic brownouts along with lots of “Panic Now!” days. Then we voted his ass out of office and things were back to reliable and normal again. Decades later, “his side” is back in power and so the State is back to cutting power to cause panic (again).
This time I’m pretty sure that there will be no RINO replacement governor. The Dems controls the vote counting, so assured Gov. Nuisance would not be recalled. Can’t have Nancy “the Pill” Pilousi’s nephew being recalled when he’s being groomed for The Prez, now can we?…
In some part that’s why I left California. It became clear that voting was not an available option to fix it. California is hopelessly dominated by a few Big Leftist Cities voting for themselves the largess of the Public Purse. They own the vote counting, so no amount of voting will change that. It is doomed to spiral into a hard crash. But I’m pretty sure that would consume most of my remaining available life time to do it; so chose to go somewhere free, functional, and livable instead (since waiting for the recovery after the crash was likely not going to work out).
Oh Well. I can always visit it if I want to look at the landscape. (Just make sure to have enough fuel in the trailer to get back out of the State again, and carry a portable generator or car based inverter … https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/minimalist-emergency-power/ )
@Taz:
Quite possible that I’m being too pessimistic. I do have a tendency to go a bit too far too fast about things going badly. A habit of trying to get ahead of problems to fix them before The Bad Thing shows up or gets too bad ;-)
In any case, what I think about it doesn’t matter. It will be what it is, and we’ll all get to see who was right and who was wrong in the end.
FWIW, I think “The World” is the wrong way to look at “kicking them”. It isn’t “The World”, it is over 100 individual countries making decisions. We already have 2 big existence proofs: India is loving the Russian Oil at only a modest discount; China is repackaging and reselling Russian Natural Gas at a nice profit via price gouging Europe. Others will do the same.
The basic “problem” with energy sanctions is that Oil and Gas are fungible commodities. Attempts to price one point of origin significantly differently from another (in the absence of a physical reason like lack of pipelines across Alaska – i.e. “stranded gas”) will run headlong into 2 things:
1) Economic pressure to use the artificially cheaper source (and it can be massive).
2) The willingness of market players to “cheat” and rebrand or blend down to hide origin and make a profit.
See India for #1 and China for #2 as major examples. Were I an Indonesian oil trader, I’d be looking at how to buy Russian Oil at a modest discount, ship it to Indonesia, and then either blend it with local oil (to disguise origin chemical signature on the re-export) or just sell that oil into the domestic market and export Indonesian oil to the ROW as “non-Russian” so deserving a bit more profit…
Are the Russians really “gulping”? I have no idea. They are not in our news. There are lots of riots / protests in Europe over high prices, but I’ve not heard a peep about Russians upset with Putin. Got any pointers to that? From what I’ve seen, Russia is just doing “Business as usual”.
Unlike The West, Russians do learn their history. Pretty much every Russian Family has a family story of folks killed in W.W.II, so take Invasion From The West personally.
Did we kill all the males in Vichy France? In W.W.II Germany? In Japan? In all the Pacific Islands we invaded in W.W.II (or even in the Spanish American War…)?
Again, I suggest you would benefit from a bit more latitude in your approach to “invasion”…
@John Hultquist:
Yeah, I found it really odd that they had 32 down for “maintenance” all at the same time. There’s some back story missing, IMHO. I can see a relatively easy “restart” for those that were just administratively taken off line. Wondering hard about the stress corrosion choices…
@Andysaurus:
Yup, that’s the point of the article. Regular Folks are not going to take well to a 3 x on their ESSENTIAL heating and lighting in winter. That’s a big “own goal” from the sanctions.
Russia just shifts their sales to another buyer, but what can a retiree in the UK do?
(This is “personal” to me, as Mum told me stories of being very cold in England, looking at the one lump of coal they owned, waiting for when her Dad would return from the Sea and then they would burn it and be warm for a little while…)
The UK sits on a huge supply of coal and gas. NOBODY in the UK ought to be cold in winter. Bad choices by bad governments, likely due to stupidity AND evil intent.
Stress corrosion…they don’t say where. I am not sure but I believe their reactors are all Pressurized water vice boiling water reactors. Stress corrosion if on the primary (reactor coolant) side would be in the steam generators. Pretty easy to plug or sleeve the tubes. Heck many utilities here in the US can due a complete steam generator swap in 30 days. No details of the type of stress corrosion either. Lots of places susceptible on the secondary side. The barriers are all political
The abcnews article misses the most important point.
Yes, for households energy prices are capped (it’s cost per KWh and therm that’s capped – the £3549 number is the average bill), but there is no cap for businesses.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/06/it-will-be-cheaper-to-close-businesses-urge-liz-truss-to-act-fast-over-soaring-bills
https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/tom-kerridge-warns-energy-bill-27891151
It’s not that a few pubs and restaurants will close, it’s that the majority that will:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/23/pubs-winter-energy-costs-soar
And it’s not only the hospitality sector affected – it’s care homes, hospitals, schools, every shop, and everything else besides.
Can anyone say “economic collapse”?
Our new PM says she’ll come up with a plan in her first week to tackle energy costs, and for once I’ve no doubt that’s what will happen.
However, we’ve still got the same Treasury and civil service, and they both HATE small business. (It’s nearly impossible to over-state how much they want to get rid of small businesses. If you asked “what more could they do to kill off small businesses without it looking like that’s what they’re doing?”, I can’t think of anything, and I think even they’ve started to run out of ideas. They’ve already fiddled with taxes under the guise of “fairness” to the point where you are taxed at a higher effective rate as a company director of a small business than an employee). There will certainly be a plan, but it’ll be a plan to force more small businesses to sell-up to their larger competitors.
As for providing support so that society as a whole keeps going, that would require a degree of basic competence not seen for so long it’s presumed extinct.
There will be riots – a burning building will keep a mob warm for days! (/sarc, but only a little).
Yep. In my opinion, it was a *major* mistake to not include Russia as a NATO partner 20 or so years ago, yet keep in mind their own view of their history. The Poland of today was basically shifted west, so more Germanic now than before. In the West’s eyes, “We tried to work with the Russians, but couldn’t” and in Russia’s eyes, “We tried to work with the West, but couldn’t”; so there we are.
Many people in the UK had happily been working from home this summer. While not needing to use any heating, and the costs of electricity to power a computer was much less than the cost of driving to work.
I predict this winter we will see many people revert to driving to work, where the light and heating is provided by the employer, and boiling a kettle will start to feel like an luxurious treat.
I’ve just made sure we have a kerosene lamp, just in case of long dark windless nights when the French nuclear power stations can’t send us enough electricity.
EM says.
“ Yet knowing NATO is essentially all Good and Moral they just went ahead and tossed agreements out the window and went rushing up to the gates of Russia. A Stupid or an Evil move (pick one or both)”
Well considering the same GEBs that caused the Ukraine crisis, also developed Covid, possibly leaked it, shut down VERY effective prophylactic treatments, created mutations, forced an ineffective vaccine that most certainly causes greater overall morbidity mortality, broke the supply chain, caused the energy crisis, precipitated a growing water crisis, imprisoned mostly innocent Jan 6 protesters, stole an election or ten, instigated riots and burning down businesses, ran GOF bio labs around the world, I will go with EVIL.
Hungary has ignored the EU restrictions and got a deal for gas from Russia. Czechs are demonstrating in vast numbers in Prague (even the “News” has to admit 100,000) with the slogan Czechs first. Italy restarted a coal fired station using Russian coal, so cracks are opening in the EU wall. Slovakia and the Balkan countries might follow. There have been demonstrations in The Netherlands and Austria against EU policies.
As for poor old GB they are going to be badly hit. The French won’t be delivering electricity even if they have it, because Germany will need it and Macron hated Brexit. The Norwegians supply the UK with electricity from their hydro systems but have already signalled that due to water shortages they may restrict generation (current storage level about 60%). They also supply much of the gas too and they restricted that back in 2021 about the time that there was the first ‘mechanical problems’ with Russian supplies (so both countries forced themselves to charge more). The UK has let their gas storage reduce, along with finding any more gas fields up north (where the Norwegians find new supplies) and banned fracking, have shut down all their coal mines and most of their coal-fired plants (followed by hasty demolition) and have allowed their nuclear supplies to deteriorate (new plant 2031 maybe).
And to add to the general joy
https://www.the-sun.com/news/6142322/russia-uk-prices-sanctions-food/
@E.M.Smith
I was very pro Russian before their expansionism set in. Now just want them destroyed, and am willing to pay the price to do it.
World can’t continue like this, with political numbskulls starting wars with impunity then facing zero personal cost. I include the US in this batch of offenders.
Don’t like, Europe, Britain, or Ukraine. They all cost us money. But I’m willing to set real grievances aside when they get invaded or threatened. Putin won’t stop at Ukraine.
So maybe it’s time for that nuclear war, followed by complete conquest of Russia? Meticulously avoiding former Soviet Republics who elected to avoid this war.
Any post nuclear/industrialization war would put pirates on equal footing as states. You wouldn’t need all those grand poobahs working for paychecks. All you need is land, loot, and women available for seizure.
Russia is wasted by the people on it. They aren’t what we had hoped they were. They’ll always be a threat to their neighbors. So let’s get this over with.
No one will help Russia. No one. Russia doesn’t have friends. They’ve worked on that.
The country of “West Alaska” has a nice ring to it :)
I really shouldn’t be smug about the damnfools realizing they’re going to have a long, cold, dark winter. But I am enjoying some schadenfroid.
@E.M.Smith, some choose roads that are too divergent to even discuss rationally.
“21 Million German Households, Industry Suffer Body Blow as Green Energy Scheme Disintegrates”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/09/06/21-million-german-households-industry-suffer-body-blow-as-green-energy-scheme-disintegrates/
Not Europe but –
“Note the Net Zero energy sources for California.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JunkScience/status/1566980996725182464?cxt=HHwWgMC8-cG6hL8rAAAA
This was yesterday, but I imagine today is much the same.
Gavin Newsome should now shut off the natural gas power plants. ”
More here
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2022/09/06/o-sweet-saint-of-san-andreas-125/#comments
A note of hope – maybe
“Labor Day Assessment”
https://kunstler.com/cluster*-nation/labor-day-assessment/
Taz says: 6 September 2022 at 11:52 pm
To say that I am staggered by your diatribe against Russia is an understatement.
I am not sure how old you are, but anyone who glibly talks about “Nuclear war” as punishment for Putin does not live in the real world.
To suggest killing Billions of people from nuclear fallout, nuclear winter, famine and the breakdown in society to punish one man is appalling.
I can only assume it was some form of sarcasm or jest.
I think this may be relevant here. I am amazed at how quickly and deeply ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) has become ingrained in the financial system. Brings to mind Lemmings over the cliff …
JPMorgan, the biggest US bank, has teamed up with software firm Datamaran to develop a data-analysis tool for clients to gauge not just the environmental, social and governance risks facing portfolio companies, but also the ESG risks that such assets pose to the world around them. While the concept — known as double materiality — is already built into EU ESG regulations, it has yet to make inroads in the US.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-07/jpmorgan-product-reveals-wall-street-s-shifting-views-on-esg
Since that article didn’t really explain much, here’s one that attempts to …
https://www.ehs.com/2022/06/what-are-materiality-and-double-materiality-heres-what-you-need-to-know/
The cost-of-living crisis facing consumers has “only just begun,” according to analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co., who downgraded clothing company Hennes & Mauritz AB and flagged risks for other retailers including Marks & Spencer Group Plc.
Consumer spending on discretionary items in the UK may shrink by a mid-single-digit percentage in 2023 compared to 2019, even if the UK energy price cap is frozen at the current level, retail analysts including Georgina Johanan wrote in a note. Spending may fall 10% without an energy price freeze, they said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-07/jpmorgan-analysts-say-uk-cost-of-living-crisis-only-just-begun?srnd=premium-uk
Power output at Europe’s newest reactor is set to hit a landmark 1,000 megawatts overnight as it ramps up toward full production, bringing some relief to the region’s strained market.
Finland’s Olkiluoto-3 nuclear unit will provide much-needed supplies to the Nordic nation’s taut power system when it reaches full capacity later this autumn, after imports from Russia were cut completely in May. The Finnish grid has warned of rolling power cuts this winter as Europe faces its worst energy crisis in decades.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-07/europe-s-newest-reactor-is-ramping-up-much-needed-power-supply?srnd=premium-europe
Germany produced over half its electricity in the first six months of the year from conventional sources, led by an increase in coal-fired power, but renewables are gaining, according to data released by the statistical office in Wiesbaden.
While 51.5% of the electricity produced from January to June came from conventional sources, down from 56.2% in the same period a year earlier, renewable energy sources reached a share of 48.5%, up from 43.8% a year ago.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-07/german-reliance-on-coal-renewables-grew-in-first-half-of-2022?srnd=premium-europe
@AC, sounds like Taz wants millions to pay the price to destroy Russia.
Want a smart meter?
“the power companies in Texas and Colorado have been stealthily adjusting people’s “free” smart-thermostats behind their backs — and then LOCKING THEM DOWN.
You read that right. Many consumers have Google’s NEST thermostats, which were given to them “for free” by their power companies to get a teeny-tiny discount or rebate or something. In Texas, people didn’t even get a rebate, they just got “entered in a sweepstakes to win a $5,000 credit” toward their power bill. Suckers! There’s one born every minute. Look how many voted for Biden, for instance.
The problem seems to be that the fine print in the terms and conditions of service allow the power companies take over your thermostat and decide FOR YOU what the temperature in your house should be. They can — and HAVE — lock the thermostat so you can’t move it back.“
David A – change the calibration of the temperature sensor? Should be a fairly easy hack….
@AC Osborn
Not at all. For 50 yrs following WWII this was US doctrine. We prepared to fight and win a nuclear war.
Now many of those old “assumptions” probably wouldn’t hold up now. Especially since supply chains would vanish within three days.
But all those “super duper” weapons would have been used too. Combatants would be reduced to rocks pretty quickly.
Rocks can still kill.
Ever read just how antiwar the United States was after involving itself in the first European war? Those people “got it”. They were resolved never to get involved again. Yet they did – because the war was brought to them. Didn’t really have any choice.
You won’t have any choice with Ukraine either. Just sample the garbage being peddled on Russian TV. The garbage that 70% of their population is in tune with. Weekly diatribes about “cobalting” the British islands. Or our east coast.
Be incredulous all you want, but a bully just hit you. It’s the same bully which has been involved in many similar incidents. So your choice is simple. Stand there and wait until he kills you – or kill him first.
And all this second guessing about Europe’s insanity? Well, maybe they were incautious. Bet too much on Russia. Wanted to be at peace with them too much. Drank too much from the green religion…..
This is something to condemn? To ridicule? Maybe this is really a critic problem? Non participant hand wringers having “their say”.
Maybe those who aren’t prepared to kill bullies are like innocent Europeans?
Yes, I am aware of the irony of anyone from this country calling others “a bully”.
@Jim2:
From that German energy Bloomberg story:
One wonders how well that will work out this winter with lower hours of sunshine, especially on a windless day… Hope they have some more idle coal plants to restart…
Nice to see the Fins are not stupid, and are getting more nuclear power not less. Would be nice to know what “full power” is, but The Bloomer has limited my “free” articles such that I can’t read the story.
Yes, when it is cold and folks are hungry, it is all the “discretionary” spending that halts. Old clothes work as well as new. Bed sheets can go another year. Dishes that are stained or have a few broken pieces are “good enough”. The old washer still washes enough. Car tires may be marginal for winter, but still legal, so… And on it goes. (Not to mention not buying that new £ 50,000 electric car…)
I’d not want to be selling Consumer Discretionary nor Consumer Durables right now. Nor be a supplier to those industries. Consumer Staples only. (Papers, food, …)
Blackrock owns something like $10 TRILLION of stock. They tell the CEO “Implement ESG or look for a new job as we will vote our proxy to remove you”. That’s how it is done. There’s a small cabal of Very Rich fund managers voting YOUR stock holder votes. Pull your money out of their funds.
@AC Osborn:
Maybe we need to add “Putin Derangement Syndrome” to TDS? /snark;
The “Root Cause” of the difference is pretty simple:
Does one see this as Russia protecting Ethnic Russians in enclaves isolated in the breakup of the USSR, or does one see this as Expansionist Putin out to dominate the world and reassemble the USSR?
So far, in Georgia and in Ukraine, Russia has been faced with The West trying to set up shop on her border and inciting border countries against Russia (and ethnic Russians inside those countries). Russia has responded just enough to protect the Ethnic Russian enclaves.
IMO: That is an existence proof of “facts on the ground” that Putin / Russia is NOT “expansionist” but is in fact “Russian Protectionist”. Russia did NOT take all of Georgia. Russia has NOT attempted to take all of Ukraine (only the historically Russian and full of Ethnic Russians Crimea – gifted illegally to Ukraine by the Ukrainian Khrushchev, BTW, an important fact often ignored; and the highly Russian Donbass and related areas – being shelled, bombed and killed by the NATO / GEB installed Western Ukraine government, an important fact too.)
So you end up with 2 camps:
1) Folks who remember the last 10 years or so, don’t know or care about the 100 year or more history, and know for a fact(oid) that Putin is an Evil Expansionist hell bent on dominating all the former Soviet Union nations. Therefore must be attacked and if possible destroyed.
2) Folks who remember the last 50 years, know the 1000 year history of Russia, paid attention to the NATO broken treaties and agreements, look at the facts on the ground of Russia only occupying Ethnic Russian areas (and typically only after years of abuse by the non-Russians), and look at the care with which minimal destruction needed is applied to achieve the goals. (i.e. not carpet bombing nor nuking things. Notice that Kiev is still standing and The Government has not been “decapitated”?). So can see things from the Russian POV, and sees Putin as a Rational Actor, even if Russian Centric and willing to do “Dirty Deeds” if that’s necessary.
IMHO, Taz is in camp #1 and driven by the emotion / hate that comes with it. It is also the narrative being pushed hard by The Media all over The West, and is one of the more effective propaganda ploys (HATE THE EVIL ONE!!!) (and “Oceania Has Always Been at War with Eurasia”…)
I’m in camp #2 and just don’t see this as An American Citizen’s Fight. Russia has done nothing to me, my country, or anyone I care about. Russia hasn’t done anything to harm NATO or the EU / UK. So why are we running a full on Proxy War with them? I see this as a Slav Family Feud mostly, and somewhat as a Euro-GEB WEF vs Nationalist Russian food fight.
Ukraine has been a state inside Russia for about 900 out of 1000 years. Only when under Mongol domination (about 800 years ago) and when (somewhat artificially) separated during the Bolshevik Revolution for a couple of decades, and then when the USSR broke up for about another 40 years, has it even been considered anything other than Russia. So how is this not a Slavic Family Fight?
Oh, and I likely ought to add that anyone advocating for a Nuclear Solution does not understand the “assured destruction” part of Mutually Assured Destruction. By my figuring, it would take at most 3 Russian Nuclear Submarines to eliminate every city of importance in the USA. Probably only 2 for Western Europe. Then there’s the ICBMs, the bombers, etc. etc. Then there’s the aftermath of death and starvation as nobody is working the land, growing food, pumping oil, running power plants. Essentially nothing in North America, Europe, and likely a lot of Asia, would be anywhere near survivable. Were China to get into the act, and I’m sure the USA would retaliate too; add in Asia being gone too. That means nearly no manufactures for the ROW and an economic collapse of “Biblical Proportions” even if the fallout and nuclear winter scenarios don’t happen.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure if nukes start flying, somebody will decide it’s a nice time to take out The Muslim World just so they can’t run in and take over the glowing rubble… So you can likely kiss off north Africa too. There’s a small chance Australia and South America can survive (at a subsistence level given that most tech and manufacturing globally are gone…); though I’d expect China to swoop in to Australia and just take it.
Yes, folks in bunkers would survive. But they would come out a few weeks later to utter devastation and misery. (Oh, and that assumes there isn’t a “Dead Man” deal where at week 3 you launch another round to take out the “survivors” who came out of their holes…)
So my assumption is just that Taz is in group 1 and reacting emotionally, not looking at it with a historical and analytical perspective. His choice.
“Oceania Has Always Been at War with Eurasia”
Nice one…. It does seem like they’re using “1984” as a template, and not as a warning.
@RalphB:
That’s the big technical unknown. Just what is corroded and what does it take to fix it (and does France have enough of ‘what it takes’ to get it done in the time allowed…)
@Prak:
I didn’t know that… No cap on industry means that when profit goes negative, you shut down / close. As energy is a key “input”, that will happen widely and fast…
It won’t just be small business either. Heat for a giant warehouse is a huge bill, and an electric steel furnace or aluminum refinery is 100% driven by electric costs…
@CDQuarles:
Yup, a “Golden Opportunity” lost. Imagine a world where Russia was a NATO member and could count on all other NATO members not to invade it or attack it. The whole “Russia Russia Russia!!!” crap would be gone too. The EU / UK would have plentiful and reliable energy…
@Rudolph Hucker:
Interesting points. You are right, France will choose Germany over the UK (just out of spite if nothing else) for electricity routing.
I’d stock up on sleeping bags or comforters too, if you don’t already have them, for added warmth at night…
During power outages, I’ve found candles to be very useful. Put one in each room likely to be occupied, but save the Big Light for the room where most folks are gathered. https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/thread-wicks-and-rolling-your-own-candles/
Though I suspect some folks may find their “workplace” shut down eventually too…
@Graeme No.3:
The Eastern Europeans do seem to be more rational about consequences. It will be interesting to see if the EU holds together under those strains.
@Doug Jones:
Yes… one of the few benefits of all this ;-)
Hey, hey, hey! I just ran across two small oil lamps today when cleaning out an attic.
I had some smokeless lamp oil that I’d never pitched because it’s flammable., so no-go in the trash. I thought I had gotten rid of my oil lamps years ago when LED lanterns became cheap and ubiquitous. I have a couple for night fishing so the few times I’ve needed light in a power outage, then have been at hand and very effective.
So now I’m back in business with a couple of oil lamps and enough lamp oil for a few weeks or more of light, should batteries become scarce.
EMS – Fin reactor is 1.6 Gw at full power, 14% of Fins needs.
“Denmark flag
Anonymous (ID: tOkUwBlm) 09/07/22(Wed)14:43:38 No.394277138▶
>>394275092
>it’s good that they’re getting some money now cuz after Europe fully converts to liquid gas that’s all they’re getting for many years to come
This is also what i find stupid about it, imagine being russian oligarchs and destroying many many billions annually in profits by selling to european market, all because you got upset about that they via NATO agreement apply sanctions on russia, based on a war that RUSSIA F–ING DECIDES TO START, also it’s not even a war it’s a f—ing straight up annexation attempt of a country 2x larger than germany.
Then they are like
>yes we can squeeze europeans like this, they need this, this will hurt them massively
yeah, you not getting the money they usually pay you either then dumbass.. European nations were literally russias best customers in this regard.. most well paying ones too.
The only one really laughing is USA, they get russia isolated as ofcourse USA wants, to isolate europe from russia. Russia doesn’t benefit, europe doesn’t benefit. USA laughing their ass off. And then germany get squeezed and get blame.. someone always germany gets blame. Cause of nazism, just…”
Putin the genius. Really 4D chess instead of buffoonery. You just aren’t smart enough to notice.
I don’t agree that the US wanted to isolate Europe from Russia. Maybe some in our defense industry and pretend military….pretty much no one else. Russia just had ONE thing to do – LIVE and prosper.
But they chose something else.
Same guy from Denmark
Anonymous (ID: tOkUwBlm) 09/07/22(Wed)14:46:13 No.394277490▶
And all that f–ing pipelines they spend billions of making too.. The sanctions were meant to only be temporary, hoping maybe russia would back off annexation of ukraine, now it’s a permanent change in where european nations buys various energy things from. And sweden and finland with the NATO shit.. talk about just f–ing everything up cause you confident you could bully europeans to accept that ukraine was just going to be annexed..
Anonymous (ID: tOkUwBlm) 09/07/22(Wed)14:52:41 No.394278360▶>>394278986
>>394277770
>yeah they’re buying it from america and your f–ing country anon..
>meanwhile a roundtrip to asia to sell their gas to their new buttbudies takes almost 2 and 1/2 months. which means they need at least 72 new oil tankers if they wanna make a delivery per day and still they’ll probably get nowhere near the sales
Yes, USA win again, europe is in worse position, so is russia, and USA also in case you didn’t see what biden is doing, they moving a massive amount of chip manufacturing from taiwan and south korea to USA.
So USA isolate russia, by getting putin to screech of germany when it’s USA that wants this deteriorating relationship and is taking advantage of angry euro politicians who is fearful of what russia is doing with ukraine. So they punish germany and laugh about it.. Who really laughing.
USA.. nordstream pipelines now a total loss on ROI both of them. Russia gets isolated from europe.. USA also simultaneously screws china by removing chip manufacturing to USA, so now taiwan is not so interesting for china as it used to be since the chip manufacturing there was a major part of why chicoms were so interested in annexation of taiwan.
And europeans buy gas and stuff from canada and USA.. total win for the american assholes as usual. Europeans (especially those that relied on russia) and russians just keep losing..
Putin got played so f–ing hard for USA it’s unbelievable. He shuld have focused on being angry with USA instead of the small euro countries that were russians primary customers.
EVERYONE lost due to this Russian midget. Except perhaps the US. I doubt this was by design but if it was – am disgusted we would stoop so low. The world did not need this invasion, and Russia would have been far better off not starting this conflict.
Be citizen of little country – Denmark:
Anonymous (ID: tOkUwBlm) 09/07/22(Wed)14:54:30 No.394278622▶>>394280780
>>394278136
>That’s actually happening, though.
no they sabotaging european countries, particularly hurting germany massively which is causing problems on european market and rising inflation in prices. Germany is the main economic western economy that the others are very dependent on is functioning decently.
They are not bleeding ‘the west out’ they sabotaging germany primarily and also other small european countries who are in big trouble cause of this. Ironically the last people putin should be f–ing with. They just apply sanctions cause they are expected to by USA and others because of russia try to ANNEX A F–ING COUNTRY NEXT TO THEM..
Anonymous (ID: oh9p7sTl) 09/07/22(Wed)14:57:17 No.394278986▶>>394279530
>>394278360
I think it’s a decent enough win for us as well. I don’t want to be friends with those subhumans
maybe in 10 years we won’t just see aids, murder and krokodil from Russia but actual cannibalism. that would be neat
no one can afford a security risk like being energy dependent on retards like russians, Germany f–ed themselves over. this absolutely had to be rectified
Anonymous (ID: tOkUwBlm) 09/07/22(Wed)15:01:50 No.394279530▶>>394279937
>>394278986
>no one can afford a security risk like being energy dependent on retards like russians, Germany f–ed themselves over. this absolutely had to be rectified
The sad thing is how germany taking all this shit for going against usa and actually TRUSTING RUSSIA TO NOT F– THEM, and then germany is one of the only ones who actually gets f–ed in the ass over this. USA gets to say i told you so, and russia gets geopolitically isolated which i think is really not what putin had in mind.
Because the germans kept being told you can’t trust russians they will stab you in the back with this eventually.
And germans go;
>nono, they not soviets anymore, stop with this bullshit americans, you just looking for your interests you don’t care about us, we will make this deal with russians and so we have good relations with russians”
and then putin F–S THEM COMPLETELY.. cause it’s like ooh how dare you apply sanctions cause i order annexation of a country 2x larger than germany. Now i’m going to squeeze you ‘nazis’ a bit..
FFS.. and USA just laughing hysterically.. literally exactly what they wanted putin to do.
>
Anonymous (ID: tOkUwBlm) 09/07/22(Wed)15:05:52 No.394279985▶
Cause part of reason why germans apply sanctions so strongly is, cause a) usa and other nations in NATO expect them to b) they feel it’s a betrayal that putin do this now that they have placed this trust in him and actually in a big way TOTALLY gone against USA in this dealing with russians. And then they take this leap of faith and putin f–s them in ass HARD with this, for being upset about it.
They all went and said to germany when the sanctions were coming in. You are a very important nation in europe, maybe we even ask you to have more military, and germans are like i don’t believe this shit. I DON’T BELIEVE WE HAVE TO DO ANY OF THIS, we trusted these russians we thought okay it’s not soviet union anymore we don’t have to worry about such things..
And then putin is like HOW DARE YOU..
>>
Anonymous (ID: tOkUwBlm) 09/07/22(Wed)15:07:19 No.394280150▶>>394282332
>>394279937
Well i mean trump did warn them about this, and they are seen there laughing in that clip, and thinking he’s an idiot and there’s just NO WAY russia will do stupid shit so it’s fine to deal with them, and just thinking look this american just they want russia isolated for USA benefit and this is why they don’t want us to make deal with russia, but it’s okay we trust putin they get lot of money we get this from them and pay for it handily so it’s good, what is this orange retard saying..
Well turns out he wasn’t exactly 100% stupid in everything.
I’m not gloating over Germany’s beat down. I feel sorry for them. They were trying to make their neighborhood a better place. Something all of us should do.
And the US wasn’t smart enough to engineer this, despite what the conspiracy hounds would say. This is pure Putin. Sabotaging his own country.
“UK quietly bans Covid vaccines for children under 11”
https://joannenova.com.au/2022/09/uk-quietly-bans-covid-vaccines-for-children-under-11/
I do not believe the Fake News on the Ukraine Russian war. I do not believe the narrative. I do not believe the story coming out of Russia. So I do not know what to believe.
But what I KNOW is that Russia is single handedly killing the AGW hoax. After this war (a long war why? They could have Blitzkrieged Ukraine in a month!), they will own Europe and Europe will no longer believe in Green anything except gangreen! Russia is bleeding Europe, not Ukraine. For the single purpose of making them vassal states to their energy!
And they will do it.
Serbian flag:
Anonymous (ID: Kt1KetwS) 09/07/22(Wed)17:49:41 No.394299853▶>>394300801 >>394301751 >>394302565
>>394297708
You gotta he retarded then , west has opportunity to meat grind Russias army without risking a life of a single soldier , and Ukranians dont care that means death for them since they want their independence. Its a perfect storm for west , and for Ukranians its personal. As for Russia we all know they did it because Ukranies gas reserves that got discovered would mean Russia has to complete with Ukraine in being EUs gas station since they dont produce anything of note other than raw resources. West couldnt have asked for a better set of events if it plans to weaken Russia
I’d like to believe this fellow is just wrong. That we weren’t trying to screw up Russia’s business deals. But there are many weasels within events. So what he claims might be true.
Russia could have beat such designs by simply offering reliable and courteous service with no invasions. After all, who in the hell wants to deal with Hunter or Nancy Pelosi’s kin? Imagine the stank both parties would bring to any fuel deals.
And something no one has noticed? Russia’s top general apparently left China empty handed.
If true. US owes China some genuine gratitude and thanks.
US claims Iran is shipping weapons to Russia. Iran claims it hasn’t. Maybe we own thanks to Iran too?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/07/liz-truss-vows-never-exorbitant-energy-bills/
She wants fracking, North Sea production, and capping the household energy bill at 2,500 pounds.
@philjoudan said “a long war why?”.
Easy – one of Putin’s stated aims for the SMO was the demilitarization of Ukraine, and it’s being achieved in 2 ways:
On the ground: he’s not just demilitarizing Ukraine but the whole West – we keep sending kit over there, he keeps destroying it. If he does have ambitions beyond Ukraine there’s not much we could do about it now.
Economically: the longer it goes on the more Western economies suffer. We’re already drowning in debt, and there is a point for every country where the markets won’t take any more. Putin is testing where that point is.
We should admit (another self-inflicted) defeat, give Russia back her assets, and negotiate a reasonable (but undoubtedly painful) deal to have the gas turned on again.
We should, but we won’t.
@Simon
Re recalibrating thermostats
I’ve heard of a temperature control problem in a building which had an open central area. So the outer offices were exposed to sun and the inner ones to shadow. The first go at “climate control” meant, depending on adjustment, that the there were “cookers” and “freezers”.
One office was “modified” with a bar heater pointed at that thermostat,
The building eventually had a drastic remodel of the AC system.
@Another Ian:
Adjusting climate controls in an industrial sized building is a challenge in any case. I had a regular 120,000 sq.ft. office building of 4 floors (IIRC) and the long axis was E/W. So the South facing side got more sun, and the ends were daily “one hot one cold” pretty much all the time
Took me about a year to get it where I wanted it. Tuning up thermostat settings, adjusting air flow. Folks had been cranking thermostats all over the place and making their space fine (at Noon or at 4 pm on ONE particular day…) and then leaving the company or just not changing it back for 8 AM as they came to work at 10…) Some I had to convince to “Leave It Alone”, others were just locked down. Eventually I got it all balanced and folks were happy, so had no desire to “dick with it” anymore.
Big Bits were just finding the Crazy Thermostats where someone had cranked it to full hot or full cold in a hallway and left it, then nobody else noticed. I had one side of the building running the heater and the other side the A/C at the same time, then the return air being a mix of the two… Once the “Crazies” were set to 72 F, I could go back and tune the separate areas for air flow (dampers in the ducts), thermostat settings, and then adjust total air flow (main air intakes).
By the time I was done, with the system not fighting itself, we had a pleasant air temp pretty much everywhere all the time. There was still a bit of an issue with the SW Corner Offices getting a bit too much solar heat on some days in the late afternoon; but reminding those folks that they had blinds and maybe just closing them then would make their life better seemed to fix that ;-) (And everyone else in that corner of the building would not freeze because one office with the thermostat cranked it down to minimal… and left it there when they went home)
One thing that helped a lot was that I’d cruse the building at first arrival in the morning and just before leaving at night and set all the thermostats that were prone to Dick With Factor back to 72 F. So it tended to be “right” start of each day.
Reblogged this on Calculus of Decay .
@Taz:
You have 3 in “Trash” due to an embeded F-Bomb. To avoid that in future, edit out the F-Bomb. I’ll get around to editing it out a bit later and restoring them.
@E.M.Smith
(shrug) A quote is a quote.
Putin’s invasion was a mistake. This is where it might take us: But EVEN THEN, the fighting will continue. Until one side literally killed the other.
Why you don’t invade other countries in 2022. Reagan and Gorbachev were realists. Putin is not.
The worst part of nuclear war is surviving it. Millions would die in a nuclear exchange between superpowers like Russia and the U.S., but billions more would die in the aftermath of even a “limited” nuclear war. That’s the takeaway from a new study published in Nature Food that models the effects of nuclear war on the global food supply.
The prediction is dire. “We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia—underlining the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war,” the study said.
The paper’s title is “Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection” and it’s the latest work in the long-studied phenomenon of nuclear winter. The gist is that the massive explosion from nuclear bombs injects huge amounts of soot and debris into the atmosphere. The more explosions, the more soot and the more devastating the implications for the environment.
The soot injection from a nuclear explosion is comparable to that from volcanic eruptions, a naturally-occurring phenomenon that has disrupted climate systems and led to famines in the past. Alan Robock of Rutgers University is one of the paper’s authors and has a background in studying climate and the effects of volcanic eruptions.
In the 1980s, he learned about nuclear winter. “I calculated how climate would change using the same climate model I had been using for volcanic eruptions and I found, indeed, nuclear winter could last for a long time,” Robock told Motherboard. “I was amazed that [then-presidents] Reagan and Gorbachev listened to scientists from the United States and from Russia, who both got the same results that nuclear winter would happen after a nuclear war between two countries. That helped motivate them to end the nuclear arms race.”
The new study started by looking at what experts call a “limited nuclear war,” meaning a small-scale exchange of nukes. A detonation of 100 weapons would immediately kill 27 million people and starve ten times that number—260 million—by the end of the war’s second year. A worst-case scenario would be the detonation of 4,400 nuclear weapons, something that could happen if Russia and the U.S. engaged in a full-scale nuclear war. In that case, 360 million would die immediately and more than 5 billion would starve after two years.
“It doesn’t really matter what country has a war,” Robock said. “The amount of smoke would determine the climate change, and it doesn’t matter where because the smoke lasts for years. Once it gets into the stratosphere, it would cover the world.” Robock explained that there’s no rain in the stratosphere, and thus no way to wash away the nuclear smoke once it’s settled there.
The resulting nuclear winter would cool the planet, kill wildlife, and disrupt agriculture on a grand scale. Those who survived the famine would still be starving. The models predicted that even limited nuclear war between countries with small nuclear arsenals like Pakistan and India, would have devastating consequences. As an International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War analysis of the study said, “using less than 3% of the world’s nuclear weapons, a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could kill up to every 3rd person on earth.”
Despite the dire warnings and recent rise in nuclear anxiety, Robock is hopeful. He lived through the dark days of the Cold War and feels that tensions have eased and that cooler heads are currently prevailing. Yes, Russian President Putin has recently made nuclear threats and the U.S. is ratcheting up spending on nuclear weapons under the auspices of modernization, but Robock pointed to the current pushback from the international community and the revival of the Obama-era New START treaty—a treaty between Russia and the U.S. that limits deployed nuclear weapons and sets goals for reduction—as positive gains.
The UN recently ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, an international ban on nukes. The problem, of course, is that the nine countries with the weapons haven’t signed it, and aren’t likely to. “It’s the will of the rest of the world to tell nuclear nations: ‘We don’t want nuclear weapons. We’re going to suffer if they’re ever used,’” Robock said. “There are no nuclear weapons in the Southern Hemisphere. So a lot of countries listen to what we do. But the nine countries that still have nuclear weapons have tried to ignore it. So the question is: How do you get them to listen?”
He also said he knows nukes aren’t high on some people’s list of priorities. “They’re worried about COVID or their job or education or healthcare and even global warming,” he said. “But nuclear war would be instant climate change. And it’s easy to solve the problem. Just get rid of the nuclear weapons and take them apart. We know how to do that.”
@E.M.Smith
Nuclear wars are still winnable…there’s just not much left.
The only real prize is being able to use your opponent’s head as a hood ornament. (likely overrated)
Putin is “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”
The song’s titular character is a 6’4″ tall man from the South Side of Chicago whose size, attitude, and tendency to carry weapons have given him a reputation in which he is adored by women and feared by men. He is said to dress in fancy clothes and wear diamond rings, and to own a custom Lincoln Continental and a Cadillac Eldorado, implying he has a lot of money. He is also known to carry a .32 caliber handgun in his pocket and a razor in his shoe. One day in a bar he makes a pass at a pretty married woman named Doris, whose jealous husband engages Brown in a fight. Leroy loses badly, and is described as looking “like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone”.
The story of a widely feared man being bested in a fight is similar to that of Croce’s earlier song “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim.”[4]
Only a fool pisses off Ukrainians. Putin is merely a pompous buffoon – and Russians will pay for him. Russians will be kicked for a long time for allowing Putins.
@EM: “Adjusting climate controls in an industrial sized building is a challenge in any case. ”
It is even more difficult when you are dealing with anti-rational behavior.
Most multistory business buildings have non-opening windows. My son did daily phone business with a friend at a company in Louisiana. After Hurricane Katrina, the power grid for the company was out, but the building owners had been prudent and installed a diesel generator with enough capacity to run the entire building (including the air conditioners) and a storage tank with approximately a week’s worth of fuel. Just after the storm, my son was talking with his friend and asked about the power situation. “No problem. Yes, the grid is down but we have enough fuel for the next week and should be able to last until things get repaired.” However, the company had to shut down at the end of business on the second day. The problem? The original plan was to stretch the fuel by turning off the air conditioners during the evenings and at night and then turn them on again at start of business day. Unfortunately, there was a state agency (I don’t remember. Maybe the Office of Redundancy Office) in the building. The head of the agency had contacted the building owners and told them in no uncertain terms that they WOULD NOT turn the air off, period. He wanted his office to be the correct temperature WHEN HE ARRIVED AT WORK. Turn the air off and he would see that the state government got involved. So they left the air running, they ran out of fuel, everything shut down — and the agency employees all got a paid vacation.
Russia warns Korea over participating in gas price cap
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2022/09/113_335812.html
Very lively discussion here:
https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/394473404
Bets are already being voiced that tiny “cuck” countries will always back down.
Make a list of these predictions. They’ll be an interesting read 5 yrs from now.
India, “Russia’s staunch ally” has already cancelled some very large contracts with Russia’s defense industry. Not out of any sympathy for Ukraine, instead because they know the Russians well. Don’t wish to serve as their bag holder.
The walls are closing in, but maybe Putin is still playing 4D chess? The rest of us peons just don’t understand….
Russia has lost 2/3rds of it’s export customers. It’s biggest accounts.
And how will it build that Siberian pipeline to China? China demands results – on Russia’s dime. That pipeline is now un-affordable even if they could buy the technology they need to build it.
Long ago, I read the story of a Pakistani airman who accidentally bent on airspeed tube on an expensive fighter. Panicked, he bent more than 20 additional tubes on other fighters to hide his mistake.
This is what Putin’s life is now. His deeds – waiting to be discovered.
Be happy you aren’t Putin.
@Taz:
“A quote is a quote”, but “an automatic filter is an automatic filter” too. You can edit out F-Bombs or your comments can end up in the Trash folder. The “toss F-Bombs in the trash” happens automatically and without any action on my part.
BTW, I’ve noticed that the “recommended” on EwTube is now presenting about 1 in 4 that are hard core Ra-ra pro-Ukraine or Boo-Hiss Anti-Russia. I suspect, fairly strongly, that Youtube has decided to suppress any pro-Russia news and promote anti-Russia in their selections. You might want to bear that in mind.
Near as I can tell, it is no longer possible to get any actual truth or news out of YouTube “news”.
meh, media has always been that way. Even print media.
Ukrainians now complaining about too many prisoners….and that’s with the Russians fleeing faster than they can catch up to them. No one expected this.
ZSU is kicking the **it of Russians in Liman, these minutes. All Russian positions on fire. Some units are fleeing to Rubezhnoe and Svatovo. Disorderly flight. Panic. Lots of dead Russian bodies everywhere.
1:18 PM · Sep 9, 2022
·Twitter Web App
Then humor inside the tragedy….
.
@krpogues
·
10h
Replying to
@lilygrutcher
what Kadyrovites doing????
Gunnar Bech
@BechGunnar
·
10h
Busy doing tiktok movies!
How many world leaders are now just movie stars?
According to some reports the cost of a few villages retaken in a counter offensive was very high, with as much as 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers killed in one day. A US general, with a history of losses around the world, says that the money to Ukraine should be increased, and NOT reported.
Interesting statements from R.T.
“Russia is set to ramp up grain exports, seeking to supply some 30 million tons this year, President Vladimir Putin has announced. The supplies will prioritize less well off and food-insecure nations.
“We believe it to be right to ramp up deliveries to the poorest countries,” Putin said during a meeting of the Security Council on Friday.
“In total, by the end of this year, we will supply some 30 million tons of grain and are ready to increase this volume to 50 million tons or more, because, thank God, we have a good harvest this year,” he added.
Moscow is also ready to supply fertilizers to the poorest nations free of charge, the Russian president said. “Our producers – if I remember correctly, we’re talking about potash fertilizers – are ready to deliver them free of charge to developing nations that urgently need them,” Putin said, instructing the Russian Foreign Ministry to work on the plan.
Ukrainian grain going to EU instead of Africa
The president also touched upon the UN-brokered grain deal with Ukraine, reiterating his allegations that the goods have primarily been exported to the EU rather than the developing countries in Africa that need the food supply the most.
“Of the 87 ships that left the Ukrainian ports with grain, 32 remained in Turkey. And I think that this is absolutely natural, because Turkey, the host country of this entire process, certainly has the right to do that,” Putin said.
Another 30 vessels were sent to EU nations, while only two ships went to “the poorest countries for UN food programs,” namely to Yemen and Djibouti, Putin said. The vessels only carried around 60,000 tons of grain on board, constituting only around 3% of grain exported by Ukraine under the deal.
@Prak
re:
It was a rhetorical question. As I agree with your entire post and was getting to that. Alas, you are a new poster, so I will acknowledge your insight and go with that.
@Taz
It was not a mistake (while not good, it was not a mistake). It was a very cold calculated plan. And the plan continues but the fake news refuses to diagnose what is going on!
Putin is achieving his goal. He has the energy, the west does not. He will prevail in the end. He is NOT stupid. But those who are railing against him are. And that includes Resident Biden!
Sorry about the previous comment! Apparently my cats want to change my Email address! It is still the same, without the crap in front!
@Taz:
Near as I can tell, that Denmark poster just has a big fat emotional chip on his shoulder.
Putin did not put the Sanctions in place. Putin did not forbid selling to Russia repairs on turbines and pumps.
Blaming Putin for the shut off of oil & gas sales to Europe when Europe has put the barriers in place is just silly.
@Per Russian vs Ukrainian “success” or “failure”:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a few more times:
We have no idea what is really happening on the ground in this war. EVERYONE has a big incentive to lie about what is happening, and our “media” is so used to lying about everything now that it isn’t possible to trust anything they say. Frankly, be it our Officials in our so called government, or the so called reporters in the “media”: I’d check for myself if they told me that the sun was up at Noon…
Unfortunately, you can’t “check for yourself” in a war zone.
Are the Ukrainians making a great success of a push? Or is Russia attracting them into a salient soon to be a cauldron? No idea (and no talking head knows either).
We will only know when it is over. (And even then much will be hidden).
“Cheering” for either side is a sure indication of bias and a distorted view, as that leads a person to “selection bias” in what information the consume and accept.
My bias:
I don’t care at all who “wins”. Russia has a reasonable case for the invasion. Ukraine has a reasonable case for not being invaded. Russia has a fair number of corrupt actors. Ukraine is up to their eyeballs in corruption. The USA is captured by a Horribly Corrupt DNC / Biden & thrall to China for $$$. The EU is an authoritarian New Holy Roman Empire in the making. Why ought I care about any of those folks?
My allegiance is to truth. Sadly, almost no truth is to be found in the available information. So my bias is just to sit back and wait for the summary when the smoke clears. No matter who “wins”, it will not be an improvement.
philjourdan: “But what I KNOW is that Russia is single handedly killing the AGW hoax.”
Ah, looking at the bright side! Although, technically, Russia has had a very good assist from the EU. Actually, it’s more like an EU own-goal. But whatever, it’s a good goal. Double good if it takes down the EU dictatorship.
Putin didn’t make Europe kow tow to the eco-notsees either. The committed ampicide.