Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they do that, what’s their motivation?
I think ideology. "Green movement"
Torpedoing wind projects and investing more in gas pipelines and generators is exactly what the green movement was about.
Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
381–390 of 436 posts
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The solution is not obvious, The problem of relying on Russia for energy was obvious. There isn't a singular "the solution" because there were many possible solutions, nuclear energy being just one. In addition to investing in wind/solar, there are other solutions besides nuclear. Particularly, fracing and coal mining. Both of these are unpopular for obvious reasons (which is the reason everybody talks about nuclea…
> The problem of relying on Russia for energy was obvious. In 2020, the EU imported 13 786 PJ of natural gas, while gross available energy was 57 767 PJ, i.e. gas imports accounted for 23.9% https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... Also in 2020, 27.2% of petroleum gas imports into the EU were from Russia. https://oec.world/en/profile/international_organization/euro... Put together, 6.5% of gros…
> > The problem of relying on Russia for energy was obvious.
> Put together, 6.5% of gross available energy in the EU was from Russian gas.
In case anyone is curious, the sources I find suggest the following about the sources of the primary energy in the European Union:
~38% from oil, of which ~29% is from Russia = ~11% of total energy, plus
~24% from natural gas, of which 39--45% [note this is higher than in the parent comment] is from Russia = 9+% of total, plus
~14% from coal, of which 46--70% is from Russia = 6+% of total energy, plus
~11% from uranium (nuclear), of which ~20% is from Russia = ~2% of total energy,
altogether totaling >28% from Russia.
Other sources may disagree on the particular numbers, but the rough estimate of "one quarter" is in line with other sources: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/europe-russia-energy-...
Some sources for the individual numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_the_European_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_... https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2... https://www.statista.com/statistics/1034930/eu-hard-coal-imp... https://www.dw.com/en/eu-ban-on-russian-coal-imports-comes-i...
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
Canada/US learnt that lesson back in 2003 with the Northeast Blackout. Generators on cell towers where not fueled and some data centre’s caught fire when the cooling went down but the systems didn’t. Lessons where learned. Cell infra is strategic and should not be allowed to go down, everything uses it and people will die if it goes down.
Indeed! In Toronto, the cooling for 151 Front Street West was grid-powered electric pumps pulling cold water from deep in Lake Ontario... so despite all the fuel they had ready to run the systems, they couldn't use it and had to shut the building down.
i heard stories of cabinet fires that day on front.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russia has only turned off the tap after Europe had already turned off every possible economical tap flowing in the direction of Russia, so in a sense, Europe did it all by itself. Sure, it's the right thing to do for Europe as no one want to help Russia sponsor the war on Ukraine... but that doesn't change the fact that Russia wouldn't just turn off the tap without Europe turning highly hostile to it and basically l…
This is not true, Russia started reducing output last summer. Before their invasion of Ukraine.
That pipeline runs through Ukraine to an old & dying oil field- Russia was fighting with Ukraine about transit costs and graft and wanted to turn on Nordstream II next. It wasn't about sticking it to the Germans for no reason.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People laugh at Preppers and call them crazy for taking prudent preparedness steps as insurance against future risks. It's a very human thing to do. I think most of the time people are laughing at preppers on TV. Having an emergency radio, a gun, extra water storage, a back-up generator, etc. - I haven't experience many people who laugh at that, though certainly I imagine someone exists who does. The government pub…
Due to Earthquakes, California asks that you have at least 3 days of supplies on hand at all times, with 7 days of supplies being prefered and 14 days of supplies being the best. Same thing from my county and city. They all know that when "The Big One" hits, your average citizen is going to be on their own for at least a couple of days.
Do they have stats on when to expect it?
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hindsight is 20/20. There were plenty of reasons to be skeptical that russia would turn off the tap. There's always counterparty risk when importing things, the US could also decide to cut europe off from LNG if they wanted.
The US has been a stable ally since the end of WWII and really prior for countries other than Germany. It’s also quite hard for a president to just unilaterally suspend trade. US sanctions require acts of congress, and it would be hard to get an anti European majority in the senate. So no, there was never any risk of the US suspending trade. Meanwhile Russian has almost always been hostile to or at least in competiti…
It is easy to say that now. Serious criticism of Putin/modern Russia in the West really only began after the invasion of Georgia and was not even remotely mainstream until the early 2010s. America literally banned the export of crude oil from 1970-2015 so their energy worries were not entirely unfounded. Also, nowadays most sanctions are done unilaterally by the executive branch.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Question: could Russian disinformation have played a role in germanys policy here? As a German, no, that was quite voluntary. People like me completely agreed. I only woke up on 24 February. I'm from East Germany, speak some Russian, and have been to Russia a few times, and to Ukraine too, for months actually. I did not care about the Krim annexation either. I think because it was peaceful, and because I did not se…
I am Brazillian but been following a lot of the events in Europe for a while. Something a lot people miss, is why Russia is doing what they are doing, many assume they just want to conquer Ukraine "just because", or that it is a purely cultural issue, or that it is Putin personal design. The major point of contention here is that USA and allies (including NATO and the non-NATO members of Five Eyes) have proven themse…
> So first thing is, yes, Russia has reason to fear USA.
> The other problem here is strategic and geographic: Russia border is enormous and in the middle of plains, driving across the border with tanks and reaching Moscow and other major population centers right now is something trivial to do, Russia still didn't recovered properly from WW2 and don't have the manpower to defend such huge border from a land invasion.
If every country in the world besides Russia joined NATO surrounding it completely, we would still never invade Russia because they have 1500 thermonuclear warheads! We are literally too afraid to even put our troops in Ukraine because of the threat that we all end up dead in nuclear war. Please give me 1 good reason for invading Russia that is worth the risk of all of us dying in the nuclear relation.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
Due to Earthquakes, California asks that you have at least 3 days of supplies on hand at all times, with 7 days of supplies being prefered and 14 days of supplies being the best. Same thing from my county and city. They all know that when "The Big One" hits, your average citizen is going to be on their own for at least a couple of days.
Do they have stats on when to expect it?
The same time a 9.0 is due in the Midwest... any day now.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#389A typical cell tower uses 4kW to 5kW, sometimes less (at least in the states). That's reasonably close to a standard home's central air conditioner, or a home's electric stove/oven/range. I'd be highly surprised if, of all possible things, this is where they want to cut to lower electricity usage.
Load shedding occurs in larger regions of the grid. The utilities don’t have the ability to turn specific sites on and off at random throughout the day.
They can with smartmeters
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#390I can understand why that'd happen. Where I live, in France atm, there's one cell tower around. And when it's down, it's down. I know because in June there have been one hour of electrical blackout about once a week and, well, our smartphones weren't working anymore. I don't even bother with an UPS or a 4G router for my network: when there's no electricity, nothing is working anymore anyway. Stuff that keeps working…
Your station météo should be good for a few months until the batteries go out, so at least there’s that.