Putin announces 'military operation' in Ukraine.

[Jaymo]

2 hours ago, Dave-G said:

Just out of idle curiosity - anyone know any potential long term dangerous implications of leaving oil and gas in the ground if its not extracted? I get its been there a very long time but earthquakes and whatnot might have repercussions of the planet erupting. 

I'll get my hat.

 

Nowt- it’s been there millions of years and wouldn’t be going anywhere if we weren’t extracting it. 

[oldypigeonpopper]

Hello, I wonder why Hungary have chosen a Russian company to build 2 power stations, ??

[Stonepark]

6 minutes ago, oldypigeonpopper said:

Hello, I wonder why Hungary have chosen a Russian company to build 2 power stations, ??

They are quite literally "bomb proof" .... as Ukraine has been finding out with Zaporozhye.

[armsid]

Hungary went to Russia for Covid vaccine voted against sanctions by the EU and was president when country was Communist a foot in 2 camps

[Jim Neal]

On 24/08/2022 at 18:59, Smokersmith said:

Lets hope the system cuts off at 100!

Alas.....

 

Anyway don't worry.  The Rasputitsa is coming.  It changed the tide in two world wars previously so I'm pretty sure it's going to have an effect on this one.  It rarely favours the attacking/advancing side.

[Dave-G]

13 hours ago, Jaymo said:

Nowt- it’s been there millions of years and wouldn’t be going anywhere if we weren’t extracting it. 

Lol, I might indeed need a bigger cap.

Yes I get it sounds a bit far fetched but it's being claimed gas use amongst other fossil fuels is causing rising temperatures but if it stays underground how many more volcanoes will erupt to release the pressure and heat up the planets crust more anyway?

What I'm not wording very well is, is it about evens to use the gas or let it escape and burn without using it. I'm thinking this ought to be a new topic perhaps.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Dave-G

[JohnfromUK]

10 minutes ago, Dave-G said:

Lol, I might indeed need a bigger cap.

Yes I get it sounds a bit far fetched but it's being claimed gas use amongst other fossil fuels is causing rising temperatures but if it stays underground how many more volcanoes will erupt to release the pressure and heat up the planets crust more anyway?

What I'm not wording very well is, is it about evens to use the gas or let it escape and burn without using it. I'm thinking this ought to be a new topic perhaps.

If you burn (natural) gas (which is a mix of carbon and hydrogen mainly in the form of methane) - you release carbon.  For every cubic yard of gas burned, you will release the same amount of carbon wherever it is burned (your cooker, my boiler, the power station, or the flare at a plant in Russia).

If you leave the gas in the ground, no carbon is released.  It will not 'build up' in pressure.  It was made from decaying vegetation millions of years ago.  It has been there for millions of years trapped (a long way) under the ground like an air bubble trapped under ice.  When you take it out by drilling into the pocket of gas, you reduce the pressure, but the pressure does not 'build up' if not extracted.

Volcanoes are unrelated and come from molten rock - MUCH deeper than oil and gas.

Edited August 28, 2022 by JohnfromUK

[Dave-G]

37 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

If you burn (natural) gas (which is a mix of carbon and hydrogen mainly in the form of methane) - you release carbon.  For every cubic yard of gas burned, you will release the same amount of carbon wherever it is burned (your cooker, my boiler, the power station, or the flare at a plant in Russia).

If you leave the gas in the ground, no carbon is released.  It will not 'build up' in pressure.  It was made from decaying vegetation millions of years ago.  It has been there for millions of years trapped (a long way) under the ground like an air bubble trapped under ice.  When you take it out by drilling into the pocket of gas, you reduce the pressure, but the pressure does not 'build up' if not extracted.

Volcanoes are unrelated and come from molten rock - MUCH deeper than oil and gas.

And so endeth todays lesson. Cheers me dear. 

[Rewulf]

2 hours ago, JohnfromUK said:

you leave the gas in the ground, no carbon is released.  It will not 'build up' in pressure.  It was made from decaying vegetation millions of years ago.  It has been there for millions of years trapped (a long way) under the ground like an air bubble trapped under ice.  When you take it out by drilling into the pocket of gas, you reduce the pressure, but the pressure does not 'build up' if not extracted

Not strictly true. 

https://weather.com/science/environment/video/methane-fountain-bubbles-in-arctic-sea-near-siberia-as-permafrost-thaws

There is that much gas under permafrost in Siberia, it often comes up in summer thaws. 

Methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2. 

[mchughcb]

19 hours ago, Dave-G said:

Wondering if Greta Thundermouth's family has any connection.

Honestly starting to think so. She'd over 18 now and not getting much press as people are starting to learn the hard way how their energy, their food and clothing that they are so far removed from the production of is now in short supply based on the choices their elected governmens made.

[JohnfromUK]

6 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

There is that much gas under permafrost in Siberia, it often comes up in summer thaws.

That's true - as it does from the bogs, wetlands, rubbish tips, sewage treatment and slurry lagoons here in the UK.  It is recently 'fresh made' from decaying vegetation that is near the surface. 

But it is 'geologically recent' in that it isn't trapped a long way down under rock effectively sealed in in the way that the gas that is drilled for is sealed in with the oil (the two usually go together).   The gas being (normally) supplied by Russia is deep drilled gas I believe.

Our local council tip generates methane as the rubbish breaks down - and 'some' (I have no idea what percentage of that made) is collected and used in internal combustion motor driven generators to make electricity fed into the grid.

You are right in methane being a major greenhouse gas.

[mchughcb]

Well I can't blame David taking on the millenials. Energy security is not a "thing" its the thing.

 

 

[Stonepark]

The largest volume and greatest effect greenhouse gas is H2O, it forms 0.5% of the atmosphere compared to CO2 0.04% or methane at 0.000017%.

Part of the reason the IPCC models don't reflect reality (and therefore are predicting warming, whilst we are cooling) is that they put more emphasis on CO2 than H2O.

The  models also fail to take into account the total energy input to the Earth, only using total solar irradiance, which whilst the majority, is not complete.

 

[mchughcb]

9 hours ago, Stonepark said:

The largest volume and greatest effect greenhouse gas is H2O, it forms 0.5% of the atmosphere compared to CO2 0.04% or methane at 0.000017%.

Part of the reason the IPCC models don't reflect reality (and therefore are predicting warming, whilst we are cooling) is that they put more emphasis on CO2 than H2O.

The  models also fail to take into account the total energy input to the Earth, only using total solar irradiance, which whilst the majority, is not complete.

 

Yep, biggest greenhouse gas, water vapour otherwise known as clouds. But the complete utter focus on CO2 and CH4.

[islandgun]

23 hours ago, JohnfromUK said:

That's true - as it does from the bogs, wetlands, rubbish tips, sewage treatment and slurry lagoons here in the UK.  It is recently 'fresh made' from decaying vegetation that is near the surface. 

But it is 'geologically recent' in that it isn't trapped a long way down under rock effectively sealed in in the way that the gas that is drilled for is sealed in with the oil (the two usually go together).   The gas being (normally) supplied by Russia is deep drilled gas I believe.

Our local council tip generates methane as the rubbish breaks down - and 'some' (I have no idea what percentage of that made) is collected and used in internal combustion motor driven generators to make electricity fed into the grid.

You are right in methane being a major greenhouse gas.

Rice cultivation [a staple for 1/2 the worlds population ] also produces a huge amount of methane due to flooding the paddy fields

[Mungler]

Interesting piece in the Telegraph. Some won’t like it because it suggests that the latest phase of Nordstream maintenance isn’t maintenance but the deliberate throttling of European energy supply (covered earlier on in this lengthy thread) and that Mr Putin is a genocidal neighbour invading tyrant etc. 

 

Putin’s stooges almost succeeded in persuading Scholz to defy his Nato allies. He dithered until the eve of February’s invasion before shelving Nord Stream 2.
Now, after six months of Europe’s worst war since 1945, some German politicians are once again calling for the pipeline to be opened “so that people do not have to freeze in winter and our industry does not suffer serious damage”, as Wolfgang Kubicki, Vice-President of the German Parliament, puts it.

Meanwhile Ms Schwesig has just been re-elected as leader of the Social Democrats in her state by a large majority. Schröder has yet to be expelled from the party, let alone sanctioned.

Germany’s Achilles’ heel

This is the measure of Germany’s abject reliance, not only on Russian energy, but on the Russian state. For Putin, gas and oil were only ever a means to an end. He has always wanted to reduce the Germans — towards whom Russians have traditionally had an inferiority complex — to a status of servility. 

Stalin only succeeded in dividing Germany. Putin seeks to turn the entire Federal Republic into his client state — and thereby impose his will upon Europe.

With the unerring eye of the predator, Putin grasped that energy was Germany’s Achilles’ heel. A single plant of a single corporation, the headquarters of the chemical and pharmaceutical giant BASF at Ludwigshafen, uses as much energy as Denmark.

Over the last 25 years, Germany’s craving for cheap energy led it into an unequal relationship with Russia — what the philosopher Hegel called “the dialectic of master and slave”. 

Putin saw that some German politicians could be bought (Schröder), others bamboozled (Merkel), and still others bullied (Scholz). Other EU countries followed the German example by relying heavily on Moscow for energy, influenced by the evasion and ambivalence that has characterised Berlin’s policy for decades. 
Germany, whose economy is substantially larger than Britain’s, has given just £1 billion in military aid to Ukraine compared to the UK’s £3.5 billion. The United States has given ten times as much as the EU. Yet Ukraine is a European country under genocidal attack.  

The reluctance to provoke Putin that still prevails in wide circles of the Federal Republic is rooted in exaggerated notions of Russian military power, economic importance and cultural pre-eminence.
German fatalism about Russia’s ability to absorb casualties and yet win ultimate victory reflects folk memories of the Eastern Front. But Putin, unlike Stalin, does not have a vast conscript army at his disposal, he does not enjoy technical superiority and he cannot afford the war of attrition that he has unleashed. Nor are the Russian people united against an invading force in defence of their homeland. Only in Berlin do they think this is another Stalingrad.

This historical myopia has much to do with the long-standing German habit of subsuming the other nations that made up the Soviet Union into Russia. To this day most Germans have no awareness of the fact that the Nazis killed millions of Ukrainian civilians and devastated their country. 

Ironically, many artists, writers and musicians who have fled Ukraine have found refuge in Germany. One example is the composer Valentin Silvestrov, who fled to Berlin aged 84 with one suitcase, full of his manuscripts. Once there, he discovered that Ukrainian music was unknown in Germany. Now that Silvestrov’s works are being performed, including at the Proms in London, the Germans are slowly waking up to the presence of a greater living composer than any of their own. 

Many ordinary Germans, like the British, instinctively warm to the Ukrainian cause. The difference is in leadership – or lack of it. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, unlike Boris Johnson or Liz Truss, has shown only lukewarm support for Kyiv and has been implicitly rebuked by President Zelensky.

Hamburger grilled

Although there is no suggestion that Scholz has been bribed to go easy on Russia, he himself has become embroiled in a corruption scandal. He is accused of helping M.M. Warburg & Co, Germany’s oldest and largest private bank, to avoid a €47 million fine in 2016, during his time as Finance Minister in the Merkel coalition.
The Hamburg-based bank is alleged to have made up to €300 million in a capital gains tax scam which came to light while Scholz was also mayor of the city state. Just as he finds himself facing an unexpectedly grim present and a positively terrifying future, his provincial past has returned to haunt him.

Last week the Chancellor was grilled by a committee of inquiry in Hamburg. The normally meticulous Scholz claimed not to remember any details about his meetings with Warburg’s former chief, Christian Olearius, who has now been charged with tax evasion. Germany’s safe pair of hands, whom millions had entrusted with the nation’s finances, is now accused of being cosy with tax-dodging bankers and being an unimpressive, even unreliable, witness.
In other ways, too, Scholz is failing to live up to the moral example set by the two great Social Democratic Chancellors of post-war Germany, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt. At a joint press conference with Mahmoud Abbas in Berlin earlier this month, Scholz remained tight-lipped while the Palestinian leader delivered an anti-Semitic tirade, accusing Israel of committing “many Holocausts” against his people. 

Schmidt, who concealed the fact he had a Jewish grandfather from the Nazis but as Chancellor was an outspoken philosemite, would not have been impressed by his fellow Hamburger Scholz. Nor would Brandt, who famously fell to his knees at the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Not for decades has anti-Semitism been such a threat in Germany: in July, Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial was desecrated with swastikas. Now, as Putin’s myrmidons massacre and deport Ukrainians near the site of Nazi genocide, while a quarter of the Russian Jewish population has emigrated in anticipation of pogroms, Germany needs a leader who is not afraid to denounce anti-Semitism even at the cost of diplomatic niceties.

After less than a year in office, Scholz’s personal ratings are plumbing depths never seen during Mrs Merkel’s 16 years at the helm. As Germans brace themselves for unprecedented hardships in peacetime, they are led by a weak and indecisive Chancellor at the head of a fragile three-party coalition.

Post-heroic, post-patriotic

Wednesday’s visit to Kyiv by Boris Johnson – his third – to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day was hugely appreciated not only by Volodymyr Zelensky but by all Ukrainians. Yet it was a gesture of solidarity that did not occur – could not have occurred – to Olaf Scholz.

The German Chancellor’s only visit to the Ukrainian capital last June, accompanied by Emmanuel Macron and Mario Draghi, was an awkward, chilly affair that yielded little more than promises. This week, Scholz posted a short video message, concluding: “Our hearts are with you.” Ulrich Speck, a German foreign policy analyst, commented: “Hearts, yes. But not weapons.”

Johnson, by contrast, knows he is among friends in Kyiv – a friendship symbolised by Zelensky awarding him Ukraine’s highest honour, the Order of Liberty. It is impossible to imagine the lugubrious German Chancellor finding the Prime Minister’s pithy words: “While people [in the West] are paying energy bills, people in Ukraine are paying with blood.” Nor would Scholz echo him in declaring: “I believe Ukraine can and will win this war.”

For his part, Zelensky told his people that they had been “reborn” in the heat of war. “We used to say: ‘Peace’. Now we say: ‘Victory’,” he declared.

Highly educated Germans find it hard to empathise with such Churchillian sentiments. Jürgen Habermas, the eminence grise of German intellectuals, makes condescending comments about Ukraine as a primitive place, still captive to the nationalist illusions of the last century, unlike more sophisticated, “post-heroic” Germany. It doesn’t occur to the 93-year-old philosopher that without the heroism of its soldiers and civilians, Ukraine would by now have ceased to exist.

Prussian military prowess has long since given way to post-patriotic pusillanimity. Where Merkel and Scholz feared to tread and even Biden was hesitant, Johnson was the first to commit himself wholeheartedly to the cause and to visit war-torn Kyiv.

Many other nations – the Poles, the Baltic states, the Scandinavians and the Canadians among them – have been more supportive than the Germans, who owe Ukrainians the greatest moral debt. 
Berlin boasts of handing out a handful of howitzers while dithering over clapped-out armoured vehicles. Meanwhile British arms and training, Turkish drones and American rocket artillery systems have proved decisive on the battlefield.

Sold down the Dnieper

Although the Scholz coalition officially sides with Ukraine, the unpalatable fact remains that Germany and its EU partners are financing Russian aggression by paying vast sums for Russian gas.

Will they stand up to Putin in Germany when the enormity of the ordeal ahead becomes clear to everybody? Will public opinion continue to back even the present feeble commitment, or will the voices calling for peace at the expense of Ukrainians prevail? It is all too believable that at some point, probably early next year when gas storage facilities are empty, Berlin – and Brussels – will open negotiations with the Kremlin, regardless of Kyiv’s wishes.

Yet it is then that the ghosts of the past may rise up to intervene in the present. The thought of Germans and Russians redrawing the map of Eastern Europe at the conference table sends shivers down the spines of every Pole, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and, of course, Ukrainian. On August 23, 1940, exactly 82 years ago this week, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, carving up Poland (which then included Lviv and other parts of present-day Ukraine) and the Baltic states between Russia and Germany. No German Chancellor wishes to be reminded of that precedent. 
However, nor can Scholz risk presiding over an even deeper and more lasting recession than that caused by the Covid pandemic. Somehow he must steer a course between the Scylla of appeasing Putin and the Charybdis of economic ruin.

The tension between these positions is reflected in the tripartite coalition. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and the Greens are the hawks, Finance Minister Christian Lindner and his pro-business Free Democrats are the doves, while the Social Democrats are deeply divided. The party leadership leans towards Moscow, the rank and file towards Kyiv. This explains why Scholz never says that he wants Ukraine to win the war, merely that they must not lose it. 

The opposition Christian Democrats are only slightly more united. They too have a large wing that privately favours a negotiated peace, represented by their pro-business leader Friedrich Merz, and a smaller but not insignificant group led by the foreign affairs expert Norbert Röntgen, who hope for a Ukrainian victory. Merz has papered over the cracks by focusing on a campaign to reverse his predecessor Mrs Merkel’s exit from nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, the “understanding Putin” lobby has the support of both the hard Left Die Linke and anti-immigration AfD parties. German public opinion has slowly tiptoed away from its initial admiration for Ukrainian resistance and towards a compromise peace. 

That subtle shift could soon become an overwhelming tide, once Germans are required to make real sacrifices. Vladimir Putin, we may be sure, is counting on it.
From October, Scholz will impose a gas levy on consumers to compensate energy companies for the cost of replacing Russian gas supplies. Germany’s biggest energy company, Uniper, was bailed out in July to the tune of £12.5 billion; it is now claiming another £18.5 billion of levies.

This policy is bound to be unpopular, since it redistributes tens of billions from the poor to the rich — curious thinking for a government of the Left. But this is nothing compared to the prospect of protests sparked by a national shutdown caused, not by a deadly virus, but by Putin’s energy politics.

A change in the air?

Modern Germany has a volatile history of popular protest. It began with the revolution that toppled the Kaiser in 1918. The Nazis mobilised the masses to carry out their “national revolution” in 1933. A workers’ uprising in East Germany was crushed by Soviet tanks in 1953. Student protests brought about a cultural revolution in 1968. Uniquely bloodless and benign was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This was Germany’s finest hour.

The defiance that breached the Wall and sent the Soviet army home was a blessing, but the despair that Putin’s revenge may induce this winter will surely be a curse. Gas has given the Russian dictator coercive control over the German political class, which willingly acquiesced in its fate.

In Kyiv, Boris Johnson said: “I can tell you that we in the UK will not for one second give in to Putin’s blackmail.” Olaf Scholz is incapable of speaking like this — because he does not believe it. He has failed to frame the coming ordeal as a battle in which Germans must make sacrifices for their own liberty, not just Ukraine’s. People don’t mind his lack of charisma; they do mind facing a nightmarish winter with spineless hypocrisy at the helm.
Will it become so obvious by next spring that Scholz is unequal to the task that either he or his coalition are replaced? Can the centre of German politics hold — or are we about to see a terrible revolt of the masses against a discredited political establishment? It has happened before. It can happen again.

Daniel Johnson was the Telegraph’s correspondent in Germany and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. He is now the editor of TheArticle.

[Scully]

Very interesting, and enlightening ( to me at least ) thanks for taking the time. 
 

Interesting times ahead methinks. My main concern is that hopefully none of it has too much of a negative impact on the lives of my kids. 

[Mungler]

Ravil Maganov, head of Lukoil, a truly massive Russian energy company, died after falling out of a window today.

This is lucky, the last two but one committed suicide after murdering their wife and daughter (that's two wives and daughters between them).

The last one? Some people came round to help him commit suicide while his brother was in the bathroom. Strangely, after initially telling his story, the brother went silent.

Are there still people who don't understand or refuse to accept that Russia is a mafia state.

[islandgun]

4 minutes ago, Mungler said:

Ravil Maganov, head of Lukoil, a truly massive Russian energy company, died after falling out of a window today.

This is lucky, the last two but one committed suicide after murdering their wife and daughter (that's two wives and daughters between them).

The last one? Some people came round to help him commit suicide while his brother was in the bathroom. Strangely, after initially telling his story, the brother went silent.

Are there still people who don't understand or refuse to accept that Russia is a mafia state.

Perhaps he felt compelled to clean the window as he had spotted a nice cathedral in the distance and wanted a clearer view

[Rewulf]

54 minutes ago, Mungler said:

Are there still people who don't understand or refuse to accept that Russia is a mafia state

Who has said it isn't? 

 

47 minutes ago, islandgun said:

Perhaps he felt compelled to clean the window as he had spotted a nice cathedral in the distance and wanted a clearer view

Very good 👍

[Raja Clavata]

9 hours ago, Mungler said:

Are there still people who don't understand or refuse to accept that Russia is a mafia state.

There appears to be at least one person who doesn't understand that everyone understands that Russia is a mafia state...

[Mice!]

5 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

There appears to be at least one person who doesn't understand that everyone understands that Russia is a mafia state...

😅😅 it was never in any doubt was it?

[Mungler]

“Are there still people who don't understand or refuse to accept that Russia is a mafia state.”

Oh there’s plenty of Putin lovers and apologists out there - indeed, where is Stonepark? He should have some insight on this and be ready with an excuse, a reason or a pro Russian rationalisation 😁

The list of Salisbury poisoning deniers is also an interesting insight into who believes what…. but we’ve covered that and people have offered their odd and varying views on that already…. along with the Nordstream maintenance cycle  which remains entirely normal, just like every year, apparently 😉😆😆 😆

Edited September 1, 2022 by Mungler

[Rewulf]

8 minutes ago, Mungler said:

along with the Nordstream maintenance cycle  which remains entirely normal, just like every year, apparently

Mungler, seriously ? 
Why do you keep bashing your head against the wall about the gas thing ?
We and our allies have allied ourselves with Ukraine , and have denied their enemy things, sanctioned them, would Russia not be justified in denying us things , like gas ?
The problem is , they shoot themselves in the foot by doing so, all those tens of thousands of tanks the Ukrainians keep blowing up arent cheap you know...
But the yearly maintainance IS a thing, get over it .

 

See the dips in July ? A weeks annual maintainance every year when demand is lowest.

Another complete load of BS , is that the Russians have 'cut off' gas supplies to Europe, Nordstream isnt the only pipeline, Yamal ect are still pumping gas , thats if the Ukrainians allow it.

 

[Mungler]

I fully expect Russia to throttle / cut off gas supply to Europe as a result of the conflict - it’s their best card.

Nordstream 1 has now been shut down completely - Russia cite seemingly never ending maintenance and everyone else connected to the pipe and it’s maintenance citing Russian BS.

You believe who you want to believe, right?