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Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

reuters.com

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Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#301

Post by ben_w »

yorwba wrote: post #232
MichaelCollins wrote: post #169

Earlier 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…

I can see why someone might hear that number and shrug. But given what’s happening to the energy prices, I think those 6.5% are more significant than “1/16th” feels like it ought to be.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#302

Post by thanatos519 »

beached_whale wrote: post #57
crote wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, if you experience blackouts that often your infrastructure is probably prepared for it. Most of Europe basically never has blackouts, so why spend money on backup batteries when they will be deprecated before they'll even be used once?

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.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#303

Post by subsubzero »

scifibestfi wrote: post #149
mrtksn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This place started to think in memes I feel. Every issue comes with the automated arguments, the same ones every time. If the topic is energy someone must write the "they shouldn't have closed those Nuclear power plants, silly environmentalist". Anyway, France is full blown nuclear state and they are having energy issues too, because as it turns out nuclear power plants require long regular maintenance periods. Maybe…

The people are fed up with dangerously incompetent leadership, who literally laughed when warned to not be dependent on Russia for energy. It's not a meaningless culture war. The loss of energy means lower standard of living at best and mass death and famine at worst.

We also have to remember Europe had the absolute disaster of a vaccine purchase program which was totally down to its incompetent leadership which for some reason the US media fawns over. The delay in getting vaccines to citizens probably cost 10's of thousands of lives.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#304

Post by gambiting »

avgcorrection wrote: post #285
gambiting wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it's completely obvious - Poland and its 50 million citizens depend on the Norway->Poland gas pipeline for having any gas this winter at all. Blowing up Nordstream is clearly a signal from Russia that if we don't stop pushing back on Ukraine, then that pipeline is next to go. That's how I read it anyway.

Classic scare tactic. Station your troops on someone else’s border and suicide them. That sends the message that friendly fire can become invasion fire. Makes perfect sense.

I mean, those pipes were clearly not going to be used anytime soon. It's not like they blew up anything that was actively making them any money, nor did they sacrefice their own troops to do this like you compare to. It's a good target because it sends a message but it's pretty useless otherwise.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#305

Post by ben_w »

Jon_Lowtek wrote: post #287
adventured wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the acrobatics required for Europeans that try to blame all of this on the US because they need a scapegoat so as to avoid personal responsibility.

This has nothing to do with scapegoating, the US military literally attacked european infrastructure this week

Really? Where?

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#306

Post by gambiting »

avgcorrection wrote: post #289
gambiting wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the problem here is that you basically assumed what my position is and then argued against it, but it isn't based on anything that I have said so far. The only point I want to address is that I really don't believe Putin is acting rationally in this war. Nothing he has done has been rational. If he cared about the billions of euro flowing through those pipes, he simply wouldn't have attacked Ukraine in the fi…

If you claim that Putin isn’t rational then you can claim that he is liable to do anything and everything since his actions don’t make sense. Hence the obvious question: why would one theory be more likely than any other? You yourself haven’t given any rational reasons for your original theory.

Trying to scare EU/NATO to back off or a country of 50 million people will go without gas this winter isn't a rational theory? Seems like a very clear thing to threaten in this situation.

>>Hence the obvious question: why would one theory be more likely than any other?

Well, I mean, some theories are obviously more likely than others - it's more likely that Russia blew it up than that Japan blew it up, right?

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#307

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

usrusr wrote: post #135
rr888 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia and Germany have been at war for centuries. The last few decades when their economies became co-dependent was a blissful peace. Beware the long term consequences of buiding a new wall between them.

But times when Germany/predecessors and Russia hand been allied haven't exactly been peaceful either. History is the worst foreign policy advisor of them all.

Exactly. You can't safely drive forward by just looking in the rearview mirror.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#308

Post by avgcorrection »

gambiting wrote: post #304
avgcorrection wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic scare tactic. Station your troops on someone else’s border and suicide them. That sends the message that friendly fire can become invasion fire. Makes perfect sense.

I mean, those pipes were clearly not going to be used anytime soon. It's not like they blew up anything that was actively making them any money, nor did they sacrefice their own troops to do this like you compare to. It's a good target because it sends a message but it's pretty useless otherwise.

Compare it to blowing up a ghost town near Finland, then.

No one would be scared of a military managing to destroy something on their own soil.

In fact, a better theory for you would be to claim that Russia did it in order to make it look like sabotage from the EU/America. Just a propaganda exercise since the pipeline is “useless” to them right now in any case. But you are clearly so desperate that you just go for the first cartoonish theory that you can come up with.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#309

Post by janef0421 »

godelski wrote: post #267
adventured wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expense is also not a good argument. Nuclear power should be subsidized as necessary for the exact same reason healthcare is: energy security is a critical matter. A nation like Germany for example could easily afford to have many more nuclear power plants and be pushing that much more energy over the borders to the rest of the EU in exports. They could do a lot to further the EU's energy security, given their fiscal…

> Nuclear power should be subsidized as necessary for the exact same reason healthcare is: energy security is a critical matter. Not that I disagree, but money is not an infinite resource. So yeah, it does matter. Maybe I'm interpreting your comment as more dismissive than it actually is.

Money is not infinite, at least for practical purposes, but it is socially constructed, and consequently not a hard constraint. If a nation has the means to obtain the necessary resources and labour, it will be able to build and run nuclear power plants.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#310

Post by mantas »

hef19898 wrote: post #288
megous wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germans would have happily helped train Russian military if 2014 did not happen. Money's good.

Where did you get that idea from? Without looking it up, I suspect Germany, as a NATO country, helped Ukraine as other NATO allies did. And supported the orange revolution, as the other EU nations did before 2014.

Germany (along with France and others) supplied military-related stuff to Russia, even after 2014.
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