Europe's New Security Architecture

[Albion]

That does not mean that an average American family needs 3 cars that are huge almost as a bus. Or that people need to fly on vacations over the half of planet.

You mean like John Kerry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Redford and other advocates and spokesmen of the "Climate Change" cause do themselves?

No, I suppose it's correct to say that the average person (who doesn't do any of what you just listed) doesn't need or even aspire to such things.

 

[trophy33]

You mean like John Kerry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Redford and other advocates and spokesmen of the "Climate Change" cause do themselves?

No, I suppose it's correct to say that the average person (who doesn't do any of what you just listed) doesn't need or even aspire to such things.

No, I mean average American energy consumption and waste production.

 

[Albion]

No, I mean average American energy consumption and waste production.

What you wrote, however, was about people. People of your imagination, or so it seemede.

But in any case, it wasn't about "average American energy consumption and waste production."

 

[trophy33]

What you wrote, however, was about people. People of your imagination, or so it seemede.

But in any case, it wasn't about "average American energy consumption and waste production."

Not sure what you mean. America is composed of American people. I do not think that American animals are doing it.

If you call it imagination, just youtube some street videos from a US city and from an European city (or an Indian city, even better) and compare the cars.

And if you will still not believe your own eyes, you can google it too:
America's poor consume more than world's wealthiest countries - Metro Voice News

Or, you can see that the USA has almost twice as much emissions as Europe or India, having much smaller population:
Climate change: US vs. China -- Here's how the two biggest emitters stack up - CNN

 

[dqhall]

Because they do not understand what it means for the global weather, for example for hurricanes or for oceanic and marine life.


It needs much more investments and inventions, current clean energy technologies are quite primitive and ineffective. Except of nuclear energy. But solar panels are much cheaper and much more effective than 10 years ago, so some advancement can be seen.

There are few homes with solar panels installed. There are few electric cars, buses and trucks. The price of lithium was rising. You need batteries to store intermittent green energy. China has a near monopoly on rare earth magnets used in windmill turbines and other tech. Refining rare earth minerals causes pollution. Most nations did not compete against China in this industry. Ukraine has a near monopoly on neon gas. It can be pulled from the air, but the machinery used is expensive. Neon is used in silicon chip production. There are chip shortages.

 

[FireDragon76]

The acceptance of climate change is a given in Europe. Also, we are not as well blessed with oil and gas as are the Americans and are not inclined to poison our water tables with fracking. Wind Energy and its spin-offs have developed significantly in recent years and on the scale now being talked about can replace much of our fossil fuel usage. The alternative is a dependence on Russian gas or Arab oil. American extraction costs make their gas about 40% more expensive than Russian gas and so is not as attractive an option as you might think. You may find you need it more than we do as supplies struggle to meet American demand. Also, the real reason for the re-emergence of energy deficits in the USA, the US's vulnerability to global energy market pricing, and the increase in American energy bills is the growth of demand in the USA exceeding supply and has nothing to do with Biden.

Nuclear needs to be part of any green energy mix in Europe, because you need excess capacity to meet fluctuating demands. Supercapacitors are a long way in the future.

 

[Aussie Pete]

It is not just sanctions but also intelligence sharing and military equipment and supplies also. Russia may well take the country militarily but holding it will be a lot harder than it was for the Coalition to hold Afghanistan or Iraq. The people want their freedom.

You may be right. It may be that Russia simply won't have the resources to hold onto Ukraine. I wouldn't bank on it. I expect China is closer to invading Taiwan than ever. I suspect that the only thing that holds them back is the risk to their economy. However, Putin has ignored that risk. If I was China, I'd wait a while to see what impact the world's sanctions have on Russia. China's government may believe that it is self sustaining because the population is so large. It's hinted at that already.

One of the problems that the Western world has is that it sees everything Western as being superior to the rest of the world. Even if this is true, it is arrogant to assume that everyone wants to adopt Western culture. It's been proven to be a myth many times.

 

[mindlight]

You may be right. It may be that Russia simply won't have the resources to hold onto Ukraine. I wouldn't bank on it. I expect China is closer to invading Taiwan than ever. I suspect that the only thing that holds them back is the risk to their economy. However, Putin has ignored that risk. If I was China, I'd wait a while to see what impact the world's sanctions have on Russia. China's government may believe that it is self sustaining because the population is so large. It's hinted at that already.

One of the problems that the Western world has is that it sees everything Western as being superior to the rest of the world. Even if this is true, it is arrogant to assume that everyone wants to adopt Western culture. It's been proven to be a myth many times.

When Christian the Western world was superior and it still has a considerable legacy to rest its laurels on. It is Christianity that ennobled the idea of freedom and made it something worth dying for. But Putin's Christianized vision of Russia is much harder to confront on that moral basis than was communism. Also, he is operating in what the Kremlin regards as its own backyard in Ukraine.

The pictures coming from the Ukraine of women and children crying and men rushing back to serve their country in the fight are heartbreaking. But the fact is that Ukrainian freedom is quite secular, abortion is commonplace, a gangster Mafiosi hold sway there. The question of 'freedom for what' springs to mind. If freedom is a gift and a right then indeed what have we used it for?

The West will make this invasion very expensive for Putin as will the Ukrainian people themselves. Holding the country may prove a nightmare. He will probably try some kind of puppet regime supported by Russian troops, that would have to be quite brutal and we may see major instability as a result. You are right about the parallels with the Chinese ambition for Taiwan. This is a testing ground for what will happen there also. But there again the Taiwanese are not Christians fighting for freedom of worship they are less Christian than the Chinese themselves. This moral ambiguity was not there in the cold war even though we try and dredge up these symbols of that fight for this one. Now freedom means LGBTQ and is laughable to a Russian soldier.

 

[mindlight]

Fracking is safe. Trusting Russia for energy is naive.

You do not have a natural gas pipeline from North America to Europe anyway. After ten years of development, the U.S. is nearly the largest exporter of LNG. Most of it is spoken for.
U.S. to be world's biggest LNG exporter in 2022

It has taken years to expand LNG export capacity. The U.S. has enough for itself. Most other NATO nations are not self sufficient in energy. As nat gas became expensive, power plants switched to coal. Europe might rather freeze than burn coal. China and India consume piles of it.

I agree to trust Russia for energy supplies was naive also the complicity of European elites in that is clear. Gerhard Schroeder an ex-German Chancellor is still on the board of Gazprom.

Fracking is not safe and is poisoning drinking water and contributing to harmful air pollution in the USA.
Facts About Fracking
Much of your gas exports are coming from this process.

Europe wants a fossil fuel-free future and is a pioneer in the technologies to make that happen. We had planned to use gas in the meantime but now that does not look realistic.

 

[mindlight]

Well, that part ^ I think is untrue, but I did appreciate the points made leading up to it.

Energy demand grew massively in the recoveries after Pandemic lockdowns at the same time as a considerable reduction of coal usage were taking place. As a result, you now find yourself in an energy deficit on the overall level. That does make you vulnerable to global markets where the supply of oil and gas was deliberately restricted in the last year by Russia and by OPEC and prices have skyrocketed. Gas prices at the pump are inflated by that net effect. Short of cutting petrol duty, there is little that Biden can do about that.

 

[mindlight]

Nuclear needs to be part of any green energy mix in Europe, because you need excess capacity to meet fluctuating demands. Supercapacitors are a long way in the future.

I agree we need a base supply and nuclear is the best we have right now. The culture in Germany is very green right now and nuclear has already been rejected. Coal is too polluting and gas is now politically untenable. The ambition is to build windmills on 2% of Germanys' land surface which would cover all our needs as there is wind somewhere all the time. This is happening despite many legal battles relating to it. There are also storage options and green hydrogen options for the future. This will take time. Germany may well end up pioneering many of the new industrial techniques of a green economy. The French meanwhile are and always have been fans of nuclear and have a strong base supply which other countries in Europe tap into when the wind stops blowing.

Transport including cars is also being electrified and then there is the issue of household heating which is mainly gas at this time. The government will probably have to incentivize a shift to electricity there also.

 

[dqhall]

I agree to trust Russia for energy supplies was naive also the complicity of European elites in that is clear. Gerhard Schroeder an ex-German Chancellor is still on the board of Gazprom.

Fracking is not safe and is poisoning drinking water and contributing to harmful air pollution in the USA.
Facts About Fracking
Much of your gas exports are coming from this process.

Europe wants a fossil fuel-free future and is a pioneer in the technologies to make that happen. We had planned to use gas in the meantime but now that does not look realistic.

There were a few fracking accidents. The benefits outweigh the risks. Water aquifers in fracked areas are usable, else fracking would have been shut down.

California tried fracking. They discovered shale rock there was already fractured by earthquakes. Fracking was not economical there, development ceased.

Canada and Argentina are fracking. Columbia wants to test a frack well. Saudi Arabia is testing fracking for natural gas extraction. Algeria has natural gas shale that is not being developed. They are hostile to outsiders. Mexico has oil and gas in shale. They are against fracking.

It took years for the U.S. to develop natural gas import facilities that turned the LNG to gas and connect it to pipelines. As the U.S. energy crisis was lessened by new shale gas and oil supplies, they started to build LNG export facilities. They chilled and compressed the gas to make liquid natural gas. Special tankers transport LNG to specially equipped ports connected to pipelines. It takes years to do these things. There are manpower shortages at this time.

Nuclear reactors are being built again in various nations. A smaller safer reactor design is sought.

 

[Aussie Pete]

When Christian the Western world was superior and it still has a considerable legacy to rest its laurels on. It is Christianity that ennobled the idea of freedom and made it something worth dying for. But Putin's Christianized vision of Russia is much harder to confront on that moral basis than was communism. Also, he is operating in what the Kremlin regards as its own backyard in Ukraine.

The pictures coming from the Ukraine of women and children crying and men rushing back to serve their country in the fight are heartbreaking. But the fact is that Ukrainian freedom is quite secular, abortion is commonplace, a gangster Mafiosi hold sway there. The question of 'freedom for what' springs to mind. If freedom is a gift and a right then indeed what have we used it for?

The West will make this invasion very expensive for Putin as will the Ukrainian people themselves. Holding the country may prove a nightmare. He will probably try some kind of puppet regime supported by Russian troops, that would have to be quite brutal and we may see major instability as a result. You are right about the parallels with the Chinese ambition for Taiwan. This is a testing ground for what will happen there also. But there again the Taiwanese are not Christians fighting for freedom of worship they are less Christian than the Chinese themselves. This moral ambiguity was not there in the cold war even though we try and dredge up these symbols of that fight for this one. Now freedom means LGBTQ and is laughable to a Russian soldier.

Putin is ex KGB. I don't believe that this particular leopard has changed his spots in the slightest. His own pronouncements make that clear. Mafia? Russia is run by organised crime.

I detest Islam and I'm no fan of Buddhism either. But China has no right to enslave the Uighur and Tibetan people. If a nation is free, even if it is not Christian, it at least enables Christians to witness there. It is becoming more and more difficult. Christians in India have long been persecuted on the quiet, but Modi is stirring up tensions Hindu against everyone else.

The alternative is open slather. Let loose the dogs of war, every nation for itself. Winner takes all. Except in a modern war, there won't be much left.

 

[Aussie Pete]

No, I mean average American energy consumption and waste production.

It is also an American who has driven (pun alert) the move to electric vehicles. It's an American who has developed massive battery packs that can eliminate the need for coal and gas fired generation. He is also working on electrically powered aircraft. Every country has its faults and flaws. America is a big target and I think often unjustly criticised.

 

[Aussie Pete]

That does not mean that an average American family needs 3 cars that are huge almost as a bus. Or that people need to fly on vacations over the half of planet. Or to live the consumerism to the fullest, producing unbelievable amount of waste. Or that people should not support clean energy in politics, even though they will have less money for a new iphone.

We must start somewhere. And there is not much time anymore, to do nothing. According to scientists, we must make the turn in few future years or else it will be irreversible. We certainly cannot return back to coal.

China is one of the most polluting places on the planet, along with India. Nothing to say about them?

 

[Albion]

Short of cutting petrol duty, there is little that Biden can do about that.

That is a lame theory. The USA was an energy exporting nation until Biden.

Then he shut down a lot of our production by edict.

Now we are importing energy from other countries. And you think that Biden can't do anything at all during the current Ukranian war to affect things????

 

[dqhall]

That is a lame theory. The USA was an energy exporting nation until Biden.

Then he shut down a lot of our production by edict.

Now we are importing energy from other countries. And you think that Biden can't do anything at all during the current Ukranian war to affect things????

The U.S. exports coal.
The U.S. exports liquid natural gas.
The U.S. is a net exporter of dry natural gas.

Some U.S. oil imports are refined and exported as products such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, asphalt etc. The U.S. is a net exporter of petroleum + petroleum products. The exports are small.
EIA expects U.S. petroleum trade to shift toward net imports during 2022 - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Biden stopped issuing drilling permits on Federal lands. This stunted oil production growth. Most oil is produced on private lands.

Biden should open Federal lands to drilling to help supply Europe NATO nations.