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Russian gas flows to Europe

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Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#211

Post by _kbh_ »

vfclists wrote: post #206
rasz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Sanctions imposed on Russia prior to this war' were a direct answer to 2014 Crimea invasion. You are repeating 'US made me do it' bullshit rhetorics, invalidated by putin himself when he got honest for once https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-put... https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putin-adm...

Crimea never belonged to Ukraine. It was in the Soviet era that Crimea was made part of Ukraine. Once an Ukrainian govt hostile to Russia took over it was inevitable that Russian tanks would move in. Why do guys like you think that Russia is ready to cut of direct control of a port important to its maritime and naval operations? When America invaded Panama to guarantee its control of the Panama canal where were you?…

So your saying that Germany should retake Kaliningrad then?.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#212

Post by rhn_mk1 »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #199
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "enough"? If any solution has to solve all the problems to be considered at all, you're going to have trouble noticing solutions that chip away at the problem until it's solved.

Enough means sufficient to mitigate the consequences of today’s gas crisis. Other people in this thread explained it well enough.

If by "mitigate" you mean "completely solve", then you're committing an error of being blind to incremental solutions.

If by "mitigate" you mean "make less painful", then indeed it is enough, as it's a step in the right direction.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#213

Post by tomjen3 »

_xnmw wrote: post #93

It's far too late to change this. You cannot restructure the energy sources of a whole continent in a few months or even years. This could've been fixed if the West had understood and reacted appropriately to the magnitude of the Russian threat about 10 years ago, as foreseen by academics like Stephen Cohen and businessmen like Bill Browder, instead of blindly falling for its own hubristic self-delusion (which contin…

Oh for the love of god or whatever, Russia likes to think it’s a world power. It couldn’t fucking take kiev, so calling it a regional power is already pandering.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#214

Post by severino »

konschubert wrote: post #176
severino wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who do we buy oil/gas from? Venezuela? Iran? Saudi Arabia? United States? I don't see a reason why those countries are better than Russia.

None of these countries are actively trying to erase another country from the map right now. The US is a democratic country so far, Russia is not. It’s incredibly childish, stupid and dangerous to pretend that these countries are all equally evil.

Does being a democracy make the US a better country than the others? If it's the voters, and not a guy, who decides to invade and take over your country, then is it OK?

And while none of those countries may be involved in a military conflict right now, they've been in the past. Recently.

So given there is no good country selling gas right now, I prefer to get the cheapest one. Thanks.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#215

Post by Arnt »

jhgb wrote: post #161
Arnt wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That law wasn't the last word… it didn't prevent extending the allowed lifetimes of the already-built reactors a year or so before Fukushima.

If twenty years ago it was decided in law that X would shut down about now, and X is shutting down now, then I don't see a reason to not say that the decision to shut down X now comes from a law twenty years ago.

I suppose there are several ways to view that…

Mine is that the decision to stop was taken by a government with a parliamentary majority in general, but narrow popular backing in this specific case. So the law at risk of revision if the right/wrong parties won an election. Some politicians thought revising it might be a good campaign issue.

The reacter lifetimes were extended after such an election, and I think it was a first step. If that had gone well, one of the parties in the coalition would've proposed revising the law before the next election. But it did not go well: "Fukushima ändert alles", said Merkel, and I think she was right. From that point on, the law aligned well with a broad majority of voters. Noone proposed a revision as a campaign issue after that point.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#216

Post by Arnt »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #102
Arnt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems irrational because that's not what's happening. Those power plants can't be run next winter. Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. It's possible to write new contracts and order new parts, so they could be back in operation, maybe sometime late in 2023. But that would still leave them…

A government is a law unto themselves. They have power to do what they need in times of war. Germany shouldn't be pulling a Chamberlain moment while Russia is hot to commit genocide in Europe and roll over whoever they want.

The first person who said words like yours was probably a chieftain long ago who went to his smiths and said "I need my new sword NOW, hurry up with that hardening!"

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#217

Post by mantas »

shmerl wrote: post #7

How fast did the rest of Europe cut ties with Nazi Germany after World War II started? Current level of feeding Russia's war machine looks bizarre.

When do you count start of WWII? Austria? Czechoslovakia? Poland? USSR? Or USSR's attacks on Poland, Baltic states and Finland?

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#218

Post by mantas »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #170
ithkuil wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps the worry is that if Europe collapses, we may discover some of the members actually align with Putin? That's the nature of democracy, all it takes is a candidate (which we usually label as "populist") to leverage the resentment of the hardship endured because of being anti-putin.

In Eastern European countries this resentment almost surely already exists through some sort of “Russia’s Phoenix resurrected from the ashes”

Coming from Eastern Europe... Here the fear is that Western Europe will end up in bed with Putin and sell us off.

Here anti-Russian notion was written in genes in cruel ways for generations

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#219

Post by turbinerneiter »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #62
turbinerneiter wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany still does not have a solution for the nuclear waste. Nobody wants it. All the pro nuclear people turn into anti nuclear people once their region is looked at for a nuclear waste disposal site. Recently a former conservative minister got an award for fighting against wind power which is named after a former key figure of the early green movement in Germany, wo later dropped out to figth against wind turbines.…

Freezing to death this winter because your source of fuel oil is now your geopolitical enemy seems like a more pressing problem than the tiny amount of waste 3 plants will generate decades from now.

Please inform yourself before you say things like that. This discussion is already hard even without the constant interjection of uninformed opinions.

The decision to keep these 3 plants running or not is not about the waste, but about the fact that they were planned to shut down for years now, and there is some real hurdles to reversing that now. The impact of keeping them on is also rather small. The effort and money is more effectively spent elsewhere.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#220

Post by turbinerneiter »

jhgb wrote: post #141
Arnt wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster. A lot of Germans believe (rightly or wrongly) that Japanese are as quality-conscious and dependable as they themselves. Corollary: if the Japanese can fuck up in the ways that led to Fukushima, then the German operators can fuck up in similar ways. Now, these people may be wrong. But they made the decision. Until Fukushima, there was a net pro-nuclear v…

> Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster. No, they're not. The shutdown decision was made (and put into binding law!) almost ten years before Fukushima.

AFAIK, the Union/FDP government reversed that decision, made new contract with the plants, changed their opinion again after Fukushima and we now have to pay breach-of-contract fines to the nuclear power plants.
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