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Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

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Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#41
post #36
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to have a lower mean temperature and still use less total heat. Stats, right? E.g. if the temperature is warmer at night.

Unless there's some non-linear interactions that I'm unaware of, it seems like the mean temp is the only thing you'd need to know wrt how much energy you need to use to keep it roughly at some other temp thru the season

Heat loss is linear.

Resistance heating is linear. Furnaces using slightly colder outside air are just a tiny bit less efficient, but it’s really close to linear. Heat pumps are non linear and do use electricity from natural gas.

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>Russia invading Chechnya is like USA invading Texas. Chechnya was an independent country in 1991, as was Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus and other ex-USSR republics post 1991. It had no right invading Chechnya.

Your comparison is a poor one. Chechnya wasn't ever an independent country. They declared independence, but it was never recognized as an independent country by anyone, including any countries in the West.

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>Russia invading Chechnya is like USA invading Texas. Chechnya was an independent country in 1991, as was Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus and other ex-USSR republics post 1991. It had no right invading Chechnya.

You’d better open Wikipedia or something to find at least basic facts, because what you are saying is 100% not correct. Chechnya was not a political entity on the same level as Ukraine and under Soviet constitution could not leave the union. It was an autonomy within Russia and dissolution of USSR did not automatically grant it independence. Moreover, in 1991-1992 the political entity was called differently and was replaced officially by two regions, one of them being Chechnya, only later. So called “invasions” were in fact a civil war between separatists on one side and loyalists and Russian army on the other side in 1994 and counter-terrorist operation in 1999 (because that was after Beslan, Russian 9/11).

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#44
post #38
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the USA and Poland were screaming at the top of their lungs to not do nord stream and the German public didn’t care. At all.

Of course they didn't care. The USA were screaming because they wanted to flog more expensive LNG to Germany and Poland was screaming because they wanted their transit fees. The US screamed so loudly that Nord Stream exploded.

[flagged]

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#45
post #8
post #3

The winter was exceptionally warm, and no one could really predict that. But putting that aside, this whole episode was making me uneasy. To this day so many people in Europe cannot engage in strategic thinking. I think they simply do not believe that bombs can ever land on their own roofs. The understanding of foreign governments and their real intentions is often at a comical level, even when applied to actors that…

> To this day so many people in Europe cannot engage in strategic thinking. Much more troubling: Few people worldwide have the attention span and stamina to read a text of the length of an academic paper and engage its contents. That this thread is for the moment mostly hurried comments desperate to control the message shows as much. And it's tightly related to inability to do strategic thinking.

The problem with academic papers and stamina is that most of them are bullshit produced only to further the author's career and not to produce new knowledge or inform anyone at all.

Publish or perish has side effects, consequences, and pitfalls.

Sorting out which papers are bullshit, lean on scant evidence, were funded by organizations who want an outcome, or exist solely to meet a requirement for the author to advance towards a PhD is time consuming and almost never worth the effort.

That is ultimately why we pay people (civil servants, etc) to figure this shit out on our behalf when implementing regulations.

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#46
post #39
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there an alternative to Uniper’s nationalization? It was insolvent and forced into fixed price deliveries that it had to procure through suddenly expensive spot market.

The government could have relaxed the fixed prices, and perhaps they did that anyway?

They did

> Germany sets the gas levy that would allow Uniper and its rivals to pass on 90% of spiralling gas prices to customers.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-russian-gas-cris...

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#47
post #36
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to have a lower mean temperature and still use less total heat. Stats, right? E.g. if the temperature is warmer at night.

Unless there's some non-linear interactions that I'm unaware of, it seems like the mean temp is the only thing you'd need to know wrt how much energy you need to use to keep it roughly at some other temp thru the season

IDK, extremes matter. -5 to +7 has the same average as -20 to +22, but the effects on energy use are widely different (e.g. the former may command a little heating for some time; the latter will command both extreme heating and possibly also cooling).

It's the same as with climate talk in general. "Ooh, the average yearly temperature only rose this much, or even fell down relative to 5/10/20 years ago." - sure, but if the range of temperatures keeps growing, you can end up with both a nice average falling year over year, and uninhabitable land due to all useful vegetation freezing up or drying up.

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad Germany didn't stop trading with the US after they invaded Irak by producing fake witnesses, or the second time by fabricating proofs, or Afghanistan. Diplomacy is not black and white.

As an American: It should’ve. If a firmer hand was taken it could’ve saved thousands of lives. France and Germany wagged its finger but basically waved us through.

There was nothing that could have been done from the outside to stop that. The only people who could have made a difference were the citizens of the United States, but about 80% of them thought the invasion was a good idea.

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#49
post #6
post #3

The winter was exceptionally warm, and no one could really predict that. But putting that aside, this whole episode was making me uneasy. To this day so many people in Europe cannot engage in strategic thinking. I think they simply do not believe that bombs can ever land on their own roofs. The understanding of foreign governments and their real intentions is often at a comical level, even when applied to actors that…

From the article: Moreover, the country did not simply get lucky with particularly mild winter temperatures, as often alleged. The average winter temperature in the 2022/23 winter of 2.9°C was actually slightly colder than the average temperature over the four previous winters.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/09/climate-change-eur...

Not sure how the second warmest winters ever recorded can be cooler than the average of the next 4 warmest winters.

Re: Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

#50
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To this day so many people in Europe cannot engage in strategic thinking. Much more troubling: Few people worldwide have the attention span and stamina to read a text of the length of an academic paper and engage its contents. That this thread is for the moment mostly hurried comments desperate to control the message shows as much. And it's tightly related to inability to do strategic thinking.

>Much more troubling: Few people worldwide have the attention span and stamina to read a text of the length off an academic paper and engage its contents. You don't need to read academic papers to know that Russia = evil. Eastern Europe has been parroting this for decades but Germany stuck its fingers in its ears and went "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you over the sound of my cheap gas brokered by our lord and savior, G…

Chechnya was a civil war within the internationally recognized borders of Russia, not an invasion. The only foreign power that had recognized independent Chechnya was Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

There was a general feeling in the early and mid-2000s that Russia was finally changing for the better. The economy was growing and the quality of life was improving for many Russians. While no one mistook Putin for a democratic leader, he wasn't particularly bad as far as semi-authoritarian leaders go.

The invasion of Georgia in 2008 was a turning point, because people didn't believe Putin would go to war to prevent the expansion of NATO. But it wasn't a particularly big shock, because military interventions as an extension of foreign policy were quite common in the 1990s and 2000s. It was more unpleasant with "their side" doing it, but as long as "our side" was also doing it, military interventions were a legitimate policy tool. International politics is pretty childish in this respect.

After the invasion, politicians had much less favorable views of Putin. But they continued dealing with him, assuming that he would act based on rational self-interest. The real shock in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was not the invasion itself but the irrationality of it. If Putin could miscalculate his actions so badly, it made no sense to treat him as a rational actor anymore.

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