[HN Gopher] Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
___________________________________________________________________
Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
Author : prostoalex
Score : 159 points
Date : 2022-09-29 14:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| masswerk wrote:
| Seeing `&` on a page like Reuters is quite a throwback to the
| 1990s. There's actually something soothing about the imperfect
| exposing the "stroke" of the underlying media. :-)
| londons_explore wrote:
| This won't happen - instead big users will be told to shut down
| completely.
| maxsilver wrote:
| A 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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more about the power simply is gone as in that
| portion of the grid is out? I don't think they run custom
| circuits just for cell towers as that would be quite expensive,
| 5G sucks a lot of power and I don't think the backup batteries
| can last for days on end of a severe power outage.
| gpvos wrote:
| Indeed, not particularly, but they will just lose power
| together with the buildings around them.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| 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.
| alex_duf wrote:
| I think it's more about the cell towers being cut at the same
| time as their local area.
|
| Where it's easy to anticipate that hospitals/police
| stations/fire birgades will need a special connection to the
| grid, it probably was harder 20 years ago to realise the
| numerous new cell towers also needed to be put on a separate
| connection.
|
| So they'll get cut at the same time as the companies and the
| houses in the local area.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| In France, the talks about the rolling blackouts were
| acompanied by assurances that private homes wouldn't be
| affected, only industries.
|
| So they should have some kind of ability to target at least a
| kind of user. I don't know if cell towers qualify as industry
| or their own, separate kind.
|
| There's also the fact that there has been a massive rollout
| of connected meters, so, at least in theory, they could
| target individual homes for the blackouts (I'm not saying
| that would be useful in any way).
|
| I don't know if other kinds of endpoints have similar kinds
| of meters, but they could.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > So they should have some kind of ability to target at
| least a kind of user.
|
| Industrial power is easier to separate because it is almost
| always a separate grid region. There aren't many houses
| built up against your local steel mill or refinery.
|
| Cell towers are collocated with residential areas because
| that's where the users are. The power for homes and cell
| towers comes from the same source.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Yes. But since power cuts shouldn't affect residential
| areas, cell towers should also be safe.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My understanding is that many have supplemental power options,
| or at least the ability to be hooked up to a mobile one.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I wouldn't worry about powering the cell tower itself, but
| more about the backhaul infrastructure that it relies on. In
| cities it relies on fiber that's often leased from various
| providers and terminates at datacenters where it shares
| switching equipment with a lot of other customers of the
| provider & datacenter, so power can't effectively be
| segregated. If that datacenter can't be kept powered (and
| that will require _a lot_ of power), it doesn 't matter
| whether the tower itself remains powered.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > A typical cell tower uses 4kW to 5kW
|
| Just to give some perspective, that figure is less than 2 times
| what a single Antminer S19 Pro Bitcoin mining appliance draws
| (found by searching "most used bitcoin mining hardware").
| Mining farms contain from hundreds to thousands of these
| devices (search "antminer farm") kept on 24/7. Also, that model
| is far from being the most power hungry. And no, they're not
| only operating in poor countries where energy is cheap: all it
| takes for whoever operates them is being able to profit more
| than the cost of energy plus maintenance, no matter where.
|
| Rationing power for cell towers would be pure idiocy that would
| give nothing in return, while there are well known places where
| lots of energy is wasted 24/7.
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| Lots of people here seem to echo the idea that there is a way to
| prioritize cellular towers. That's up to whoever runs then. The
| power goes off for everyone in the area. They need to have enough
| batteries and generator capacity. Many sites have no generators
| and battery capacity will vary. Some carriers try to have a week
| or two of battery capacity but that isn't practical at small
| sites. When power starts going off, the towers will be
| prioritized through alternate power sources maintained by the
| carriers or their contractors.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| This will be amazing advertising for Starlink.
| mrtksn wrote:
| You should check out how much power the Starlink base station
| requires. It's one of its main issues.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| You just need a phone and network that uses it.
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-
| cove...
| [deleted]
| james_pm wrote:
| And a few years until it actually exists.
|
| "starting with a beta in select areas by the end of next
| year after SpaceX's planned satellite launches". On Elon
| time, that's 2025 and perhaps never.
| ajross wrote:
| This headline is awful. There's nothing specific to "mobile
| networks" in this news at all. They're saying that there's a
| potential energy crisis and that it might impact phones.
|
| ...which is also just plain ridiculous! Phone service is a
| critical piece of infrastructure and in almost all markets
| subject to special treatment and provided with redundant power
| mechanisms.
|
| Lots of things may break this winter. Phones won't be one of
| them.
| doix wrote:
| I've been in South Africa for the last month, which has had an
| energy crisis since around 2007 and somehow they manage to keep
| mobile networks up during load shedding. There are 2:30 hour
| (sometimes 4:30 hour) blackouts daily and yet everything seems to
| keep chugging along.
|
| Mobile towers are probably have some of the highest
| electricity:benefit ratios out there, it would be silly to not
| prioritize them.
| pram wrote:
| The towers have battery backups usually.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The less reliable the grid, the more backup power is planned
| into infrastructure like cell towers.
|
| In Europe the grid has historically been quite reliable, so
| backup options are likely more limited at these sites.
| Semaphor wrote:
| My wife is from SA. There, every supermarket and even smaller
| stores have generators because blackouts are frequent.
|
| A few years ago, we had a bigger 6h or so power outage, all
| the stores had to throw tons of products away because there
| was literally no redundant power supply at all. It was my 2nd
| power outage in Germany in over 30 years.
| jefftk wrote:
| Yes: this is the same as when an inch of snow shuts down a
| warm city and people from cold cities say "we handle worse
| storms several times a month". People engineer for likely
| conditions, and those aren't the same everywhere.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Hot weather too - runways were melting in the UK this year
| in what would be regular summer temperatures in Arizona.
| The engineers weren't feckless - few people plan for
| conditions that literally haven't happened once in 200
| years of records.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Yup. And in most cases it simply doesn't make sense to
| spend the capital on the preparations.
|
| Ex: Atlanta gets roughly 2 inches of snow a year (usually
| one or two minor snowfalls) and it's far cheaper to simply
| shut down for a day when it happens than it is to have the
| infrastructure in place to handle staying open.
|
| Every 10 years or so we'll get a big snow, and be down for
| a week (ex: 2014) and people will freak out - but on the
| whole, still much cheaper to have that downtime than to be
| exorbitantly over-prepared for situations that are rare and
| not disastrous.
|
| I suspect this will be the case for the mobile outage here
| - on the whole, the circumstances causing the outage (lack
| of power) is likely not recurring, and the costs of
| weathering this outage with existing infra is much more
| favorable than being over-prepared for blackout conditions
| which are rare.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| As someone who lived there for awhile, was going to
| mention Atlanta too. And I'd assume similar latitude
| cities like Birmingham, Charlotte, and Dallas?
|
| Cities operate with limited budgets. It does not make
| financial sense to prepare for some relatively rare
| events, versus allocating that money to better prepare
| for likely events.
|
| If Atlanta had a fleet of snowplows, they'd be unused 75%
| of winters and used for only a couple days in 20%. Bad
| investment.
| crote wrote:
| 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?
| beached_whale wrote:
| 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.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| If everything is tied to the "same grid" you may not be able to
| shut off only specific classes of customers.
|
| If the grid is designed for unreliability, you probably have
| the ability to order load sheds of various levels, so you can
| cut power to houses without cutting streetlights and cell
| towers.
|
| Alternatively, you could have it built into smart meters.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| It's unfortunately not that simple. I'm South African. We have
| load shedding "stages", where each stage sheds 1GW from the
| grid.
|
| We were just at stage 6 recently, and this means there are days
| with 1x2.5hr outages and 2x4.5hr outages, with maybe 2-3hrs
| between these stages to recharge batteries. In my experience
| the cellphone towers do not always have sufficient time to
| recharge their batteries.
|
| I live on an estate with a cellphone tower owned by the largest
| network operator, and this is still an issue. SMS-based MFA
| becomes a problem when this happens.
|
| Interestingly, I have never once had a fibre outage through
| years of load shedding. (I have battery backup for my fibre
| CPE.) I can easily get 200mbps to a local DC while people
| relying on 4G or 5G are completely cut off.
| tapland wrote:
| In Sweden we haven't separated their power supply from anything
| else, so rolling blackouts will kill them as well. And the
| blackouts are probably coming sooner than a fix can be in place
| yobbo wrote:
| There are different generations/eras of "towers". The ones
| dating from NMT and the cold war have their own little
| shrapnel-protected bunkers and most likely UPS:s.
|
| The latest ones which hang on every roof in cities might be
| turned off, but it just means phones scan until they find
| 2G/3G signals.
| kalleboo wrote:
| I remember in the several hour long power outage in
| Southern Sweden in 2003 the GSM network was still up
| dijit wrote:
| I actually had a problem with Swedens approach a few years
| ago.
|
| The Swedish power grid is a single grid and the idea is: all
| eggs in one basket, but pay close attention to the basket.
|
| Unfortunately when it comes to datacenter designations, two
| independent power feeds is required for tier 2 and above.
| Excluding all datacenters in Sweden.
|
| At least _some_ portions of Canada are also excluded because
| they have rules that say that only hospitals are allowed to
| have two independent power feeds. So Ubisofts Montreal
| Datacenter is in the same building as a hospital...
| Gud wrote:
| What do you mean by independent power feeds?
|
| If you mean fed by two different substations it's not a
| problem in Sweden at all. Most(every station I've ever
| worked in) medium/high voltage substations in Sweden are
| fed by at least two separate lines. Same as any other
| country I've built substations.
| dijit wrote:
| That's interesting, we visited many datacenters across
| Skane and none of them said anything higher than T2 is
| possible due to the single power grid.
|
| Does Bahnhof and Tele2 know about your stations?
| Gud wrote:
| Just curious what you mean by independent power feed. If
| you mean fed by two separate power plants, you are right,
| but I don't see how that would be possible in any
| country.
|
| My next work assignment literally starting in a week is
| building a high voltage substation for a data
| center(customer is well known on HN) so that's why I'm
| curious
| gerikson wrote:
| How does that work in for example the US? The Texas grid is
| separate from the rest of the continent, no?
| lostapathy wrote:
| You can connect to separate energy providers - such that
| if one provider or their transmission infrastructure goes
| down, you're still connected to and online with the other
| provider.
| zinekeller wrote:
| The "two separate flow" refers not the national/regional
| grids but instead to the specific substations, the idea
| being that if a substation was tripped (due to chance or
| for maintenance) you can still get electricity from the
| alternate route.
| gerikson wrote:
| Sweden is not on the same power network as most of the rest
| of Europe.
|
| It's a factor in the recent price spike - Swedish companies
| are selling surplus power to Europe at the prices these are
| prepared to pay.
| yobbo wrote:
| "Surplus power" is not accurate. It's more accurate to say
| that the transfer cables are mostly at full load because
| the European demand is so large. In effect, this means
| European prices in Scandinavia.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| "Russia's decision to halt gas supplies via Europe's key supply
| route in the wake of the Ukraine conflict has increased the
| chances of power shortages."
|
| Europe's decision, Germany especially, to be reliant on Russia
| for energy when they could have not shut down nuclear plants and
| built more.
| j-pb wrote:
| Thats a false dichotomy.
|
| Germany was well on it's way to become entirely self sufficient
| on renewables, until the conservative party which was in charge
| for the last 20 years, sabotaged the entire effort.
|
| The german energy industry calls this the "Altmaier"-Dip, named
| after one of their politicians.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| No they were not. Their geolocation and battery technology
| means it wasn't feasible regardless. It was sabotaged to
| begin with. No other efforts needed.
|
| https://zeihan.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/03/13-globalwinds...
| j-pb wrote:
| Location? Germany has huge amounts of wind, especially in
| offshore. Your own map even shows this. We also have plenty
| of solar, enough that the conservatives introduced a solar
| installation LIMIT to keep fossil fuel and nuclear
| competitive.
|
| As for storage, with large enough over-capacity it's really
| easy to retrofit old coal plants to work off head
| capacitors, and we have plenty of those.
|
| It's just no good if there is no political will to do it.
| And the "nuclear narrative" is one of the whataboutisms
| together with "breakthrough hydrogen tech" to distract from
| the solutions that are cheaply implementable today.
| origin_path wrote:
| The idea that this is just a matter of political will is
| nonsensical in the extreme, it's impossible to understand
| how anyone can believe this except via massive
| propaganda. Here's a graph of German solar/wind power
| production:
|
| https://energy-
| charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&...
|
| Notice how it frequently drops to _near zero_. For
| example the morning of the 22nd where total wind+solar
| production in Germany was just 1.34 GW. Peak load in
| Germany often reaches 65-70 GW.
|
| The people saying renewables cannot work and power must
| come from coal, gas or nuclear aren't evil conservatives,
| they are rational people who understand what renewables
| can and cannot do. The fact that the left systematically
| refuses to accept this reality is now not only destroying
| the European economy but flat out endangering lives. How
| long must the rest of us put up with this sort of rampant
| irrationality?
| j-pb wrote:
| You accuse other of irrationality, yet you prop up a
| straw-man that's been debunked over and over again.
|
| Nobody argues that renewables deliver peak power all of
| the time. The goal is to have enough capacity and
| intermediary storage to be able to deliver constant peak
| power with both combined.
|
| The current economic situation would be much better had
| we spend all our money on renewables and storage instead
| of nuclear and gas, which ultimately end up fueling the
| very regimes that give us trouble e.g. saudi arabia,
| iran, russia, instead conservatives implemented arbitrary
| constraints like the solar cap and maximum wind farm
| distance.
|
| Solar is already the cheapest form of energy per watt
| produced, investing into any other technology than the
| cheapest and most sustainable one is what's irrational.
| retinaros wrote:
| there is no storage capability that would allow europe to
| work on renewable it doesnt scale just look at how your
| storage batteries are made! look ar how lithium is
| harvested please...
| j-pb wrote:
| Theres plenty of other ways to store energy.
|
| Insulated thermal for example is extremely cheap and can
| be retrofitted to existing power plants. All you need is
| a insulated steel vessel filled with something inert when
| heated, e.g. sand. If you want to go real fancy you could
| use quicklime, that could be used both as a bulk heat
| store and additonally releases more energy in it's
| hydration bonds than lithium ion batteries.
|
| You can actually run a surprising amount of existing coal
| plants on iron dust, which when burned becomes iron
| oxide, which can then be recycled to metalic iron.
|
| Northern germany has many salt caverns which can be used
| as pressurised air storage.
|
| Southern germany also has huge pumped hydro storage
| potentials.
|
| Batteries are one storage technology, there are plenty
| others, far cheaper if you just want bulk and dont't care
| about space.
| [deleted]
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand as
| someone from a neighboring country -- could you elaborate a
| bit more about what happened with the Conservative Party
| undermining the green energy effort? And how close would
| Germany realistically have been to being completely self-
| sufficient by now if that didn't happen?
| usrusr wrote:
| Realistically: not close at all. But significantly less
| close: in the last few years, German renewable buildup per
| capita effectively collapsed. Expressed in _the most German
| units imaginable_ , buildup dropped from "world champion"
| to "failed to qualify for the tournament". Part of it is
| certainly caused by running out of low-hanging fruits, but
| yay can't be the only explanation.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Blocking wind power and grid efforts everywhere, stopping
| planned storage efforts, man we even shut down pump
| storages etc over the last decades that would be so
| necessary to have any chance to support and realize base
| load with renewables. Right now we are shedding cheap bio
| gas and wind power production again (and that given we
| build up much too little as we could have) while the power
| stock exchanges have fun gambling.
|
| On top this constant nuclear narrative, which is not even
| much significant for current power production, this is all
| beyond any funny.
|
| Google translate those for few alternstive povs:
|
| https://www.klimareporter.de/strom/deutschland-fackelt-
| gas-a...
|
| https://www.makawind.de/index.php?show=news
|
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Pumpspeicherkraft
| w...
| chess_buster wrote:
| Oh yeah, I forgot. All of that, too.
|
| And this is the look of the politician in question https:
| //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Peter_Al...
| chess_buster wrote:
| Many things:
|
| * Blocked Biogas by imposing a limit on installed capacity
|
| * blocked solar by imposing a limit on yearly added
| installed capacity (1GW)
|
| * introduced the so called EEG-Umlage that made storage
| technologies unprofitable when used to store renewable
| energy
|
| * introduced a shitshow of bureaucracy to prevent new solar
| and wind projects from coming online
|
| * introduced another shitshow of bureaucracy to prevent new
| solar and wind projects from coming online on top of the
| existing shitshow
|
| * undermine EU law by just not implementing it, for example
| regarding neighbours giving energy to each other
|
| * introduced redicoulus "Abstandsregeln"/distance
| regulations, so for example open pit mines that use
| demolitions have an allowed min distance of 300m and
| windfarms 1000m
|
| * When China poured billions into the companies forming
| China's solar industry, while German's companies had no
| help with their investments and funding
|
| the list goes on and on and on and on...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| They also proactively chose in the wake of the 2003 invasion of
| Iraq to avoid importing more natural from the US. Schroeder and
| co wanted to reconnect Western Europe to Russia and avoid any
| dependence on the U.S. I think we now all see who the more
| reliable partner for Western Europe has been.
|
| [edit] if you're going to disagree, I'd be interested to hear
| your specific objections. The shift away from US natural gas is
| well documented.
| cinntaile wrote:
| LNG is more expensive than Russian gas so it makes or made
| economic sense to do that.
| adventured wrote:
| > LNG is more expensive than Russian gas so it makes or
| made economic sense to do that.
|
| It only made sense if one pretends that Russia is not
| Russia.
|
| To get there you'd have to forget to take into account all
| of the factors, namely that Russia's culture will always
| bring it back to trying to conquer its smaller/weaker
| neighbors.
|
| Risk is a factor when considering economic security.
| Whether something makes economic sense must include that
| factor or it's a garbage calculation. The EU widely ignored
| this obvious risk regarding Russia. It has been obvious
| what Putin was for at least 15-20 years. And anybody that
| missed it after 2014 is an outright fool. I remember
| reading about his moves to strip the Russians of human
| rights in the early days of his reign and it was quite
| clear what he was doing and what direction he was going
| (standard Russian authoritarian), all of this is the
| natural culmination. I don't believe the EU was taken by
| surprise by Putin's choices, they merely wanted their cake
| and wanted to eat it too (for as long as possible), which
| is pretty typical behavior. Now they get to pay for that
| willful mistake.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Does it make sense now that the pipeline is shut down and
| Russia is in conflict indirectly with Western Europe?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| 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.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| 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 competition with Western Europe. Moreover
| Russia's Duma follows Putin's lead.
| brabel wrote:
| 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 leaving Russia no
| option (it's costing much more to Russia than to Europe).
| cinntaile wrote:
| This is not true, Russia started reducing output last
| summer. Before their invasion of Ukraine.
| brabel wrote:
| They spent billions to create the second pipeline to
| *increase* exports... are you trying to say they didn't
| have interest in increasing output? Why?!
| cinntaile wrote:
| At this point it is obvious that their occupation of
| Ukraine outweighs the $11 billion cost of the new
| pipeline. That's just the total cost by the way, not who
| paid what exactly.
| Ambolia wrote:
| LNG is expensive because you have to outbid the global
| market to get it. It would have been expensive and
| damaged the German industry 5 years ago as well. Maybe it
| would have been better to do it at their pace, but it's
| not like sacrificing cheap energy and natural resources
| is an easy step to take.
| DenisM wrote:
| I'd be interested to see that documentation if you have it
| handy.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Sadly I'm on my phone and some stuff I want is locked up in
| Jstor , but look into the France-Germany-Russia troika in
| the run up to the 2003 invasion. Schroeder was pushing a
| bigger gas deal with Russia at the time and selling it on
| the basis of European independence.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The difference is that when the US invaded Iraq, Germany
| complained a bit but didn't do much else, but when Russia
| invaded the Ukraine, Germany decided to cut Russia off
| economically. The reason why the US is a "reliable partner"
| is that German politics is willing to accept American wars.
| And before we hear any cries of, "Iraq was different," recall
| that it was an illegal war of aggression that caused the
| deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to large scale
| torture, and generally caused a monumental societal collapse
| in Iraq.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >And before we hear any cries of, "Iraq was different,"
| recall that it was an illegal war of aggression that caused
| the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to large
| scale torture, and generally caused a monumental societal
| collapse in Iraq.
|
| I've been trying to come to terms with this since the
| invasion of Ukraine. Yes, the details on the ground are
| significantly different. But it doesn't change the legal
| reality of what occurred. I've come to the same conclusion
| about Iraq recently.
|
| I was an 18 year old US Army infantryman getting ready to
| deploy to Iraq in 2007. I made the decision back then to
| not go, because ultimately something just felt completely
| wrong about it during training. The guilt around that had
| haunted me ever since. It wasn't until this year that I
| understood clearly what I did was the right decision, and
| felt vindicated. The entire last 20 years, our country has
| been engaged in global terrorism led by the neo-con hawks
| like Rove, Rumsfeld, and Bolton. It's sickening to truly
| realize and accept the horrible things we did, but I am
| forever grateful for having refused to take part.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| You'd definitely made the right decision for yourself,
| and possibly in the general case.
|
| I'd add that while the bursts of hawkishness in US
| foreign policy are awful, they pale in comparison to the
| barbarism of other past powers or modern regional powers.
| That isn't meant to excuse anything, but look at the
| Russian invasion and the intentional atrocities being
| committed. Compare that to the invasion of Iraq and I
| think any honest reading will reflect governments and
| societies with very different values.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I cannot see how one can claim that the US invasion of
| Iraq was less barbaric than the Russian invasion of the
| Ukraine.
|
| First of all, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. The
| US practiced torture, as we all found out when the
| pictures of Abu Ghraib came out. The US worked with
| Shiite militias that conducted ethnic cleansing and
| torture on a massive scale. The US put down uprisings in
| places like Sadr City, Najaf and Fallujah with full urban
| ground invasions. As a result of the invasion, Baghdad
| turned into a warzone for years, and the city's
| religiously mixed neighborhoods were ethnically cleansed
| (or however you refer to its religious equivalent). Iraq
| became a byword for failed state.
|
| Finally, I would tell anyone who talks about "values" to
| take a look at the "Collateral Murder" video, in which
| helicopter pilots crack jokes while shooting explosive
| rounds into the windshield of a van full of children.[0]
| Only two people have gone to jail for that: the soldier
| who leaked the video (Manning) and the guy who published
| it (Assange).
|
| 0. https://youtu.be/zYTxuW2vmzk
| Maursault wrote:
| > I cannot see how one can claim that the US invasion of
| Iraq was less barbaric than the Russian invasion of the
| Ukraine. First of all, _hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
| died._
|
| >> Estimates of the total number of Iraqi war-related
| deaths are highly disputed. According to Keith Krause of
| the Graduate Institute of International and Development
| Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, "the consensus seems to be
| that around 150,000 people died violently as a result of
| the fighting between 2003 and 2006."[1]
|
| I am in no way attempting to justify or defend the Iraq
| War, which I and many believe was both illegal and a
| Republican political gambit to stay in power by
| heartlessly leveraging outrage from the 9/11 attacks. I
| think one can make the argument that both the wars in
| Iraq and Ukraine were invalidly justified using
| manufactured and outright false intelligence. But while
| yours and other comments above are searing, astute and
| poignant, in essence both it and previous opposing and
| supporting comments are tu quoque arguments.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_
| War#Tot...
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Estimates of total deaths in Iraq due to the war
| generally come up with a figure of several hundred
| thousand. You can look at the page you linked to for
| examples of these studies.
|
| Iraq Body Count tracked 120k individually verifiable
| civilian deaths in Iraq through 2011 (a figure that has
| increased significantly since, due to the rise of ISIS,
| which was a side-effect of the Iraq War). But in a war
| zone, many (maybe even most) deaths go unrecorded. If you
| use survey methods (going random homes to ask for death
| certificates) to try to get a statistical estimate of the
| number of deaths, you find a number that is a factor of a
| few higher, as several studies in Iraq have shown.
| hnhg wrote:
| I'd add to the list: indirectly creating ISIS, enabling an
| enormous amounts of ethnic cleaning/genocide of minorities,
| allowing a takeover of the country by Iran and related
| militias, and hosing down the place with depleted uranium:
| https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/09/21/new-study-
| do...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That has nothing to do with my original comment. As a
| response to the Iraq war, pivoting to Russia as an energy
| supplier now looks foolish.
| hef19898 wrote:
| There was no turn to Russia, the USSR was a reliable gas
| supplier since the 60s and all the way through the Cold
| War...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| My point is that Germany chose further reliance on Russian
| gas as a response to the Iraq war, they didn't just
| complain. Making that choice looks pretty naive in
| hindsight.
|
| I'm not here to justify the Iraq war, and no good faith
| reading of my post would suggest that.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Germany imported Russian gas because it was cheap.
|
| It had nothing to do with the Iraq War. If you look at a
| graph of German natural gas imports from Russia by year,
| you will not see any major changes after 2003. Imports
| from Russia (back then, the USSR) reached 50% of total
| imports in the 1980s, and flatlined after that.[0]
|
| 0. https://rujec.org/article/55478/zoom/fig/11/
| hef19898 wrote:
| Don't confuse the meme of Germany's "dependence" on
| Russian gas being "the root" of yhe current "evil
| inflation" with facts. Not to mention that regardless of
| all other sanctions, following a war _Russia_ started,
| the EU, and the West in general, excluded energy. This
| left a door open for Russia, it also allowed to mitigate
| the energy markets problems we currently see. Heck, both
| sides did their best to prevent damage to the gas
| pipelines in Ukraine. It was Russia, more precisely
| _Putin_ , that closed that door and caused the
| clusterfuck on energy markets.
|
| I say energy markets, because global availability of gas
| doesn't seem to be an issue, prices are. Gas shortages
| have nothing to do with crazy electricity prices lately.
| And even then there were no shortages or blackouts
| anywhere in Europe so far. Energy prices did hurt
| industry and drove inlfatuon, sure, but this is a global
| issue not sole caused by the war in Ukraine, COVID,
| Chinese lockdows and the chip shortage all played a role
| in that. As did the constant injection of money into the
| global economy since 2008.
| megous wrote:
| > but when Russia invaded the Ukraine, Germany decided to
| cut Russia off economically.
|
| Yeah, 8 years after invasion, maybe.
| ajross wrote:
| It's upsetting that so many here want to take a genuine (and
| very scary) international crisis and use it to flog their own
| personal peeves.
|
| Needless to say, "German energy policy of the last two decades"
| and "Let's Invade Ukraine and Blackmail Europe!" _are different
| decisions_ , and subject to different analysis. You can have
| reasonable opinions about both, but if your opposition to
| Russian adventurism and brinksmanship[1] is grounded only on
| your support for the German nuclear industry, I think you're
| not helping the discourse.
|
| [1] It's looking increasingly likely that they blew up
| Nordstream, which is _dangerously_ close to an act of war
| against other nuclear powers.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| > "German energy policy of the last two decades" and "Let's
| Invade Ukraine and Blackmail Europe!"
|
| There is a good argument that those two are related. Energy
| is a weapon of war for russia, and it works best when there
| is a dependency on it. A lot of money flows towards
| increasing that dependency, including towards advocacy groups
| with irrational stance against nuclear.
| rkachowski wrote:
| There is of course nuance required, but it's already
| acknowledged inside and out of Germany that the dependency on
| Russian gas / nordstream had an effect in bankrolling the
| aggression against Ukraine. Zelenskyy himself addressed the
| Bundestag and said as much.
|
| > Why is this possible? When we told you that Nord Stream was
| a weapon and a preparation for a great war, we heard in
| response that it was an economy after all. Economy. Economy.
| But it was cement for a new wall. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/promova-prezidenta-
| ukra...
| m348e912 wrote:
| Honest question. How did you get to the logical conclusion
| that Russia is the most likely party that bombed Nordstream?
| gambiting wrote:
| 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.
| brabel wrote:
| To me, it's completely obvious the truth is the exact
| opposite. I feel like only someone who is no longer
| thinking rationally can claim that Russia would blow up
| their own pipeline and make it impossible, even after
| hostilities cease (yes, they will cease one day, they
| always do... or are you still hostile to Germany?), to
| get billions and billions of easy Euro flowing down on
| its coffers.
|
| If you know history you should understand that a "small"
| even like this, in a highly volatile situation like we
| have now, could easily trigger an irrational war no one
| can win to start. I would think that Putin knows that
| very well, so it's not imaginable to me that he would
| risk.
|
| Could someone who feels so strongly against Russia, given
| all the news we're being fed daily in the West, actually
| want NATO to enter this conflict directly to finally
| "destroy" the enemy (which seems to be the only thing
| that will make Putin give up on Ukraine's East)?? I feel
| like, given responses like yours, that's exactly what's
| going on. You believe Putin is so murderous that he would
| just blow up one of his country's main sources of income,
| which he supported (against American strong opposition)
| for so many years, just "to send a signal" he will blow
| up Poland's main source of energy if the West doesn't
| back off... I can totally see someone who believes that
| also believes the only acceptable thing to do right now
| is to start a full scale war against Russia.... which
| would be so disastrous to humanity that, once we look
| back before that happened, we will wish we had just had
| the balls to freaking sit down with the Devil himself and
| have a talk and resolve our issues if that would've
| prevented Armagedon.
| ajross wrote:
| > If you know history you should understand that a
| "small" even like this, in a highly volatile situation
| like we have now, could easily trigger an irrational war
| no one can win to start. I would think that Putin knows
| that very well
|
| Isn't the very existence of a ground war in Ukraine clear
| evidence that Putin does _not_ "know that very well"?
| Your point seems to be "Putin clearly won't escalate
| because he already escalated". That seems poorly
| grounded.
|
| And in any case the logic seems generic anyway; you can
| make that argument about literally any theory about "Who
| Blew Up Nordstream?". If you think Putin is risk-averse,
| why do you think western governments aren't? You really
| think Biden is going rogue over this but you... trust
| Putin to be a steady hand at the tiller?
| brabel wrote:
| Russia made it clear since the 1990's that if Ukraine
| ever tried to go the NATO way, they would intervene...
| this war was a long time coming.
|
| Now, you can't compare invading Ukraine, right on
| Russia's backyard, with invading or attacking a NATO
| country (or its supplies in this case, which has the same
| effect).
|
| My argument was not the Biden did it :D is that really
| what you read from what I wrote?? My argument is that
| someone in the West (or just on Ukraine's side), not
| thinking rationally anymore, may have been responsible.
| That's the only thing that fits with all we know so far -
| lots of people in the West see Putin as the new Hitler...
| would you do everything in your power to stop Hitler if
| you were in a position you believed you could?
|
| If you believe only a Government has the capability to do
| such thing... then it's not so difficult to find one that
| would be "desperate" enough. Ukraine itself seems to be
| the one who would most benefit from NATO entering the
| war, right? But would they really risk getting caught and
| losing the trust of NATO? I don't know, but when your
| country is half in ruins you may not think straight
| anymore.
| gambiting wrote:
| 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 first place.
| Judging him by what he's done in the past is pointless -
| he has congratulated and praised Zelensky when he was
| elected, now suddenly the guy is a fascist neo-nazi?
| Putin has military objectives and he won't stop until he
| achieves them. I wouldn't support an all our NATO Vs
| Russia war, but I do think that Putin shouldn't be
| allowed to annex parts of Ukraine just because he wants
| to - because yes, as a Polish man that triggers a very
| deep response, response that tells me that at some point,
| maybe not now but at some point, he will come and just
| declare that portions of Poland are now Russian. The
| comparison to Germany isn't really relevant here because
| Germany isn't attacking its neighbours currently like
| Russia is - but if it was I'd feel the same for very
| similar reasons.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| 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.
| gambiting wrote:
| 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?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| No, it isn't a rational theory. Because the only
| elaboration you have given is that you are a worried
| Polish person.
|
| Putin has already given quite brazen warnings like
| "remember that we have nukes". And yet he would covertly
| sabotage Russia's own pipeline? What kind of a limp-
| wristed warning is that?
|
| > 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?
|
| Yes, a country on the other side of the planet probably
| had nothing to do with this. Well said! Probably not Fiji
| either.
|
| Any more brilliant counters?
|
| Alternatively there _are_ countries that are closer to
| the Baltic Sea which are both not Russia and Japan... as
| well as countries that have geopolitical interests in
| that general area.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| Reminding about nukes doesn't work. The only outcome is
| being reminded by US that Russia will not survive
| consequences of using them. Nobody takes that as a
| serious treat.
|
| Now pipes being blown up in a somewhat deniable way is
| treat, because that's something that can realistically
| happen without Moscow being nuked in the process.
|
| Russia being a culprit here is so unthinkable for you
| probably because you vastly overestimate value of
| pipelines being affected. NS2 was never going to deliver
| gas, NS1 was turned off, likely forever. And hey, Yamal
| is still there, unaffected, if Russia actually will want
| to sell anything to Europe instead of China.
| brabel wrote:
| > Nobody takes that as a serious treat.
|
| You misunderstood the threat (probably because news are
| always distorting things and people tend to believe
| uncritically in times of war). Putin's threat is very
| clear: he will use tactical nukes ("small" scale ones) to
| defend "Russia" against aggression... by annexing part of
| Ukraine, he gets the excuse he needed to use them against
| Ukrainian forces... that's why the Kremlin keeps pointing
| out to their "nuclear doctrine" which states that Russia
| may use nukes in self-defense. The annexation makes total
| sense when you understand that.
|
| People claiming the threats are directed at western
| Europe countries are misinformed or trying to generate
| panic intentionally. If that was the actual threat, you
| would be right, it wouldn't be a serious one... but the
| one he actually meant is very close to becoming a
| reality... just wait a few weeks and you'll see it...
| specially in case Ukraine continues imparting serious
| losses on Russian forces. There's approximately zero
| chance Russia will just go away from the territories it
| occupies now.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Reminding about nukes doesn't work. The only outcome is
| being reminded by US that Russia will not survive
| consequences of using them. Nobody takes that as a
| serious treat.
|
| The world would not survive the consequences of a full-
| scale nuclear war. It is still rational to fear nuclear
| war because hasty decisions could still bring it about.
|
| > Russia being a culprit here is so unthinkable for you
| probably because you vastly overestimate value of
| pipelines being affected. NS2 was never going to deliver
| gas, NS1 was turned off, likely forever. And hey, Yamal
| is still there, unaffected, if Russia actually will want
| to sell anything to Europe instead of China.
|
| So it is unthinkable to me because I overestimate the
| value of the affected pipelines. So Putin wanted to send
| a strong message by sabotaging useless infrastructure.
|
| A light bulb has gone off and I can see things
| clearly...?
|
| Refer to my other comment about blowing up a Russian
| ghost town to "send a message".
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33026408
| gambiting wrote:
| >>No, it isn't a rational theory.
|
| Again, I don't really see why. What's so irrational about
| threatening enormous economical and societal consequences
| in a situation like this? Surely it's a credible threat?
| Is it just the fact that I'm Polish that bothers you
| about it, because you maybe think I can't keep a straight
| head about it?
|
| >>What kind of a limp-wristed warning is that?|
|
| The same one as poisoning your critics with unique poison
| that only Russia could have and then denying any
| responsibility, I guess? Sends a message, which is the
| main point.
|
| >>Any more brilliant counters?
|
| Do you think we can have this discussion without you
| being sarcastic?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| 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.
| gambiting wrote:
| 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.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| 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.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> But you are clearly so desperate that you just go for
| the first cartoonish theory that you can come up with.
|
| That is very uncalled for. I really feel like this is a
| direct threat to Poland, but obviously I'm talking about
| it from a perspective of a Pole. Maybe if you live
| elsewhere you just don't feel that way - but I don't see
| any reason to describe this theory as "cartoonish".
|
| >>No one would be scared of a military managing to
| destroy something on their own soil.
|
| Yeah, except that pipeline wasn't destroyed on Russia's
| own soil, was it?
| m348e912 wrote:
| I don't agree with your assessment but I upvoted you
| anyway. Not sure why you were downvoted.
| chimen wrote:
| I would say Ukraine destroyed it. They are, at this moment,
| the only ones with a benefit in having Europe unable to
| received Russian gas any more. It's either Ukraine or the
| US which has popcorn in the microwave at this war by proxy
| which bleeds Russia of resources down to nothing. My 2c
| ajross wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-formally-blames-
| sabotage-f... https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/28/politics/nord-
| stream-pipeline...
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-
| national-s...
|
| It's at the point now where you have to believe that every
| government in the west is outright lying about this to buy
| a scenario other than "Putin did it to burn his bridges and
| prevent a coup". Now, this is the internet, so surely there
| will be plenty of people in this topic willing to
| disbelieve their governments. But it's good enough for me.
| [deleted]
| jaywalk wrote:
| You don't have to believe that every government in the
| West is lying about it. You just have to believe that one
| government (the one who did it) is lying, and the rest
| don't know because they weren't told.
| bombcar wrote:
| You don't even need one government to lie; you only need
| a small portion thereof.
|
| And if you did it right, you could have setup this whole
| procedure ages ago and then have complete deniability.
| Izkata wrote:
| You don't even need a small portion to lie, you can just
| take them at their word:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-german-chancellor-
| nord-st...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _You just have to believe that one government (the one
| who did it) is lying, and the rest don 't know because
| they weren't told._
|
| Or the rest figure it out and independently conclude that
| siding with NATO is still their best choice, so they
| better keep up the lie and avoid the drama of calling out
| their ally.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Now, this is the internet, so surely there will be
| plenty of people in this topic willing to disbelieve
| their governments.
|
| Can you even imagine? Degenerates who don't trust their
| own governments? _Verrater_.
|
| Being mildly skeptical of one government is... _fine_...
| but two who are allies? Eight who are allies? The
| official Nato position? Surely, at some point they all
| become infallible.
|
| Don't discredit your own fatherland, mensch.
| mc32 wrote:
| If we're going with that speculation then we could also
| speculate there is a small likelihood someone doesn't
| want someone else get cold feet and Kapitulieren in the
| middle of a bitter cold winter.
| landemva wrote:
| No options now to turn on the pipeline.
|
| I recall USA sabotaged a USSR pipeline way back in 1980s.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/2
| 7/r...
| m348e912 wrote:
| The way the article reads it's not clear if the US
| sabotaged software that was ultimately stolen by the
| Russians and used on pipelines or if the US intentionally
| and covertly transferred the flawed technology through
| more legitimate channels.
| landemva wrote:
| I recall it as USA found out from a spy the shopping
| list, and created sabotaged items that would be stolen.
| Supposedly the explosion shockwaves were expected by a
| few USA insiders. I have yet to read the referenced book,
| though it looks like a fascinating (though white-washed)
| read.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Ah yes, this is straight from Sun Tzu. Attack thyself. /s
| marcfr wrote:
| Quite honestly, if a bank robber goes into a bank and
| shoots himself into his foot, saying: 'now imagine what I
| could do to you' - I'd be pretty impressed!
|
| Related, an article in the WaPo about this behavior: https:
| //www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/r...
| mc32 wrote:
| What's the advantage of blowing up a pipeline over simply
| shutting the valve when you control the valve AND supply?
| ajross wrote:
| Removing the incentive for your own power structure to
| knife you in the back to get the gas pipe turned back on.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think they have special "camps" and unfortunate mundane
| accidents such as inopportune tripping hazards next to
| open 10th floor windows and landlubbers swimming in open
| ocean for that.
| Rexxar wrote:
| Show everybody that you can to it on other pipelines while
| doing it only on a currently useless one (I answer the
| question by giving one possible advantage, I have no
| opinion on the real cause at the moment)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| As a show of force I will destroy one of my own
| battalions. _Watch out world: I could do the same to
| yours!_
| mc32 wrote:
| Exactly. Except for Intelligence agencies, we do not know
| who did it. However, the media consensus is that the
| enemy did self sabotage to show us they can do bad
| things? We know they very well can do bad things. They do
| not have to prove it.
|
| Hell, GWBush was an inch away from approving tactical
| nuke use in Afghanistan but ultimately talked out of it
| and opted for the MOAB, but now a cornered rat thinking
| about it is now crazy? Does that mean GWB was crazy too?
| mc32 wrote:
| There is little value in crazy showing crazy can do crazy
| things. We know crazy can do crazy. It like Kim, jung-un
| --it does not have to show us it is willing to lob a
| nuke, we know it would lob one if if needed to for self-
| preservation. These are rational actors, their reasoning
| might be foreign to us and operate differently, but they
| act within their own rational frameworks.
| Rexxar wrote:
| > There is little value in crazy showing crazy can do
| crazy things
|
| There can be some strategical value in some situation to
| be perceived as crazy.
|
| > These are rational actors
|
| Probably but it's not 100% guaranteed
| mrtksn wrote:
| 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 there's no simple answer for energy issues and countries
| don't simply build or close down power plants over single
| issue? Maybe it wasn't done just to please some tree huggers?
|
| Maybe someone in Germany could have had crunched the numbers
| too and see the risks? Maybe some politicians were too close to
| fossil fuel money? Maybe it was considered as a way to keep the
| relationship with Russia profitable for Russia and encourage
| Russia to build good relationships with their primary customer?
| Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as an
| alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without USA?
| Maybe they wanted to reduce their footing in Africa by not
| relying for them in Uranium production? Maybe it make more
| economical sense to use the non-nuclear solutions?
|
| Just maybe it wasn't a single issue decision even if it didn't
| play out as hoped? Europe is acutely aware of its tight energy
| situation, that's why they have been regulating the efficiency
| since decades, it's not coincidence that in Europe everything
| is very energy efficient. They squeezed it to the point where
| faster water heaters and more powerful vacuums were presented
| as Brexit benefits.
|
| Oh, I'm so fed up by this culture war.
| mjthrowaway1 wrote:
| While the arguments are repetitive this isn't a culture war.
| The EU made its bed (or more likely, imported it) and now has
| to sleep in it. Deindustrialization has been ongoing.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| In California, I get physical mail pamphlets that help me
| prepare for power outages and what I should do to reduce
| quality of life. It's not from PG&E, but our city.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I don't think this part of living in the future was
| predicted on _The Jetsons_
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Oh my, I didn't realize The Jetsons aired in 1962:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jetsons
|
| Thats 60 years ago. Wow.
| dsr_ wrote:
| George Jetson's birthdate is arguably this year.
| landemva wrote:
| German government published a cookbook to teach people
| how to cook without electricity.
|
| "Kochen ohne Strom" https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pr
| essemitteilungen/DE/202...
|
| It would have been useful to keep coal powered electric
| plants in use and stocked with a mountain of coal.
| cinntaile wrote:
| They will likely keep some coal plants online longer than
| was originally planned, so that is definitely a thing.
| They even restarted some plants to reduce their current
| dependency on Russian gas.
| landemva wrote:
| There have been logistics issues getting coal to the
| plants. It feels like energy production followed the
| manufacturing motto of "just in time" instead of
| stockpiling the input coal. This lack of resilience was
| unnecessary.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I am not aware cial, usually shipped in bulk and very
| easily stored, was ever delivered JIT. But whatever, JIT
| was already the reason why the chip supply from Asia to
| overseas car factories was disrupted, at least according
| to certain people without the slightest clue of how JIT
| works. Or supply chains in general...
| cinntaile wrote:
| It is an ad hoc solution to the current situation so I'm
| not surprised it's not exactly smooth sailing. It doesn't
| help that they recently shut down some of their reactors,
| they could have at least kept them open until the
| situation stabilized.
| medo-bear wrote:
| > The EU made its bed (or more likely, imported it) and now
| has to sleep in it
|
| we should have taken the US more seriously when they said
| to buy US oil. not wise to piss the US off
| adventured wrote:
| 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.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| This has nothing to do with scapegoating, the US military
| literally attacked european infrastructure this week
| ben_w wrote:
| Really? Where?
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| It was almost certainly a state actor behind the
| destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines recently.
| https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/another-nord-
| stream-l...
|
| A former Polish Minister of Defense posted "Thankyou USA"
| to Twitter after the attack. Various US officials have
| made public statements since the start of 2022 stating
| the US wouldn't allow Nord Stream to go forward. The
| whole reason the pipelines were built was for Russia to
| cut out the Ukrainian/Polish middlemen (transit fees)
| involved in selling gas to Germany, so the Russians don't
| have any incentive to blow up their own pipeline.
| ben_w wrote:
| I agree that a state actor was involved.
|
| I disagree that Russia has no incentive.
|
| While the USA obviously has the means and more than zero
| motivation, I don't see this type of infrastructure
| damage so close to allies as likely. Especially given the
| EU was already in the process of permanently ending the
| purchase of all Russian gas, not just these pipelines.
|
| Russia, however, is looking at one never-opened pipeline
| and one already-offline pipeline, which is going to a
| bloc that has announced that it won't pay as much as
| Russia is asking for its gas, won't pay in the currency
| Russia is demanding, and wants to rapidly move away from
| Russian gas entirely, and which is currently sanctioning
| against Russia. Russia appears to believe that cutting
| off gas to Europe will end European support for Ukraine,
| and therefore has an obvious incentive to cut it off.
| Russia has incentives to make this look like it isn't
| Russia's fault, for the same reason anyone who might have
| done this would have had an incentive to hide their own
| identity.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It was probably Russia, Germany would be to pissed if
| Biden did that
| retinaros wrote:
| u mean like when ukrained was trained by us operative,
| its leadership selected by us operative and using us
| weapons . the only country that used nuclear are the usa.
| i wouldnt trust them not to push for a nuclear attack
| again
| pkaye wrote:
| It was not just US but includes UK and Canada and the
| NATO organization.
|
| https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/S
| N07...
| retinaros wrote:
| nato is usa
| medo-bear wrote:
| i have thoroughly enjoyed americans enjoying this and
| telling everyone i told you so
| finikytou wrote:
| france nuclear was fine until macron five years ago pushed
| for decommissioning 15 reactors (the 15 he wants to open
| after 5 years...) and obviously by sending the signal that it
| was not the industry for the future of france investments
| into its future stopped just liked the CEO of EDF said "we
| didnt hire people to build reactor or even maintain those we
| focused on hiring people to decomission reactors" and guess
| what they arent many people in this field. its not IT. people
| who know are either retired or dead.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Yeah 100%, given we need to keep our nuclears now on to
| mainly support France's rotten ones and neglecting the
| lobbying and corruption that happened and didn't get us much
| further away from fossil+nuclear (we are shedding wind and
| bio gas right now again) is the actual depressing thing..
| anovikov wrote:
| Thank you! Agree with all of it except
|
| >Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as
| an alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without
| USA?
|
| The decision to rely on Russia was made when USA was a net
| energy importer, with some dependence on natural gas from
| Canada, and terrible dependence on oil from whoever could
| offer any.
|
| To add to that, nuclear was phased out to a large degree
| because it gets in the way of renewables, as it's impossible
| to regulate. Nuclear reactor is pretty much an on/off thing
| and can't safely operate on power levels much under 100%
| continuously, and if it's off, it can only be restarted in a
| day, or even a few days. It makes balancing the grid
| including a lot of intermittent renewables, a huge headache.
| Renewables already provide more electricity in EU than
| nuclear ever did, and they cost a lot less to build, and
| almost all of them were built in less time than it takes to
| build a single nuclear reactor.
|
| Speaking of the future, all of this discussion is meaningless
| again, because of time. If we start today, electricity will
| be 100% solved by renewables everywhere in EU before any new
| nuclear can be commissioned.
| champtar wrote:
| French nuclear reactor can vary their power +-80% in 30min
| (article in french
| https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suivi_de_charge)
| sascha_sl wrote:
| > as it turns out nuclear power plants require long regular
| maintenance periods.
|
| That's because everyone has been operating their PWRs/BWRs
| way beyond the design lifespan, which would be fine if we
| didn't just stop building new ones in the past 20-40 years
| (depending on country) to prevent too many of them needing
| regular maintenance at once.
| godelski wrote:
| This is something I never understand about the anti-nuclear
| crowd. There are plenty of good arguments against nuclear
| but most often the ones used are not that great.[0] I mean
| we could talk about the expense of them and that they
| require long-term investments, making them not attractive
| to bureaucrats and political leaders, which led to the
| situation of extending lifetimes, losing knowledge, and
| increasing maintenance periods. Which let's be real, that's
| a critical flaw if it requires humans to act in ways that
| aren't what humans typically do. But maybe that's why we
| always fight. I mean the pro nuclear camp isn't that much
| better as there are plenty of people arguing for it that
| don't know the difference between a beta+ and beta-
| particle.
|
| Then again, the parent says all these things and goes to
| the culture war. Feels a bit all over the place to me.
| Though it does seem that a lot of these issues are all
| caused by us trying to act more intelligent than we are and
| social signaling. But I don't think that's what the parent
| was saying.
|
| [0] You could also easily make the argument that we
| wouldn't be in this mess if Germany didn't shut down their
| nuclear plants early because doing so increased their
| dependence on France and Russia for power. But this also
| isn't that great of an argument.
| wolpoli wrote:
| > There are plenty of good arguments against nuclear but
| most often the ones used are not that great.
|
| I suspect that the cost-based anti-nuclear arguments
| aren't really meant for the crowd that understands
| budgeting or long term planning, since the arguments tend
| to highlight numbers out of context. It's really meant to
| create short, stand-alone soundbites that could be
| repeated in social media posts and news articles.
| godelski wrote:
| I mean the cost issues are pretty complex themselves.
| We've seen that estimates are unreliable because every
| time we build a new reactor we have to rebuild the entire
| tooling and supply chain. Westinghouse filed bankruptcy
| over exactly this issue. So are we discussing building
| one reactor? A few? Or a hundred? But are we also
| discussing rolling out a hundred and then not building
| many again for decades? There's also bureaucratic issues
| that prevent newer and cheaper reactors from being built.
| Some of those issues have merit and others don't. I think
| it is easy to oversimplify the issues here, especially
| when we mostly get social media soundbites and
| explanations from news articles that don't consult
| various experts. I just think it is hard to garner a
| strong opinion without also having deep knowledge.
| glaucon wrote:
| >don't know the difference between a beta+ and beta-
| particle.
|
| I don't know the difference between a beta+ and beta-
| particle so please tell me, why would my, positive to
| some degree, views on nuclear energy be more valid if I
| did ?
| godelski wrote:
| So it is basically an example of basic knowledge.
| Something you'd learn in Chapter 1 of an introductory
| textbook. If you do not know this knowledge it is
| impossible for you to also know much about nuclear
| theory. A litmus test if you will.
|
| Now what does this specific test have to do with nuclear
| energy? I'll be honest that the specific example only has
| a little, and that's to do with waste. These particles
| are common forms of radiation and knowing how they
| interact is important in understanding safety and
| longevity of waste. (our decay typically comes in the
| form of alpha, beta, neutron, and gamma)
|
| I do want to be clear though, that this doesn't -- and
| shouldn't -- stop you from having an opinion. But it
| should note how strong those opinions should be, as it is
| naive to have strong opinions on topics you also do not
| care to learn about the details. This is more what I'm
| getting at. Strong opinions matched with weak knowledge
| is a dangerous situation. The key part being the strength
| of the opinion, not existence.
|
| I also don't think this disqualifies other types of
| opinions that you can have about nuclear (or other
| topics). An economist could not have any working nuclear
| theory knowledge but also be well qualified discussing
| the cost. But they may also not be well qualified to
| discuss the cost of decommission or waste without the
| support/collaboration of someone with working nuclear
| theory. At least we can recognize that without the
| combined effort that the opinion is limited in accuracy.
| (this is also true in the reverse direction fwiw)
|
| So for some signals that may help you navigate this space
| (these are not absolute, mind you, but there is a
| tendency).
|
| Pro-nuclear armchair experts tend to hype up thorium,
| ignore costs, claiming nuclear's issue is only fear, and
| dismissing the waste issue completely.
|
| Anti-nuclear armchair experts tend to exaggerate the
| waste issue, ignore developments over the last half
| century, and pit nuclear against renewables (a position
| no scientist actually has. Our opinion is that nuclear is
| a zero carbon energy source and should be _on the table_.
| Which isn't a strong stance btw).
|
| But mainly I think the issue is that in a world of ever
| increasing complexity we are also gaining access to large
| amounts of high level knowledge and internalizing that as
| expertise. I do think this is a recipe for disaster and
| we're already seeing the effects of it. We see this
| commonly in climate discussions. Where even the pro-green
| people are not always aligned with the scientists albeit
| substantially closer in alignment than the anti-climate
| people. But climate is one of the most (if not them most)
| complex issues humanity has ever faced. Unfortunately
| complex issues require substantial amounts of nuance and
| require complex solutions. Which ironically includes
| political support which is hard to garner without these
| same high level explanations. I'm not sure there's a good
| solution to all this tbh.
| adventured wrote:
| 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 and engineering
| capabilities. Their main reason for not doing it (fear)
| is heavy in emotionalism, irrationality.
| godelski wrote:
| > 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.
| janef0421 wrote:
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| This seems a bit naive. While money is a social construct
| it is also a proxy for resources. Also, to be clear, just
| because things are socially constructed doesn't mean they
| aren't useful. Most things are social constructs.
| janef0421 wrote:
| Money is a useful proxy when used to allocate resources
| to individual economic agents, but is not useful when
| analysing and coordinating an entire economy. In fact,
| the loss of fine-grained information and introduction of
| social subjectivity is often highly counter-productive.
| godelski wrote:
| I think I understand what you're saying? That money isn't
| a good proxy for issues of things like shared resources.
| A la tragedy of the commons types of issues? If that's
| what you're saying then I fully agree. Money has been a
| great tool for proxying local economic effects and
| facilitating trade but it is not nuanced enough to
| capture more long range phenomena like ToC. But I do feel
| like this is where governments are supposed to step in.
| While I'm pretty critical of authority I do see this
| aspect as part of the need for strong governments and
| limitations to pure democracies, as we have yet to find a
| structure where large swaths of the population can either
| be accurately informed or where we can have sufficient
| reliance upon experts. Obviously too much in the other
| direction (authoritarianism) comes with its own slew of
| problems (ones I think are worse).
|
| (I do think a wide distribution of ideas that we can
| sample from, with a fairly normal-ish looking
| distribution, creates a powerful framework to build
| democracies. You do need anarchists, nationalists, and
| extremists, but not in large potions. When the mean
| shifts to any of these I think the system becomes
| unstable. But neither should we truncate the
| distribution.)
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| > Anyway, France is full blown nuclear state ...
|
| ... with a fuel cycle that goes through a breeder in Seversk,
| Russia
|
| ... with no long term plan for low radioactive waste and
| contaminated equipment
|
| ... with almost no uranium deposits worth exploiting left
|
| as is true for all of europa
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| No, what is sent to Seversk is not just the spent fuel, but
| also radioactive material that was used during the
| treatment of the spent fuel.
|
| No, the fuel cycle doesn't depend on Seversk, the contract
| from EDF was signed in 2018 (and EDF says that nothing was
| sent yet)
|
| No, this is not even the fuel cycle, Orano signed a
| contract with Rosatom so that they could send spent URT and
| Rosatom uses it for their own reactors. Literally selling
| spent fuel (instead of burying it)
|
| No, you are lying, there are plans both for long term
| storage (Cigeo) and for low radioactive waste which the
| Andra handles. (https://www.irsn.fr/FR/connaissances/Instal
| lations_nucleaire...)
|
| No, you are lying once again. The uranium deposits are not
| worth exploiting because it is currently cheaper to get
| mines in say, Niger, but Europe still has large potential
| mining sites, and extracting it from lignite is easy.
|
| So, no, your sources are Greenpeace and are lying.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| >> _No, the fuel cycle doesn 't depend on Seversk_ +
| "Literally selling spent fuel" (instead of burying it)
|
| well, if you put it that way, then the fuel cycle doesn't
| even exist at all, france just imports fresh uranium from
| Russia, Nigeria, Kazhakstan and Australia and sells spent
| fuel to Russia.
|
| > _and EDF says that nothing was sent yet_
|
| under that new contract maybe, here is an article from
| 2009 in which EDF _" told news agency AFP that it is only
| "recyclable uranium from fuel processing at EDF nuclear
| power stations that is transported to Russia to be
| enriched."_ - rfi.fr/actuen/articles/118/article_5481.asp
|
| > _No, you are lying once again. The uranium deposits are
| not worth exploiting_
|
| that is literally what i said. They are not worth
| exploiting
|
| _> So, no, your sources are Greenpeace and are lying._
|
| that is just low effort insults, here have an IAEA
| uranium deposit database: https://infcis.iaea.org/UDEPO/
| France largest "reserves" are the trace amounts in the
| rocks around a mine they closed 21 years ago. Even if the
| price rises to a point where exploitation of those trace
| amounts becomes worthwhile again, there are no large
| reserves in europa, we are talking a demand in the
| thousands of tons per year.
|
| The nuclear industry in europa depends on imports, stop
| peddling some makebelieve about large untapped reserves
| with which europa could theoretically become energy
| independent if they would just use them. It is
| nonsensical
| rglover wrote:
| https://youtu.be/mTHchH9VRh0?t=34
| sbf501 wrote:
| You provide such a wonderful list of factors that may/may-not
| have contributed to a this crisis that I went cross-eyed and
| drooled a little at the depth of the complexity. But isn't it
| a little ironic that you end by blaming the culture war?
| We're literally a part of it, and it is an enormous obstacle
| to enacting policies in a rational way. It's not something we
| can bail-out on, like people fleeing to Canada when they
| don't get their way in US politics, instead it is something
| that has to be embraced and worked within as a medium, for
| better or for worse. I'm reading a book about early humanists
| in 15th century Italy and the issues are exactly the same.
| Culture wars are wars of rhetoric and polemic, and will
| always be with us. Best to master them, no?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not anti-nuclear and I don't have a problem discussing
| it as an option. I have a problem with repetitive arguments
| that push an agenda though. The "Only if they hadn't closed
| those few plants everything would have been perfect"
| argument is not only false but is pushing an agenda that is
| part of the culture war.
|
| Notice the OP doesn't even mention the environmentalists
| etc. but the comment is instantly recognisable. It's the
| same talking point that needs to be repeated every single
| time.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| 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.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The solution is not obvious, it's obvious only to zealots.
| It's kind of obvious that the solution is in PHV and wind
| energy but you can fight it to death with people who would
| claim that it's obvious that the solution is Nuclear
| energy.
|
| This is not a good discussion, this is fanatics fighting.
| Anytime someone suggest simple solution to a big problem
| %99.9 of the time they don't actually have a simple and
| obvious solution.
| yakak wrote:
| Europe's gas problem is entirely theoretical and goes
| away if any part of Russia exists and wants to be part of
| society at the end of the winter, or if 2 in 3 Europeans
| can follow simple directions to not be selfish and dead.
|
| I find it tiring that any country that plays chicken with
| the superpowers gets all these warnings and abuse while
| the superpowers themselves do not give a crap who does
| what to undo their progress to Armageddon.
|
| Germany was right to give Russia an option not to suck,
| the idea that Russia would not already suck worse by now
| and yet still be a military superpower if Germany didn't
| try to keep a vague semblance of balance in economics is
| a fantasy.
|
| Is it seriously believable that Russia would have done
| nothing with violence by now to force changes in the
| economics if the west was shunning its natural resources
| for strategic reasons since the 1990's?
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Although I think Smartgrids and all technology close-by
| including usage counters would really make a difference.
| No matter if you're for renewables or even Nuclear.
| Considering how much energy goes to waste because of
| inefficient usage. Every 60W laptop has an elaborate
| power management but multi kW homes aren't even close.
|
| Still that's just one building block obviously...
| Amezarak wrote:
| Increasing complexity decreases resiliency and
| reliability.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| But one part of Smart grids is just measuring everything.
| Another part is decentralization which actually increases
| resiliency. In a positive light it's probably a bit like
| Internet vs. telephone network. Higher complexity but the
| tools are there to make it work
| [deleted]
| origin_path wrote:
| Pumped hydro is very limited and most resources are
| already exploited. Wind energy is not a solution because
| sometimes it just doesn't appear when you need it.
|
| Nuclear actually is a solution, in the sense that if you
| implement it, the problem will go away. Renewables are
| not a solution in the sense that even if you over-
| implement to an absurd degree, with present technology
| the problem will sometimes remain.
|
| The people pointing this out are not zealots, they're
| people with a basic understanding of how electricity
| works. It's the people who insist against basic physics
| that renewables can power 100% of the grid that are the
| zealots, and now we all will pay the price for
| accommodating their extremism :(
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is an overdone and incorrect response.
|
| Variable renewable sources can't power 100% of the grid,
| but they can easily power 80% of it without any of the
| normal whatabout problems. Renewables could also power
| 120% of the grid without problems, interesting variable
| loads to take up the extra very cheap energy would
| manifest soon enough.
|
| Claiming exactly 100% is full of problems is true,
| pedantic, and nowhere close to any reality which would
| happen.
|
| Of course there will be a mixture of power sources,
| relax. You can develop a lot of variable renewables
| before the issues come up.
|
| Europe needs to develop every power source at the same
| time, distributing resources compromising for risk,
| several time frames, and cost. This involves a solar/wind
| heavy mix along with longer term nuclear developments and
| large scale energy imports from North America.
| drran wrote:
| Cheap long time storage methods, like "Sand battery"[0],
| can change the equation.
|
| [0]: https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _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 nuclear instead), but I think both are better than
| the political autonomy of an entire subcontinent being
| threatened by a belligerent foe.
| yorwba wrote:
| > 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/internatio
| nal_organization/euro...
|
| Put together, 6.5% of gross available energy in the EU
| was from Russian gas.
|
| It's not so obvious that that is a problematic level of
| reliance threatening the political autonomy of an entire
| subcontinent.
|
| If it meant that 6.5% of the population will be left
| without any energy, that would be quite terrible. If it
| meant a 6.5% drop in GDP per capita PPP, it would be
| worse than the drop from 2019 to 2020, but still only
| throw the EU economy back to 2013 levels.
|
| That doesn't mean it isn't worth planning ahead for the
| consequences of reduced energy availability, but maybe we
| don't need to panic, either.
| ben_w wrote:
| 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.
| yorwba wrote:
| Yes, the price increase is larger than the reduction in
| supply. Nobody wants to reduce their energy use by 6.5%,
| so everyone is trying to snatch up as much of the shrunk
| energy pie as possible, bidding up the prices in the
| process.
|
| But there's a limit to the price war. At some point, a
| factory making widgets is going to look at price
| increases that make the cost of producing a widget
| greater than its expected sale price, at which point
| they'll probably stop their production lines, unless they
| feel like setting money on fire to keep them running.
| Those factory closures then provide for the necessary
| reduction in energy use. But everyone else still needs to
| pay the higher prices.
|
| Fortunately, higher energy prices also incentivize
| increasing supply from alternative sources, so the EU
| probably won't have to reduce energy use by the full
| 6.5%. And as long as people setting money on fire are
| sufficiently rare, it will be energy-intensive, low-
| profitabilty users who give up first, so the economy
| likely won't shrink by 6.5% either. But a larger fraction
| will be captured by energy suppliers as profit.
| neodypsis wrote:
| > The problem of relying on Russia for energy was
| obvious.
|
| Indeed. Always found it strange that Germany didn't see a
| problem with relying on Russia for their main energy
| source.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Motivated reasoning. Cheap energy is extremely
| attractive, so seemingly obvious downsides can be swept
| under the rug.
| caeril wrote:
| I think this is very _human_ reasoning.
|
| 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.
|
| During the early days of COVID, some people started
| coming around to preppers being not-so-crazy-after-all,
| which lasted for precisely a few months before the toilet
| paper returned and preparedness being an acceptable idea
| left mainstream thought.
|
| Expediency and lifestyle will _always_ trump prudence in
| the human mind. It 's the primary reason we will
| eventually exterminate ourselves, regardless of the
| specific existential risk we succumb to. The Great Filter
| is no great mystery.
| ericmay wrote:
| > 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 publishes info on
| emergency disaster preparedness kits and other things
| too.
| mullen wrote:
| 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.
| megous wrote:
| Germans would have happily helped train Russian military
| if 2014 did not happen. Money's good.
| hef19898 wrote:
| 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.
| megous wrote:
| https://www.dw.com/en/rheinmetall-poised-to-honor-
| military-d...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Some quick numbers: 2020/21 exports of weapons from EU
| cointries to Russia were aroind 100 million (or
| thereabouts, might even include icebreakers, good luck
| using those for conquering Mariupol). Since February 2022
| EU countries committed to send 2.5 _billion_ of military
| gear to the Ukrainian forces.
|
| I guess details and context still matter.
| mantas wrote:
| Germany (along with France and others) supplied military-
| related stuff to Russia, even after 2014.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Under contracts signed _before_ 2014. Seems like a detail
| worth mentioning.
|
| EDIT: Which is bad reason, but at least an understandable
| when it comes to foreign policy. And it is not that arms
| exports are actually hindered by morals, all the exports
| to Saudi, UAE, Mexico and every other crisis region show
| otherwise. Personally, I think the West shouldn't export
| to those countries or conflict zones. The West also needs
| the industrial base to maintain reasonably strong
| militaries so, and with defense spending being a less
| than popular thing after the Cold War ended, exports are
| necessary for that. This could change so, and already did
| in Germany with additional military spending.
| mecsred wrote:
| "The solution is not obvious, it's obvious only to
| zealots. It's kind of obvious that the solution is [...]"
|
| Seriously?
| jlmorton wrote:
| There were legitimate reasons to be wary of becoming
| dependent on Russian energy supplies. There were also
| legitimate reasons to pursue tighter economic integration,
| which when it comes down it, is the entire raison d'etre
| for the EU. There were also legitimate reasons to pursue
| cheap, reliable natural gas.
|
| Trying to now pretend, ex post facto, that this was
| strikingly obvious and the result of incompetent leadership
| is profoundly narrow-sighted.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I agree, none of this was blatantly obvious and a lot of
| aspects need to be taken into account. The world isn't
| black and white even though it would be nice if it was at
| times.
| [deleted]
| finikytou wrote:
| many people in usa laughed at trump, called him a racist
| for wanting to block china trades and having some of the
| 20's policy of america 1st. turns out biden pushed those by
| an extent trump wouldn't dream of and everyone is fine with
| it now. leadership is corrupt and just want power even if
| it means bringing our nations to their knees.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| > The people are fed up with dangerously incompetent
| leadership
|
| When thinking of politicians, Intelligence is not an
| attribute which comes naturally to my mind.
|
| Yet the absence of intelligence in karge swaths of green
| politicians is striking. Im specifically talking about the
| German green movement, not generalising.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Like being inteligent enough to prolong nuclear reactor
| runtimes, signing LNG deals with the UAE, fillong up gas
| reservoirs faster than anticipated, pushing for military
| aide for Ukraine, figuring out fallback plans for
| potential gas shortages?
|
| Yeah, absolutely stupid things to do in the current
| situation.
| subsubzero wrote:
| 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.
| xienze wrote:
| > Maybe there's no simple answer for energy issues and
| countries don't simply build or close down power plants over
| single issue?
|
| Well, two things. One, pretty sure the push to shut down
| Germany's nuclear plants was a response to a single issue,
| Fukushima.
|
| Two, one simple answer to this particular situation is to
| assess your energy independence before sanctioning the
| country you rely on for natural gas. Germany is getting raked
| over the coals with the same talking points precisely because
| they walked into a situation they weren't well-equipped to
| handle.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Nuclear power plant construction is flat since Chernobyl
| and seen slight decline after Fukushima: https://dropover.c
| loud/ec077b#c8239728-7d32-49ab-98c7-865fb0...
|
| Safety concerns are definitely an issue that can nudge you
| to prefer alternative sources but this doesn't make it
| single issue. It's simply one of the things you consider.
|
| As you can see, despite NPP construction stalling in late
| 1980s, world energy consumption continued to increase:
| https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
|
| This simply means, considering the risks and cost of all
| energy sources, nuclear power fell unfavourably. Doesn't
| mean single issue.
| godelski wrote:
| I think this is mostly due to the fact that the advantage
| of nuclear is long term and humans -- and especially
| politicians and bureaucrats -- aren't good at long term
| planning. Globally we basically rolled out a bunch of
| nuclear plants and went "welp, that'll hold us off for
| the next 50-60 years." It's like exercising and eating
| right for a year and expecting this to keep you healthy
| for decades as you eat poorly with little to no exercise.
| Maintenance and continual production is key to cost
| reduction and advancement but this is something nuclear
| never got. I really do think nuclear's biggest flaw is
| its lifespan. Just allows people to get lazy.
| landemva wrote:
| > assess your energy independence before sanctioning the
| country you rely on for natural gas.
|
| Trump blurted that to the Germans around 2019. The press
| brushed it off as "highly misleading".
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/trump-is-exaggerating-
| german...
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Trump blurted that to the Germans around 2019. The press
| brushed it off as "highly misleading".
|
| And the Germans literally laughed in his face:
| https://youtu.be/FfJv9QYrlwg
|
| Pretty hard to watch now. The smugness is palpable.
| aiilns wrote:
| > President Donald Trump repeated a highly misleading
| claim on Friday that Germany will soon depend on Russia
| for 50 percent to 70 percent of its energy needs.
|
| Then the article spends significant time pointing out
| that Russian natural gas plays only a small part in
| Germany's total demands in energy, citing numbers like
| 20% & 13% and thus Trump's claim is am exaggeration.
|
| And then goes on to say:
|
| > To be sure, Russia also accounted for about 40 percent
| of Germany's crude oil imports and 30 percent of its
| foreign coal supplies in 2016, according to IEA. But that
| hardly makes it an outlier in Europe.
|
| How is that glossed over? Is it just me or - I hate to
| say it - Trump actually had a point?
| jskrablin wrote:
| I tend to think that Trump is not the sharpest knife in
| the drawer. Now thinking about people/politicians that
| laugh him off when they were warned about energy
| dependence on Russia... they must be dumb AF or bribed by
| Putin or both.
|
| EU/Germany energy politics were/are a trainwreck and that
| was obvious for at least a decade. Instead of recognizing
| the obvious warning in 2014, most of the continent
| doubled down on Russia energy dependency.
|
| As a citizen of EU county - this is depressing. Most of
| our political elite should be locked up somewhere and
| keys tossed away. They are directly responsible for the
| clusterf*ck that follows.
| landemva wrote:
| He has been shown to have been correct on this. I think
| he was also correct to ask Europe to fund NATO on their
| own. As USA taxpayer, I don't want to pay for it.
| Europeans know where they live and their history.
| godelski wrote:
| This is a bit tricky and I don't think many consider it.
| One of the leading theories for peace in Europe is the
| lack of militarization in Europe. Countries with standing
| armies are more likely to go to war with one another. So
| we got the rise of superpowers and where better to place
| that superpower than across an ocean and in an area with
| few contested borders and not thousands of years of
| history of fighting? I mean it seems the other approach
| is akin to what China did. Just be successful in
| conquering the region.
|
| Obviously this point is _highly_ debatable but it is
| worth consideration. And it is not like the US hasn't
| benefited from the military industrial complex. Though I
| do think the funding structure could be reworked or we at
| least acknowledge that this is what is happening.
| retinaros wrote:
| we dont want nato it was pushed on us. no one ever voted
| for being a tool in the us armada. you know the usa that
| would definitly go crazy if russia or china had weapons
| in mexico but see no problem of doing the same. one day u
| will understand that american people live well because
| their number one investment is their army and nato
| godelski wrote:
| > Is it just me or - I hate to say it - Trump actually
| had a point?
|
| I'm not sure why people are afraid to say this. He has
| literally said everything under the sun. You throw enough
| darts and you're bound to eventually hit the board.
| Supporters just focus on the hits and don't pay attention
| to the misses, but this isn't different from any populist
| (I mean look at Musk. If you keep predicting that
| autopilot is a year away you'll eventually be right and
| that's all we'll ever remember)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| HN doesn't think in memes more than before. It's just you who
| percieve commenters to be NPCs because the same things keep
| getting upvoted.
|
| > Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as
| an alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without
| USA?
|
| Considering the EU's actions since the war started we can
| safely discard this theory.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yeah, because the war Ukraine was no valid reason to revise
| whatever plan you had before...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Hmm? Could you be more coy and less direct in your
| replies, please?
|
| Did Russia transform from a cosmopolitan, Western
| European-loving, tolerant nation with fantastic relations
| to the EU overnight into a savage brute in Feb 2022? Or
| was it always at least a little bit backwards, clearly
| not democratic, sphere of influence-envious, and had
| already arguably been at indirect war with Ukraine since
| _2014_?
|
| To claim that Germany/EU wanted closer relations with the
| Russian Empire contra the American Empire is clearly
| asinine if you look at the actions of Germany/EU.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Since Europe has not enough natural resources to be self
| reliant, and the US only has enough oil gas due to
| fracking, there is no alternative other than dealing with
| oppressive, human rights ignoring regimes. Iran is under
| sanctions, the UAE and Saudi are by no means better the
| Putin at his worst days (we in the West just don't give a
| damn about the war in Sudan and Yemen). And yes, closer
| relationships to Russia are, well have been, a good
| thing.
|
| Russia decided to throw all that away in a failed bid to
| keep NATO away from their borders. Or rather Putin did.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| That's better. Thanks.
| scrubs wrote:
| What? Russia better than Saudi Arabia? The Saudis are
| neither stupid enough to attack something like Ukraine
| nor do they have the backbone to even think about it.
| They're not as caught up in cold wars or bemoaning their
| version of what Gorbachev did. Human rights aside
| wouldn't most petrol customers prefer SA over Russia?
| Granted, Europe and Germany esp. didn't but then again
| trade was supposed to mute the stupidity of the Russian
| government and that didn't ultimately work.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Culture is preference. Democracy is voting preference.
| Authoritarians get fed up with competing preferences and
| squash other preferences/opinions but risk making the wrong
| decisions.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| It was Europe's decision to halt gas imports, not Russia's.
| rr888 wrote:
| 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.
| brabel wrote:
| It's too late... the scene is already set up for the next big
| war.
|
| We're in a situation where the hate between both sides is
| very close to the surface, no one is trying to hide it
| anymore.
|
| All that's needed now is one excuse... as it happened so many
| times before, for centuries... one small thing - an important
| figure murder, a bomb that lands on the wrong side of the
| border (accidentally?)... the destruction of NordStream,
| which I thought would be enough to start a full scale
| conflict with Russia, but for some reason hasn't yet (though
| it remains to be seen). It's very clear that what we're
| seeing today looks exactly like what we saw just before other
| large wars: a mostly regional conflict that serves as a proxy
| conflict between the bigger players causes the hostile
| rethoric on both sides to grow more and more, until the
| population not only supports a conflict, but demands it.
| Whether or not the news are telling the truth (which anyone
| who was there in previous situations like this, including
| Iraq not so long ago, knows is full of lies and uncontested
| half-truths from both sides) doesn't even matter anymore.
| It's a matter of time, you can be sure of that.
| odiroot wrote:
| Sorry but from the perspective of Central Europe, the times
| when Russian and Germany are friendly, have been the most
| dreadful. We barely avoided it this time.
| hef19898 wrote:
| So, those times were worse than WW1, WW2? Interesting
| perspextive, that...
| odiroot wrote:
| Interestingly, WW2 was one of these times.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Barbarossa might have a word with you... And the
| Holocaust only got really going after that. So how again
| were Germany and Russia _friendly_ during WW2?
| rr888 wrote:
| > So how again were Germany and Russia friendly during
| WW2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribben
| trop_Pac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93
| Soviet_Boundary...
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Germany and the USSR (there was no independent Russia at
| that time) were not friendly in 1939. The Soviets signed
| the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact because they knew Germany
| planned to invade the USSR at some point, and they wanted
| to buy time.
|
| It was a scurrilous, unprincipled deal (much like
| Poland's deal with Germany to divide up Czechoslovakia a
| year earlier), but the Soviets didn't make it because
| they were friends with Germany. They had actually
| preferred to sign an alliance with France, in order to
| protect Czechoslovakia, but that had failed due to a lack
| of willingness from France and a refusal by Poland to
| allow Soviet troops to cross Poland to reach
| Czechoslovakia (for some reasons that were
| understandable, given that the USSR and Poland had
| recently fought a war, and also because Poland itself
| wanted a piece of Czechoslovakia).
| usrusr wrote:
| 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.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Exactly. You can't safely drive forward by just looking in
| the rearview mirror.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The last time nowadays Russia and nowadays Germany were
| allies was at the end of the Napoleanic Wars and during
| Bismarcks, IMHO ingenious, coalition policy between the
| large European powers. Back then we talk about _actual_
| Emperors. After Bismarck, things deteriorated to WW1,
| followed by WW2, in between both, the USSR ans Nazi-Germany
| were short term allies for military build up and at the end
| to split Poland. After that, both sides were totally not
| allies. And after that we had the Cold War, which had
| Eastern Europe under Communist rule but without any active
| wars. Those were fought in Korea and Vietnam, withkut
| German participation.
| yrgulation wrote:
| It's worse than you think. Germany blocked or was against a
| large number of alternative pipelines and was preparing to
| actively block nuclear at an eu level.
| bpfrh wrote:
| Which pipelines are you talking about?
|
| "actively block at an eu level"
|
| Do you mean not labeling investment in nuclear as green?
|
| Because that is very fair, if I invest my money in "green
| energy" I don't expect to fund nuclear.
| tomp wrote:
| So _nuclear_ (zero CO2 emissions) isn't "green" but _gas_
| (CO2 + methane emissions) is?!
|
| This is the reality of institutional stupidity at the
| highest EU political levels.
| f1shy wrote:
| Believe it or not, the green party is one of the most
| hard opponents to nuclear. Of course, they suggest the
| alternative Wind+Solar, not gas.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| In fact, in the 1970s, the German Green Party proposed
| replacing nuclear with more coal power plants.
|
| They were anti-nuclear first, the whole CO2 thing only
| ever started to get traction with them when they won
| their first Atomausstieg and needed a new topic to
| terrorise children into next-generation voters with.
| hef19898 wrote:
| What was a bigger issue in 70s, 80s and 90s? Nuclear
| power, Chernobyl just happened as did the Pershing
| deployment, the Ozone layer or climate change? To answer
| the question, climate cjange only recently got the
| traction it deserves. Assuming you believe global warming
| is an actual problem, and not just something evil Greens
| and environmentalists are scaring our youth with.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _they suggest the alternative Wind+Solar, not gas._
|
| Storage technology to support an industrialized nation
| with pure Wind+Solar does not exist, necessitating gas.
| Advocating for Wind+Solar but not gas is like advocating
| for building with lumber but not cutting down trees. One
| inescapably implies the other.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Why would they do that, what's their motivation?
| glogla wrote:
| Being "green".
| yrgulation wrote:
| Not just that. Keeping east europe under developed and
| thus reliant on "eu funding" coupled with corruption and
| sheer incompetence.
| glogla wrote:
| Yeah, probably. The moment Germans started on EU level to
| push natural gas (which burns into co2) as green and push
| zero emission nuclear as not green, I stopped believing
| they are more than Russian puppets or useful idiots.
| f1shy wrote:
| I think ideology. "Green movement"
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Merkel fucked loved Russia and China for some reason we'll
| probably never know and that's pretty much the whole story.
| adambyrtek wrote:
| So that Gerhard Schroder could get a job at Gazprom: https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Relation...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > In 2022, it was reported that Schroeder was paid nearly
| $1 million per year by Russian energy companies.
|
| Who knew sabotaging a continent's energy policy was so
| affordable.
| munificent wrote:
| Fossil fuel executives sure as hell do.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Question: could Russian disinformation have played a role
| in germanys policy here? Perhaps they were pushing anti
| nuclear viewpoints for a decade leading up to this?
|
| To be clear, I have zero evidence either way, I'm just
| curious how large an effect these campaigns have had on
| public policy across the world
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I think you're right. The anti-nuclear activists of the
| 20th century focused as much on nuclear weapons as
| nuclear energy, frequently conflating the two.
| Furthermore these activists were almost always left wing
| and had obvious affinity for their idealized vision of
| what the Soviet Union was. I think the Soviets fomented
| anti-nuclear sentiment in the west during the Cold War to
| give themselves an edge in the nuclear arms buildup.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I wouldn't use that word. Germany made choices, and
| believed in a way that Russia could be pulled westward.
| Russia intended to use this belief to its own advantage
| at Western Europe's expense. People pointed this out, but
| German politicians shouted that down as cold war
| thinking.
| jmarbach wrote:
| Of course, everyone is a booster for their own cause.
|
| The angles of attack range from the top-down to the grass
| roots. There are tactics for each (e.g. corrupting state
| leaders vs controlling mass media narratives).
| gadders wrote:
| It's possible. They also push anti-fracking campaigns.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _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 see Ukraine and its government in any better
| light than the Russian one. The corruption problem was
| (is? no idea now) real, and some really bad and shady
| stuff happened in Ukraine.
|
| The reason I turned is all because of the behavior and
| the atrocities of Russia. My opinion does not require a
| "good" Ukraine, so arguments like "but... corruption"
| (for Ukraine) don't matter any more. To me, having seen
| the incredible modernization of Russia - supported almost
| completely by the West and a little bit from Asia, not
| self-made, and then Putin's declarations about "war with
| the West" was one of the things that turned me. You owe
| the "evil West" BIG TIME! I actually have friends who
| have done business in Russia since the 1990s, so I've
| followed along the stories passively and still do.
|
| No, you cannot blame Russia for what we Germans thought
| and did before this war. I was for Nord Stream 2, I was
| outraged about US interference when they pressured us to
| stop the project, I was outraged when Trump made his
| comments. This was not because of any "propaganda", that
| was my own 100% self-made opinion. I only read some
| mainstream news portal headlines to begin with, so I'm
| not exposed to anything like those people in some
| Telegram channels, or Stammtisch discussions in some
| places in East Germany (I moved out of East Germany - and
| in the end to the US for a long time - not long after
| reunification).
|
| You need to understand a lot of Germans, especially East
| Germans of course, did not fear Russia but saw them as a
| true partner. Putin spoke in the Bundestag in a "historic
| speech"! They were mostly interesting to do business
| with. They needed so much from us (and got it), and we
| had good use for their oil and gas and metals and other
| things. Business was really good, for both sides! We
| ignored Russian aggressive moves with mostly just some
| eye-rolling - "that's just how they are" but did not
| think much of it.
|
| Now, I see that Russian society as a whole has a big
| problem. It's very far from only Putin being responsible.
| If they don't lose _very_ hard they may develop like
| Germany after WWI, thinking they only lost because of
| "Dolchstosslegende" (stab in the back myth -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth). I
| want us to ignore the nuclear threats and to sent Leopard
| tanks and Marders. Biden too seems a bit afraid, e.g.
| limiting rockets for HIMARs to the shortest range "to not
| provoke Putin".
|
| I find this strange, if the West wants Ukraine to win
| Putin will be _very_ "provoked". What kind of conflict is
| this when the enemy gets to decide which weapons out side
| is allowed to use? Essentially, Putin now has veto power
| over what weapons the West sends. I _hope_ there is more
| going on underneath the surface, because this does not
| make sense.
|
| Maybe they _want_ Putin to invest more and more and grind
| Russia down slowly? Losing too quickly would leave Russia
| with too much left? Of course, the cost of such a
| strategy would be borne by the Ukrainians, who pay in
| blood. They may agree though, I don 't know, because only
| a big loos for Russia would give them real peace instead
| of just a pause. Just my speculations about why we hear
| (tome) flimsy excuses instead of seeing more done to let
| Ukraine win more quickly.
| speeder wrote:
| 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 themselves to be very aggressive, there are
| repeated claims that NATO is defensive, yet a lot of the
| wars in the past 25 years were started by USA or allies
| in first place.
|
| 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.
|
| When Putin says he is defending Russia survival, he is
| speaking that literally, Russia border is a major
| vulnerability.
|
| There are basically three "good" solutions for this
| problem:
|
| 1. Have NATO disbanded or made much smaller. Or join NATO
| in first place. It is obvious this won't happen and
| Russia doesn't have the means to make it happen.
|
| 2. Conquer surrounding countries until they reach the
| mountains, that are easier to defend. This of course
| would result in massive negative repercussions, also a
| lot of countries that Russia would need to conquer for
| this joined NATO.
|
| 3. Convince somehow the countries between Russia and the
| mountains, to be neutral and not accept NATO inside them.
| This way if NATO decided to invade Russia by land, there
| would be time to mount defenses.
|
| ----
|
| Russia was basically attempting to do the solution 3
| using diplomacy. USA did their best to prevent that,
| because it would be a victory for Russia and a clear loss
| from USA point of view. Russia then decided that the
| option left was force option 3. Attack Ukraine and force
| them to be neutral.
|
| It ALMOST worked, but the peace talks in march ended
| being cancelled by the Ukranian side.
|
| So plan became a mix of 2 and 3, conquer some parts of
| Ukraine and keep trying to convince some "Neutrality"
| peace.
|
| ----
|
| The problem now of trying to help Ukraine win, for
| example by giving them tanks as you suggested, is that
| option 3 would be gone, and Russia would see themselves
| forced to use option 2. Russia not declaring war and
| using "special operation" is meaningful, they are STILL
| trying to do things semi-diplomatically, but as soon it
| becomes clear this is impossible, things will be very
| ugly.
|
| Also Russia has a time limit here, their population is
| still declining for various reasons (including a cycle
| where each generation that is descendants of WW2 adults
| are smaller than the others, Russia demography graph look
| "wavy" because of this). They must solve the problem of
| the massive hard to defend border with NATO "now", thus
| they will get more and more desperate, the next
| generations will be too small population-wise to defend
| that border effectively.
|
| ----
|
| If NATO never had expanded right up the border with
| Russia, all this would probably been avoided. Yes I know
| people in the countries that border Russia that joined
| NATO are happy with NATO and wanted to join, but this
| doesn't change the fact that NATO members been attacking
| other countries left and right, and Russia thus has all
| the right to be terrified of NATO on their giant flat
| plains border.
|
| Still, NATO did. So what is left now? Ideally NATO should
| pull back with the condition Russia pull back too, but I
| think the chance of this happening is close to zero.
|
| What will most likely happen is Russia will keep trying
| to secure their border by any mean necessary. For NATO
| this is in a sense a golden opportunity, it means they
| can keep Russia busy there and grinding themselves to
| dust as they try to get defensible borders.
|
| But for me that is in Brazil, and I am not pro-Russia,
| neither pro-USA, I think this is extremely dangerous,
| because eventually there might be a situation, where the
| only way for Russia to be safe, is if they turn the the
| area between their border and the mountains into a
| wasteland hard to cross, and decide to bomb the shit out
| of the people there until all that is left is craters and
| rubble that can be used for defensive purposes.
|
| I see Ukranians having only these paths:
|
| 1. Somehow, winning the war without getting bombed to
| oblivion. (I think the chance of this working is minuscle
| and not worth attempting for real).
|
| 2. Fighting to win and get utterly annihilated
| eventually, with Russia making sure the country becomes a
| barrier between NATO and Moscow (unless Russia conquers
| all of Ukraine first).
|
| 3. Cutting their losses, giving Russia some territory
| that moves the border away from Moscow, and pledging to
| not help NATO invade Russia in the future.
|
| EDIT: forgot option 4 here, because it is unthinkable,
| but could happen: Ukraine attempts to win the war because
| it convinced other countries to actually help them beat
| Russia, for example with actual boots on the ground...
| but this would turn into WW3, in this scenario everyone
| loses.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| > It ALMOST worked, but the peace talks in march ended
| being cancelled by the Ukrainian side.
|
| This is a Russian talking point that has been getting
| spread around the internet lately. Those talks failed
| because Putin refused to negotiate on a few key items,
| and it quickly became apparent that he was trying to use
| those talks to buy time to regroup his forces after the
| initial invasion. But lately, right wing leaning news
| sources are now taking a quote from Boris Johnson out of
| context to try and frame the failure of those talks as
| some Western conspiracy to prolong the war.
| thaufeki wrote:
| >Maybe they want Putin to invest more and more and grind
| Russia down slowly? Losing too quickly would leave Russia
| with too much left? Of course, the cost of such a
| strategy would be borne by the Ukrainians, who pay in
| blood.
|
| I think this has been the conventional wisdom for a
| while. One thing I ask people who are vociferous in their
| support of Ukraine (and our paying for that support) is,
| how is this going to end?
|
| Russia quietly bleeds out and overthrows Putin? Is that
| realistic? If Putin is a madman dictator, do you really
| think he'll just whimper and disappear? It seems
| necessary that a negotiation take place at some point,
| and that negotiation result in lost territory for
| Ukraine. It's not a question of justice, but
| practicality.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| Russia has a history of throwing out leaders after failed
| wars. On one hand Putin appears to have a fairly tight
| grip on power right now, but it doesn't take much to
| actually execute a coup. A small group of of participants
| to capture or kill him, and maybe one or two handshake
| agreements with one of the many security or military
| forces might be enough. There is a reason Putin has been
| spending most of this war in his bunker after all. It is
| certainly not because he fears attacks from Ukraine. He
| know this war has greatly eroded his leverage over the
| oligarchs and as such he is acting accordingly.
|
| Of course it is hard to even put a probability on
| something like this happening, but I think most folks are
| underestimating the odds. It is one of those things that
| feels very unlikely to happen, until it actually happens.
|
| However, I do think that the highest probability outcome
| is Ukraine and Russia end up roughly where they were
| before the invasion, perhaps with slightly different
| boundaries. If you were not aware Russia and Ukraine have
| been at war for 8 years. For most of the years, it was
| effectively a stalemate, with a handful skirmishes to
| remind each other of the others presence. And the rest of
| the world for the most part carried on with business as
| usual. If feel like this is the most likely scenario, and
| if this is where we end up, I think it was 100% worth the
| cost as it means Ukraine maintains self-determination and
| Russia likely learns a really hard lesson regarding its
| Imperialistic ambitions.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| The result will not be just "lost territory" it's hundred
| thousands people left in Russian bondage. And that will
| not be the end of it - Putin will be back for more in a
| year or two. There can be no peace as long as his regime
| is in power and as long as russians cling to a fantasy of
| living in an empire. I don't know how realistic is to
| bleed Russia, but fighting it now is only viable option,
| there is nothing else.
| landemva wrote:
| Thanks for the perspective from east side of the wall.
|
| It was not voted on directly. Like removal of Deutschmark
| under Kohl, it was done by those governing without direct
| vote. The people didn't react, so you get what you
| tolerate.
| nosianu wrote:
| If you are talking about reunification, we, the East
| Germans, definitely overwhelmingly wanted it. There was
| no need for a referendum, I will make that claim.
|
| Remaining blocked off by not having any real money (GDR
| money was useless! Exchange rates, if you could exchange
| at all, were astronomical when you add the fact that East
| Germans had very little of even our own money to begin
| with), after we finally got the wall down and saw in
| brief visits to the West, getting _Begrussungsgeld_
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begr%C3%BC%C3%9Fungsgeld),
| now we should stay isolated in East Germany?
|
| Without reunification everybody who could would have
| moved to the West. Even so that movement existed even
| after reunification, but it was a lot less than it would
| have been without reunification.
| landemva wrote:
| Oh, to clarify -Reunification was needed. I paid that
| payroll tax in the 1990s!
|
| Russian energy dependence was not voted on. Green (reduce
| nuke and coal) was enabled by votes for those people.
|
| I think euro would not have been voted in by German
| people, if they were allowed to vote on d-mark or euro in
| 1997.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Fascinating how a large portion of germans were enamoured
| with a murderous corrupt dictator yet they speak with
| disgust about peaceful east european allies and look down
| on them and sanction their economies at first signs of
| dissent. Truly one for science books. Is it because of
| the age old "dream" of sharing east europe with russia?
| If so, east europe shouldnt sit idle. It should respond
| in kin.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _they speak with disgust about peaceful east european
| allies and look down on them and sanction their economies
| at first signs of dissent_
|
| Wow this is such a bad comment. I will even be so bold
| and call it outright lies.
|
| You seem to be talking about Hungary. A country that I
| actually really like, I was there in my (East German)
| youth three times, once on vacation with my parents,
| twice in youth camps, an East German group among
| Hungarian kids.
|
| Hungary even then was very much oriented towards the West
| and very modern. Even the ice cream selection was an
| order of magnitude better than in East Germany, never
| mind that one could buy Western music and magazines. I
| loved the country. I loved the food. Well, maybe not some
| parts of the rooster in my soup.
|
| The problem with Hungary's government now is that they
| are going down a path of "removing" any opposition and
| have moved towards autocracy. If they remained a
| democracy they could have whatever opinion they want. The
| problem is not their stance towards sanctions, for
| example, but that they are no longer a democracy.
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-
| room/20220909IP...
|
| That is not a German opinion, as you can see.
| [deleted]
| tomp wrote:
| Ok so you explained your love affair with Russia. Thank
| you for that, very insightful and courageous.
|
| But why the hate of nuclear? Was there a lot of
| propaganda in the media how dangerous it is? I really
| don't understand it. It gives clean energy independence
| almost for free!
| sgift wrote:
| The Chernobyl disaster was a big part of it. I wasn't old
| enough back then, but my parents told me how people were
| told to not play outside with the children, not to drink
| milk, eat things and so on. No one really knew what was
| going on. That fear has always been a big part of the
| anti-nuclear movement here in Germany.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Germans particularly have a lot of good reason to dislike
| nuclear _weapons_. If the Soviet Union had ever sent
| tanks through the Fulda Gap, NATO would have dropped a
| lot of tactical nukes on Germany to stop it. They had
| plans for it all drawn up, weapon systems invented
| specifically for this, etc. NATO and the Soviets were
| both planning to actually continue fighting through a
| nuclear war. Those in power viewed a nuclear WW3 as a
| salvageable situation from which one side might emerge
| victorious, not the utter end of the world. Germans who
| called the planned nuclear battlefield their home
| obviously weren 't enamored with this idea.
|
| But I think Cold War era anti-nuclear activists exploited
| this rational fear of nuclear weapons to vilify nuclear
| power as well, to weaken the capitalist West which they
| almost universally opposed.
| tomp wrote:
| This is beyond illogical.
|
| Funny enough, _having_ nuclear weapons is _the best way
| BAR NONE_ to avoid becoming a nuclear (or any other kind
| of) battlefield.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| There were a ton of nuclear weapons _in_ Germany, that
| didn 't belong to Germany, and I think those nukes
| ultimately dissuaded the feared war. It's easy to see in
| hindsight that there was no war, but at the time the
| situation seemed very dangerous.
| d0mine wrote:
| "Russia's decision" to introduce sanctions against itself /s
|
| And many people just eat it up without questions :)
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| There is a penn and teller episode where they argued that
| globalization was creating world peace. Basically, when
| everyone's economies are so entangled, they said, nobody would
| want to go to war because of how expensive it would be.
|
| Their model, I think, only works for democracies. When a
| dictator controls a country, and their quality of life remains
| unchanged and revolves mostly around delusions of grandeur
| (like an impetuous monarch centuries ago), that dynamic isn't
| enough of a deterrent. It only works when the leadership is
| sensitive to the well being of the country and it's people
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Even for dictators, economic costs are a real barrier. You
| can't loot from a broken economy in the future or build
| vanity projects if there's no money. Economic interdependence
| constrains authoritarians as well, just a bit less.
| LeanderK wrote:
| I think it is all a game of perception. If you think you
| can muscle your way through, either quickly enough so that
| no harm is done to your economy/population until your goal
| is reached or if you perceive a weakness in the opposition,
| a fear of taking action against you, then you see the move
| as possible.
|
| I think the line of thought that economic (co-)dependence
| makes conflict impossible or leads to a more harmonious
| relationship is probably the gravest error in german
| foreign strategy. I think it's a reason behind both our
| relationship with russia and china. But it assumes a
| rational actor who's concern is the well-being of its
| people. Putin doesn't care for his people, he cares for
| power. He want's to increase his power, the stability of
| his regime etc. He might have employed the same flawed
| thinking to come to the conclusion that europe won't help
| ukraine if it's dependent on russian energy.
|
| In reality, economic costs only become apparent after the
| harm is done. The greatest strategy crumbles if it is build
| on flawed assumptions.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I don't think that's the strongest version of the
| argument. I would boil it down to something along the
| lines of economic relatedness building roadblocks and
| off-ramps on the way to conflict. Trade gives some
| opportunities for low risk retaliation that can be hashed
| out and deescalated prior to any shooting happening. It
| presents resistance that can slow things down. It
| obviously can't prevent a determined large nation from
| barreling through, but it's a layer of defense.
| yonaguska wrote:
| > Their model, I think, only works for democracies
|
| I no longer believe that most "democracies" are actually
| democratic in the sense that people are actually represented.
| One keystone to a functioning democracy is transparency and
| an informed populace. That population also needs to be
| capable of shared coherent goals. Culture is programming for
| the masses, and was once something established through blood.
| Now, culture is established by media, and control by control
| of information.
|
| Dictators are just as beholden to culture as a tool for
| control as are democratically elected leaders. If culture can
| be manipulated in short order, consent can be manufactured,
| then there's really not that much difference the
| authoritarian by declaration versus the authoritarian by
| "consent".
|
| As long as people have there very most basic needs met, and
| they are sufficiently convinced that there is no other
| possibly better state of existence for them- they will live
| and they will die to the benefit of the leaders subsisting
| from their labor.
|
| The real, current example of this would be the USA- we've
| been in conflicts for the entire duration of my life, it
| hasn't been cheap, but the expenses have been neatly placed
| on the shoulders of people that will probably never even
| realize the origin of the burden they bear.
|
| In the meantime, the expenses of war need to be paid to
| someone, and with a democracy supplanted by lobbyists, we are
| saddled with a parasitical class of elected officials that do
| not answer to votes.
|
| tldr - Even in a global economy, wars will happen, because
| all wars are just wars against the lower classes. War won't
| stop until the standard of living of the elites are
| threatened, regardless of the political system.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > Their model, I think, only works for democracies.
|
| Completely agree but I suspect democracy is not enough. When
| a leader manages to assume a power that can be kept by other
| means like nationalistic rhetoric or cultural issues they can
| too engage in economically irrational politics.
|
| People often rally behind ideas about god, identity or
| ideology. In fact this is very natural and expected because
| otherwise people could have accepted offers like "if you let
| me exterminate this group of people I will give you gas at
| discount".
| mminer237 wrote:
| It's notable that in 1909, people thought the world was so
| interconnected that there could never be another general war
| in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
| origin_path wrote:
| Democracies have often gone to war. The usual formulation is
| that no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other
| but this is specious reasoning - it asserts causality without
| even bothering to speculate as to an actual underlying cause,
| probably because there isn't one and any attempts to argue
| otherwise would immediately fall apart. Democracies have been
| invading, overthrowing and subjugating other countries for a
| long time.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Dictators benefit from economic prosperity just as Democratic
| leaders do: the propensity benefits those who keep them in
| power. In a dictatorship, economic prosperity rarely benefits
| the average citizen, but that's because the average citizen
| isn't important to secure the dictators power.
|
| You can see Putin paying a price for the continued economic
| hardships. He is absolutely risking an end to his reign, but
| apparently the possibility of glory is more important to him.
| landemva wrote:
| I suspect if Putin is removed the hard-liners behind him
| will make things quite difficult for the west. Careful what
| we wish for?
| golemotron wrote:
| > Their model, I think, only works for democracies.
|
| I think it's simplistic to rely on that dichotomy when
| unaccountable power dwells within countries and bodies like
| the EU that are ostensibly democratic, and nearly every
| government that is called authoritarian holds elections of
| some sort and is subject to regime change irregardless.
|
| It is more of a continuum than a sharp line.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > There is a penn and teller episode where they argued that
| globalization was creating world peace.
|
| This is something that worries me about covid supply chain
| onshoring.
|
| > Their model, I think, only works for democracies.
|
| It's kept China in-line, but it's also made North Korea a
| pariah state.
|
| The other lesson we recently got in world peace is countries
| with nukes can do what they want to countries without nukes.
| Could be the US and Iraq or Russia and Ukraine.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| > countries with nukes can do what they want
|
| Tragedy of the commons: to save the world, we need to get
| rid of all the nukes. But unless you have nukes, you are
| helpless against everyone around you, so everyone has to
| get nukes (or a trustworthy ally who has them)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > globalization was creating world peace.
|
| Wait. I thought their brand was about making fun of BS? Did
| they peddle BS themselves as an ironic gesture?
|
| > Their model, I think, only works for democracies.
|
| Like the nominal democracy the US of A?
| dehrmann wrote:
| That quote also mischaracterizes the decision. Cutting gas
| supplies was retaliation for sanctions. It wasn't really
| "Russia's decision" as much as it was western Europe's decision
| to back Ukraine.
| sleton38234234 wrote:
| I think there's a bigger lesson to learn in all this:
| Increasing Self sufficiency is really important both on the
| country level and individual level.
| [deleted]
| neonsunset wrote:
| Imagine using easily expendable and non-renewable resources,
| subjecting the very processes our civilization is sustained by to
| a great risk of failure while having an almost inexhaustible
| source of energy that was invented more than 50 years ago.
|
| Surely that would be a madness and no reasonable organization
| would do this, right?
| fsh wrote:
| According to IAEA data, there is considerably more minable coal
| than uranium on earth (by extractible energy). Current nuclear
| reactors are not scalable to global energy requirements.
| neonsunset wrote:
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Is that "more" by mass, or energy content?
| fsh wrote:
| Energy content of course. Uranium contains quite some
| energy, but it is also extremely rare. Without breeders, it
| would be exhausted in a few years.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Is the inexhaustible uranium in your comment?
|
| I'm unclear. Uranium is fine. But it's totally exhaust-able.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| My serious question: Is this a way for the EU nations to quell
| public uprisings from fuel shortages by limiting network
| communications while not taking the blame for it?
| amalter wrote:
| No. They are talking about limited disruptions to limited areas
| due to planned load shedding. If your power and phone are out
| for 4-6 hours - is that going to suppress your ability to
| protest?
|
| I know I'm not supposed to do this, but is this "concern
| trolling"? I can't see how you could get from A->B unless
| you're trying to rabble rouse?
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| I got from A -> B because
|
| https://www.wionews.com/photos/in-pics-protests-across-
| europ...
|
| https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/03/31/government-
| internet...
|
| It is not a fault, but a virtue to be suspicious of
| governments during times of protest. Does a 4 hour black out
| slow down protests? Probably not, but it does not stop
| countries like India from constantly doing so:
|
| https://therecord.media/governments-intentionally-shut-
| down-...
|
| Planting narratives in the media is not an unusual agency
| tactic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public
| _opinio...
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I see a lot of confusion in the comments about why cell towers
| would be impacted. Load shedding in the grid occurs across
| regions of the grid. The power companies don't choose which
| specific sites to cut off. If cellular infrastructure is in part
| of the grid that gets disconnected, it will go down too (after
| exhausting its backup supply).
|
| The top priority for keeping power on goes to grid segments with
| life-sustaining equipment. If you live within a grid segment that
| also powers a hospital you will likely not be subject to load
| shedding.
| myself248 wrote:
| The critical detail is that the batteries are configured for
| standby service, not cycling service, which means that they
| don't recharge quickly when power comes back on. They're set to
| a float voltage which maximizes battery service life (years),
| at the expense of cycle time (hours).
|
| The first time power cuts, you might have 8-10 hours to run on
| battery. But if it comes back on and then goes off again just a
| few hours later, the batteries might've only recovered 3 hours
| of charge. Increasing the recharge rate wouldn't be technically
| complicated (just adjust the rectifier output), but it would
| have a logistical cost: These rectifiers aren't designed to be
| fiddled with so it would take a bit of skill, and someone with
| that skill would have to visit every site.
|
| Worse, by boosting the rectifier voltage, the batteries would
| then fail faster, as commensurate with cycling rather than
| standby service. A site that normally gets 10 years on its
| battery plant might need new batteries every 3 years, for
| instance. That's a bad deal.
|
| (And no, the rectifiers simply are not set up to do multi-stage
| charging. That would add a bunch of coordination and complexity
| that's just not needed in standby service where they can output
| a simple float voltage and be done with it. Changing that would
| be a forklift upgrade, replacing the simple rectifiers with
| complex chargers.)
|
| It's reasonable that new sites may be installed with lithium
| batteries someday instead of lead-acid, and that may already be
| occurring in some places, and that would solve the problem
| quite simply because lithium just has such higher charge
| acceptance rates. You can float-charge a lithium and still use
| it in cycling service because it absorbs charge much more
| readily even on float. Lead-acids charge incredibly slowly on
| float, which is fine in a standby application, but it might be
| the Achilles' heel here.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| You missed a critical point that by increasing the charge
| rate of the battery you've also increased the load on the
| grid, exacerbating the original problem.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| In Pakistan we have had daily blackouts for almost 15
| years, though things were better in urban areas recently.
| Basically, everyone in the middle class has a UPS, with
| battery to power lights and fans for several hours. Except
| these are maybe 70-80% efficient. So, yes, the grid has had
| to deal with, in a very real way, with the increased power
| demand of millions of households.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The article seems to agree with your comment:
|
| > "It [Enedis] said it was able to isolate sections of the
| network to supply priority customers, such as hospitals, key
| industrial installations and the military and that it was up to
| local authorities to add telecoms operators infrastructure to
| the list of priority customers."
|
| This is also a good argument for mesh-networks between cell
| phones independent of cell towers, although those don't scale
| for large numbers connected phones and large numbers of users.
| Texting could be supported via such mesh-nets easily I imagine,
| but not video.
| alibert wrote:
| Indeed, a large part of cell towers are hosted on the rooftop
| of residential buildings and mostly connected to the same
| electrical network.
|
| In France, most homes have a smartmeter (called "Linky") and
| these could be used to have very precise load shedding (they
| communicate with PLC) but I believe this feature is not
| available or developed (yet?).
| giantg2 wrote:
| My first thought was actually that this was concerning EMP or
| radiological issues if Putin goes nuclear.
| Kye wrote:
| If Europe's power systems are anything like those in the US,
| Russia hopefully wouldn't risk a cascade failure going all the
| way to Russia with an EMP.
| gpvos wrote:
| Europe's are actually a bit more robust, like the article
| says. But still far from invulnerable.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I was thinking more about the electronics associate with
| the towers and handsets.
| raverbashing wrote:
| That seems like a stretch
|
| Mobile stations are usually very well prepared for power
| redundancy
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Not as far, I know here in Europe. Why should they. For sure,
| they have batterys for one hour or so. But there is no second
| electric connection, to a diffrent electric grid. Something
| like that does not really exist, because our electric grid was
| not planed in mind for a such situation.
| izacus wrote:
| Most main base stations have diesel generators, not second
| power grid.
| chinathrow wrote:
| I am not so sure if this is true for mobile base stations
| in Europe e.g. in cities, mounted on roofs of e.g. a church
| or another building roof.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Have you ever seen an antenna on a roof somewhere with a
| diesel generator?
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| There is T-Mobile equipment on my building. They are
| connected to the diesel generator circuit (shared with
| the elevator) and have battery backup.
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| Or if like in USA commonly are fueled by natural gas
| infrastructure, or propane in a tank (as well as the
| Diesel, althou that is less common)
| Semaphor wrote:
| When we had a 6h power outage a few years ago in my city in
| Germany, mobile services were completely down as well.
| pier25 wrote:
| In Mexico power cuts are so frequent that most (probably all)
| cell towers have batteries that last for an hour or two.
|
| It's rare that power cuts last so long, usually it's like 10-15
| mins, but I've experienced 3-4 hours cuts a couple of times over
| the years. When I lived in Cancun these were more frequent
| though, because AC consuming so much power during summer.
| Aloha wrote:
| I'm a former field engineer for a US Cellular carrier.
|
| I don't understand how a two hour outage is a panic event, both
| Cellular CO's and Cell Sites should have at least 3-4 hours of
| holdover time. Thats just the standard of design.
|
| Like, what happens if I storm blows thru, knocks down the
| infrastructure, if you have heat related infrastructure failures,
| or some other just normal failure - power outages happen, for
| those sites in the states where long power outages are common
| they'll have a permanent generator on site.
| myself248 wrote:
| Same here and likewise baffled. TFA says:
|
| > Europe has nearly half a million telecom towers and most of
| them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run
| the mobile antennas.
|
| Which seems bonkers to me. Perhaps they deploy incredibly small
| batteries because they're engineered for a different outage
| profile than the US? Or perhaps the reporter is quoting
| something inappropriately -- traditional large sites with many
| hours, and many new small sites with no backup at all, might
| well average out to 30 minutes.
|
| I think there's real work to be done on improving bring-up time
| when power returns, though. I worked on the EVDO rollout and
| rebooting a site after work would take 20-30 minutes because
| it's something that's only expected to happen once in a blue
| moon. I believe if they relaxed GPS timing tolerances a bit and
| optimized a few other things, this could be shortened to 5-ish
| minutes without a whole lot of work.
| Aloha wrote:
| The Samsung gear I worked on would take about 10 min to come
| back up, give or take. I know because I dropped a handful of
| sites when I did power testing - visual inspection was not
| always enough to verify if the power was wired correctly.
| Most of them came back up in 10 min.. well, except once there
| was one site that didn't come back because the Microwave
| didn't like the power hit, lol - that required another tower
| crew to revisit and hang a new RRU.
|
| I just can't imagine power design is that different, I'm used
| to these cabinets even in urban areas having 4 strings of
| batteries in them, are they only building sites with a single
| string in europe?
| 9dev wrote:
| Just for some perspective: In my entire life in Germany, I
| experienced two power outages, both more than 20 years ago.
| The grid is rock-solid here; this might not warrant for huge
| battery capacity in general (even though 30 minutes _does_
| seem quite small).
| Aloha wrote:
| The grid in the states is rock solid here, in general -
| certain cases not withstanding. Power distribution in the
| states is largely arial, which means deeply effected by
| large weather events, so while the power might be on - on
| the transmission side - it doesnt mean that the
| distribution side is in any condition to deliver any to you
| at that moment. I cant say my overall experiences with
| power are different than yours, I dont think I've ever had
| an outage longer than one hour, and I've only had four
| power loss events, each less than a half an hour in
| duration over the last 20 years.
|
| The US has many extreme weather events - Hurricanes,
| Blizzards, Floods, Wind Storms, Ice Storms, Tornados,
| Wildfires (yes, thats sorta weather), Heavy Rain events,
| etc - that will often bring down trees onto distribution
| circuits. I may be wrong, but I have the belief (based on
| news reporting) that weather events which in the states are
| considered 'normal' would be 'extreme' in Europe.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Vodafone Portugal suffered an extremely successful cyber attack
| in February 2022, taking down:
|
| - 4G
|
| - 5G
|
| - Fixed voice
|
| - Digital TV
|
| - SMS
|
| - voice
|
| It took _several_ days to bring everything back online. [0]
|
| No Ransomware requests issued, most likely a state actor.
|
| Many people speculate the attack was a training ground for
| Russian cyberwarfare.
|
| I find this a much more likely failure mode for communications
| (including emergency services) than network operators not
| managing uptime because of blackouts.
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2022/02/vodaf...
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I live at a Germany/Belgium border, and have no mobile service
| sometimes for days. So yeah, whatever...
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I 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 for a few hours: the Kindle, tablet and
| local files on the laptops. So there's that.
| nivenkos wrote:
| bitcharmer wrote:
| So appeasement then? Please show one example when cowering to
| the bully actually solved the issue.
| COGlory wrote:
| You can surely argue that it's not worth the cost in good
| faith, but there's no way you can describe an invasion and
| demands of territorial annexation as "reasonable" and still be
| taken seriously.
| leesalminen wrote:
| I believe the parent was referring to Russia's demand that
| the west agree to deny Ukraine membership to NATO and/or EU
| now and in the future.
|
| I'm not an expert on this though, that was just the
| impression I got.
|
| I don't think anyone could say what's happened since Feb is
| "reasonable".
| Huh1337 wrote:
| How is that request in any way reasonable? It's an
| independent, sovereign state. Would Russia listen to any
| such requests or deem them reasonable?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Make the case that it's unreasonable to not want Soviet
| nukes in Cuba.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Apples and oranges. US is not and never was plundering
| Cuba, unlike Russians who plunder every single state in
| their sphere of influence until nothing is left. This is
| not about some nukes on Cuba, this is about living like a
| normal person and not in a corrupt, fascist despotism
| where you die decades prematurely and nobody cares.
| vkou wrote:
| You're going to have a hell of a time convincing anyone
| that the Cuban missile crisis nearly started a nuclear
| war _because the US felt bad for Cuba_.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| I said it's apples to oranges, didn't I? This comparison
| just makes no sense whatsoever.
| vkou wrote:
| The comparison makes complete sense when we speak about
| the roles of buffer states, which is the conversation
| that the parent post started.
|
| Your off-topic complaint that distracted from that point,
| is that eastern imperialism was worse than western
| imperialism. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not [1], but
| it's not relevant to the subthread.
|
| [1] It's difficult to have a meaningful conversation on
| this subject, because every empire of note has a long
| history of being smeared in shit, and spends a lot of
| effort indoctrinating its subjects that its brand of
| imperialism is way better than all the other ones.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| It's not off topic at all. If somebody abuses their
| buffer states this much they can't have them. Perhaps
| there wouldn't be such opposition to the claims of
| reasonability of their request if the Russians treated
| their buffer states nicely (or at least not so badly).
| bskan wrote:
| Talking about corrupt despotism it is not clear to me if
| you are talking about Russia or Ukraine.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Sure, Ukraine had - and still has - problems.
|
| But one thing is to have your own problems, and entirely
| another thing is to be forced to have Russian problems
| and to have every hope for change destroyed by Russia
| because it's threatening their position that they built
| on sponsoring the corrupt people.
|
| Consider that it was revealed that FSB has/had a massive
| corruption campaign in Ukraine funded with billions of US
| dollars _per year_. Let 's wait with judging Ukraine
| until we can judge fairly.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| I'm curious what your definition of "plunder" is,
| considering the USA's track record towards Cuba.
|
| https://www.reformer.com/opinion/columnists/usategui-us-
| poli...
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Look up what the Russians did in Poland, Czechoslovakia,
| Lithuania, Hungary etc. That's my definition. What the US
| did is nowhere near that. My grandmother said she
| preferred the Nazis to the Russians.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Of course Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state.
| Russia wasn't making that demand of Ukraine, per se
| (AFAICT). The demand was largely on existing NATO / EU
| member states to actively deny any request from Ukraine
| to join.
|
| And, of course Russia would likely not acquiesce if such
| a demand were placed on them.
|
| I think whether that demand is reasonable or not depends
| on one's perception. If one is a NATO ally or dependent,
| then anything that limits or reduces NATO power is a bad
| thing. If one is not, then demanding a buffer state
| between the sides seems like a middle-ground compromise
| from their point of view.
|
| I'm only replying to these comments here to illustrate
| the importance of looking at a scenario from your
| opponent's point of view. Using the word "reasonable"
| requires context and perception. No matter how much one
| might disagree with the opponent, and how morally-right
| your side is, it's still important to do. It helps one
| understand their opponent's motivations and anticipated
| outcomes.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Well, as a citizen of one of the former buffer states, I
| really don't think there's a single bit of reason in that
| demand. I have the context and perception of living under
| Russian rule. Russians don't just have buffer states -
| they plunder them. Tens of millions of people in Ukraine
| have done nothing to deserve this fate and now that I'm
| also considered "the West" I won't let them fall into it
| if I can help it.
|
| Every single nation that ever had something to do with
| them and was fortunate enough to leave their sphere of
| influence is trying its hardest to join NATO, isn't that
| a little telling? Perhaps Russia is not only looking for
| buffer, but wants more?
| gpvos wrote:
| "Now" is actually reasonable. "In the future", not.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Do you have a secret rulebook that I'm unaware of?
| leesalminen wrote:
| One could argue that acquiescing to the bully now will
| make it harder to push-back in the future. From that
| perspective, "now" isn't resaonable.
| nivenkos wrote:
| I meant his demands that the LPR and DPR hold recognised
| referendums for independence, that Crimea be officially
| transferred back to Russia (after being arbitrarily granted
| to Ukraine by a Communist dictator), and Ukraine to remain
| neutral.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-russian-
| military-...
|
| Fighting against those isn't worth hundreds of billions of
| dollars and tens of thousands of lives. The first two will
| continue to be problematic even if Ukraine wins.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Mobile networks should of course be classified as critical
| infrastructure, and thus be exempt from any rolling blackouts.
| blueflow wrote:
| They already are. The article is just sensationalist. And from
| all providers, they picked Deutsche Telekom, which is like the
| provider with the worst reputation in terms of reliability and
| service. Of course the german internet is in shambles if you
| ask DTAG... because theirs is.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > which is like the provider with the worst reputation in
| terms of reliability and service
|
| Every other provider would like a word with you. I don't even
| think there's a good one outside tiny ones.
| blueflow wrote:
| Intentional superlative, DTAG is the worst, it doesn't say
| the others are good. It just says they are less bad.
| gpvos wrote:
| Too little time to implement that before the winter. Mobile
| phones used to be supplemental to the old fixed phone network,
| which _is_ on separate power.
| torcete wrote:
| USA is using and destroying Europe in its proxy war against
| Russia.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Maybe Europe should take responsibility for reckless energy
| policies over multiple decades?
| vkou wrote:
| It's a little bit more complicated than that, much of Eastern
| Europe is also happy to both make and hop into that bed.
| izacus wrote:
| I strongly strongly doubt that critical emergency call
| infrastructure will be blacked out before literally anything
| else.
|
| Even when massive ice buildup took down a whole region's power
| grid in my home EU country, mobile cell towers were the first to
| be kept up and brought online to allow emergency services and
| citizens to communicate.
|
| This feels like a nothing burger from Reuters (which is
| publishing some seriously dubious news these days).
| Kye wrote:
| The general vibe of quotes from governments/operators in the
| article is they intend to find ways to keep essential services
| running in the event outages last longer than a couple of
| hours.
| gpvos wrote:
| Indeed, they will just black out _together with_ everything
| else. They are generally not on separate distribution circuits.
| They do have some limited backup power though.
| izacus wrote:
| The ones I was helping deploy usually had generators as
| backup because the requirements from the government was that
| emergency call infrastructure works when power goes out.
|
| I can see smaller network operators save money on backups,
| but major monopolies usually don't have a choice in this
| manner.
|
| So I wonder which regions don't do that?
| bismuthcrystal wrote:
| For how long can these generators run?
| zanethomas wrote:
| Easily predictable, and predicted, unintended consequence.
| sschueller wrote:
| Mobile networks are considered essential. They will be the last
| thing to be turned off. I would expect trains to stop running
| first and businesses having their power cut before any cell tower
| would be affected.
|
| I would also like the point out that network operators have
| mobile cell towers they can deploy and do deploy during large
| crowd events. These run for hours on diesel.
|
| This is sensationalist journalism trying to sell papers. Every
| paper will be reprinting this in their language as they do for
| many reuters articles. Irresponsible IMO just like the weekly
| nuclear holocaust headlines because of that reactor in Ukraine.
| How about we educate the public instead of printing garbage
| headlines?
| antonymy wrote:
| So it's not turning off mobile networks in particular, it's just
| a general power shortage, a consequence of which might be some
| cell service being interrupted. They made it sound like they were
| going to shut off mobile networks specifically to save power,
| which doesn't make sense for a couple of reasons.
|
| Starting to feel like Reuters isn't worth my time anymore. Too
| many clickbaity titles like this lately.
| toyg wrote:
| I was reading the other day that they've made dramatic cuts in
| most of their local offices, and their material is now largely
| produced in a central hub in a low-cost Eastern European
| country. It shows.
| throwie_wayward wrote:
| they're running a business, after all.
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