Airborne_Again wrote:
Why start bothering with justifications now? It doesn’t make sense.
They’ve probably decided they need a ‘victim’ piece to put on TV. Who knows.
The idea of using helicopters to cross the front lines and attack a fixed piece of infrastructure like a fuel depot makes even less sense. It would be a suicide mission, assuming Russian units on the front line retain some sort of anti-air capability.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I don’t know about Norway, but Sweden already has about as much hydroelectric power as we can. Only a few rivers have not been exploited and these few are explicitly reserved for cultural and environmental reasons.
It’s all built here as well. In fact Norway has 25% of all hydropower in Europe (in GWh). About 30% of the gas in Germany comes from Norway (the rest mostly from Russia). 90-100% of the UK gas is from Norway 
If we shut down oil and gas, Europe would for sure be cold, except France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and a couple of others perhaps. With the prices of oil and gas right now, I can literally hear my pension fund expanding (It’s actually shrinking due to the cooling of the entire economy, no free lunch, sadly). Every day we export an amount of energy in gas alone at the size of 10 times the entire hydropower production in Norway. 10 times the hydropower production is roughly 2.5 times the entire hydropower production capacity in the whole of Europe.
I have to wonder how long it will take before the “west” (meaning Germany first and foremost) take to its senses and starts building nuclear plants. Hydropower is very geographically dependent and limited. It’s all built also, just about everywhere. Oil and gas is also geographically dependent and there is this CO2 thing. Wind, one of the most nonsensical power productions ever made due to a whole range of reasons. Solar is actually very good for local house hold stuff, but completely nonsensical for large scale production due to area use. Fusion, perhaps in 100 years.
I agree. But it took a crazy Putin to achieve this.
What will happen with China is interesting too. I predict an acceleration in Western companies “re-shoring” their production.
Ukraine seems to be going for a record of Russian hardware destroyed in past 24hrs: The Ukrainian military reports that it has destroyed 44 armored vehicles, eight tanks, 10 artillery systems, 16 military vehicles, and three drones in Donbas over the past 24 hours. They post photos of it too in a telegram group – a very long string this morning. Little wonder… the Russians have been doing what they were doing in any previous conflict: pillaging, stealing, wrecking everything, shooting any civilian they see walking along. They put out a video from a tank, driving along and taking random shots at apartment blocks, just for a laugh.
LeSving wrote:
I have to wonder how long it will take before the “west” (meaning Germany first and foremost) take to its senses and starts building nuclear plants.
You know what? They have them. Only they shut them down out of fear after Fukushima. No idea if they are still in a state where they could be restarted, but I suggest some folks in Germany are looking into this really carefully right now.
LeSving wrote:
If we shut down oil and gas, Europe would for sure be cold, except France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and a couple of others perhaps.
Switzerland has a lot of hydroelectric energy and a couple of NPP’s I hope we should be ok for now.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
You know what? They have them. Only they shut them down out of fear after Fukushima
Yes. I remember journalists in Fukushima coming back home due to elevated danger of radiation. They said with terrified looks on national television that the levels had become above what was acceptable, they could even “feel it”. So they went back to their homes in Norway where the radiation level was at least 10 times as much due to naturally occurring radioactive radon gas in the ground In fact, it’s literally impossible to find a spot in Norway with less radiation level than Fukushima at its worst.
gallois wrote:
We might have got more oil from Iran if Trump had not pulled out of that nuclear agreement.
Well, is the whole agreement dead or just US/Iran?
gallois wrote:
I agree a standby generator is useful, but with the cost of fuel at the moment, here, it costs around 4 times the price per unit as electricity.
But still ok in the short term.
Clearly short term. I got a 5000 liter oil tank for my heating, lasts about 5 years. Currently about 2000 liters in there. A Diesel would run fine on this and would keep the vitals going until hopefully power comes back…
gallois wrote:
Political will is the much bigger problem than the technology and this has always been so.
Interestingly even some of the green parties start realizing that if they want to reduce on CO2 nuclear is the only option. Some have started to openly say going out of it was a mistake. Wonders never cease.
greg_mp wrote:
it indeed looks like russian forces around Kyiv are retreating.
I hope it is not in preparation for a chemical or nuclear attack to finish Kiev off.
Peter wrote:
Putin doesn’t look too healthy in that pic…
Some sources claim Putin has cancer of the thyrroid gland. Quite likely this is just another “click me” bait but what if not.
Imagine a guy who knows his time is limited and wants to get his legacy sorted the hard way. And as he will be gone soon he might take as many as he can of his archenemies with him?
I’ve heard variously Parkinson’s disease and bowel cancer. I’m not placing any bets but I agree he doesn’t look well.
With the civilian atrocities done by the Russians on the withdrawal from the Kiev area (lots of videos going around today) the emotional legacy of this war is going to take decades to go away. Hard to believe this is happening in the 21st century, and so close to “us”. But actually this kind of “warfare” is normal in the 3rd world – it is how African wars are fought. But, we all thought Russia was now a civilised “European” country.
Putin doesn’t look good relative to his previous, but he is a model of health compared to much of the UK and indeed N Europe I am informed thyroid cancer is well treatable and isn’t likely to get him anytime soon. Bowel cancer will get him almost certainly but again not quickly.
He has strong support among Russians. They have always liked strong men, particularly strong lone men (no family obviously visible). Russian women also like strong men; well that’s pretty standard
This is one Russian angle.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
You know what? They have them. Only they shut them down out of fear after Fukushima.
You could also argue that Fukushima was just the fig leaf Merkel needed to make Germany more dependent on Russian gas. Everything this woman did was to weaken Europe. Anyway, one can only hope that the Germans come to their senses and keep their existing nuclear plants running longer and perhaps re-start some of the shut-down ones, although I have no idea if that’s possible.
