There's nothing wrong with the Norwegian approach of excessive extraction combined with demand destruction. It just forces the Saudis to cut their production even more as they want to keep prices high.
There's too much focus on supply in environmental circles. The IEA forecasts an excess of a staggering 8 million barrels per day by 2030 due to peaking demand. The only question is who will have to cut this time.
There's a lot wrong with it. The reserves that will be burned include all Saudi reserves and all Norwegian reserves. The hand wringing BS doesn't change anything about prices being high enough to fund the politics of forcing us to extract and burn all reserves until they are gone. Only refusing to burn your reserves changes whether we are screwed.
There isn't enough demand to burn all reserves, and nobody will burn oil for fun - it's quite expensive. Someone will be stuck with stranded assets, and currently it looks like it will be the Saudis.
The cost of all sorts of energy extraction methods have steadily dropped over time. Oil would have to be politically stranded forever, which doesn't fit the 1984 like political flows of the current world.
Most places where pumped hydro is viable already have it. The growth potential is limited.
Hydrogen is a more interesting option. Not necessarily for energy storage, but as a fuel for use cases where electricity can't be used (like fertilizer or methanol rather than cars or heating).
Hitler conquered several countries in under a year and there were no signs of that slowing down, Russia has been at a stand still in Ukraine for over 2 years now. Current war is closer to ww1 than ww2.
And why was Hitler's Germany able to conquer several countries and kill millions? Because big powers felt "we're afraid of repetition of the 1st war" and "peace in our time" and "let's make deal with him againt the others". Those policies caused utter disaster.
When you find a scorpion at your doorstep, even if it talks smoothly, and proposes to share the room as mutually advantageous, you don't negotiate with it.
Oh, now I see what meant by "with russian-compatible thought processes". Dehumanizing other people by likening them to insects and attributing incompatible 'thought processes' sounds familiar. The last time the USSR lost 26 million people because of European invasion.
You misunderstood. I meant the dangerous poisonous nature of the scorpion, not that I hate the insect; I am fascinated by scorpions, but I don't bring them home. I can rephrase - when Russian state official is at your doorstep, and makes suggestions that part of your space will now be his, don't negotiate.
> The last time the USSR lost 26 million people because of European invasion.
No - it lost them because it allied with Hitler in destroying Europe as it existed then. From the Winter War against Finland, to invading Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to invading Poland with Hitler and jointly holding a victory parade as the rest of Europe watched in horror. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_military...
USSR lost many people not only because of the German invasion, but also because they had a terrible leader who co-started WW II and misjudged Hitler. And Europe and America made sure USSR won that war.
Tell me, how long other countries on the European continent fought Nazis?
>Europe and America made sure USSR won that war
That's funny, almost all of Europe fought along with Nazi with small exceptions like Greeks. And no one in Europe was in position to "make sure the USSR won the war"
Europe was divided, we know that. My people fought both against USSR and together with it against Germans. History and its significance can't be explained in single historical essay, and it certainly should not be misused to advance one's poor argument.
'Helped a little bit' are the right words. And helped only out self-preservation fearing what would happen to them if the USSR loses and its resources become available to Nazis.
My impression is that they helped a lot: they supplied the USSR with trucks, jeeps, food, clothing, experts in industrial engineering, etc; their ships endured attacks by the German navy to deliver this aid to Soviet ports; their bombing campaigns had the opposite effect on Germany, i.e., to make manufactured goods and things like refined petroleum products a lot more scarce than they would otherwise be.
Yes, their campaign in Africa too. But compare that to 2/3 (or 4/5 depending on the source) [0] of total Nazi casualties that happened on the Eastern front and now it's not so much.
The assertion this thread is talking about is, "Europe and America made sure USSR won that war". How many casualties Europe and America took in the course of doing so is a separate question. The US and Britain had competent leaders and an advantageous strategic position, so they were able to make sure the USSR won the war at a cost of relatively few US and British casualties.
Helping isn't measured by numbers of killed Nazis. It was about massive material support of the USSR so it was able to fight the aggressor and kill so many Nazis. The West enabled that.
Here, from the bigshots from USSR:
"Khrushchev went further and admitted: “Several times I heard Stalin acknowledge [Lend-Lease] within the small circle of people around him. He said that . . . if we had had to deal with Germany one-to-one we would not have been able to cope because we lost so much of our country.”"
"Perhaps the last word should be left to Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who masterminded the Red Army victories. He admitted, in a bugged conversation in 1963, that without Lend-Lease the USSR “could not have continued the war”."
Not according to Comrades Stalin and Khrushchev, who were in a position to know about such things:
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.
-- Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918–1945
However, what we do know is the transition being existential for some actors - and even countries. If Russian propaganda about Ukraine is bad, EVs are much worse, since they are actually an existential threat.
According to an article quoted by another poster, they are growing slower. The rate of growth is decreasing. It is reasonable to assume that without another keystone event, we are past the halfway point in the growth curve, and peak ownership is less than double what it is currently.
The Minsk agreements began as an effort to address the conflict between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, though. Do we have a disagreement here? I crystal clearly remember when pro-Russian Ukrainians were fighting against their own Ukrainian government.
As for the rest: the failure to uphold the commitments made in the Budapest Memorandum contributed to the deterioration of relations between Ukraine and Russia, leading to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The Minsk agreements were then pursued as a diplomatic effort to address and resolve the resulting crisis.
Regardless of any of that, it was between pro-Russians in eastern Ukraine vs. the Ukrainian government. The conflict in eastern Ukraine involved clashes between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups. These groups, often referred to as "separatists" or "rebels" declared independence in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and established self-proclaimed republics. Amidst the conflict, efforts were made to negotiate ceasefires and peace agreements. The Minsk agreements, as mentioned earlier, were one such attempt to bring about a cessation of hostilities and a political resolution to the conflict. However, the ceasefire has been repeatedly violated, and the conflict remains unresolved. Might I add that the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine has been repeatedly violated by both Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups. Both sides have been accused of violating the terms of the ceasefire agreements outlined in the Minsk accords. You can read more about it.
For the record, Donbass is often used as a term to refer to the eastern regions of Ukraine, particularly Donetsk and Luhansk, where the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups has been ongoing since 2014. Those regions are where pro-Russian sentiment is significant.
If you look at prominent "pro-Russian separatist" commanders in Eastern Ukraine back in 2014, the vast majority of them were Russians who came there from the outside, not locals. Igor "Strelkov" Girkin being the most prominent example, and particularly relevant since he, by his own admission, was the one who shifted gears from civil unrest to outright war by occupying Slavyansk and Kramatorsk with his unit.
There were no separatists in eastern Ukraine. The European Court of Human Rights has determined that the so-called separatists were either unmarked members of Russian armed forces and special services, or under their direct command. It was one big ruse and as you demonstrate, even ten years later, when all the facts are known, people are still believing a lie that was manufactured in 2014 as a cover story for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Court held, on the basis of the vast body of evidence before it, that Russia had effective control over all areas in the hands of separatists from 11 May 2014 on account of its military presence in eastern Ukraine and the decisive degree of influence it enjoyed over these areas as a result of its military, political and economic support to the “DPR” and the “LPR”. In particular, the Court found it established beyond any reasonable doubt that there had been Russian military personnel present in an active capacity in Donbass from April 2014 and that there had been a large-scale deployment of Russian troops from, at the very latest, August 2014. It further found that the respondent State had a significant influence on the separatists’ military strategy. Several prominent separatists in command positions were senior members of the Russian military acting under Russian instructions, including the person who had had formal overall command of the armed forces of the “DPR” and the “LPR”. Further, Russia had provided weapons and other military equipment to separatists on a significant scale (including the Buk-missile used to shoot down flight MH17). Russia had carried out artillery attacks upon requests from the separatists and provided other military support. There was also clear evidence of political support, including at international level, being provided to the “DPR” and the “LPR” and the Russian Federation had played a significant role in their financing enabling their economic survival.
By the time of the 11 May 2014 “referendums”, the separatist operation as a whole had been managed and coordinated by the Russian Federation. The threshold for establishing Russian jurisdiction in respect of allegations concerning events which took place within these areas after 11 May 2014 had therefore been passed. That finding meant that the acts and omissions of the separatists were automatically attributable to the Russian Federation. /---/ In the absence of any evidence demonstrating that the dependence of the entities on Russia had decreased since 2014, the jurisdiction of the respondent State continued as at the date of the hearing on 26 January 2022.
It's quite ironic how you wrote exactly the opposite regarding Palestine in another thread:
>Gaza is just a region of Palestine. Palestine is an occupied territory. A fast and enduring solution to the conflict is that Israel ceases its military and civilian occupation of Palestine and withdraws to its internationally recognized borders: those of pre-1967. Period.
The situation of Palestine is entirely different from that of Ukraine. The Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" is centered on ethnicity. Israelis have made clear multiple times that they want the whole land for an ethnic state that excludes Palestinians (which yes, means either ethnic cleansing or genocide). And there is no interest on Israel's part in any agreement to end the conflict- because it's only thanks to the conflict that Israel can keep expanding its territory. Mind, the conflict can still end through negotiations and guarantees for both sides, exactly as in the case of Russia and Ukraine; it would just be- let' say- helpful, if the major states stopped siding with the invader and oppressor and started sanctioning it, exactly as they did with Russia.
On paper, digital cash is superior to both physical cash and digital bank money in almost all aspects, but many Americans oppose it anyway because they see their government as their enemy.
As an European I fail to see how I could call myself patriot and at the same time distrust my own government - elected by me. Even if I didn't like the government, I'd still go with it because it's representing my country, and I'd also try to change the aspects which I don't like, again because it's my country. Those "actual true patriots" sound to me more like actual true selfish people which only want things happening according to their own ideas and needs.
> Distrust of government, and the limiting of its powers, is an American founding principle
American Patriots believe defending themselves and their country from an oppressive government is true patriotism. It looks and sounds a lot like you think because taken to its logical conclusion thats exactly what it is.
As a European, you almost certainly have better representation than most Americans. We haven't expanded the House of Representatives since 1929. We're approaching a million constituents per rep, an extreme outlier among OECD countries:
The reason Americans no longer trust Congress is because the Colonists had better representation per constituent (on paper) in British Parliament. Early U.S. representation was in line with Nordic countries today.
Also the US following UK's FPTP system inevitably creates a 2-party system, you simply cannot have just 2 parties representing all of the political spectrum and needs of a nation of 340 million people, and very diverse people at it, across a vast swath of land.
Even though most Continental Europe elections end up being a race between 2 major coalitions at least there's fluidity in the composition of these coalitions, sometimes the right-wing coalition embraces the centrist parties, or the greens, sometimes it's the left-wing coalition, this fluidity creates a lot more of nuance and compromise in politics rather than choosing Team Blue vs Team Red. FPTP is a dumb election system.
The patriots mentioned in GP don't distrust Biden, they distrust the entire system and elections and representation, everything. Disliking Berlusconi motivated Italians to vote him out of office, not to burn down Palazzo Chigi. That's the difference I meant above.
This particular pathology makes more sense when you recall the traitor statues of Robert E Lee, etc; there's a substantial faction in the US which is against the US specifically because it won the civil war and imposed the end of slavery on them, which they remained upset about into the 20th century and schools in Alabama being integrated at gunpoint.
That's why the "anti-government" faction doesn't care about civilians being unjustly shot dead by police, because they're not federal government.
Fortunately, I live in one of the few countries which don't subsidize gas (Sweden). When I visit the continent and see a gas stove, it feels like going to a museum. Induction stoves are so much better.
We should let people decide what sort of stove is best for themselves rather than pushing one from the top down. Also, most people who are pressed to prematurely replace their stove will choose the cheapest option, which if pushed away from gas would be resistive electric not induction.
If there’s a negative externality to the fuel it should be priced-in, which is really all carbon tax is intended to do. You can still use gas but you have to pay for the environmental cost upfront. The carbon footprint of electricity usage would be taxed as well, but if it’s overall more efficient it would have a lower carbon tax.
Even electrical resistance heating is more carbon efficient than burning gas at home. This doesn’t even require a high-renewable grid - it produces less CO2 burning gas for electricity to run an electric stove than it does burning gas at home due to the efficiency of a modern gas power plant and the dreadful waste heat of a gas burner.
I live in Sweden as well, I used to live in the Netherlands. The former is close to gas-free while the Netherlands is (or was) one of the most gas-dependent countries in Europe owing to the discovery and exploitation of large gas reserves in the north of the country and the North Sea. I have used gas, resistive electric, halogen electric, induction electric as well as wood stoves for cooking. I wrote a sizeable comment on the virtues and vices of induction earlier in this thread and found out one of its parents had been killed, most likely due to its author's clearly stated preference for cooking on gas. This is what I wrote on the subject in reply to a comment very similar (but much shorter) than yours which simply proclaimed induction to be 'superior':
That all depends on what you're cooking. I have used just about all types of cooking contraptions there are ranging from an open fire through a pit fire, several types of "cultivated" fires (wood-fired stoves, BBQs etc), propane/butane/methane gas burners of various types, coil/cast_iron/ceramic/halogen electric and induction stoves. I normally cook on a wood-fired stove seeing how as I live on a farm in the Swedish countryside with plenty of forest on my doorstep which I also use to heat the house and whose branches I cut up for the stove. I do have one of those cast-iron resistance heated electric ranges next to the wood-fired stove but I only use it as a parking lot for pans etc. I also have a few single-hob induction plates around which I sometimes use outside when we're not supposed to light fires due to extreme drought etc. When I lived in the Netherlands I bought a "gas-free" house which meant I had to use electricity for cooking. Induction was supposed to be the bees knees so I built myself a range with an induction cooker on top and a hot-air oven underneath it. The thing worked fine for some types of cooking but it royally sucked for e.g. stir-fry cooking using a wok. Even the flat-bottom version I got did not come close to the real thing on a gas stove or wood fire.
Now, more than 20 years later I regularly use my mother's new induction stove when I visit her in the Netherlands. That thing still sucks for stir-frying, no matter which pan I use. There is just not enough power to be had on a residential induction cooker to reach the quick heat needed to make a good nasi goreng (i.e. Indonesian-Dutch fried rice). On the wood-fired stove here at home I use a Chinese wok which hangs directly in the fire and as such is close to perfect. The sad part of this is that my mother's previous range had a special wok burner which, while not as capable as the wood-fired stove, at least made it possible to quickly reach a good heat and keep it. Alas, she felt she needed to go with the flow and had that range swapped out for an anaemic induction cooker which is supposed to be able to run 2 plates at max power (~2 kW) at the same time but does not even seem to be capable of that without dropping one of them a notch down.
If you're comparing commercial induction cookers to gas stoves the comparison might hold. There are special induction plates for using a round-bottomed wok which may also lead to better results. Those are not what most people will get at home when they replace their "dangerous" gas range though.
Induction's pro's are its reaction speed, cleanliness, electrical efficiency and sometimes price (single-hob plates at e.g. IKEA are dirt-cheap) but that is about it. Its cons are the lack of power in most residential ranges, the lack of fine-grained control, the sensitivity of the ceramic top plate - it gets scratched easily when you have an 'active' cooking style as well is liable to break when confronted with heavy cast-iron skillets in the hands of inexperienced users, this is true for all ceramic cookers and not specific to induction - and the power electronics (I have repaired two induction cookers already, one of them (a commercial single-hob plate) had a blown out capacitor (literally - loads of black smoke blew out off the thing), the other (Siemens) suffered from a whole bank of broken power transistors (RJH60T4 IGBTs). Finally, confusingly in the light of my remark about single-hob plates being cheap, its often high price. Induction still seems to be priced as a "luxury" good while in reality it is fairly cheap to produce, the only relatively expensive part being the power electronics (where "expensive" means "a few tens of euro's for the requisite transistors and capacitors as well as the copper induction coils).
Depends. When the electricity comes from a gas power plant, it is way more efficient, to use the heat of the gas directly, instead of heating water and steam, running through a turbine, transmit lossy overland, convert to household power -> turn the electricity into heat again.
But when you have renewable sources, it is a different story. I believe you have mostly nuclear power in sweden?
(And the above even generously assumes the generation is not CHP which would make induction look better still, and ignores the extra energy needed for chilling your house)
The low efficiency of transferring heat from gas to the cooking vessel kills the odds for the gas range in the competition, most of energy goes to heating air instead of the kettle.
(But we shouldn't generate electricity from gas of course, fossils need to be left in the ground to avert worst of the climate disaster)
You are ignoring the cost of laying millions of miles of natural gas pipes to each and every home. And the leaks through all these pipes, which is 9%.
Electricity is the first utility and all homes have it. Of course, you can be off grid and have no utilities, just have solar+batteries, electrification works perfectly in that scenario.
"I have a gas range, gas water heater, gas logs, and gas backup heat."
With the electricity equivalent.
Makes sense when all is powered by green energy, but it does not makes sense to switch all that and power it with electricity from coal. Then the CO2 costs are higher.
Have you tried the Copenhagen Metro? It has a twin-bore tunnel system that allows 24/7 service with a higher frequency than the New York City Subway. It's cheap to use thanks to the efficiency of driverless trains.
What does Boring Company bring to the table? Tunnel boring machines already exist. Having cars instead of trains just increases the cost of operation.
There's too much focus on supply in environmental circles. The IEA forecasts an excess of a staggering 8 million barrels per day by 2030 due to peaking demand. The only question is who will have to cut this time.