Youtube comments of Archangel17 (@MDP1702).
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@LRRPFco52
including billions we have spent saving France from Germany twice
The US didn't save France in WW1, they shortened the war for sure, but they did not save it. As for WW2, again the US played an important part, though I dislike the implications so often in these kind of statements. The US was part of a large multi-nation coalition, even without the US WW2 would have been won by the allies, the main question would be after how long and what about the situation after (for example a soviet controlled Europe or not?).
Also it isn't like the US did it out of the kindness of their heart. In WW1 they only came in after the unrestricted warfare was restarted, putting in danger US shipping and when they received an intercepted message stating Germany offered Mexico an alliance in case the US entered WW1, for which Mexico in return would invade the US, which was unacceptable to the US, obviously.
In WW2 the US only became military involved after it was attacked itself and declared war on.
then sending billions to help re-build France after both wars.
I don't think the US gave funding to France after WW1, in fact it insisted on all loans being payed back. Though there is conflicting reports on this, another source states the US forgave 2,8 billion debt in 1947 from ww1 and 1939-40 France had, though it doesn't say how much was from WW1, probably not much seeing the loans would have been close to being payed off.
Furthermore allied bombings are estimated to have caused damages to France in the hundreds of Billions and around 70 000 civilians killed. So that 'saving' came at a great cost.
All in all the marshall plan did help, but wasn't the main contribution to recovery, which already had started right after the war and by the time the marshall plan started it was well underway in France. To link France's economy in the 1980-90's to US funds from after WW2 is rather stupid.
Then during the Cold War, the US maintained the biggest military contribution to Western European security with a giant buffer between France and Russia, while facilitating friendly trade relations between Germany and France.
Which was all for US benefit, it just so happens it was also good for Western Europe. The US rather wanted that Europe again became the battlefield if the cold war became hot than closer to their home. They also realised that if the USSR took western Europe, the USSR would almost certainly become the dominant power in the world.
So the Rafale and all of the French defense industry is a bi-product of American intervention and years of infrastructure-development money that France didn’t have.
You do realise that Dassault already existed even before WW2? This kind of thinking is really a next level self-centered view.
When people from the US or UK keep bringing up the "saved in WW1 and 2" argument decades later, I can't do anything but laugh, thinking of a Frenchman telling the US that France saved the US in their independence war and to the UK that their army at Dunkirk was saved by their valiant resistance.
Rafale unit cost is $144 million per the deal with India, whereas F-35A is $77.9 million. So with Rafale, you pay more for less.
Generally the estimated cost of Rafale is around 70-75 million per unit, the problem is it depends on scale, less you buy, the higher the price. A batch of 118 rafale's has a cost of around 74 million, however the Indian batch is so small prices go up quickly (and possibly there is more to that deal too).
This is a problem that planes like the Rafale has vs a US developed plane like the F35. The F35 is ensured of economies of scale, even when the US alone buys them, the scale is considerably larger than most other developed planes can get on a worldwide scale. This increases end cost. Like I said, the Rafale's development costs were 20 times lower than the F35, however the F35 already has 3 times more built than the Rafale and probably a lot more agreed to be built, seeing how recent the F35 is. It isn't impossible that by the end of its life, it has been built 10 times or more than the Dassault. And then the question ofcourse is whether the US government doesn't partially cover the costs of the development.
So yes, the Dassault can be more expensive now than the F35, but if built in similar numbers it should be considerably cheaper.
And then there is also the expected maintenance etc. Apparently the F35 will be expensive to maintained due to parts, crews from the US needed to come over in case of problems, ... which might also possibly change the economic picture, not to mention ensured longterm capabilities in times of conflict.
And when India made the deal the F35 wasn't even a consideration, it wasn't fully rolled out yet and other countries (US close partners) would have been given preference in terms of early deliveries, especially seeing India bought S-400's from Russia, which the US doesn't like at all.
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I don't really think the language is that much of a problem, there is one clear option: english. Not only does this not favor any (large) EU member, but it is also the most used language world wide, the most used among EU allies and is used internationally in many different fields too. In the end every soldier that can't speak english yet would just take a course for it. By extension I also think english should become the 'official' EU language and be thaught in every member. Not to replace other languages, but to be used in official EU circumstances (politics, EU announcements and military for example) and so that citizens of different memberstates always have a common language to communicate with/fall back to, while ofcourse using their own native language when possible.
I also don't really think the budget would be that problematic. Essentially you'd state that all members spend at least 2% of their GDP in a common military fund, with the option to put more into it with the option to spend equally less than 2% in another year within the next 10-15 years (so a nation spending 3% one year could spend 1% a few years later), though the funding needs to be known more or less 2 years in advance and the fund should have always some reserve fund left. Then it is up to the military to manage that fund under the supervision of the EU parliament, which also needs to keep the council up to date when asked about. Ofcourse this oversight can be different depending on the answer of 'who is in charge?' And ofcourse the minimum budget can be increased if most countries are in favor, though probably only done in times of need.
The difference in equipment also isn't that difficult, though it isn't something fixed in a few years. For one you'd just slowly phase out the older equipment and replace it with newer common equipment. Secondly, some of this equipment could potentially be sold to other non-EU countries and replaced with common new equipment, this even could be seen as part of a modernisation plan.
The main problem with this question isn't the difference in current equipment, rather the defence industry and selecting which equipment to actually use in the future. EU nations are already working on this problem (FCAS, German-French tank, ....), but it won't be an easy thing regardless, no country wants to lose jobs.
I personally don't think public or political support is a problem overall, as long as you ensure that this EU army will not jeapordise NATO, something several (eastern) countries are afraid off. It is more the perception of opposition than actual opposition that is holding something more regarding an EU military back, that and the less easy answered questions. Regardless, starting with an 'EU army of the willing' is imo the best option.
The 'who is in charge' and 'sovereignty' questions are essentially closely interlinked and aren't easy to fix, especially not with the current still pretty decentralized EU government.
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@theodoresmith5272
You are overestimating the US tourist influence on overall european tourism. Will a lot of income be lost? Yes, but compared to the overall tourism industry it will be limited. In this video it is clearly said that around 7 million americans visited the entire EU in the summer last year. Compare this to just France receiving 80 million tourists every year (or spread out over the all the months 20 million in the summer months).
Now even if the US makes up 10-15% of European summer tourism, it will not be so bad that it will starve or be pushed to allow US citizens in. Most of EU tourism is still internal tourism. And these kind of safety measures have a lot of support in the EU nations, many people would even have accepted a complete closing of borders (even internally) probably.
Oh, and many Europeans would love to see NATO be disbanded in a controlled way, it might even push the EU to form it's own proper united army, maybe even similar to that of the US (federal and national guard). And even without Nato we could still have a regular alliance. The thing is that NATO is a political game and is mostly beneficial for the US to keep pressure and soft power in Europe and to use bases as a staging ground for military actions elsewhere, like the middle east and africa. And European leaders go with it, because it keeps them from having to divert extra resources and attention to a closer military co-operation in the EU itself and moreover they overall don't want to be responsible for souring US-EU relations too much.
As for money from military bases, I don't really see how this matters. The host countries in Europe pay around a third of the cost for these bases. Even if the economical outcome afterwards is still positive, we're talking about around a billion dollar at most.
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@SHUBHAMSINGH-wj2fg If what you said was true, China would go around acting with impunity, it doesn't. China is much more fragile than you paint it. The main reason the current Chinese government remains in power is the good Chinese economy, if it crashes there is a great risk of either the Chinese government being replaced by civil unrest/unpopularity or even civil strife. It wouldn't be the first time a Chinese empire broke up in several states.
Moreover most things that actually come from China are meant as luxury items, non-essential. Would it hurt if it stops coming? Obviously it would, but almost anything that China has/does export is replaceable by western means overtime or are non-essential. Arguably Russian gas is much more important, it is used for heating and part of Europe's industry and isn't really replaceable withing EU's borders, so to exchange it, they need to get to another third party involved, which takes time and is usually costly, which is why the EU is now likely planning to move away for Russian gas/oil in the next few years, but fell short of sanctioning it to buy time to make and execute the necessary plans for a shift.
Most of the reason why there is so much trade between China and the West comes down to one metric: cost thanks to mostly cheap labour due to lower wages and lower labour standards.
If that trade falls away, it mostly will just hit the prosperity of the west, not cause it to crumble. Likely it would mean something like the great depression. For China, internal instability could be a much greater threat upon economic collapse. A government that leads a prosperous country can get away with much more than a government that caused a great failure. Especially in case such difficult times are caused by the actions of your own government, this could spark huge resentment.
Regarding the energy producers. The countries you mention are first of far from the only ones. More likely they'll have to sell to other friendly nations, like China, freeing up other energy producing nations to increase exports to the west. Furthermore this 'energy production' is "old" energy the west is moving away from anyway. Within 20 years these nations will mean nothing to the west in terms of energy export.
China has far from a free run. The west and China are just too entangled at the moment and it is in neithers interest to shake it up too much, especially since most of China's influence in the world is economic related, not political or militarily.
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@ChaosSwissroIl I am guessing you're talk about the Phoenix "valley metro rail"? The one that actually exceeded revenue expectations a bit, has helped development in downtown Phoenic and Tempe and has since openings a few extensions? And as for going around the city, it is just one line going mostly through the center parts.
Light rail btw is more like above ground subways than trains, let alone HSR.
Because the highly populated areas are better served by highways between then
Yeah, right, and then have massive traffic delays once they actually hit a city region. Only highways is a rather stupid plan, the US is one of the few developed nations that thinks that way.
and are either too densely populated for interal HSR
You can also just place the station right outside the densely populated city, with other public transport going further, not unlike airports do Though if you can get regular trains in cities, you can also get high speed trains into densely populated area's. The high speed trains can also use regular tracks, they just need to take them slower (ie similar speed to regular trains).
too loosely populated for any rail (internal or connecting) to be viable.
Sure, just like there are places like that in Europe, you just don't put a trainline there, definitely not a HSR.
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+Nexus
There are differences between NASA and space x that makes comparing them stupid.
1) Nasa's goals are set by the government (president) and might change every 4-8 years, this might not sound like much, but just as in the energy sector, ..., this is fast. This while companies of space x don't need to change their visions/goals, unless they want to. And if they change visions/goals it's probably an extension rather than a complete overhaul.
2) Nasa is funding much more with this 18-19 billion a year than just the development of a rocket (what spacex basically does with around 1 billion). They also need to fund satellites, space station, other projects, ...
3) Nasa is government funded to do thingd that don't make money, basically to turn money into scientific advancement, spacex's goal is to eventually make profit (if they don't already)
probably some other reasons why a comparison is bad, but I can't directly think of them. So yes it's ineffective, but it's not necessarily nasa's fault, but also the government. If they would allow NASA to set it's own goals/visions (with oversight ofcourse) they might be much more effective.
Nasa doesn't make money from launches, every launch they do, they pay for. That's one of the reasons why private companies catch up and seem to do much better than nasa (altough spacex seems to be doing great ofcourse in what they do).
Nasa's mission parameters shouldn't be focused on designing and building rockets, because others can do that cheaper (demand for it by many more people than just nasa, so unless nasa is also going to go for this market and not just for themselves, they'll always be lagging behind), but should focus on things that at this moment don't directly seem profitable (exploration, ...). Going to the moon didn't make them money, nevertheless that was an important milestone, getting into space for the first time didn't make money (or anything else), but was essential for how we live our lives now. That's what government agencies like this do, seek the boundary, push them further, even if there is no direct apparent profit (in terms of money).
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@Jacob55367
no mention of the Mediterranean
That wouldn't be a theater. The only way in or out are the straits of Gibraltar and Suez. Both points would be easily guarded by the EU. Any US actions there would end catastrophically.
or of the Middle East theaters
I don't really think this would play a large part in a conflict like this. It might depend, but most nations there would remain neutral most likely and the distance from the middle east to Europe is also still quite large, even if you don't care about breaching Turkic airspace. Anyway, you could rather easily come up with a scenario where the entire middle east, Russia, North Africa, ... gets pulled in, just like you can come up with scenario's where this isn't the case.
No mention of Iceland which would be a vital staging ground for any land based invasion of Northern Europe.
The entire premise is that Iceland would remain neutral, which it would. And honestly I don't know if Iceland is such a great staging point anyway, but I don't know enough about its infrastructure.. Ofcourse it might help, but it might also not be worth the effort and possible hit on image attacking a neutral nation.
No mention of Northern Africa as a large staging operation of Southern Europe.
Why? No North African nations is likely to come into this war, so getting any staging point there would be by first invading those countries, just enlarging the amount of enemies the US has. And with the mediterranean on a lock, it wouldn't be a great staging point anyway.
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@matthiuskoenig3378
if the movie had spent its time explaining backstories and alliances
A movie doesn't have time for that, it was already quite long now. Unless you make it into a documentary. So saying "the change was bad due to this backstory in the books" is stupid if this backstory wasn't/couldn't be in the movie. In the movie Theoden was just upset by the fact of how close Rohan was to being destroyed/taken over and the fact that Gondor didn't do anything. Which is a very reasonable thing (considering the knowledge viewers have), even if you know they probably just couldn't help (not necessarily something the viewers know btw). He isn't a "Vulcan" that just follows logic. Ofcourse if you include the backstory from the books into the movie, this kind of change would probably make the scene change worse vs the book. But the scene wasn't worse imo exactly because it fits perfectly with what viewers know.
now the real question is whether its more entertaining to have drama added or explaining backstory/worldbuilding.
That is easy, for overall audience and movie: drama hands down. Too much backstory/worldbuilding would make a film feel slow and possibly boring for many viewers. And fans already know the backstory/worldbuilding. So more backstory/worldbuilding would only be good for a niche audience.
Now if it was a serie with multiple episodes and seasons instead of one/three movies, that is somewhat different. You have more time to explore things and because it is cut into 1 hour or so segments it wouldn't feel too slow or oversharing if done correctly.
even without book knowledge do you really expect me to believe that Rohan would let their only potential ally (according to movie knowledge) die to an expansionist mordor
Well, yes and no. Yes, because the viewers don't even know middle earth that well. It could be that there are other nations that Rohan will/can turn too. And no maybe due to the setup of Gandalf and his coucil to ride when the beacons are lit and the importance of Gondor (which again viewers are not fully aware of), but that doesn't mean there is no emotional baggage. Afterall in the movie they do go to Gondors aid, and even when things look dark they don't go away. What this scene does is showing that Theoden is a man with doubts, anger, fear, ... just like anyone else, but that in the end he does what is right and comes to the aid of a longtime ally. And then again, people don't always think logically. It wouldn't be the first time people are shortsighted and break promises and long lasting bonds/alliances, at great costs later on. And his emotional state is just one of several possible reasons for his silence.
it makes him look like a fool, a shortsighted fool.
It makes him look human. Which especially after having your nation ravaged, your son killed and you being controlled like a puppet seems quite normal. It would be weird honestly, if he just acts "alright lets go, forget all other problems we have here and past events".
he seemed willing to let an entire nation die
Well, no. At that point minas tirith is just under threat, he might not even be aware of the true scope of the threat. Afterall Gondor has been in a constant struggle for years now. Gondor might survive without him, just like Rohan survived without Gondors help. He might also just contemplate what the best course of action is. How best to aid Gondor. Can he mobilise enough forces in time? is a suicide run the best thing to do? Will he even have enough time to get to minas tirith/Gondor. So many possibilities.
for at most a few extra years of peace
I never even thought at that scene that he hesitates just because he wants peace and not get involved. More that he is thinking of what best to do. Go fast now? Possibly with just a small force? First stabilise Rohan, so that he can muster all its power? Maybe it are just emotional scars he's working through? Who knows?
because they were busy when his nation rapdily changed its attitude.
Don't even know what this means.
I mutch prefure the over zealous Theoden who seems to be trying to make up for his past ignoring of orc incursions when under grimma's influence.
And I prefer a Theoden who might be thoughtfull and show feelings, exactly because of his experience.
In the end there are so many ways to interpret his hesitation: feelings (anger, betrayed, fear, ...)? Is he just thinking of the best course of action or is he thinking of not going to Gondors aid? Maybe he is just realizing the importance of the beacons being lit, sort off? That this might be the end? The last stand of the west? Who can say. And that is what imo makes this scene better than just immediately "muster the rohirrim". And this scene makes imo the "muster the rohirrim" even better. Despite the reasons he might have (both logical and illogical) he decides to act immediately and decisively. It would be a bad change if they made him think about it for a longer period (for example sleep the night over it), but this short time of a few seconds? I think its great. It adds drama and depth that the moment otherwise wouldn't have.
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the reason why these nations are now shit is in great part because they were colonies (I am talking about the colonies already inhabited before colonialism). Colonial borders most of the time didn't account for etnicities, local rivalries/tensions/cultures, ... Some colonies were before actually quite good kingdoms/small countries, but just didn't had the military (technological) power the colonial nations had. After they gained their independence they turned to shit, just because they weren't ready, why? because the british (and othe colonial powers) liked that they were dependent on them before for these higher things (organisation/security/...).
It's really funny that now the reverse is being claimed, that these nations where better of than they are now while colonialism is a great factor that tributed to the current situation. Before colonisation they probably might also have been better of then now (if we measure in their location, knowledge, resources, ...) If left alone these colonial regions (or free in this alternate timeline) might actually have become thriving nations.
If you don't know the history of these colonies before their colonisation, don't speak about the topic.
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@ianbirchfield5124 Several of these empires actually lasted a pretty long time and did fairly well, the problem is any empire (and even nation) eventually comes to an end regardless.
The oldest nations currently probably exist for a thousand years, having gone through a lot of changes in that time (for example France today vs France 500 years ago or France 1000 years ago, big difference). Some empires (like the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, ...) lasted for several hundred years, longer than several large nations today (US +-250 years, modern China +-70-100 years, Russia +-500 years, ...).
Now, if we look at why these nations fall, it usually is more due to corruption and internal powerstruggles together with outside pressures then ethnic and cultural differences, these usually started to really cause trouble once the empires already were in decline (essentially when things go great/fine, people don't really care, but when things start to go more difficult/badly, they start to look at reasons and often they use culture and/or ethnicity as a possible solution, even if this is not the best thing to do).
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I really don't understand how the US could get a 10, but France and Belgium 8 or 9. When going to the site, it seems like Belgium got a downgrade during the political crisis of 2007-2009, which is rather stupid, considering the deadlock was caused by the composition of the parliament, which is caused by the large split in representation, ie meaning better representation, on the contrary in the US people essentially only have choice of 2 parties and when you look deep into it, you'll find that much less people got the representation they wanted, even those who voted on one of these 2 parties. Not to mention voter suppression in the US (ie ID laws, closing down voting stations, ...).
Considering everything, freedom house seems much better and logical than polity V
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@marshie1337
the us reduced co2 emissions more than any other country on earth
Not difficult if you were the largest polluter for a long time. Maybe the US has done the greatest reduction in absolute numbers, but in % it is at best average (+-48th in the world). In terms of emissions per capita the US is 17th and that includes regions like Gibraltar and the Faroe island in those 16 higher (most other countries are oil producing countries).
despite not being in the paris climate accord (PCC)
The paris climate accord only really is a marking of intention, a country can essentially do whatever it wants, thats why all other nations joined it. Leaving it was a purely political action that didn't really matter.
the PCC has china as a developing country and hundreds of billions of dollars are to be paid by the US to china to reduce co2 while simultaneously hamstringing our own oil industry and costings thousands of jobs.
China is in essence still a developing nation, but getting close to becoming developed (maybe in 10-20 years). If it was a developed nation, it would have surpassed the US in GDP. Also China has put forward quite ambitious reduction goals, reducing emissions by 60-65% per unit gdp by 2030 vs 2005 and peaking emissions around 2030. It certainly isn't that China does nothing. Also can you provide me your source for the hundreds of billions China would receive? All I can find is that developed countries agreed to in total put 100 billion a year in a fund to help ALL developing nations from 2020 untill 2025 (probably need reaffirmation to continue after that time).
oil is not just for energy generation and transporation, it is used in basically every product. toothbrushes, ziploc bags, beauty products and on and on.
I know, but 50%+ (+-55%) is used for electricity generation and road transportation, this should be dissapeared in 15-25 years.
do you know how bad the lithium mining process is for the environment?
Lithium mining needs to happen once, then it can be recycled. Oil needs to be mined for continuously, do you know how bad that (both mining, refining and using in general) is for the environment?
the transpiration of those electrical vehicles and batteries all around the world too
I guess you mean expiration. These will be recycled. It is cheaper to get these materials from recycled batteries than from mining and there are already several companies that have achieved 95% recycling rate for EV batteries.
why is it that everyone preaching about "climate change" flies around in private jets, owns sprawling estates while preaching how righteous they are.
Everyone? Really? I didn't know that millions upon millions of people flew around in private jets and live in sprawling estates or that so many people all have this. Just because a few rich and well known people who do/have this advocate for climate change, doesn't mean you can generalize this for everyone. There are even acitvists using sail boats to go to international climate meetings taking 1-3 weeks instead of using a 4-10 hour plane.
wikileaks had a huge drop several years ago where employees of the EPA were requesting scientists to doctor their numbers for a larger impact.
The EPA is a politicised organisation, under Trump it was also found that it ignored, framed or doctored numbers to go against climate change and to justify cutting regulation.
until there is rock solid science that suggests climate change theory is anything more than a theory
Yeah, lets just ignored the mountains of empirical evidence and the wide concensus among scientists, why not. Next you are going to say all those doctors should prove you have a tumor when they are waving scans of you showing you have it.
the carboniferous period and today, the quaternary period are the only times in 600 million years that co2 was under 400ppm
And this is exactly the time we thrived in. No one disputes that climate change happens naturally, however normally this takes a much longer time, giving more time to adapt, now it is going much much faster. And even if it is now natural (it isn't), should we just ignore that fact that the climate in which humanity has thrived in for 10 000 years is coming to an end instead of at least trying to keep it in bounds?
yet i'm supposed to believe the earth is ending in 12 years unless we enact the green new deal?
No, you aren't, because that is not true. The earth isn't coming to an end, it doesn't care. However it will change, and to our detriment. The costs of climate change will be much much higher than the costs of fighting/minimising it now, not just economically, but also socially and environmentally.
the whole thing is a scam to further enrich the elite class.
I am just going to ignore you said this.
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@Britannic hayyomatt
the EU is run by un-elected members who can't be removed from power.
Who are you talking about? The national governments? The commision? The parliament? Be specific.
They can create any policy they want and as long as there is a majority vote it gets passed. Yes that's democratic
What else is democracy? How does this differ from eg the UK?
You'll see how badly they treat him and the British.
I doubt all british are treated badly, however, Ukip? Probably this has to do with, I don't know, they wanting to see the EU fail? Also don't tell me such behaviour isn't seen in the UK politics, because it certainly is.
Even when he's correct in an argument and gets all the other members behind him... Nothing happens because he's normally arguing with Belgium and France... Permanent leaders of the EU.
Ehm, no. If a majority of the members are in favour of something, it will probably happen, except if it is on a subject all members have a veto. I don't know where you get this dellusion that majority can't rule due to a few member. Also several times you mention permanent leaders, what do you mean by that? France and Belgium are original founders yes, this might give them some prestige within the EU, but they don't get an extra vote in the council, they don't get more MEP's, they don't get an extra commisioner, so I don't really get your point.
The EU exists to make Belgium rich
Sure, let's ignore that they also give more than they receive (if we follow brexiteers logic) or that Belgium overall has been a fairly wealthy area since the high middle ages, thanks to its location, demography (cities, good land), geography, trading and industry. Not to mention that Belgian is the 5th largest of the original 6 founders and that the capital first was put in Luxembourg, but moved for several reasons (mostly logistic and politics). But sure, whatever works for you.
Like, when the UK (a country which is supposedly worthless to the EU) wanted to leave last year, the European parliament went mental. Do you know why? Because the UK actually gives a lot the EU and if the UK leaves, others (Poland and Spain) will follow. We voted to leave, and they didn't even let us leave.
So much wrong here, were to start.
1) No one would say the UK is worthless to the EU (it's the 5th largest world economy and has a strong military), but it was holding the EU back, and in that regards a bit negative to the EU in my eyes.
2) The EP didn't went mental, they were ofcourse sad and upset, but how do you think Scotland or Ireland voting to leave would be received in the UK?
3) Yes the UK brings a large part of the EU budget, which will have to be reworked (and the EU is already planning to execute the changes necessay to make up for the loss).
4) No, others won't follow, this is clearly visible from the way they act now towards brexit. No country has enough reasons to leave vs the negatives. Poland gets 8 billion net from the EU, don't even mention the money that flows into their country from polish people working in EU countries. Spain also has no real reason to leave, I don't know where you get this from. From all southern EU nations, Spain is probably the worst example you could pick.
5) What the hell do you think these negotiations are for. To negotiate the UK leaving. If the period of negotiations isn't extend by both the UK and EU before 29th of march, the UK leaves.
I am going to leave it at that, because practically everything you said is wrong.
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@costakeith9048 6 parts? That would completely be seen as a cash grab. Maybe you could have split up the two last in 3 movies, but more than that is unlikely to fly. Remember these movies aren't just for the fans who wan't every detail, it is also for the general public (of which most viewers would consist) who don't want every single detail, because it would become boring to them, too slow paced.
Seeing they ruined it by doing it in 3 parts, while it is seen as one (if not the) best movie franchise out there, is quite stupid, especially since your 6 part series is more likely to actually having it ruined, it isn't unlikely it would never have gotten past the second in that case.
As for the hobbit, it was quite good for the average viewer, maybe people who go more in depth/the fanbase didn't like it, but it wasn't terrible. The sequel franchise of Star Wars (at least the 2 last movies) is a better representation of a bad trilogy by stretching out the story because they wanted to do it.
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Wow, Bernie and Biden are working together? So what. Biden will just give some tokenism or say he'll support this or that and then not do anything for it in office and afterwards say "well, it didn't get through senate/house" or that some other things took precedent. Looking at Bidens lying record, he can't be trusted with just some policy concession. Now appointing progressive cabinet members or even better a progressive VP (and no, that is not Warren) or as Kyle said a list of things he can do without congress in the first days of his presidency, those things wil convince people on the left.
At this moment Biden's campaign is just talking, nothing more.
He let Bernie keep his delegates? What are you talking about? Biden can't take away Bernie's delegates. If he could that would just show how corrupt the DNC truly is.
Bidens most left position is at best centrist. He has been one of the most conservative members in congress for decades, even bragging about it.
Hillary proposed more on healthcare. Biden said he'd lower it to 60, Hillary to 50. Biden said he'd veto m4a when it would come on his desk.
Unless Biden gives tangible concessions, whatever he "concedes" is nothing more than some words.
Kyle said it clearly, he wasn't going to support, let alone endorse, Biden untill there are tangible concessions. Everyone on the left that endorsed Biden now has basically given up all power they had to truly push him left.
Krystal will not endorse eitherway. She didn't endorse Bernie because of her show (though it is clear she's a bernie supporter, since she is open about that, as should all political commentators), she sure as hell aint going to endorse or support Biden.
And they believe that Biden will just continue Obama's policies that got Trump elected and that after Biden another more effective and dangerous Trump might come around or (if he's still healthy enough, doubtfull but you never know) Trump himself might come back and maybe even win again after 4 years of centrist policies.
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+Lennart
No it isn't. By definition an oligarchy is ruled by a group of people that are distinguished by:
-nobility (no),
-wealth (not really there are plenty more wealthy people not in politics and it's not the main reason they are in power),
-family ties (no),
-education (indirect consequence of the system is that the leaders are educated, but the people can vote for an uneducated person if they want to, most are just smart enough to realize this isn't going to work, not the most educated get into power (professors, doctors, ...)),
-corporate (corporates can influence but not entirely control),
-religious (no),
-military control (no)
Altough you could say there are common elements, the US is not an oligarchy, without elections it might turn in one for sure, but almost always through history an oligarchy has been tyrannical, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist.
The US is by definition much more a democracy than an oligarchy, but both are actually very close to eachother due to indirect consequences of democracy (wealth necessary for campaign, education necessary to succeed (normally), corporate backing for funds (I don't think Bernie had it so it's not always the case)).
Oligarchies tend to keep all powers in hands of a small group all the time, without the people having any say about what so ever. In theory every person can step into politics in the US, in an oligarchy, this wouldn't even be possible in theory.
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@thirstyserpent1079 In France a little over 50% or a in favor of the EU, the lowest of all members, but definitely not as low as 25%, otherwise parties like FN (or whatever they call themselves now) wouldn't have shelved their Frexit rhetoric.
Now, any federalisation would happen overtime and overall the youth are more favorable to a USE than the elderly, so as time progress you'll already get a shift in thos polls. Also if the major powers (China, Russia, US) keep getting more challenging and trying to exert their influence, more and more people will want Europe to be more unified.
The idea that people would lose a lot of power is quite moronic, considering most people already have so little power over their governments actions individually. There is a reason people vote for political parties: to unify in an ideological group. This won't be different in a USE, people would still vote for ideology, not specifically region (though an ideology can be more prevalent in one region vs another). Also that Germany as the greatest would be in control is bullshit, that would be like saying Germany is controlled by Bavaria or North Rhine-westphalia. You always have bigger and smaller/wealthy and poor regions in a country, unless the country is very tiny, and even then, you have these dynamics even in large cities.
In the end it wouldn't be regular people losing power/sovereignty, it would be national governments and those in it. And even then it would be limited. Many powers would still remain 'regional'.
People already live in federal society, how many people live in a city state? Very few. People already often have a communal government, a provincial/state government and a national government. The EU is one more or could even replace national governments with regional powers going to the provinces/states.
I wonder how many people that are fearing for their sovereignty would advocate for essentially city states where they truly could have a larger impact on their sovereignty, few most likely.
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@Jamie-Z most people who live in cities where it is most useful cannot park in the drive to charge up normally
These people need to park their car somewhere at night no? So it is just a matter of deploying low level 2 chargers to regular streets so people can use them at night. Besides that you need to ask yourself what these cars are used for: travelling to work? charge at work. Go to the shop: charge at the shop. ... Essentially there are more then enough possibilities to charge, however they need to still be rolled out. And if you really have no other choice, fast charging is available too.
Electric has range issues
The current hydrogen cars have a marginally better range than several EV's, who sometimes are much cheaper than those hydrogen cars. Besides you'll need quite some hydrogen refueling stations, which are very expensive. For that same price you can place around 30 fast chargers, that you can disperse over a wider area, meaning less time lost going to a station vs hydrogen. And if you have a car that can go 500km, that would be more than fine enough for almost anyone, considering you can't really drive further than that in 3-4 even when constantly driving at a speed of 130km/h (which is the highest limit in a lot of countries/regions). And after every 3-4 hours of continuous driving you are advised to take a 15-20m minute rest anyway, during that time you can also go to the bathroom, eat or drink something, stretch your legs, just shut your eyes, ...
In regards to trucks/semi, 800km seems to be a good range considering you'd be able to drive that range in around 9 hours at the usually top speed of 90km/h. Beyond that you'd exceed lawfull time limits in the EU and can be fined for driving too long. And realistically most trucks won't drive non stop for 9 hours at the max speed. Tesla semi have a claimed 800km range fully loaded, if that is correct, there really isn't a reason EV trucks aren't a good option for regular trucking. Only for multiple driver trucking would you need hydrogens range (and even then, what is losing 30-60min at a fast charger considering the cost savings driving on battery power?).
as well and short lifespan
What lifespan are you talking about? The batteries? Current Tesla batteries already are expected to last beyond the lifetime of most ICE cars, this also goes for several other EV parts (like the motors). So I don't really see what you are pointing at.
which makes them a waste problem
Not really, all EV parts are recyclable, even the battery (several companies already achieved a 95%+ recycling rate).
The infrastucture of the oil industry could easily be changed to hydrogen.
I don't agree with that, it is quite a different infrastructure you'll need. Only general things like docks for ships wouldn't need (much) changing.
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@jack99889988 Taiwan has a landmass that is 17 times smaller than ukraine. It is slightly bigger than Crimea.
With a population that is not even 2 times smaller. This higher population density will actually make it more difficult due to shorter supply lines and easier to reinforce certain points, as well as a hell to deal with heavy resistance.
Of that landmass 2/3 of the land is mountain and not suitable to live. It's cities are all around the coast.
Which again would be defensive bonus, considering Taiwanese troops could use guerrila tactics in those mountains. So even if Chinese forces successfully execute landings and take the cities, they still could face very heavy resistance.
Since it is an island means sending supplies will be easily targeted by PLA.
Not at all. If neutral nations decide to reinforce Taiwan with supplies, the PLA will either have to sink those ships, essentially declare war on those nations or let them through. Not to mention that we are talking about at least 100 miles from the Chinese mainland and potentially even 180 miles if they supply from the other side of the island. And ofcourse if for example US ships are sunk, they'd send their fleet(s) and airforce to protect them, if this wasn't already the case.
The island is right beside china not US. Cuban missile crisis already taught anyone that it is how China going to invade without firing a single bullet.
And? Japan is right next to Taiwan and so is the phillipines. Any Chinese attack will become clear days or even weeks before it can actually be executed, giving time for the US to stockpile supplies and hardware in allied territory of Taiwan, Japan and possibly the Philippines. How has the Cuban crisis exactly thaught us that you can invade without firing a single bullet? So far I know the US never invaded Cuba during that time (successfully).
Since it is an island. It has no area for its 23 million people to hide. Also, no land to retreat for counter attack.
The mountains and likely present bunkers there are ideal regions to pull back to for a counter attack, Taiwan likely also has many bunkers/shelthers scattered throughout their urban area's. Moreover Urban area's are great places to fortify and defend against an invading force.
Missile explosion will easily cover the entire island compare to ukraine because of the size difference.
Not at all. Missiles aren't that powerfull, the missiles strikes against Ukraine are targetted on cities and keypoints for a reason. Most of Ukraine has never had a missile strike happen. To blanket just the Taiwanese urban centers you'd need tens or thousand of quite expensive missiles. You use artillery and bombers/unguided ammunition to blanket area's and missiles to execute precision strikes, they are way to expensive to waste them.
The economy difference between China and Taiwan is greater than Russia and Ukraine.
Not really relevant, since it is also much more difficult and expensive to capture such a large island as Taiwan, and an economic blockade of China's trade lines would be much more damaging than any sanctions against Russia. Moreover unlike Russia China has other neighbours to keep in mind, India might use this conflict to weaken them and even other nations might think that to be an opportune time to limit Chinese power.
China have world's strongest costal firepower and biggest active military.
What precisely do you understand under coastal firepower? Coastal ships? These aren't really suited to manage the 100 mile straight, just defending their own coastal area's.
They might have the largest army in terms of manpower in the world, but that is pretty irrelevant in this situation. Firstly they'll need to keep a lot of those troops to secure other borders and even to quell any possible internal dissent. Secondly in such a naval invasion you can only use so much troops. You have the limitations of the ships, supply, usable area, ... The amount of planes and strong naval vessels and transport ships is much more important, and there the US has quite the advantage, even when not using their full power.
Taiwan is not internationally recognized as a country, where as Ukraine is recognized.
Doesn't matter, if anything such an invasion might spark the west to recognize Taiwan, they are not doing that now to not disturb the balance that currently exists.
War means internationalization of Yuan and end of dollar and American trust. It also means the end of American empire.
Not at all, a war between China and the US is likely to hurt the Chinese economy and thus the yuan far more. If the dollar diminished due to such a conflict, it likely will be to the benefit of the euro, not the yuan.
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The Russians feints around Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa held large amounts of Ukrainian troops in place while the real war was in the Donbass and Azov Sea area.
And now the major part of the Ukrainian army, which is in eastern Ukraine is caught in a pincer's move with Russians attacking from the north, east and south with the Dnieper river trapping them in the west.
So what is it? Large amount of the Ukrainian forces were held up in the west to make it easier to conquer the east OR is the majort part of Ukrainian troops in the east getting cut off by Russian forces?
Also now that the pressure on Kiev is gone, all these troops can be redeployed against these pincer movements in the east.
BTW, kharkov is in the middle of the war in the east, in other words a major objective for Russia.
As for the Dniper trapping them in the west, Ukraine holds all major bridges across it, this would actually be another reason for Russia to take Kiev, to start securing the Dniper from the north down to the south (and from the south to the north), isolating eastern Ukraine.
Nothing in the current state of affairs point to Russia getting close to do any pincer maneuver like you describe.
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@tomorrowneverdies567
this means a lot of more taxation
barely any increase really.
and an important portion of the (scarce) workforces of EU countries will have to be put to do army related work, and therefore this will lead to more poverty (a reduced GDP per capita).
No, it really wouldn't. the EU combined militaries currently already have a standing army larger than that of Russia (pre-ukrainian war mobilization) and the US (barely). Only China and India have a larger standing army worldwide in terms of manpower. And if you talk about military industry, that wouldn't be a drain on the economy, could even be a net benefit.
if you take for example 40,000 people from their current jobs, to place them to do army work, then the workforce availability in the jobs they previously did, will decrease by 40,000, and therefore the amount of products and services they previously produced, will decrease.
You don't really seem to know how the economy works.
First off, these people wouldn't be just plucked away from one company or sector, but everywhere. This would decrease the impact considerably. Moreover companies and sectors will adapt to a smaller workforce. Next to this those people will create value elsewhere.
Moreover this isn't even a valid discussion, your 40.000 number would make up something like 0.012% of the total EU workforce.
Essentially, if the economy can't 'handle' this small change, it would collapse at the first 'minor' problem it faced (like a light recession).
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I think the reason for Prussian defeat by the Austrians would be really important though, considering Prussia's stance on learning from their mistakes. It isn't entirely impossible that they'd change and improve their military based on this experience, becoming stronger militarily, while the Habsburgs might be more complacent.
I think a Dutch-north german federation is likely also more active on the scramble for Africa, considering they'd have the already existing Dutch colonies and mentalities and the Dutch naval prowess + the wealth and strength from industrialisation.
Personally I can see France taking a more neutral stance in a conflict between the north and south germans. I don't even think it will devolve into something like WW1, rather more a conflict between The powerfull habsburg (in this timeline, though potentially a paper tiger imo) and the north German-Italian alliance, likely influencing the peace treaty to ensure no big swing in power either way. The British likely take a similar stance and Russia might have too many internal problems or unwillingness to ge involved (they didn't even necessarily wanted WW1 but had no choice I think). The war likely would also happen sooner, somewhere around 1880-90.
I think they still might take the south German states into their federation essentially forming Germany+the lowlands, probably angering the French causing them to become more of a rival and also antagonizing the British who fear a shift in the balance of power on the continent. The Habsburg would be pretty weakened similarly to our timeline, but even a bit more. Potentially doing the same and looking for an Austro-German alliance against Russia+Balkans on one side and the Italians on the other. This then might lead to a more WW1 style conflict, but maybe set back a decade or so. This imo could end up in a rather quick German-Austrian win though contrary to our history, due to the bufferstate of Belgium not existing and slowing down a German advance and Germany overall more powerfull and having more recent war experience than the French.
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@minimax9452 What a ridiculous thing to say, a remembrance day is absolutely unnecessary for that, otherwise some countries would have a remembrance day every day for what happened in their past. I can understand that Congo would have a remembrance day for it (though I don't know if they actually do), but why would we have it? Descendants of people who had nothing to do with it? Like I said, the Congo free state was a personal property of Leopold, essentially run like an international company with a multinational armed force and it was granted to him by the great powers. the people of Belgium had essentially nothing to do with it untill the state took it away.
And I do believe there is a museum about congo, its free state and colonial era and what happened back then, though it was originally built by Leopold II to 'celebrate' the congo free state in 1897 (and to shame of the belgian people) left practically untouched in what was showed since then untill the start of this century (honestly I doubt many people even knew it existed, we see what happened in classrooms, we don't visit museums for it, personally I don't see any benefit from a museum vs teaching it in the class room in this regard), it has since been completely restored and revised with an impartial account and collection of Congo's history.
As for Leopold, he died one year after the colony was taken from him. The archive of the congo free state however was burned, either on his order or others who would be shown complicit. Any trial of him would thus only be able by investigations and first hand accounts, which can't be done across such distances and terrain in just one year. Just an accusation would obviously not have held up in court, even if it was believed by the public.
As for the Royal family, Leopold had no legitimate sons thus the crown went to his nephew, the second son of Leopolds second brother. Albert I didn't have any interaction with the Congo free state before it was seized by the government. He visited it right before his coronation (when it was already a Belgian colony) and proposed reforms to protect the natives and better provide technological progress, which he instituted in his years after ascending the throne.
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@six2make4
Your average person don't care for modern art
Exactly, so why the f°ck do you mention this in shared culture. Modern art is the culture of none.
Nothing of what you said about culture is unique to the EU or being pushed by the EU, it is more of a general Western trend.
The EU mostly doesn't engage in cultural affairs, or if it does it is usually to support cultural things with funding. Honestly the US doesn't have one unified culture either, they have a unifiyng thread for sure, but if you start comparing New York, California, Florida, Missisipi, Mexico, Nebraska, ... you'll find quite some differences between them too.
No unified or reliant military power. Most of EU members rely on the US for military protection due to low spending and no real unified command except for NATO which is none EU specific
The reason there isn't a unified EU military is because it is controversial, especially if you don't have an efficient EU government to actually lead it yet. However NATO countries have agreed to spend at least 2% of gdp annually by 2024 and it isn't like the EU isn't strong either, all in all they are even now the 3rd biggest military spender in the world and if they all reach 2%, it could become the 2nd behind the US. The division does make the EU military weaker than is can be, therefor it most likely will eventually form one unified structure eventually.
And there are already programs for closer EU military cooperation, which overtime are being expanded.
Weak borders: By not setting a proper border a massive strain is put on the "border regions"
There is/was no real EU outer border program, because this was a demand from members, they wanted to keep control over these outer borders. Since the 2015 crisis, the EU has been strengthening Frontex to aid the border nations when asked for help.
*Foreign focus
By prioritizing foreign investments and not incentivizing "local" growth it will eventually make people question what the point of such a union is if they can get better deals outside, this is further exacerbated by point one.*
Are you here refering to the EU budget? If so, this in nothing different than is already being done in countries overall.
Nothing you mentioned here proved the EU won't last, all it showed is that the EU is still in its early stages, between an international organisation and a federal state, which is nothing new, everyone with a bit of knowledge about the EU knows this. The EU is slowly moving towards further integration.
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If I am right the first amendment talks about freedom of religion, still you speak as though Islam is forbidden bij the constitution.
It's weird that you would label hillary a communist despite the fact that she is labeled by most to be very right wing for a democrat, and a common attack on her is that she's in the pockets of the big companies, which can't be further from communism, seeing in communism there are no companies, everything is controlled by the state.
neo-liberals isn't made up by the left, it just refers to a new form of liberalism (neo = new). Just like neo-colonialism, ... I always found it weird that in the US right wing is labeled liberal, eventhough liberalism if on the right of the political spectrum. (for less goverment interference => more liberty => from the latin libertas)
What happened in so called communist countries is caused by corruption and human greed. The core of communism is that everyone is equal and that the state controls everything inorder to achieve this. It never had the goal to enrich the elites, in fact the capatilistic system is more likely to enrich a certain elite. It's very much like feodalism, only less visible/obvious.
What wars are you refering too? Please name them. For every example I'll name a counter example.
Hitler and Trump have way more in common than hitler and Obama. Hitler was a nationalist for god sake, learn your history. And please name the similarities between Obama and Stalin, because I can't find one.
"who thinks like the Founding Fathers"
So now you know what the founding fathers thought and what trump thinks? Also is it good to have him think like people who lived 250 years ago? If the founding fathers lived in this time it's very likely they would have very different views than Trump, but this is speculation and isn't relevant at all.
You clearly have no idea what communism actually is (supposed) to be. Stalin only wished for power and after taking over changed the USSR to fit that purpose, he had very different idea's than those who started the USSR in the first place.
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@westasleep Many sites will be unsuitable
Most regions/houses would be just fine, you can always include the possibility to ask for an exception in the house's permit request with the specificied reason (eg. shaded roof area due to trees). Also in larger regions where it would be that usefull (like a place with very little sunshine, ie. Alaska, ...), you'll get regional exceptions.
Manyconsumers would buy the cheapest possible setup that satisfies the mandate, resulting in bad experiences, fires, and hurt solar's reputation.
The mandate can easily set a minimum standard, so this really isn't an argument at all. Moreover most people would go for the most cost-effective setup they can afford, not just the cheapest. The mandate even can include that banks have to provide cheap loans for those solar panels.
Setting a city-wide mandate with a deadline would cause a massive spike in demand for domestic installations.
Which is why you'd only mandate it for new buildings or those undergoing extensive renovations. This way you spread out the impact.
I am not saying this absolutely would be a good idea (though imo it defiitely could be an option), however your couner-arguments just hold no merit at all.
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One thing that you should take into account is the difference in warfare and manpower use between those era's.
In the medieval time you usually had smaller conflicts due to smaller states waring against eachother, because of this the emphasize was on quality rather than quantity. This also persisted into the later medieval age where bigger nations could field more troops, but not necessarily the roman sized numbers specifically because of the higher quality requirements for many troops. Only after this quality requirement dissapeared/diminished (due to the introduction of firearms and professional 'citizen' armies), you again see larger armies coming to the field.
In regards to manpower use, tribes in the past could see a much larger share of the population engage in fighting (most men of fighting age likely for migrating tribes, ie. maybe between 10-30% of their population) vs a small fraction in medieval times (potentially 1% of the population or even lower).
Just dismissing the large numbers of ancient times because this wasn't the case in medieval Europe is just wrong. Even during medieval times we saw larger armies in other parts of the world, where you still had a different ideology to warfare (ie quality/quantity, migratory/settled, small/large nation, ...).
Also it wasn't just during roman times there were apparently such big armies, also during other times and in other places during ancient times.
During Roman times (eg 0 ad) you also had a similar population size as during the medieval era (eg. 1000ad) in Europe (high deathrate, unstable situation, epidemics/plagues, ...). So a higher % of fighting men would automatically result in bigger armies.
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@Resistor.1 The UK joined the EC because trade with the commonwealth (and thus Canzuk) nations was already going down a lot, it joined out of necessity.
Besides, the UK already has an FTA with Canada (essentially the same it would have as a member of the EU I might add) and is negotiating one with Australia currently, as is the EU. So what exactly would it gain extra if it already gets seperate trade deals? What value would Canzuk add you can't do through seperate trade deals? And why would it have a greater impact, what is the point of Canzuk if it only entails a 4 way FTA, instead of 3 seperate FTA's per country (which can essentially reach the exact same thing, just more specialised on countries interests).
Canzuk only from a trade perspective makes no sense, it has to be more, otherwise why speak of it as if it is something special and not just another multi-nation trade deal, which isn't uncommon, but if you look into it, they are almost always geographically inspired, why? Because trading with close nations make more sense than with nations on the other side of the world.
So no, trade alone doesn't make sense to form something like a Canzuk, it would rather be much more similar to the former EEC.
If you think the canzuk idea is only about trade, I'd suggest looking it up, because you'd be wrong.
which was much cheaper I might add
Could you give a source for this or is it a subjective anecdote? And even if that is the case, meat is far from the only thing. The other things could have been vastly more important than a bit more expensive meat. Don't just focus on one thing.
Only a fool with a grudge would see this negatively.
I don't necessarily see Canzuk negatively (honestly I don't really care), just saying that it doesn't make sense from a purely trade perspective, if Canzuk would be just that, it is a dead horse on arrival, or at best something like a butterfly that was announced as an eagle, nice but not really relevant.
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Tesla can't create factories faster than legacy's convert existing ones. At this moment most legacy makers have either a low aimed production rate (for example for the more expensive models) or have/are building a new factory/line to produce EV's, since they don't want to touch their ICE production just yet. That is the main difficulty legacy automakers have, balancing the transition from ICE to EV. Tesla doesn't have that problem, it just needs to keep ramping up production. Besides managing the transition, the main problem is the availability of batteries and the resources needed for them.
In theory legacy car makers could transform their production completely to EV's within the next 2-3 years in terms of pure production line conversion, but this would mean shutting down their current production and not selling cars in the meanwhile, which isn't really a great thing. They first need to be certain they can produce the amount of cars necessary regarding resources and that there will be enough demand vs other legacy automakers that still produce ICE cars.
So now they just are making sure they aren't completely left behind and are likely going to move to a staggered transition, with one line after another being transformed and ensuring they can run completely fine.
And as others said, building the factory/converting is one thing, but you need to be certain to have to material needed to actually use that capacity.
A factoryline should be able to convert in around 6 months to a year tops and start production, Tesla's factories need between 1,5-2 years to do the same.
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@marycaine8874 There has not been the dire consequences forecast by the doomsayers on the remain side
Have you actually looked at the trade figures?
Actually, support for Brexit has has jumped to 70%
Can you give me a polling source for that? Yougov polling has had it "brexit bad" ahead untill april, where "brexit good" just beat out the "bad" option. It is nowhere near 70%.
Besides, at this moment there still are some transition plans active and covid helped hide any brexit impact. It is way too early to see what the impacts are.
Five million EU citizens have recently applied to stay in the UK post-Brexit.
And? This was already planned from the start, which is why this application scheme was set up. If EU citizens left the UK, it would hit some crucial sectors hard (like healthcare). And this is btw also something the EU fought for, to guarantee the rights of EU citizens who live in the UK and the capability for them to remain in the UK if they prefer.
Besides, membership cannot be said to be voluntary when the bloc tries to make difficult the life of any member state wishing to extricate itself.
The bloc just negotiates the best deal for itself and its citizens, just like the UK did too. This isn't something that was unforseen (at least not by anyone with a brain).
Is that the yarn that the Eurocrats have cooked up: it was all Greece's fault?
Not only obviously, but yes the Greek government lying about their financial situation and mismanagment of funds really was the main factor. Ofcourse one of the reasons they could mismanage it so severely was because they could loan at low rate due to international trust in the euro. There really should have been more checks in regard to euro members spending and lending, which has actually since the greek/eurozone crisis been introduced/strengthened.
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Austria didn't really had a choice , the assasination of their heir by a citizen of a foreign nation demanded retribution. If you blame austria that they should have known about what would happen, that could be said about the black hand too. And if I remember correctly, Austria first demanded that they would be allowed to investigate (or take out) the black hand in Serbia, seeing this was were most of it's members operated from. princip was Serbian. Serbia refused and eventually Austria gave them an ultitmatum: give them the right to investigate and arrest people on serbian soil (perhaps in cooperation with serbia?) or be declared war to. Serbia didn't respond. At least this is what I heard/read somewhere. I also read somewhere that the kaiser of germany contacted his cousin the tsar to try and avoid a war, again don't know how correct this is.
Ofcourse germany had plans to invade France, it was their 'mortal' enemy and I doubt France didn't had some plans too. Also Britain didn't just went to war because of belgium, but in the years before Germany built up it's navy because the kaiser wanted to bring prestige to Germany and wanted Germany to have a fleet like britain (ruled by his cousin). Of course britain didn't like that at all.
- Russia wanted like Serbia a large Slavic country
- France wanted retribution for the previous war with Germany they lost
- Austria wanted retribution for their murdered heir and if they could expand = bonus
- Great britain wanted the few colonies Germany had and wanted to make sure the German fleet would not become too strong and threaten theirs
- Germany wanted expansion/prestige? And had to help it's most important ally in Europe
- ...
All in all the only thing that could be blamed is the alliance forming, nationalism, ... War was 'normal' in Europe and Europe was at it's peak in regards to world power back then. No one realized that this war would be too different from the wars before this. If they had payed closer attention to the american civil war they might have had a better idea of what could happen (not to mention that weapons had already become stronger since then).
The origins of WW2 could be blamed however on the actions of the victors of WW1. Taking way too much territory from the axis, highly limiting their army (like this wouldn't backfire eventually and even worse not acting in time when Germany under Hitler didn't hold themselves to it), war reperation payments that Germany would have had to pay untill this century!!! more than 80 years. Like germany didn't suffered either during the war. Let's not forget that the casulties of germany were as high as those of the allies (at least on the western front). With much less harsher sanctions, Hitler may have never risen to power.
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+John T indeed, innovation should be done before it's needed. If you only start to innovate when you need to, it's too late already. And It might be true that this prototype is really expensive, but prototypes of projects like this usually are. Do you know how much companies pay to produce prototypes of new things? Compared to mass production the prototype costs are huge. It might be that when this ships "mass" production begins the costs are lowered a lot. Like prototype costs/10
Don't misunderstand me, watersupply and other things should come first, but if the military budget remains the same and we are just talking about relocating funds that always would have gone to the military, than that's not a problem. And who knows, in comparison to earlier ships innovations in the past, this ship might not be so expensive. Also like John said, this takes years, so the costs are spread out over the years. 4.4 billion/10 years = 440 million/year, this might not be that much when talking military research. Ofcourse this are just assumptions.
Apple spent $2.6 billion on R&D iPhone research for the first iphone, just think about that, 2.6 billion for a phone. This ships R&D costs don't really sound that expensive anymore, does it?
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If you need to change it make it 50% of the states won plus 1...So today it would be 26 states carried.
That would mean that essentially 19% of the voting population could stop anyone from becoming president. This is probably the most stupid change that can be made.
Still true today the College ensures that even the smaller states have a say in the decisions of government
1. The electoral college only decides the president, this isn't exactly a say in the decisions of the government. The senate would be a much more correct example of the states having a say in the decisions of the federal government.
2. It is not true today. The smaller states can still and are largely ignored, unless they are swing states. All that the electoral college with the winner for all achieves is that "safe"/"lost' states are ignored and that candidates fulle focuses on the 13 or less swing states (both large and small).
By popular vote a candidate may only win 12- 15 states to become POTUS
Theoretically, yes. Realistically? No. They could only do this by almost winning all votes in these large states. The reality however shows that even now the largest a candidate can get in a state is between 60% and 75%. The highest percentage Obama got in 2008 was 71% in Hawai. Furthermore a popular vote might bring out voters in states where their vote is now basically a lost vote, like California, Hawaii, ... for republicans and Texas, Alaska, Alabama, ... for democrats. At this moment only 5 presidents did not win the popular vote too, so clearly all in all the electoral college doesn't do much except popularize swing states and causing a lot of "lost" votes, both for republicans and democrats.
The best alternative in the end (for now) is that the states just divide the electors proportionally rather than the winner takes all. Small states still are buffed up by the 2 extra electors they get and there will be no more lost votes + all states will matter more except for swing states.
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@LeadLeftLeon
exactly. The accounts I've heard from western "volunteers" fighting for Ukraine have not mentioned anything about either side losing catastrophically.
Because they overall won't be deployed where these success are achieved. The number of western volunteers is still very small compared to the overall total involved amount of troops.
Russia has firepower superiority and escalation dominance.
Yes, and it had it since the beginning of the war, since then it's share of firepower superiority has only shrunk while gaining very little land and losing a lot more itself. Russian firepower superiority is only set to dwindle, while tht of Ukraine is likely to remain steady or even to grow.
their manufacturing is made for war
This might have been the case for the USSR, not entirely certain this is still the case for Russia now. In any case it can't produce any highly technological equipment anymore or only in small batches/low reliability. So at best it has a good production capacity of regular 'old type' dumb shells, which are only usefull in large quantity, and here come logistics and Ukrainian long range HIMARS attacks on supply depots in play.
I'm banking on Russia winning this by demilitarizing Ukraine. If Russia wins
There is no indication whatsoever currently speaking in favour of Russia winning. The seemingly best outcome they can achieve currently is a stalemate, and more likely a prolonged war of attrition will see Ukraine win, they have the morale as the defender, they can 'afford' taking high casualties, Russia can't even just from an internal unrest point of view. Furthermore Russia has been losing military equipment at a faster rate than the Ukrainians since the beginning of the war.
You know Russia now controls Ukraine's industrial heartland.
Even if that is the case, it doesn't really matter. Ukraine now is fully focused on waging war anyway and this is where their manpower is needed, not in factories. The West still is more than capable to produce what Ukraine needs, certainly more than Ukraine could ever produce themselves in that industrial heartland.
That 20% of Ukraine that has gone back to Russian leadership is where 80% of Ukraine's natural resources are
Again irrelevant. Ukraine wouldn't have the manpower to mine it and Russia also can't afford to try and extract it as long as the war goes on, that is even if they had need or money for it.
Western nations are still buying Russian resources on the down low.
A fraction of what is was before the war and soon regulation comes into play limiting this even further.
Ukraine's best trained guys have been dropped.
So have Russia's by all accounts. In fact currently it is expected that the average Ukrainian soldiers is better trained and equiped than the average Russian combatant.
Ukraine is currently sending guys to Britain for 5 weeks of training to replenish their casualties.
They are doing this because they can. Why not send troops you don't immediately on the frontline to get better training and be more usefull later on?
It takes 6 months to make a combat ready soldier.
The same can be said about the Russian mobilised conscripts, yet a lot of reports indicate that plenty of those already have been send to frontline instead of getting proper training. If anything it is Russia suffering from manpower shortage due to the limitation of not being at full mobilisation.
West deindustrialized long ago
The west indeed partially deindustrialized in the recent past, this however doesn't mean it doesn't have industry left and it sure as hell beats out Russia. Russia isn't even in the top 10 most industrial countries in the world, however 5 of the western countries supporting Ukraine are, making up 28% of the total global manufacturing. The idea that Russia is a powerfull industrial juggernaut is outdated for a long time now. And besides this the west has more funds to buy things from other industrial nations if need be.
and is running out of sht to send over to Ukraine
Just because it isn't constantly in the news doesn't mean it is running out or not improving its own production. Russia also doesn't share its numbers and for good reasons.
Western leaders are worried they won't be able to replenish Ukraine at the current rate.
Ofcourse they are, just like they were worried about weathering covid, just like they were in WW1 shells production, ... They often are worried, and yet in the end they find ways to prevent the worst outcomes. Don't expect the West to just let its shells supply run out.
On conducting a special military operation had the stated aim of demilitarizing Ukraine.
And yet they are further from this goal than before the invasion.
Ukraine exchanges lives for land to make headlines and continue getting support.
Russia even more. For Ukraine a stalemate already is a victory against Russia, for Russia a stalemate is bad news.
Land can be retaken, lives cannot.
Good advice for Russia, though in there case both lives and land being lost seems to be the problem.
no one has been educated on what Russia has recently gained with its annexations. Consider what Russia has gained. Why is that land valuable
As of now, nothing. It can't develop or properly use this land as long as there is an active conflict raging in the region and much of the infrastructure is damaged at any rate.
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@god6384
if no country actually speaks english as their main language inside the EU?
That is one of the advantages, there would be no quarrel about any of the memberstates being favored above others. If you choose French, other nations are going to question why France gets favored, etc.
More over English is the most used language in the world both generally and in specific fields (science, aviation, ...) and is the language of most allies of the EU (memberstates).
the only way to solve this is to make a unified Eu language outside of the Anglophone influence
That would be quite stupid, since this would mean everyone would need to learn a new language that isn't used outside of the EU, next to the other languages. Some countries already teach 3 or so languages to children (1-2 native languages + english). Considering how important the native languages and English are, these aren't going to be dropped, so either they won't teach this new EU common language, or they'll have to teach a 4th language, which is going to be very difficult for everyone but those good with languages.
but english would never work especially since now the UK has left the EU
That is one of the few reasons it might work. As long as the UK was in the EU, the other countries would definitely not have accepted english, since it would have favored the UK above all other memberstates.
My vote goes to Latin since most country's already are heavily influenced by latin
Latin is a dead and pretty difficult language, that it greatly influenced current languages is irrelevant. Also these days you can say the same about French, English, ...
and it would revive European solidarity and culture
Nah, it wouldn't do anything more than English or any other language, the entire point is that a common language will help European solidarity and unity. No new language is going to "revive" European culture, that is like saying the US would need to create their own language to get there own culture, that doesn't make much sense. Culture is created by a lot more than language and in the end this common language isn't meant to replace existing native languages, rather just be a tool to unite and communicate easily, not execute cultural changes.
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China might have brought the first new spacestation in orbit, but it is essentially just a newer version of the old ones (ISS, MIR, ...), that overall shouldn't be too difficult to achieve these days. The thing is that the other nations didn't need a new stations since they still have ISS. And sure, the Chinese stations might look cleaner than ISS, but is that really a surprise when you compare an 25 year old station near the end of its life with a brand new one?
Now if China had used for example inflatable sections that allowed for large space and room etc and didn't just use an improved version of existing idea's, I'd be more impressed.
Currently China is just the first of likely many new space stations, that in of itself isn't special, neither have they done new things to push spacestation boundaries. Now China needs to be able to 'cash in' on the fact that they are the first, however as long as ISS is operational, who is really going to care?
As long as there is a western alternative the moment ISS is retired, China doesn't really have a leg up at all, in fact they just catched up, considering they weren't allowed on ISS in the first place.
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@robinbinder8658 Which country might that be? Because a country with a lot of renewable can't have EV's that are less green than ICE cars, unless you compare a very inefficient and large EV with a very efficient and small ICE (and even then it should be close).
Even Poland with +-67% coal production at this moment would have 161g/mile (so 175g seems high). Ofcourse not only renewable share matters (for example Poland uses 18% renewable atm), but also the rest of the mix. Coal is really bad in terms of pollution, gas is already a lot better (+-1/3rd less pollution) and things like nuclear and renewables is where EV's shine ( coals is 20 times worse than solar, 80 times worse than wind and nuclear).
In the EU EV cars aren't better when charged with coal, with gas turbines they are slightly better, but almost equal these days (better emission regulations) and thus are more or less equivalent to or sllightly worse than a gas car at end of life. When you don't use coal and have a large share of renewables/nuclear (30%+), it shouldn't even be close. Currently based on the overall EU grid composition, an EV would do around 73g/mile and of which around 54% is caused by coal, being phased out in the next 1-2 decades, no plans for new coal plants for so far I know, and 40% from gas power plants, which also should be phased out over the next 2-3 decades.
In the US however ICE cars are overall that inefficient (in terms of emissions) that even coal powered EV's are better. According to the EPA the average passenger car emits 404 g/mile in the US (even higher than I expected, must be the number of trucks). Fully coal-powered EV's would emit between 190 to 325 (for EV vans, inefficient EV's)
Considering that the grid will get greener every year and coal should (at least in many countries) dissapear more and more (in europe completely by 2035-2040 depending on the country) as well as gas power plants in the long run (20-30 years), EV's will get much cleaner, and on average are already cleaner.
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@TheW89
There's no specific cars for different temps
There however are different aggregates in the fuel you use depending on the climate. Anyway, so what? If you can't use an EV yet in colder climates, bad luck (though considering EV's are outselling ICE in Norway, the cold doesn't seem to be a great problem for most users). Car manufacturers aren't going to design an EV for colder climates for just the +-100-200million population in the colder area's (which would represent maybe max 50-75 million sales over 5-10 years, spread out over the many car brands). At best they'll do updates they'd do anyway, like installing a more efficient heatpump.
* -10/-15 is far from extreme and is completely normal*
It is extreme for most regions. Anything lower than Scandivia in Europe will reach those temps maybe a few times a year at night (so no traffic).
Russian population alone is more than 100 million.
Yes, but most of the Russian population doesn't live in the colder area's. Lets be really generous and say 50% of Russia lives in such cold temperatures (regularly occuring more than maybe 5-10 times a year), so 75 million.
Add to that Northern Europe
+-21 million.
Canada
38 million
Northern US
If we're generous 50 million
Iceland
+-300k
Mongolia + Kazakhstan
+-22 million
and even Souther Europe
What the hell are you on about here?
So in the end when being very generous you'd get +-207 million, fine it is more than my initial number that was just meant to make a point. It isn't like this is changing anything.
I already know how those cars deal with cold. Badly.
Then what is the point coming on here? Like, you are complaining about EV's regarding cold temperatures on a video that specifically focuses on regions where your named temperatures would be very rarely achieved? If you know, why bother? Because you don't agree with the definition of winter temperatures? Guess what, these temperatures differ from region to region, and so will the notion of winter temperatures. And for most of the world -10/-15°C are extreme temperatures, experiencing them maybe once a year or never and usually at night when there is no traffic. I live just 700km's south from Norway and I can probably count the times the temperature reached less than -10°C in my 26 years on my two hands.
Do EV's not fit your personal requirements? Fine, buy an ICE or a hybride, who tf cares?
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@ArawnOfAnnwn
when the battle will be mostly at sea and mainly with the US. The home field (or rather sea) advantage is with the Chinese, not the US.
I think you are underestimating home field advantage of the US when they operate from Taiwan and Japan, and overestimate Chinese home field advantage in the seas around Taiwan. What is China going to achieve with just a naval blockade in the strait? The US would just secure convoy routes around Taiwan and create a corridor to the west, from where Taiwan can ship anywhere. Also it would never just be naval, but also air, and there the US has the edge once they properly redeploy their naval carriers and can use Taiwanese runways. You seem to overestimate the impact China can have with just a naval presence, at best it would turn into a stalemate, which in the end is the same as if China did nothing, thus a loss.
Hell, they don't even need to use their navy all that much, they can just pummel American ships from the shore
The US would take out as much of Chinese shore batteries with missiles strikes and airstrikes. And it wouldn't put its navy close to the chinese coast, rather in the surrounding of Taiwan or far enough away to be dispatched quickly. And it is not like the US isn't aware of those and their ships aren't fitted with counter-measures.
You think the Chinese will let American troops establish a presence in Taiwan?
I am talking in the event of an already existing conflict, what could China do more in that scenario, they'd already be at war with the US and Taiwan.
there's never going to be an American base there
I never said there would be an American base there during peace time, only that in the event that China goes after Taiwan, the US could create some and operate from them.
you to not be so cocksure of a nation that's repeatedly lost wars in the last several decades against far weaker opponents.
I am not cocksure of the US at all, however the US military was aimed at fighting larger oppenents, this is why they struggled against guerrilla tactics. However in this case they wouldn't be the invader and if it came to it, they'd be on the side of the guerrilla fighters this time. It is equally stupid to underestimate the US because they were involved in conflicts they weren't best equiped/prepared for, during the true battles it did, the US in past few decades always quickly came out on top.
You'd think by now some humility would've been learned
I am not American btw, nor do I specifically have great affinity towards it or its military (more like the contrary)
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@markhull1366 That is politics for you, even if NASA wanted to go for something like SpaceX reusability goal 10 years ago (which was unlikely seeing their experience with the shuttle and that it would be around 5 years later for the first rocket booster landing for reuse), congress wouldn't have allowed it, SLS came about as a compromise: jobs remained for congressmembers and NASA got to go for people on the moon and the mosst powerfull rocket in history, at least that was how it looked at the time.
Cost obviously spiraled out of control as did the timeline, though it was always planned to have a long lifetime, and to be honest, SpaceX is an exception to the rule, most spacecrafts take several years to a decade to get from initial development stage to actual flight. And SLS is a clear example for why just reusing parts of an old design isn't necessarily the best choice. NASA with the politics expecially suffers from inflexibility and outlook (NASA couldn't show 'failures' as easy as spaceX or other private companies can).
I do hope the SLS will fly once or twice, afterall there is already so much money sunk into it, however it always depends on how much MORE it will cost from this point onwards.
Obviously from NASA's 2010-2011 perspective a brand new expendable modern rocket design and parts would have been much better eitherway, but again politics. And they'd never reach SpaceX development capabilities, SpaceX is just so extraordinary in space development.
In retrospect, NASA just shouldn't have gone for another rocket itself, but at the time, this was definitely not clear yet. I'd say only around 2018-2020 was this really starting to be obvious.
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@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714
What is a nation state?
"a sovereign state of which most of the citizens or subjects are united also by factors which define a nation, such as language or common descent."
The common descent can certainly apply here in regards to being European. Sure if you go back far enough that isn't the case, but that likely goes for most large nations.
Cos all people in them are largely the same and thus those who work in government can serve all of their people.
They can serve their people regardless? You don't need to be exactly the same to have common values. Hell, a liberal in Portugal might be closer to a Liberal in Latvia than a conservative Latvian. At higher level ideology is much more important than geographical origin.
Obviously city states are bad, that is the point. For some things larger groups are better. For the competences that would at EU level, that would be the case too.
If you think that where you grew up does not affect your culture and ideology
I literally said it does, however there are huge commonalities between ideology groups regardless. In the end people will always find a party/people from even the other side of the continent that they can side/agree with. We aren't talking about things like education, transport, ... but things like defence, foreign relations, climate change, ...
You highly underrate how much people have in common on the issues that actually would be decided at EU level. And well, there would a 2nd chamber with representatives from each region for a reason.
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@Pax.Britannica WTO in affect sets out how countries deal with each other, not what they deal with each other.
How does this contradict with what I said?
the 15% common external tariff is one, it affects me every time I buy over priced junk from the EU instead of the better quality, more competitive foreign produce, because protectionist trade practises price the better stuff out of the market.
Considering it is 15%, the 'junk' from the EU (which is usually of higher quality) can't be that much more expensive, else you'd just take the 15% extra cost. So what for example did this impact, which specific items did this negatively impact?
Also every country has such tarrifs set up unless there is a trade deal with another nation. If they don't set such tarrifs, it is only going to be to the detriment of that nation long term.
Or what about the Digital Services Act, yet another censorship bill designed to further pressure big tech to be more trigger happy when it comes to stifling speech?
How did it truly impact you? You do realise that the UK is out-regulating the EU when it comes to online services? Or more than likely you just don't hear or notice that because everything happens in the background, not impacting you, just what happens with these new EU laws.
the EU keeps coming up with new BS laws
So does the UK government, shouldn't you worry about that? Maybe split of your region from the UK?
If you think the UK isn't regulating a lot, think again. Boris himself once used to complain about an 'EU-rule', for it to turn out be a UK rule.
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@Intreductor Renewables are the cheapest new production method currently. However they were expensive when Germany started the energiewende. And ofcourse there is the problem of intermittency and with storage it is more expensive. However cheaper gridstorage is coming, it just needs some time to get here, just like what was the case with renewables and EV's.
Bjorn Lomborg's book is nothing to take account of. Essentially he is saying the opposite of what almost the entire scientific community says about the urgency and possible consequence of climate change. I won't trust him over peole who actually studies and did research on it their entire lives. His main message seems to be to follow a market driven solution with only slight government intervention, this didn't work that well in the past and won't work well now. Besides, renewables are market driven, the governments just aided in increasing the adoption speed. Instead of it taking decades, it now takes years. If we followed his approach, gas and coal powerplants would still be the go to thing for the next several decades.
Patrick Boyles video just said that prices will be higher. That is true at this moment. Every transition is expensive and often costs more than status quo initially. However this doesn't take into account the costs of the status quo in the long term, ie. the cost of climate change, which can be several magnitudes higher. Also the current increase is mostly due to the shortage of natural gas and coal, not the energy transition in general. Where there the same shortages 10 years ago, the price would also have shot up like it did now.
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@superamazingexpertfantasti6593 I don't see the problem. Most people will probably drain an EV battery (250-300 mile) by less than a third daily (probably even much less). So why not use the extra battery capacity as a backup? Charge it when there is more production than demand (cheaper) and use it at home and/or bring it on the grid when there is high demand (peaktime, more expensive). Most people are never going to go less than 250-300 miles range once these EV's get cheap enough. They want the range in case they need it. However in daily life this range would essentially be wasted and just sitting there.
It is almost certain that eventually people will be able to say how much they will allow the battery to discharge (for example don't discharge below 30-40%, charge no higher than 80%), which will make sure the car can drive more than enough miles if needed. And then it will just charge overnight or during the day when there is cheaper electricity available. At the same time if you plan longer trips you just deactive the V2G setup. If you discharge it to 40% and never want to go under 20%, you'd still have 60 miles left for an emergency, if you need to drive longer than that, stop at a fast charge station on the way. Even with 30% and 20% you'd still have 30 miles for an emergency.
And you can for example discharge during peak to 30%, then charge to 40-45% during the night and charge to 80% during the day and start over. There is no real reason that EV's can't be used to help lower your own grid usage during peak and work during that time also to stabilise the grid. At least that is if it remains beneficial cost wise. If the economical benefit don't outweigh the extra degradation, that would change things. But It should be economical, at least once they really work with flexible grid prices.
But you are right in that buying a long range vehicle version which you almost never need and would mainly use it for V2G, would be stupid.
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@entspannter Though if there aren't many Ukrainian troops in that city, flattening it won't really hard the Ukrainian army much, rather cause a lot of death civilian, more staunch resistance and just a small part of Ukraine's fighting strength would be lost.
The flattening of cities isn't to dismantle Ukrainian forces, rather just weaken up de city to take it. For example Mariupol is heavily damaged, but only around 3000 Ukrainian fighters are said to defend it. That means they'd have to flatten 80-100 cities like that to completely take out Ukrainian forces (figuratively speaking), not taking into account troops that will be conscripted to replace the losses.
And the longer the conflict last the more beneficial for the Ukrainian forces (though not people), they get more time to equip and train new conscripts, reinforce the frontline, execute hit and run attacks, cause partisan troubles for Russia in occupied area's, let western sanctions impact Russian economy, ...
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I said/meant it would hurt the EU marginally compared to how it will hurt the US. Now if the US only focussed on the EU, fine it will hurt the EU as much as the US, but the US is basically starting a trade war with everyone, allies and non-allies. They can't keep that up, while the EU is only hit on the US market, the US is hit on nearly every great market.
Decimate the German auto business? German car companies are already building many cars in the US and on a wider range NAFTA. Many of the german cars produced in the US even get exported. Now if tariffs are imposed these already existing factories are just going to make more cars for the US market instead of focusing on export. Furthermore, if he wishes to hurt German car companies, he'll have to do something about NAFTA, because there are also a lot of car factories in Mexico. Another problem is that if China is going to put tarrifs on cars (also German cars) made in the US, this would be another reason for the companies to change the focus of these factories to the US market. Honestly, yes companies will get hurt, but they will survive and probably just make more cars in Mexico and export it to the US from there.
The US definitely isn't going to gain much from this.
There even is a question whether such tariffs could even be imposed, because even republicans will be against it, due to some of these factories being in their states. So how is Trump going to impose them? Again citing national security seems a bit unlikely to be accepted by congress, and congress might not be willing to impose tariffs on this.
The first we even hear now of a consequence of the trade war is that harley davidson is going to ship a part of it's production out the US because of EU tariffs.
Even if Merkel falls, that will not be the end of the EU, it's not like she's an irreplaceable pro-EU leader, french President Macron is also very pro EU and most Germans want EU too (they just don't agree with what's happening on immigration, which in the end is a national topic, not an EU one, altough Merkel wants to rather find a larger EU solution to the migration problems).
Bilateral trade agreements between EU memberstates and other countries aren't possible, they'll need to leave the EU first and deciding between the EU and the US/UK will for most countries be a given (the EU). Besides personally I wouldn't really care if most off the EU countries leave, this would be eastern and/or southern european countries and it would make it easier for the EU to reform and move forward (altough it's very unlikely that these countries will leave anyway). oh, and most of the US trade with the EU is with western european countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland) which are not going to leave the EU, they created it (except Ireland ofcourse, but they have done rather well in the EU even taking into account the crisis). Only Italy (right before the Netherlands) an Spain (28th) are in the US 30 top trading partners.
To think that this trade war will somehow make/help the EU explode is laughable at best. It might even strengthen the ties within the EU with this common "enemy".
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@Nokamigg China for the moment is not acting like an ally though, rather as a neutral party that isn't in favor of Russian actions, but also doesn't want to side with the west. If supporting Russia isn't in their interests, they won't do it.
Europe by far is Russia's largest trading partner, you don't just switch this to China. The infrastructure, demand, ... isn't present and isn't easily created.
The 2014 sanctions have had had an impact on the Russian economy, causing it to drop and then only slowly recover. And the 2014 sanctions are a drop in the bucket compared to these new sanctions, which aren't only state sanctions, but also corporate (as in companies cutting ties, pulling out, ...).
The 2014 sanctions are still in place and that was arguably for a less important reason. I don't see these new sanctions dissapearing unless Russia withdraws without changing Ukraine's government. Germany and the west will just adapt to the current state of affairs, as they did after 2014. I wouldn't be surprised if Europe gets rid of Russian gas and oil in the next 4-5 years, which would be detrimental for Russia, with around 40% of their economy relying on energy export if I remember correctly.
I think you are underestimating Europe's resolve on this, the importance this invasion has. Germany has announced to up their defence spending to 2% soon and a one time special 100 billion fund to update their military. This was unthinkable even just days ago. Switzerland has for the first time in centuries broken their neutrality by also imposing sanctions on Russia. Finland and Sweden are closer than ever to joining NATO in terms of popular opinion (though their governments still are being carefull and waiting). Several EU members (10+) have come out on favor of an immediate ascension of Ukraine to the EU (likely only after the war), though enough other members are only in favor of a more regular process.
Russia had half of their gathered reserves tied up in Western countries, this has now been frozen. Clearly the sanctions from the west have gone much further than Russia imagined.
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The thing is, by this time the empire would exist for hundreds of years and just like France could be rather stable internally (even in Italy). Also the French, English, spanish and dutch also often were at war. Only the ottomans would really be a problem, however in our timeline Austria and Poland were able to keep them off, just half of the holy roman empire (southern half: austria, italy, swiss, bavaria, bohemia, ...) would probably be enough to hold off the ottomans (theoretically), while the northern half can focus on the colonies and baltic. Really you don't need too much control over a colony for it to succeed, just enough money and settlers in the early stages to basically give it a jump start.
Also colonial rebellions (by colonists) wouldn't really be a problem if they aren't taxed too much and maintain a lot of self control. As long as they remain like independent regions within the empire with (very) light taxation, there is no real problem. Also you should not see the colonies as all the same. Just like in our timeline, colonies in asia wouldn't be same as colonies in south america, north america or Africa.
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Imo for now nothing really points to SMR's reducing the cost of nuclear in the future other than promises or too general and optimistic assumptions of advantages, while potentially ignoring the disadvantages too much. It seems the closer they get to production phase, the more it becomes clear they might not even be able to compete with regular reactors or at best equal those. And quite some cost and difficulties not yet factored in might also come up during operation and end of life too.
This doesn't mean that SMR's can't play a role anywhere, there are plenty of potential situations where SMR's might be really usefull. Like remote communities, industrial sites that need 24/7 guaranteed power, things like space travel in the future, ...
If SMR's do become less costly per kW than the regular large reactors, great. Maybe they will once they get past the R&D and protoype phase. I just don't see it happening for anytime soon, definitely not before the new fleet of reactors will/should get rolled out to combat climate change in time.
The project at 15:40 is essentially already quite a bit more expensive than the generation of new large scale reactors that France is ment to start building in the next 10-15 years. These plants are expected to be around 8-9B per 1600MW reactor (or at least it was before recent inflation spikes, but this article is also from 3 years ago), while this project according to this would be around 13,5B. This is similar to Flamanville 3, the first modern new modern reactor in France, essentially a kind of prototype/1st of what will be used to replace the older close to retiring old French reactors. Having learned from this "prototype" they'll be able to reduce cost and time for the future reactors in the fleet (normally) to the expected 8-9B cost.
Anyway, I guess we'll see what the future brings regarding nuclear use and what SMR's will amount to.
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@jamesmiller2735
you're literally telling Hungarian people to pay more at the pump probably for fuel and gas and here you're calling it an external factor
Bunch of bullshit, the prizes were already going up worldwide for quite some time even before the ukrainian conflict. And do you think people or leaders in other countries want rising fuel prices?
I also never said there were no external factors influencing it, rather the internal factors are way more important than external ones regarding general wellbeing. For example the problems in the UK that were blamed on the EU were predominantly caused by internal UK decisions/policies.
which planet do you live in also I was alluding that the people have to be asked about their opinion on certain foreign policy decisions which clearly will come home to bite them
History has shown repeatedly that people don't often make the best foreign policy decisions by themselves, mostly because they either fail to see the bigger picture or are too uninformed to make a decision. A referendum on foreign policy matter could be acceptable only if the voters first prove they know what they are voting on, which would just cause the intellectual elite and those with a lot of time to vote.
Anyway a veto (which was what this conversation was about in the first place) doesn't change a single thing about whether people have more power or not, only the leaders and usually abused by leaders who are only thinking of themselves, not their people.
if for example you want Hungary to stop purchasing energy from Russia, this will have a profound effect on the population
And so would a predatory Russia on the border who got shown that they can get away with most anything just by threatening the fuel supplies. What stops Russia from upping the prices then because they know they can? Or forcing Hungary to take certain stances even if it isn't in favor of the general Hungarian populace?
If Hungarian people don't like to be part of a larger group, then they should just leave the EU, not keep it hostage because they only want what is good for themselves. Lets see how good that would be for them (spoiler it won't be, it will be much worse than slightly more expensive fuel prices).
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The center didn't get destroyed in the UK, it just underperformed compared to early expectations. You could just as well say that Hillary got destroyed in 2016, eventhough a few thousand votes might have completely changed the outcome.
The center in the UK had already been destroyed in 2015 after their coalition with the conservatives and for their entire existence the FPTP system has been hugely unfavorable to them. Just imagine Bernie running as a third candidate in the general election, he won't win, eventhough he might easily win as the democratic candidate. Yes, they lost a seat, but they gained in votes. Labour lost almost a fourth of their seats and a fourth of their vote share (11% of the total votes), they have been destroyed in this election, period.
However drawing a comparison with Bernie is indeed stupid, because there are many factors, most of which are different for Bernie (Corbyn's popularity, brexit, too unclear/difficult policies, just the circumstance of the people overall, ...). Labour's results in an election say NOTHING in regards to Bernie's/the left, not in 2017 and not now in 2019.
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Why do you think only native speakers can spreak/write english fluently? Many people have english as a second/third/fourth language and might still speak or at least write english fluently enough on the internet to pass as a native speaker. This is due to the fact that english is used in so many fields and so widespread. first of all due to the former british empire spanning the globe, secondly because of the US influence on world affairs after ww2 and thirdly because it's mostly used in science when communicating with people of a different native tongue, aviation, widely spread by english music, series and movies, internet where english is used as a universal language, ...
When we talk about the number of people speaking english fluently enough on the internet (which doesn't really need to be that fluent, because I have seen several times that americans too use average english, due to fast typing/laziness/...) we might be talking about 2 billion or more, here the 320 billion US citizens make up only 16%, if we scale down to 1.2 billion this still would only be around 25%
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There is just waaaay fewer planes than cars, but when an accident does happen it is on much larger scale
Yes, EV fires are more difficult to control, but that overall doesn't matter as much if it isn't happening in a building. Also overall EV's tend to not enflame/blow up directly after an accident, giving occupants time to safely exit.
Then it depends on design how easy and cheap it is to replace
More and more it looks like batteries (>70% of capacity left) will outlast the cars lifetime, thus no real need for easy access to replace it.
in normal car you can recharge or change battery at home without any special skills and you can refill the tank anytime instantly.
I don't really see why this follows changing an EV battery. The comparison is replacing the engine, not the small onboard battery (which EV's also generally still have).
With more EVs the demand for elecricity logically increases and it will get covered by easy to build and maintain powerplants that can work 24/7 - coal or phosil fuels power plants
EV's should add around 10-15% to the current electricity demand. It won't come from coal or fossil fuel plants, mostly from renewables, which could have a good synergy with EV's if done right.
but the volume released into the atmosphere will be the same.
That is already incorrect seeing my other answer, but also cars are generally less efficient than powerplants, so you'd still see a reduction in air pollution.
Not to mention most countries in europe dont have the energy grid capacity to cover this inceasing demand yet
They do, or at least they should unless they are completely ignoring grid maintenance. The extra demand isn't that big as I said and it grows overtime, it isn't like you just flip a switch. People also could use renewable from home (solar panels) or work/local (solar panels and wind turbines), decreasing the pressure on the grid if v2g/h is also used.
Lastly we used to be able to change batteries in our phones, then this choice was taken away from us, not thanks to EU it may be coming back, but this western trend of not fixing broken stuff or being able to get only certain parts, just having to buy a brand new product is what is what makes EVs not ecologic choice
This argument can just as well be used for regular combustion engine cars.
There are people who have the same working and safe car for 40 years in the eastern europe
Could be, but likely with a lot of maintenance costs along the way. That or something is really different from eastern Europe and the rest of the world in terms of cars.
more people than I thought are getting new car every 2 years, thats so much material mined and emissions created just by the production
I doubt there are many people that do this. And these cars don't just immediately get scrapped they are sold 2nd, which then in the end will push the oldest cars out of circulation down the line. Also EV batteries can and will be recycled, it is too lucrative to not do that. So the effort/energy used during mining isn't just going to waste.
We need to change people's and companies' behaviour first before EVs can be considered a "green" choice.
This doesn't have something to do with EV's specifically, rather cars as a whole.
they need to stop thinking only of Fukushima and Cherbobyl and consider the hundreds of perfectly safe plants, so that it is affordable and reasonable for people to get EVs and get their full use out of them
Even if the German government drops it anti-nuclear stance from ideology, they still wouldn't adopt it for a certain reason: new nuclear powerplants are extremely expensive (per unit energy produced), more so than solar, wind turbines and coal and around the same as gas powerplants. Maybe this changes eventually, but the current financial situation isn't beneficial for new nuclear powerplants.
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@Destereir I am Belgian myself and seeing that we (based on GNI) were the 2nd largest net contributor between 2007-2013, I can only guess that in 2014 some tallying changed. Our yearly contribution didn't go down, so it must be that a lot more was spend here, maybe investments in EU adminstration buildings or some other things that cost a lot of money?
I think I just found it, in 2014 €4,7 billion from the 7 billion expenses in our country were administrative, so probably for some reason administrative costs went up or formerly non counted costs got counted, causing a massive increase.
If we discount all administrative costs in all countries, Belgium becomes the 6th net contributor gross and the same when divided by the GNI of the countries. This makes a lot more sense.
And as for splitting, don't get your hopes up, there is no popular support, only around 15% of Flanders want to actually split up, for comparison according to polls an around equal amount want to move back to a unitary system.
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Again, you are completely wrong on what caused labour to lose the elections.
- In 2017 they didn't win or lose due to brexit, every party was about honoring the vote, so it just wasn't a large issue. Labour won in 2017 because the conservatives did really badly in the campaign and Corbyn wasn't as disliked.
- Leave parties got a lower share of the vote in these elections compared to remain parties, so clearly supporting a second referending wasn't a bad option. It was just that the remain vote was more split and that labour had both strong leave and strong remain constituencies. Not taking a stance would have alienated both kinds of constituencies, choosing to support brexit would have lost them most constituencies in the larger cities and choosing to support a referendum would loose them the red wall (like now). There was no good choice here, they'd have lost constituencies either way. the main problem is that they took their stance too damn late and didn't gain remain constituencies due to a split remain vote and their tardiness to take a stance.
- No matter what you say, Corbyn's popularity was one of the most important reasons labour lost. Corbyns (in)actions/leadership during the brexit debate and smears made him woefully unpopular. In 2017 his popularity was neutral (0%) in 2019 it was -40%!. No party going into an election with such an unpopular leader can hope to do good. Remember, many people don't just vote based on policies, but also on who will lead the nation, how many people didn't support labour just because they thought Corbyn would be a bad PM (and personally I'd agree with them, Corbyn showed bad leadership during brexit as the opposition, normally an easier task).
So I hope you'll read this and actually look better into this and hopefully change your mind. You usually are quite right about things, but being so wrong on this I just can't stop wonder if there might be more things you are wrong about that I am missing. Labour lost due to 1) Corbyn, 2) a not truly popular/easy to understand program and 3) dragging their feet on brexit, period.
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@honkhonk8009 Industrialisation didn't start in the nations with (at that time) the largest colonies or even no colonies at all, for example Britain at the time only had a few small colonies around the world, except for north America, but that wasn't a treasure trove for the UK, in fact it might have been almost a burden at that time, which is why they constantly had to increase taxes there. Another early industrial region was the Habsburg Netherlands (aka Belgium), which didn't had a colony at that time.
In fact in case of the British, one can argue that industrialisation really sparked the rise of their colonial empire.
Conversely, countries/regions with vast colonial empires and slavery usually didn't industrialise because they had another income in wealth, in the end this caused them to actually come out worse economically in the long term compared to nations who industrialised and didn't have (large) colonies at that time.
Human capital has almost always been fucked with and from all people. Slavery existed in one form or another in almost every time period and in many places in the world. The reason the European colonial human impact is still so often remembered/talked about, while other times are not (not even about current day slavery), is because of the recent Western/european centrist world due to being the most recent world superpowers and the recent time of European colonisation.
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@Djhg2000
42% of SA's gdp comes from oil. I was talking about a total embargo on SA's oil during a "war" between SA and western powers like the US, This would definitely cripple SA, or at least shrink their military budget massively. Indeed China might respond because of part of it's oil export being jeopardised, but they wouldn't risk a war with the US if they can find a diplomatic solution, and the US would probably try to find a temporary arrangement to "pacify" China.
Russia wouldn't be all over SA, they are allied to Syria, who hasn't especially friendly relations with SA atm. Furthermore Russia is an energy giant in its own right, they probably would be happy with an oil embargo over SA as it could increase demand in their own oil and gas.
China too is heavily investing in renewable energy, and if electric cars become cheap enough, China will probably also use them en masse, for air pollution (which is a problem in several of their cities) and because it could effectively reduce their reliance on foreign substances like oil. Renewables and electric cars will not just be limited the US or europe, every country around the world that doesn't have its own reserves of certain resources (like oil and gas) will use them when they become cheap enough for that specific country (or in other words, as cheap as fossil cars). This is a real concern to countries which are rich in oil and gas.
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@gig2734 Crashlanding will always be a possibility in regards to reusable rockets of this kind, especially in early versions. However the plan is to use offshore launching and landing platforms on sea (expected to be put in international waters), thus any explosion would happen miles from land. And even with this heavy payload explosion, the weak shockwave would travel around 3 miles, the heavy blast wave around 0,6 miles and the fireball itself 0.25 miles. And in reality a heavy booster or starship would with very little fuel. A falcon 9 needs around 1,7% of its fuel to land, so lets for safety sake assume the heavy holds 5% right before landing, this is just 180 pounds instead of 4800 pounds. And as for it blowing up on the path, the same can be said about the SLS or any other large rocket. And a launch explosion is very rare. Usually such an explosion would happen during preliminary tests happening before launch and before the rocket is completely fueled.
This "what if it explodes is stupid", at best it would kill the passenger, just like if a passenger jet crashes.
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Usually you are right on the mark, however this time you sometimes weren't.
Supporting a second referendum didn't cause labour to lose, not fast enough supporting it did. For too long the labour stance was ambiguous "do they or don't they support another referendum" and for a long time they didn't. Their official standpoint was (due to Corbyn) to renegotiate a better deal (eventhough the EU rejected any renegotiation) and then get the UK out with it. Furthermore labour didn't work enough together with the other remain parties. A remain alliance that always only put the strongest remain candidate for election would have trounced the conservatives.
As for the brexit party, they didn't do anything to favour the conservatives, the opposite is true. In some consituencies Labour held on BECAUSE the brexit party split the brexit vote. If the brexit party didn't run, most of their voters were most likely to move to the conservatives. This could have been an even bigger landslide for the conservatives without the brexit party.
Also the comparison with the 2017 election was wrong.
- First of back then the conservatives ran a bad campaign that made them weaker than they were now.
- Secondly, the labour manifesto now was considerably more left wing. Even as a leftist European it would have been too left for me. Sure the labour party doesn't need to go to the center, but they should also not slide of to much towards the extreme left. And the lib dems only lost due to the system, in number of votes they did gain 4%, half of what labour lost in number of votes. So no, the lib dems didn't lose, the remain side did due to a split vote and the bad system
- Thirdly, yes brexit played no major role in the 2017 election, but that was only because it was right after the referendum. If labour can't change their strategy based on what happened in the last few years, their loss was their fault.
Now, as for the media, yes, that was bad, but isn't the same happening in the US with Bernie. The main difference is, they can't really get Bernie on anything and Bernie is liked. Corbyn has never been liked outside of the core of his party and his party was split. Hell Corbyn isn't even for remain, but did "campaign" for it.
Labour won the 2017 election despite Corbyn, not because of him. And now against a more focused opponent, an internally weakened and divided labour, he just couldn't make it.
Pro-brexit parties got 46,5% of the vote, so clearly it was the remain split that caused them to lose, not their remain stance. If labour had been pro leave, they'd have lost many remain votes to the lib dems.
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@ngutumpuennutu2836
Apparently, you think you're smarter than Russians, Iranians and Indians
Obviously the Iranians want it because it will give them more power and influence. Russia wants it to circumvent potential sanctions from the west/EU. India is only interested if it reduces cost, which it theoretically might do, but theory is often wrong. You often have quite a lot of cost overruns on big projects, despite them being done by people who should know what they do.
So Russia and Iran are interested for political reasons and India for economical only, but they aren't a main partner in this, their role isn't at all crucial. They'll just sell/buy their goods to where it is most interesting, through the Suez canal or this new route, they don't care.
I believe that when the Suez Canal was planned, people like you pointed out its exorbitant cost.
Probably, except its advantages also were very clear and big, much more than this project. And Suez also was as much a political as economical decision, ie to allow British forces/ships could to much more easily reach their colonies in the east.
In any case, everything that can be done to circumvent the harmful effect of american thalassocratic power must be implemented.
If it is purely for a political idea like this, sure it could work. Then again it also give Iran more power being able to threaten to close it if Russia doesn't pay enough to use it etc. It just shifts from one entity to another. And it isn't like the US can't stop shipping to Iran if it really wants to. If it doesn't really wants to, it likely also wouldn't stop shipping towards Russia around Europe.
It is also in this logic of bypassing the power that the United States of America exercises on all the seas of the world that the BRI was imagined by the Chinese.
Yes, and so far the BRI is an abject failure that hasn't achieved anything in regards to this political goal while costing a shitload of funding. And this executed by an economical much more powerfull nation. If China's sea routes get shut off, it will suffer big time and overland routes will never be able to make up more than tiny fraction, not without investing massively oversized amounts of funding on these overland routes.
This saves China from embarking on a ruinous arms race for its economy,
China is investing massively in its armed forces though?
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@waysidetimes9226 1. A family doesn't need to have their own solar panels, nor are solar panels the only source you'd want for electricity. There are other renewable sources that are much cheaper. Besides, overall the cost of electricity (purely on production) doesn't even need to go up with renewable energy.
2. electric cars are now still expensive mainly because they are low in production and still under large scale improvement. Early ICE cars were crazy expensive in the beginning too. It is predicted that within a few years electric cars will be cheaper or as expensive as ICE cars.
3. Again, a family doesn't really need batteries, it can be usefull, but not necessary. It all depends on how we manage the system. Besides an average family would have enough with less than 10k batteries, the price of which will eventually decrease and as electric car batteries need to be changed/aren't good enough anymore for car use, they still can be used for stationary applications (for example at home). Also (again depending on the system) batteries at home could save a lot in electricity cost, overtime probably even paying back the initial investment.
You are making the mistakes so many people make. If I used numbers from a hundred or maybe even just 50-60 years ago, the current lifestyle would be impossible for most families. And the speed of development has only increased since then. Basic computers cost thousand upon thousands of dollars 30 years ago, while still having only a fracture of the power.
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@TheW89 The whole Russia sees temps lower than that
Moscow on average only sees temps of -10°C a few times a year and that is the minimal temp, thus at night, the lowest average there is around -5/-7°C. And more to the south it will be even higher. So this is clearly a wrong statement.
Northern US has far more than just 50 million people.
Not unless you are going to add NYC and regions more to the south to it. This while NYC sees an average temp of no lower than -3/-4°C in the winter. So which parts of Northern US would you add to regularly experience -10/-15°C?
Southern Europe has mountains -> colder weather up there.
And most people don't live high up in the mountains, only a small negligable amount do this.
So in the end you calculate the poor population, like africa, to be a potential buyers of electric cars.
No, I don't. I was speaking about the winter temperatures and the significance for car producers.
No, remove them from calculations
Why should I, the EV's will still work properly there.
And whoops, you got big part of the potential buyers in areas where temps get below -10C.
No, you wouldn't. Even if eliminate Africa, Middle-east and poor asian countries, we'll still be talking about several billions of people vs 200 million in the very cold regions.
I can't watch car reviews and stay up to date? What are YOU doing here?
I wasn't asking why you watch this review, I was asking why you are complaining about this noth being winter temperatures, even though they are for most of the world, and definitely for the region reviewed in this video.
The video isn't focusing on any regions.
No? I could swear they were driving in the UK, not all over the world.
You clearly do bother
I don't bother about what you drive, I bother about stupid complaining about this not fitting your specific special region of the world.
what are you here crying for then if I call -10C normal?
Because -10°C isn't normal for most of the world and definitely not the region this review was done in.
"=/ Still not usable, especially in winter. Long road ahead for normal people to use electric vehicles."
This was your initial statement. And you just said it is not usable in winter, it is. Maybe just not your winter, and even then this isn't accurate. It is usable in your winter for longer distances.
Why do you care about traffic that much?
Sorry, I must have mixed up this thread with another one where someone was talking about being stuck in traffic in cold conditions.
I am not going to bother with this anymore, I guess I'll in future just ignore irrelevant statements like yours, just as probably everyone else does.
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@johngrimes93
But imagine in my country in Ireland with 13 seats out of 705, how are uniquely Irish concerns going to get heard?
By talking, negotiating and banding together with other like minded groups? Overall most policy should have little to do with regional differences and more political differences (left, right, center, ...).
Also the same can be said of eg. Dublin (10% of pop in Ireland vs 13% for Germany in EP) vs Cork or small communities even within Ireland. These problems in difference of representation aren't introduced by the EU, they already exist, but just taken as normal or ignored.
People need to get off the idea that one country or group of people would rule the EU, they don't and won't, there always will need to be a consensus among several different nations to make progress.
You'd need all MEP's of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland to vote together just to get a simple majority in the EP, if you introduce a qualified majority in the EP for lets say 65% of votes you'd also need to add Romanian, Dutch, Belgian and Greeks MEP's. And obviously you'd never have all MEP's from these nations agreeing on issue considering they'll represent many different viewpoints.
In the Council it is even worse, you need 14 countries to agree for a simple majority and 17 for a qualified majority (and these need to make up at least 65% of EU's population).
So no, there is no way Germany would rule the EU, that is just impossible. Yes, Germany might have most influence of all members, but they'd have this regardless.
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@sfp2290
The leaders "I" elect, should not have any say in how the peoples of southern, eastern or western europe lives.
But the people you elect now have a say in the lifes of people in other parts of Denmark, so in the end you get the same result: your vote influences what happens elsewhere.
But it does also mean, that even if all Danes voted for the same party, it would still amount to about a tenth of the strength the Germans would represent in the EU.
Yes, but people don't vote in the EU based on nationality, they vote based on ideology. People from a town in Denmark also don't have the same voting strength as a large city. This is universal. If this is something you have a problem with, you'd need to reduce the politics to a "city block" level. It doesn't really matter if you scale this up.
Now what could be different is regional concerns. For example many people in Denmark might feel x about Z and in Italy most people feel y about Z. This can be a problem, however this also can exist in a small nation, my country Belgium is a good example of that. That is why there would be a senate where the senators are voted based on equal sized district. A north German district might have similar concerns as a Danish district and completely different concerns than a south German district. Eventually on the European level it would be Germans/Danes/... it would for parliament: left, right, center, ... and for the senate: north, south, east, west, center, ...
And for parliament I'd just have a general European list or otherwise few very large lists, not nation by nation.
Then there's the whole issue with the media. Most Danes doesn't know even the most basic things of how the EU works.
EU media networks would come into existence and the way the EU works would be learned in School, similarly to how it is done now for your national government.
I also wouldn't be surprised if there comes a univeral "EU" language that will be adopted in all nations as a second/third language. I'd bet it would be English. And EU wide media would just use that (as well as EU politicians when outside their nation).
Add to that, that most people (at least in Denmark) vote for the same parties in the EU election that they do on a national level, despite not knowing what parties the representatives they vote on are a part of in the EU and what they stances on different EU matters are.
That is just a problem with the current system. With a better new political and election system that would change.
Personally, I believe people who speak of the EU, myself included to a large degree, judge the EU and its' worth based on the idea they have of it and not based on knowledge of how it actually works and what decisions are made.
Indeed. I can agree with your sentiment in terms of how the system is operating now. I do expect this to eventually change. A federalised EU can't function with the current system.
Also sorry for the long comment :p
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Andy M
in both world wars Belgium was a coward
A coward that in WW1 refused an ultimatum for free access from Germany (the strongest military power on the continent), full well knowing it might lead to an invasion. Furthermore during WW1 Belgium resisted the invasion at every step, delaying the Germans much more than they expected, which partially caused the Schlieffenplan to fail and during that war Belgium kept on fighting even after most of the nation was occupied. During the war there were plenty of resistance movements in Belgium fighting the Germans/helping the Entente. Doesn't sound like Belgium were cowards during that war.
In the second world war Belgium held out longer then France, the Netherlands and Poland relatively speaking (compared to country and population size), they only surrendered after they really couldn't hold on anymore, its army being cut of from any meaningfull ports, not being able to move during the day due to constant bomber harrasment, railway lines cut, ... Essentially the belgian army was done for and they notified GB and France of this several times prior to surrendering, but with no real military response (GB and France probably couldn't spare any troops themselves). What made the situation worse was that there was a rather large civilian presence in the area that was still in Belgian hands (+-1800 people/km2), both people from that area and refugees, fighting on would have had desastrous consequences in terms of civilian casualties and wouldn't have done anything considering the state of the army.
The rest of your statement is just mumbling nonsense
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@Frostmear The stupid part is that many European allies call on the US to intervene in stupid affairs.
No, they don't. Almost always it was the US that decided to stick their nose in it. Never has a NATO member activated article 5, the US did. And the EU didn't ask the US for sanctions against Russia, the US decided this on themselves, since they knew that if they didn't it might entice Russia to become more boldened after their illegal annexation of Crimea.
For the longest time European nations have been a kind of extension of the US on the world stage post 1960-70. And the UK is probably one of the allies that asked the most of the US to do something about whatever.
Russia literally isn’t an issue whatsoever to the US.
This is rather stupid take. Russia has never been a non-issue for the US since the start of the cold war, it just went to the backburner after it lost the cold war untill Crimea, however it never left the US' radar.
When in reality many of the post soviet states would rather have that old lifestyle than their current one
Again quite an ignorant take. Except for maybe Belarus and some parts of Ukraine, not a single European former soviet state would want to go back to that time. In fact it is them that keep mentioning Russia as potential danger and that NATO shouldn't let their guard down. Now, as for Asian former soviet states, that might be something different, but then again no one is engaging Russia for getting closer ties to former soviet states in Asia.
Crimea didn’t even care that Russia annexed the peninsula.
Crimea never even got a say. Since Russia's annexation there is no trustworthy reporting about Crimea's situation in regard to support for the annexation. And even if that is the case, they should just hold a second referendum overseen by international supervision (also from neutral countries). If Crimeans support the annexation, than what is the problem? The referendum would just again win, this time in a legal manner. As of now a majority (100) of UN members sees the first referendum as invalid and only 11 members as legal (the remainder abstain), thus declaring the Russian annexation illegal.
If Russia can annex Crimea just like that and there would be no pushback at all, they'd just keep doing it again and again, just like Nazi Germany did before WW2.
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@jan maroto 187 million, 57%, 1.98million km2,
Around 200 million people live on the east coast, Texas, California and pennsylvania, that is around 60% of the population on 22% of US landmass. Don't be fooled by overall numbers, a lot of the US just is really unpopulated. This would give those regions a population density of around 100 people/km2, higher than spain (92) and only a little bit lower than France (118). Add to this that a state like California and New York is also pretty big and has a lot of sparsely populated area's, you can eliminate maine from the east coast (large state with very little population) and you probably could get a population density for those parts of the US of around the same as France or higher.
That the US has a low density it rather stupid. Yes, it is true if you look at the overall numbers, but look at it per region and you get a completely different picture.
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+Shtuff Happens
The incentive to earn much will never dissapear, even if someone who earns 1m a year has to pay 500k in taxes, he'll still have 500k, something middle and low earners might need to work decades for or maybe never achieve. There never will be so high taxes that earning much will be a negative, you will certainly always keep more than those that earn less. The same tax for everyone might seem fair, but isn't. A high earner would keep way more in absolute numbers (which is most relevant) and not everyone can get a high end job, it just wouldn't be sustainable. You will always have jobs that are necessary, like doctors, nurses, fireman, police officers, Garbage men, ... Who never could hope to earn so much, but still they would have to pay the same in taxe %-wise eventough they already earn so little. 33% on 21k would leave them yearly with only 14k, probably just enough for their basic needs. This while someone who earns 210k would still keep 140k, even after more expensive 'basic needs' they would keep probably at least 100k for luxury items, savings, ... If we on the other hand tax the 21k for 'only' 15%, they would keep 17.85k, not much more, but still the small difference would mean a lot, while taxing the 210k for 40%, still keeps them 126k, the difference would probably not really be felt that much (even when having a much more luxurious lifestyle).
Furthermore you could have a system where high earners pay more, but for the same earnings pay the same. For example everyone pay 10% on their first 15k earnings, then 15% on their earnings between 15-50k, 20% for 50-100k. For someone earning 80k it would come down too:
-15k*0.1=1.5k taxes
-35k*0.15 = 5.25k taxes (from the 15-50 bracket: 50-15 = 35)
-30k*0.2 = 6k taxes (from the 50-100 bracket: 80-50 = 30)
or the totals som of the taxes would be12.75k from the 80k.
This kind of system ensures that high earners pay more, but will always end up with more after taxes than those that earn less. I don't know if the US system is sometin like this or not, but it is in my country (with different numbers but just giving an example)
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@brandonwright1791
Back in 1949 all signatories of the NATO treaty agreed to spend 2% of their GDP on armament development and production
1. Can you link me a source where it says this in the original articles?
2. I can't find any official 2% guideline from before 2006, when it was introduced as a guideline and in 2014 Obama reached an agreement that all members which spend less than 2% will do so by 2024 at the lastest.
3. *on armament development and production*: this especially is a weird way to put it, because this seems to only include material, not broad military spending and this kind of rhetoric is was the US likes, since they sell much military material to NATO members, so the higher the material investments, the better for them. I believe in 2014 it was agreed that around 40% of the 2% would be for material investments, but I am not sure about that.
4. There was no need for a 2% minimum before, since between 1949 and 1991 (most if not all) members spending never dropt under 2%, not because of a rule, but a perceived necessity due to the USSR's threat.
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@Brigstad
New York and california combined would have 16% of the voters. Even if we add all the largest states together, you would still need at least 9 states to achieve a majority, but most of these 9 states are split between rep and dem, so obviously you'd need a lot more states to get a majority. With one person one vote, there is no specific state that matters, because the candidates need to get as many votes as possible in ALL states.
Furthermore, at this moment elections are basically decided by swing states (also maybe 9 states, sometimes more, sometimes less), how is this different from a popular vote system, other than that fewer people are in these important states now? Now you also have certain states that hold way more power in election and usually these states are targetted by candidates, while "save" states are practically ignored.
The "large states will have all power" argument isn't any better than arguments against the electoral college, because both sides can use this "states x will have more power" argument, just with different states.
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@oneman7094 Because that is the answer? You really want someone to go in the technical and bureaucratic mess of next gen fighter development? That would take a long time and I am not really interested in doing so, and I doubt anyone else is going to give a much better explanation.
Development just takes long, that is it. Designing, simulating, redesigning, prototyping, testing, redesigning, ... We are talking about very complex systems, you don't just quickly design it, build it and done.
There are constant iterations of design, simulations, prototyping, testing, improving, ... for every part, every assembly, every piece of code, ...
And then we aren't even talking about the difficult of working between several companies, defence departements/divisions, bureaucracy, politics, funding, ...
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@Pax.Britannica
It contradicts what you said because countries can do whatever they like
No, they can't. If they don't follow WTO rules, they can't be a part of WTO, which generally isn't a good thing if you are a nation with a lot of trading. It is the same with the EU, you can do whatever you like, but if you break the rules, don't be surprised that there are consequences.
And it's not imposed on anyone.
It is imposed if they want to be a part of WTO. If you don't follow WTO you'll have to trade with WTO members as a third party, which isn't something you want unless you aren't relying much on trade.
See, there you are asking for specifics. I don't need to give specifics when it applies to every single damn item I buy from outside the EU.
But you don't give any evidence that this truly negatively affects you. You just claim the goods from the EU are inferior or more expensive and that is it.
I too sometimes buy stuff from outside the EU, which is not really a problem or negatively impacts my life. Often it is still (significantly) cheaper than from within the EU, though for a lot less quality. Or the cost is more or less similar for a similar quality, depends on the region I buy it from (Asia vs for example the US). Generally I don't really buy expensive stuff from Asia, since it is lower quality, and this cheap stuff is usually duty free too if I remember correctly. And I only buy something from the US that really has high import tariffs if I really can't find it in the EU, which has so far only happened once or twice.
It however can impact peoples lives very negatively if you just remove those tariffs. And this is also the thing. You just want to maximise you bottom line, I personally also think supporting 'local' suppliers is worth something extra and to me tariffs are worth that.
And such tarrifs are a normal thing, that isn't a great example of how the EU negatively affects you. The pre-existing national tarrifs have just been moved to the EU level so that there is no problem with internal free EU trade.
Not Singapore.
And Singapore is a country that specifically has set this up as a special system. There are only very few countries/regions in the world without tariffs.
And I actually can understand from a small nations standpunt with little own manufacturing that is relying on imports for almost everything that you don't want to add this inescapble burden on your citizens. This however definitely isn't case with the EU, where you can find most things already imported or evne better manufactured within the EU.
Overall the EU actually doesn't have that bad tariffs at all when looking at the weighted mean on all products, likely because while the EU has some high tariffs for certain products, it also hasa lot of trade agreements etc.
Tariffs are self harm, imposed only to protect a politicians voter base.
You have clearly no idea of the important of tariffs. They protect a nations/regions own production base. If you set no tariffs and your production base dissapears because of that, you are in deep problems if something happens to that foreign production base. Moreover by protecting this production base you secure the jobs in these sectors. Generally low/zero tariffs are only good for big global bussiness or in case of small nations relying on imports and even for these small nations just getting FTA's with your main trading partners and still setting tariffs for everyone else might be beneficial, though depends on the situaton. There are a few exceptions, but for a large market like the EU, that just isn't the case.
From Adam smith, Milton Friedman to Thomas Sowell, even Karl Marx, economists understand this.
And there are just as many or more economists that would state the opposite. There are quite some opposing economist policies that all have some support.
By increasing the risk of me being censored. A more censorious world is a more dangerous one.
How does it increase the risks of you being censored? Did you read it? Or did someone just tell you that is the case? Like I don't know the specifics of this, this is a genuine question.
Given that you think it's OK to ask for specifics, I'm going to ask that you give me the exact regulations that the UK has "out-regulating the EU" with.
Online age verification for example, where the UK wants for example porn sites to verify a visitors age using passport information. This is ofcourse just one that easily jumps out. But if you actually do a deep dive, the UK has a lot of regulation. And a lot of EU regulation was also pushed by the UK.
Specifics please.
I think it had to do with kippers or something similar, a quick google search will show you that.
The reason I ask for specifics is that people often are saying that something (like a law or rule) impacts their life negatively and thus it or the instution responsible is a negative. But when you ask how it specifically impacts their life negatively, they can't give it since they were mostly just raging against something and trying to come up with (acceptable) reasons to do so.
in the EU only the unelected politicians who make up the Commission can propose such legislation.
I am actually not sure whether the parliament can't amend or remove already existing EU legislation, it might fall under their perogative. Though I can't find anything either supporting or disproving that possibility.
Anyway, yes the EU can be improved, and it is improving over time. There also are many countries that need to be improved, but aren't doing so (the UK, US, ...).
The CPTPP btw is essentially just a free trade agreement involving several nations. It is like NAFTA. Even the EU has some similar trade deals where it involves many other countries in one trade deal. It won't move towards a protectionist bloc, considering it isn't a trade block/union.
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People apparently don't realise how many trade agreements, FTA's and PTA's, the eu actually has. The EU has among the most trade agreements of all nations, and still people in the UK think they can get even more? Maybe you can if you spend 20+ years on it, make it the most important thing for the UK and even then the question is, will these trade deals be as good? At this moment the EU either has a trade deal or is negotiating one with nearly every nation on the planet.
Oh, and the UK doesn't even has an accepted WTO schedule for the future yet, so it is likely that even your WTO schedule will be worse than the one you have now as a member of the EU.
Brexit never was meant to be good for the UK economy, brexiteers just talked about this great chance to make trade deals, when that didn't panned out, they started talking about WTO as an amazing thing. The truth is, these brexiteers were either liars or ignorant. But it is all good, apparently economics weren't the reason people voted for brexit anyway (although why did brexiteers talk about then?).
Oh and the 8 billion you would save when leaving the EU is expected to be completely wiped out by the loss in economical growth and the hit on the UK economy.
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@bjrnhjortshjandersen1286 I'd like to have an EU army and in that case NATO could be replaced by a just a regular defensive alliance, though it would come down to more or less the same. Even if NATO seizes to exist, I don't really care, but there certainly need to be a united EU army before that time imo.
As for the need of a credible enemy for a defensive association, I completely disagree. A defensive alliance doesn't really need a clear enemy, it is usefull eitherway. It will diminish the chance of conflicts between members (due to the other members wanting a peacefull resolution) and it defends all members against any attack, whether it comes from a clear enemy or not.
A defensive alliance in of itself can never hurt, it just can't be turned into a more offensive one. And NATO definitely isn't likely to transform to an offensive one, too many members are against that. Sure some members might cooperate regarding offensive actions, but that happens regardless of NATO. The only time NATO can be seen as an offensive alliance was Afghanistan, but this was in response to the 9/11 attacks, so it can still be considered a defensive action (though due to the more borderline nature of that situation several members only contributed the bare minimum/no combat troops).
Russia overall definitely doesn't need to fear more from the west. Its entire history is one of constant expansion since it conception, ofcourse this sometimes will cause an invasion/war at some point by another power. Even during WW2 there are credible sources that indicate Stalin hoped that the European powers would bleed themselves dry in a war between them, so that then the USSR could invade and easily take over European lands, the Nazi German invasion just came +-2 years too early.
At this moment no one really wants a conflict with Russia and definitely doesn't want to invade it. Russia doesn't have anything to fear from Europe or the US unless they themselves make the first move. Russia's problem is it is stuck in a 'war is necessary to grow power' hard power mentality, while Europe is more looking to the economy and soft power. The more powerfull EU countries rather want peace and good relations with Russia and the US focus has shifted to China and the South China Sea. If NATO is a threat to Russia, it is all due to Russia's own doing (more specifically their leadership).
This is really shown by the Ukrainian situation. There was really not a movement of Ukraine joining NATO, at best just speculative discussions. By now acting as if Ukraine would join NATO soon, Russia likely has just sped up its future ascension and even made other neutral countries (ie. Sweden and Finland) move closer to joining NATO than ever before.
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@gags730
The Dark Side of Solar Power Harvard Business Review
Ironically, this proves my point, namely that recycling of solar panels cost between 20-30€/panel.
However they claim the cost would rise much due to the logistics, which I don't see as feasible, it seems they are painting the worst scenario possible and are specifically just talking about the US. For example the reason why costs would mount that much are threefold in their argument from what I gather:
1) dissassembling of the panels from their place (roofs, stands, ...). This I find pretty ridiculous. Sure it will up the cost, but definitely not more than would be required to install them. Moreover later they talk about the problem that people will replace their old panel with new ones faster than expected, however this would mean dismounting these existing panels would happen at the same time as installing new ones decreasing costs.
2) legislation making PV panels hazardous materials, increasing regulation on it. This too sounds farfetched. While yes PV panels contain some hazardous materials, these are in such small amount and bounded in the panels in such a way, you need to pulverize the panels or burn at a hot enough temperature for them to cause any problems. Neither of these things would happen if you properly handle them. The EU already is recycling them without such (hazardous material) restraints, I can't see why the US would impose them. Hell, if you put that on those panels, you'd also have to handle new panels as hazardous material, which could even impact the core way of how PV panels are used. I just don't see why lawmakers would shoot themselves in the foot like that for no reason.
3) the sudden increase in PV waste. This is essentially their core idea throughout their research regarding PV panel waste, it is going to increase suddenly to a very high amount and the industry won't be ready. This is valable argument, but only up to a point. In worst case scenario they'd have to store these panels untill recycling capacity can follow with the demand.
All in all what it comes down to is that preparation is needed, without it the cost of PV panels in the US could skyrocket. Though quadruppling of LCOE doesn't make sense at all, that means getting rid of them costs 3 times more than production, installment and maintenance and this while recycling costs themselves are 10 times lower than the installment+production costs, so logistics and dismantling would somehow cost nearly a thousand dollar per panel, which is ridiculously high even taking into account possible emergency measure like storing old panels untill they can be recycled.
In the EU currently recycling is mandatory and the costs for dismantling are normally up to the company, which they likely just add to the initial price and yet PV panels are still being sold and installed at an increasing rate. The owners aren't supposed to pay anything for the dismantling and recycling when it is needed. This show recycling isn't a problem unless you just don't prepare for it, which would be stupid, especially considering studies now already are being done to warn about it.
from the mining of materials
As you said, they are cheap. While materials from China might be a bit cheaper, they aren't by that much. Most of the mining these days is done by machinery and with as low manpower as possible, there are few exceptions (like cobalt in the Congo), but this doesn't really matter that much. In fact mining by manual labour tend to be more expensive, even with cheap labour.
to everything in between from the parts in the box
Which for the most parts also will be automated. Or pretty cheap regardless. What parts specifically are you talking about?
to the box itself
Really? You think this can't be/isn't automated?
the driver and truck that bring it to a ship that is all factored in.
Yes, well. These just increase the cost vs local manufacturing, don't they? A panel that is produced for the same price in Europe and being delivered in Europe by an 'expensive' driver will be cheaper than the one produced in China at the same cost, then being driven and shipped by cheap labour to Europe. Especially since you still need to drive the panels from the harbour to the costumer by an 'expensive' driver anyway.
According to articles they even use slave labor in the process.
Yeah, there are claims, which can't be verified. But even those that make claims about it speak about pretty low amount compared to the overall workforce, thus it isn't even certain this has a real impact on the cost. It could also just be a way for the Chinese government to at the same time have low skilled cheap labour and more importantly, control over what they seem to deem a non favorable ethnic group within their borders.
Deplorable, but studies into the cost of Chinese low cost panels don't really seem to back up that their cheap labour is really a big factor in low PV cost.
In France is the recycling of the panels subsidized
Not that I know off, the cost goes to the companies that install/sell the panels, so likely it is the costumer that pays for it upon buying. Though this is for Belgium where I live, about France I can't be certain, but I assume it is similar in all of Europe with recycling being mandatory at EU level.
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@jg9585
which have unanimously and consistently underestimated the left's results for at least ten years
Have they though? In 2012 and 2017 presidential elections the polls were pretty much dead on and this year it was within the margin of error of 3% (when looking at the entire left).
In 2012 the polling in the legislative elections the seats and votes for the left were also pretty much dead on. In 2017 it was quite a bit off, but not just for the left, also for the right. It seems the polls overexaggerated the succes of the new LREM party back then.
I'd assume with the experiences of 2017, this time the legislative polling might be a bit improved to more match the 2012 accuracy, but that is something we'll have to see within a few days.
french polling institute have explained that their formulas exclude electors who are uncertain for whom to vote or whether they will vote.
Except I am looking at the results of several different polling agencies, often with different techniques. But I guess we'll find out how accurate they were this time.
At the same time the left has been increasingly focusing their campaigns in the areas where participation has been low for a while, so I'd say there is a distinct possibility for an offset of the current power balance and so of polls.
Polling should normally look at all of the population, so if more people intend to vote compared to the other times, then this should already be reflected in the polls. Again might depend on the different techniques used.
What the current polls show is that possibly the left coalition might get a plurality of the vote, but not even close to a pluraility of the seats, which could indicate the left being very strong in some departments, but overall speaking less strong than some other parties (like Ensemble). In the % of the votes, there constantly is a switch of who gets the plurality, but there never is a switch in the number of seats, there it doesn't seem to even be close.
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@Bobis32 Your calculation is wrong. An ice car would need to do 60mpg to be equivalent around 150k miles, considering the average car in the US is around 25mpg, an EV with a 100kWh pack (which is huge btw, the average is around 45kWh) would be better after just around 30k miles.
If we take the end of life around 150k miles, we get in this situation that the EV is around 58% lower co2 emissions. If we do this for a 45kWh battery EV, we get a break even point of less than 15k miles and a total co2 saving of around 64%.
Now, considering EV's are expected to actually last longer than ICE cars due to their lower part count (no engine, no big transmission, no clutch, less use of brakes with regenerative breaking, ....) before being scrapped, this difference would become even more stark.
Now, this large difference is mostly due to the US terrible fuel efficiency in the car fleet, in Europe this would already be different with their average 35 mpg, for 45kWh is would be 21k miles and for 100kWh it would be 48k miles.
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@tomorrowneverdies567 The Ottoman empire that lasted longer than the US currently exists? The Russian empire that essentially still exists in the form of Russia (minus a few territories due to losing conflicts)? Austria-Hungary had a lot of internal problems, not just cultural ones.
There have been plenty of nations/empires throughout the past with multiple local languages and cultures that still were stable. Unless the cultural differences are directly opposed to eachother, it isn't necessarily a problem. And in terms of languages you just need a common language that people can speak as a 2nd/3rd language and you are fine.
people felt that the policy of the central government was not in their favor.
Like we've also seen in large homogenous countries? This isn't necessarily caused by different cultures/languages, just bad governing of the central government.
The Hungarians believed that the government in Vienna always favored Austrians and Austria. ...
Austria-Hungary wasn't exactly a democratic country, ofcourse there will be differences of opinions, especially when Austria-Hungary (its central government at least) was essentially ruled almost solely by the Austrians.
there is namely the danger that in some country, people will feel constantly misrepresented
That already happens at every scale in most societies/countries. That isn't really anything new. This is currently rebuffed however by having democratic insititutions (at least in democratic countries, in authoritarian ones it might be the iron fist).
or that their opinion on politics does not matter at all, because they are so few in number
Which is why you don't centralise everything, just mainly the parts where the differences aren't so much regional, but rather ideological (transborder).
And then they will try to form an independent country
Or they will just get some more autonomy in certain things.
first you need all these people to aquire the same identity
Nearly no large country in the past (and even many now) don't have the same identity across all regions, usually there were/are a lot of regional differences. The European identity that currently exist is likely even more uniting than the identity of many large successful countries in the past.
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@LRRPFco52 Europe needed a lot of help after the war.
I am sorry, but by 1980 the war had been over for 35 years, I'd hardly call that 'after the war'.
as part of a scientific exchange program to help with the ECA
Could you say more about this, I can't find anything about it.
An exchange program doesn't necessarily mean it was really needed, but could also just be to increase cooperation. There are plenty of exchange programs between universities, doesn't mean one needs help from the other or would otherwise fail/get nowhere, rather they want to just cooperate for boths benefit.
My mentioning of the F404 in the first Rafales was in response to people trying to compare the development budget for the Rafale to JSF.
This is irrelevant, you are acting like the Rafale just got those engines, and like clearly said, the Rafale only used the F404 as a temporary placeholder, there still was another engine, so you can't claim it was a cost saving measure, I'd say the opposite since they had to get those 'unnecessary' F404's for initial testing of the plane.
If someone can find a reputable, accurate accounting of the Rafale development budget, that would be one place to start.
According to official French senate figures the development cost of the Rafale was around €25 billion and another €20,85 billion for building 286 for French forces.
Upon further review I can't find the exact development costs of the F35, seeing I accidentally used wrong numbers, so development cost difference might be lower, possibly around 3 times the cost of the Rafale. If we look at development + procurement (most often used numbers), it would come down to around $190 million for the Rafale (per unit) and $162 for the F35 (per unit) when looking at French and US acquisitions. Ofcourse the US has the advantage of scale (286 vs +-2456 expected F35 sales by the US), which pushes down production cost numbers significantly. Which we also see with the Rafale, when India wanted to buy just a couple dozen, costs/unit increased quite dramatically vs larger batches (100+). Though the Rafale should have lower running/maintenance costs than the F35.
Anyway, I doubt at this point there will be demand for the Rafale by anyone, seeing the F35 has started to be more interesting due to scale and capabilities.
France/European nations seem to have learned from the Rafale and Typhoon projects, being developed so 'late'. They now skip the 5th generation and are immediately moving for a 6th gen plane, which will likely come out around the same time or just a bit later than that of the US (though obviously depends on delays etc.). I so dislike that 2 6th gen projects are active in Europe, since this will lower the scale of production if both are achieved, increasing endcosts.
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@enlighteneddoggo5803
Jeezes christ, it is not about wether you can divide a foot by 10 (what would be the point?), it is about the mismatch of converting magnitudes of units ( 1 foot = 12 inch, 1 yard = 3 feet, 1 chain = 22 yards, ..., 1 mile = 5280 feet vs 1m = 100 cm, 1 cm = 10 mm, 1 km = 1000m ). There is too much unnecessary calculations in imperial units compared to metric units. It might be fine in everyday life, but once you get to actual complicated engineering, it is usefull to easily move between these magnitudes with ease in order to prevent mistakes or to not waste too much time just converting measurements.
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@LifeLongStrong1961 If Germany ever gained an edge in capital ships, the UK was doomed.
Here is the problem, the UK would always be aware of what Germany builds and react to it. In reality Germany's surface fleed never could have outmatch the british. If necessary the british would abandon other theaters and pull more forces to the nord sea.
Yes, countering a capital ship is not easy, but neither is countering a submarine fleet. The problem is that the capital ships are just one large target, take it out and you lose years of building and a large part of your naval strength. Also the nazi's spend huge efforts and funds on thos capital ships, not just to build them, but also to maintain them. Just keeping them safe in harbour was extremely costly, since they often would have been a target of not just naval assets, but also air attacks.
The fact that the little submarines they had, did a lot more than their entire surface fleet already shows the where the real strength is in their situation. If Germany had nearly 10-15 times the subs they had (could have been possible with proper focus on submarine warfare), they would wreak havoc on british shipping early in the war, possibly even strongly hindering the UK's attempt to try and counter it. Moreover had they put more emphasize on subs, they might have brought out their newer improved model much earlier, instead of just at the end of the war.
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@twoshedsjohnson8540
And how do you think you're funding health care for those that can't pay for it? By taking from others.
How do you think insurance pays for it? By using the money of others. That's the whole fucking point of coverage.
That's what health insurance does...spreads the costs out over a vast group of people.
And that is also exactly what universal healthcare does, only on an evn bigger scale with much more negotiation power.
And government ever growing involvement in health care has driven costs up.
Maybe in the US because every effort was half-assed due to the health insurance, pharmaceutical companies and republicans being against a proper universal healthcare system. The healthcare in any developed western country is cheaper, while also doing better and is run with more government involvement.
Yes yes yes...public roads. That's the one example...got another?
Police, firefighters, military, general infrastructure, public schools, essential things like water, public transportation, ...
More cost effective than what? How will costs go down under M4A?
I don't know the specifics of costs inside the system, but the US system is now way more expensive than the universal singlepayer systems of other western nations.
Wrong...it's not regression...it's conserving aspects of traditions that work.
It works only as far as civilization doesn't progress. Do medieval medical practices work? They were deemed to be working back then. Maybe you should go back to using a horse and cart, that used to work great.
And funny that most of the progress that we benefit from has come from capitalists that create new products that improves our lives.
And? More like most people live in capitialistic societies now, so if they create some product, it is "due to capitalism". You do know that many inventions that improved human life in the past were not created in a capitalistic society, right?
But this doesn't even matter, because we are not arguing for a non-capitalistic society, but for a mix between capitalism and socialism, with the best outcomes of both.
Conservatives are traditionally capitalists in this country.
So are most (if not all) democrats (at least the capitalistic part).
Public schools? Really? Actually, that should be the argument made AGAINST government involvement.
So you want for millions upon millions of children to not get an education. Do you want to revert to child labor?
And what's worse, when competition from other publicly funded schools come into existence, CHARTER SCHOOLS, supporters of public education want to shut them down.
Yeah, because the system of charter schools is a failure to make a profit.
And it's minority parents actually that support Charter Schools, while it's white elitists that oppose them.
Yes, and many african americans are in favor of Joe Biden, despite him having a terrible track record on policies involving them. It's not that because one group is in favor of something, it is suddenly in their best interests.
and public transportation could very easily be run by private companies
And then they can jack up their prices, just like the healthcare insurance and medical companies.
...and actually Uber and Lyft are the most incredible advancements in transportation,
You do know they are still way more costly than public transport, right?
which is unsurprisingly creating more and more expensive barriers of entry against them...to protect the old Taxi industry. That's called cronyism.
More like the fact that taxis have many other costs Uber doesn't have and because there is regulation that Taxis need to follow, but ubers do not follow. This is one of the reasons uber is so cheap vs taxis, and also the reason why uber can in certain countries/cities only operate if they follow the same pre-existing requirements as taxis, guess what, uber doesn't get of the ground there.
And another thing...those on the left always rail against evil monopolies. Yet, you bow to one of the biggest monopolies in the history of the world...US public education.
Expect you can influence it by voting. If you want to equate the US government to a bussiness, then every US citizen is a shareholder with (theoretically) an equal amount of shares. You can't say this of the companies with monopolies. Furthermore, public schools aren't even a monopoly because private schools still exist.
Lack of funding? That is ALWAYS the reason for the failings of the system..."if we just had more money!". All we do is throw more money at it.
More like a better usage of the funding. And a better distribution. But it is indeed not just money, but also other things that need to change.
And college kids are in debt up to their eyeballs
And this is due to a lack of regulation.
In my town here in CA, they get paid around $75,000 a year
Exactly, you town, look past you own surrounding.
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There are three main reasons for labours loss:
1) Corbyn: he isn't really liked by anyone outside his own core of supporters, basically he is like the hillary Clinton of the UK (left), maybe even worse. He is too far left, an ineffective leader and just not likable, add to this that he constantly went around questions of his own personal brexit stance and the labour ones and you have a really bad combination for a leader who effectively is running for the prime minister position. He is personally for brexit, because he fears that EU rules might stop him from nationalising everything he wants to see nationalised (among others), while he did "campaign" for remain. This middle lane was probably the worst he could do in the brexit debate.
2) Labours program: it was way too left and seen as too expensive, much more so than during the 2017 election. This spooked many possible voters, especially those who already might have been doubting to vote for labour due to brexit/Corbyn. Corbyn was just pushing the party too far left, almost towards the extreme left. I am a left leaning european, in the US I would be by far a real progressive, but even for me it was too far left and might have stopped me voting labour if I was british. Compared to labours stance now, Bernie's policies almost look like centrist policies. Labour was slowly moving to actual democratic socialism instead of a social democracy.
3) Brexit: labour has for a long time not been very clear on brexit. Or let me rephrase, they have been clear on brexit, however it was kind of like a middle lane option for a long time and internally there were huge divisions in the party. For most of the time their stance was brexit, but only a brexit THEY (re)negotiated. This stance in itself was problematic: 1. the EU has made it clear no renegotiations. 2. They alienated remain voters AND leave voters, because their leave idea was too soft the one and too hard for the other.
Eventually they choose to support a second referendum, however it was way too late and they still held on to their original idea. They lost the people whose main concern was leaving completely and still didn't appeal enough to the remain side.
These 3 things combined was desastrous for labour, period.
Now labours loss was the main reason for the conservatives winning the election, however the split vote on the remain side was also responsible: it was split between labour, lib dems, greens, SNP (who did really well overall) and some other smaller parties. If labour had formed a remain coalition with other remain parties to turn this initially into just a brexit referendum, they wouldn't have been battered so hard, but might have even come out on top. They should than just have dealt with brexit as this remain coalition and then call for a new regular normal vote.
In the end pro-brexit parties only got 46,5% of the votes, so in number of votes the remain side won, however due to the UK outdated election system and remain not uniting, the conservatives are now free to do their brexit and everything else they want practically unopposed, only internal problems could stop them from doing whatever they want.
As for the Bernie-Corbyn thing. That doesn't matter. Bernie Sanders unlike Corbyn is really wel liked overall, is an effective leader and is exactly in the sweetspot in terms of progressivism/leftist. Bernie is the example of a great left leader, while Corbyn is the example of a bad or at best average left leader. Don't get me wrong Corbyn might be fine as a left politician, just not a left leader.
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@jamesmiller2735 conduct a referendum on foreign policy decisions
Which is almost nowhere ever done because it isn't practical. Also the main factors determining people's lives have always been internal, not external, the latter is just an extra factor.
sovereignty belongs to the people and not a select few individuals running a government be it senators,mayor's, governors,prime minister's and president's
Nice in a theoretical debate, not usefull in practice. People would have to be constantly looking into things to do this, having barely anytime for anything else, this you'd have on the few with the necessary time participating or a lot of people making uninformed decisions.
The EU should keep the veto or risk becoming the Soviet Union 2.0
What a bullshit, this isn't even in line with your sentence just before. A veto is made by a head of state, and as you clearly said, it should be done by the people. Also there is no reason the EU would turn into the USSR 2.0 when removing the vetoe, just some really stupid fearmongering.
As you say the EU officials are selected rather than elected.
So are essentialyl all ministers and cabinetmembers elsewhere, it is the parliament and head of state (which should become a presidential function) that are directly elected, just like everywhere else.
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+Taylor Hurst
1. Obama's ban: 6 months of iraqi refugees, which could still get in only less fast, every month refugees from iraq still came in. Green card and visa holders who were already vetted were not hurt and this 'ban' passed through several committee meetings, involving cabinet and deputy cabinet-level officials from all of the relevant departments and agencies, including the State, Homeland Security, and Justice departments, while Trump just flat out signed a peace of paper. As for this list provided by Obama's administration, the only thing this did was tell people from visa free travel country with double nationalities, of which one is on this list, need to get a visa. This would take longer to get, but does not ban or really hurt them.
Always when I hear a Trumps ban defence it goes back to Obama's so called ban or make america safer, which is just stupid, the vetting procedures have been highly improved under Obama and it usually takes years for refugees to get in. 4 months of ban isn't going to do shit, except give more reasons for radicals, or others to radicalize against the US. The chances of homegrown terrorists increases, while safety doesn't increase.
2. Fascist left? You do know fascism is more to the right of the spectrum. In other words, you are either saying this left isn't left anymore, or fascism is changed. Also I don't really see any of fascism signs on the left side, corruption and politics yes, just like with the right. And I'd rather have that then someone who just signs things without the advice of people involved or not thinking of the real consequences except those in his imaginations or are popular (wrong) beliefs and just do whatever he wants.
3. Firing the minister of justice: I have no problem with that if she doesn't do what you ask, but calling her a traitor because she believes that your actions are unlawfull is just wrong. This is a dangerous precedent for 'Who do not share my views, be them lawfull or not, are traitors'.
4"TRUMP NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT HATING WOMEN"
No, perhaps not hating them, but maybe also not really sees them as man's equal or sometimes as digusting or objects. So his actions and private conversations showed.
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As for who won the second world war, the answer is simple: the allies. the US wouldn't have won it on their own, the Russian's either. Both of them were important in securing the victory, but they wouldn't even have won it without the help of many countries and it's people that are never mentioned. Britain fought important battles in north africa and the air before the US even got involved, the resistance in the occupied country was important for intelligence and so on, It's called a world war for a reason. If anyone won the war for the allies, it was Hitler, because of many stupid important mistakes he made: -attacked Russia before Britain was conquered and north africa secured, leaving a front open in the west and south and a place from were the US in the future could sent troops from to Europe. He could have easily waited for some years, because he had made a peace agreement with Stalin after Poland, and Stalin was keeping to it. It is said that Stalin was very suprised that Hitler broke this agreement. - Pushing to fast against Russia with unprepared troops and supplies in Russian territory on a too wide front while splitting up his forces to much. Effectively making the exact same mistake as Napoleon. - Declaring war on the US hoping that Japan would in return help him against Russia without any garanty. This was an absolute gamble that most likely has cost him the war. The japanese never opened a ront in the east against Russia, they even left the border with Russia quite undefended to focus there troops against US forces. It was because they had no real force in the north against Russia that they surrendered after the Russian invasion of Manchuria in 1945. (p.s. Their political leader alreasy wanted to surrender as of 1943, but could never come to an agreement with the allies over the demands of surrender. Also the top of the millitary were trying not in agreement.)These are just a few giant mistakes that Hitler made, and without these mistakes Germany would have had the best chance to win the war in Europe and Russia.
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@hennessyblues4576 You're an idiot, what you describe is exactly how it might work if we have war with the current system. In an EU army all military personnel would be trained to use one language when not among/speaking to someone from a same region, like for example English, seeing it is already the most used language in the world, a lot of people in the EU would already know it/use it, our main allies speak english and since the UK is out it is a rather neutral language.
Furthermore these soldiers wouldn't be seen as italian or german or whatever, but as european soldiers and might even be mixed among eachother (definitely in the higher ranks). Do the french soldiers now make the distinction of someone from Paris vs someone from Toulouse vs ...? Ofcourse not, when it comes down to it, they are french people serving in the french army.
Early on the logistics definitely will be difficult seeing the large amount of different equipement, but over time this would be standardised and logistics would definitely improve between army corps/groups of different regions.
The US has a shared language, so can the EU army have, that is not so difficult to achieve. Same culture? Maybe same roots, but if you compare Florida to New York to Texas To California, ... you'd be surprised how much difference there is. And all in all different culture isn't that bad, especially seeing the european cultures have in the past century already moved closer together. They are not so different they were 100-150 years ago. Even on a local level this is noticable, due to increased connectivity there are barely any young people speaking my local dialect, sure there are some different words still lingering, but barely noticable, this while most (if not all) young people here can speak English (I live in Belgium/Flanders for the record).
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@LeadLeftLeon
Russia's current account surplus is bigger than ever.
it was bigger than ever, only to then nosedive as the price of gas and oil went down and exports decreased recently.
Russian exports are going strong.
I wouldn't exactly say lowering by 5% going strong. Moreover supply lines aren't easily cut, Europe has only just begun moving away from Russian gas and oil, before now they still needed it to fill their storage and to have time to get into other supply options (like LNG). This won't be the case for much longer. Sanctions always are a long term game, not a short term one.
Moreover it is more about the imports of crucial goods. Overall imports were down almost 10% for Russia.
Then you have the -4% economy 'growth' of Russia, which are official numbers from the Russian government, it isn't unlikely they upped the numbers a bit to paint a more 'positive' picture.
US vassal Europe is having its economy crushed because sanctions backfired.
US vassal 🤣. And its economies crushed? If that it is the case the Russian economy got destroyed, considering its inflation and growth rate was significantly worse, even by Russian numbers.
US thought it could engineer regime change in Russia with sanctions.
No one expected any regime change with these sanctions, at least not in the first few years.
IF the West is pushing Zelensky back to the negotiating table, they have accepted Ukraine is losing.
No, just that negotiations still need to happen. No one likes this war and if it can be over sooner by negotiations, that is the best outcome. However they aren't pushing Zelensky to make peace at all costs, in fact they reiterated they'd keep supporting Ukraine. They know Ukraine won't accept any peace treaty if it doesn't at least include the return of all occupied territories (save maybe Crimea).
The West will just GIVE 300 billion frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. Where'd you pull this one from? Out your azz?
Logic dictates compensation for the damages caused by Russia in Ukraine. This also happened in the past. Ofcourse this best gets legalised in peace treaty ofcourse, but it Russia refuses, the west likely will just give it to Ukraine. You seriously think Russia will ever see these assets returned? Maybe after the regime change which promises war reparations to Ukraine, though these most likely will be similar or higher to these seized assets.
This long distance makes Ukraine's weapons vulnerable as they're being destroyed by Russia.
And yet this doesn't happen, and do you know why? Because Russia doesn't have that capability without full control of the airspace, which it hasn't.
To make matters worse the US is low on supplies and recently had to go shopping in South Korea to find shells for Ukraine.
This kind of shopping isn't anything new. It also doesn't mean the US is running out of supplies either, could for example be to grow their supplies or increase shipments to Ukraine. The US will never let its stockpiles run out, if they get anywhere near this point they'd invest massively into quickly upgrading its production capacity. Even a fraction of what they did during WW2 would be plentifull.
Meanwhile Russia is supplying itself
Clearly, if you ignore that they need to turn to Iran and NK to buy military equipment 🤣 Russia doesn't have the military industry anymore it once had, large stockpiles, yes. But these are meant to last long enough for production to increase to war production levels, but that isn't possible without a full mobilization and war economy. As it stand Russia is emptying its stockpiles.
and can get weapons onto the battlefield faster to maintain its firepower superiority.
And yet logistics are one of the key problems Russia so far has faced in Ukraine and it firepower superiority has only decreased in the past few months because they couldn't keep up with logistics after Ukraine started using HIMARS to destroy their logistic hubs.
20,000 Russian shells fired for every 7,000 from Ukraine.
Pityfull display from Russia. They are supposed to be the 2nd strongest military power in the world and only outmatch Ukraine, that had no real military to speak off 8 years ago, 3 to 1. If this is the rate Russia can maintain, it would get dwarfed in a war with the west, who'd immediately amp up production of shells beyond that level.
The US & the West do not have infinite weapons to send to Ukraine.
No, but they have bigger economies and industries that Russia, so can sustain a war of attrition much longer.
Over 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead already stated by EU's Ursula von der Leyen.
Casualties, meaning killed and wounded. The estimates for Russian casualties are of a similar size.
Ukraine is being demilitarized.
You have a weird interpretation of demilitarisation. A country that has only grown in military strength holding off the supposedly 2nd strongest military in the world for months and having pushed it back on several occasions when the expectations were it would fall in weeks, equals being demilitarised 🤔🤣
Demilitarization happens by destroying all of their weapons or/and annihilating the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
By that definition Russia is getting demilitarized even faster. It has lost more military equipment than Ukraine while it can't replace it with new equipment at even a fraction of the destruction rate vs Ukraine who has only seen its military equipment grown thanks to western nations sending military systems Ukraine couldn't even hope to get their hands on before (both due to cost and politics). And in terms of manpower Ukraine and Russia are losing more or less equal amounts.
But hey, I guess we'll find out in the end who was right.
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@fmvm I disagree on public transport, China already has proven that electric busses are more than possible, one city the size of small countries in population switched to fully electric busses in just a few years (forgot which city it was). My local (well provincial) public bus operator bought some hydrogen busses 2 years ago and shelved them after a few months due to too expensive.
In Europe most trainlines are electrified, so no need for hydrogen there. As for trucks like the original commentator said, EV trucks would fit perfectly into the time limits imposed on the trucking industry (After 3-4 hours mandatory 20-30 minute stop to rest, no longer than +-10 hour driving untill taking a much longer rest, meaning around a max daily distance of 525 miles with stops during which some charging can be done). Hydrogen trucks might stil be used, but more likely as a niche sector.
Hydrogen really could play a part in air and sea travel when it comes down to transportation, for other things it is much more limited.
And no, the infrastructure for hydrogen isn't similar for CNG, or better it isn't usefull. Sure it is similar in that both are a gas, but that is mostly where it ends. Most of CNG infrastructure isn't really fit for hydrogen and there aren't many cng cars/trucks to start with, so there isn't much infrastructure anyway.
As for recycling, EV companies are already looking into recycling as a cost saving measure since they don't need to constantly mine and refine their needed resources, something that is rather costly due to the low % of these resources in the overall mined material, however batteries already have a rich presence of these resources.
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Swords, spears (most melee arms in general), bows, crossbows, musket, smootbore cannons, trebuchets, siege towers, ... I can keep going if you want.
If you now say "modern technology" that isn't relevant. Military technology doesn't just become obsolete suddenly. Usually it takes centuries to become obsolote (not taking into account minor improvements, then we talk about decades). The rate at which weapons are developing now is quite faster than in the past, so it is definitely logical that eventually certain things become obsolete.
Tanks aren't becoming obsolete because there isn't really a replacement for them at the moment. Their whole function is getting strength with ground forces, this doesn't just become obsolete because you get better "air forces" you still might need this on the ground 'close quarter' physical presence in certain cases.
The reason the battleships became obsolete is because something better came around that can do their function better: destroy other ships and support/bomb area's close to the shores. Just like guns initially replaced other missile weapons and in the long run even melee weapons (though this also because a gun also could be used as melee weapon). Or why cannons replaced trebuchets, ...
To be honest, if we just look at the last 100-150 years, you'd have a much too narrow view, but even then you'll find examples (cavalry, disciplined wel organised infantry lines moving to the enemy at nearly point blank range, zeppelin bombers, scouting balloons, wooden ships, ...).
So yeah, things become obsolete, though because it usually is replaced by something similar but better, you might not notice, or you might just not have looked into what actually became obsolete.
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All you said about solar panels is essentially wrong or irrelevant.
solar panels have a limited lifespan
Doesn't everything? Current expected lifetime for solar panels is around 25-30 years (technically they could last longer, but every year around 0,5-1% of their capacity is reduced due to among others damage to the glass like scratches etc.), which is more then enough and this "short" life actually allows them to be more quickly/easily replaced by improved panels/technologies, where with a nuclear reactor planned to last 60-80 years, you would be stuck with it for 60-80 years, even if in that time better options become available.
contain toxic materials
Regular solar panels do not contain toxic materials (at least no more than other electronics that people use so often). And the panels that do contain toxic materials are not a problem. In order to get these toxic materials into the environment, they need to either be burned or grinded to dust.
and there is no plan to safely dispose of them
This is the most stupid statement. Recycling of solar panels is mandatory in the EU, 95-98% of a panel is recycled with the remaining 2-5% being mostly glass and other non-problematic things (the reason why they don't improve it more is because there is no economical point in trying to recycle all 100% of the glass from the panels at a much higher cost). Yes, without regulation solar panels are most often still dumped, that will almost always remain a bit cheaper, but it definitely isn't like there are no options to deal with old solar panels.
Renewables can definitely provide an effective and green transition of the power needs, however it will need storage, which is expected to have reduced in costs enough around 2030-35. And personally I'd expect a mix of nuclear and renewables be (for the close future) be the best option. Long term fusion would probably be the best and if that doesn't work I wouldn't be surprised that in the long term renewables alone might be preferable.
Btw, if we ignore 4th gen we'd only have around a centuries worth of nuclear material to provide the worlds energy needs.
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@foxfire5235
Rail is most definitely not cheaper than shipping. Yes it is around 2-3 times faster, but most trade between (for example) EU and china is not time sensitive, if it is, often it will be shipped by air. In most cases the reduced cost is more than worth the extra time.
Hell, shipping companies even often operate at reduced speed, just to save some on fuel and costs. If time was of great importance they wouldn't do this.
The difference in scale is just too big.
The 'hidden' cost of a navy is irrevelevant, countries would still have navies anyway, whether trade goes on land or by sea.
the train is 14.85km long!
And which train might this be? Since the longest operational trains are around 4km long, never has a train even breached 10km length for so far I know. A train is limited in length by many different factors: traction, couplings, curves, gradients, braking, ... And this is just the technical reasons. From a logistic perspective it isn't really interesting to have really long trains, overall they don't provide much added benefit and can even have a negative outcome.
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@robinbinder8658 Poland doesn't come so high, since they also import a lot of renewable power, overall Poland these days rarely comes above 530g/kWh. And seeing a good EV (like a Tesla model 3) can do around 4,2 miles per kWh, that makes 126g/mile, or even if we use the 730g/kWh, it comes down to 173g/mile. Again, this is mostly due to Polands reliance on coal, which will dissapear in the next 2 decades, making EV's by far the greener choice.
An efficient EV does between 15 and 20 kWh/100km, however the average is ticked up by inefficient large EV's and electric vans. I guess the energy mix in your country still makes an ICE car still viable for the next 2 years (still don't know which country and I am really interested to know which country has lots of renewable, but still does 530g/kWh), though I am surprised an old ass car does only 120g/mile.
Just to be clear, I am speaking in a theoretical sense, I am not saying anyone should abandon their old car and buy an EV (I still drive a 14 year old car, though likely not for much longer due to repair costs), that wouldn't even be possible now just due to a lack of EV's, the current price and charging infrastructure.
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@marpagapal3312
Taiwan is not a allied nation to the US
That is why I also used friendly nation and not just allied nation.
US doesn't recognize Taiwan as a country at all
Because neither the US nor Taiwan wants to drive this to the point over something like a small recognition, especially seeing this wouldn't just be recognizing an independent nation, but Taiwanese claims to China.
There is a huge difference between bombing a failed state like Iraq, Afghanistan and now Syria and start a direct confrontation against a economical and military powerhouse.
Sure and there is also a huge difference between invading due to "dictatorship",oil, weapons of mass destruction, ... etc and protecting a friendly region against one of your top rivals that is overall very disliked, not just in the US, but the west in general and even among many of its surrounding nations.
Both US and China will act as they will do everything for Taiwan but the island is clearly more important to China than to the US.
Obviously it is more important to China than the US, this however doesn't mean the US wouldn't interfer, they probably just wouldn't stick around if it became too costly. And if they play it smart, it would cost China way more than the US. China couldn't allow a failed invasion/submission attempt, especially with huge Aerial and naval losses. They won't make a real move unless they are truly ready and willing.
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@effexon Why do people keep insisting oil should be the only concern? The Nazi's also didn't take oil by diverting resources from Moscow and even if they immediately went after the Baku oil fields, these most likely would get sabotaged and bombed into oblivion, requiring a long time to get back operational and a lot of protection in terms of planes and AA.
Yes, Germany needed oil, that doesn't mean they couldn't fight without it. Taking Moscow would deal a huge blow to the Soviet morale and greatly damage Soviet logistics. Leningrad would all be cut off from the Soviet logistics system and even Murmansk also, making supply efforts from allies very very difficult. Not to mention tha Moscow was a major supply depot in of itself.
Also if the Nazi's could take Moscow, they could bunker down there and very likely the Soviets would try to retake it, weakening themselves on other parts of the front, which the Germans could then potentially profit from. And if Leningrad would fall, a lot of German troops would also be freed up to help in the Defense of Moscow or the push in the south.
Moscow wasn't at all as insignificant as many now make it out to be, it likely was the most important strategic location in the entire USSR at that moment. There wasn't really a way for Germany to quickly get oil production from conquered territories, so the goal should have rather been to deal a big decisive blow as big as possible to end the war fast, or at least put the Soviets on the backfoot long term and not give up the initiative.
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I am sorry, but you are still wrong on the UK election.
First, comparing it to 2017 and pointing to labours good showing as an argument that it was brexit and not the policies is stupid. During the 2017 campaign the tories ran a really bad campaign and labour overall a solid campaign. Basically labour did good back than for a large part because of weak tories. This time the tories campaign was a good populist campaign that resonated with many voters.
Secondly, the backtracking on brexit isn't exactly the problem, the late decision was. Sure labour would lose some seats in strong labour regions, but also might have taken seats in originally not labour regions. Furthermore if labour didn't support a second referendum they might have lost many seats elsewhere, possibly more. After their clear decision to support a second referendum their polling went up from 26% to 32-32% and just so you know, remain got a majority of the votes, they were just much more split up.
Thirdly, Corbyn's popularity might have been the greatest problem. Whether this was due to the smears or not (I think it is both due to the smears and just his own appearance and leadership), it doesn't matter. The fact is Corbyn was the worst candidate to go into this election as the head of labour. During the 2017 election his popularity was mixed, neither popular nor unpopular, but smears and the way he handled brexit made him hugely unpopular (average net popularity was around -40%! last few months). They should have changed leadership during the summer, just like the conservatives did.
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@yoannbelleville7763
The other problem with a military is that even if EU had sufficient funds without compromising on the military, there wouldn't be enough young people in the coming generations to have a functioning army due to the lower birth rates
There is barely no difference between the EU and US in birthrates and Russia etc is even worse. Even China is expected to see a massive population drop off in the next few generations. It are mainly African nations that are expected to grow.
Generally the younger people are opposed to the military in general as they see it as an oppressive system that diverts money away from the people that need them
That is a pretty generalizing way of seeing things. There might be young people that see it that way, but those are few. Overall the younger people aren't in favour of unnecessarily high military spending like in the US, but they do agree that there needs to be enough. Especially now with the Russian invasion in Ukraine did this positively influence people towards military defence.
It's not surprising that many Western European young people see the Ukraine war as funding the capitalist military industrial complex and would rather see Ukraine surrender and negotiate a permanent ceasefire rather than spending billions of euros on lethal aid.
I live in western europe and haven't met anyone thinking this way. The general consensus is that Ukraine needs the help and should be given to it, that Russia can't be allowed to win.
Only 18% of Germans, 29% of French, and 28% of Italians are willing to fight for their country in the event of a war.
These are bullshit polls since they are heavily influenced by the fact that we haven't been attacked in decades. Most people connect war to military expeditions in further away countries, like the US' Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If attacked a lot more people would be willing to defend it. Also 20% of 400million people would still be 80m people, more than ever served on all sides combined in ww2 or ww1.
You can see in the eastern European countries that perceived threats really matter in such polling.
1) they are a dictatorship so the government can force them to fight and war is often a numbers game with soldiers
This is a very naive idea. In russia they arguably need to be more carefull drafting troops for an unpopular war, since this could cause the people to turn on the government. There is a reason Russia only officially drafted 300k people so far and didn't draft more despite the stalemate situation on the field. In the Ukraine-Russia conflict, Ukraine is quite likely will able to draft more people than Russia in the end.
And even now the combined EU militaries still have more troops in their militaries than Russia.
which is why they crushed Chechnya despite the Chechens having higher moral than an average Russian soldier
The reason they won this ware if very simple: much bigger and better equiped army and airforce. Chechnya has only a bit over a million people and its capital got quite destroyed + they were fighting a foe with much more equipment.
With Russia enforcing traditional/nationalistic education on the younger generations after Gen Z, this number will only increase
That is to be seen. There is no also more access to the internet that in past times (even in Russia) and it isn't clear what will happen if Putin were to die or if he can't win the current conflict.
So I'd say most of your points are useless and either not a problem or pretty easily solved.
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I somewhat disagree with you. Sure a bit of debt and deficit isn't a problem if you have your own currency (and especially if you are the worlds reserve currency). But this can't go on and on. You can't just keep increasing it without any trouble. This is basically creating a bubble that you keep blowing up, if it is small, fine no problem. But as it gets bigger and bigger eventually it is going to burst and then you are in big trouble.
What will happen if the US is in huge debt (say 150% of the gdp) and there is another strong currency that isn't so much debt? People are going to put their trust more in the save currency and suddenly the US dollars will slowly stop being the worlds reserve currency. Investors will wan't their money back and the US will have to print more to pay up. This will in turn decrease the value of the dollar. Now, this might not be a great problem for the government (after all they can keep printing if need be), however this will be really bad for everyone else that uses the dollar. And then it will be the peoples problem, what if suddenly they need to pay 1000 dollar for a bread? (yeah, exageration, however this has happened before rather often)
Now, you are true that investing money in a smart way (and going in debt while doing it) is good to increase the economy and that it is sometimes necessary. However this only good if this after a while turns around and this former investment is "payed back" with an increase of tax revenue. In other words, you invest to get a better return. You don't invest just for the sake of investing and to just keep increasing the economy, because eventually the economy will collapse (that's inevitable as history shows) and then you suddenly need to invest more to get the economy back into shape, while having a lower revenue.
I also think this what the hosts were going for, you can have a deficit when it is needed (for example to rekindle the economy), but this doesn't mean you need to keep running deficits.
You also said that during deficits the private sector does good. Well yeah that is the point of investing. It is like you invest in a your diner. You modernised it, more people come, you gain more and earn your investment back. However you can't keep running up debts inorder to invest in you diner, if for example the market crashes, people go less out to eat, your earnings drop and suddenly you have a huge debt and no way to pay it back.
You can't keep pumping in money because it seems to work, eventually you at least have to balance the budget or even decrease it. Or are you saying all these nations that lower their deficit and balance their budget are wrong?
As a last point if you're running a deficit while investing, no problem you get that back later in increased tax revenue. However if you're running a deficit to fund your army, provide welfare or grant a tax cut, ... you're doing something wrong. A stronger army will not increase future revenue, a tax cut will also not increase future revenue (enough), welfare also will not increase the revenue depending on the kind of welfare, for example education might in the future improve revenue, but healthcare often does not increase it (enough), healthcare is an investment in human decency, not an economical investment (or instituting it wouldn't even be a problem).
To conclude, there are times you need to balance the budget (and even run a surplus) and time you need to run a deficit. This is exactly why "how to pay for welfare" is relevant.
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Sure, you can just keep increasing anti ship missile defences, just like you can keep increasing anti ship missiles themselves. However at some point your defence system can get saturated and even just one missile getting through potentially means a huge loss, whereas if this happens to a static airfield, you 'just' need to repair it. And the closer you get to the enemies anti-missile launch systems, the higher the risk your defences get saturated. This is why a US carrier will never get to close to (for example) Chinese shores during a conflict, to project strength? Sure, but in an actual risky situation? Definitely not.
As for the tank, there isn't anything that can really replace its role: delivering ground strength. Yeah, sure you can use missiles and planes, but these would be supporting roles, you can't actually use them in a prolonged ground combat or in a ground control way. Otherwise you can just also eliminate the need for ground forces, not going to happen.
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@Frostmear
please explain to me how Russia is a threat to US national security?
For one Russia is the second largest nuclear power. Secondly if somehow they were to get Europe under them, they would become the world power practically by default. Thirdly you have aspirations of both the US/Canada and Russia for shipping lanes in the north pole when the ice melts enough. Fourthly historical rivalry, this doesn't just go away just because you say so. Fifth, Russia is influencing western elections, including that of the US, and if Russia grows in strength their cyber- and influencing attacks will only increase.
Russia doesn't want to be just a regional player, they want to again become (one of) the dominant players, and to get this, they have from their point of view no other real choice but to also take on the US in some form of another.
Now, if the US wants to go the (semi-) isolationist route again, this might all not matter that much, but then again it could find itself in a worse situation than during WW2, with a rival China in their west and a strong Russia on their east.
What Russian plans pose a direct threat to America and her allies?
Expansion in general? How can Russia annexation a part of a neutral European nation and supporting rebels in that country in order to do the same again not be a threat? Ofcourse now it just is a neutral nation, but this is also seeing how far they can push untill the US/EU pushes back. As long as the US/EU doesn't just ignore these kind of actions and responds with things like economic sanctions, I don't think Russia really poses a threat (except for their cyber activity), however if you just let things like Crimea and the Donbass region slide, Russia will just go further and further untill you reach a point economic sanctions will be too little too late and a conflict is practically unavoidable.
but their current situation is terrible since Eastern Europe is basically a Slavic ghetto.
This is just a laughable statement. Where did you get that from.
Now I agree we should hold a neutral referendum. That way we’d actually see if Crimea truly supported the annexation. If they did, good for them. If not then that’s when issues would arise.
Well, that is how you can use these economic sanctions among others, force Russia to allow a neutral referendum and force them to pull support for the Donbass rebels.
Lastly, you mention how when there’s no pushback to Russia annexing Crimea.. who’s going to enforce that exactly?
I didn't say there isn't pushback, there is/was, in the form of economic sanctions from both the EU and the US.
When a bunch of people want the US to stop interfering with foreign issues???
There is a large difference between invading/sending in military force and using economic/political sanctions.
Aggressive countries annexing other territories unlawfully yet nobody is there to enforce such actions and when America does people are suddenly like “stop meddling with foreign affairs!!”
Except the US hasn't intervened because of countries annexing other nations territories. They wen't in for their own reasons and then stayed there for decades, again mostly for their own reasons. You could argue that Iraq and Kuwait is the exception, except Iraq-Kuwait situation wasn't the reason for the invasion that truly caused problems.
And again to make it clear, using military force and economic/political sanctions isn't the same. The later can actually avoid future military intervention by forcing to resolve the problem in diplomatic manner or at the very least showing the other side you won't just sit idly by when they go to far.
Because literally no other country is going to do a damn thing except the US
The EU has also done sanction on Russia like the US and it hits them more economically.
Europe isn’t going to do squat against Russia unless America is backing them.
That is still to be seen, for now the US and EU closely work together regarding Russia due to NATO being literally created to face off Russia, so there is no clear indication what they would or wouldn't do seperately. Would the EU have done the sanctions without the US? Yes, I do believe they would have. Will they take any military action against Russia without the US? No, unless they aren't given a choice really. Hell, even with the US they'd keep military action as an absolute last resort.
Just to make it clear, the choice isn't between being the world police and isolationism, you can be active on the international theater and defend/face off nations without sending in the military, toppling governments, etc
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@LD-tn6ff I don't you understand where the original poster got his 100% from, so let me explain.
1) the WFP said they couldn't release how the board vs members voted, because they can't/won't show how individuals voted.
2) If neither the leadership nor the membership voted for 1 candidate completely, then releasing how the board vs members voted wouldn't show how individuals voted. Because if even 1 member and 1 boardmember voted differently, we can't know which individual voted for which candidate, we can make assumptions, but this we already can do either way.
3) Thus either
a. there wasn't a 100% vote for a candidate with the members and board, in which case the reason given by the WFP for why they won't release how board vs members voted makes no sense and thus it must be an excuse to hide the fact that the board and members voted completely differently.
or
b. there was a 100% vote for one candidate among either the board or members. Because then there is an explanation for not releasing how members vs board voted makes sense. Afterall if 100% of the board voted for 1 candidate, you know how every individual on the board voted and therefor releasing the breakdown of the weighted vote would show how individuals vote.
So either WFP lies as to why they don't want to release the breakdown of the vote, or the board must have voted 100% for one candidate. Which is perfectly possible, afterall the 50+ people might have debated about which candidate they want or maybe there was some pressure form donors or what not forcing them to vote a certain way. In either case the result is that Bernie and the members most likely got stiffed by the board vote.
And again, if this isn't the case, there is no reason for the WFP to not release how the board vs members voted.
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@JohnnyWednesday The accumulators are more like capacitors.
Now, if you lower 1 ton 1000m, it would only provide around 100kW of power output, 1/30th-1/50th of windturbines. Now the storage capacity can vary, if you only use one 1 ton weight, you only get a total 2,8kWh, ofcourse you can use multiple blocks, though if you take 100 ton or 100 1 ton blocks, you'd be able to store around 277kWh. That is nothing.
The problem also is that you'll need to find cabling that is good enough. First problem is that even elevator cables larger than 500m are not really possible, this is why elevators in a very high building are a great problem. Getting a cable that can takes a larger load than 1 ton over more than 500m is likely to be very very cost intensive.
Then there obviously is the amount of deep mines, sure, there will be quite a few, but nowhere near enough to make a huge impact.
And then there is the cost of the entire system, which will not be small.
So no, gravitational storage is not usefull, at least not compared to existing storage options.
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A Id Language isn't that big of a problem. At a time the US had large regions who spoke french, german, ... Only over time has this unified into one language. Hell, even now the US has actually no official language and could be seen as having two major languages: english and spanish.
As for the EU it would just be a matter of looking for a common language that would be learned as a second/third language in all schools and would be used if people don't speak the same primary language (for example on the European level, european news, from different countries, ...). Honestly english would probably be a great common secondary language. With the UK leaving there is no great nation in the EU that speaks english (yeah sure, Ireland, just assume they speak Irish and they aren't a large nation anyway), so it would be a neutral choice. Furthermore english is the most used language worldwide and is primarily spoken by most EU allies worldwide. And in several nations it is already thought as a second language.
People would speak their own language in commone life, but could communicate with others, follow news and european elections/politics/...
Eventually language in the connected world of today is bound to start growing towards one or a few languages. Dialects are already in many parts dissapearing or dissapeared altogether (at least here in Belgium I notice this tendency).
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@SirDella Longer ranges? They might have to prove this first, maybe for trucks (more space), but then the question is what is more expensive: driving on green hydrogen or just charging once for 30-40 minutes?
For personal cars, hydrogen doesn't provide longer range, the fuel tanks are too big and heavy. They at the moment provide an equal range as bev's almost half their price.
As for faster refuelling, yes if 1) there is no waiting line (hydrogen stations are much more expensive, thus lower capacity of amount of cars fuelling/charging at the same time compared to charging stations and lower stations overall and 2) the station needs to have enough pressure, if it needs to repressurize it is out of service for some time. And ofcourse you need enough supplying of hydrogen.
Add to this that it is mandated by law, at least where I live, that truckdrivers need to take a 15 minute break after 3-4 hours and a long break after 9-10 hours and you can charge during this break, actually making the lost time not even as bad.
But batteries suffer the faster you charge them, reducing their limited lifespan
Even now batteries are fine with the right management. But yes, degredation is worse with more fastcharging, just not an immediate issue and like you said, tabless batteries might improve this.
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@randomdude2832
around 15% of russia's peace time army was enough to keep advancing until august
This already shows you don't know what you're talking about. Russia's armed forces at the beginning of this war numbered around 1 million. The army makes up around 300-400k of that (the others being in the navy, air force, nuclear detachements, ...). Considering the initial invasion force was something around 200-250k, Russia send in 20-25% of their entire armed forces and likely 50%+ of their army into Ukraine at the beginning and this number only increased in the months following. This is why Putin had no choice but to execute a 'limited' mobilisation, because they needed more troops.
nato is out of soviet style tanks
And? only Eastern Nato members had those and they will now get replaced with new more modern tanks. I don't see how that is a negative.
and running out of ammo and already gave ukraine most of the artillery reserves
They aren't running out of ammo, sure they are depleting their stockpiles of old ammo (that would have expired anyway), but at the same time they are now increasing their production capability and can rather easily buy more ammo from other nations that have a large ammo production and stockpiles (like South Korea), the west will never run out of ammo before Russia does.
russia is well under way to fullfil their stated goals from the start of the operation;
*secure donbass, (more than half way complete)*: should already have been accomplished nearly a year after the start of the war and they still are only marginally taking land in Donbass currently. But fine, if you think this is going good, I won't argument too much against that.
*demilitaring and denazifying ukraine*: Don't see how Russia is anywhere near this goal, if anything Ukraine's military has only grown stronger with mobilisations and international aid. And how Russians are supposed to 'denazify' Ukraine when having only lost significant terrain since April/May, I don't see it.
de militarizing nato at the same time
You think NATO is being demilitarized? If anything this has helped NATO's militaries, it allowed them to get rid of older systems and ammunition to be replaced by new modern systems and ammo. It even caused 'dormant' NATO militaries to awaken and step up their strength.
if anything they've gained a lot of soldiers and manpower when donbass, zaparozhya and kherrson joined
Except Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are occupied territories that tie down Russian troops to keep these area's in check. And Donbass was already fighting against Ukraine since 2014, so how could they have increased Russian troops?
and may gain even more if odessa and kharkiv join too.
In all those regions you mentioned (except maybe Donbass), the Russians have been greeted as invaders with no local support except from few collaborators. You are living in a dreamworld if you think these regions will support Russia in anyway. Like I said, they are more a manpower drain than the opposite.
russia's economy shrank 2.somenthing after nuclear option sanction ans is expected to outpace england's economy this year
That sanctions on Russia are long term and despite the Kremlin having artificially support the economy, it is still suffering. The UK isn't entirely a shining beacon of economic greatness, it is being hit hard by covid and brexit aftershocks. Besides, you are not even remotely correct. The UK economy shrank by around 1%, the Russian one (officially) by around 4%.
europe on the other hand is getting de industrialized
How? Even if that is the case, it has a lot of de industrialisation to do to come at the same level as Russia, considering at least 4 EU countries are ranked higher than Russia on industrial output.
nd russia's status in the world remains the same
If you say that, you haven't been paying much attention to international relations.
and yet russia is advancing
At a pityfull pace, with which you'll need years just to secure Donbass. We are talking about WW1 trench warfare gains.
a nice way to try to spin that china and india are getting the energy deals that europe used to have.
Except they are getting it at such a reduced price Russia is barely making money of it. They are literally abusing Russia's weakness with energy exports to Europe greatly reduced. Currently Russia is even getting payed less for its energy export than before the war by all trading partners.
which doesn't matter because the price hike in hydrocarbons is more than making up for that.
Except that advantage has been completely lost in the last few months with oil export prices having dropped to very low prices and gas demand being cut due to Europe's mild winter, gas reserves and other imports.
and yet nato i has given ukraine all their artillery reserves and has not been enough
Like you said: reserves. NATO countries never were big on artillery recently, they'll use more modern weapons (Himars, missiles, jets, ...). Moreover this conflict might exactly be the thing that reminds them of the importance of artillery, causing them to increase their artillery stocks.
And considering Russia can barely make advances anymore, it has been quite enough for now.
and that's also why russia is already advancing on the southern front
You mean the eastern front, right? Southern front is Kherson and Zaporizhzhia
and has lamost surrounded bakhmut
Should we applaud the taking of a pre-war 70k town that held off Russia much longer than it should have? The fact that Bakhmut is given so much importance should already show how badly Russian progress is going.
this video said that ukraine need over 500 tanks and getting less than half it plus air supprt and artillery they're not getting
This video isn't exactly a good source for indepth information, nice for a general idea, but I am not going to take it for granted. Many such channels said one thing, while the opposite happened.
and yet they've fielded enough tanks to hold back all the weapons nato has sent...
The Russian army isn't supposed to hold back NATO weapons in this conflict, it is meant to overrun it as the invader. Also how have the Russians held back Himars? By moving their stockpiles and commandposts further away or to more secure places 🤣
it would have ended in april if boris johnson hadn't stopped zelensky from negotiating in april.
You really are oblivious aren't you? Zelensky's demands in any peace negotiation were a complete removal of Russian troops from all Ukranian territory, this includes Donbass and Crimea. This demand was always non-negotiable for Zelensky.
and now ukraine has over a hundred thousand more dead and a 2 more lost oblasts.
Ukraine has an estimated of 100k casualties, that includes killed AND wounded. Russian estimated casualties are around the same.
And what are you talking about? Ukraine has taken back much more territory than it lost since then? Or do you really think the one-sided annexation announced by Russia means it suddenly is part of Russia? 🤣🤣
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This exactly might also be one of the reasons why his support is highest among young voters and low among older voters, younger voters tend to research more, watch alternative media, ... While older voters mostly watch MSM if they watch news at all. And all of these MSM networks portray Warren and Biden positively (or at least more than they should) and either don't mention Bernie or otherwise if they mention him, it is to attack him.
Ofcourse people who only watch MSM aren't going to see Bernie as a viable candidate and support him and this is also a reason he doesn't do to great in the polls, people underestimate the impact of the MSM on voters. Even lots of bad coverage is better no coverage (see what happened to Trump) because then people might do more research themselves if it becomes to obvious. The thing is, there isn't enough bad things to cover about Bernie.
And this is indeed why bernie voters in general need to speak about him to their family and keep their family up to date about him and his campaign (especially older family members/MSM viewers).
I wished Bernie's campaign talked more about this media black-out, not on these media channels (they'd just black it out again and find some excuse) but on rallies and to say at every rally to spread the word, to inform family members, maybe even promote some non MSM news, like youtube channels (this one, The hill for people more used to "regular news outlook", secular talk, the humanist report, ...)
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@Brigstad
Also, it’s not 1 person 1 vote bc the US isn’t a direct democracy
Most nations who have 1 person 1 vote for the presidency are representative democracies, that's what parliament (or in the US congress) is for. Ofcourse people often simplify too much, you can have one person one vote for presidency, while not having one person one vote for parliament (like with the US senate). So most nations use a mixture of election systems.
bc democracies always crash and burn
So the US is going to crash and burn, seeing you said it yourself, you are a "*democratic* republic"?
Napoleon, who invented it
What did Napoleon invent? Democracy? direct democracy? Napoleon was an enlightened despot/dictator (although he was one of the good ones in my opinion). And you do know Napoleon was more refering to parliamentary system, basically the US congress and the fact that decisions are made slowly or not at all there, while a one man dictatorship/ruler can make these decisions quickly and act?
We are a democratic republic
So are almost countries with one person one vote and a presidential system.
funny how liberals all seemingly failed civics
Funny how you said that, while completely fumbling up the actual terms and ideas behind it. But I guess it must be an American thing, since they have made these kind of mistakes so often in arguments I had with them.
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@Horizon301.
350 million is obviously a theoretic statement to highlight how much we send to the EU per week
The UK sends around 171 million pounds net to the EU each week, so the 350 million is a lie. Sure the argument is that the total would be 350. However seeing the context of the bus add "350 million a week more to NHS", this isn't a valid statement, seeing that from this 350 million, the UK automatically keeps a rebate of 107 million pounds a week and it already gains back 76 million a week that is invested in the UK public sector and another 28 million per week in the UK private sector.
and it was funded partly by the taxpayer
You know that both campaigns got taxpayers money to execute their campaign, right? That's why the leave campaign had to create one "official" leave campaign (and Farage then started his own campaign with private money, because his side didn't got the grant).
Still nothing they said has happened, Sterling didn’t depreciate as much as claimed
Brexit hasn't happened yet, the markets are still waiting to see what Brexit will bring. For all they know a deal can be reached that ensures their normal operations or maybe it gets cancelled all together or .... Simply put, we won't see the real impact untill brexit actually happens.
and now we are being told about food shortages.
A lot of food in the UK comes from the european mainland. Even a slight delay (a few seconds per lorry) will cause hours of traffic. And then I am not speaking about the possible hours in delays that will happen due to paperwork that now doesn't need to be done. Food shortages are a genuine concern if huge border delays happen. Mostly because people will not be ready in the beginning. It might get streamlined eventually, but that won't happen from the start. And the reason food shortages weren't mentioned in the campaign was simple, everyone (including brexiteers) thought a deal would be reached before brexit actually happens.
As if the EU businesses don’t need us to sell their goods to
Ofcourse they will still sell goods to the UK, it will just all be more expensive due to tarrifs and delays.
and it’s not like the car industry will go kapoot in Germany.... oh wait it will
I think you also underestimate UK car industry (or atleast the German franchises there). Around half of total UK car production (1.6 million) is sold to costumers in the EU. 85% of UK car imports come from the EU and this comes down to 11% of EU's total car production, or in other words 1.8 million cars.
Yes, european car companies will get hurt, but it will not destroy them, seeing it represents only 11% of their eu production. British people that want to buy a car, will be hit even harder with price rises. Anyone that wants a new EU car in the next 2-3 years, better buys it now.
chiefs representing the unions have said this but of course the EU is too naive to admit it’s a two way road.
Oh no, they know it is a two way road, the difference is that in the EU the impact will be spread out over multiple countries, while the UK will have to take the hit on their side (at least as large, if not larger) all on its own.
Germany is about to go into recession which I suspect is guaranteed after Brexit
Maybe, but where it will be maybe 1-1;,5% in Germany it will be a 3%+ recession in the UK.
France has civil unrest
What's new? France has civil unrest every few years, just look at the popularity of the french presidents and you'll notice it always takes a dive around the same time and depending from president to president it goes back or stays there. This btw has nothing to do with brexit or the EU.
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It might not seem like many oppose it, but that is mostly because independence is not really a thing. By most it is just seen as a political talking point and not more. If it would truly become a real possibility, you'd see the opposition skyrocket, especially when the downsides would really start getting pointed out (like a certainn economic collapse and political irrelevance in the world and even just (western) europe.
There are also many young people idenfying more as Belgian than Flemish, it really mostly depends in which cricles/regions you move in.
Studies keep showing that support from independence lingers somewhere between 10-30%, but at the same time you have studies showing that support to return to unitarism might just as high or higher, there just isn't a real big political party moving into it, or they are not attractive to many pro-unitarism people due to their other policies (like PVDA).
You might feel more at hom in Maastricht or Amsterdam, I for example would not. I don't really like big city centers to start with, they are often different to the rest of the country, thus not necessarily a good representation. Except for the language I as a Flemish brabant citizen would feel more at home in Wallonian Brabant than eg West-Flanders, let alone dutch regions.
There are also regional politically differences in Flanders, should we then afterwards also split up flanders? Different regional political leanings is normal in countries.
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Sanders state polls (all in the lost 1,5 month, newest number first):
Iowa 11 (but untrustworthy, only +-600 respondents and no breakdown of landlines vs cellphones, just telephones), 16, 26
new jersey 18
Florida 14
Cali 26, 18
NY 15
New hampshire 29, 21, 26
Texas 12, 13
Nevada 29, 10
SC 18, 16
Massachusetts 8
Wisconsin 20
Colorado 26
As you can see here there sometimes is a large discrepancy between polls (especially iowa and nevada)
1 million donors 3 months before his own 2016 record and 4 months before the previous recordholder Obama 2008.
Bernie is seen as second choice by +-30% of biden voters (or around 10% off all registered voters).
But yeah, Bernie has a low ceiling facepalm
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@mukkaar In the US the cost of new nuclear is also high, I doubt that it isn't streamlined there. There are several reasons for the high prices.
- Bureaucracy is one of them.
- Another is getting the permits, people tend to not like having a nuclear powerplant in their neighbourhood/close by. So they start procedures to stop these permits. And ofcourse it isn't only local activists, also anti-nuclear activists in general will try to stop or slowdown the construction with procedures. It is both the procedures and delays that costs money.
- then you have the interest on loans/investment. Generally without government support, the interests on investment into nuclear are a lot higher, since the large cost make the risk higher. If something happens to the plant before it breaks even, the losses for the investors can be massive. And ofcourse if the government gets involved in this to lower the interest rates, they essentially make themselves a guarantor, putting the risks on the tax payers. These tax payers don't like that and as a consequence, neither do the politicians.
- Then ofcourse you have the actual costs of the plants and all the necessary safety requirements/systems, which is far from cheap either and might have become more expensive than in the past due to increased requirements.
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It is much easier to price for access to a databank or price large amount of data than individual data. Therefor it will be increasingly hard to determine how much the data of an individual is worth. And further than this, how much someone data is worth can depend from person to person AND there might be a difference how much specific data of one individual is worth (for example browser history, hobby's, family situation, job, ...).
So putting a price on individual data will be increasingly hard. Too low and your data will be more easily distributed, too high and no one can get to it (and in that case platforms like facebook wouldn't let you use them anyway).
And then there is also the problem a platform like facebook will have, now they get a lot of profit from this data, however if they need to pay for it, they'll need to get money elsewhere, say bye bye free facebook, hello subscription facebook.
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@jackjones9587
Well, there are several reasons:
1) increased safety demands. Governments have just kept adding regulation on nuclear reactors to make them safer, just in case. This ofcourse increased cost.
2) new technology. They now build different plants than in the past (at least in Europe), they should be better, but also are now initially more expensive due to new problems that arise etc.
3) risk. In the past governments like France just footed the bill for the risk, ie. if something happened that caused operations to be shut down due to whatever reason, government payed for it. This was mostly with the government giving low cost loans, subsidies or the companies building them being (partially) state owned. These days if a plant needs to attract private investors or get a loan from a private institution, an insane % of interest is counted on it, around 10%+.
4) the plants usually were cheaper in the past due to scale, ie. usually a series of plants of the same type would be built (like the many reactors in France from that time), currently this isn't really the case (yet).
5) Current nuclear powerplants can also deliver more cheap energy due to their investment already being payed off years ago, essentially having to just pay for maintenance. Whether this actually lowered the cost, I can't remember for sure, but they certainly could run cheaper than initially was the case if they wanted to.
6) There is the idea that currently the companies running these older nuclear plants might be underestimating the costs of the end of life, often setting aside way too little to pay for the clean-up/demolition. This while for modern LCOE numbers more thought might be given to the end of life costs.
Also prices in Germany are so much higher than in France due to a difference in taxes. Purely looking at the production costs, there is around a 2c/kWh difference (+-7,5 vs 5,5c/kWh), and eliminating difference in taxes brings a total price difference of around 4 c/kWh. Though I have to add this was for around 2017-2018, since then French prices suddenly dropped, this seems to coincide with the pandemic. Most likely lower energy use, but ofcourse similar production capacity => lower cost for electricity.
Also the LCOE costs here indeed seem to be from Lazard, which seem high for nuclear, with most companies claiming they can run nuclear reactors for an LCOE between 60-100$/MWh, still more expensive than solar and onshore wind, but competitive with offshore wind for now. And ofcourse no storage capacity required unless you go above 70-80% of the energy mix. Beyond that nuclear becomes a lot more expensive, since it is expected that it runs 90% of the time, thus working as peakerplants isn't feasible, though adding some grid storage could manage to have nuclear run around 90% of the time even while supplying nearly 100%, but ofcourse then you need to start comparing with renewables + storage.
Why are Lazards nuclear prices so high? I don't know, maybe they add things nuclear companies tend to not incorporate into their LCOE costs (end of life maybe?).
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@romualdaskuzborskis
while PV is not even goes above viable threshold.
This is completely incorrect, don't know where you get this from.
What I mean by big energetic loses is all the energy needed to maintain the system, not just "natural".
I never talked about anything but transmission losses, not the losses within a system, which would happen whether you place it in the desert, or right next to your house (figuratively speaking). You too talked about just the 'transportation' losses in your original comment, not the losses within the generation system.
And that is just for Sahara dezert vs Germany
So what else you want to compare? The Sahara to the US, eventhough the US has deserts closer to themselves, like in their own country? No one ever talked about the sahara providing power to the entire world, at least not more than just as a thought process to show how much solar would be needed to power the world when placed in those regions. And I don't think there are many places on earth that are further away from a desert than northern Europe vs Sahara, perhaps South America and smaller islands.
well we already saw this year what economical failure was switching off stable nukes and going non stablr towards wind/solar.
The decision to shut off nuclear in Germany had nothing to do with renewables, it was purely a political decision. They then decided that rather than replace it with coal and gas, they'd invest in renewable, not just to replace nuclear, but also coal and eventually long term gas. If they didn't make the political decision to shutdown the nuclear plants 10-15 years earlier than expected, they just have replaced more coal with renewables. Which arguably would have been better for the climate/emissions, but wouldn't have changed a damn thing regarding grid stability or economic outcome (at least not much at worst).
Also how is Germany suffering from grid instability? I haven't really heard of large problems coming from Germany regarding grid stability? I do hear problems from Austrialia and in the US, where ironically it often is just the state of the network, fossil fuel plants or just bad management that seems to be the problem.
If you are talking about gas, Germany isn't really using much more gas for their power since 2010. And the slight increase there is, is due to the shutting down of coal plants to replace them with renewables and cleaner NG. Overall only 15% of Germany's power comes from gas. The US gets 40% of their power from NG.
And if you just talks about the price of electricity in Germany, you need to remember this is mostly due to taxes. There was in 2018 only a 2c/kWh difference between France (nuclear) and Germany in power production cost. With similar taxes the cost difference in 2018 would only have been around 4c/kWh in total on the bill. But Germany has just more taxes and instituted a special tax to pay for renewable subsidies that were necessary 5-10 years ago when renewables were still significantly more expensive compared to now and this tax is planned to lower and dissapear in the next few years.
for te system to be viable we must consider provision fro somewehere that is 20k km away
I don't really see how you get to that conclusion. That is the completely other side of the world. If you say in order to cover the night, that isn't quite right. Wind doesn't stop blowing at night. Also if we really needed to, CSP in Sahara (or even just southern Europe, like Spain), while more expensive, would be still fine to cover the night if necessary, especially since demand at night is significantly lower.
And it is expected that several grid storage options will become cost competitive within the next 10-15 year.
The truth is, the Sahara project was abandoned because PV became much cheaper than CSP and the instability of the region could be avoided by just placing PV at home/in Europe for just a bit less output. The transmission losses might have obviously been a small factor, but not even close to the main reason for the Sahara power initiative to be scrapped. Other small factors included the lack of needed personnel in those desolate regions and the use of water where it obviously is a commodity.
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Large plots of land are not really a problem, besides the roofs you have parking lots (helps to keep cars cool/free from rain), unused land, even farmland. Tests with farmlands already have shown a great improvement of land usage. Around 80% of the crops remain vs a full crop field and you get 80% of the solar power (vs a complete solar field), so in the end you get around 160% of land usage compared to earlier in regions like even Germany. In warm regions the benefit is even higher, due to the shade helping against evaporation and the strong solar rays, allowing crops to grow very good where they otherwise would grow very poorly or not at all. Another possiblity are things like water canals and waterreservoirs, where the solarpanels also help against the evaporation.
As for the disposal, they are perfectly recyclable and the price isn't really that high (around $20-25 per panel, which is around 10% of a normal panel cost, with 95-98% of the panel recylced). In the EU regulations state that all solar panels need to be recycled by law.
Due to this recycling the mined rare earth minerals will remain in the cycle and at a certain point not much more mining should be necessary (not taking into account ever increasing growth of power consumption), for now there are more than enough rare earth minerals.
Yes, nuclear is another consideration (thoug the mobile part shouldn't be added), but not immediately in countries with a very nuclear averse public opinion. Moreover just like renewables nuclear can only become so much of a grid before storage or other means are needed. And once renewables+storage has gone down enough in price (expected around 2030-2035), it can be more competitive than nuclear and actually more interesting in general.
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@alexsilent5603 Weapons to shoot down a plane at 33000 feet are relatively rare, only state militaries usually have this (and many might not even have them), exceptions maybe being rich organisations like ISIS who can both buy it and easily get it shipped to them. The rebels don't have that kind of funding and the only way to get such a system to their controlled area's is through Russia. So the assumption that they don't have such weapons is a valid one if you are certain they didn't get their hands on one of your own. And even if the rebels somehow got that kind of funding and ties and somehow can get it into their region without Russia and Ukraine knowing, it wouldn't be worth it. There are so many other usefull things that they can spend their money on.
This Russian argument is just trying to distract from the fact that it was a Russian supplied weapons system that took it down, the fact that it was a Russian system is recognized by most outside Russia, who obviously aren't going to admit they supplied a system to rebels that then was used to take down a passenger airliner.
And ofcourse money will have played a role, just like several other factors, but the possible loss in money would be nothing compared to having a passenger plane go down because you were greedy, this is not a risk you would take if you know it is a risk. At the very least you'd close the airspace above Donetsk and Luhansk and just redirect them around this region (leaving the rest of the air space open), still getting money from the passage, while also ensuring the safety of the plane. That they only closed the airspace up to a certain point clearly indicates they had no indicators that the rebels had a weapon system that could pose a danger to a plane at that altitude.
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CFHforever
I'll now adress your post and if I find time I'll adress the video's you used as argumentation.
so obama told us that gdp growth over 2.5% would never happen and all we could do was manage the decline. It DID NOT grow under obama and attributing it to him is a common dem tactic
When did he say that? It would be weird that he'd say that, seeing he had gdp growth's of up to 5.1 in comparison to Trumps best so far at 4.1. Maybe he might have said it in his first term, but for his second that would be weird.
Just like he inherited a bad economy from Bush, Bush got a good economy from evil Clinton, Clinton got a bad economy from Bush sr. They do it every time.
If it is the truth, then what could you say otherwise? Can you show me that it is wrong? That the economy at the end of Obama and Clinton wasn't booming and at the end of Bush's terms failing? (PS I never claimed Bush sr gave a bad economy to Clinton, I wasn't there, I haven't looked into that and won't support this claim without evidence, which there is for Clinton-Bush-Obama)
As far as separation of families at the border, that was an existing obama policy, even though the dems encouraged people to bring children to help them ILLEGALLY enter the country.
Obama's policy of detention of illegal immigrants happened during a period with a lot of new arrivals/crossings, like 1,5 times as many as now, and only on a non-frequent basis where children seperated from their family (in cases where there is more illegal activity than just illegally crossing the border, like also smuggling drugs). This compared to the Trump administration who made it a standard practice to seperate children from their parents and then even call these children "unaccompanied minors", while they were originally accompanied by someone.
So your claim that this was a practice also executed by Obama is a gross overexaggeration. You know why Trump had this policy implemented? Because in his first few months the number of new arrivals was unusually low and he claimed this was his doing. When after that the numbers started to rise again to normal levels, he freaked out, suddenly he couldn't claim low numbers anymore.
I also wish to note that Trumps deportation numbers are still around the same as in Obama's first term and that Obama had the largest amount deportations of any US president.
Not to mention the problems with child trafficking at the border. Many of the people bringing children aren't even related to the children they're bringing.
Numbers and evidence please, thank you.
And unemployment barely moved under obama.
In october 2009 the U-6 unemployement rate was at 17.10%, in December 2016 it was reduced to 9.10%. In my eyes an 8% reduction can't really be classified as barely moved. This is a yearly decline of 1.14%, Trump's average unemployement decline so far is 0.88% each year, so 0.26% lower.
Thy hey claim to have created however many million jobs, but it doesn't equal the jobs lost under obama.
When Obama entered office the U-6 was at 9.2%, when he left is was 9.1%. From these numbers you could assume that he created only few jobs (and definitely more than were lost), but he became President in 2008. The first year of a presidents term, they are still working on the budget and policies from the previous president, and it is in that year that most jobs were lost due to the 2008 crisis. In january 2009 the U-6 was already at 14.2%, going from this to 9.1% already indicates the creation of many jobs. But a crisis like in 2008 isn't easily stopped and dealt with. The ultimate point at which Obama's policies changed is around when the U-6 was at its maximum of 17.1%. Again to reach from this back to 9.1%, you need to create a shitload of jobs.
Where you get your us news? Bbc? Think for yourself, you've been lied to
I do think for myself, I don't watch the Bbc, fox, whatever. I research things myself and look for statistics and different explanations. I can hardly be lied to by US media if I don't follow US media.
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@Joso997 Yes, there were active military, but they made out around +-1,5% of all signees (all the others being civilians, probably followers of FN/Le Pen), and yes I know there was another one from high ranking officials, but these mostly were older former military on pension. Generally older people hold the views shown in these letters, but it will be the younger ones having to actually execute/take part in a civil war/revolt.
At this moment the letters are a worrying thing, but nothing specific, it could just be that there is a tiny fragment with this view and most of them have already signed on to these letters. At this moment the signed on active military are around 0,5% of all France active personnel. I guess the french government (or someone else) could take a survey to see whether they represent a majority, a large minority or even just a very small minority within the military.
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The Headhunter antisemitism => Bernie is jewish. So already doesn't fit your narrative. Being critical of the Israeli government because of their policies doesn't make one antisemitic.
Pro islam => please show me where they say that they want to treat muslims better than others. Just because you aren't against someone, doesn't mean you are for them.
Open Borders => Sanders himself said that open borders wasn't a possibility and no real progressive will advocate for it. If they do, they are well past progressivism.
Wokeness => here I have to admit that there is a part that is like that, however usually those are more centerleft leaning and not actual progressives, but ofcourse there are those progressives too.
Identity politics => this is something more done by the establishment corporate centrist neoliberal democrats or fake progressives, not progressives, otherwise Bernie wouldn't be popular among progressives being an old white men.
Safe spaces, trigger warnings, social Justice warriors, cancel culture => these are not progressives, just annoying people. Even progressives are annoyed by them, maybe even more so because they are diluting the progressive message.
BDS => this is just opposition against the Israeli governments policies, which are just extremely bad. And seeing that the Israeli government is heavily supported by US interest groups and US politicians this has spread into the US. Ask most regular Europeans and they don't agree with the Israeli government either, but they don't have to take actions because their governments don't actively support the Israeli government.
You are clearly confused between a neo-liberal, neo-progressive and true progressives. And it seems you can't make a distinction between Israel and Judaism.
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@sajiktm China is actually usually ranked much worse than most democracies in terms of corruption, the thing is that China just can do more with less due to the overall lower cost of labour and stuff i general, not to mention the power of the Chinese government itself and corruption happens more out of sight/internally.
Of the top 20 least corrupt countries in the world, only 5 are non-European, China isn't even in the top 100.
As for drugs and alcohol use, China indeed doesn't do bad, though the difference isn't that large compared to for example western Europe. Most Western European countries are between 2-3% of their population, China just shy of 2%. Though there are several developed countries above 3,5% (Canada, Australia, ...) or even above 5% (US, Russia, ...)
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@________
Which institution allowed the flood of refugees?
I'd guess you can blame the declaration of the rights of men or some similar international treaty that is much larger than the EU.
* did the Middle East countries somehow forced the EU to do it or did the EU taken them willingly knowing fully the havoc it will cause?*
Neither really. The refugees came because they believed they had no choice, because they hoped for a better life. The moment they could set foot on EU ground (Greece, Italy, ...) due to international law they had to be given the possibility of asylum. Greece couldn't handle stream on their own and opened up its borders with other European countries. Then Hungary couldn't handle it and just send the refugees through. If anything is to blame it is the weak outer border of the Schengen. But you can hardly blame the EU for that, since it was a treaty created by the memberstates that said that the nations need to take care of the outer borders themselves. The EU litteraly had no jurisdiction here.
This is something many people don't seem to get, immigration or border security of the Schengen is not an EU power, but a national power, the EU has nothing to say about this. When people talk about "the EU decided this or that on immigration, border security", they are talking about the council, or in other words the national governments, not truly EU institutions.
Which institution is responsible for the consistently bad investments that led to the global financial crash?
I guess you can blame the private banks and insurers for this. Although they could do this due to the fact that US regulation was weakened under Bush and the fact that the economy and banking system is so international caused a domino effect.
was it just the US or did the EU banks collude in on the whole thing?
The 'EU' banks probably got caught in it too, just because we are talking about a global market. But I don't see why you talk about EU banks, these are private banks and banks from all over the world where caught in this net. It is exactly because of the financial crisis the EU institutions started to truly regulate/keep an eye on the banks, since the memberstates seemed to have failed in that.
Which institution is responsible for a common currency
That would be the Council, which is basically nothing more than the national governments coming together. While it is an EU institution, it is not EU driven, it is nationally driven.
that pretty much ensures countries like Greece or Italy could never economically competitive?
Greece cooked their books in order to give its people much more benefits than they could get, that already was going on before the euro, the main difference is that after that they could lend even more, because lenders looked at the viability of the eurozone as a whole, not just Greece. As for Italy, they have had currency and competitive problems even before the euro, now it just might be more visible. Italy was one of the main backers of the EU for the record.
the institution that is responsible for the prolonged and slow destruction of the Greece economy is the EU
Well, Greece was on the brink of bankruptcy due to the cooking of the books. They needed loans from EU nations and ofcourse they couldn't take the risk that Greece would just continue its former behaviour. In the end Greece itself is to blame for its problems, or more specifically former Greek governments are to blame.
Basically the institutions you have to blame are either non EU institutions, or institutions where the national governments have the power.
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Paranormal Encyclopedia
I am a bit confused. At the beginning of this discussion I thought it was about the fact that there is nothing like just agnostic, but agnotic atheist and agnostic theist. And you seemed to claim the opposite. But then you called yourself an agnostic theist. So was this discussion basically between two people that thought the same, but didn't realize it?
The thing is, agnostic theists will usually label themselves as theist, while people that just label them agnostics usually (practically always) are non-theist => atheists. It's because of this atheists say that agnostics are just a subcategory of atheism, the other subcatergory being anti-theist.
This is why the explanation of Tyson in this video is astonishingly bad.
1) He basically says he defines atheists based on the people he knows, which are active atheists. This isn't surprising, since passive atheists (who still label themselves as atheists or are labeled as such by the official definition) don't really talk about it, afterall they're passive atheists. These passive atheists will only talk about their stance when others ask them too. It could very well be that passive atheists actually make up 90-98% of all atheists (for example, buddhist also classified as atheists, because their religion has no gods).
2) He identifies himself as agnostic, just because he doesn't want to discuss it. This sounds quite the same as passive atheists.
As for it's mostly greed, natural violence, ... that causes violence and religion being mostly just an excuse, I always like this quote about that stance:
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. Steven Weinberg
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You are quite wrong about a lot of things here.
1) Your stance on a second referendum. This was far from unpopular and the main logic behind a second referendum is that there were campaign violations in the first one and a lot of new information came out in the years after the referendum. Almost all pro-brexit figure heads talked about a good deal, a "soft" brexit, never a no deal, ... but after most of them switched to a no deal stance once it was clear the EU wasn't just going to bend over backwards (who could have guessed that). Basically many voters were badly informed or just misled. As time went on remain became more popular again and there were massive manifestations for it. At one time nearly 1,5% of the british people went to manifest in London for remain. Hell, only 46,5% of the people voted for leave parties in this election.
2) 2017: every party was about honoring the referendum, in regards of brexit what mattered here was a hard or soft brexit, labour advocated for a soft brexit. And brexit wasn't by far as important back then as it was now. The british parliament has been deadlocked now for nearly 2 years on brexit. And lets not mention that the conservatives ran a really bad campaign in 2017. Already the premise of May's "let's quickly get an election to get a LARGER majority" idea wasn't a great outlook.
3) The smear campaign: yes Corbyn was constantly getting smeared, guess what? Every labour leader gets smeared. Corbyn just isn't well liked at all. Even in the labour party only a core of people like him. He was one of the main reason people gave for not supporting labour. Basically in terms of likability he was the Hillary Clinton of the left in the UK.
4) Labour's brexit stance more specific: for the longest time labour kept going for a brexit, just a "labour" brexit instead of the conservative brexit. They were greatly criticised for this and started losing support. At a certain point in time some said labour was going to support a second referendum, others said labour didn't support it. And after labour took the clear stance of going for a second referendum (after they would have negotiated a new deal with the EU, eventhough the EU said their would be no renegotiation), their polling numbers started to improve massively and other remain parties support dropped. If this election was called at the moment that labour didn't support a referendum, they'd have lost much more heavily.
5) labours policies: the policies labour proposed this time were more left than in 2017. Too left it might apparently turn out. People were questioning whether or not enough money could be found for all their proposals.
To conclude: I read somewhere that main reason not to vote for labour was Corbyn, followed by Labours manifesto and only then brexit. Whether this is correct or not, I can't say, but brexit definitely was the main reason for them losing. At best it wa part of the reason.
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11:50 Another reason why 2) isn't an option is because Kings Landing is the defacto capital of Westeros, and with her being in control of all of Westeros, the capital would be her main base and would directly be under her control. Why would you sack a city that will be your greatest economical and adminstrative asset, one of the few that will be under your direct control?
In order to get the same outcome as in the show (dany burning the city), I would put hidden balista's on the roofs of buildings spread throughout the city (*). I would also have the golden company still very much be fighting in the streets. They will not just surrender like the lannister forces in the episode. And Dany's forces would have great difficulty fighting both the golden company (GC) and the lannister forces (who do not surrender due to the GC).
Now Dany basically would have several choices:
1) She just supports her troops and strategically takes out any building with a balista with the goal to kill as few innocents as possible. But this tactic would really endanger Drogon with possibly hidden balista's firing outside of her and his view and hitting him.
2) She goes directly to the red keep, taking a detour by flying outside the walls, not to be a target to the hidden balista's, with the goal of taking Cersei out and end the fighting this way.
a. She kills Cersei and some innocents by taking out the red keep and ends the battle.
b. She kills Cersei and starts a chain reaction when she accidently lights the wildfire under the city, destroying it, killing most civilians, enemy units and her own soldiers. She will become mad with guilt from this and be seen by all Westerosi as the mad queen. (and thus becomes the mad queen)
c. Cersei had already escaped to a house somewhere in the city, close to the red keep, but far enough not to be hit when Dany destroys it. From here she directs the siege and her troops. She has several decoy command posts set up throughout the city were soldiers run in and out (usually the same soldiers, but from the sky this can't be noticed). Now dany again has to choose between 1) destroying the city, 2) getting out of the battle and let her troops deal with it and 3) strategically destroying the command centers/hidden balista's. (*)
3) She decides to just destroy kings landing, because it is not worth the effort and lives of her soldiers (mad queen).
Each possibility shows her to a different degree of sanity/insanity and they would all have their own interesting outcomes to work out. (You litteraly can create a whole new season about a civil war against Dany the mad queen (with possibly Jon being the leader of the opposition). You basically can do this now still, but ofcourse they are finishing it the next episode.
The scenario with (*) perfectly fits with Cersei's wits/ruthlessness and her tactic to use the city and its people as a shield. She basically wins eitherway with this strategy. Either she wins the battle and remains queen or she loses and forces Dany to destroy kings landing, possibly forcing people against her.
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@CL-gj9mf
You don't see that, at our scale of existence petroleum isn't a sustainable vector of energy.
Actually I do, but whether you like it or not, at this moment we live in a petroleum civilization. EV's, renewables, ... are exactly what is needed to change this. Hydrogen will/should only be used where electrification by direct use or batteries isn't possible, like in shipping, airplanes, industrial applications (for example steel production and industry that requires high temperatures), ...
Petroleum isn't useless, it store CO2 out of the air we breath, and out from the water we live in...
I clearly meant useless in terms of energetic value to us, not in terms of carbon storage. This was completely in regards to your comment that hydrogen is as efficient as fossil fuels, which is actually really bad for hydrogen since we need to put all that energy in it first, we don't need to this with fossil fuels.
* it doesn't exist*
Yeah, it does. Several small companies already are capable of recycling lithium batteries at 95%+ efficiency. The main reason these are new pretty small companies is because they were founded with the vision of recycling EV batteries, before EV batteries the recycling market for lithium batteries just was too small to be interesting.
We aren't ready for fully recycling plastics
Completely different thing. Just because we can't fully recycle one thing, doesn't mean we can't recycle a completely different thing.
Fuel cells already exists
So do batteries. And their recycling.
If you choose others solutions you choose to engage war with China for the control of minerals and rare earths ressources
Most battery resources are not in China.
You can't electrified industrial moving engine
Depends what you understand under it. They even already electrified enormous mining vehicles that transport the mined substance, though for now it is still situational. And there also are already electric tractors for agricultural use if I am not mistaken.
So we will have to use methane produced from agricultural residues
While I like the idea, it isn't practical. I personally thought about that too, but the only way to do this is to have cattle sit in well isolated barns and having a system to get the methane from that air, doable but not really profitable and definitely not for mass scale use in industry, more like personal use of the farmers or surrounding area at best.
ITER is the final research step from 80 years of climbing efforts
ITER is not the final research step unfortunately. All ITER is meant to do is show we can get more energy out of the reaction than we put in and do so at a large enough rate to be able to produce enough electricity in another plant. Even after that we'll need to see if it will be commercially viable, building actual testplants that can produce electricity, ... And for now there still is no certainty ITER will do what it is meant to do. Yes, normally it should, but we can't know for sure. Even fusion scientist say that we don't need to expect any real electricity generation from fusion reactors within the next 30-40 years, even if ITER is succesfull. By that time we need to have fully electrified our civilization already.
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@Jamie-Z The problems with recharging are beyond current technology
What are you talking about? Recharging isn't a problem.
Hydrogen on the other hand can solve the problems without the need for another pollution
Yeah, no. This isn't correct at all. Hydrogen would pollute more or less the same, just in a different way. (For example 3 times the needed renewable capacity that needs to be installed, which still has a co2 footprint)
there is not enough raw materials on the planet to make the batteries
Except, there is.
and in 8 years when those batteries need to be replaced
Modern EV batteries are expected to last the lifetime of the car, except if the car model has a terrible battery management system. Several manufacturers even guarantee a batteries minimum charge left (usually around 75%) after 8 years or 150k km.
whereas with hydrogen we would have no such problems
Except you ofcourse need the resources for 3 times the amount of renewables.
Hydrogen is the best future
You still haven't mentioned a single good reason for this claim. All you did is say stupid outdated criticism of EV's that anyone with a bit of knowledge knows is just stupid.
Leave tons of copper lying around in every street in London
Yeah, in protected cables/under the sidewalk, just like is the case now. Do you really think there are no easy solution to situations like this? Are you really that blind to reality or are you just insanely uninformed?
Given that there is not even enough parking in Fulham for the residents
Then where do they park their cars now? I doubt they keep driving them around constantly because there isn't enough space. Every car currently needs to park somewhere, that is just a basic fact.
When I lived there I spent most evenings driving around searching for a space
But you clearly found one, otherwise you would have been driving all night untill you had to get back to work. A charger doesn't necessarily need to be a private charger, you could also just install a lot of public chargers which cost slightly more (but not much, maybe 3-5cent/kWh extra) to charge at.
I would suggest you visit Amsterdam in an electric car to see how well they did and they are the best there is :)
You mean a city were most people use either the bike or public transport? Again if there are cars, they need to park, meaning they need parking spaces, meaning you can install a public charger, not all that hard to understand. Essentially you aren't talking about the problems with eV's, you are talking about hte problems with cars in general.
and they are the best there is
Not a single city region is where it needs to be for fully electric driving, just like there isn't any region even remotely close to accomodate hydrogen driving for even a fraction of the drivers. Just because it isn't here now, doesn't mean it can't/won't be possible in the future. There is nothing fundamentally stopping EV's from replacing all ICE cars, the main thing that needs to be done now is just roll out the necessary regulation and infrastructure, exactly the same as with hydrogen. However while you need to roll out this infrastructure for literally everyone in regards to hydrogen, you only need to do this for people who can't charge at home or along highways for those people that make longer trips, so a lot less infrastructure is needed.
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@nexussmile8525
right now it’s not about human rights, LBTQ issues are so minor an fabricated of an issue.
Ofcourse it fucking is about human rights. The charter of fundamental rights of the European union is made legally binding in the lisbon treaty and this Hungarian law is violating parts of it. This isn't just the first issue either, it is something like the last drop. Countries like Hungary and Poland are constantly testing how far they can go, at some point you need to draw a line. And LGBTQ issues are not a minor thing, at least not in my country.
We face much more graver issues: China,Russia,Philosophical drought,supply lines, survival of the west etc
Like we can't also worry about China, Russia, etc. while also worry about the fundamental rights of the EU. It is not like we ignore or neglect NATO, which is the main thing against Russia. Neither does this somehow stop the sanctions on Russia.
Philosophical drought? Has nothing to do with this.
Survival of the west? I see the EU as essential to the 'survival of the west' and for the EU to to move forward, it needs to tackle these internal issues.
LBTQ issues is honestly the most pathetic thing to worry about.
Which just shows your color.
It’s like if Britain would focus on South African issues while the Germans where on the verge with war on Poland.
WTF? No, it isn't. Hungary is in the EU literally bordering other EU members, this isn't some far away region. This also isn't the first thing in regards to Hungary it is just one of many. This is about the essential values of the EU and its stability. If Hungary can just ignore fundamental EU values without any pushback, the EU is doomed anyway, and so are the chances for European resistance/strength to deal with those problems you mentioned.
well what I meant with the Germans was that : every reaction has the same and opposite reaction.
And? What is your solution? Ignore it? Lay back? Let Hungary walk over EU fundamental values?
Should we then not also follow the same appeasement politics in regards to Russia and China? Like that did the UK any good in the 1930's.
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Economic sanctions are not an act of war and they where imposed after the annexation of crimea. Russia knew (or at least should have known) that this would trigger a reaction from the EU and the US. Yes by many media Russia is being demonized, but they themselves are also actively engaging in this information war to further their own agenda. Propaganda is nothing new.
In the case of Skripal i agree with you, my first reaction was that they shouldn't take any measures without having proof and making sure this isn't a way to deteriorate relations with Russia and give a reason to take more actions against Russia. They should have first looked into all possibilties and get the facts and only then act on these facts.
NATO is not one country no, but a nuclear attack against any of it's members will be retaliated in kind. If you don't see this, you don't understand the situation. If for example Germany or Poland (or whatever non nuclear nato country) get's hit by a nuclear missile, the US can't standby and do nothing, it would make them look weak and there would be the fear that non-action would create a dangerous precedent. A city for a city, a country for a country (or even more likely trying to nuke out the entirety of Russia in the hopes to minimise another counterstrike). The moment a nuclear incident happens between the alliances of at least one nuclear power on each side, it will devolve in a full scale nuclear war. That's why nuclear strikes are an ultimate last resort and even then probably wouldn't be used (this is the basis for the MAD principle => what Nuclear weapons real power now is).
I doubt the russians are the only ones that would do the most unpleasant stuff. The US tries to keep a good guy appearence, but you can be damn sure they are looking into all possible options and also have the people needed to do these most unpleasant things.
Europe is more manufacturing based, while Russia has lots of resources. But guess what many other countries have these resources too and NATO will in a conflict be able to control all the seas not directly bordering Russia and therefor they will be able to keep resources flowing in. An alliance that has the manufacturing capabilities and the possibility to get the necessary resources will always outmatch a country that has a much weaker manufacturing base with many resources in a prolonged conflict.
Russia's size is only relevant in terms of occupation, and while the size of western Russia alone was already enough in the past, mobility and infrastructure has increased so much that size will not matter, controlling western Russia and the eastern coast would be enough to eventually take out Russia (also while Russia has a large size, it has a low population count in regards to NATO).
For a new modern war, don't look to ww2 or wars that happened before it. The mobilty alone changed so much that lot would be different (not to mention that we are talking about all of Europe and US, while in the past the greatest threats have only come from one of these countries: Nazi-Germany, France, Sweden, ...)
I don't think somekind of an alliance between the EU and Russia to be impossible in the future if relations can be normalised, however Russia actually joining the EU is damn near impossible without Russia changing a lot (it won't be the EU adapting to take in Russia for that it's too large, unwieldy and almost certainly too much unwillingness among many of it's members)
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+Revital
The EU couldn't really reform because countries like the UK stop every kind of reform if it includes more Europe, which basically is the only directions the EU can go. Less Europe would be just tracing our step back, moving back to the past, not the future (but I guess seeing the British empire is in the past I might understand their nostalgia).
The EU didn't gave the remain campaign any money, because that would against British law, breaking it would be rather stupid. However the EU tried 'paying' with promises for more british 'independence' (or better put more exeptions for the UK, seeing they still are an independent country).
"We are always outvoted", yet the UK controls the third most seats in the EU parliament (9.7% of the total seats) and in the european council had an equal vote as any other memberstate, so basically you are always outvoted because you didn't had enough support from the other eu countries (which says more about the UK than the EU).
"We pay more than we get out" True if you just look at what money you give the EU and what you directly get back, however this doesn't incorporate any other gains the UK gets economically. Besides it's not possible that everyone get's more money directly back than it gives, this is also the case in the UK itself. If you look at what you directly get from the EU Germany loses more than the UK, yet people always claims them the big winner of the EU. Maybe you should think about why that is.
"the EU forces the UK to give them money to bail them out fund less weaker country's to keep them from going into crisis while making the UK poorer" really? Any bail-outs from the EU are loans that have to be eventually payed back. However the interests on these loans (if there are any) are much lower than if these economically struggling countries would go directly to the market to get loans. Money is only lost if the debt can't be payed back overtime (which is why the EU always asked for harsh monetary policies to be implemented first). As for the subsidies, yes the UK pays for the weaker EU countries as does Germany and many other western european countries. This however only incorporates money directly given to and received from the EU and doesn't include any financial/economic gains you have from being in the EU.
"the EU needs Britain more than Britain needs the EU" Actually the EU can easily move further without the UK. Maybe even more easily seeing the special kid is out the classroom. The UK came in because it needed the EU (or the ec back then), not the other way around.
"The EU think they own us as a country, the EU treats it's member states as puppets and scares country's to abide by there way or no way" Give me direct examples. By the way the eu way is the way created by it's members, not some bureaucrats in Brussel who appears to have much power but actually hasn't got much at all. They got the power a mojority of the memberstates allow them to have.
"Ignoring referendums" The national countries are resposible for organising and following national referendums, not the EU. To which referendums are you hinting? Not the brexit one, because a brexit is happening. If you refer to the irish repear of a referendum, the second referendum happened after the EU made concessions and because before the first referendum the Irish government did a shitty job of informing their citizens.
"Removing local governments powers and the citizens rights to vote how the county should be run and controlled." Clearly you have no idea on the inner workings of the EU. Any power the EU has is because national governments gave them these powers, how the hell would an entity without an army, without land, without anything but paper (not the money kind) be removing local governments powers? Nearly all policy is still decided on the national level, except if we are talking about policies that span outside the national borders, in which case it's mostly the national leaders together who decides how to move forward/what to do.
1:"The ultimate goal is to remove local governments completely"
2:"to remove all blames of failure so nobody can be blamed for the errors and greed which is the EU."
for part 1 this is what many people overtime had also said about national governments (especially in big countries), yet national government in some form or another have been around for millenia. So what does it matter?
part 2 (and its connection to part 1) doesn't even make sense isn't removing all failures a good thing? And with the removal of local governments all blame would go directly to the EU.
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+SteveFusionX
It's quite often that European capitols are melting pots of different cultures, don't make the mistake to take a large capitol city as an example for what the rest of the nation will become.
Is the EU flawed, yes. But when these flawes will be eliminated, it will be much better than being independ. For example: a unified european army would could be much more efficient and at the same time cheaper than what we have now. The immigration crisis could be solved much easier if the memberstates actually had less influence, because now you've everyone with different visions running around making everything much difficult than it has to be.
Now, let's look at what would happen if the UK abandoned the EU:
1. economically the UK would go downwards. Because despites of this money the UK has to give to the EU, it's receiving: much more in return. When the UK leaves, the most optimistic prognoses still say that the GDP will go down with about 1-2%. The large trade agreements with China, US, .... will dissapear. Britain loses negotiating power, companies that went to the UK because it was Europe's gateway will leave for other EU members.
2. Diplomatically: Like said before the UK will lose negotiating power, scottish independence could be sparked, Irish politicians said this could make border agreements null and void => The UK might actually start crumbling down.
3. Immigation: people will not just stop coming, the only change might be that the EU behind the scenes let the immigrants who want to get to britain slip through and make it your problem. Immigration might go down, but not as much as you think and most Eastern europeans who wanted to move to the UK already did, so no point in leaving the EU for that.
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I don't agree with many decisions they make or how they deal with the several crisis, but I do think that the EU is the better way to go, just differently than it is now. It expanded way to fast, they should have stuck with western, central, northern, southern europe (or less) and only let other countries in if they met really high requirements, so that for example eastern europeans wouldn't come and work in the west but are inscribed/pay taxes and follow laws in/of the east. This is one of many problems.
And perhaps there is no way of changing it atm, but by leaving you'll not get much more freedom and it will not cause the eu to change or fall. In order to have the EU to change by leaving, more countries need to do this at the same time. One country alone will never work, definitely not the UK who has always been half in, half out
Also people are saying here that it's not right that one country cannot change/oppose/... laws. But waht about regions/cities in a country? can they do this for an entire country. I don't know the complete system of the EU politics, but it seems people here are saying that it's not deocratic that the majority rules. Guess what, almost all 'democratic' systems are based on this principle. Besides leaving all this besides, the UK still has way more influence in the EU than many other members.
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@pietersteenkamp5241
1) Yangs UBI is a libertarian one and favours the middle class much more than the lower classes. Those who get certain benefits now would have to give them up to get UBI, which means they get less 1000 dollars per month net, but will still see prices in the stores go up. And the groups receiving benefits are the lower classes. On the other hand, middle class people who do have a well paying job would always get 1000 a month net (or 2000 for a family). So in the end they'd be the greatest beneficiaries. Higher income earners won't feel the difference, neither the 12000 year, nor the price increases; middle class will get more use from the 12000 a year than the price increases and the lower classes will feel the price increases more, while experiencing less of a benefit from the UBI.
Yang's UBI just isn't progressive, and the way it is tailored isn't even taking on the problem it is meant for: job losses due to automation. UBI isn't enough to live from, so these people who lost there job due to automation and can't find another job easily, will live on the brink of poverty, even with UBI. The better option would have been to (temporarily) increase the UBI for people who lost there jobs or earn less than X a year, while lowering it with increasing income (for example up to 40-50k a year income) or just increase welfare benefits and create better unemployement pay (like universal income for people without a job).
2) The problem with a public option in the US (possibly in contrast to other nations) is that the private insurance companies are really strong and the entire system is corrupt and bloated.
A. IC's (insurance companies) will just offer different plans for sick and healthy people. The plans for sick people will be so bad and expensive that the sick people will move to the public option; while the plans for the healthy people won't cover much, but are cheaper than the public option (and many healthy people might be trapped by this). This will cause all sick people to move to the public option, increasing costs there, while the healthy people will go to the IC's, decreasing income for the public option, while still allowing the IC's to make large profits (although maybe not as much as now).
This will force the government to increase the funding and allow politicians and other actors opposed to government interference to say "see how inefficient it is. If a public option fails, how can m4a ever work" and bring it back to the same private insurance system it was before.
B. Furthermore would a public option not deal with othe problems of the current US system, the costs would remain high, because the government will have less leverage to force drugcompanies to lower prices, costs in hospitals and doctors will still remain high due to the enormous amount of administration due to fragmentation. The difficulty to see what is covered, where you can go, which doctor you can visit, things like ambulance choppers that still will work privately and can charge people whatever they want (no one can start negotiating prices when they need to urgently get to the hospital), ... Basically the public option doesn't allow to increase efficiency, streamline everything and will basically end up being just another cog in the insurance/healthcare machine. So in the end a public option WILL remain more expensive than m4a and might even become more expensive than the current system overall.
The US system now already causes healthcare prices to be twice as high per capita compared to the average of other OECD countries, so this system needs to be changed completely, something that won't happen with a public option.
An option might be to get a m4a plan like Bernie's, but replace the ban for duplicative coverage with a demand that ALL private plans MUST offer AT LEAST the same coverage as m4a and allow everyone to pay the same price (so no discrimination based on people's medical history, current medical conditions, ...). But this would be a cosmetic difference mostly, because IC's wouldn't be able to make a profit with this. The only difference between these plans would be price (probably higher for IC plans than m4a, due to profit incentive) and extra coverage. But then again, this extra coverage can already be offered under Bernie's plan and who would want to pay a higher price? So the endresult would be similar.
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@eragon78 I believe it should be taxed on income with a very progressive taxrate (eventually 80-90% on anything above 1 billion). And I'd include the sale of stocks as income. But I don't think it is a good idea to tax perceived wealth, which stocks essentially are. Stocks can rise quickly only to drop even more the next day, how are you going to tax that? Is the government going to return taxes when the value of the stocks drop? it just isn't a good, nor easy thing to tax that. However when turning this perceived wealth into real wealth (selling stocks) this is something different. So just tax all income (regular, bonus, stock selling, dividends, ...) with a progressive tax rate. As long as people don't sell stocks, the value of stocks don't matter, they can't use it to do anything else than have a say in the company.
And ofcourse close all tax loopholes (though for this I'd essentially burn down the complete tax system and built it back up new, including incentives, etc.)
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Oh, so easy to shut her up. The UK's new prime minister is only chosen by the conservatives, the UK government doesn't represent a majority of the votes, many UK citizens don't have representation, because they are represented by someone they didn't vote for. The UK in this time still has a house of lords for gods sake (no matter its powers).
That she first gets the UK in order and then schools the EU, which is still in its early phases, still becoming more democratic. The UK (and britain before it and England before that) on the other hand has had a thousand years to reach a system of optimal democracy and still isn't there yet and yet it now seems they think they are at the finish, they are not.
And the EU isn't yet a nation, it is still an international organisation, how many international organisations are fully democratic? The EU has excuses to not (yet) be an optimal democracy, the UK does not.
Glad we get rid of the UK, finally, good riddance. Just leave or shut up about democracy.
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@slanwar
maybe if the rich nations (cough Germany cough) didn’t open the borders to immigrants from 3rd world countries
This is such a stupid and ignorant comment. The borders of the EU were already breached by the refugees, Greece couldn't handle them and send them through, then Hungary (I believe) tried to send them through too when they couldn't stop them anymore, but Austria refused to accept them. It is at this moment that Germany stepped up, they essentially just offered to take on a share of the burden, never did their stance cause the borders to become more open and neither is there statistical evidence that their stance caused an increase of refugees coming over, the tide/wave already started well before that.
and then forced them in other countries we would have UK still on board
Again stupid, the UK was one of the countries who were the least hit by the refugee crisis and also would have taken a much smaller amount under the distribution plan that was aimed at lowering the pressure on the border countries (Greece, Italy, Spain and Hungary I believe). The UK did not leave due to any effect of the refugee crisis, it was just a talking point of leave that had no merit whatsoever. Much more 3rd world citizens entered the UK through commonwealth ties than due to the UK being a member of the EU.
My guess, the EU is building an enormous bubble and soon or later will explode
Your guess based on what?
After this pandemic with millions losing their jobs
I don't know if you realize this, but overall EU country have used policies that limit the loss of jobs due to covid. The unemployment rate in the EU has only gone up by +-1% since covid and has now again started to decrease. It has gone up to around 3,5% lower than it was in 2013. There is no largescale job loss due to covid in the EU. In the US on the other hand, unemployment increased dramatically and has now gone down a lot again to levels similar to early 2014.
and seeing immigrants coming in and helped by the government
Not noticing that, there is literally no chatter about that (at least not here in Belgium). Not in politics, not in conversation, not in the news, ... Immigration was a hot topic maybe 1-2 years ago, but now? Nothing.
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@ryankornkven9451
So then why not privatize all roads, highway systems, schools, hospitals, firefighters, police, security, hell why not the military. Seeing that the private sector does a jobe better than the government in every aspect. Except these private corporations goal is to make profit, not ot help society.
If a company suddenly owns all roads in your neighbourhood and says "to ride on this road you'll have to pay 100 dollars a day" what are you going do? Not drive your car anymore I guess, so then what?
There is a reason certain things are done by the government and never is the focus on profit, but rather on how beneficial it is to society, the people and the economy.
An enourmous amount of wealth is lost due to traffic, both on road maintenance, company services (trucks, people who need to move from area to area during work, ...), etc.
Now if you can reduce commute traffic by even just 20% thanks to highspeed rail, this would already have an immensely beneficial outcome for the economy. And if people can get to work in half the time with a train compared to their car, don't you think a lot of people would benefit from this? Commuting just for work in densily populated area's is much more efficient with public transport, that is a fact.
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@alioshax7797 Germany spends 100 billion extra in the next 5-10 years, that is a yearly increase of 10-20billion. And this is after they really underfunded their army and need to get it back into good fighting shape. This isn't at all the case in France, which has maybe the most experienced and strongest army in Europe and has consistently been around the 2% of GDP target spending.
After looking into it, it seems this budget increase has more to do with just following expected GDP growth. Expected GDP for France by 2030 is around $4205B, which would come down to $84B with 2% of GDP. So yes a large increase in absolute numbers, but not actually a large increase relative to the GDP, which is what matters considering higher GDP also means higher tax income.
There are also some discrepancies. Sources in % of gdp put current French military investment at 1,95%, which would make +-$57B, but the sources speaking about the increase put it at currently $43B. There likely is just some different accounting being done, like adding costs that usually were/are kept seperate, be it to make the increase seem bigger than it really is, or to just streamline things. For example the US budget usually includes veteran care and pensions, while other countries don't do this in their official numbers, but keep it seperate as part of the welfare/pension budget etc.
The actual yearly budget for the next 6 years on average is around $66,7B (based on the $400B over 6 years), or just +-$10B higher than now. That would overall come down to a yearly increase of around 4,5% between now and 2030, from '22 to '23 France had a 7,4% increase in their military budget.
So in the end, no the French military shouldn't be getting a huge increase compared to past years, it just seems that way because absolute numbers keep up with inflation/gdp growth and France does their initial military budget planning in a series of 6 years.
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It is difficult to say so far out. Just a few months ago Macron had a pretty nice lead in the second round with around +10%. (In fact a more recent Ipsos poll that happened after the Harris poll, put it at +12%)
A lot will depend on what happens in the next year, will covid-19 be gotten under control for example. Also while Le Pen couldn't actively campaign, Macron had the disadvantage of governing, because that is what it is in France in a presidential election: a disadvantage (at least it seems like that). The fact that Macron is still ahead after some of his problems is not bad for him, even with tight polls. Closer to the election Macron will not make as unpopular or controversial decisions and it seems that when Macron actually starts campaigning he usually grows his support. If I remember correctly after his poll numbers went down a lot with the yellow vest movement, he went on a bit of a town hall tour or something and afterwards this together with some concessions saw an increase in his numbers again.
By the election Macron could fall down a lot, but it is just as likely (if not more) that by then his lead has grown again.
And Le Pen will have the disadvantage that the rest of the parties might converge around Macron in the second round. If they openly support Macron after the first round, this might take away voters that now say in a poll that they'd vote for Le Pen and switch them to Le Pen, or get more of their voters to the polls who'd else just remain home.
A lot will adepend on turn out too, it is easy to say you'll vote for X in a polling, but going out to vote might be different.
Now, I am not French, so this is only based on my limited knowledge, if you think I am wrong, I am happy to know why.
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Nuclear powerplants don't really help with the renewables intermittency, since they best run constantly/as much as possible. Now, you could say nuclear needs to be the baseload and renewables everything above, but if you have more renewables than necessary, the lower generation costs could outperfom the nuclear base load at certain moments, causing them to either produce at a loss or lower output, which isn't really great for nuclear. So the government will always have to guarantee that nuclear reactors get a certain minimum price and production rate, essentially subsidizing nuclear in the long term even when renewables don't need subsidies anymore and are cheaper.
The main danger I see is now going full into nuclear only to find out that by the time most of these plants become operational, storage is so much more viable that it starts to compete with these plants, meaning you might be stuck with more expensive plants for 60 years even when you have better alternatives.
And now you can say that storage isn't going to become viable that soon, but remember that solar panels were 10 times more expensives around 10-15 years ago and that the price mostly went down due to economies of scale. Storage wasn't really needed that urgently in the past, so it only is coming up now, it is very possible that they'll make a similar growth rate in the next 10-15 years in cost as solar panels had.
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@gilian2587
Battery storage using standard lithium ion batteries is quite expensive at the moment;
That is indeed true, however even without improvements in battery tech it is expected that Li-ion batteries will become cost effective around 2030-35 just due to scaling. However I don't think Li-ion is going to be used for the grid past quick reactionary means to stabilise the grid, I'd expect other battery chemistries to full fill that role in the future ('rust' batteries, iron batteries, flow batteries, ...) as well as completely different storage solutions (CAES, LAES, heat energy storage, ...).
The market for large scale grid storage is rather new, so the companies and technologies catering to it are too, they now need some time to prove their products viability and to scale up. By 2030 the gridstorage situation can look completely differently. And even if we decide to build new nuclear powerplants now, they likely wouldn't start operating for another 10-15 years, so a similar timeline to what storage might need.
These current energy shortages in Europe speak to that.
Yes and no. Yes, renewables have underperformed this year (mostly wind, solar was overall still pretty stable, though not favorable), however the greatest problem is the gas supply which has been seriously hampered causing the vast increase in prices. And even nuclear wasn't a guarantee for the UK, where there was an unforseen shutdown for some reactors. Essentially this is a perfect bad situation.
Grid storage would have definitely helped though.
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@elmohead
That said, it's also much easier to blockade for the same reasons.
Actually not really, considering you'd need a navy to do so and you'd need to take out ships sailing under the flags of neutral countries. If those ships get attacked it could drawn them into the conflict, especially a nation like the US. Furthermore in order to blockade it, you'll need to either have air or sea dominance or both, which isn't at all easy to achieve if the defender and its allies have sufficient anti-air defences, fighters and ships, which in the case of a taiwan-US block is likely to be the case.
Taiwan also isn't going to sit idle while China is preparing their invasion, they'll likely try to stock up on essential and military supplies in the weeks leading up to it, if they haven't already a strategic stock of such things.
And destroying harbours also wouldn't be a good option for China, considering they'll need harbours to support their onw troops once they get a foothold on the island, Taiwan is more likely to destroy harbours when they are about to lose full control of it.
*However, it also means Taiwan also has very little room to maneuver. *
Which isn't a really a problem, a defender doesn't tend to maneuver much. Urban and mountain warfare favours the defender. The most maneuvering a defender would really need to do is from defensive point to defensive point, they don't need to use elaborate maneuvers or large scale tank/armour maneuvers.
Terrain is neutral
Nope, this urban/mountainous island is very much in favour of the defender.
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I didn't react to the previous one, but I do believe you were slightly off in the Belgian elections when we talk about the federal level and spectrum leanings.
If you combine the "political families" of the flemish and walloon parties (left, center, right, ...), you get a different main party (ie. winner).
For example then you'd get:
left (PS+Vooruit): 29 seats (from 31 in '19)
right (MR+Open vld): 27 seats (from 26)
center (Les engagées+CD&V): 25 seats (from 17)
right (NV-A): 24 seats (from 25)
Far right (VB): 20 seats (from 18)
far left (PvdA): 15 seats (from 12)
left (greens): 9 seats (from 21)
I combined this into the "families" which basically are the counterparts in the language regions. This is why the greens aren't put together with the regular left and NVA not with the regular right (there are quite some policy differences between those groups).
Based on this the left "won" as the biggest party and thus should get a point, I'd normally also say to give a point to the (far) right (NVA and VB) as moral victor with the biggest increase, but that wouldn't even be correct, since this would be for the center and far left first. I'd actually give the center a point due to their 8 seat rise.
Based on these results the right and far right would actually lose a point and the left gain a point, thus again putting them in front. The center would get out of the negative but wouldn't change position.
I didn't mention this before since my recollection said that the NVA and VB were the winners, but I don't actually agree on this completely anymore and they definitely shouldn't be the winners based on your method and taking into consideration Belgiums unique political structure.
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@irham191 actually the eastern part of ukraine was predominantly russian.
Because of former soviet policies to move Russians into that region. So if these people don't wish to be part of Ukraine, they should just again be moved back to Russia imo. Anyone that hasn't had several generation living in an area should claim said area for themselves. Otherwise why wouldn't Russia just help other Russians to move into other border regions and then claim to 'defend them against aggression'?
Moreover polls showed that majority of the population might have been in favor of a special status within Ukraine (like increased autonomy), but not really independence/annexation by Russia.
And the conflict in donbass has caused about 1,6 million refugee. 600,000 comes to russia.
So in other words, the majority of the refugees weren't to Russia.
Judging from the russian history, its not the first time that the sanction caused a hardship for russian and yet we never seen them topple their government, especially in soviet era.
I'd argue that it actually was the economic difficulties that caused the soviet union to collapse in the first place. Also propaganda was much more easier to do in the past, even just by causing shear ignorance. If you never knew better, than why would you go against a government for economic reasons? These days, while there still is much propaganda, there are also more ways to get around it and people have more reference points, even due to just personal experiences of the last decades. And at the very least, a diminished economy means less government income, means less money to the military (or at the cost of a larger % of GDP).
And apperantly china had some problem with trade war and sanction, with their close ties with russia, and india abstinence in UN resolution. It should made european leader worry about their position.
Actually the expectation was that China would back up Russia. China remaining quite neutral is a very interesting development to the West, it could indicate the alliance between Russia and China is possibly more fragile then was expected and that China at this moment still very much favors stability and growing their economy vs getting into a conflict.
India remaining neutral is mostly about their trade relationship with either side and regarding the Russians mostly to do with military trade. Not at all surprising.
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@keko7198 The US isn't spend more than 2% to protect Europe or to abide by the 2% rule, even without NATO you'd be spending as much as you did. The 2% rule also wasn't official until around a decade ago, with the timeline to meet being around this time, with most members meeting it.
Also US european bases are more meant as a power projection for US actions into the middle east and north africa and not really to defend European allies (obviously they can be used for that purpose if it ever comes down to it, but isn't the case currently).
Europe doesn't really needs US help against Russia, Ukraine definitely showed that. Also so far article 5 has only been activated by the US so far.
I was talking about before that most weren’t we were footing the bill for nearly a decade
What bill?
Russia didn't do anything under Trump (domestically at least) because they were building up for it and waiting for the proper time. It wasn't because they were scared of Trump, rather it wasn't the correct time, especially with Trump seeming rather friendly with Putin.
Also China has been saber rattling in the South China sea under Trump too, so not sure what you are talking about. It had nothing to do with Afghanistan, which is something completely different to power projection on sea.
if other countries aren’t paying the required amount for NATO and US is picking up the slack what would you call that?
You do realise the US isn't spending more because other NATO members were spending too little? If that were the case the US defence budget would have gone down as NATO members increased their military spending, which is the opposite of what has been happening.
Not to mention the billions the US invests in RnD that these countries benefit from
You mean the R&D these countries pay back when buy these systems? European nations buying US military products precisely allows the US to spend MORE on R&D than it otherwise could.
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@TheJK300000
also just to point this out nearly every country in the Europe uses fptp except for the Swiss though they are pretty unique as history’s go
Completely wrong, most nations use party-list proportional representation, then you have parallel voting (party-list PR and FPTP), And France uses a two round system. Basically the only European nations that solely uses FPTP are the UK and Belarus for the first house/parliament and Poland for the upper house.
where the senate for states and parliament fling the law at each other till they all agree on it or a majority agree.
Like most systems with 2 chambers/parliaments/representative bodies. Nothing really special about it. And btw, after a certain amount of this ping-ponging (I believe 2 or 3 times), representatives of both the parliament and council sit together to try and find an agreement, if this in not possible, it is just scrapped, otherwise it goes to a last vote.
it’s more complicated than that
Ofcourse, the EU isn't an nation, but something between that and an international organisation. The complexity exists because the memberstates want to remain fully sovereign.
it’s insanely un democratic due to the sheer amount of moving parts
You don't need moving parts for to create something undemocratic or corrupt (just look at the US congress if you want to see corruption). And I don't really think it is undemocratic if the two organisations deciding in the end are constituted of elected officials. Prone to corruption, fine you can lay that at the feet of the EU. Undemocratic on the other hand is ridiculous. Can it be more democratic, sure. But so can the UK (arguably there is more room in the UK to improve democracy than in the EU).
though the Greeks were basically annexed so yea
What an ignorant statement. They needed a loan, and they got it after they fulfilled some requirements. But I guess you grant someone that owns a large part of your house continuously loans without any requirements, or let them go bankrupt which causes you to lose the house (and take huge losses in the process)?
due to the fact head of state has no power (or very little)
The head of state (the Queen) actually has ridiculous amount of power if we speak in a theoretical sense. She just doesn't use it because she knows parliament will limit it then (maybe even going further than necessary). If you meant the PM, his/her power might be limited, but since parliament has the power to do almost everything and the government and majority party are usually the same, the governing party has tremendous amount of power.
and the senate can only amend and send back to parliament.
Which basically means you just have an unnecessary senate that only delays legislation. The fact that you can basically abolish the house of lords (senate) without any real consequences doesn't make the system more democratic. At best it is a status quo. An elected senate with actual power could provide a counter-balance for a parliament that most often is controlled by the same party of the government, meaning the government can do almost everything it wants unchecked as long as it has the backing of its own party (which in most cases will be so).
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Indeed moot :), english is not my first language and I had to be fast, thank you for pointing it out.
And not really, you can't replace the god hypothesis with something with no agency, like "mutation".
Why not? What stops me from replacing it? The more mutation, the more likely you get something like a human. Afterall, this is kind of the basis of evolution.
But even if using somethig "else that might have caused humans to exist", like aliens, the act of "replacing" god with aliens gives a SIMILAR argument, not an identical one, i.e. down to the values. There's no reason to say the chance is the exact same, it could very well be the case that the alien hypothesis is more likely.
That's what I said, it gives a similar argument that has the exact same outcome, unless you can insert different numbers for p and q, which you can't do here, because we have no data to determine these numbers for p and q (unless you do have it?). Therefore this math can't be really used to prove god(s) existence nor can it say that it's more likely than other possibilities. This in the contrary of what is shown in the video, where they seem to just slap a higher probability on something.
There's a whole lot of complications to trying to apply maths to real life, and ASAP science really failed (imo) to stress that out.
That's why trying to use math on a (in the end) theological or philosophical question like the the existence of god(s) is in the end just an exercice in thinking without any real world application or any added value.
Also, even IF the chance WOULD remain the same, how is this argument moot and irrelevant?
If the chwhat'sance of everything is the same, the point? Aren't you then just back to where you started? What does this argument add to the question whether god(s) exists or not? What makes this argument more valid or relevant than the intelligent design argument or any other argument for or against god(s) existence?
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@davidgmillsatty1900 Why who never post numbers of Ukrainian losses?
Yes, Ukraine is in the defensive and needs to react obviously, this doesn't say jack shit about this supposed masterfull feint tactic for which there is no evidence, but rather a lot of evidence that it is very unlikely.
What video's specifically? I am not going to watch hour long video's of him talking for just a few snips, especially if he said what you now says he said, which doesn't make much sense and doesn't seem to have proof for it.
Russia always underrepresent their own loses, Ukraine would do the same, I don't listen to what either says about their own losses, rather what the opposite side said and then take a conservative guess based on those numbers. Ukraine says Russia lost around 17k troops, NATO says between 7 and 15k and Russia claims around 1k, which is ridiculously low just looking at the confirmed loss of materials that Russia has suffered so far. So 7-12k for Russian losses seems logical. As for the Ukrainian side, Ukraine won't release those untill the end of the war, but it is said to be 'considerable'. Based on the numbers before they stopped releasing them (and on the number claimed by Russia), likely similar to a bit higher than Russian losses.
I don't see how time is on Russia's side. As we speak Ukraine is training more and more conscripts, probably able to outnumber the Russians in the field by 4-5 to 1 within a few months and with most of their forces at least decently trained and equiped with modern equipment from the west. This while Putin has assured no new draftees/conscript would be send into the conflict and considering the fact that Russia can't just abandon all their other borders, they can't really increase their number of troops in the conflict. Which means any loss will be felt harder an Russia's side than Ukraine's. Not to mention that the Russian economy and arms industry won't be able to keep up with Western supplies to Ukraine.
You shouldn't have to switch from urban to open field warfare at all, rather be able to do both. For example Russia is supposedly having around 15k troops around Mariupol besieging it, at the same time other troops are doing operations in the open field.
If it takes more than a week to do that pincer move in the east, then Ukraine by that time will have redeployed their troops from around Kiev to reinforce the Eastern front, and this 'best military feint in history' would have been fucking useless.
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@davidgmillsatty1900 If Ukrainian losses were 6 to 10 times higher than Russia's, Russia would have come out with such large numbers, but currently if we extrapolate Russian earlier named numbers, it would be closer to 3 times Russian (real) losses and just as Ukraine overblows Russian losses, Russia is certain to overblow Ukrainian losses. 6 to 10 times more losses is based on nothing but guessing a number out of thin air.
Considerable can mean anything from 10k to 100k+, though 100k+ would likely be called more something like extreme or such, considerable is a lot more maintained. Russia's current losses can be called considerable for example.
Russia doesn't have that high amount of missiles and missiles are mostly used against infrastructure, not troops. 200-300 sorties aren't actually that great, during the golf war air campaign the US flew around 2700 sorties a day and during the iraq invasion close to a 1000 a day (for 6 weeks) and this was on terrain even more favorable for supporting ground forces with air support. Moreover whereas western forces mostly used precision guided ammunition from planes, current intellegence indicates most of Russian planes use unguided ammunition against ground targets.
Russia doesn't have air dominance, supremacy yes, but not dominance. So far they have already lost more than 100 (around 40 confirmed) airplane losses. That would make up almost 10% of their entire fighter/multirole+attack aircrafts, and obviously Russia can't afford to use their entire airforce there just incase NATO for example decides to become more active on their other borders. Russian planes can't operate at all with impunity in Ukraine.
And FYI, Ritter likely doesn't have any access to military intellegence that isn't public or such at this moment. And he seems to be pretty pro-Russia to start with too.
I guess we'll see whether he was right or not, but again, I don't think he is.
The Ukrainians have no air force
They have been using drones quite effectively and the west is also sending smaller drones that can be used as precision artillery. Also how does this correspond with Ukraine apparently having attacked a Russian fuel depot on Russian soil with helicopters?
or navy
Navy is useless in this conflict anyway, except to serve as a platform to fire missiles from, which can also be done from landbased installations/platforms.
The Russians had only about 40,000 troops near Kiev, a city of three million people
Only? That is 1/5th of their entire invasion force. And the size of the original population doesn't matter, many fled and if they can't attack Kiev with 40k troops, I don't see how they'd take other cities like Karkhiv (1,4 million) or Mariupol (430k with 15k russian troops) with much less either. They invaded a country of 40 million people with 200k troops, '3 million' vs 40k is better odds.
Normally you need about 250,000 soldiers to capture a city of this size.
In other words more than the entire invasion force? So how do they plan to defeat Ukraine's 40 million population with less than that amount? They'd need 3 million troops by your estimate to successfully defeat Ukraine.
But you have no understanding of military history
I guess you do? And please don't say Scott Ritter does, he was an intelligence officer and a weapons inspector. Neither of this demands extensive knowledge of military history or strategy, now had he been actually in charge of military operations in the past, that might have been something different.
The Russians used 40,000 troops to take Mauripol
Russia hasn't take Mariupol yet and they are using 15 000 troops, not 40 000. Not to mention that they are essentially sieging Mariupol down, not actually invading it.
The initial idea was that they'd storm into Kiev and take the center and either capture the government or force it to flee, causing the rest of Kiev to surrender. Ukraine's resistance and morale just came as a surprise.
You need Ritter to teach you some basic military math.
Again Ritter, how much trust do you actually put in someone that hasn't actually planned or commanded a military operation and who appears to be quite pro-Russia?
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@TheShadowOfZama So one bad policy is reason to completely give up on the idea?
Independence is an absolute last resort and can be used as a stick.
In a unitary model, theoretically the Flemish could create a majority government on their own, in reality it should be split among ideological lines (liberals, centrists, socialists, ....) independent of language. And if wallonian politicians make too much problems with this, make it clear it either is cooperating or seperating, lets see how long they would remain in office without cooperating then.
There are problems in Wallonia, but running away from them isn't the correct answer, neither is just ignoring them. The regional split has only caused Flanders to lose power regarding Wallonian policies, allowing the problems to become worse.
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@johnbussell8279 That a country has been long around doesn't mean it has an advantage, often it can even be seen as a disadvantage, because it might struggle with old internal problems, more problems with changing systems, ...
Not to mention the other circumstances, such as war etc. For example Europe has experienced 2 major wars that destroyed large parts of the nations infrastructure and population in the last century, meanwhile the latest real war the US faced on it's own homeland soil was probably the civil war. Most countries came weaker out of these wars, the US on the other hand came out stronger. Whether a nation is 300 years old or 1000 years doesn't matter, as long as it isn't shorter than 100 years it will not experience negative effects/drawbacks from its "young" age.
The US is also far from the latest founded countries. Belgium, Germany, Modern France (with its government and structure changes), Italy, Poland (revived after WW2), ... The list can become pretty long.
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@johnbuckner2828 Moving away was maybe putting it strong, more hesitant maybe. Though they are expected to replace several of their reactors, there doesn't seem to be a huge push. It is possible they'll get nuclear more as a baseload (+-50-60% of the grid) and the rest be from renewables. Honestly it isn't entirely clear. What is clear is that they are investing in renewables the last few years and that production from nuclear slightly tapered of a bit at the same time and there isn't an official response on the price of new reactors offered last year (othey asked for the quote). It is possible they think the price is high and are considering other options, a different mix, ... At the very least they aren't gun hoo in regards to nuclear.
I was under the impression that once nuclear plants, especially with newer technology, we're up and running that the maintenance costs were pretty low, & it's just the startup cost that deter investment.
Yes and know. The greatest cost is obviously the initial investment, which makes it a risky investment without government assurances (taxpayer money assurance essentially). However maintenance might be rather cheap in comparison, it is still expensive. And it seems the latest plants being build in Europe currently are going to have a rather high LCOE cost compared to older reactors (possibly more than doubled).
Also with these newer small scale plants that can just be buried in concrete and left to run for 20 years and die don't seem to require maintenance?
That sound rather idealised. Often SMR's are brought up as a cheaper, better solution, however several SMR's I looked into seem to have a comparable price in the end. Their main advantage seems to be flexibility, maybe. Most of the SMR that are hailed as great etc, aren't yet in operation anywhere. So it is difficult to actually see their capabilities.
Honestly I'd wait for gen 4 reactors, they seem much more promising, though they still will have to live up to their expectations/hope too.
There just isn't a clear cut "this is the best" answer to electricity generation, each one had advantages and disadvantages. It is clear it will be renewables and/or nuclear, and personally I expect some kind of mix in the long turn (with nuclear more focused on industrial, especially with electrification there, and renewable more for households/commercial buildings). Though also the public adversity will play a part, for example in Germany I don't see any new nuclear plant in the next 20-25 years, possibly even longer, because there is just no public support for it (the opposite).
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@Fresh Turkey Yes, but there were many more other terrorist attacks, you can't just ignore them. Also between 2006 and 2013 most stopped and not stopped terrorist attacks (and arrests around it) were planned by seperatists or anarchists.
If you want the people to commit to it, ask the soviets and its republics to do it first. If they are still here.
This is a stupid notion. Just because you don't hold yourself to standards, doesn't mean I wouldn't/shouldn't. This way nothing moves forward or improves.
Millions came into the EU illegally in the past ten years.
And millions have been deported or were given status to stay as refugees (you know, because at home it is not safe). Furthermore many terrorist attacks are executed and/or planned by people who came here much earlier, illegally (and did not start a procedure, even with strong border enforcement, which for the record is a national power, people would slip through) or were even born here.
And I don't turn a blind eye to it, there are problems, terrorism just isn't caused by the refugee crisis of the last few years, it is just like that crisis a consequence of a broader problem/cause: the destabilisation of Libya and the Middle East from the last decade.
And to me the main way to deal with the refugee crisis is
1) a strong European outer border control instead of leaving it to the members, but certain members are opposed to this, some even having outer borders themself.
2) a European immigration policy instead of the several different immigration policies and systems, which sometimes get played against eachother (being denied in one country and starting a procedure in another)
3) the long time it takes to go through a procedure (1 year should be enough, now it often takes longer, so that even children who grew up only knowing europe have to be deported)
4) a proper European integration policy, because often times integration is lacking, both due to the immigrants, but also due to the lack of possibilities to integrate/learning to integrate.
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@elijahculper5522
I think the fact that the media ignores him is evidence that he’s failing at redefining American socialism.
Except the media isn't ignoring hime because he dscribes himself a democratic socialist, but because he himself is a threat to the status which is so good for these large media companies. They don't give a damn on how Bernie paints himself.
Democrats win when they pick someone who can work the media
But during both Obama's first run and Clintons, the media was practically the only ways for many people to find out about the contestants, these days that is not the case by far. Therefor you can't just make this assumption at this time anymore, what might have worked in the past, doesn't necessarily needs to be the case now.
and it matters more and more how they are seen.
I agree, and that is why Bernie is so smart to use different outreaches, like a fox news town hall, interview with Joe Rogan, ... Bernie would never be shown favorably by the media or the establishment as long as he isn't already the democratic nominee. The only way for him to change this is be different from who he is and change his policies, which in return will take away his appeal with progressives. The problem at this moment is more that there are still too many contestants and that Biden is just coasting on his "Obama's VP" heritage. If people (especially black people) would actually look past that, a lot of people would drop him quickly and after that it would be between Bernie and Warren. Now Warren seems to be loved by the media despite having similar policies as Bernie. But this fact actually worries a lot of progressives, because there is no reason for them to love Warren, except that she might be a sell out like Obama.
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@canemcave Sanctions were announced, however the German government quickly took the necessary actions to remedy the situation (though it was more of a temporary stopgap, essentially justifying to the German court that the German/EU decision was in line with German law). The Polish government on the other hand is using it to fuel an anti-EU stance. That is the difference. Moreover if this Polish court decision is followed, the only way forward is for a complete renegotiating of the EU treaties or Poland leaving the EU. A complete renegotiating isn't possible, not in the least because one of the things the court attacked are fundamental EU values. Thus the Polish government has essentially 2 possibilities to move forward: change Polish law to be in line with the treaty or leave. Currently it is doing neither. Why? Because neither is a good option for them. If they change Polish law it will be looked at as them backing down. If they start the process to leave, they'll quickly be chased out of office by the 80%+ of poles that want to remain in the EU.
By essentially remaining in limbo for now the Polish government hopes that the EU will eventually back down first. The EU can't back down, there is no way, it would be the end of the EU. Thus Polish government chooses limbo, giving the EU no other choice but to slap with (budgetary) sanctions, since it neither can push Poland out, nor do any more decisive sanctions with Hungary blocking every effort.
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@eddefy22
Saudi Arabia is probably the most fundamentalist islamic nation in the world and supports countless terrorist organisations. The only reason the US didn't go after them is because they were allied to the US and US needs their support in the middle east.
Oh BTW we targeted the Iraqi military and ousted a dictator.
Oh and how did that played out? Decades of instability, hundred thousands dead, the rise of ISIS, .... Yeah that was a great job the US did. Eventually the same happened in Syria, a dictator was ousted, and the country fell into chaos. These dictators might go against our feeling of democratie and might do horrible things, but they provided stability and the suffering they caused was less then the suffering caused by war.
US intelligence knew there weren't WMD's, this was just an excuse. There were several politicians that argued against the Iraq war like Sanders, who realised that there wasn't enough proof and that there wasn't a good enough plan for after the invasion.
Al qaida killed 2900 people, the US a couple 100k, seems a more then fair answer.
See we don’t attack a whole populace on the basis “some people did something in New York”. Which is in that case kill 29 hundred people.
Oh yes, you did. It might not have been the official reason, but that was the reason many american supported the Iraq war and why only so few people were against it. People were much more easily persuaded that there were WMD's exactly because of 9/11.
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@awesome guy Actually no it makes perfect sense. Taiwan is an independent country, understood as such by most, but not officially recognized by many to not antagonize China. Since if many countries do recognize Taiwanese independence not only would that sour relationship with China, but also might push China to invade Taiwan ASAP. Even Taiwan itself already made clear that while they are independent, they also don't want to be relly recognised as such if that would inflame relations with China too much.
Basically everyone in the west sees Taiwan as a fully independent nation (which it also is in reality), only the governments do not as to not antagonize China, rather they usually take an ambigious stance or just not talk about it at all.
If Taiwan was officially seen as a rebel government, China would be in open conflict with it and in fact would have to take Taiwan ASAP to squash such a thing. Rather China espouses the 'one country, two systems' principle, meaning in their view that Taiwan is officially part of China, but completely autonomous except for foreign affairs. They take this stance because they know they have no control over Taiwan at all, but if they would recognize this, they would have to declare war on Taiwan and take it by force inorder to maintain their "one China" principle. In this case they bully and threaten other countries not to officially engage with Taiwan (which is why visits from US officials created so much tension last year), but don't take any direct action against Taiwan except veiled threats (like flying their planes in Taiwanese airspace).
For the last decades China has attempted to bring Taiwan back by using diplomacy and economic ties, but that hasn't worked, with now more and people identitfying as Taiwanese and not Chinese compared to the past. Thus either China will eventually have to invade Taiwan or accept it has lost it.
Whether you like it or not, the political situation regarding the Taiwan is rather complex, but the simple version is this: Taiwan is an independent country, but neither it nor others want to unnecessarily antagonize China too much.
Oh and btw, if we would actually be completely correct, then Taiwan is the actual Chinese government and the PRC one a rebel government, since the current PRC communist government rebelled and drove out the back then official Chinese government which fled to Taiwan.
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Problem is that her party was far right and the softening has happened only recently. Furthermore where did all those previous voters go that voted for the party before it took a more soft stance? If they remained with the party (which seems most likely) one can't be blamed for being sceptical and fear that the softened stance is more a political ploy of somekind, one that when it comes down to falls away the moment this far right backbench start raising trouble after the party was able to get more power. We saw this in the UK, with the ERG, who essentially pushed the conservatives even more to the right and even more eurosceptic once they were able to do so.
There is a similar problem here in Belgium with VB, a softened stance with a rebranding and some older far right people being "pushed out", but still retaining this far right base, while also gaining extra votes with their softer stance.
One can wonder if it wasn't better (though more difficult) to just create a new party instead of trying to rebrand it, causing the far right voters to remain with the old party (in the first round), but the more soft voters turning to that new party, at the very least this would have taken away some of the fear/doubt.
For example it seems Marine Le Pens voters are still more than half made up of voters who also voted for her father (in the first round), who most certainly is considered far right and with whom Marine seems to have broken (politically at least) because of that. Even in the 2017 second round Marine only got around just less than 2 times the votes her father got in the 2002 second round, so possibly around half of her voters might have voted for her father.
Her father created his own new party, but fully supported his daughter in the presidential election.
There were no (other) Far right parties running during the 2012 and 2017 presidential elections, so the far right voters stuck with the 'reformed' RN, still forming its strong backbone, which they could leverage if MLP wins the presidency, even if she wanted to have fine policies, she might be forced to take on bad (far right) policies.
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@GeorgeGeorgeOnly
So, given the combined European membership of NATO (if say they were to represent themselves as one under the EU flag), what are the proportions now in terms of balance of power?
US would still hold the main power, however it definitely would be more like equals.
At this moment EU members in nato would spend around 300-350 billion in their military if they spend 2% of their GDP (which would be the most likely target for a EU army), while the US spends 700-1000 billion into their armed forces (official budget is around 730 billion, but much of the presidents discretionary budget also flows to the military, how much this is exactly I can't tell) which makes up for around 3,6 to 5% of their GDP, so probably double that of what the EU would set as their goal.
Now, in terms of strength it might get closer than you would think based on these numbers. The US spends a lot on maintaining many foreign bases and waging costly "large scale" military operations globally, while this offers more global power, it offers little to regional/base power in terms of bang for bucks, which is what the EU would probably focus on (more defensively orientated). And especially Nato would be focused on the region around Europe. Furthermore it isn't exactly clear how efficient US spending is used. If the EU spends it more efficiently it might in the long term match US "regional" or "base" power with lower spending. For example, Russia only spends 60-70 billion on defense, but is still considered the world second strongest military with several innovations.
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@GeorgeGeorgeOnly
It doesn't govern NATO in that they can make the others do what it wants. However, thanks to its power and influence the US can often push NATO members to do what it wants, however in the end the members ofcourse can still decide themselves. And they definitely are seen as the leader of the alliance, though sometimes large european nations (Germany, France, ...) try to push back against this.
A united EU in NATO would definitely be more seen as a "co-leader". Then again besides these two, the only other members are Canada, Iceland, Albania, Montenegro and Turkey. It is therefor possible that a united EU army might lead to a degrade to a more regular military alliance of the US, EU, Canada, Turkey and Iceland. Albania and Montenegro are likely to eventually join the EU if it exists long enough and could just be guaranteed by the EU untill then. But this would be rather far into the future either way.
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SamoaVsEverybody814 I calculated that the republicans would eventually get 210 seats with 3 seats still undecided, based on the uncalled, but clearly won seats.
For some reason it are mostly republican won seats that have not yet been called, even when it is mathematically impossible for the winner to still change. And these are almost all seats in NY and CA, this probably is just a coincidence, but still.
NY-1, 100% reported 61% vs 38%
NY-2, 100%: 57% vs 41%,
NY-11 100%: 58% vs 42%,
NY-22 100%: 54% vs 44%
NY-24 100%: 55% vs 40%
All these are uncalled republican seat, how are these not called? And these aren't the only ones, just the most clear.
So yeah, they don't have ways to go, they will only have to win 8 seats more next time and possibly less depending on the 3 so far unclear seats.
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@scottfranco1962 Your entire comment is stupid
your car is not plugged in at home when you need the battery power
Yes, it is. Peak demand happens in the evening when people come home from work up untill the time they go to sleep. During this time the car would very much be plugged in. Most of the day an EV won't be driving, unless you're talking about robotaxi's, though these too will have peak and low demand times, during low demand many taxis could be linked to the grid too.
and anyways you would be taking charge from the car that you need to drive it.
In regular days you probably only use like 15-20% of charge to drive. The other 45-40% between 20% and 80% could be used as storage (though maybe 30-35% would be a safer option). Furthermore you'd discharge the battery during the evening and recharge during the night/day, so there would be no problem regarding range.
The main reason Elon prefers not to have V2G is because they'll sell less battery walls and installations if this is used. The only reason not to possibly use V2G would be battery degradation. Though if this isn't really a problem, there is no reason not to have at least V2G capability. Whether it is used would be up to the end user/owner of the car.
That being said, your EV might not be at home when your solar panels produce power, so a small house battery would still be usefull. But this doesn't need to be large, just enough to get your solar generated power, not a whole day of electricity usage, let alone 2 days for example. And if you work at home you wouldn't even need a house battery, or maybe just an even smaller one to be safe.
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@jackf1841 If Flanders could just become independent without anything else changing, maybe it could be very prosperous. However that isn't what would happen. Rather it would automatically get kicked out of the EU and probably not allowed back in due to veto's of Spain, Remaining Belgium (Wallonia+Brussels), ... Due to this the port of Antwerp likely would quickly falter, trade and movement across borders would be hurt hard, ... Also a lot of the wealth in parts of Flanders (like Vlaams-Brabant) actually comes from Brussel (people working in Brussel, paying taxes in Flanders/Belgium), which also might dissapear.
If everything goes good, yes independence can be beneficial for Flanders. However the moment some things don't (like the EU, Brussels, Port of Antwerp, ...), we'd end up in a hard economic recession.
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp I can't immediately find it, but I think it came more out of context than him actually openly saying it. As for why? Like I said, an EU army would make the EU less reliant on the US, less inclined to remain silent when they believe the US does something stupid or right out illegal (like the assassination of Soleimani) and instead of buying US weaponry (like the F-35 and other), it would be more inclined to research and develop its own fully in house, immediately removing a large market for US manufacturers.
Sure, the EU and US are allies, but alliances rarely last forever and if it at some point sours, you can be damn sure the US government wants every influence it can get (hell, the US spied on allied leaders). A superpower like the US want often one thing (or at least the US of the last 70 years): influence, power, control both over allies and enemies and everything in between.
It is just like Trump like the UK leaving the EU, it weakens the EU and opens an opportunity for the US to take advantage of the UK's future really weakened position.
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I'd agree with Kyle's assessment if Bernie wasn't so old. While it doesn't impact him now, a lot can change in 2-3 years, especially with what he wants to accomplish. therefore it would be better to chose someone that more closely aligns with his policies and vision (which is why I believe he'd chosen Warren a year ago, not so anymore now). Someone like Nina Turner, who also has shown that she can be an "attack dog" if she wants to (less than Tulsi, but Tulsi is ofcourse a candidate and vilified by the media, more in the spotlights), would be a better pick.
I think the voters Tulsi would bring, would be minimal compared to what Bernie already should be bringing out at this point. Especially since those republicans who'd vote for her as president, might not necessarily vote for a Bernie/Tulsi ticket. You can't just add up their supporters, because their can be aversions among them towards the whole ticket. Especially among the possible supporters of the VP.
Tulsi would however be a great pick as SOD, being anti-war, a veteran and she would be the first woman to become SOD (although the last part would be of less importance ofcourse). And if they already talked with Tulsi about becoming SOD directly after the nomination, she still can be an "attack dog" for Bernie's campaign (they could just float that she'd be the most likely pick).
So, yeah, Nina Turner as VP and Tulsi as SOD would be the best at this moment in my eyes.
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@brandonwright1791
minimum membership fee
The membership fee is the contribution to the NATO budget which is used to fund the NATO organisation itself. The US pays around 22% of this cost, Germany 15%, France and the UK around 10-11%. So there always was a 'fee', this just wasn't linked to military expenditure of the members.
freeload
Now personally I have no problem with the 2% mark and indeed members should not be allowed to freeload. What I do dislike is that quite often people from the US say that the US pays for EU defence, which is rather stupid. The US doesn't have such a high budget because of European defence, but rather because it wants to have such a high budget and because of its global ambition, US costs for 'protecting' Europe are likely quite low compared to that. This won't change when every member spends 2% of their gdp.
And even now the EU combined spends around 3 times as much as Russia, so it isn't really just about spending, the main weakness of the EU to me is the division, which makes it much less effective even with high spending.
I personally am in favor of an EU military where countries pay in 1,5-1,8% or so of their GDP in a common budget, with 0,2-0,5% spend in something like national guard units for each country, coming to 2% of GDP in total. Even without an increase in % expenditure, this will increase the EU's military potential a lot.
However the US (government) doesn't really like the idea of an EU military for multiple reasons:
1. They fear this might threaten NATO, because the EU wouldn't need NATO, but rather just want a regular alliance,
2. An EU army would most likely not buy equipment from the US, but rather become selfsupplying, causing the US to lose out a lot of income and influence,
3. they probably won't like that suddenly they aren't by far the strongest, possibly losing influence in NATO if it remains.
PS. the requirement for expenses on material is 20%, not 40% like I thought it was earlier. Just wanted to set the record straight
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@brandonwright1791 *Europe has tried many times to come together on armaments, they've tried it on ships, tanks, artillery and aircraft and IT NEVER WORKS.
They all tried to bring rifle ammunition calibre down from 7.62mm to 5.56mm and they couldn't even agree on that so it took the USA to simply go ahead with it for them to sheepishly follow suit!*
Which is exactly why I am in favor of a more united EU military, then squables between the members are less relevant in development and acquisition.
It never works and it cannot work simply because whether you like it or not Europe is made up of disparate nations with disparate ambitions and desires,
The US is made up states with their own desires and interests. They just share a common interest on defence in the form of a federal armed forces. The EU can have this too, it just needs to reform towards it. It isn't like the US upon its creation just happened to suddenly have common material etc. its army was a patchwork of militia's. Only over the course of decades was it turned into a more efficient federal armed forces.
you might erroneously think that they all come together under the eu umbrella but in actual fact this umbrella merely exasperates their differences and it always will.
That is your personal opinion, with which I disagree.
So the eu is 'coming together' to produce a 6th gen fighter while neatly skipping over the fact it never produced a 5th gen? Right.
Why not? Why waste time and resources on a gen 5 fighter when it will clearly be 1-2 decades behind upon development completion, by which time the US and possibly others have already almost developed their gen 6. Your entire rant was about the typhoon being late to the party, this time they will try to avoid this by skipping the gen 5 and you're again critising it, be consistent.
For 2026 read 2039 and by then the world will be flying 7th gen?
Yeah, right. Now I see, you are just so biased you can't look at it in a normal way anymore. A gen 7 by 2040, oh please. It takes usually around 20-25 years to develop a next gen fighter, the US expects their gen 6 to be operational somewehere around 2030, at best only a few years before European 6th gen fighters are meant to be operational and after that 7th gen is likely to be much longer out, you can only keep advancing so much. At this moment no one knows what a 7th gen would be like. Even for a 6th gen it is still not entirely clear.
Europe CANNOT cooperate, it CANNOT do it.
Says your own personal bias. If Europe can't cooperate the EU wouldn't even exist, let alone things like the Eurozone.
but is still 4th generation!
It is by most considered a 4,5, somewhere in between a 4th and 5th gen.
Meanwhile top tier air forces have moved on to 5th gen stealth
At this moment F35 is the only 5th gen stealth fighter in large numbers, the other gen 5 fighters put all together don't even equal 80 planes built combined.
Eu defence procurement is 100% politically driven
This is completely ridiculous since several EU nations have bought F35's and buy other US hardware. And again, in the US defence procurement is also greatly politically driven, they just are fortunate that they have a massive military industry and budget so they can decide for themself how to develop for example their next plane. This is entirely the same as these european cooperation projects, only at a much larger scale and at one level: their federal level, which the EU at the moment lacks for military matters, which I'd like to see change.
even if it's utter crap and costs a fortune as has proven the case with Panther, A400M Typhoon and Merlin.
The procurement of the Panther has nothing to do with the EU. The UK itself selected it and it was a British company that built it based on the Iveco LMV from Italy, but adapted. This is completely irrelevant to this discussion since it isn't an EU cooperation, rather several european nations opted to buy it. And the humvee definitely isn't the great vehicle you think. It served well in a non-armored way (in Afghanistan soldiers even removed doors and other things for mobility). However once IED's started to become more frequent and armor was added to it, it started to have problems of its own which eventually led to it becoming replaced. So no, it didn't necessarily fit the requirements of certain nations, like probably the UK.
I already talked about the A400M, it definitely isn't a bad plane, not even for its price, it just a rather recent plane and it has the disadvantage that it (likely) never will be adopted by the US or several of its allies, since many procurements are also politically inspired (keeping the US happy for example). We won't be able to really evaluate how well the A400M did untill next decade or so, but based on capabilities it was certainly worth it.
The typhoon has been a mess like I said, because for one France pulled out with its investment and expertise (they made a very capable plane by themselves, probably besides the F35, F-22 and typhoon best in the world in active operation, for 20 times less than the F35 and around 35% than the F-22) and the problem that they changed its intended role mid development due to the fall of the USSR (for a moment the entire project was expected to be shutdown back then).
And why is the merlin utter crap according to you?
Hell, the Italian Panther was even built under licence in Russia for Russian service!
You mean the original Iveco, on which the panther was based, not the "italian panther". And so? What does it matter that Russia uses a version of it under lincensing. If anything it means it is better than you try to make it out to be, why else would Russia even want it?
There's a difference between politically driven and defence trials, in the USA there are numerous defence contractors all vying for the contracts, only the best will win, IT WORKS!
You think this is different in the EU? What do you think happens during a cooperation? They also let companies offer propositions and then select one, just like in the US. No one is forcing any EU country to buy an EU product, as is clearly shown by the fact that several EU countries bought F35 and France having its own rafale. What exactly are you trying to say here? That Europe shouldn't even get a choice, but should just always buy from the US and let the US develop the military armament. Do you know how stupid you currently are sounding like?
In the eu there is BEA and nobody else, if the eu insists on buying internally then it must be BEA, can you not see the fault in that?
Oh wow, this is nex level stupid, it is like me saying in the US there is only Raytheon.
and can you remember what happened the last time a top notch military fell into the hands of unaccountable Europeans?
Really a WW2 reference? you really are going of the deep end, aren't you? If anything an EU military would prevent another such conflict in Europe, since an EU army would prevent EU internal wars from ever developing (just like a war between US states is now unthinkable) and clearly be focused mostly on defence, with only limited intervention forces.
Would you honestly trust a first world armed force in the hands of the eu?
100%, I'd trust it more in the hands of the EU than the US.
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@twat240
But what if, for example, they make one on the right to live? Something that no one could ever contest, something that's very clear? Well would that be used to block any form of abortion whatsoever? Or block euthanasia?
Ofcourse whenyou make a constitutional law, you always make sure to be very carefull with the wording and lots of experts would look at it and try to find possible unwanted implications and change it to account for something.
And if you are somehow blocked, you'd try find a workaround. In your example, they'd just say that because the embryo up to week x isn't alive/viable to live yet (medically), it therefor doesn't have the right to live yet and therefor an abortion untill week x is possible. In case of euthanasia, it is even more easy, the right to live doesn't mean you are forced/obligated to live and therefor you can choose to end your live/have you live ended. You see how important the wording can be? And if it is absolutely impossible to get around, you just need to change the constitution. In fact, this is exactly what Ireland did.
Particularly as we don't have proportional voting
If you get a written constitution, maybe at the same time you can chance to PR. But again, it mostly depends on the UK situation and yes, the UK the situation at the moment is difficult. In my eyes partly because the UK is falling/has fallen behind other democracies on democratic systems (FPTP and constitution).
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@ninemilliondollars Update, 1/5th of the cost is a tax that will lower every year from now and dissapear by 2030, this tax was necessary because renewable were still very expensive at the beginning of their energy transition. In terms of cost for production Germany is only +-0,2 cents/kWh higher than France (6,6 vs 6,68), and this while they placed a lot of renewables when they were still expensive (and thus will remain an expensive part untill reaching their point or returned investment), but everything new now placed is cheaper than current new nuclear.
52% of Germany's electricity cost is taxes, Of this around 1/3rd is this renewable tax that will lower and eventually dissapear and 1/3rd VAT (16% in Germany, 15% in France) and the remaining third a slew of other smaller taxes. If we just compare the production + grid costs of the bills, Germany is around 2,7 cents/kWh higher. No, renewables don't cost more below 50% of the grid, however if you started the transition when they were expensive, you'll feel that for some time (+-20-25 years for those expensive installations). Furthermore if you grant subsidies etc. to quicken the transition, than this too is an extra cost. Without the subisidies the transition would still have happened, just a lot more slowly.
France also exports their power to neighbouring countries during excess production, this allows them to keep a higher % of production nuclear without incurring higher costs/managing problems and at the same time they can charge higher prices for the power, double gain. If everyone of their neighbours used nuclear power at the same rate as France, they'd have way too much production at times, having to curtail their nuclear output, which is rather costly and might prove more difficult to manage (EV's could help with this, just like they'll help renewables).
Furthermore France uses old nuclear reactors, the cost of which tend to be very low currently compared to this of new nuclear, 2,5-4 times cheaper.
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@Willywin
first it was, the economy will collapse as soon as you vote to Leave
then it was the economy will collapse when you invoke Article 50
Just few people actually said this and this would was always more dependent on how markets would react and wasn't a 'collapse' as you say, rather a hit to for example the pound. The markets reacted better than expected, possibly because essentially nothing was clear or decided at those moments, for all they knew the EU and UK would reach a deal that would cause nothing to change in terms of trade.
And for the record, the pound has been falling the last few years compared to the euro and there has been a lot of investment moved out of the UK to the EU or investment that was expected to be done in the UK put on hold or moved to the EU. Does this mean there was no investment? Ofcourse not. And again, a lot of bussiness wanted to first see what would happen, if you don't need to move production, work, whatever obviously it would be cheaper to not move it. Much will again depend on how bussiness will react now to the deal reached and the actual impact of brexit/end of transition.
then it was the economy will collapse when we left on Jan31st
Anyone who said this was just stupid, the transition agreement ensured essentially nothing would change in terms of trade for almost another year. So why would the economy collapse at that point?
then it was the economy will collapse at the end of the transition period
It would collapse without a deal, guess what, a deal has been reached, so any economic impact won't be as worse as could have been according to the worst case scenario.
Besides this, only one day has gone by: a holiday during lockdowns, so a negative outcome can still come. Moreover most people that know what they speak about said the hardest hits would come overtime, initially not noticed, unlike covid which hit directly and has a direc huge impact, the brexit impact to the economy will happen over a prolongued time almost unnoticed while it is happening.
'There would be queues miles long from the get go - then when there are no queues - 'well there's no trade...'
Well, yeah, there is no trade, get the numbers yourself if you don't believe it. It is a holiday, with lockdowns, uncertainty among hauling companies on what to do/what will happen especially after what happened last week, ... So obviously there aren't lines now. Sure some people said there would be queues immediately, the problem is, this was under the assumption that there would be as much trade as usual, there isn't. Last week we could already see how much impact a temporary closure had after a few hours, eventually the impact lasted for days after the border was opened again. That there will be delays at Dover is not disputed, even the British government has prepared for it.
Now at some point I am sure there will be some minor disruption somewhere which will be quickly resolved as companies and Governments in Europe want to sell hassle free to the UK as well
You do know that the UK governments position is to get deliveries into the UK as hassle free as possible (since this involves things like food, medication, essential supplies, .... things that will immediately be noticed by the population if missing), even if it means just waving them through upon entering the UK. It is the EU that plans to treat the border as it is: a border. The delays are expected to hit traffic coming from the UK to the EU and the EU can't care less about that.
But you need to move on, everyone else has, Labor, Lib Dems, the EU
Oh, don't worry, we have moved on and accept the UK is out, you already were out almost a year ago, and I am happy about that, I would have detested another extension. But just because we have moved on, doesn't mean we can't look at and expect/discuss the impact of brexit. Labor does this too, as do the lib dems, EU, ...
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+Benny Biggums
First off all the US and Russia have been rivals for decades and with russia meddling in us elections tensions have only risen, this while the US and europe have been allies for several decades and are both part of nato, which in the event of an attack on a memberstate gets triggered regardless. Now in this scenario ukraine gets attacked, not a nato member, but that doesn't matter, any openly russian expansion from towards/into europe will be seen as an act of agression.
Secondly Trump doesn't hate nato, he only critised other members for not investing enough in their military/
And to close, Trump's opinion doesn't matter at all in this matter. It's congress that declares war, not a president. Maybe trump can veto it (I don't know us law on this), but seeing he's under investigation for ties with russia and probably his entire party, as well as the democrats and most of the rest of the US would support a war against Russia, he can't afford to use this veto, if he does veto it, the republicans will quickly replace him with mike pence (impeaching trump either through congress or through his own republican cabinet).
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@thepax2621 You clearly have no idea how people outside Germany view it if you think people laugh with it. Maybe the only thing that is laughed with in regards to Germany is its military, something most people never even think about when mentioning Germany.
Considering Merkel is respected all over (getting better polling numbers in other countries than even popular leaders from that country), I don't see how you could think she made Germany a laughing stock. If Germany is a laughing stock anywhere, it is despite Merkel, not because of her.
I am sorry, but there isn't a euro crisis anymore. Are there possible financial problems? Yeah, but these are present at all times. The Euro crisis as a crisis has been over for years. The same with the refugee crisis. Just compare the moment it was a crisis with how it is now. If you feel these are still crisis, it is your subjective opinion, not a objective fact.
And to say Merkel 'accumulated' crisis is just ridiculous, these crisis just happened while she was a leader, not because of her. They would have happened whether she was chancellor or not.
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@herculeskoutalidis1369
the only part of EU legislation that I (and Le Pen's party) find negative, is the "freedom of movement"
Which is an integral part of the single market and probably one of the advantages most people will not want to give up. Even the swiss voted against ending free movement and they are probably one of the countries most affected by it (negatively). And well, according to polls 74% of EU citizens say that the EU is not worth it without free movement. This obviously is shortsighted imo, but it shows the popularity of it and ending it will not be easy. And before saying "well, the eastern countries were the ones voting in favor of free movement" or something similar, in that poll Polish people were least likely to agree with that statement (ie. they think the EU is worth it even without freedom of movement).
which leads to a (very) higher immigration from eastern and southern Europe
Many people coming from eastern Europe don't emigrate here, they work a few years and then go back home. They normally are a net benefit to the economy, since they still pay taxes, help spur economic growth and don't require as much 'investment' (no education, no healthcare during their childhood, no healthcare costs when they grow old, ...), moreover they usually take on lower paying jobs many people don't necessarily want to do.
Besides there are already rules countries can use to minimise the impact of low payed eu immigrants. Can that be improved? Yeah probably, but I don't think this is what Le Pen wants when I look at her EU stance.
by starting some EU-wide conversation about this
This is under the assumption there wasn't already a conversation about it, there was/is. This has been a rather large issue for many years now. I don't remember the outcome, but a few years ago they were already talking on the EU level to put out more regulation/national powers in terms of controlling eu migration and cheap foreign labour.
is that in countries like France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and also the UK, indigenous population is projected to be less than 50% of their population, by 2050
You do understand that people of neighbouring countries also fall under this, right? For example for Belgium the Dutch, French, German and people from Luxembourg are also seen as 'foreigners' in those predictions. And if at the same time people from Belgium emigrate to these neighbouring countries, the proportion of people with foreign origin will grow even more, despite not necessarily a larger influx of foreigners.
People of foreign origin from eastern Europe only make up less then 10% of all foreigners in Belgium. there are more southern EU foreigners (people with Spanish and Italian origin make up 15% of foreigners), but these mostly emigrated pre-1975. At this moment people from neighouring countries make up 20% of people with foreign ancestry in Belgium.
Also you need to be aware of how these predictions might determine people from foreign origine. Is it up to the grandchildren, great-grandchildren or maybe even further down the line? It could be that in this way one foreigner can have a large family of 'foreign' children and grandchilden, even if his kids have a mother of Belgian ancestry and mary people with Belgian ancestry, ...
And then there is the fact of globalisation. In the past you didn't have many people of different origin because travelling and communicating was much more different. Even without the EU free movement, this globalisation isn't just going to end.
This is lowering the quality of the population of these countries day by day
You do realise this is a very racist thing to say and is actually close to, or exactly how Nazi's looked at/talked about 'intermingling' with slavs and jews? By insinuating that foreigners lower the QUALITY of the population you are essentially saying these foreigners are of lower quality/value/lesser.
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@Al Castill
So basically you are saying that because the smaller states have an overrepresentation, this increases stability, eventhough this just causes friction in the larger more populated states? Exactly how does an overrepresentation of the smaller states improve the stability?
Look at the biggest cities, they are hording all the votes
The 240 largest cities in the US would need to vote unanimously and with all eligible voters for one candidate in order for this candidate to get the same amount of votes as Hillary in 2016. That all people there vote is unthinkable unless voting becomes mandatory. Furthermore that all voters would vote for the same candidate is even more unthinkable. The "cities will have the power in a popular vote" argument is ridiculous.
Many nations today are still in Civil war because one of the reason is that their is only one majority ruling party and the other parties are being oppressed.
No, most civil wars are caused by ethnic and religious divisions. Furthermore you are now talking about dictatorships, it is not like abolishing the EC would turn the US into a dictatorship, in fact it would allow MORE parties to get a chance. At this moment the way the EC is set up, the number of parties in the US is basically artificially depressed to 2, because if a third one comes up, it will eat in one of the other two, and eventually either the new or old one has to dissapear in order to not always let the opposition win.
Plenty of nation have split in two because that issue.
Examples please.
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@Pax.Britannica
"You can't impose differing tariffs on a country *dot dot dot, unless you have a trade agreement"*
This doesn't mean they can do anything they want, afterall you need to get a trade agreement to get different tariffs. If you as a country want to apply different tariffs for different countries without a trade agreement, you are in violation of WTO rules and will be sanctioned for this.
So, yes, you can impose differing tariffs on countries... Just go about it in ways everyone can understand.
Only under stipulated circumstances, guess what, these kind of stipulated circumstances can/are also present in EU law. This doesn't mean you can just do whatever, you can just do what you want as long as it isn't in breach of any rule.
You cannot get 90% of the world to belong to an organisation that exists just to tell them what they can and cannot do.
Actually that is exactly what happens, however WTO rules are made in such a way that they aren't a problem for most nations or better put, they aren't a worse problem than just being outside WTO, just like being inside the EU is considered more beneficial than being out for its members, despite the rules.
You can easily do that actually. North Africa, middle East, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Serbia, and a crap tonne of microstates that probably import their own drinking water aren't even observers.
There are actually 14 non WTO countries (Bosnia or Serbia aren't one of them). These are either non-recognized countries (Kosovo, Palestine), small nations that really don't need it or someone like North Korea. The only odd country is Eritrea.
It's not some regulatory body
It has a regulatory process, just a very intricate one that essentially consists of its members.
Again, I don't need to. All I need to prove, is that at some point in time, I have purchased something from outside the EU, And that alone is proof I have paid a 15% tariff imposed by the EU.
Which is a worthless argument. I can then say that I bought something from outside the EU didn't need to pay import duties on it (which is usually the case for me btw) to say that it isn't a problem.
And right there you admit the Tariffs are excessive, and that the only time you are willing to pay the excessive tariff is when you have no other choice.
Completely not what I indicated. I don't go looking for anything outside the EU unless I can't find it in the EU, this is completely irrelevant of tariffs. Even without the tariffs I would do it this way.
It impacts only the lives of those who've profited off the restrictions of others freedoms.
So essentially tou just don't care about other people, just yourself, great mentality.
No, I wish to make food cheaper for the poorest in society
No, you don't. The EU has FTA's with many food producing countries already allowing the import of a lot of food from outside the EU duty free. Furthermore the EU actually has fairly low tariffs on agricultural imports (+-6% only the US, Indonesia and Oceania do better with around 2-4% less) and the EU is the largest importer of agricultural products in the world. Food is fairly cheap in the EU and cutting tariffs is barely going to change anything.
If you want to support the poorest in society, advocate for these tariff income to be put in a social program that support these poorest. Abolishing the tariffs is not really going to help them.
I wish tariffs would stop being imposed on cheaper clothes
If they are cheap tariffs are barely going to move the price and again you can use the revenue to help those that really need it instead of lowering the price by a nearly meaningless amount.
I wish farmers would stop extorting money out of the people, by demanding that if they want to continue living, that they buy their food off them.
Well, farming isn't cheap nor easy. These farmers also need to earn their living or else they can't afford to buy anything, from the EU or not. Ofcourse you could just say that we should stop farming here in Europe and should only import from other countries were the farmers are working for a fraction of the cost. Lets just ignore that we then are exploiting these farmers, and just focus on the fact that we then wast valuable farmland while there is already little, the fact that more and more natural land elsewhere is already being destroyed to use it for farming and the fact that if for some reason global trade lines are interrupted, we'd have a big problem to just feed ourselves.
foreign companies don't even bother selling to us.
What the hell are you talking about? The UK imports more than it exports.
Doesn't exist. Don't add the word "free" where it doesn't belong.
Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean the notion doesn't exist. We don't need to pay anything when transporting between EU states, thus it is free trade. Don't like that, I don't care.
No, they hadn't. They got kicked out of Malaysia
Fine, bad choice of words on my part.
only to find no one cared enough about them to make a deal
Only problem with that is that they are one of the countries in the world with the most FTA's (by countries, not treaties).
we got rid of the corn laws
Which completely forbade imports untill a (way too high) price was reached. This is a completely different situation. Tariffs don't forbid trade and the EU is the largest importer of agricultural produce currently despite the tariffs.
and our economy bloomed
The UK was in the true golden age of its empire, ofcourse the economy bloomed. And ofcourse a complete restriction on (certain) food imports is not really going to help the economy.
No they protect the owners of that production base
Nope, overall it would be better for most bussiness to just offshore the production and paying lower wages while just keeping the same price or just lower it slightly to be more competitive.
and the reason that production base dies as a result is because they are incapable of competing.
Because of the higher wages here, something the producers can't help. Eventually the wages in these foreign countries are going to rise too and their products will become more expensive, but by then we won't have the production or know how capability here and will remain beholden to these other countries.
but if you actually looked at the number of jobs nation wide
Because the economy grew, which it was doing regardless, but in the meanwhile regions in the rustbelt are devastated with high unemployment because people can't find work they can do.
Again British empire. Probably the largest free trade experiment
Again look at the term 'empire'. How was the UK economy doing after it lost that empire and before it joined the EU?
It puts even more responsibility and rules on tech giants to guard their platforms against copyright infringements and misinformation
Well, those are problems that needs to be adressed. Entire societies can be destroyed with a lot of disinformation. But it is is a very difficult topic, they are still currently working on it for so far I know, so we won't know the impact it will actually have on us. I however do see the impact misinformation already has.
hasn't passed, try again.
Actually it has passed as part of the 2017 digital economy act, it just was never enforced for now. The government was sued for that last year and is currently again trying to pass a law to enforce it. And it is just an example of what kind of regulation the UK government is doing, just because this didn't pass, doesn't mean other regulation isn't passing too.
The DSA isn't passed either and could also still fail, yet you bring it up.
It doesn't matter if regulation doesn't impact a particular person's life, if it exists, and it affects someone's, then it's fair game for criticism.
So a law outlawing murder can be criticised? Afterall that impacts the life of the murderer. Obviously I know you don't mean this, but it shows that under your way of thinking, no law or rule can be passed without being fair game of criticism. Every law and every rule will impact someone, what else is the point of having it?
but clearly it affected to Metric Martyrs
They are just stupid ideologists. Putting both metrics on it wouldn't really change anything for them.
*"Many countries that need to improve, but aren't doing so (the UK)"
I'm sure the metric martyrs would disagree with that.*
I was talking about the government institutions.
Is a trade partnership that budges it's nose into the laws of member states. Such as demanding they have laws governing conditions of work relating to minimum wage, hours, and health and safety.
Which is exactly what trade agreements include if there is a potential competitive difference between the sides due to work conditions. Nothing abnormal about it. You can't really have a free trade agreement without things like this included. Usually even equal nations would put this in, but it is then considered so irrelevant it is essentially ignored.
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@andrefasching1332
1. Sure, but it is clear to most that individually EU countries won't really count in the future, that is exactly one of the reasons to unite: to not become irrelevant/weak.
2. There were also different languanges in the US in the past: English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, ... German only really diminished around WW1 for example. And the US still doesn't have an official language. Overtime you'll get a common language in the EU next to the native ones. In fact English is already becoming that language.
3. That isn't really relevant. The Colonies at the time of creation weren't all exactly the same in terms of (local) government. And again, this is something that changes overtime. The US didn't form their identity in a few years, it took decades/centuries. The current EU is barely a few decades old (depending on when you'd like to start counting).
4. Yes, they left Europe for several reasons, one of them was to keep their identity that was being subdued in their homeland.
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I honestly had quite a lot of issues with Thunderfoot's video, there ofcourse are reasonable criticisms, but then there were reasonable criticisms with planes 100 years ago and now it is a very reliable and highly used method of transportation.
The thing is that we already can do this with current technologically, it just depends on how economically they can make it more than anything else.
These kind of video's just come way too soon, the development of all these companies only started less than 5-6 years ago, maglev has been in development for around 50 years now and it still isn't widely used, but nevertheless recognised as being viable and the future of high speed rail. Just give it 10-15 more years before actually saying hyperloop isn't possible, it might very well be, especially with further development.
It's been a while that I have watched his video and responded to it, so I don't remember everything exactly.
People also said that boring company tunneling costs were way too optimistic, and yet they have several projects in the pipeline that are really cheap compared to other comparable projects (and for which boring company will be on hook in case of failures).
Things can change/evolve overtime, the same can happen with hyperloop. That having said, I'd expect a hyperloop to be much more realistic using tunnels, it will be much more difficult for air ro rush in, safer from things like natural disasters or sabotage, less problems with land acquisition and less need for curves/following geography, especially if the boring tunnels costs are correct, this could be incredibly beneficial, main downside would be maintenance difficulty.
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@csuporj It would be awkward to let Russia-s enemy build military bases in a russian speaking territory.
And like I said, NATO wouldn't built military bases there, they are not stupid.
Russian is the most common first language in the Donbas and Crimea regions of Ukraine, and the predominant language in large cities in the east and south of the country.
And? German was the predominant language in Sudetenland, Austria and Danzig, so are you saying that Nazi-Germany was justified in taking those regions and when Poland refused, to invade it? France is the predominant language in Southern Belgium, does this mean it has the right to take it? Spanish is the predominant language in most parts of South/central America, does this mean Spain can claim it? Ofcourse not, purely talking about language is non-sensical.
The Alps didn't stop the occupation of South Tyrol.
You do realize there already were German troops in Italy before the occupation as allies, right?
A buffer btw doesn't necessarily stop a war/invasion, rather makes it more difficult.
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@chipwhite7170
the 12 years is the time we have to act before we probably end up in a selfsustaining cycle if don't actually start to act (that climate change will keep going even if we achieve 0% emissions eventually). This number comes from scientific reports, so you indeed don't need to be a climate expert to know that it is so wrong, you should just read their reports to know it is right. It isn't that difficulty to believe if you realize climate change is like an exponential process.
In the beginning (year 0) you notice almost nothing, in the middle (year 20 for example) you start to notice a few things, in the end (year 35 for example) the earth is uninhabitable for humankind (or better said our current society/way of living). Now the example I gave is an exageration, but you should really look into expontentional progress of climate change if you haven't already heard about it.
I am well aware that there are cycles throughout history, and experts know this too, yet they still warn for climate change, why? Actually fairly simple. At this moment the last 10.000 years has already been the warmest period in modern human history (+-100.000 years), the modern human hasn't been through higer temperatures. Furthermore the temperature of the past 10.000 years has been rather constant, in the 100.000 years before the temperatures went up and down, up and down. It isn't a coincidence human societies developed al in the past 10k years. This has for a part to do with the fact that the temperature is at a stable rate that is nearly perfect for human society to flourish. If this becomes warmer or colder, our entire civilisation, human life as we know it could collapse. A few degrees might be all that it takes for our societies to collapse.
When people come with the temperature cycles of the far past as an argument, I always have to almost laugh. We know that that is a phenomenon, but it is one that takes centuries, millenia even. At this moment it is happening over the course of a maybe a few decades. Furthermore there never were prospering human civilizations during these cycles, so the fact that we know these cycles happen, doesn't mean we should just sit by and do nothing because it is just how things go. We need to do what we can to maintain the stable temperature we have now, and don't let it move out of control whether it is cause by humanity or is just a natural phenomenon.
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So much stupidity in this video, it almost pains my brain.
Europe has been left fearful
Ofcourse they are afraid of a no deal, anyone who doesn't fear no deal is an idiot. Sure you could be happy to leave and that the UK will finally be out, but you should also be fearful for the (short-term) consequences. There are basically no positive predictions for the aftermath of a no deal (ofcourse there have been positive speculations, but without any foundation).
But if Jonhson hope is that the EU will blink (or rather the national leaders of the memberstates), it will not. No matter how damaging a no deal will be, it will be nothing compared to risking the entire EU falling apart because one (or more) of its core pillars have been "demolished".
they have been debating for 3 years in parliament
And? Does this mean you can just shove aside the parliament, who didn't just wanted to debate, but actually create new laws? The intention is undemocratic to its core, no matter how you try to spin it. Furthermore, if the problem is that parliament doesn't get out of it, the solution should be to push it back to the public with a general election. But ofcourse the tories don't want it, because they know they'd lose. Furthermore, the brexit stalemate wasn't caused by remainers, but by a divided leave side.
They voted for a no deal brexit by triggering article 50
Ehm no, they didn't. Nowhere in article 50 or in the legislation parliament used to trigger it is it stated that the UK would leave with no deal if a deal can't be reached by date x. In fact, they can at any time revoke article 50 and extensions were also not made impossible. So to say they voted for no deal then is bullshit. And in fact they have voted against no deal several times. However, no deal was made an option by triggering article 50. One that parliament wants to avoid in almost any way possible in favor of either a deal or second (more detailed) and possibly binding referendum.
They suddenly have become so pro-uk and pro-british democracy
No, they didn't, they have always been PRO-DEMOCRATIC. In fact a nation that isn't democratic can't join the EU and would be punished or even expelled if they became undemocratic and refused to restore democracy.
They have been undermining (or trying to) british democracy for years
How? By allowing the UK a seat at the table, a veto in important matters, a say in the future of the EU and EU laws, by allowing the most opt outs of any memberstate? How exactly was british democracy undermined? By having the UK vote against 3% of EU laws that passed?
The UK is part of an international organisation that has gone out of its way to be as democratic as an international organisation can be without taking away too much power from memberstates.
The EU is keeping Boris at armslength
Ofcourse they are, he isn't offering anything new. He isn't offering solutions that can see the backstop dissapear, he isn't doing anything that changes the situation, other than having meetings that lead nowhere and keep status quo.
remainers are plotting to stop this
Ofcourse they are, that is why they are called remainers. What you should be focusing on is the brexiteers who don't want a no deal, without them the remainers don't have a majority to do anything either way. So it is Boris' own party that is in shambles. And what did you expect Bercow to do, he is the speaker of the house and it is very clear that that proroguing parliament is meant to stop parliament from stopping no deal, and thus go around parliament. If he didn't react this way, he'd be a terrible speaker.
Scottish court
It isn't illogical that they refuse to postpone the suspension, the suspension won't happen untill after the actual hearing has found place, there is no suspension to postpone now. However I believe they moved the hearing from friday to wednesday so the court will have enough time to give a verdict BEFORE the suspension. At this time there is no victory for any side on this matter, but for some reason brexiteers try to spin it like it is.
The shutdown is only for a few days because parliament would already have been shutdown for the conventions
Except parliament could and wanted to stop the shutdown during the convention, but because it is now officially prorogued at this time, it doesn't have that option. So that is just a bullshit excuse. At the very least the proroguement could have started right after the convention shutdown, there is no reason to have it started before and ended after the convention shutdown. So it is clearly just a ploy to take away parliaments choice in the matter, I wished the Queen had agreed to prorogue parliament, but in this way.
The other things were correct for so far I can tell, so that is at least something.
And before anyone calls me a remainer. I am a pro-EU non-british citizen and I want the UK out, I want the EU to refuse an extension if asked for one.
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The reason this kind of commercial spacetourism is important is because it opens more opportunities for scientific experiments that need to be done in 0g. It as well opens up these space companies to get a different kind of revenue to also develop more capable orbital rockets to further orbital expansion and allow more people to experience true 0g and see earth from space with their own eyes even if just for a very short amount of time.
The reason Bezos went on the first crewed New Shepherd flight is two-fold: 1) he probably wants to do it and seeing he started and funds Blue Origin, why not and 2) to show that this system is completely safe, otherwise he wouldn't go on it. Especially the 2nd reason is important, it shows how much trust they have in that system.
As for the regular people not caring, sure. But most of them don't care or know anything about what happens in the space industry anyway, eventhough the space industry is crucial for so many things people now take for granted, going from GPS, to wheather reports, to scientific data, ... However for people following the space industry (ie space enthusiasts) this it a big deal, because they know why it is a big deal.
Then for Bezos' comment. It is quite clear what he meant. He made his fortune, everything he has due the success of Amazon. Without the success of Amazon he wouldn't have been able to found and fund Blue Origin. The conditions of Amazon workers might not be good and something should be done about it, but he would have said the exact same thing if these workers had good conditions. He wasn't laughing with them here, he was just stating a fact: Amazon's success allowed him to fund Blue Origin and their New Shepherd program/rocket.
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@alexanderlipowsky6055 (FYI, this is partially a response to you and partially also going broader)
I'd say that an EU army should be defensive in nature and only can be deployed outside of EU/allies borders with express permission of the EU parliament (2/3rd permission or so, not easy to get).
However I'd have 'national guard' units that are directly under the command of the national memberstates and payed for by them (for example everyone has to give 2% of GDP to the EU army, but can get 0,2-5% or so back for the national guard units). The goal of these units could be two fold:
1) it can be easily deployed by that nation/memberstate within their own country for example against terrorist activities, natural disaster relief , ...
2) it can be used as expeditionary forces. For example if France wants to still do something in Africa, they can send these units. Why give that option? Because otherwise resentment can build up and nations might want to leave this common EU defence army to reclaim more independence.
Now memberstate can obviously call in help from the EU army for internal matters like terrorism and disaster relief, though nations with national guard units would be expected to use these first.
So nations wouldn't necessarily need national guard units, for example a memberstate like Luxembourg is too small for a usefull guard unit and a memberstate like Germany might not want one because it doesn't wishes to deploy troops outside EU borders without a clear EU mandate.
FYI a defensive focus shouldn't mean the EU army isn't focused on doing offensive operations either, rather just that it won't do these unless with clear permission or for defensive reasons. Any effective army should be capable to do both offense and defense and have the means for it. For example a few aircraft carriers might be usefull in that regard, but not too many, 2-4 could be a good number.
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New independent media needs to come together and get their own cable channel to reach older voters. Like fox for the conservative and CNN/MSNBC/... for the democratic moderates/neoliberals, you need to create a true left cable channel. Even if you just run your youtube shows on it, it will still be accesible for older people who don't use youtube/social media.
Also you can have your already existing fans point this new cable channel out to their (older) family, for whom the change won't be too "extreme". Putting things like Secular talk, the humanist report, the rational national, Tim black, ..., possible rising (though I don't know if this would even be allowed by the hill) on cable might increase the outreach of progressive new independent media to older voters.
If you don't do this, than you are basically just admitting that you won't really have an influence on elections/older people for the next 10-15 years untill your current viewers enter this older block op voters in larger numbers.
Trying to have the corporate old media like you is I believe rather useless. Obama, while running a rather progressive campaign, still was probably already known by the media establishment to not be hostile to the establishment. The left and progressive are (known to be) "hostile" to the old corporate media and the establishment and are an existential threat to the establishments future. So no, I don't think sucking up to existing corporate media will work. You can try, but you should focus more on expanding the outreach of new media.
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@segiraldovi
1) Sure, though I don't know if this is because people tend to work more or due to something else. If you earn more because you work more hours/multiple jobs, that isn't necessarily beneficial. For example people in the EU tend to have more vacation and other leave than the average US employee and possible also other benefits brining productivity down, but life quality up. Then it might become more a question of what is more important: quality (more benefits) vs quantity (more money)
2) No, the average citizens isn't harmed. Also the average american can actually be paying more tax (public AND private) if you include things that are covered under Europe public taxes, but not American ones, like healthcare. You will need to be at least in the high middle class or higher for the higher taxes in the EU to be negative compared to the low US taxes
3) There are some very high level US American universities, but those are general well funded and ofcourse are not the benchmark imo. It is a bit like the medical industry in the US. They have some of the best medical research and new procedure, but at the same time most of these might never be available for anyone but the (very) rich. I'd also not discount the high European universities either.
5) Depends on what you understand under freedom. In certain cases yes, in others no. But generally in terms of freedom I'd rather live in Europe than the US based on what I currently know about both.
6) Trump sees everything as a transaction or a powerdynamic. Like the trade deficit European spending on the military, strongman dictators generally looking more cool, powerfull and in control vs European democratic leaders, ... And he often doesn't see the nuance bits of this.
For example, while yes quite a few European nations underspend on the military in the last 2-3 decades, the difference is less big than it seems. For example the US wants to maintain a global military power, Europe doesn't need that. The US incorporates things like healthcare, pensions, benefits, ... for their military personnel in their military budget, in European nations this usually is already covered under different budgets, thus aren't added to the military, ...
Main point is, while European nations did underspent a bit on military on general, they aren't by anyway freeloading on the US, especially not when the US main policy was keeping Europe dependent on the US to maintain huge influence in European nations.
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@JustAGuyWhoLikesStuff. Like I said in my first comment, even if we decide to go nuclear now, it won't be operational untill around 2040, by which time we also can get a fully reliable renewable system.
And one of te problems of using current new nuclear next to renewables is the cost. If renewables undercut nuclear in price, it will cause nuclear to be shutdown. Ofcourse it isn't good for nuclear to be shutdown, from a technical standpoint, but even more from a financial one. Since nuclear that doesn't operate as a baseload will get even more expensive, giving renewables even more opportunity to undercut it. In the end the government would have to ensure that the nuclear powerplants need to run a certain amount of the time, even if this means cheaper renewables can't be used. And this isn't just going to impact the next 2-3 decades, but more like the next 6-8 decades, which is a very long time.
I do believe there can be a time and place for nuclear, but I am thinking more about gen 4, rather than gen 3. However since there isn't a single gen 4 yet in commercial operation (for so far I know), we don't know if gen 4 will meet the expectations (especially on price) and European governments aren't going to bet fully on gen 4 nuclear untill it has at least had a running commercial plant/reactor for a few years.
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@cedrickropp
because for now it’s the only technology we could start build right now and we needed to start last decade in order to get renewables as reliable as nuclear in the next 3 decades.
This already shows me you don't know anything about current gridstorage development.
Absolutely no one is Willi to allocate like a third of government spending on energy solutions
No would that be necessary.
and if countries like Germany with perfectly good regulatory oversight remove their nuclear
It was a bad decision of them, not going to argue with that.
countries like Poland with at best questionable oversight over what goes on in their economy will have to build their own solutions.
No, they wouldn't. Poland will always need to go outside their own country to get nuclear plants build. Germany likely would need to do the same thing, considering their latest nuclear powerplant was build 30 years ago and I don't think they have any company building nuclear power plants.
Also you have international oversight organisations regarding nuclear power production, so it isn't like Poland could just fuck it up.
which they now stopped producing because no one wanted to buy the damned thing.
It actually is the opposite, it was so popular (as a city car) due to its low price (in Germany with incentives only around 11 914€) demand was outpacing manufacturing for the e-up (already 16 months wait time) and because of the low price, it wasn't really profitable for VW, so because they now also sell the ID.3 and 4, they temperorarily suspended new orders, the question ofcourse is whether these will eventually restart again.
BTW the reason why it is so cheap is because it is a very tiny car with a tiny battery, giving less than 100km of reach, the id3 has between 350km and 550km of range, quite the difference and ofcourse it is also larger.
and build up coal
no one in Europe is building up coal, advocating for it or has plans for it.²
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You are somewhat missing the mark here.
For one space exploration is incredibly important for humanity. The resources on earth are finite, however in space you have practically infite amount of resources. A lot of problems now could possibly be fixed with future space advancement, going from resources to energy production, to even ensuring the survival of the human species. The truth is that we actually don't spent enough in space.
Now as for the wealth tax, for some time I was in favor of this, however I changed my stance on it a bit. The main problem is that a lot of wealth is due to stocks. Sure they can sell them to pay the tax, but how are you going to calculate the tax? What if right after paying the tax their wealth suddenly halves due to the stocks plummeting? Should part of the tax be payed back? That is the problems, stocks are essentially perceived wealth untill they are sold. The better solution would actually be to tax the sale of stocks (with a progressive taxrate). Untill they sell the stocks, the wealth value of them are worthless to their holders, they then are only usefull to keep a hand on the company's direction/actions.
So rather than doing a wealth tax, close the loopholes and tax all income (regular income, stock sales, dividends, bonus, ...). Also have all transference of stocks, no matter in what context (eg. inheritance, gift, ...) be seen as a sale and thus taxed.
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@jackjones9587
most of the world could be like France; generating over 70% it's power needs at pretty much net zero.
Maybe, though part of the reason it works so well for France is because it also exports a lot of electricity during down time moments. Without it, 55-60% might be more normal, though not sure about that.
Giving up arable land threatens food security
You don't really need to give up much though? PV panels can be paired with crops, several projects have already successfully proven this. Wind turbines take some space on the ground, but not that much.
and the efficient lifespan of renewables tech is a quarter that of nuclear.
Which I see as an advantage, you can more quickly replace it with improved tech, be it a better version of the same or just something completely new.
but if we really have as little time as we're being told, then, on balance, nuclear stacks up better than renewables.
I am not so sure. it takes around a decade or more to build a new nuclear powerplant in the west (Europe/US). Projections put gridstorage competitive within around 10 years, so by the time the nuclear plants come online, renewables + storage might already be competitive with it. And while during those 10 years nuclear doesn't do a damn thing, renewables are constantly increasing overtime untill you reach the point they need to be, so you don't need to wait 10 years to see effects.
In the end a mix of both renewables+storage and nuclear is likely going to be result in the short term, long term is just impossible to say.
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@jackjones9587
renewables must be the most heavily subsidised sector in the history of power generation!
Possibly, though now this dissapears. Also I wonder if nuclear R&D costs include things like the manhattan project etc, from which likely a lot of knowledge for civil nuclear reactors was also gained. Also I am going to wait, considering a lot of nuclear companies don't put the necessary budget aside for the decommisioning phase, so this might fall back on subsidies too possibly when it comes to it.
The carbon debt payback of renewables may be quicker but the lifespan of their generation capability is much, much lower than nuclear
Which doesn't matter, the carbon cost and the monetary costs of all systems are calculated using expected production over their lifetime. Its a universal value independent of a systems lifetime. So if renewables do better or equal in those, a shorter life actually can be an advantage, to more quickly replace it with improved systems, while with nuclear your are tied to 'old' technology for many more decades.
As I work on large scale solar projects in rural areas, I can tell you with absolute authority, that beyond sheep grazing, no farming is allowed on land leased for solar projects.
So I guess you have taken part in the projects that specifically looked into combining the two? Probably not.
Apart from it being strictly prohibited by the leasehold agreement
Which is not an inherent problem, rather a contract/regulation problem.
it's absolutely impossible to plough, sow, and harvest crops under the panels
Except it is already been done. It just has different design choices from traditional solar field, for example raised higher above the ground and enough spacing. Test have shown around 160% of land use, or 60% more than either just solar or just farming, with around 80% of crops vs normal and 80% solar vs normal. In some more arid area's this likely is even higher due to lower evaporation rates of the crops and the evaporation there is helps keep the panels a bit colder (though probably not that much). There even was a project were they had a net benefit in just the crops yield.
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It comes all down to this: US essentially has a military focused on power projection and offensive operations. And since their goal is global, they need to have large numbers of almost everything. EU countries mostly just focus on defense and regional power.
Also, it feels wrong to just put up all US forces in the Atlantic, they'd need to leave forces/ships at strategically important locations around the world (pacific, south china sea/Japan and South korea, ...). The EU wouldn't have such problems.
In a scenario where a war between the US and EU happens, there should have been years of deteriorating relations and breakdown of NATO. This would spark EU countries to re-orient to EU self reliance on equipment and might also spark more investment in their navies. It would also cause a further integration/cooperation of EU militaries before.
In the end the EU would still keep a defensive stance, both by choice and out of necessity, but it would be much more capable in actually waging a defensive war than in this scenario.
Anyway, like probably everyone else, I can't see a scenario for a US-EU war in at least the next few decades.
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@toddfulton2280
I hear politicians in the US warming up to nuclear
Politicians aren't warming up to nuclear, most never were anti-nuclear to start with. The only reason they talk more about it is because it is either renewables or nuclear when we're talking about reducing air pollution. And thus if they aren't pro-renewable, they need to look to an alternative: nuclear
even some talk of tech companies wanting reactors to power their data centers and transferring excess to the grid
This makes sense, I even imagined using nuclear to power industrial area's (especially those running almost non-stop). However in the end it will be cost that will decide it, and so far I don't see favorable costs for it. Then again maybe the profit these datacenters will generate and non-reliance on other factors (like the grid) will make the extra costs worth it.
but that doesn't mean it was the sole motivation or even the primary motivation
It indeed wasn't the sole one, but imo the main one. Ofcourse stop strengthening our adversaries is also a good thing, however some would argue that creating economic ties with them will make them stop being adversaries entirely. Overall most Europeans would like the EU to become more neutral on the world stage, with good/decent relations with all main countries. Also the US is helped by a threatening Russia, it causes European nations to look more at the US for support.
The idea that improving material conditions in those countries will prevent conflict hasn't panned out.
I don't think that is the right take away. Just because it didn't work out now, doesn't mean it doesn't work out in other occasions. There also have been many times it did work, but obviously it isn't a magic bullet that always finds its mark. Also for all we know in 10-15 years we'll be talking about a democratic Russia with its leaders being inspired by the economic relations we had before the invasion. Making guesses on the long term based on just the past few years is dangerous.
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@robertlipka9541
currently nuclear is expensive to build because about each reactor is a custom job.
Yes and no. Yes it makes is more expensive, but even the mass build French nuclear plants are apparently according to a study from a few years 60-70$/MWh, what makes them more expensive than onshore wind and large scale solar (without storage). Now the difficult thing is that the production cost is lower on the bills, so I don't know how this is the case. Maybe the dismantling costs are underestimated? That or the study overestimates something.
Really there isn't a clear picture, some sources put nuclear even a lot higher, while on the bills it somehow is often much lower. Maybe a lot of current old nuclear reactors will suddenly need subsidies upon decommissioning or something.
If you could have a standard design nuclear reactor, you could mass produce and lower costs.
It will get costs down certainly, but it isn't going to like halve the costs.
For costs, you have to include EVERYTHING in the comparison (including the lifetime of solar panels vs that of a nuclear reactor which can last for maybe three times as long as solar panels).
Yes and no. For LCOE you don't need to include everything, for system LCOE you do. And indeed renewables are quite more expensive when looking at system LCOE at this moment.
Though the lifetime plays no role in LCOE in whatever form. The entire point of LCOE is calculating all lifetime costs and dividing it with the expected electricity production over the plants entire lifetime. So for nuclear 60 years at 90% is already expected in these calculations.
In fact if I had to choose between two options with the same system LCOE costs, I'd always choose the one with the shorter life, since this:
- allows much more flexibility: replacing it sooner by more efficient forms of production eg. better modern solar panels, fusion if it reaches viability, ...
- lowers risk: if a PV plant has a disaster in its first 20 years and needs decomissioning or large repairs, the costs will be much lower than if it happens to a nuclear plant in the same timeframe. Not even mentioning the just changing circumstances on the energy market/politics.
Advanced Nuclear is not that expensive, around $60-70
I expect you mean $60-70/MWh, if so that isn't cheap either, more expensive than coal (though probably not for too long) and only slightly better than offshore wind and gas plants.
Battery storage is almost double this (without the cost of energy to put into batteries).
True , however battery costs are going down, while for now nuclear costs seem to mostly rise. Also it is really a misnomer to look at current prices. A nuclear plant won't be ready untill after around 6-8 years on average and sometimes even longer. And these often are just construction times. It can take much longer from the moment the decision is made up untill start of operation.
What if you now decide to build a nuclear plant and within 10 years when it is just about to become operational, storage costs have gone down enough to compete with your price and still going down? And this is especially important now. Before this time storage wasn't really needed, thus there wasn't much demand or research/development in it. Now several different storage options are being launched/developed, not all might be successfull, but if some are, this might completely change things. And this is just in the next 10-15 years, let alone the next 60-80 years the nuclear powerplant needs to operate in.
This together with the high initial costs is exactly why nuclear will always need a governmental guarantee of a steady price and operation and if this isn't achieved the government will step in with subsidies, essentially putting the risks on the government and overall population, not the investors or developers.
The energy market trading you describe for batteries can also be utilized by nuclear plants... since they run all the time, they can sell at the very peak and even GUARANTEE that power will be available
You could, but it wouldn't be better. Since nuclear generation costs are now higher than renewables (and renewables are still going down, be it at a slower pace) nuclear+storage is more expensive than renewable+storage, so you'd never do it except if you really want to go 100% nuclear with the help of storage (though at that point costs are not that much lower than renewables + storage).
The problem with industry is that they need large amounts of power pretty much around the clock
Some industry, definitely not all. Though I could see these kind of round the clock energy heavy industry overtime congregating in special area's with maybe SMR's to supply them, or SMR's being put up in general for them, but that they'd guarantee paying the price of the SMR's production, not any other generation means.
fill in the demand for minimum base-load power and industry with nuclear power plants.
The problem with this is that while the concept of minimum baseload essentially is still true (the least needed energy at all times), there is a huge change. In the past baseload power generation happened to be those that best were always producing AND were the cheapest solutions overall (nuclear, coal, ...). However this is a problem combined with renewables. If renewables are used and cheaper in generation costs, they'll undercut the baseload generation like nuclear. Essentially it lowers the baseload demand by putting more cheaper energy into the grid.
For example if at certain moments during the day renewables can deliver 100% of the demand cheaper, the nuclear plant will either need to lower/stop production or sell for cheaper than they produce it at (to compete with the renewable energy), this will cut into their margin and might essentially cause the plant to run a deficit in the long term. Obviously this isn't sustainable and again either the government will need to step in (with guaranteed prices and operation for nuclear) or nuclear will not be interesting.
Ofcourse if the government needs to subsidize nuclear this might not be politically great. Renewable developers and anti-nuclear organisations will be against it and ask why the subsidies don't just go to storage (placement/research). You could argue this is similar to how people are now looking at renewable subsidies, but that wouldn't be entirely correct. The idea behind renewable subsidies is among other that renewables will eventually not need subsidies as is shown by their falling price, it is essentially to jump start the renewable engine. If nuclear can't show a similar price lowering trend, it will be seen as subsidizing a non-competitive industry to just keep it afloat, similar to subsidies to the fossil industry currently.
Essentially if you are not the cheapest option, you can't run as a baseload power facility without guaranteed subsidies, even if the alternative (renewables) aren't always readily available.
I do not like windmills because they kill birds in large numbers and parts of them are hard to recycle
Wind turbines kill around half a million birds a year (though I don't know how outdated this number currently is), cats kill billions of birds a year and windows several hundred million if I remember correctly. The bird deaths are ofcourse unfortunate and that is why there is research into it. For example painting one blade black reduced the bird deaths by 70%. Other means also exist, like tilling the ground around the turbine causing prey for birds to go elsewhere, or camera sensors detecting birds and shutting the wind turbine down untill the bird(s) have passed.
As for the recycling, this is only in regards to blades. And while this is a problem, it is one being researched. Overtime recycling ways will be found or different kind of blades that can more easily be recycled. It is essentially like nuclear waste, a problem now in the real beginning of adoption, but one that will eventually be figured out.
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@siraff4461
The next step in evolution would suggest something being better in every way
Combustion cars were the next step in evolution vs horse drawn carriages and still early on they were really expensive, had very few refueling opportunities, difficult to start, pretty short range, lots of maintenance, ... in other words, perfectly logical for people back then saying it would never be the future, just like people do with EV's now.
Are EV's currently perfect? No, ofcourse not, they still need and will get a lot of improvement overtime, this however doesn't mean they aren't the next evolution on ICE cars for a few reasons:
- Much more efficient.
- No reliance on finite oil supply from (for many regions) elsewhere.
- Cheaper to operate (if you aren't only using commercial fast chargers).
- Normally safer in a crash, since the batteries don't immediately combust.
- No need for refueling stations every few 'hundred meter/few km', only fast charging points around highways and maybe few scattered around for people without access to charging at home (should become rare), these can and likely will be placed at store parking lots and other dual purpose locations.
- less overall pollution and much less local pollution.
- Less maintenance.
And then I am probably forgetting a few advantages.
Obviously they are still more expensive, generally have lower range, take longer to fast charge and the infrastructure needed isn't very well rolled out/regulated yet. But these are all things that just need some time to improve, as the original ICE cars needed.
you have to ask if ev's are actually cleaner.
Essentially all peer reviewed studies find that EV's are cleaner over their lifetime vs a similar ICE car. How much cleaner depends on the grid mix mostly. Only those studies going for the absolute worse case scenario's find that EV's aren't cleaner or even worse. Though it also depends on the region. EV's fully powered by coal generated electricity are worse in the EU, though still better in the US, this due to the stronger regulation in the EU regarding ICE car emissions. Fully gas powered EV's in the EU are around on par with ICE. Luckily the share of coal in electricity generation in the EU is around 15% and gas around 20-25%.
A decent diesel will be close to 40% efficient and thats improving every year too.
Improvement in modern ICE engines is very small, difficult and costly. Also 40% is on the upper limit currently.
A coal/gas power station is around 55% efficient.
Lucky that there are also things as nuclear and renewables, which in the EU make up more than 50% of the grid mix.
Except the ev took a lot more energy and precious metals to make in the first place.
Except these precious metals can be recycled, used oil can't be.
Then there is the matter of the ice kicking out heat which if used to heat the cabin adds to its overall efficiency while ev's have to burn electricity for it - be that in a relatively efficient heat pump or a more wasteful resistive heater.
This is true, then again a lot of EV's use seat/steering wheel warming to save energy and in terms of airco an ICE needs to keep the engine running all the time, EV's don't. This also is the case for heating if you are stuck in traffic or just need to sit in your car in the cold for whatever reason (waiting for someone or something), the EV only uses energy to heat up the car, the ICE needs to keep the engine running and while this is at a reduced usage, it still wastes more energy.
it needs more making and energy in the first place (Solar panes)
Doesn't really matter if it generates (much) more than was needed to make it.
most panels can't be recycled so end up in landfill
Actually pretty much all regularly used solar panels can be recycled, this is even mandatory in the EU. That they end up in landfills is more due to people being cheap and the lack of regulations. It isn't even that costly, only around 20-30$/panel, which in the EU is included in the +-300$/panel purchase price.
Only special solar panels (like those really thin/flexible ones) might be more difficult to recycle, but they make up a small % and aren't relevant in this discussion.
and most systems don't make enough to cover people's home needs anyway
That entirely depends on the size of your roof and (planned) installed capacity. If you have enough space on your roof, you can make the calculation whether installing solar panels to charge your EV would be beneficial, in many cases this likely would be the case.
The pragmatic use at the moment is plug-in hybrids
Yeah, that can currently be fine if used correctly, ie. using it as an EV and when the battery is empty use it as an ICE, or use it as an ICE when you drive on the highway for a longer time. Just avoid constantly switching between battery and engine, this can even cause your car to become more polluting than an efficient ICE. Though Plug-in hybrids also usually are more expensive and lack the maintenance benefit of EV's, might even be more maintenance heavy than an ICE sometimes. They definitely aren't more efficient than EV's when talking about energy use.
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@alexsilent5603 Actually, yes, I think that Ukrainian government knew that rebels have such weapons
No, they didn't. If they did they could accuse Russia of supporting the rebels with strong military weapon systems. And the risk of a plane taken down is not worth the money. Hell, even if they closed air space above Donetsk and Luhansk, this would just mean a minor detour around Donetsk and Luhansk, the planes would still fly over the rest of Ukraine => money would still be received.
BUK is a weapon system, doesn't mean it is all just one easy to use truck or whatever, it consists of several trucks with their own specialised equipment (missile, radar, tracking, ...) and isn't just easily used.
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@iGamezRo
Look at Spain with Catalonia, the UK with Scotland or Canada with Quebec.
Both Scotland and Quebec had referendums on independence which failed. They failed due to popular support, not some "America wouldn't allow it" theory.
Catalonia is something else, but that is mostly due to internal Spanish problems, not indicative of some wider conspiracy. But yes, nations likely where silent about it to not scof the Spanish allies.
Catalan independence is "illegal", while Kosovar independence isn't
Probably because Kosovar independence is a consequence of ethnic fighting and Serbia wasn't meaningfull to anyone. I don't agree with the Spanish stance on Catalan independence irregardless.
Belgian dissolution would be a nightmare for American.
Depends on how it happens and what the stance is of the new countries. Most likely the split parties would just join NATO and it wouldn't really matter much for America. Wallonia likely would remain in NATO as Belgium imo, while rejoining NATO would go fast for Flanders unless Wallonia is being difficult. The EU is a different topic and this likely would see Flanders economy being ruined. But this isn't really as important to the US.
what would be quicker would be Union with the Netherlands, France and Germany for every linguistic part
I don't at all agree it would be quicker. France and Germany have essentially already infered they don't want to take (back) these regions and the Flemish definitely don't want to join the Netherlands. It would take many years to get to a conclusion on this, if it even is possible.
Belgian dissolution would just cause a big nuisance in Washington.
Nah, Belgium isn't that important to be more than a small nuissance (relatively speaking), the biggest nuissance would be whether or not to move the NATO headquarters somewhere else (from a US point of view, not european).
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@flaggschiffen
carriers wont become obsolete because another weapon beats it.
It certainly could, armor became obsolete with gunpowder weapons. If something becomes so vulnerable that you can't protect it or only at insane costs and effort, it can be made obsolete. Battleships didn't just became obsolete because aircraft carriers did their job better, but also because they became too easy targets compared to their costs/use.
Like any other weapons platform the carrier will become obsolete when there is a platform that does the job of a carrier better than it.
And which is why I also said "due to the increased range of planes and ..."
unless you are talking nuclear powered planes they will still require airfields and refueling.
Which they can get on 'nearby' land airfields. An operating range of around 5000km should be more than enough. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if range increases even more. The US air force wants the 6th gen fighters to become larger for increased range, seeing dogfighting isn't going to be relevant anymore in their opinion. Better engines with better fuel economy + increased fuel capacity => much greater range. We are talking about 80+ years or so in the future. 80 years ago battleships still played a role (or was expected to do so) and fighter planes were nothing compared to current day fighters.
A forward deployed mobile airfield will still enhance their capability.
That is only if the mobile airfield can safely get closer than non mobile airfields.
Does not offer fire support for land invasions, won't replace carriers.
But they can force a carrier to operate from further or increase protection costs by threatening it.
Does not offer fire support for land invasions, won't replace carriers.
Missiles will be able to offer fire support just as well as most planes. And again they can threaten the AC's, forcing them to operate from a larger distance and/or increase costs to protect the AC's.
You would need a fleet of intercontinental planes that can fly across the globe
They wouldn't need to fly across the globe in one go, AC's take weeks to deploy, more than enough time for planes to get to airfield closer to the conflict and run sorties from there. Maybe if you don't have a network of allies/military bases AC's can be usefull, seeing how many bases the US has across the world, I don't see them needing to maintain AC's for that purpose.
fight and protect your troops without refueling
They would refuel on land bases instead of the AC's. And in air refuelling might also become more common.
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@lucofparis4819
nobody ever figured out a way to make highspeed vactrains and highspeed pneumatic trains both industrially feasible, and economically viable.
And again, the same was with other things that are now becoming commonplace.
How much effort has actually been put into it except 1 or 2 projects? It was considered dead in the past, so no one looked at it.
I am not saying there aren't any problems or challenges, but to just dismiss it because it wasn't viable in the past and isn't viable in your mind is rather stupid.
Obviously there are hurdles to overcome, but the advantage of it becoming practical is huge.
The video is interesting, but kind of besides the point (at least to me). Yes, there are trains that can go fast, though at this moment the fastest train in operation has a speed of +-270mph, even if hyperloop achieves only 600mph, that still more than doubles the speed. Yes, the mcmaglev from the video goes faster, but even its top speed (record) is 40% lower than what the hyperloop would do with 600mph. And it isn't like the mcmaglev is cheap, it is currently predicted to cost around 150 million per km (and cost overruns aren't that rare in big projects). If Hyperloop can beat that, they could defintely be economical.
Furthermore mcmaglev needed 30-40 years to reach were it is now, the hyperloop concept only exists for a few years.
There are some valable points though, for example why does it need an aerodynamic shape, this can however be explained from a safety standpoint, if somewhere there is a small breach and some air seeps in, you don't want your hyperloop to have a flat front. Ofcourse I wouldn't be surprised if some or even most of hyperloop companies are shams or something similar.
I also don't like that he acts like the hyperloop would have only one pod, and not just like trains have multiple carriages together, maybe it wasn't first envisioned as such, but I don't see why that couldn't be possible, the only downside is a longer airlock.
Now imagine using the mcmaglev technology in a low pressure environment, not only can it go even faster, but consumption could be reduced and possibly even the necessary strength (and cost) of the system.
At this moment we can just not determine yet whether hyperloop will work and whether or not it will be able to compete or even outcompete "regular" highspeed trains.
Hyperloops and the likes are simply not material and energy efficient enough to ever count as a useful option
This is a ridiculous statement, because we simply don't know yet. It could be that a short hyperloop just isn't energy efficient, but a long one is.
as even commercial airplanes are already a safer, cheaper, and equally fast (in theory, and definitely faster, in practice) option.
Yes, one problem, they pollute. The EU has already agreed to a plan where planes can't fly between airports/cities that are closer than 500km (if I remember correctly) and that would go in from 2030 or somewhere around that. This would be the distance between Amsterdam and Paris, or in the US Los Angeles and San Francisco.
When simpler tech is already superior to your high-tech energy intensive concept, it's never gonna leave the drawing board.
We'll have to wait and see. Trains were in the past superior to cars and have remained less energy intensive, and yet look at how things played out.
Or even planes, the early planes most definitely weren't better than the existing trains, it took decades for them to eventually jump past trains.
Why waste more resources and money to ship one's cargo no more faster than regular high speed trains or cargo planes
Cargo planes is easy again: pollution. And no, high speed trains aren't faster and they aren't used for cargo anyway.
in an environment far less safe for the cargo which could easily destroy it? Who would pay for that kind of service?
It depends on the cost. If people need to pay lets say 10-15$ extra to get it with you in a week or less vs 4-5 weeks, then that would be interesting. And if cargo operation proves it is safe, then maybe even passenger travel can be opted for.
Planes aren't inherent safer, they are build to be so safe. They have needed decades of iterations and improvements to become as safe as they are now.
Honestly a hyperloop above ground doesn't make much sense to me, unless it can be competitive with things like the mcMaglev, however if you can build it underground with lesss problems in regards to breaches, property, buildings, terrain, .... then yes, maybe. I wouldn't be surprised if this is (partially) why Musk still keeps an eye on it, to see if it can't be eventually a usefull venture for the boring company (or work with it), if they can get costs low enough, that and Mars. At this moment Musk claims they can tunnel at around 15 million per km. Now these tunnels might be too small for a hyperloop (though, maybe a small one is possible), but it still could show promise if hyperloop systems keep it under 100 million per km.
Again I don't know if hyperloop ever becomes a thing, it might, it might not. I just dislike that people automatically wave it away based on the little information and experience we now have. This has been done so often in the past and sometimes proven right, but other times proven completely wrong.
Eitherway neither of us have influence over it or lose anything by just keeping an open mind. If it works, it works. If not, whatever, at least we know.
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@lucofparis4819
you seem to believe that vactrains and pneumatic trains are somehow one or two breakthroughs away from becoming a new mode of transportation
I do not believe that, but I also don't just immediately discredit the idea based on the view of people not working on it and who use the "history" card as a stupid argument. There have been no trials to use pneumatic (no one is talking about this btw, don't know why you mention it) or vactrain technology in around a century. Hell, vactrain is probably never even looked at before now. If there have been, please provide me with the examples.
We are talking about the transportation analogue of crossbows: modern ones are awesome and leagues above medieval crossbows, but battlefield wise they've been obsolete for centuries.
This is a weird analogy that to me doesn't hold any value. Crossbows went out of fashion because of gunpowder weapons. Yes, modern crossbows are much better, but so are modern gunpowder weapons.
There hasn't been any historical equivalent to a vactrain, since in the past the technology to get a vacuum was inefficient and much more expensive, neither were people back then looking at vehicles with a speed where the effort would be even remotely worth it. Again I am not saying a vactrain can for sure work and/or be economic, but we thought the same about so many other things, that they might not work and/or be economic, only to eventually be proven wrong.
You may only know of one or two, it doesn't mean there was only those two.
Then please, enlighten me about more.
I strongly advise you take a second look at the video I've linked, as it does review the various projects that were established.
He mentions literally one old project 150 years ago that was about pneumatic trains, something that isn't even discussed anymore for a long time in regards to a hyperloop.
As for the current projects/companies: like I said earlier, there sure can be companies and projects that are scams or suffer problems, that however doesn't entirely discredit the idea. You think other technologies/ideas never suffered these kind of problems, with people trying to use it for their own benefit?
Hyperloop companies are literally 5 years old or less. In your linked video itself he said that Japan invested 50 years of development in the maglev trains, the first maglev train tests happened many years after development started. But, oh well, hyperloop companies need to get it done in less than 5 years, do you know how stupid that is? Then he talks about spaceX test track and the problems there, but remember, spaceX isn't even in this bussiness, so why would it matter that their testtunnel isn't working great? It is not like their goal was to use a top of the line advanced vacuum tube or develop one, they just needed a track that is used once a year. At this moment they are thinking about having the extension to a 10 km vacuum tube also be a competition.
Several companies might also be just keeping information close to their chest, not revealing much untill they actually can present something concrete. Hell, at this moment BO exists for 20 years and hasn't even reached orbit, not because it is impossible (clearly it is not) or because they are inept (at least I'd be surprised if they were), but because they take their time and do tests and development out of public eyes, most companies do this. SpaceX is a great exception to that rule.
At this moment we know literally nothing about the technical capabilities of these companies, since they don't participate in SpaceX public competition, university teams do. So the "a student group could do what a professional company could not" dig from the video is so flawed, since professional companies don't take part, exactly because of the intellectual property becoming public property, ie. everyone can make use of it after. This competition is meant to promote and aid the idea of hyperloop and more broadly stem fields in general. If a university team can reach a speed of 463 km/hr, it is certainly possible that professional companies can reach higher speeds.
Dude, Hyperloop is just a name. It's not a new co dept because the name is new. It's just yet another try of the same old concepts
Dude, show me these old concepts from the past, where a vehicle (probably similar to or just a maglev) moves through a vacuum tube. Since you are so certain, it shouldn't be difficult to find for you. And ofcourse the tried development of these concepts. There where old concepts of flying through the air for quite some time, but they just weren't feasible at those points in time, not untill we developed small, light and powerfull enough engines.
it's an evidence based statement
Ok, show me the numbers, and no, that video clip won't do at all. That is just an opinionated piece, hell, I could probably make planes sound crazy and uneconomical to someone who doesn't know about planes yet (which is kinda hard to do these days) if I wanted to.
By the way no, the Hyperloop isn't faster than the SCMaglev, the White Paper gives a faster speed, but the tests do not
We have literally no idea about the tests of professional hyperloop companies, all we have is the speed of university teams. And seeing the length of the testtracks, at 1g acceleration they'll have to start slowing down around the current max speed (at 1g they'd reach the max speed achieved after around 900m), they possibly could have reached higher speeds on a longer track, we'll see about that in the future seeing SpaceX plans to extend the testtrack to 10 km.
This is also why a university team holds the record, they can increase the acceleration to as high as they can (the current recordholders claim they can reach an acceleration of 2g), they don't need to care about whether it is practical for future application.
In fact this is exactly what professional companies have also said, they need longer tracks to achieve the higher speeds, afterall even 1g is unlikely to be used in a commercial operation, so there is no way for a professional company to get the highest speeds if they don't want to go into uncomfortable acceleration ranges.
Several companies have already plans for longer testtracks. Some sponsored by the government, others already as a small initial (part of a) commercial plan.
Once again, the physically necessary equipment needed to achieve the claimed speeds will render the project too costly, thus, the Hyperloop will have to aim for more modest speeds to will destroy its apparent advantages over existing systems, rendering this endeavour pointless
This is ridiculous, how can it be slower if it could use the same technology as currently exist if they want, a hyperloop could use maglev technology just as well, it will rather be whether the gain from near vaccuum vs in air travel will be high enough to offset its investment and maintenance cost.
Theoretically there isn't a limit to speeds they can achieve in a vacuum tube using maglev technology (though it depends on the practical limitations of maglev) if the track length is indefinite. Ofcourse there are practical concerns limiting the speed, like length of track, acceptable safety risk, power use, ...
It depends on so many factors, we just can't say whether it will be economical or not. For example if they could use boring company tunnels at twice the price/mile musks says they reached/can reach, a tunnel from San Francisco to Los Angeles cost around 7 billion to dig (14 billion for two way). Ofcourse this is just one part, but putting it underground might lower other costs, because the risk for a breach causing air to jump in would be much lower and things like a terrorist attack would also not be a problem and you could also go in a straight line, not many curves (if at all) would be needed. Now has/can the boring company reach this cost? I obviously can't say. Can they make the hyperloop system small enough to use in a boring company tunnel? Again impossible to say.
And yes, 7/14 billion sounds like a lot, but the total costs of the scmaglev is 80 billion on a shorter track, so all in all these costs could definitely be in the economical limit.
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exactly, I am pro eu and don't underestimate the importance of nato in its initial phases, but now nato isn't really a necessity. Hell nato dissapearing might even be a good weak up call to the eu states to more actively work on a common defence force. I always am surprised that people these days are so fearfull of nato falling apart (which is expected to happen if the US wishes it), the last years it has been less of a defence force and almost like an expansion of the UN, but controlled (mostly) by the US, it has more or less lost it's purpose.
As long as the eu survives we will probably be fine, and without nato the eu might even slowly move to be a "mediator" between Russia and the US.
(and in all honesty whether NATO exists or not, the US would not just standby if Russia would take military action against europe and vice versa (if nothing drastically changes, like the US becoming full isolationist again). Europe now provides a kind of balance in favour of the US, were europe to fall under Russian influence, Russia might once again become a viable adversary to the US.)
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@Marylandbrony If we are going to expand in space, it likely wouldn't be on planets surfaces imo, rather using extremly large rotating space stations (check out o'neill cylinders) or something similar, which could mimic any gravity. Moreover you could tailor these stations to have the environmental factors you want. Ofcourse something like that would be far from easy to build (though normally possible with current tech), but colonising other planets wouldn't be that much easier either due to several reasons.
Farming really isn't a problem. We already can farm indoors with artificial light etc. So most vegetables and crops could be farmed in enclosed farm buildings. Now, things that grow on trees like fruits might be more difficult, but we could technically do that too, you just would either need much larger spaces or you would need to genetically adapt those trees.
I don't think you understand the massive amount of resources that are out there in space. Most of our resources would come from space mining in such a society, not from Earth. One particular asteroid has so much estimated valuable resources that it might be 125 000 times more valuable than the entire earths current GDP if estimates are correct. One of the entire reasons to go into space as a civilization would be to harness these resources rather than use up the earth.
Farmland is really badly used now. If we could cut husbandry of cattle, we'd free up 50%+ of our current farmland. Not to mention if we really wanted we could switch to indoor farming, which could reduce farmland usage several times and water usage by even more than 100 times. The downside of that currently is the cost (mostly from energy use and labour) and the energy use.
If we can artificially grow meat, or can create non-meat burgers that are almost exactly the same in taste, we could even with current technology feed the the current population possibly 10 to 100 times over, even by US standards.
Ofcourse this is futuristic, but definitely within reality if we really (had to) dedicate ourselves to it.
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@HavanaSyndrome69 That still doesn't prove they have been saving their artillery, especially considering they went through their own offensive and attempts to push on certain fronts. Sure they might have some strategic reserves ready, but I wouldn't necessarily expect them tho have really saved their artillery that much. Hell, if they saved their artillery, there is the potential that it will not matter if Ukraine moves fast enough, hits supply lines/depots or even knows where those artillery reserves are located and targets them by the longer range artillery some Western nations have since provided.
Yes, Russia has been preparing for defending against an offensive to avoid earlier scenario's, but they might also be relying on just a few well defended forward lines that once breached opens the flood gates. It is really difficult for us to know how it will go and to what extent Russia will be ready on the position(s) Ukraine will attack. Imagine Ukraine suddenly starting a counteroffensive around the Bakhmut area, where Russia might not have great defensive positions due to being on the attack, while the troops there being exhausted from the fighting. It is unlikely, but it is more to show that there might be points where a weakness could get exploited.
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@jurycould4275
Tesla is the 12th most sold car brand in the US, it's the 18th most sold car brand in the EU
This doesn't really mean much at this moment, Tesla is an up and coming company, ofcourse it isn't in the top yet. The thing is that they both have the drive, knowhow, capital, ... to become one of the top players and not taking them seriously untill they are is kind of stupid.
VW and other brands like Mercedes, Audi, Hyundai etc are already offering cars with better self-driving, higher ranges, more luxury and for cheaper prices.
I don't know about all of this. Personally VW doesn't sell a better car imo, just a cheaper one, which is likely at this moment their greatest advantage, that and people in the EU knowing them. Only the ID3 pro S seems to be better range for a cheaper price at this moment. Though different vehicle class too.
No doubt Tesla has had a problem with quality in the past, but that seems to be limited in their newer factories (like the one in China). And their US centered models they have now aren't really great either, however it will be only a matter of time before they bring a model more focused on European demands (ie. small hatchback) at a small enough price.
In Europe very few people are actually buying Tesla and their market share is dropping.
Obviously it is dropping, they at a time where almost the only major EV producer, now that more and more companies are selling EV's, their market share decreases, not because they sell less EV's, but because more are sold. If at some point only 200k EV's where sold a year and Tesla sold 100k of them (fictitious numbers), they hold a 50% share, however if 600k are sold and they sold 200k of them, that is 'only' a 33% marketshare. At this moment Tesla also is constrained still by production capacity and considering they have to ship the cars for the EU market from the US/China, the EU was hardly their most important market and they aren't limited by sales, but by availability here currently (I'd argue this is the case for many manufacturers regarding EV's at this moment).
people don't know that these alternatives are out there.
I don't know about that, getting this information is rather easy these days.
I am not saying that Tesla will definitely become the largest or is the best, not all. But they are doing some things right. They have a great and efficient manufacturing process, their new battery cells should improve things, they have the largest charging network currently, .... and several other advantages/strong points. Ignoring them or swapping them aside because they are small is dangerous and stupid imo. Don't forget that they started selling cars around 12 years ago and now already are at almost 1 million a year (probably around 800-850k this year) and building 2 factories that might at full capacity get production up another 1-1,5 million cars a year within +-2-3 years with further expansion of these factories possible.
Personally I'd likely never get a Tesla as it stands now. Th ID.3 or even cheaper 208 e would be more my preference. At this moment though I wont buy an EV at all, still too pricey for me, rather wait another 3-5 years untill prices have dropped. And if Tesla by then has come with a smaller hatchback or similar, maybe, but else I'd not be interested, others might though.
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Honestly the EU level should either replace the national level or the regional and national level should become one, long term ofcourse.
Most things done on a national level can easily be done (better) on a european level (defence, borders, immigration, mobility, environment, infrastructure...) and the things that can't (like cultural affairs, education, ...), can be given to the regional governments.
But ofcourse anything like this is very far off, if ever achieved.
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@Allen Loser
Could you use 1 comment in future, or at least try to limit the number?
150 kilowatts to 350 kilowatts delivered from the charger to the battery pack is also not impressive compared to in excess of 14,000 kilowatts equivalent delivered to my fuel tank at six gallons per minute on the slow hook.
You keep hung up in this. How often do I need to say that yes, fuelling up is way faster, but if you can charge your EV in 15 minutes this would be more then enough, since you'd only do this during a long trip something like 250-300 miles. Most people only do this kind of travel a few times a year, losing 15 minutes is nothing on such a long trip and will allow you to go to the bathroom, stretch your legs and leave again refreshed.
cordless drill cells
What exactly do you mean by this? When I try to find out it only shows me batteries of a drill.
Tesla should have played at least three suppliers against each other to beat them up for low unit price, rapid delivery time, low defect rate and liberal payment terms.
You have no idea how EV batteries work, do you? Tesla is already expected to be with a supply shortage if it doesn't start producing its own cell in two or so years. There aren't many battery suppliers that can supply enough batteries need for large scale EV production and it is not like they are the only ones. Neither is there a great deal of price difference. If you really think Tesla didn't try to get the best supplier, I don't know what to tell you. You are acting like Tesla just wanted to buy a car and could act like you suggest, this clearly shows a lack of understanding in the EV battery market.
The comparison is invalid because drivers in 1910 did not lack for means to fuel their ICEVs with kerosene or ethanol.
You really belief this don't you. Often people had to drive many miles to just be able to fuel up. I don't know where you get it from most people had access to ethanol fuel or kerosone more easily than gasoline.
Your prior post justified slow rollout of charging facilities
And how does my post justifies a slow roll out exactly? I don't understand how you could get this idea.
Buying fuel at a retail pump works best for me at this time.
And I am talking about in 5-10 years as I have been clear about several times. And if it suits you best, fine with me, but you'll be in the minority.
Buying fuel at a retail pump still works best for you. You haven't changed your behavior either.
Because I just said that I am talking about 5-10 years. I can't afford an EV now, for me they are still to expensive, when they reach parity in around 5 years I will certainly buy an EV as my next car and I will be happy about it. I always get an annoyed feeling when I notice I need to go to the gas pump, that will finally go away once I can just plug in my EV at home.
Hydrogen is pointless as a transportation fuel.
It is indeed pointless for roadtransportation, it might however be usefull for ships and maybe short- to midrange planes. Maybe your synthetic gas too, but it is there it will compete, not in the car industry.
No new storage, transportation and retail sales infrastructure is needed.
True, but many of the disadvantages remain: noice, pollution in aread of driving, more maintenance cost for the car, higher price, ...
Premature replacement of hundreds of millions of cars and trucks is avoided.
Why are you talking about premature replacement? It isn't like people are just going to be forced to buy a new EV, they can use their ICE car as long as they want, which is for most cars around 80-12 years.
Nobody need ever forgo the benefits and convenience of liquid hydrocarbon fuels or settle for the fundamental deficiencies of using a battery pack as the sole fuel tank in a car or truck.
Trust me, there will be few people finding hydrocabon fueled cars better and more convenient than EV's in the long run. Even several companies are looking at replacing their semi's with BEV semi's because of the lower running costs (less maintenance, cheaper "fuel", ...)
You are in no hurry to switch. Why should I?
I am not saying you should switch NOW, I am saying in the future not switching would be stupid and will be seen by almost everyone as such, even with 'green' gasoline.
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@terron7840 The birthrate decline and aging population isn't just a European phenomenon, but a developed world phenomenon. The higher the living standard, the more the birthrate goes down. Ofcourse there are other factors, but this is a trend. One that eventually will have to be changed by incentivizing getting children (lower costs, more free time, ...). But at this moment the problem is that there is the idea that we already overpopulate the planet, thus we shouldn't incentivize a more than status quo birthrate (2 children per woman/couple). Untill this idea changes, we will probably see an aging population appearing in all nations with high living standards.
As for unelected bureaucrats, popular notion when criticizing the idea, but unsubstantiated.
And then we have your initial claims.
- Manpower: the EU has 110 million more citizens than the US. The combined EU armed forces consists of 1,43 million active personnel, the US has around 1,35 million active personnel. So no, the EU does not lack the manpower to be a super state (if you consider the US one that is).
- Economic capacity: the EU has the 2nd largest GDP in the world, it has the most trade in the world and its currency is the 2nd most used in global trade.
- Industry: the EU has the 2nd largest industrial capacity, right inbetween China and the US (China 4,566, EU 4,184 and US 3,602 billions USD)
So on all these points, the EU definitely has the capacity to be a superpower if you consider the US one.
As for renewables, you do know that renewables make a nations overall less reliant on other countries. Currently what is used? Oil? Gas? Nuclear material? All comes from outside the EU. Only coal is found in the EU.
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@JSK010 All 3 are aircraft capable and carry planes.
And because the US sends an 80 aircraft carrier, the EU would also need to send an 80 aircraft carrier?
The minimum range of these ships is 13k km, which gives a range to Indonesia or the southern tip of south america before it needs refueling. Moreover it likely would be accompagnied by a tanker.
I never said the EU needs 5-6 supercarriers, I set carriers, as in regular aircraft carriers. You practically never need supercarriers for defensive missions, only if you want to project your military power globally.
Literally no one talked about just 2 investments. The point was that pooling resources would be vastly more efficient, not that the EU suddenly becomes as powerfull as the US or a global military superpower (which isn't needed).
but my issue is: it’s 90% a question of money, 10% of organization.
That is just bullshit. Scale matters massively. The US F35 currently the only real operable generation 5 fighter is (quite a bit) cheaper than less capable european gen4-4,5 fighters due to the much higher scale. The EU's fighter fleet might already increase with 25% just from cost savings alone if it were to order the same fighters in big contracts.
You are extremely underestimating the cost due to inefficiency of the current seperated systems in the EU.
The EU already is the 3rd biggest military spender in the world assuming PPP and not too far behind the number 2. The US is investing so much money to be the worlds sole military superpower, something the EU doesn't need to be.
The EU also doesn't need to safeguard all waters globally, just their specific region, plenty of other large countries also want to keep their sea regions free for trade and thus protect their regional waters.
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@CL-gj9mf
The "inefficiency of the green hydrogen" is the same than the fuels actually used in our cars
With the difference that these fossil fuels are just taken from underground, they are useless when not used (though obviously better not to use if we have better alternatives), whereas hydrogen is created with the energy we alreade have generated and can use directly with for example batteries, thus the energy loss from hydrogen use is a net loss, the energy loss from fossil fuels not. I suggest you look at the EROI of fossil fuels and hydrogen before making such a stupid statement.
but you don't talk about the pollution induced by the big batteries of your "so good electric cars" with 90% efficiency
That is made up for in a couple years. Furthermore with high rate recycling (which several companies can already do), we can keep reusing these battery materials afterwards, seriously reducing any polluting impact batteries have.
The price to pay in CO2 freed in the atmosphere, to extract these rare earths is too high
You realise hydrogen use will also create more co2 pollution? First by the need of installing 3 times the necessary renewable capacity and secondly the fuel cell materials etc will also need extracting.
And extracting these rare earths are done with petroleum
Because they obviously still need to be electrified. Do you think a hydrogen system will only use material that was mined by non-petroleum means?
No more petroleum, no more big batteries!!!
'No more petroleum, no more hydrogen'. There you have it. In fact currently: 'no more petroleum, no more civilization', just great.
However if we can electrify everything we can, including everything in the manufacturing of batteries, the 'no more petroleum, no more batteries' stick wouldn't be correct anymore.
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@CL-gj9mf
Where are these small industry, you talking about,
Redwood, Li-cycle, VW also has a subsidiary/testplant that achieved such high recycling rates. There are some more, but these are the ones I quickly could come up with.
to fully recycle my battery like the smartphone's one
It is unlikely any of these will focus on smartphone batteries, they are just too small (around 4000-6000 smartphone batteries per average EV pack). Ofcourse they could possibly recycle them as something extra/on the side, but someone else will have to do the gathering and shipping of these small batteries for them to consider it remotely interesting. And currently there is only one relatively small plant for every company, considering EV batteries are recycled at best 10 years after being introduced into the market, more likely 15-20 years or even more. So EV batteries they recycle now either need to be from EV's in the 2000's or from batteries that had a flaw during productions (which happens quite often, but these generally are found out before they leave the factory). So in essence these companies can't grow fast currently, they need to wait for another 1-2 decades to really expand on the current growth of EV's.
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@CL-gj9mf
you can't be independant from chinese supply chain
Most battery materials are not in China, that are other rare minerals you think off.
Which amount of electricity is needed to realize this recycling???
One of these companies uses the energy left in the battery to power a large part of the recycling process, and the fully drained batteries are also safer to recycle after. Other process involve chemical process' that don't use a lot of energy. Do you realize how much energy is lost mining and transporting new materials?
not a chance the solar energy will be enough on earth
We can easily get enough power from the sun to power our current civilization several times over, the main problem is the intermittency, which will get solved with improved storage. Covering just a small part of the sahara would suffice to generate all the energy the world currently consumes (not just the current electricity use, all energy, thus also those from fossil fuels).
Technically if we use CSP in for example the Sahara the intermittency problem would be fixed too, since it has a storage capacity build into it. The main reason it isn't used a lot now is because it is (slightly) more expensive (+-120$/MWh vs 40 for large scale PV, 50 for onshore wind, 50-80 for nuclear fission reactors and +-90 for gas plants). That and ofcourse the situation in regions like North Africa can be unreliable.
If you don't have a competitive price, you are in war with China
Why the hell do you keep mentioning China for no f*cking reason?
Please, take time to confront ideas to the restritives parameters of the reality.
Apparently you just have a terrible knowledge of the "parameters of the reality", since most you say is bollocks coming from being uninformed/misinformed.
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@zubair6737
most of the energy we r currently producing is coal based.
actually it is not, that would be oil based, coal is second, only slightly beating gas. In the US and Europe coal is even the 3rd most used form of primary energy. For electricity worldwide coal is indeed the number one. However in Europe and the US coal only makes up around 20% of the electricity mix and is ever decreasing.
When we store electricity in batteries we also loose some of it as heat
Which is why batteries usually are marked around 90% efficient, compared to hydrogens +-34% efficiency.
they become less efficient with each cycle
Yes, but they still last several thousand cycles before hitting around 70-75% capacity.
Also transporting electricity directly is not feasible
Hmm, what have we been doing so far? Oh yes, transporting electricity directly. HVDC can transmit electricity with a loss of around 3-4%/1000km, for HVAC this is around 7%/1000km. Hydrogen will at minimum loose around 65%, not including possible transmission losses (though when done well I guess these would be low to non-existent). This means you can transport electricity directly over +-12 000km with HVDC and suffer the same amount of losses (I calculated in losses from other necessary steps, else it would be around 16 000km), that means from Japan to around Portugal.
If enough money is spend on its research.
Or you can spend that money on improving already existing and viable other things like direct electricity transportation, or better batteries, ... (just to be clear I am not against hydrogen research, hydrogen will play a key role in some sectors, but the premise that hydrogen would be the best way if enough money is invested in research is onesided, the same can be said about many other things, like batteries, grid infrastructure, ...).
Hydrogen is not a source from which we r extracting energy unlike fossil fuels.
That is one of the points I made in this thread, as to why you can't compare fossil fuel efficiency with hydrogen efficiency. One is a 'carrier', the other a source.
Currently ev r just using energy made by fossil fuels not renewable energy.
Which would be the same with hydrogen obviously. This isn't an argument for hydrogen, it is an argument for more renewable energy to be installed.
Our problem on becoming energy efficient with renewable is that we don't have means to efficiently store it.
Which is why there are currently several storage solutions being developed or tested that could fill this gap. This ranges from different battery technologies (flow battery, metal battery, 'rust' batteries, ...) to other things (compressed air, liquified air, heat storage, ...). Most of which are more promising than hydrogen in regards to grid based storage. And ofcourse if you have millions of EV on the streets, then with enough low speed chargers that are plugged into idle cars, you get GWh's of possible storage capabilities from that alone. EV's could help the renewable transition, hydrogen cars not, since these need 3 times the renewable capacity, making a renewable transition even more difficult.
And hydrogen seams like the best way to do it
Even at this moment hydrogen is seen as a terrible way to store electricity, only to be used as the very last resort. The main purpose for hydrogen is expected to be in shipping, aviation and industry.
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@doritoification
Even if it's economical to recycle these things (I disagree about that right now but I have no doubt we can eventually get there one day)
Tesla is already taking recycling batteries as a cost saving measure (though not untill enough batteries get dated). Apparently it will be less expensive than mining for new materials. And the cost of recycling a solar panel is around 20$ (transport not included), so not expensive at all, unfortunately it is still cheaper to just dump it in a landfill (often around 1$ or less, at least in the US), that is why there needs to be regulations. If you take around 50 dollars per panel (more than enough, probably way too much), that would only increase the cost of solar panels by around 0,16-0,20$/watt. Again, it all comes down to regulation in regards to solar panels.
the amount of material required to get to the circular stage is still monumental.
Ofcourse it still a lot of material, but it isn't like a nuclear powerplant doesn't use any material either. You don't just need to account for the fuel, but also the building material of the plant itself, otherwise wind and solar don't use materials if you only account for fuel.
I don't know how your source get to such low material usage for nuclear. A more recent study found that materials needed for solar production ranged from less than nuclear to around twice as high (+-5000 tonnes vs 10 000 tonnes).
And besides it is not about these abundant materials (the needed materials used for providing the entire world electricity production with pv is a nothing compared to the worldproduction of these materials). It is more about the less abundant materials.
Not sure why you feel the need to ignore 4th gen for the discussion of uranium abundance.
Simply for the fact that at this moment not a single 4th gen is in operation (I don't infer there won't be any, just that it is not the case now). it still needs to prove their LCOE costs, for all we know it will be higher than predicted (or lower), so that is way I didn't account for it (yet).
And my comment wasn't so much to say nuclear isn't possible or a good source, but nuclear fission remains non-renewable. And people were saying that nuclear is the best even before 4th gen was really mentioned/possible. So I remain a little sceptic about 4th untill it has several reactors running for a few years and then see what of the prediction was correct.
the fuel costs for nuclear are so low relative to the overall costs that a more expensive ocean extraction method would be perfectly tolerable for the economics of nuclear.
I don't think that is true, I believe I read somewhere that a more expensive extraction process could increase the cost of nuclear significantly (maybe exactly because it now is overall cheap).
Seeing as a globally scalable battery solution is "still in development" I don't see why we should ignore 4th gen nuclear in the same boat
The difference is that the globally scalable batteries already exist now, a lot of cost reduction will come from just mass producing it more than is currently the case. 4th gen isn't in operation yet, so we'll have to see where it truly will end.
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@doritoification
feel free to share your source about solar material consumption
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325382044_Electricity_generation_technologies_Comparison_of_materials_use_energy_return_on_investment_jobs_creation_and_CO2_emissions_reduction
It's nor surprising when you see the shear scale of a solar farm, for example the proposed cleve hill solar park, and compare the land occupied with a nuclear site.
Land use =/= material use. Yes, a nuclear powerplant is much more compact, but also uses a lot more material per m2. And ofcourse not all solar panels have to be placed in new terrain, you can also place it on roofs, parking lots, .... Land coverage is not a problem for solar. It can even be placed above crops. In hot dry area's this even helps the crops and in for example Germany you can combine them too, though just with a little more space between the solar panel rows. Or you place them above canals and irrigation ways, like they do in India, with several beneficial effects.
So yes, it uses more land, but that isn't a problem.
-Hinkley point C will sell power at it's strike price of 113 Euros/MWh
Which is rather high to be honest. That will make it one of the mroe expensive sources out there.
-Out of this strike price 7 Euros is "fuel fabrication"
I am not claiming fuel prices now are high, they aren't, rather that if you need to go from the "easy" excavation to a harder one, this can seriously increase the price. Possibly double it, currently the cheapest method stands at above 200$/lb, that is around 6-7 times higher than normal, so even if it makes up just 1,5$/MWh, this might increase fuel price with 9$/MWh. Now ofcourse this isn't a lot, but with solar and wind already reaching 40$/MWh and expected to still decrease in price, every $ might count.
The pie chart price breakdown half way down the article should show why this is the case
I would like to see if they can actually get this 40$/MWh, since the lowest ones I found for new nuclear power plants are around 75$/MWh (western plants), that is almost double. I wonder if this 40$/MWh is not an overly optimistic calculation.
if the government just got their financing structure for large national energy projects like Sizewell C in order
The problem is that no investor is going to invest in building a nuclear powerplant without being ensured a huge return, why? Because of the risk and length of ROI time. The risk of budget overruns, the risk of the plant being shut down too early for whatever reason, .... Investment in nuclear powerplants is just seen as a huge risk, even if in the long term you can make profit.
It is for this reason that it is unlikely you'll get a gen 3 plant under 75$/MWh ensured price any time soon. Yes, I do think the UK government had fucked up Hinkley'd budgetting if any of these cost predictions are even in the remote vincinity, but this doesn't take away the reason why they did something like that. Even in 2012 Flamanville LCOE was already expected to be between €70-80/MWh.
*Additionally, uranium from sea water might as well just be considered renewable *
That would be interesting.
To be clear I personally have nothing against nuclear and expect we'll get a mix of nuclear, renewables and storage, however I do am against building gen 3 now, since gen 4 might be just around the corner and could possibly be rolled out in the next 15 year. and if they achieve the expectations, they'd be a much better choice. If we build gen 3 now however, we're stuck with it for the next 60-80 years.
And I do hate it when people claim renewables aren't feasible (they certainly are) or that nuclear somehow is the holy grail (fusion might be, fission isn't). Yes, renewables can't run everything currently, but we don't expect to run everything on renewables now, rather in the next 15-20 years in even optimistic expectations, by then storage should be improved more than enough to be competitive.
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@doritoification
I don't want to be mislead by my own echo chamber
Same, I have often had to review what I know/my stance because of what others said/provided. Other times though I can't collaborate their source with others, which makes me remain critical.
I did notice that the paper has an EPR lifespan at just 40 years ... so I do think that could have skewed their data
That is true. Though if you look at the long term, there would also be reduced material costs for solar and wind, after all you'd probably just need to replace the panels after 30 years, not the rest of the structure (if properly maintained), for wind turbines, you could possibly get away with just a renovation of the top part, or up to the ground, but reuse the foundation. And since solar panels ought to be recycled, you would have little extra material impact due to solar panel replacement. In that sense I do think taking a 40 year lifetime isn't really that bad. If you take 60, almost no extra material would be added to solar panels either.
is the cost of electricity generation and is not the real price paid after accounting for system costs
True, system costs of renewables are still higher. However with cheaper storage this could partially be mitigated. You wouldn't need back-up plants and have essentially no curtailment. Ofcourse you'd have the storage costs, but with decreasing prices in both storage and renewable production, this could eventually balance out. Personally I expect renewables to be used for households, bussiness and partially transportation and nuclear for the large energy users ie. industry.
One advantage of renewables is that you could generate on site, reducing overall costs. For example regular houses or bussiness with solar panels and home storage are probably going to be the norm rather than the exception, since you'd avoid taxes, grid costs, power outages, ... (so overall possibly reduced 'greater system' costs/invoice prices/whatever you'd call it).
We would need 10 HPCs just to run the transportation sector when it goes fully electric
That seems awfully high. Current predictions estimate that the electrification of transport (trucks and cars) would increase demand by around a third. The UK consumed around 300TWh in 2019, so that makes 100TWh for the transport industry. If I calculated correctly (confirmed by your link) Hinkley point C would generate around 26TWh yearly, so you'd need 4 HPC's for transport.
Total consumption with current and transport would need around 15 HPC's, though you wouldn't want to have all demand be produced by them. Anything above 60% of the grid is abnormal (only France does higher, but they export a lot of electricity to neighbours when domestic demand is low), So probably max 9 HPC (without industry electrification).
One of the problems with using experienced workforce is that you'll get a serial construction, which could (for 9 plants) take from 45 (5 years per plant) to 72 years (8/plant). You'll need to have projects working parallel, meaning using also less experienced workers. Obviously, yes the price might go down after the first one (it would be weird if it didn't), but the question is by how much. EDF in France still offered the French government a year ago a price of around €5 billion per MW, for HPC that would come to around +-€16 billion per plant (14 billion pound), which apparently is around the price EDF gave for Hinkley in 2012 and even with later plants overbudget costs can happen, for example site related costs. That is not particularly inexpensive. I guess we'll not know untill a second (and third) plant is build.
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@thevaidik_ Because low interests are overall most beneficial to most people, ofcourse for a country like Greece they might not like it, just like parts in the US might not like the inflation rate of the dollar. That is a consequence of being part of something bigger.
For my part Greece can leave the Eurozone, which is the only way to increase inflation, but this will likely hit their economy much more.
I support trade union but not a political one.
I disagree with this, in a world with increasing large nations, seperate small Europeans nations are essentially powerless if they don't stick together. Why do you think countries exist now and we don't have city states instead?
I want eu commission President too also elected by people.
That is like I'd say I want an elected PM in my country with a parliamentary system. But I vote for the seats in parliament and these members of parliament choose the PM. The commission president is in effect nothing more but the top cabinet member, less than a PM, they don't have the power most presidents have. Nevertheless I'd like political reform, with a directly elected EU president, but you know what, this would mean taking power away from the memberstates, in effect increasing EU integration, something Eurosceptics don't want (and neither do you seeing you don't want a political union). The Current system is effectively almost as democratically as can be while keeping the power mostly with the memberstates and not the EU, this is the compromise between best representation and not too much integration.
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+COYADD acyually the german empire was the strongest military power in europe at the time, it just couldn't survive a prolonged war on 2 fronts, just like any country at that time. In the decades before the start of the war germany had invested intensively in it's military and navy, which could become as strong as the british given the time. This expansion of their navy however soured relations with britain even before the war.
The Germans highly underestimated belgiums resolve to slow down their advance, for example when a belgium fort in the surrounding of Liège was destroyed, the germans asked for the surrender of the remaining survivors, and the belgian commander refused, stating that he and his men would rather die than to give up an already destroyed fort. Like said in the video, the germans needed two weeks instead of the expected 2 days to reach Liège, and while they were moving through belgium they were often attacked by civilian snipers which led to extreme reprisals of the gemans, which was afterwards used by allied propaganda.
If the Belgian king had accepted the ultimatum of Germany and let german troops pass through, the schlieffenplan may have worked.
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I posted my post after your first post, and now it suddenly isn't there, it's not like I would say something to you if you hadn't said anything before that
Also if you just edited it, then you completely changed it, because the first comment of you that I can now see is entirely an answer on my answer on you first post.
How many posts of you can you see now? I can only see 2 in total.
Also the average increase is 6% in the EU data, not 1%. And x% means a change in the current position of the EU citizens, however small this maybe. Also it's wrong to speak about EU citizens here, seeing that the EU numbers talk about the countries and take the average of these countries.
=> one or more countries with a low population count can impact the average heavily in this system.
For example the position of 15% of EU citizens position might be changed, but if most of these are in larger populated countries, than this wouldn't be visible and might only account for a very small part of the total change in taking the average of all countries.
Discrepancy only means a difference between the two sources, it doesn't say which is more accurate, so yes there is a discrepancy. Well, if you say yes and no is more accurate, does this mean pew is more accurate? And therefor my original used numbers are more correct? If so, this speaks even more in favor of the EU.
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personally I think the title is not that well chosen. Russia (or better the USSR), didn't so much stop the blitzkrieg, as well as the russian geography and climate. The entire point of the blitzkrieg is to surprise and overwhelm your opponent before he can really react, by for example creating weapons en masse, mobilise a lot of troops, stabilize the front, .... The blitzkrieg was already over by the time that Kursk happened, because the USSR effectively had had the time to build up their forces during the winter and later on. They had by kursk had the time to start their industrial warmachine.
The blitzkrieg in Russia ended when winter arrived and the germans where bogged down, by both the weather and cityfighting.
There are several reasons the blitzkrieg was less succesfull in russia than on other theaters.
1) the vast spaces of russia meant that the germans needed more time to move fast enough to decisively deal with the USSR, unlike what happened in France or Poland.
2) the bad infrastructure (roads) played also a large part, certainly in conjunction with the vast spaces that had to be crossed.
3) weather: when the winter arrived the germans had huge trouble supplying the front, keeping the troops healthy and their mechanised parts were more prone to breakage due to freezing.
4) cityfighting: what eventually really ended the blitzkrieg was the cityfighting in for example stalingrad. But this wasn't the only place, german troops came very close to moscow, up to 30 miles even reaching it's outskirts (if I remember correctly), but here then faced heavy resistance, together with upcoming winter.
So at the beginning of the winter the blitzkrieg was already over and the USSR was 'given' 'breathing' space to gather more troops, get their industrial machine working for war and prepare counterattacks, effectively the things the blitzkrieg was meant to avoid.
The blitzkrieg could have been stopped if the enemy had more tanks, troops, ..., but this would be one factor, for example if these superior numbers were spread out, the blitzkrieg still could be effective and was also meant to deal with these kind of situations in a way. If it wasn't for the russian geography and such, the blitzkrieg would have been much more effective and it still worked quite well seeing how far the germans came. But it was still much less efficient in comparison with how the blitzkrieg was executed on the western front.
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Plum Bit
The euro is still stronger than many other currencies in the world and pre-Euro european national currencies.
Greeces financial crisis is not the EU's fault. high tax evasion (only taxes paid for a few 100 swimming pools, while google earth shows several 1000 on first glance, people even buyed camouflage for their pools), bad financial welfare systems (like families of ex-ministers, .... getting payed for doing nothing the rest of their life), bad use of budgets,... and it goes on. If it were the EU's fault, britain, france, germany,... would suffer the same.
refugee crisis would have happened either way. What would have happened without EU: refugees swarming into europe, borders get closed(probably a lot sooner), refugees stuck in greece (even more than now), condemming language from other parts of the world, possible sanctions on european countries by international institutes ... Could the EU have done better, yes. Could Europe without EU have done better, no
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Obama was blocked by republicans, more than Trump by republicans at this moment, went through the proper channels (which takes more time) made sure his acts were legally sound and his plans involved more than just recalling actions of the previous president or signing papers. Because that's the only thing he did now, sign papers and let others deal with the problems caused by it. Wall: just signed to make the idea real, still needs to pass through congress, it might be granted now, but what if democrats take power within 2 years and stop the moneyflow? ban, huge problems which he denies because either he's ill informed or in denial or just stupid. Obamacare stop started, but without a replacment as of yet. And so many others decreets that don't mean much on itself. A presidents work is not defined by the number of his decreets, but by his results at the end of his term. Despite the huge opposition and going trough the channels as well as having to deal with the crisises, both foreign and domestic (terror, war, financial) he (Obama) only broke 25% of his promises, which overall is not bad. Also Obama signed a decreet to close Guantanamo bay, guess what's still open. Just shows how much a decreet might mean in the end.
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Britain wouldn't have ignored the violation of Belgium neutrality if Germany invaded, further more britain wanted to stop German growing power in the world. I don't think it would have been long before they came in either way. If they didn't had the belgium excuse, they'd probably found another reason (new french-british alliance, german aggression, ...). The real what if scenario would be, what if Belgium gave in to Gemany's ultimatum and just let german troops pass? Most likely Paris would have fallen after days, before the british army was even properly mobilised, let alone shipped to France. The germans counted on a week to march true belgium in hostile situation, but belgium delayed this to over a month (for most of belgian, small part was never capturd), giving the British enough time to mobilise. If belgium worked with or didn't stopped germany, traintracks wouldn't have been sabotaged, no civilian snipers, no need to take out the forts around liège whose almost only weakness was that it was build just before the reinforced concrete time and therefor not strong enough (not for the germans largest cannons in history back then). Most likely without belgian resistance the first german troops would have reached french borders within hours and the bulk of the german troops only perhaps a day later or so.
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Macrons words about the US were clearly meant as a way to say that Europe can't rely and expect the US to be a reliable ally for ever. In the end the US does what favors the US. At this moment that is an alliance, what if that stops to be the case? Furthermore the US would strategically want nothing more than the EU collapsing, making Europe even more reliant on the US and in a weaker position when interacting with it.
In 1917 the US only came in because Germany proposed Mexico to invade the US if the US decided to join in (this together with unrestricted submarine warfare) and in 1941 only because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and Germany declared war. In none of these cases to the US entered the war to "save" or "liberate" Europe. The cold war was mainly a conflict between the US and the USSR, Europe was just caught in between. And what does Vietnam have anything to do with the relation between the US and Europe, Vietnam at that point was a war between capitalism (US) and communism (USSR), at that moment Europe had nothing to do with it anymore.
Yes, and Russia has attacked Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic states, Finland, Ukraine, .... Most large european countries have attacked eachother one time or another.
A unified EU would be a defacto empire just by its size, just like the US, China, Russia, India would be considered empires if you look at world history. He didn't meant it in the way that it would be ruled by an emperor or rule by iron fist or suppress regions/peoples or whatever. And he said an empire for good, meaning a large power that would do the right things, fight for justice, peace, ...
An arms race is btw already unavoidable seeing China, Russia and the US. Besides, for much of history there has been an arms race, just to different degrees.
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@George Mann
Navy reactors go from 10-100% in a minute.
Maybe, I don't know enough to say that they could, but I do know that these these are very expensive reactors not fit to be competitive in the current market.
France load follows with their reactors. Its just most economical to run them baseload and if the grid managers were not corrupted by political interference that's how they would operate.
Which is why I said that you'd see costs rise if you do use them to follow load and not as baseload production. And even then, we are talking about minutes or more to ramp up/down.
Your first point is irrelevant, the public opinion is overall not really welcoming to nuclear. Yes, mostly because they aren't properly informed, but don't you think it wouldn't be tried? The public doesn't always follows facts and logic, feelings do also influence a lot, even if it means they are making the wrong conclusion. And it is much easier educating a panel, than the entire citizenry.
2) Cost is still far, far lower than wind & solar in any apples to apples comparison.
No, it is not, even with storage solar is just slightly more expensive than nuclear, the same for onshore wind. And with storage costs coming down, it is very possible that by the time a new nuclear plant is built if the procedure starts today, it will come out cheaper when it starts operating, let alone the next 60-80 years of operation.
3) Rate of nuclear expansion Twh/yr has historically been 4-10x wind & solar's maximum rate.
Can you give me a source for that?
4-5yr construction times in Asia & the UAE.
Yeah, just like anything else that gets build there goes up faster than in the west.
And 5 to 8 years seems to be the norm for construction, but before this you need to actually go through the procedure of getting the licenses etc. and the planning phase. This alone could double the time. Ofcourse a country like China or the UAE might not have problems, due to space and the kind of government, but in the west? This can take longer than the actualy construction, or can even stop projects before they get of the drawing board.
No reason it can't be faster in the West. Corruption is the problem.
No, it can't be faster, not without enormous political will and money.
Onshore windturbines are set up in around 6 months, you know how long the total procedure takes before construction, just because of procedures? Usually 2-2,5 years. Imagine this for a new nuclear reactor, the debates, petitions, court battles, getting the rights, ....
4) Wind/Solar plus storage is a joke. Not even close to economical.
Actually in some cases (lots of sun or wind) it is as commercial as nuclear, for now it is overall a bit more expensive, but not even double.
And the EROI is so low that it is physically impossible to replace fossil.
This is just laughable. The EROI can even become better with storage due to not losing energy with curtailment. Ofcourse the system needs to be properly designed to much storage can be detrimental. And then it also depends on the kind of storage, not all storage are batteries.
Wind/solar has no place in our energy grid except as a bit player for off-grid cottages or areas on diesel generation with good solar or wind resource.
You clearly have no idea about renewables if you are making this claim.
Over $2.5 trillion wasted on wind/solar with zero results. No reduction in emissions.
Yeah, you clearly have no idea.
Consider this discussion closed, unless you come up with something truly relevant and factual.
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@George Mann
Coal, Hydro & Geothermal share that same problem.
Yes, but they are less expensive than new nuclear. Hydro especially is very low cost and so not having it running all te time is no problem. And geothermal is around as expensive as CCGT. The main problem for geothermal and hydro is not the costs or the difficulty to throttle down/up, but rather the geographical constraints.
Hasn't stopped all them from being used for economical power for a century or more.
Because what are the alternatives (and geothermal, hydro will remain in use for a long time either way, low cost+renewable)? Nuclear was the only possible alternative up untill maybe 10 years ago when the decline in RE started to really happen. The fact that they remained in use and were not replaced by nuclear should already be an indication nuclear wasn't the great saviour, even when it was still cheaper than now. Why is France the only country with such an amount of nuclear if it clearly is so great, ever wondered that? France is easily used as an example, but there isn't even another country with more than 60% from nuclear. France is the exception, people that use it as an example should wonder why.
Something to consider is that France is a major exporter, which can help them keeping a higher nuclear %, we see a similar (but bit smaller) trend with Germany's renewable electricity. When France has too much production, it just can export to neighbours, seeing that older nuclear is very cheap, they won't have trouble selling it. This however means not everyone can do what France has done. Would its neighbours also have used nuclear, it wouldn't be able to sell excess electricity. France exported 41TWh in 2019, that is more than 10% of their nuclear production in that year. Maybe this is why they can keep nuclear (partially) so great in their mix. If that is the case, what would happen if they can't do that because everyone else does the same as them?
With 1/2 the electricity price as wind/solar Germany
Yes, if you look at the total bill, however Germany has more taxes in their bill. Purely on the cost of production, Germany is only 2 cents/kWh more expensive, and considering France uses old reactors that I admit are cheap, this is definitely not bad. And yes, Germany also has a 5 cents/kWH renewable subsidies in their bill, however this is because renewables were expensive when Germany started the energiewende. Cost have come down a lot since then. It is predicted this subsidie tax will shrink every year from now on and be gone by 2030.
which has taken longer
Not true, if we look at it, Germany is now with renewables where France was after +-10 years. The energiewende started around 10 years ago. So if Germany is capable of getting 75-80% from renewables by 2030, it would have been around as fast as France in the past.
spent far more
If Germany had spent their wind/solar investment on nuclear they would be 100% clean energy by now
No, they wouldn't I already calculated it once and based on current prices for new nuclear, they would have had to pay around the same amount as they did now. And this is taking into account that renewables were much more expensive when Germany started the energiewende. And the costs on the bill (for the production part) would be similar or higher.
and all its achieved is emissions 10X larger per kwh than France
Germany has historically been a nation that used coal, even when it had built nuclear plants it still stuck with coal. Since the start of the energiewende co2 emissions of electricity production has gone down by around 40% more or less the amount of renewables in the mix.
You are acting like every country has the possibility France has, France is lucky to have such a great amount of hydro available, many other countries haven't, Hydro in Germany is only minor, and if it could easily be increased, they would have done so. Between 1960 and 1975 hydro made up between 25% to 50% of France's electricity generation, that is a large amount.
instead they have killed 50 thousand Europeans with their coal emissions.
Germany's coal production went down by around 50%, it would have been more if they hadn't closed half of their existing nuclear powerplants (which was stupid). It could have gone down by around 75% if they hadn't. And they will make the same mistake in 2022 if they go through with the closure. Personally I aim for 50 years of operation for the older reactors, that would mean that Germany will close the next bunch around 15 years too early.
You know storage can be used with nuclear also daily for peak demand, in fact it is far more economical than with solar & wind?
This is just laughable, even when new nuclear plants are operating at 90% of the time, they are more expensive than solar and wind, to say nuclear+storage would be cheaper than renewables+storage is plain stupid.
And in fact nuclear, unlike solar or wind is the perfect fit for BEV charging which is mostly at night, that will flatten the demand curve making the problem insignificant.
While yes, nuclear can be helped with BEV's, it wouldn't be a better fit than renewables, it would around the same. The reason people charge their ev now at night is easy: prices are cheaper and they have the infrastructure at home. However most cars sit still for most of the day: at work, in the store, going out, ... In other words it could charge during the day with solar power and with wind when there is extra available, it just needs the infrastructure at work and around stores, this infrastructure will eventually become standard, hell at this moment people who can charge at work already often do so, because it is free (work pays) or because it is cheaper than even at night. BEV's would be a perfect fit for renewables, it could even take away some of the need for storage if bi-directional charging is used.
And molten salt reactors can add a secondary solar salt heat storage & standard CCGT steam turbine and store sufficient heat for the daily peak/shoulder load @ $50/kwh, cheaper than any battery storage by far.
And this is in favor of nuclear and not renewables how? Also it is expected that by 2030 battery costs would be around $60/kWh.
Look at what France did 20yrs before Germany, with ancient nuclear tech
Look at what France is doing with current nuclear technology. Expected to be 10 years over time, and 6 times higher cost (€19,1bn vs €3,3bn) according to a recent audit. Or in Finland where it is expected to be 11 years over time and 4 times over budget. In the US one project is expected to suffer a delay of 5 years for both new units and an increase of 11bn on the 14bn estimated price, another nuclear project in the US was stopped due to the company going bankrupt. For some reason the US and Europe just doesn't seem to be good in constructing new type nuclear reactors.
Dumb statement. Storage ALWAYS worsens EROI.
Dumb statement from you, a study found it wouldn't. Why? because you get more usefull energy produced. If you curtail, the energy is wasted. If the loss of usefull energy from curtailment is higher than the energycost of the storage to stop this curtailment, you decrease the EROI of a project by adding storage.
Weissbach did an full lifecycle analysis of ...
And his study is from 2013, that is old regarding renewables. The E-66 for example was developed in 1995 and is not being build anymore.
Ferroni found a EROI of 0.82:1 for solar PV in Switzerland
The study by Ferroni was rebuted by another article which put it between 7 and 10.
Hall found an EROI...
Halls study also is already 6 years old.
An article that looked at several studies concerning EROI of renewables found that for wind the EROI is between 34-58 onshore and 16,7-17,7 offshore (from 4 studies) and solar has an EROI between 5-34 according to 7 studies.
nuclear 75:1
A meta-analysis of 2013-2014 using 15 publications for nuclear came to an EROI of 14, maybe the values from the references are outdated, a possibility is that weissbach looked at heat energy instead of electrical energy (though why would he do that), that would mean this 14 is something more similar to 56 (heat energy is around 4 times higher than the actual produced energy in electricity). Though I too was surprised by this low number, since even if new nuclear isn't really economical, energywise I expected it to be very good, I'll look more into the analysis and the referenced studies/publications when I have more time.
But eitherway, EROI isn't the only thing to look at, costs are considered way more important as long as EROI is decent enough.
This analysis found that hydro is by far the source wih the highest EROI btw.
All of those are far below the 14:1 needed to sustain a modern civilization.
Where did you get 14 from? I can't find anything about that.
As for the clip you provided, I have some issues with it, ofcourse some things are right there, but if I really need to go into that clip/site, I will have to write another reply possibly as long as this one, so I'll wait with that for later if you want.
And just to be clear, I am not anti-nuclear, if that is the best source, fine use it, personally I expect a mix of nuclear (probably gen 4) and renewables+storage, but as things stand now, new nuclear just isn't economical. Most nations are wel below 30-40% renewables, which is considered the point where renewables will start becoming expensive without affordable storage, so at least they can build renewables up to that point. by 2030 hopefully we know whether gen 4 fullfills its promise or not and will storage have decreased in price enough to be truly affordable.
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The main problem that these "use the official way" people don't get, is that the official way is broken, if it takes decades to be processed or your request isn't even accepted, why would they choose the official way?
The thing is, the moment the border security and immigration procedures got more difficult the more people started using illegal ways. Before many people just crossed the border, did some work and went back accross the border, when they suddenly noticed that they couldn't do that anymore, they just stayed. That is one thing. The second thing is that US foreign policy messed up large parts of the world, mainly the middle east and central/south America and when they starting coming to the west/north, the reaction wasn't changing the foreign policy but increasing immigration requirements and border security. They reacted to the problem by looking at the symptoms, not the root cause. Or they just ignored that the root cause (their policies) because they didn't want to take responsbility for it/change it.
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@fjm9898
A supercharger point that includes 8-10 charging point would cost around $100-175k. A semi would probably use the equivalent of around 6 charging points, so per charging point for a truck you'd get around 75-125k (probably lower if you install multiple in the same location). It is also is very much possible Tesla would offer somekind of pay-off program like is done so often for cars, ie. they pay off the charger over time, just like they'd use fuel overtime.
Furthermore these chargers will be fine for probably 2 decades, with maybe only minor changes needed. So yearly this would maybe come down to $4-10k, which would certainly be low enough to be more than compensated for by reduced fuel and maintenance costs.
Then there is also the possibility that Tesla itself will start rolling out charging infrastructure quickly once the semi's are actually being delivered.
People are now mostly talking about charging while loading/unloading, but there also is a case to be made for charging during transit on Tesla charging locations, sure the truck and driver will be stationary for 30 minutes or so, but if you can corporate this into the drivers necessary rest time, this is no problem. And even if you can't do that, the lower fuel and maintenance cost might be enough to recuperate this lost time charging.
And ofcourse for companies that don't drive their trucks 24/7, but have daily scheduled downtimes of several hours (for example during the night or so), slower and less expensive chargers could be used.
Yes, you might be trying to sell EV trucks now, but are you working for Tesla? Do you know what their roll-out strategy is? Just out of curiosity, which EV trucks are you selling/trying to sell?
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@ps8432
Be real. Just how are we going to charge 1000s of trucks at night?
For places that use nuclear powerplants this would actually help the powerplants, because they don't need to decrease their output. There also still can be wind and hydro during the night and eventually there should be more than enough storage capacity too. Even regular EV's can help here, they could overtime be plugged in constantly while they don't drive, during the day and night. During overproduction they charge up and during high demand they can discharge, this way they can help balance the grid (including those 1000's of trucks getting charged overnight). Because of the low power input/output the batteries won't deteriorate more and in the long time this can even help your batteries according to some studies, because you'd keep your battery charged up enough at almost anytime without putting stress on it (like fastcharging would do), so more cycles, but very small and gently cycles.
Take the EU for example. It has around 4,5 million trucks on the road, lets pretend they on average would have a battery pack of 1000kWh (which is probably way too high, seeing you can cross 3/4th of France north-to-south on one charge then), this would make 4,5TWh in needed energy. The EU has 280 million cars driving on its roads, taking an average of 50kWh per car, that would make around 14TWh, so even if half of these can be used (which would possibly be much more) you'd have more than enough to charge all these trucks. And this is very conservative estimate, the average pack size of trucks is likely to be much lower, while the average for EV's now already is 45kWh, so 50 is definitely not too high. And during the night most cars would be plugged in if possible, it would be a matter of rolling out the level 2 charging grid to accomodate as many EV's as possible. This kind of system is likely to be implemented, since like I said it can also be used to help balance out the grid, especially one focused on renewables.
Ofcourse there is work to be done to make everything happen, I am not going to say it will be easy, but also far from impossible. And it is not like governments won't do anything (might ofcourse depend on the kind of government), it is very likely they'll to invest in charging and grid infrastructure be it directly, in the forms of cheap loans or maybe subsidies.
Pointing to Texas is a sign of ignorance on the facts. In Texas the problem was that the grid and generation not winterized, thus when cold temperatures happened, a lot of generation fell out (a fourth of its installed capacity). This compared to the unforseen spike in demand (which trucks wouldn't be, they'd be very much forseen, you don't get 1000's of trucks delivered overnight) caused the problems.
What exactly are you refering to in regards to Germany?
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@FaitsFamiliers Doesn't matter that it isn't hard to learn (neither is english in terms of being able to communicate imo), it is still an extra language to learn and maintain. Most people would barely even use it, while english is (as is evident here) nearly everywhere when you want to communicate with people that don't speak the same language. English already is a defacto international common language, just not officially recognised as such.
Because english tend to américanized europeans
Bullshit, plenty of people in Europe speak English, while still not necessarily liking America or American lifestyle. If that is a problem, I'd say the bigger problem is the lack of a strong native culture. Movies, Music, the web, ... is what Americanises people, but not always. Even without my lessons in school I would be pretty fluent in english thanks to exposure to it, and despite that I am no fan of the US or its lifestyle, European is imo better/preferable.
and native english don't have to make effort.
And there are no native English speakers anymore in the EU (except the Irish, but they technically also have Irish and are a minor country), that is exactly one of the reasons English is now more likely as a common language with brexit.
Btw I speak natively 2 languagues and learn 2 at school so it's not that complicated for europeans i believe.
Don't make the mistake to think you are representative of the entire populace. I am European too and not great with languages, I can use my native language and English well, but my 2nd national language (French) not really, while still having been educated in it since primary school. My sister on the other hand has a talent for language and can use +-4-5 languages, but she is the exception among the people I know. 2-3 is the normal, more is very rare. And this is in a country where 3 languages (among which english and our 2 official languages) are being taught in schools
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@eboniaco I believe it is the opposite of what you say, specifically because the UK is out of the EU, English would be more likely not less. Since this way no (major) EU member would be seen as favored above others by the commong language choice (like Germany if German is chosen, France if French, ...).
Moreover English is already used the most as a common language in the EU, whether anyone likes that or not. It is already de facto the common language, even if it is not (yet) a de jure one.
Add to this the most allies either have english as their first (US, UK, Australia, Canada, ...) or as a universal language and it makes English even more logical.
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You are so far off. Wind power is actually even cleaner than solar power. You already are cleaner after 1-2 years of operation. I don't know why people keep thinking it is so much more polluting than it actually is. Wind is as clean as nuclear in terms of CO2eq emissions.
Solar is nearly the definition of scalability. We can put it practically everywhere we want: roofs, farms/fields, parking area's, above roads, on water, ....
You don't seem to know anything about renewable energy or otherwise bought into the many completely false myths.
Nuclear is as clean as wind. That is indeed true. But it has 2 main problems:
1. it is expensive, like 3 times more than onshore wind and 1,5-2 times more than offshore wind, as expensive as roof solar (without the bonus of being used immediately compared to being put in the grid, thus increasing sale price due to grid and taxes cost) and 2-4 times more expensive than utility-scale solar.
2. like you said, it has a bad public reputation.
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Arianit Krasniqi
You are joking right? Wind made up 24,8% of the electricity produced in Germany in 2019, that is around as much as nuclear was before the shutdowns 10 years ago. Within the next 5 year wind will produce more yearly than German nuclear ever did yearly.
The cost of the electricity produced was around 8 cent/kWh, for comparison in France it is around 6 cent/kWh. Yes, the overall bill went up because the grid needed upgrades, but that is not a constantly recurring cost, eventually the grid will have been completely updated and because Germany started the transistion when renewables were still very expensive. It is partially due to German investment in wind that the cost of wind turbines came down dramatically in the past decade.
And no, the maintenance of these windmills isn't costly compared to that of other powerplants.
Seriously where do people keep getting these nonsense information that is so far off. Are you using outdated information or just listening to/reading complete bullshit information.
There isn't a single thorium reactor in operation, it still needs to prove itself. And to become competitive it will need to reduce costs compare to current new nuclear by almost half. Overall the expert expectation is that a thorium roll out in Europe won't have happened before 2050, if it ever happens.
Windmills kill around half a million birds a year, compared to the 2-3 billion that die in total every year. More birds die due to fossil fuel electricity generation than by wind turbines. Solar panels can be recycled and their harm to the environment can be mitigated to the point it is of no concern.
Honestly before talking about renewables, do some research, because you are looking like a complete fool right now.
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@CyberCPU
Yes, the intermittency of solar and wind is a problem, that is why for now it won't get above around 70-80% of the grid mix at best. If storage improves enough however you can easily have 100% renewables. And overall the question is not if we can get there, but rather when. This is why nuclear + renewables mix is a proposed solution (usually something like 60% renewables - 40% nuclear, though depends on the country too). However this entirely depends on the progress storage options make, like the one from this video, batteries, hydrogen, ....
In the case of nuclear power it's capacity is in the high 90% while wind is the low 20%.
Yes, the problem is, nuclear to be profitable needs to run almost all the time, wind already has payed itself back after 2-3 years. Both in cost and energy used to produce it, despite this intermittency.
It is for things like what happened in California why storage options are needed. However things like what happened in California are overall exceptions. Also there are a lot more problems in California that causes these black outs, they essentially mismanaged their electricity generation and energy transition. There have already been discussions on how California would have been able to stop or minimize these black outs, both renewable and nuclear provide possibilities and a mix might maybe be best. Overall, California's leadership just went about things without a vision other than "transition quickly".
And one interesting thing for the future is EV's and the possibilities of V2G, which can allow you to power your home with your EV battery. At some point most people will have an EV and chargers at home. If black outs happen, you can use the electricity from your battery, which if you don't drive too much could forsee most homes with power for around 3 days (with average use, if you are smart you use less in such a situation). Is it perfect or immediately available? No, but it will be an option in the future exactly during these rare occurences.
For example Germany does not suffer these problems, while still having reduced their nuclear (stupid move btw) and producing 46% of renewables in 2019, 24,8% of total being from wind.
Actually turbine blades can be recycled, it is just still difficult, expensive and there aren't enough old blades yet to use economy of scale to get prices down. So for now these blades are burried or stacked in empty spaces, so they can later on be recycled when things are cheaper. The same goes for solar panels btw. In the EU they need to be recycled by law, which is definitely possible and not too expensive, but for now it is still cheaper to just dump it in a landfill, so that happens in the US. It is just a matter of time though.
Nuclear waste can't be spent completely. In either case nuclear waste is not my biggest worry with nuclear power, rather the cost of current new reactors.
Nuclear still sees a lot of investment and if we look at all funding since the 50's, you'll find nuclear has for now still received more funding than renewables. And incentives for renewables are dissapearing due to the lowering of costs.
In the end, like the person from the company said in this video, it is not about efficiency, rather how much electricity you can produce at what cost. At this moment, like it or not, renewables are beating nuclear here, and not by a little.
And for the record, I want both renewables and nuclear to be researched and improved, but in the end the best cost/production will and should win out. And for now renewables are winning this game, at least untill you hit like 70-80% of grid production by renewables, at which point they need cheaper storage or it will become too expensive. Maybe next gen nuclear can change this, but it will first need to prove itself in the coming years.
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Arianit Krasniqi I think I know why we are on a different footing here. You are talking about energy in general, this includes heating, transport, ... I am talking about electricity. Renewables for now are mostly fixed on electricity transition. While yes, there are renewable alternatives for other energy needs (geothermal for heating, EV's for transport, ...) they are not being implemented on scale just yet.
Germany has focused on the transition to renewables in the electricity/power sector, not yet the whole energy sector for so far I know.
Honestly talking about total energy use when discussion wind turbines or solar panels is stupid at this moment. I therefor am talking about the production of electricity, which indirectly will in the long term also influence other energy uses (heating/cooling with thermal pumps run on electricity, eV's driving on electricity, ...) however as long as the necessary "tools" are not adopted, influencing the total energy use with renewables is very difficult, though easier with renewables than with nuclear. How are you going to power cars with nuclear if there are few eV's? Place a nuclear reactor in cars? or how about heating? Are you going to transport your heat produced in a nuclear powerplant through underground heat tubes?
If you want to compare renewables to nuclear, look at electricity, else the comparison is disingenious. Please tell me the maximum amount of total energy supply nuclear ever was in Germany, it will be much lower than renewables is now.
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@CyberCPU
This is going to be a long reply, sorry. If necessary split it up in different parts to read/react to.
it had nothing to do with the power grid but rather the ability to generate enough power during a heatwave.
And I never indicated the grid was the problem.
This is going to be a reoccurring issue every summer if California continues to invest more in solar and wind than other forms of power.
Yes and no, if they keep investing in solar and wind without dealing with its downsides, yeah probably, if they deal with the downsides this is an entirely different story
In regards to nuclear running all the time that's not really a downside.
It wasn't in the past, since you had the baseload characteristics of the grid. however with renewables this is dissapearing. People and companies that put solar panels on their roof will first use the electricity from this (cheaper due to no grid cost or taxes) and will send extra electricity back on the grid. This messes with the idea of baseload a lot. Everytime there is too much electricity being produced, curtailment needs to happen. If it is just a few minutes/an hour, they could curtail the renewables, but seeing that renewables are cheaper per kWh in general ,more and more the nuclear plants (or the power from it) would be curtailled due to its higher price. So in a future grid having to run continuously to make a profit is a dangerous proposition unless you provide the cheapest electricity, which again new nuclear powerplants just don't do.
The reason why solar and wind needs storage capacity and nuclear doesn't is because of their efficiencies.
No, this isn't due to their efficiency, but rather their intermittency. A less efficient powersource just needs more production. And seeing that renewables are cheaper per MWh even with this lower efficiency incalculated, the low efficiency isn't a problem.
Nuclear power can sustain the power grid without storage.
Yes and no. Sure you could, but you'd need a huge overproduction during most times to be able to deal with the peak vs low times. This will either result in having to use storage to store the excess (and here we have the same downside as renewables) or you curtail a lot of nuclear power, which is ofcourse bad seeing you need almost 90% production (and sales) to break-even and make a profit. This is why nuclear power is always ever used as a base load and why you won't see nuclear at 100% of the grid mix, just like you won't see 100% renewables at this moment (except maybe in geographically wel located countries).
And was California wanting to ban gas powered vehicles their power requirements are going to skyrocket as soon as people start driving electric cars all the time.
Actually, while you wouldn't think it this wouldn't be a problems and eV's might even help out a lot. For one eV's can be charged when there is too much solar or wind production, thus they don't care for (short term) intermittency overall. And eV's almost always have much more battery capacity than is needed for daily driving. For example most people with regular driving would use around 15-20% of their battery capacity. This means 80% would be unused, however due to battery life management and a safety factor (so you can still drive whenever you want), this will be reduced to 35-40% of a battery capacity never being used in daily driving. Thus this can be used to store electricity during peak production and discharge during peak demand. This 35-40% already now on average would come down to 18-20 kWh, double what an average home uses on a daily base. And even if these eV's power their owners homes during peak demand and nothing more, that still would be a great help to manage the grid and lower the problem of renewables intermittency. So in short, eV's aren't a danger, they are a help, that is if implemented in a correct way.
Wind and solar will never be as efficient as nuclear.
And again this doesn't really matter, even with low efficiency they are cheaper than nuclear and solar alone could power the entire world several times over with this bad efficiency, though ofcourse no one would advocate for just using solar ever.
I don't know about you but I personally don't want to see the landscape littered with windmills and solar panels
That is your personal preference, with me it is the opposite, when I see wind turbines and solar panels, this cheers me up.
when all of our power production can be done in a small geographical area with nuclear.
This an entire discussion on its own centralised vs decentralised power generation (or a mix of it) and many people would dislike these powerplants more. And especially in build up regions (for example here in Belgium), placing a powerplant will always need to be done close to people and will have a huge public backlash, where ever you put it. In the end many people think like you, untill the powerplant is to be dropped in their backyard, they'd rather see solar panels an wind turbines everywhere at that moment.
For that matter even natural gas and coal are low emissions due to technology. In fact I think coal burning is zero emission because of scrubbers.
not really. They try ofcourse to make it cleaner, but there is a cost vs cleaning problem, to fully clean them, you'd need to have a lot of very efficient scrubbers or use carbon capture and storage, both are never actually realised. they tried/try, but always are shutdown due to the rising costs. If you know more about it, please enlighten me, but at this moment this isn't actually an option. It would be nice as a transition electricity source, but ofcourse not as a sustainable one, since the deposit of gas and coal would eventually run out.
In regards to cost the cost of nuclear power is far less because of its efficiency. Even though it cost more to build nuclear plants the power they produce offsets the price far more than wind and solar.
Nope, the costs I look at is the lcoe (levelised cost of electricity). This is calculated in $/MWh and thus already includes the (in)efficiencies of the different production methods.
Also it's a single investment while wind and solar needs to be replaced more often.
These need to replaced once or twice in the lifetime of a nuclear powerplant (depending whether the lifespan of the nuclear plant is 60 or 80 years). And this actually isn't a downside either, since this gives the opportunity to install newer, more efficient wind turbines or solar panels. And they can also just use the existing foundation if it is still good after this time, though that maybe isn't that important for solar panels, for wind turbines however this can save a lot of costs and emissions.
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@CyberCPU
Currently in the United States we get 2% of our power from wind and solar.
actually this was 3,6% in 2019 and if you include other renewables it goes up to 11% (with biomass) or 6,3% (without biomass), for comparison nuclear (which has a headstart) makes up 8% of the energy mix. But like I said earlier, looking at total energy is at this point a bit stupid, since neither nuclear nor renewables have really a change to really do anything here without electrification of transport, industry and heating (though in regards to heating geothermal could be a usefull renewable source). Here in just power generation we find that sun+wind made up 9,1% of the US electricity production, still well below 19,7% of nuclear, but again, nuclear has a head start and it isn't like renewables are pushed in the US except for in a few states, in the opposite in fact looking at the federal government. And only including wind and solar is also not really correct, since renewables also include hydro and geothermal, bringing it up to 16,1% and depending on how you look at it biomass (personally I see it as a "transition renewable" if used correctly) it goes up to 17,5%
Looking at these numbers you'd still say "nuclear beats renewables", but if you take into account that nuclear is already used to this extent for decades, while wind and solar have come up mostly in the last decade, this actually is far from a good look for nuclear imo.
I don't see that number going up much.
Where are you basing this on? It literally goes up every year. Are you saying this rising trend will suddenly stop next year? Why?
If we do start relying more on wind and solar the only thing I really see in the future is more blackouts due to wind and solar not being able to provide enough energy to sustain requirements.
Germany has 45% renewable, 33,9% from solar and wind, and yet they don't suffer black-outs. So clearly it is more of a problem of how California manages power generation (and back-ups) than just an inherent problem with renewables (solar and wind specifically). Hell, California has less renewable generation than Germany at 32% in total and 21% solar and wind in 2019.
Personally I don't see much of the future in wind power without being heavily subsidized.
This is quite wrong, why would you subsidize a cheaper option. Subsidizing of renewables is being build down or outright stopped all over. The main reason why they are now still subsidized would be to incentivize a faster roll out. In contrary nuclear would be the one that would need to be subsidized if you build new conventional plants now.
I see a brighter future for solar as a personal investment rather than a subsidized investment.
That definitely is a fact, solar in most regions is even without subsidies if used correctly interesting on a personal level.
But I still don't see that taking over more traditional forms of power generation like nuclear, natural gas, and coal.
It will take some time like with any transition, but fossil fuels will be transitioned out, whether it is for a renewable+nuclear, renewable+storage or renewable+storage+nuclear mix is still to be seen.
In fact because of the decommissioning of nuclear power in places like California I see an even heavier reliance on natural gas and coal
If you take out existing nuclear plants too early (like they did in Germany), that is indeed stupid. I don't know the situation in Calfornia exactly, though after quickly looking into, one nuclear power plant will have reached its end of life this year (+-60 years for older nuclear power plants was generally the end of life planned), one will still run for 5 years, though looking at the commission date logically it could be extended by 10-15 years, this likely will not be done and will be a mistake, and another one was shutdown first temporarily after mechanical problems and then definitely by the company after claims of malfeasance were rising, because the mechanical problems were already shown as a possibility 8 years earlier and nothing was done to with it.
So all in all it doesn't seem that for now there were political closures of nuclear power plants that caused the problems. Also seeing that anti-nuclear sentiment seems to be strong in California for several decades, it was always very unlikely its leaders would choose to support building new nuclear plants.
Looking into California further, natural gas usage for power production went down since 2009, coal usage went down too and imports remained more or less stable since 2014. And these imports have actually a greater renewable and nuclear share in it, then their own production. I can't really find a years by year figures of imported electricity going further than 2014. If you know of one, I'd like to know how it progressed before that time. Though from some numbers I found it seems California's imports went up by around 35 TWh, while their own production went down by around 13 TWh, around 5 TWh of this seems to have happened when the nuclear plant with the technical problem was shutdown and never re-opened. When looking at these numbers I'd say the electricity problems in California aren't due to renewables, but rather a complete lack of increasing its own production and increasingly relying on imports. Germany's installed capacity increased by around a third since 2011 (+- +34%), in California, there was only an 11% increase.
All in all the problems in California seem to be caused by a lack of capacity, failures of certain plants and a historic heatwave combination. The grid operators are urging to make renewables not the scape goat though, but rather that many things went wrong. I'd say California's reliance on imports and not enough capacity installation (especially back-ups) are the main problems. There has only been one nuclear powerplant shut down and that wasn't even a political decision and new nuclear just doesn't seem to be on the cards in California, even if leaders want it. Citing decisions regarding nuclear in California or renewables as the main problem for the black outs is disingenious. In the end a bad roll out and management of the production seems to be at the foundation of the problems.
So in the long run decommissioning nuclear plants may actually hurt the environment even more.
Depends when nuclear plants are decommissioned and what is being put in place. California never really had much nuclear to start with. Here in Belgium I am curious what they are going to do. Nuclear power is around half of electricity production and at least 2/3rd of this will be decommisioned by political decision in 2025, the other 1/3rd would depend on the power supply, if there isn't enough to replace it (ver likely) it can be extended by 10 years to 2035. Now, the decision to close the older plants by 2025 isn't entirely a bad one, small microfractures have been found in the reactor vessels, while it is considered safe for now, it isn't advised to push them too far. The main problem is a lack of a cohesive vision of what will be done to replace them in the next 4-5 years. Most likely it will be a mix of renewable and gas at this moment, since even if we want, there is no way to finish a new nuclear powerplant, and neither is there political or public support for new nuclear powerplants.
Since nuclear is viewed as "dirty" and non renewable it gets pushed aside.
I don't think so, usually it is either the price or safety/waste "problems". The first one I can agree with, the last one not so much, though the idea that a nuclear disaster could happen, even if the chance is very very low, in densily populated area's does also concern me, but not as much to be against it.
Now to close, I do see one area where nuclear can be very interesting, especially if it decreases in price and can maybe be scaled down: the electrification of the industry, where the baseload characteristic can be really usefull, seeing that industry could function 24/7 with stable power needs.
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@samus598
and maybe it has on candidates who havent straight up called themselves socialists.
Bernie is called and has called himself a socialist for years (even though he is a soocial democrat), yet this hasn't hit him in the polls. He at this point does better in heads to heads against Trump than anyone else, despite everyone by now knowing his "socialist" background. So yes it has lost its strength. Especially since the younger generation identifies almost as much or more socialist than capitalist. And it is exactly this younger vote Bernie is after, since the older vote don't want progress but stability/status quo overall.
You take it for granted that a public option as a pathway to single payer will not work
It speaks for itself that a public option will not work.
First you give the insurance companies a chance to completely destroy the idea of a public option and m4a for a number of years. Even if they have to go in the red for a few years by offering too cheap plans to healthy people, they will if this means a return to "normalcy" and large profiteering after that.
Furthermore will you need to fight on healthcare one more time than necessary, that would be 3 times in 2 decades. Even if a public option works, this would entice people to just say "oh well, we have a working solution, why go further", untill it suddenly doesn't work anymore, because the big companies got their act together and decisively work on destroying it.
Thirdly, with a public option you CAN'T lower cost as much as you can as with m4a. At best you lower costs a bit. Now, could a public option work if you go from m4a to it? Yes, but in the US system today the insurance and drugcompanies have too much power to choose a public option as stepway to the real deal.
Yang supports enstating the most popular healthcare plan
No, Yangs plan isn't the most popular plan, if that were the case Bernie would not be the most trusted on healthcare by a mile.
it doesnt scare the shit out of boomers
Only few people are scared of m4a. If you just ask "do you support m4a?" 70%-80% of the US says they support it. It is only when you ask "do you support m4a if this means no more private insurance?" or something, the numbers drop to maybe half the country (still not bad). If you then rephrase it to "do you support m4a if this means no more private insurance but you can keep your doctor?" suddenly it is again up in the 60%-70%'s. m4a is the most popular plan out there, not a public option. A public option is a political compromise that will still not be supported by republicans and thus not be passed easier than m4a.
Bernie is just the best on healthcare, everything shows that, every poll. If you disagree, convince me otherwise with data.
shrinks the private insurance market dramatically
Yeah, by allowing all the sick people on medicare and the healthy with private insurers, thus putting the majority of the cost on the sick or the government. This is not a healthy way of "shrinking" the insurance market.
and sets us up for an easier transition to m4a
No, it doesn't. Which republican would support a public option, but not m4a?
Bernie wont get anything done if Trump fearmongers enough about socialism, and you have to admit Bernie is more vulnerable to that line of attack against him.
Again, no fearmongering about socialism will not work against Bernie, because that has been done for years now. We are not at the time of the cold war or right after anymore. Socialism is almost only a reason anymore to not vote for a candidate if you already lean republican. Besides, even in 2008 many Hillary supporters went to the republicans, still Obama won nicely because he energized new or disillusioned voters, just like Bernie does.
In fact Bernie is stonger against this 'socialism' attack because he comes out with it. Other candidates would be put on the defensive with such an attack and explain why they aren't socialists, Bernie just accepts the attack and starts explaining what his "socialism" means, basically the scandinavian model.
They are already running terrifying horror commercials about denied surgeries in the UK and government control over what healthcare you can receive.
And you think this kind of commercials won't be aired with a prublic option? LMOA, you must be rather naîve to think that. Furthermore, this can easily be debunked. All necessary care and operations will be given under m4a, but based on urgency. Even now surgeries that aren't necessary or too dangerous can already be denied in the US by the doctors (because it is them who decide), so nothing changes.
You need to stop focussing on the fearmongering of the republicans, they will fearmongering about everything whether it is m4a, a public option or even just strengthening Obamacare. Stop looking about what the republicans will do and focus on what matters: the actual policy and the popularity of these policies.
Support for Bernie's bill is falling
Ofcourse, it is being attacked. The same will happen with Yangs public option if he were to become the nominee. It would be attacked and the support would also drop. This is practically unavoidable at this moment. However while support has been falling, it is still the most popular option with a majority support.
"Bernies way is the only way"
I never said this and if I lived in the US and Yang was the nominee I'd vote for him, but your original statement that Yang is better than Bernie (and Warren) was just ridiculous, just as the reasons you gave. I could have agreed that his democracy dollars idea was great and should be adopted by others and the UBI would also have been fine, if it was build up in a progressive way, not a libertarian one. At this moment his UBI will be best for the middle class, but only slightly better for the lower classes. And it surpasses the original goal: dealing with automation. Jobs will be lost, 1000 isn't enough to live of decently, so you will have to find another job to live a proper life, the problem is, jobs wouldn't be available due to automation, that is the entire point of a UBI: to deal with this jobloss. A progressive UBI would be linked to income (decreasing with higher income), starting at 2000-2500 for those unemployed, but also slowly scaling down over time to a minimum of 1000 if you remain unemployed and aid at that time in finding a job.
Some of Yangs ideas show promise, but most of them aren't what the US needs at this point, maybe in future (especially a good refined UBI can be usefull in the future).
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@samus598
How much does Bernie's healthcare bill cost per year?
Surprisingly less than the current system, meaning over time it will save more than it needs.
youre wrong. 60% oppose when you tell them it removes private insurance.
I haven't seen this poll, could you post the link here?
In the end people against m4a have done research, find out why people might not support it and then spread lies that m4a would exactly cause what people fear. In polls about m4a the way you word it is important. In the same poll, it was phrased in the same 3 ways I said, with these outcomes, so the same people voted differently on this, while the poll was always talking about the same plan. Perception is important.
The same btw happens in regard to a public option, the worse you represent it (while still being true, just deceptive also), the more the support for it lowers. At worst/best the support for m4a and a public option at this moment are around the same and will be equally difficult to implement, so why go for the worse of the two? I'll tell you why, because the media and other large interests don't favour m4a, so politicians switch to a public option as appeasement (or just to seperate them from progressives) or in some cases to link themselves to the previous administation under Obama (for example Biden).
Your argument that public option cannot work is straight up false. Australia has one of the best systems and it has private insurance alongside a public option.
Sure it can work, if it there isn't already a powerfull healthcare industry that only profits from destroying it AND that basically can legally buy politicians. For a public option in the US to work, first you'd have to fix many problems in the US political system, which on its own is an entire nearly impossible battle.
Furthermore, in Australia the public side is paid for by taxes. In the US the public option would basically be the government stepping into the private market. It would be funded similarly to how the insurance companies are funded. People opting for the public option pay into it, others not. At best some money will come from the government. But seeing that candidates supporting a public option show the raising of taxes in m4a as an argument against m4a, clearly they are not going to raise taxes. That is a major difference, the way it is funded in the US vs Australia. And why it works in Australia, but won't work in the US.
Yang is rapidly gaining on Bernie in head to heads.
could you give me some polls to show this? The ones I find don't really show this. Sure Yang is still unknown, the question is, will this change in the next 2 months? If he doesn't gain 15% in Iowa, how is he going to increase his name recognition? In any early state at this moment Yangs best polling is 5%, he needs to at least triple this within the next 2 months, otherwise he won't gain any delegates, completely destroying any changes he had. At this moment I honestly think he's still staying in just to spread his ideas, maybe laying a path for a future run. Unless something really changes, Yang doesn't have chance of winning the primary, but I guess we'll see. It is best he remains in untill at least Iowa or after the 4 early states and decide what to do then. If he can't get any delegates by that point, he is better of endorsing another candidate, maybe even making a deal. I am sure Bernie would see merit in something like his democracy dollars.
Yang doesnt have full name recognition yet while Bernie has been a known public figure for 40 years
Bernie had barely any name recognition outside Vermont before the 2016 election. It is only because then he started to make a real national name. In fact if he had the name recognition then that he had today, he'd probably have won the primary back then. Even though you are correct, it is irrelevant, unless Yang suddenly increases his name recognition dramatically, he won't win the primary and thus also not the general.
I guess we'll see how it goes in february.
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@metaxu3305 If anything I believe they might be underestimating the transition, if EV's reach price parity (expected to happen around 2025), its sales will skyrocket and ICE will plummet.
But when I talked about gridstorage, I am talking about specifically the storage solely meant for the grid. If I meant gridstorage from EV's, I'd talk about V2G.
Moreover I wasn't talking about how much gridstorage there will be, but that it will be price competitive unless nuclear goes down a lot in price (not to mention public opinion importance).
As for people willingness to let their EV battery be siphoned, it would be their choice, but there obviously will be compensation. Whether V2G will become commonplace depends on the wear a battery experiences due to V2G (though this is expected to be limited since there will be no massive draw, rather a tiny amount from many batteries and only within a certain battery range) and the compensation. If the compensation comes out higher, people would make money by allowing it without needing to do anything (though it would be limited gain ofcourse at best). Another likely option is the use of V2H, where people just use their EV to power their home in the evening, though this will mostly depends on whether there are more variable prices (like expensive in the evening, cheap during the day/night), whether they have solar panels that can charge their car during the day (for people working from home forexample) or access to cheaper electricity at work for example.
Reducing the overall individual cars will unfortunately not happen any time soon, at best somewhere around 2040-2050, by that time dedicated grid battery storage will have greatly improved/come down in price even more.
And batteries aren't the only possible gridstorage by then.
Yes, thorium and molten salt show promise, there however are still non-operational so far I know. They are likely at least 20 years out before large scale roll out will even begin, a bit too late, though it might possibly compete with the second generation of renewables+gridstorage.
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@davidrenton
If you think the last 10 years have shown an energetic , decisive EU then well.
I haven't, then again neither have I seen an energetic and decisive UK government in more or less the same time, this goes for most countries tbh. At least the EU has a reason why it isn't.
but it has to federalised and that's it undoing
It definitely needs to be federalised, though I don't think it will be its undoing, I can see some nations dropping out because of it, but the ones I look at to do so, I would rather get rid of anyway.
to dissolve the nation state
That depends how you see it, there are plenty of power that can remain with the current memberstate national level (if it isn't given to lower governments first).
but Europeans will never go for that
I think you underestimate what people will go for.
How do you think Germans will feel being the bank for the whole continent.
They do get a lot of economic benefit from the EU. I guess I could ask, how does London and the south-east feel being the bank of the UK?
I design complex system's
The EU is indeed complex, out of necessity of it being an international organisation and being as democratic as an international organisation can be.
People would have said the same about the US early on, back in the beginning there are many similarities to the EU now.
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@davidrenton
Here's the difference , we can get them out
So can it also be done in the EU. The national leaders can voted out in national elections, MEP's in direct elections and commission members are influenced by both the EP and national elections. Can it be better? Sure, just like the UK system can be much improved, now BJ has a majority with only 43% of the votes.
European voters have very little say over the EU policies and direction.
Practically as much as UK voters, since every law needs to be passed by the EP and the overall direction of the EU is set by the national leaders.
The EU will require Tax raising powers, and budgets as they have indicated.
Don't know how this is relevant as a response to what I said in that sentence.
Europe is too diverse in term's of culture, history, business and wants/needs. Federalisation either means an averaging of practices, culture or the dominate partner enforces their way's on others. Either way it's will be unsatisfactory to most, German methods will not work in Italy.
I often hear that, but then it is the same in the US, UK, ... Not everywhere is the same. Different regions want different things and vote different, that is why you need a good balance between federal and local. Everything regarding culture would be local, history doesn't matter that much, in fact at this moment history looks to be used more like a unifying factor.
I'm from London , I don't mind at all, why because it's my nation, my fellow country men/women, London should support the poorer areas.
Well, then why couldn't this be the case in the EU if you can create an EU sentiment/feeling of EU unity, which already exists more than you think.
How much affinity does the average German or French have for say Hungary , will they find common cause, this is the thing , no one is truly a proud EU citizen as they are in their nation. No one would fight for the EU, like they would for their country.
Personally I disagree with this, but maybe you just have another experience with that. Though Hungary is already a special case, acting more like leech, wanting the good parts, but not the bad and attempting/supporting to subvert EU laws an regulations. Which shows why the EU needs better way of dealing with that.
The EU is not an emotional thing, it's doesn't get to people's heart's like the pride in one's nation,
Again, that highly depends on region. Also early on in the US, most people didn't care about the US, it cared about their states. The feeling towards the US grew overtime. No reason this can't happen for the EU too.
I don't follow Football, but how many people would support a EU team, over say Spain or the Netherlands. It doesn't happen.
Again different, even the UK has multiple national teams. An EU time might be nice though in the long run, but unlikely/unnecessary.
*The US is different why because it was created from scratch, no history and a dominate culture that enforced Language, Idea's, Law, Culture all. *
And we aren't the 18th century anymore either. And to say it had no history is also not quite correct. The history was brought from Europe. All in all history doesn't matter that much, except for the history of the current generations.
France and England/UK have been rivals for centuries, yet in the past century they were strong allies.
The US seperated from the UK and fought a second war in 1812, yes again they have been strong allies.
History isn't everything things can change. There is no history that can really be a problem for further unification.
By the time mass immigration occurred in the US (19th centaury) from non N European countries, the US was established , it had a defining image, so people assimilated to that.
Actually they didn't, you got communities living together based on origin, you got newspapers in different language, ... The US essentially is a quite diverse nation. It is rather recently (past few decades) many people "lost" their culture of origin. Often their culture got mixed with other aspects of US tradition/"culture".
America at it's core is fundamentally a N/W European society, doesn't matter where your from, it's still a European inspired state.
Yeah, because nearly all immigrants came from N/W Europe before the past 2-3 decades.
So for it to be like the US , you need to have a dominate culture, what would that be French, German, Spanish.
And this is you misunderstanding me and/or being ingenuine. I said the EU was similar to the US early on, not that the EU is already the same as the US or would become exactly the same. And trust me, if you go through the US you will find many different cultures with also many similarities. At this moment you could say that you have the US culture group, with many different subcultures. This is similar for large parts of the EU (though you could split up the EU maybe in a nord-western, southern and eastern culture group. However these culturegroups are becoming more similar overtime already.
There doesn't need to be a dominate culture or culture group. That is just a fallacy. There have been empires/large nations throughout history with quite a lot if diverse cultures that lasted longer than the US has existed for now.
Will there need to be a common language for example? Yes and personally I'd guess this would be english. Why? Because it is the most used/spoken language in the world, it is a neutral language now the UK left, it is used by important allies and used in many international fields.
So the EU is nothing like the Early US, it's not even comparable.
It is, you talked mostly about current or middle late US, not early US. And especially not the political and "loyalty" situation of early US.
Your siblings analogy doesn't make any sense.
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@davidrenton
I would disagree about getting them out or not even that if your a Greek voter you can vote for your MEP fine, but that MEP has no power , Greece will never have a say , so your vote is illusionary. There is nothing a Greek voter can do to influence the direction of the EU. They are at the at the mercy of the bigger countries.
How is this different in the UK? England has more MP's and is stronger than Wales, scotland and NI combined. If England wants to really do something the only thing they can threaten with is seccesion, which is also possible in the EU. Germany and France combined have around 25% of MEP's, and these always vote based on ideology more than country of origin. In the commission both have only one commisioner and in the council they together only have 2 votes or 33% of the population.
Through official means they don't have anywhere near full control. Now, ofcourse they have immense soft power to influence others, but they'd always have that, this has always been the case. Larger/more wealthy nations have more influence than smaller/less wealthy ones. Whether this is in the EU or outside it is the same. However by being in something as large as the EU, Greece has overall more softpower worldwide and is more capable of playing along on the international stage, even if it is through the EU.
Also consider that in many aspects members have veto rights, I wouldn't say Greece (or any member) is powerless. It can stop any trade deal, any new admission and so much more.
True Boris had 43% of the vote (which in the UK is actually historically very high, usually it around's 35% for a party to get power), Labour got 32%, that's the way 1st past the post works, Winner take's all.
And that is what I personally find undemocratic, a large part of the voters are essentially not heard or represented.
*We did have a vote where we used PR and each vote counted , that was called Brexit ,where the majority of voters voted for it.
To the Media a winning government with say 35% has more legitimacy than a PR vote with 52%.*
I am not going to dispute brexit won the vote, though there was a lot of misinformation present during the campaign. Easiest example is "getting a deal will be easy", "there will be no no deal brexit", ...
The point about European difference's is that a top down approach won't work, what is suitable for Germany will not be for Italy. Therefore with an open market , freedom of movement do you enforce German practices on Italy.
This is the same in the UK. What is suitable for England might not be for Scotland, what is suitable for London might not be so for the north-east/west.
Unfortunately this is a consequence of being in a larger nation/entity. Which is why you need to keep as much power as possible local, with mostly things irrelevant of region or things that can't be done locally efficiently being done on the higher stage.
Look at the fishing issue, this highlights the difference's, for France it's a big issue, Germany couldn't give a hoot, but France will probably have to compromise on something that's vital to it, to make Germany happy.
You get this in any nation larger than a "large city state".
The US as I said come from a different place, these on the whole where people looking to start afresh, have no baggage on the past, they could experiment and do things differently.
I can understand where you are coming from, but it doesn't matter. For one these people still took the burden of (relevant) history with them. Furthermore their experiment was inspired by European thought and history, like the dutch republic, ...
This also doesn't change how people thought. Early on the states were where the loyalty was. The only reason they formed the US was because they realised they were stronger together and needed to be strong in a world with other strong nations that might have interests in them/their surroundings. This is exactly how most people look to the EU now. Their loyalty is still with their nation, but they realise they need the EU to be stronger in the world (and the other benefits ofcourse).
Immigrant's adapted to the newly created US 'culture'
The problem is, they didn't, which sparked tensions in the past. It is only in the past few decades/century you see a more "unified" culture.
it's a melting pot with a dominant culture, that being a Northern European one
Because most of the the immigrants were also European. Immigrants from elsewhere, were only a small minority. Even at this moment (with much larger non-european immigration), you have around 50-70 million people not from European descent. And in fact German is the largest group of origin. Up untill the world wars many german immigrants couldn't even speak english, you had entire communities speaking german, reading german newspapers, ...
they went to American school's
When I speak about similarities it is in US 1800-1850. Schooling wasn't as universal as now.
fought in the US Army
For some time most of the US armed forces consisted of state troops/militia's, there was quite a lot of resistance against a federal army (or at least a powerfull federal army). This isn't too dissimilar from the EU currently. And in most EU nations, there is a majority support for a European army.
flew the US Flag.
EU flag is also flown in many EU nations. Again in early US the state flag was as important/more important than the American flag.
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@davidrenton National/Ethnic interests (at least contributed).
Most large nations eventually fall due to internal problems. This can be national/ethnic, but also religious, politics, succession (the many civil wars for power in the roman empire weakened it severely), ...
If your Chinese in the US, Indian it doesn't matter on the whole you , your life, you way of work, the law's you adhere to are from that American system
This is a bit redundant, obviously you are going to live by laws of the region you live in. And as it stands the live of people aren't the world are becoming more similar due to globalisation.
Why Europe is different from the US is each and every country has developed a long time before
And countries change overtime. In the past you had many different cultures and even very different dialects in France, it wasn't one country, this however changed overtime. If you look throughout history there is a trend of more and more cultural harmonisation with just some differences remaining that are more or less irrelevant to the governing of a nation at large.
and not be worried about State or Historical differences.
Like with the civil war, which was driven by state and historical differences?
When you did have a fundamental difference between the states, you had a civil war. These 2 sides had totally incompatible views and the only resolution was succession or war.
So now you're contradicting yourself, first there were no state and historical differences, now it suddenly leads to a civil war. And the EU knows and learned about this by making it possible for states to secede. The US apparently hasn't, because states can still not secede legally.
This is the thing the UK has more in common with the US/Canada/Australia/NZ (even Japan) then say Italy
Obviously, at some point in time the UK controlled all of these regions, this is completely irrelevant. The UK isn't going to form a new nation/political entity with these nations.
Though an Japan I disagree. Japan has a lot in common with the west as a whole.
So why should the EU feel ownership over us
It doesn't?
why can't they accept we are a European country not in the EU and treat us such
You do know every kind of relationship the EU has with other European countries (except Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, since there is no real meaningfull relationship) has been looked at as an option. The problem is that for every of these possible relationships a UK red line would be crossed. Thus for the EU-UK relationship they needed to look beyond Europe. The problem is that the UK is still in Europe, with easy connections to it and even sharing a border, thus a new kind of relationship had/has to be found, somewhere between what other European nations have and what non-European nations have.
they say yes those Water's are yours's but we demand access to them
Honestly I don't have enough knowledge about the fishing problems to talk about it, but I am sure it is more complex that this.
why they don't with Japan and Canada
Because one is on the other side of the world and the second at the other side of an ocean?
Brexit has been the most lied about thing in recent history. When people voted Brexit it wasn't an attack on Europe , we still wanted to be friends, but we have seen how petty , how vindictive the EU has been. This doesn't make the heart grow fonder, it want's us to have nothing to do with them.
The EU has always made it clear that it would act in the best interests of the single market and that getting an agreement/deal wouldn't be as easy as brexiteers claimed. These kind of trade deals are usually negotiated for years. Throughout this process the EU has tried to make it work, but internal UK difficulties didn't help. Inexperienced UK negotiators that often got switched, different PM's, difficult UK parliament situation, ...
Honestly the EU hasn't acted petty at all, it was the UK that underestimated EU resolve and everything that comes with these negotiations and clearly wasn't ready for it.
The more brexit played out, the happier I personally was that the UK left the EU. Because politicians kept and keep blaming the EU for their own failure and lack of prepardness.
If the EU wanted to play petty, it would have prepared for a no deal and refused any extension.
Maybe it is different in the UK, but overall the UK is seen as the one being petty, wanting to leave, but at the same time keep most of the benefits. The UK could never have received a better situation/deal than they had in the EU. Even as a member it received much special treatment.
well the EU needs to let the UK go
It was always the UK that asked for extensions. The UK already left the EU. Everything the past year is just done to try and minimize the fall out for both sides.
So as a Brexit support I want the UK to have Fair and Friendly relations with Europe , we have no problem with that, but the action's of certain European countries is not conducive to this. The EU and those are being very short sighted and creating a lot of bad blood between us.
If you feel like this, I can only conclude UK politicians or still good at using the EU as a scapegoat. The EU has been nothing but considerate, considering how the UK government acted all these years.
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@davidrenton Europe is full of contradictory systems
Like? And please don't say Poland or Hungary.
it took a lot from England.
What exactly did they take? How did it feel 'British'?
that is not a reason, the EU doesn't claim Libya's Israel's, Turkey's waters, the UK is not in the EU, the EU has zero right's to UK waters, it's very simple. the UK has no right to the EU water, and vice versa. Distance is irrelevant.
1) EU doesn't have a free trade agreement with Libya.
2) Israel's fishing water is tiny in comparison to neighbouring EU nations and is poor fishing grounds apparently. Israel even started building fishfarms.
3) Turkey has negligable fishing waters in the mediterranean due to Cyprus and Greek Islands. Only in the Black sea has it meaningfull fishing grounds. For the black sea the EU had to step in in 2018 to limit fishing to stop overfishing and stepped into an agreement with several nations around the black sea. Why they don't have a deeper agreement on fishing with Turkey, I don't know. Maybe it is because up untill a few years ago it seemed Turkey was going to try and enter the EU, thus it could be dealth with upon them entering? Maybe they didn't want to strain relations and unlike with the UK it wouldn't lose or gain much with a deal/no deal. You'll have to look more into it if you want the answer.
Yes, the EU doesn't have rights to UK waters, which is why they are negotiating on it. And for the record the EU has fishing agreements with many African nations too. The UK definitely wouldn't be a one off.
The EU pay's NORWAY for it's Fish, they as just as close.
And who says the EU isn't offering the UK a similar fishing deal as Norway, but the UK government refused it because they want sovereign fishing ground symbolism? And it definitely isn't as simple as that the EU pays Norway for the right to fish. They jointly manage Norways fishing waters and agree on the amount that can be fished by whom, etc and Norwegian fisher similarly have the right to fish in EU waters.
A Trade deal is easy, we have done 60 in the last year
The UK just got the same trade deals from those countries they had as being a EU member. These countries just agreed to roll over the trade agreement they made/had with the EU and most of these trade deals are practically worthless for the UK. They haven't made a single unique trade deal. Even their "unique" trade deal with Japan is essentially just the trade deal the EU made around 2 years earlier.
The EU has had no interest in getting a deal, they wanted to punish the UK and made unreasonable demands'.
And yet they remain at the table instead of just refusing extensions.
they wish to subsidise their Businesses, but restrict the UK from doing the same
This is just stupid, I know that this has come in the media, however the problem is, the UK hasn't subsidies bussiness as much as it is allowed to for years. All they did about this during the negotiations was acting though. They aren't even close to the limit that would be set for state subsidies. Hell, the deal with Japan has stricter rules about state subsidies then what the EU is proposing.
they want 8 year's fish access,
Yes, and allow UK fishers in EU waters, essentially just continuing the current system. It is not the EU's fault the UK hasn't go a goo fishing industry. If it wanted it could have build up a strong fishing industry by now. Instead now most of UK waters will just not be fished with a no deal brexit. Fishing has always been symbolic for the UK, nothing more.
but restrict the UK from doing the same
Where did this come from?
the UK is not petty for wanting to leave
I never said it was. I said it was petty for wanting to leave, but not lose the benefits. Because that is how the UK government has been negotiating, wanting to get things without something else in return, because with every compromise they would lose "sovereignty".
the EU is trying to punish us for it by making impossible demand's
No, it is not. The EU is acting like it should, looking out for its members. This negotiating style has been agreed on by all members of the council, or in other words all nations within the EU. It is the council that sets what Barnier can and can't do.
No other country would accept the demand's that a separate entity can access it waters
This is clearly wrong seeing the EU has several of these agreements.
No other country would accept the demand how it run's thing's like Government subsidises.
Again clearly you are wrong, since the UK accepted stricter rules than the EU proposes about this in their Japan free trade deal.
only moron's would wish to remain.
Oh great, so the moron calls the people who looked past the misinformation and pandering morons. I guess we've gone full circle.
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@sentjojo If they are forced to sell off stock to pay the taxes, people would just buy the stocks. After all the entire reason for them to pay the taxes would be because stocks value increase, if the value of the stocks increase, people will want to buy them. And no, the companies won't just tank due to this.
The main disadvantage is that people would lose power over a company (like Musk over Tesla and spaceX) which might cause others to interfere with how they are run. This is the main problem that would need to be fixed.
The better solution though is to just tax the actual income from people and not their stocks (or the increased value of it). If they sell their stocks: tax it, if they get dividends from them: tax it, if they get a bonus: tax it. Essentially tax all income streams, this way you don't need to have a wealth tax. And also make it so that people can't grant/give stocks to anyone, everyone transferance of stocks need to be seen as a sale and taxed accordingly. Also close all loop holes to make sure people aren't able to avoid taxes, because this usually mostly benefits the rich which have the money to find and use such loopholes.
If all income streams are taxed, there is indeed no need for a wealth tax, since then eventually taxes will be payed eitherway, or the rich have their hands on wealthy stocks they can't use eitherway.
Unfortunately it is much more difficult to close all loopholes (and keep them closed) compared to just doing a (one-time) wealth tax.
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I disagree with you on this. Sure there might be cops more open to the protestors (possibly same political ideas?), however it looks to me even in the video you showed that the cops realized they'd get overrun and possibly isolated if they make stand and instead just pull back and call/wait for reincorcement, possibly even redirecting manpower to evacuating the capitol instead.
In the video where you said 'they let them in', to me it looks more like the cops were trying to plug a hole, realizing how futile that attempt would be and instead moving out.
I also saw images from CNN from slightly before 5:15 where there clearly was a lot more police present and more police arriving constantly. I'd say these twitter pictures were just taken at the right angle at the right place at the right time. Afterall where are the protestors/rioters? There aren't any of the stairs and we don't have images from between the remaining protestors and the stairs, where the cops most likely would be positioned. Seeing how little protestors remain at that point, the police are possibly also relocated elsewhere in the surrounding.
There are several video's/images of cops standing against protestors and being pushed back/overrun.
I honesly don't know why you again need to make it seem like the cops in general let this happen, they didn't from what I can gather. They immediately asked for reinforcements when it was clear the protest was turning violent and tried to get to the actual capitol, they on several scenes clearly tried to make a stand, but weren't able to.
I'd like to see how you react when you are faced with maybe a dozen against several hundreds or more.
And I dislike any comparison with blm at this moment. BLM went on for days or more, so they would be more on alert after the first day. Now this was one official authorised protest that suddenly turned hostile. No one expected them to charge the capitol, they just weren't prepared.
Wasn't there a lot of initial chaos too on the outbreak of BLM protests?
And we all know things happened by police during BLM that shouldn't be condoned.
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@poruatokin true, but again you would land in safe nearby military bases imo. So the enemy would need to know it launched, where it will set down and then be quick enough there to launch the heat seeker. I can't see how starship would ever be used to deploy personnel in hostile territory, at least not without major modifications.
And well, something we maybe don't think about is that the raptor engines would actually fire for only a very short time. a few seconds maybe, the exact time is still to be seen.
Interesting would be if they could "launch" something from it that lands with a parachute. Like fire the raptors at x km height and when starship is "floating" for maybe a second or so, expel a crew/material bay or maybe even the top of starship that will land with parachutes, like an abort system of a fighter plane/regular crew pod scaled up. I don't know if this is possible or would be "safe", but an interesting concept nonetheless (more fiction than fact for now ofcourse). If you also sacrifice more internal space for fuel, maybe it will have enough to redirect afterwards to a safe friendly base, especially seeing it might have shed some extra weight?
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@petitkruger2175 that promo video isn't about the loop idea. The loop idea is about replacing/instead of subways. The tunnels from the promo video show tunnels as underground streets to be used by private cars, not public transportation, it is meant to fight congestion on the road by giving drivers that will drive anyway more space/options. This is a completely different topic.
Car sleds shouldn't be necessary in the future, FSD will do it without that.
cars would work just like trains while moving (directly behind eachother), with the difference that they can go directly to the end destination.
And not even the subway with the highest capacity in london comes close to 1500, highest is 1176, which makes 28224 per hour, the same amount of cars would be able to transport around 8000 per hour. A lot lower yes. However this is the stations throughput, not the line. The disadvantage of the rail is that the car stops every station, even when there is barely any space left or people coming on/off. This while the cars would just skip all the stations except the destination, this means the real capacity of the car system is how many cars can travel through the tunnel or the stations capacity. A station with huge capacity needs can just be made larger than those with lower capacity demands, allowing more cars to pass through it every hour.
Moreover the cost should be looked at, if the boring company can make 2-3 times the tunnels (and everything else in terms of capacity) for the same price, it is a better option.
Just to be clear, the boring loops aren't the best option everytime everywhere, it like everything depends on location and circumstances. Moreover the boring tunnels will still need to prove themselves, the idea can still bust. But especially in smaller cities with lower capacity needs it can work out much better.
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It basically would be in terms of structure be something like the UK (the same goes for a united EU), with an overarching federal government (westminster), regional/national governments (scotland, etc), provincial governments (north-east, london, east midlands, ...) and local government (mayor, etc). This is already how many nations actually function in one way or another, you only add an extra level and decide which governments has which powers. (if the UK had stayed in the EU, eventually westminster might (a big maybe) have dissapeared and just been incorporated in the EU level government. After all, what would be the difference between a westminster and eu government, nothing, only more nations under it.)
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@commonsenseskeptic The sound you are exaggerating. The space shuttle was launched less than 1km from the shore line. By your estimates we'd hear it launched in Europe, Africa, ...
And comparing it with the largest sound ever known, which if we use your own chart would have been well above 220. So lets look at that event. They measured 172 db at around 160km, using your information to calculate the soundlevel it would have been 280db at the source. 4800km from there they said it sounded like a cannon from a nearby ship. According to your data, it should have been around 146db, which is very close to the soundlevels of a cannon at just few meters, not a canon on nearby ship. At around 500m the sound of a cannon being fired (170db) would be around 115db, the same as the sound a hammer drill, well below the estimated 146db.
The problem is that you uses one rule to calculate sound dissipation, however this might not be correct at larger distances or in all situations. For example the sea isn't flat, it is in constant motion due to waves, this already can have an impact on the sound. Maybe even the earths curvature might affect it.
In essence your sound argument is way too simplistic. It is actually rather foolish to think that they haven't had someone look into this before they came out with this. The same with the propagation in the sea. You can minimise this quite effectively by sound suppression systems that prevents the sound waves from going directly into the sea, already lowering the impact on sea live a lot. There is a large differenc between a sound above the water and a sound inside the water.
Another problem is that you took a promotion video at facevalue, a lot can change from how they showed things in it. Maybe instead of a boat they'd use helicopters. Electric helicopters/vtols are well being researched at the moment, so who knows. This also ties in the rest of your arguments, they are all based on how things are in the past and now, like they are somehow static/non-changing. They are not, things are constantly changing/improving. If we used aviation procedures from 100+ years ago for now, modern passenger aviation wouldn't be possible either at this scale.
I am not saying that point to point for starship will ever be done or even possible, but your debunking video of it debunks nothing. You argue like the people on the other sides are all idiots who haven't done any research, who can't come up with ways around these problems.
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I don't see how Trump can succeed here.
He has leverage on Ukraine, but only as long as European nations don't pitch in more (they provided most aid so far collectively) and maybe even nations like South Korea might take up some of the bill after NK is proven to support Russia even more openly. Moreover if Trump gives Putin too much (like forcing Ukraine to give up land they still control), it will be seen as weakness (on a personal and national level) by everyone: US allies, US enemies and internally. So the best he could do is offer a status quo and neutrality.
Russia likely won't agree to a status quo while they are making small gains and Trump can't guarantee Ukraine remaining neutral with its EU ascension plans. Thus he'd also have to convince EU leaders to stop this. After berating them for being too Russia friendly, that would be pretty embarrasing.
Putin also can't just give in to Trump's demands, it would weaken him too much internally, especially after the cost of the war so far. He'd need big concessions from Trump, which Trump can't really afford to give
Moreover while a large part of the Republicans want less support for Ukraine, a large part also wouldn't want to just give in to Russia. Many republican politicians also played hardball with Ukraine support to not support the democrats, with republicans in full control now, this could also change.
It might sound weird, but I wouldn't be surprised if the US actually will increase support for Ukraine to force Russia to the peace table on or close to US proposed terms (and pushing its allies to do the same), even if just removing limitations on already provided equipment and (US made) equipment coming from allies.
It really is difficult to say, since we're talking about Trump. But he also often followed the military/establishment advice/views after last time even if it wasn't in line with what he said in his campaign.
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@pietvanleeuwen110 Poland has the same color of the UK, so I don't see how they would be the least efficient for wind energy.
But there is something wrong with this picture (or at least the description), since less people per MW potential wind energy is actually better. And if I try to calculate Belgiums wind power potential from this chart (or at least its minimum), I get just 36MW potential (a few wind turbines), but Belgium already has over 2000 MW in wind power installed or if I made a mistake 36TW. If I ignore the (x1000), I get 36 GW, more realistic, but is it trustworthy considering I ignored part of the legend?
What is even weirder is that this is representation of power and not energy like it is said in the video. However a quick google search by image (literally first try and first row) I found this image, it doesn't say wind energy potential like in the video, but is part of a study called "how much wind power potential does europe have", which is locked behind a paywall. It isn't even certain this chart is actually representing the wind energy potential, but possibly something else (in fact the graphs title is power density potential in Europe, not energy and nothing about wind), I am starting to wonder whether this uploader even read/has access to the study where this chart comes from, or just took it from google just having read the title.
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Honestly putting the cufs on initially isn't really a show of anything, other than that the cops play it safe. He is a man in a house that is not his, whose owner is recently deceased. Putting on the cuffs untill things are cleared is the prefered option. Because once they are on, the officers might feel safer and act more composed and the risk that something goes horribly wrong is decreased. That the officer loosened the cops also to me indicates this might just be a standard safety precaution and isn't anything unusual.
As for the lady calling the cops. If you see a strange man in the home of a recently deceased neighbour, people might call the cops, no matter the skincolor call the police. My grandparents are also quite "paranoid" and fear things like burglary, crimes, ... happening to them or their neighbourhood, despite me, my parents and siblings living literally next to them. There is for so far I got from this video nothing that shows the the skincolor played a part. Could it have played a part? Ofcourse, but do we know it did? Not really. People should be carefull to not make everything about race in such circumstances.
Also he wasn't handcuffed in his own home. Yes, he was allowed to stay there, but saying it is his own home is just false. That is like saying a motel/hotel room is someones home because he is allowed to stay there. I don't exactly understand what this lawsuit is based on, maybe it is an American law/right, but here in Belgium, there is no legal grounds that a lawsuit against this action could ever stand. The only thing maybe is entering the house without consent, but we don't know what happened, did Furdge not hear them and they entered after no response? Did they see him walking around the house and kicked in the door? I don't know, but this would to me be the only possible grounds for a lawsuit to succeed: unlawfull entry.
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@gilian2587 No, we are not 70 years away. Firstly there are several storage solutions coming up, ranging from different kinds of battery technologies to storage using temperature differentials and highly isolated storage tanks.
Even if we ignore this, research already estimated that lithium batteries would drop in price enough by 2030-35 to be a competitive gridstorage option, purely due to the scalegrowth of Li-ion batteries, ignoring possible technological improvements in the chemistry.
Also you'll only have an overabundance of energy with nuclear if you build and overabundance. With the same kind of thinking we also could get an overabundance with renewables, considering solar could power the world by covering only a relatively small part of the sahara with solar panels. With 2019 production of solar panels (not the electricity generation the actual production of new panels) and placing them in the sahara, we could produce enough to power the whole world within 15 years from now (though I think this is only for current electricity use, possibly not added needed production for things like EV's, heating, ...).
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William sutton
they've clearly stated that Tom Dick and Harry are all equal in intelligence, job, skills and all.
But then this isn't the case in real life, is it? There is a wide variety in intelligence, jobs, skills, ... Do people really need to be punished because they are born with a lower intellect than someone else?
I am not saying they should receive the same job, but a difference of sometimes hundred times is enormous.
In the example of the video I do agree that they each should pay the same amount of money. Afterall, here they are paying for only their street and they are equal in every way except how much they work. But this is never the situation.
If somehow people can assure everyone has the same equal opportunities and everything depends on how much someone works, I can understand why progressve income tax is unfair, but unfortunately, you never can create equal opportunities: you can't make people equally smart, you can't make sure they have the same parents and upbringing, you can't make sure their schools are of the same quality (not even if you really try, you will always have bad teachers, worse of schools, ..), ....
This is the real problem people talk about equal opportunities that don't exist. I am very certain that there are people who have intelligence, the work mentality, etc. necessary to do the better payed jobs, but for example didn't got the chance to get the required degree.
What could also be done is really increase the minimum wage by 3 or 4 times, so everyone that works enough hours will be certain to make enough money to survive. The problem with this? Prices will go up, because the production, sales, maintainance, ... of everything will become a lot more expensive too. And then I am not even talking about the corporations/firms that will not like this. In the end firms/shops/corporations (and their managers ofcourse) will like the progressive tax much more than a higher minimum salary.
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@I'm actually a phospholipid bilayer
If Tom pays 3000 dollars on taxes, it hurts him no more than it hurts Harry to pay 18,000 on taxes, because the proportion is the same.
No, it doesn't hurt the same. Let's say you need 15k yearly just to survive (house, food, water, electricity, ..., this doesn't even need to include healthcare costs) and Tom works the same hours as Harry.
Tom earns 15.080k, because his jobs earns him the minimum salary. Harry's job makes him 125k.
20% flat tax rate:
Tom pays 3k taxes and keeps 12k => 12k-15k = -3k
Harry pays 25k taxes and keeps 100k => 100k - 15k = 85k
Tom needs 3k more a year, just to pay for the necessities to life a "decent" life.
Harry has 85k left he can spend on luxury products, save, invest, ...
Now who do you think will hurt the most? The person who literally needs 3k more to just keep a roof etc above his head, or the person who has 85k left to do with what he wants?
This is the entire point, someone who just has to buy a little less luxury will not really feel it, someone who actually needs it to just survive, will be really hurting, despite the fact that they pay the same proportionally, they definitely aren't hurting the same.
But now, let's see at a good/decent progressive tax system with the same parameters:
The first 15k earnings (the amount you need to have a "decent" life) are free of tax, the money between 15k and 30k taxed 10%, between 30k and 50k taxed 15%, between 50k and 100k taxed 20%, 100k and 200k taxed 25% and 200k+ taxed 35%
Tom:
0k taxes on his first 15k
He pays 10% taxes on the money he earns between 15k and 30k => 80*0.10 = 8 dollar in taxes.
He doesn't earn anything more, so higher tax brackets are irrelevant to him and in the end he has 15 072 dollar left and pays 8 dollar taxes
Harry:
0k taxes on his first 15k
he makes 15k dollar between 15k and 30k => 15k*0.10 = 1.5k taxes
he makes 20k between 30k and 50k => 20k*0.15 = 3k taxes
he makes 50k between 50k and 100k => 50k*0.20 = 10k taxes
he makes 25k between 100k and 200k => 25k*0.25 = 6.25k taxes
He doesn't earn anything more, so higher tax brackets are irrelevant to him and in the end he has 104 250 dollar left and pays 20 750 dollar taxes
You can say, but you see that is not fair, Tom pays literally no tax and Harry pays 20k taxes. however, we still need to retract the necessities:
Tom has 15 072 left, 15 072 - 15k = 72 dollars
harry has 104 250 left, 104 250 - 15k = 89 250 dollars
So after everything, Tom after working the same hours has 72 dollars left for "luxury" products (this includes everything not needed to survive in a decent way: cellphone, car, tv even healthcare may be counted among the uxury products). He will not be able to save or invest money, he will not be able to send his kids to a university or college, and they too will likely end in low paying jobs like his, despite some of them maybe intelligent enough to do a ceo's work, but just not having the necessary education.
Harry on the other hand still has 89 250 dollars left to spend on these "luxury" items, he can save and invest money, he can send his children to college or university, they can end up in the higher paying jobs like their father's.
I used arbitrary numbers for the example and even Harry was in this case better of with the progressive tax than the flat rate tax. This isn't necessarily the case. The actual numbers of the tax brackets should be chosen based on research (for example the tax free amount of money was the minimum required money to survive and basically should be the same as the minimum wage)
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I don't think the idea is to keep the routing unit longterm, rather have the cars autonomously drive in the tunnels, meaning they just drive in, go on, drive out without any extra steps.
I don't think they'd ever let petrol cars in, even with a routing unit, this goes against Musks goal to electrify transport. Moreover by 2030 most new cars sold are likely to be electric, and by 2040 there probably won't be petrol cars sold anymore except for niche models. By 2050 finding a petrol car on the road is likely going to be very difficult. Therefor it is rather wastefull to try and include petrol cars in the boring tunnel concept.
semi evacuated maglev (or essentially hyperloop), would most likely get their own boring tunnels if hyperloopcompanies decide to work together with the Boring company. For now it doesn't seem like boring company is going to go into the hyperloop concept in any other way than as a tunneling partner, but we'll see I guess.
The idea also is that automated driving with (possibly) communicating cars can act as a train, just without the interlinking and therefor is much more flexible (adding, detracting "wagons"). Putting cars in a container or something similar seems like a lot more hassle for not really much gain comparatively. The advantage of the train is more the rails than anything else once automated driving is on point (which will be easier to get done in a closed off environment like the boring tunnels).
As for the panic, people will get used to it and they won't be allowed to take control of the car while in the tunnel, most likely they'll either just be checking something/waiting or on longer trips distracting themselves with videos, games, talking, music, ... People that are afraid of the close distance can even just keep their eyes closed or something similar. People can get used to a lot of things, if you put people from 100+ years ago in a car on the driveway they'd freak out (even if they know everything). Humans are rather good in adapting.
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@Herr_U If they have the cars themselves go there they they are in effect limited to about 180-200kph
180-200kph is way more then on the highway, limited to doesn't fit this sentenced. Most trains are slower then that, only highspeed rail is better, and you don't want to use a high speed train that is bigger than these cars in a small tunnel, that wouldn't be doable. Honestly 180-200kph is actually very optimistic, for cars I expect more like 150-160kph and for freight more like 100-120 kpm at most. Any higher you essentially need to start looking at the hyperloop concept with a semi-vacuum.
and with horrible efficencies
And how would this be different with a routing container exactly? This will be less aerodynamic, thus have much more drag.
having dedicated routing containers would allow for having proper rolling (or maglev) stock
With other words you are talking about a hyperloop, not the boring tunnel concept anymore, these are two distinct concepts.
I'd still be in the workforce by 2050 and I know petrol cars still will be common for me
How do you know that? Why would it still be common for you?
(electrical cars suck when the grid is down for more than a few hours).
For this you most likely would have EV with much greater range, or indeed a petrol car, like I said petrol can possibly still be used in niche circumstances. But then you might have to take some extra petrol with you in jerry cans, since petrol station will likely have become very uncommon by then.
But also, having a setup for petrol cars would also allow for hydrogen cars
Hydrogen cars don't stand a chance: expensive, not much more range than many EV's, expensive hydrogen stations that are rather few in numbers, high hydrogen prices, terrible efficiency, ... Hydrogen in personel vehicles will only be a niche product, if it isn't scrapper completely. Ofcourse this is unless hydrogen cars suddenly make extreme jumps forward, which is rather unlikely.
so no need to have separate solutions for if you want to do boring or hyperloop.
They have completely different goals. Yes, hyperloop might work together with hyperloop companies, but boring company tunnels and the tesla system won't suddenly be changed to a hyperloop concept, just not going to happen.
*Rails, being able to stack in height(!), controlled airflow (resistance), booms/shockwaves whenever a joining tunnel merges (or tunnel openings), strict service schedules (breakdown will be a fun issue otherwise). Cars are quite frankly horrible in terms of effeciency (even when alone).
(For the shockwaves alone - take a look at the generations of shinkansen, the "nose" are all about shockwave mitigation)*
Again, this is more hyperloop, not the boring tunnel concept.
Basically doing a hyperloop with automobile carriages ("normal cars") will impose some rather drastic limits
This isn't even a discussion, the boring company doesn't do hyperloop, the using cars in boring company tunnels has nothing to do with hyperloop, that is a completely different issue/concept.
It seems you are mixing 2 different concepts that have nothing to do with eachother, other then that the boring company could make tunnels for both and do both: tunnels with cars for shorter trips, tunnels for hyperloop for long trips. Hyperloop needs tracks of at least 10-20 km just to get up to speed (depending on the acceleration and topspeed) and another similar distance to slow down. That means you need at least a track of 20-40km, probably a lot more, since you don't want to be constantly accelerating and decelerating. Hyperloop is great to connect cities, however it isn't usefull to connects smaller area's, like part of a city, city with suburbs, a track with stops/offramps 'quite often', .... In other words the boring company Tesla/EV tunnel is meant as something more like regular streets and highways, only with faster speeds and no real traffic, the hyperloop is meant as a replacement of high speed rail systems, to connect cities/area's of large distances.
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@irham191
crimea annexation was done by vote,
I don't really have a huge problem with Crimea voting to join Russia, but how it was done, was completely stupid and unacceptable. Sending in armed troops and then making people vote, without any international oversight was bound to have repercussions, and the Russians knew it. However they also were imo afraid that in a regular vote, things wouldn't go as much their way as expected, similar to how Ukrainians are now putting up much more of a resistance than expected.
It also wasn't just the crimean annexation, but also the support of an armed conflict in Eastern ukraine in the Donbas region.
And judging from the gdp in 2000 its only about 300 billion and in 2013 it rose to 2 trillion, it drop after the sanction. Pretty sure the russian see him as a savior and condemn western country.
Or it could just show that it was trade with the west/Europe that caused such a rapid rise in GDP and not necessarily Putin, rather that Putin stopped it by unnecessary antagonizing Europe. Afterall, after the sanctions GDP dropped and is now just following more or less the more 'struggling' EU economies like Italy and Spain.
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There are some inaccuracies.
For example Europe does produce air defense systems (just not the very long range one like Patriot), precision guided munitions, MLRS systems and infantry vehicle.
It is true that Europe lacks in certain fields and isn't as integrated as it should. This however is for a large part because the US actively opposed further European military integration or development be it by making (veiled) threats or by proposing assurances/sweet deals.
For example
- there were attempts in the past 2 decades for better European military integration/cooperation, but repeatedly the US warned this could damage NATO, causing many European countries (especially eastern ones) to scuttle these attempts.
- The US also promised to provide the nuclear umbrella specifically to prevent further nuclear proliferation, which caused Europe to not invest in their own nuclear umbrella.
- The US uses its advantages of scale to also offer sometimes cheaper capable equivalents to European equipment, which caused this European equipment to be even more expensive and also stunts development in such systems.
The problem thus wasn't just underinvestment, but the US actively keeping Europe weaker to maintain its influence.
Thus one of the mindsets Europe needs to get is to become fully independent of the US (military speaking) in the next few years, meaning: european equipment, fill existing gaps, integrate European armies more (standardisation, training, command structure, goals, policies, ...), ...
While Europe isn't as strong as it should be, this video is extremely doom and gloom though. European countries still have a much stronger navy and airforce than Russia. Its landcomponent isn't really weaker than Russia's either, especially after all the losses Russia has suffered so far.
The US also suffers from some of the same weaknesses, like ammo storages, they also are expected to last only a few weeks in an attritional war like Ukraine. This however doesn't necessarily mean huge problems, NATO's strategy revolves more around air and mobility, essentially trying to avoid attritional semi static frontlines like in Ukraine. Ukraine just never could do the same, since it lacked the equipment for such strategies.
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@dnw009 Le Pen rises because she promises much, mostly things she won't be able to do without just passing the bill onto future taxpayers. Macron could also do that, but he realizes that 1) he already has governed, so people would ask why didn't do it before and 2) if you don't keep your promise afterwards you get a lot of problems (like protests, you and your party losing a lot of support, ...).
That is the thing with fake/'ignorant' populists, they promise much, get support because of it, get elected and then after a while without being able to fullfill those promises, they lose support, just look at the 5 star movement and Lega in Italy, they both got +-33% support at their peak of the last 4 year and are now 15% and 20% in the polls respectively.
Governing isn't easy, and keeping big promises is even more difficult
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@corradomancini3271 Populism in of itself isn't bad, however you have many kinds.
Fake populists: those who know they'll never be able or willing to fulfil the promises they make
Stupid populists: those who don't realize they'll never be able to fulfil the promises they make
Opportunistic/shortsighted populists: those whe promises much and might actually do it if they have the ability (ie. full control of the government), but doing it in such a way that the people will pay for it in the future, and most likely the same kind of people who he 'helped' with executing these promises.
And then ofcourse the real populists, who fulfil their promises in the best way for their voters/the people.
Le Pen seems to be either a fake, stupid or opportunistic. I can't she here being stupid honestly, so it is mostly one of the other.
Macron seems to try to act like a realist, but that is never popular if things aren't already good.
France is in urgent need of reforms, but the way in which they are needed are absolutely unpopular, so Le Pen will never mention them, even if she'd eventually (have to) try to institute them. Macron has no real choice, he needs to act the realist because people wouldn't accept that he wasn't able to fulfil populist promises before.
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I do think it can be usefull for scientific research to have boots on the ground. I'd still mostly use robots to do things outside, but then you have people that could maintain the robots and do immediate research inside. Another option would be having them remain in orbit and control robots from there, though if you already get to Mars orbit, going the extra step might be worth it. The main reason for this would be the delay in communication, making it a hassle to control robots and if one gets damaged, it is done for.
Personally in terms of species survival I think space stations make more sense.
1. You can develop and build them close to earth/the moon
2. You can use them to do asteroid mining, which can become really usefull to limit earth exploitation and potentially get our hands on more rare minerals
3. You can basically move them anywhere thus also out of range of nuclear missile attacks etc.
4. You can make a lot of them and if they (mostly) can become selfsufficient, it would also protect them better in case of pandemics etc. And again nuclear or other attacks are more unlikely to take them all out of there are enough of them.
5. Long terms they can be used to even venture beyond our own solar system, though this is extremely long term
6. Some things can only be done in 0g, like 3d printing applications, new medication research, .... Spacestations thus would also be more usefull for this than a mars colony
7. Easy access to (continuous) solar power if not placed too far and in the right orbits, thus no need for other power generation there
Ofcourse there is still a lot to do to make this a reality, but overall it might be just as realistic as colonising mars and be more usefull long and short term.
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@alessandroruozzi7363
Nuclear marine propulsion has been a thing since the 1950s.
Yes, and these are very expensive, therefor only used for specific purposes (like military or like you mentioned icebreakers) rather than entire shipping fleets.
A nuclear powered ship goes faster than a conventional one
Not really, there is a reason shipping vessels go the speed they do, and that is one simple thing: energy consumption. The more energy consumed the more expensive the trip. Most current shipping vessels could go a lot faster than they actually do, they just don't need to.
and eliminates the need for refueling since it has to stop just once every 24 months.
This really isn't an advantage at all. A ship needs to dock at a port for quite some time anyway, the refuelling really isn't a problem.
Producing all this electricity with intermittent renewables is difficult to imagine
Not really. This hydrogen is likely going to be produced in arid sunny regions. If they use CSP, they can run 24/7 on solar energy. CSP's are for now more costly (around 12c/kWh), however they could use a mix. Using PV during the day (an average of 8 hours of good sunlight a day already is 2920 hours) at around 0.04c/kWh currently (and still expected to drop), is it definitely possible to get an average of around 2-4$/kg for the energy in hydrogen production in the long term.
Now considering that hydrogens complete efficiency cycle (from production to end use) is around the same as the efficiency from bunker fuel burning in the engine, every kWh we put into the hydrogen initially is around worth the same as the energy available in the bunker fuel before it is burned. Considering bunker fuel has an energy density of around 11 kWh/kg and hydrogen starts with around 50kWh/kg (just like you pointed out), we'd need around 5 kg of bunker fuel per kg H2. Bunker fuel is around 0.63$/kg, or around 3,15$/kg H2 eq. So in other words if hydrogen is around 3-4$/kg, it is price wise similar to current fuel use.
So purely on fuel/energy economy there likely isn't a problem.
Then you would need to transport hydrogen to the ports.
Hydrogen would most likely be produced at the coast and there isn't really a reason why this shouldn't be close to a port, from there it can be transported using large hydrogen ships to other ports.
And hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe therefore is difficult to transport and even more difficult (and expensive) to store in large quantities
That is indeed a problem that needs to be overcome, however considering that hydrogen will most certainly play a large role in the energy transition, even without shipping, there will definitely be improvements here. Also there is a way to store hydrogen as a solid and this shows promise if it can really be achieved at large scale and for the properties the company claims.
And then the ship itself: hydrogen takes an enormous volume and all this volume could not be used for the cargo.
That is indeed another issue, it takes around 3 times more space than regular fuel in liquid form and around 4-5 times more in gaseous form. In that case they'd lose around 5-10% cargospace (at a least based on the explorer class containership).
Therefore a nuclear powered cargo ship would be capable of transporting a larger cargo at higher speed.
Higher speed means higher energy consumption meaning larger nuclear reactor needed, meaning higher costs than necessarily needed. Speed is not necessarily an issue for shipping. In essence the profit from higher speed doesn't outweigh the costs. The same likely will be true for nuclear, since you essentially would oversize the reactor with a larger cost as a consequence.
You'd spare around 2% extra room for containers or around 7-12% more cargo space vs hydrogen.
This is the reason why hydrogen-powered ships are proposed just for very short trips.
This ofcourse is something that could happen, that ships take more routes with an extra stop. Only for crossing the pacific would this likely be not really possible. But it isn't definitely needed, hydrogen ships could also travel longer distances if need be, just with a slight reduction in cargo capacity.
Yes of course the personnel of a nuclear powered cargo ship would need to be specifically trained but I don't see the problem,
You don't see a problem with needing thousands upon thousand of highly skilled nuclear engineers more? Really?
When it comes to pirates, the IAEA and the IMO would be in charge of setting the standards to protect the ship from attacks (for example a dozen of well trained soldiers on every ship).
If pirates or other groups want to get a hold of a nuclear powered ship, this just means they'd need to assemble a few more bodies and ships. If it was this easy don't you think they'd just put soldiers on every large ship passing regions with pirates, avoiding hijackings like this, instead of sending several ships to these regions?
Can you imagine the ransom demands pirates can make with these ships? The loss of the ship alone would be 2-4 times more expensive for the company, the threat of sending it into a port and causing a nuclear catastrophy there is unimaginable. Just imagine a nuclear ship gets a nuclear 'accident' in the panama or suez canal. Anyone that gets their hands on such a ship and gets in one of those canals, can demand insane amounts of money to not make one of these canals unusal for decades or more.
Something else, several nuclear powered military ships have in the pas been taken out of commission because they were too costly. To be clear, not because the initial investment cost was too high (afteral all they were already in operation), but because operating costs were too high. So clearly nuclear marine propulsion is even in operation expensive, and due to the higher investment costs, they definitely need to be much much cheaper in operation.
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@davidgmillsatty1900
If Putin had decided to use the west's approach of "shock and awe, Russia would have needed a million men.
No, he wouldn't. Iraq has a similar amount of people and landmass and yet during the invasion the coalition used around 300k men.
And he wouldn't need much troops at all if they believed Ukraine wouldn't resist as hard as they did.
And he has actually met most of his goals with 200,000 men.
Only if you believe the overthrow of the Ukrainian government wasn't one of the goals, which it clearly was.
(1) Have the break away republics free from Ukraine. He seems to have accomplished that.
Not by a long shot, for one he still has ground to take to do it and secondly if Ukraine doesn't accept peace at that time, Russia will be pulled in a long war, that isn't beneficial to them at all and could again lose that territory.
(2) Keep Crimea as part of Russia.
This war probably only increases the risk of losing Crimea. Ukraine wouldn't have attacked it before, since they wouldn't be able to mobilise as they did now, nor would they have gotten so much Western support. However if the war now would turn against Russia, Crimea is a valid target for Ukraine.
(3) DeNazify Ukraine. That is still a work in progress and will probably be the hardest thing to do.
He won't be able to achieve that at all without taking Kiev and taking out the Ukrainian government, since he painted them as nazi's or at least supporters of Nazi's. And recently most of Ukraine is painted as Nazi's or misguided people in Russian propaganda.
(4) Demilitarize Ukraine. He has done a pretty good job of that.
What? Ukraine probably is currently more militarized than it has been in the last 20 or more years. They have/are recruiting more soldiers than ever and getting modern western equipment.
And mostly what he meant by demilitarization is the de-NATOization of Ukraine.
That is absolutely not what is meant by demilitarization, since they in negotiations were still demanding demilitarisation after Zelensky already promised to not join NATO.
NATO is in horrible shape after this war and is in disarray.
NATO is stronger than ever, it was in an existential crisis the last decade with no clear goal and Trump doubting whether it should remain, now it has truly banded together and has again a clear purpose. I don't see how you get that it is in horrible shape or disarray.
(5) Having Ukraine be a neutral state. And it seems certain that Putin will be able to achieve this goal.
Except that Ukraine has formally requested to become part of the EU since the start of the war and the EU decided to accept it as a future member, starting the process all prospective members have to go through. Moreover this war shows that Ukraine can't trust Russia at all and they will only look/move even more to the west in the future, if necessary indirectly.
If Russia was going to occupy Ulkraine it needed a million men.
It was never the intend to occupy Ukraine, just to put in place a pro-Russian/catch the Ukrainian government and hope to get their other goals this way (demilitarisation, donbas and Luhansk independence, official recognition of Crimea's annexation and neutrality or even beter a pro-russian stance/russian vassalstate). They though there wouldn't be much resistance against that considering Zelensky's low approval numbers and how weak Ukraine reacted in 2014 against Crimea's annexation and the donbass rebellion.
The 40 miles of Russian caravans were a decoy
A very expensive decoy, considering the losses it and Russian forces have sustained around Kiev. Also it doesn't make sense to make that a decoy, but in the first hours of the invasion sending in elite airborne troops to take Hostomel.
Convoy's like this are sitting ducks if you have air superiority.
Ukraine doesn't have air superiority, but neither has Russia. Russia had the advantage of knowing when they'd strike, damaging Ukraine's airforce and military airports early on. Also Ukraine focused on the supply for this convoy, not the convoy itself, since it was no threat at all without enough supply of gas, food and replacement parts.
And it did make the west think that Russia might be intending to attack Ukraine.
I guess you mean Kiev? And yes, that was intended as an attack, you don't send 40k troops (1/5th of total invasion force) to do a feint, a couple thousand would be enough for that. Even then Ukraine always would have had to deploy troops in Kiev just in case, these 40k Russian troops would have been more usefull to help the initial push in the east, getting the eastern objective much more rapidly by overwhelming the Ukrainian troops stations there.
But that would have been foolish on Russia's part with only 40,000 men
Not if they didn't intend to take the whole of Kiev, but rather just make a push for the center, decapitating the government or at least weakening it by forcing it to move away and by having them run, also demoralise the population that supports it, while gaining the support of those who are against the government.
You don't need extreme precision to wipe out a military that is a sitting duck even for non-guided missiles.
Yeah, you do. High altitude bombing isn't usefull against moving targets, artillery is a lot better in that case. To optimally use the airforce against ground forces you either need to do low flying passes with unguided ammunition or use precision guided ammunition. And if you do low passes, they make themselves a target for the western supplied manpads. Why do you think they used dive bombers during world war 2 to target troops on the grounds and ships? Because from high up you can be several 100m off, which is why high bombing raids where used against cities, harbours, infrastructure, ...., ie. non moving targets that present quite a large target.
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@borisnoone
The EU recently asked Qatar to up their LNG production and were told they can't meet their demand.
In the short term most likely. If the EU creates a long term contract with Qatar, investment likely can be made to increase the LNG production in the next few months/years. I am not talking about short term, but long term ie. 5-15 years.
I am very well aware of the nuclear situation, and I am not per se in favor of nuclear due to the time to build and the cost, however if Russia keeps playing games, it might lead to higher investment in nuclear. And yes the recent reactors took a lot of time and cost. EDF gave a cost estimate to the French government regarding new similar reactors for a much lower (though still not really cheap, more average like coal-gas) price. If EU nations are more determined to go all in (like France in the 70's-80's), we might see things go a lot faster in the next 15 years and this might somewhat drive the costs down too. Greatest problem really is political, which might be somewhat abated by recent events.
Russia and China aren't the only ones, Korea recently also build new plants, so if push comes to shove and EDF (or other European companies) can't deliver, maybe a Korean company can.
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@borisnoone
Yep, such overly optimistic forecast will certainly keep them dreamy Europeans warm during long cold winter nights for the next 10-15 years.
Now you're just overly dramatic. If need be, the EU will just overbid other nations to get gas from elsewhere, at best there would be just one cold winter and even then, nothing clothes and blankets can't fix. At worst you'd get some gas rations (highly unlikely), not completely collapse.
It isn't like I expect no gas during the 10-15 years of the energy transition, just a bit more expensive.
And gas prices will likely spike for everyone worldwide, likely causing a general recession, and Russia would be pointed at for it. While Europe just needs to pay a bit more for gas from elsewhere and quickly roll out some more LNG infrastructure (maybe immediately designed to afterwards be used for hydrogen), Russia would lose more than 20% of their GDP. Maybe Russia would supply China more cheap gas as a consequence, but this would help alleviate the world gas market too anyway, since China would buy less from other countries that then would supply the EU.
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@jarogniewtheconqueror2804 Something to consider is that Rome had to manage and defend and already very large empire surrounded by many enemies. Alexanders main focus was on Persia.
I'd also argue that because of this, Rome never really wanted to conquer Parthia in their entirety, since this would stretch an already very overextended Roman military and bureaucracy way too far and thus they focused on just getting the Eufrates and Tigris region. This however always allowed the Parthians to counterattack, making it difficult to not impossible to hold these far off regions. However Alexander instead pushed forward, he had no real reason not to. There were no bigger threats somewhere else and he could just as well take over the entire Persian empire. Also while Rome had to think long term stability, it seems Alexanders mind was on expansion more than much else.
Also the Persian leadership actually quickly switched to Alexander, for them this was more just a switch in leadership. A lot of satraps for example switched sides to Alexander after Darius' and Bessus' death. If Darius hadn't been killed, maybe he'd been able to keep them together against Alexander.
And then ofcourse there is the difference in people and circumstances. For example the Parthians vs Persians (and their different mindset), the length of existing empires (Parthia came up together with Rome, Persia already existed for much longer), ...
Alexander ofcourse was a great general, no doubt about that and likely none of the Roman generals/emperors that invaded Persia were his equal, but the situation also was just vastly different.
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Thorium shows promise, but we need to be carefull as to not be too optimistic about it. Early on early generation nuclear powerplants were also hailed as the end solution and a way to get real cheap energy, now it is one of the most expensive forms of producing electricity.
Eitherway the true potential and cost of thorium will probably not be known for at least 10-15 years, so by the time it might become mainstream we already are +-20 years further. There is at this moment not a single thorium reactors operational and past reactors have often been shutdown due to cost, mechanical problems, etc or found large problems when shutting after having run it for a few years. I certainly hope thorium fullfills its promises/hopes, but we'll still have to see.
As for ITER, while it costs a lot and takes a long time, this is the entire thing with research and development. But the possible pay off is huge. It might never work and then at least we know this, but if we can use it to eventually reach commercial fusion reactors, it will be an important step.
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@_PatrickO So the size is the downside? Doesn't really seems a problem to me.
As for ac single phase and dc, this is bit more nuanced, it could be that single phase and dc will be enough, but are we certain? Sure, for slow charging speeds single phase will do fine, and DC for high speeds too, but what about in between? Also converting to dc at these lower speeds? Won't this increase the costs of these chargers? I think we'll still need a few years to be be certain 3-phase is (not) needed. And thus it is smarter to now use a standard that supports this. In a few years this can obviously change if needed.
A small connector might be nicer, but it needs to be able to adapt to changes, which a small adapter won't for now.
It wouldn't be difficult to eventually put adapters on CCS2 in the future to fit smaller connectors if needed, however putting a 3-phase adapter on a single phase/dc connector will be more difficult. So long term it is better to now choose something like CCS as a standard and in the future maybe go to a smaller standard if possible.
But all in all I don't know enough to really have an in depth discussion about, rather learn more.
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@John Flaherty I never talked about the viability of train travel for passengers, I was only reacting to your (i think) comment about trains polluting as much as other transportation methods, which is completely wrong. I do understand why train travel in the most of the US is not an option.
I do think it might have been an option in the more densely populated area's if there would have been a vision before they let everything be built full, like between DC and new york, a car takes around 4 hours, a flight might around 3-4 (due to checking in, air traffic density, etc), a train might do it 2 hours. Also a train network should always consist together with other public transport systems like trams, metro's, busses, which are meant for local relocation, while trains are meant to be used between city centers (longer distances).
And lastly a train is usually meant for people who 1) don't want to drive, 2) don't own a car (especially poorer people or those living in more densely populated area's), 3) are more consious in terms of pollution or 4) want to spend this traveltime in a usefull way (which you can't do in a car for example) (a bit together with point 1 though).
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@John Flaherty
I understand you believe trains pollute less; I've explained how trains, if used to the degree required, pollute quite heavily too.
I don't just believe trains pollute less, it is supported by evidence when looked at the full lifetime cycle of everything involved (production, usage (including the energy sources required) and recycling). There are many statistics on this. Are you just denying simple facts because you don't agree with them? Also this research looks at the pollution per passenger (or for cargo per kg or something similar), so saying they will pollute quite heavily to when used to the degree required is a non-point and rather seems to show your ignorance on the topic.
I also consider that airplanes and cars don't pollute at all if they're not flown or driven, yet they're not workable (viable) transportation if they merely sit.
Again, what? We are talking about pollution caused when transporting the same amount of passengers over the same distance, so your comparison is bullshit.
We have higher priorities than worrying about alleged atmospheric pollution.
Ah, here we go. It is already a fact that these vehicles cause atmospheric pollution and causes millions of deaths worldwide every year. Even climate change deniers changed their tune to "well, the impact of this pollution isn't going to have such a large effect", instead of denying the pollution altogether like you did now.
It is exactly people like you who consider their own time and energy now more important than the lives of future generations that caused many problems who have now or will have in the future. Problems that now can be fixed with billions, but in the future will require trillions to fix (if at all fixable).
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@johsenior1535 You do realise imposing a no fly zone would require attacking military installations on Russian soil, right? Also sending in western troops is a clear large scale escalation of the conflict.
Putin will not just be ousted by Russia being humiliated a bit. First off his government controls the narrative in Russia, so any humiliation will be severely downplayed or covered up within Russia. Any kind of humiliation that can't be covered up/spun around would require a clear escalation that Putin then also will use as an excuse to escalate things in Russia, by for example starting a mass mobilisation and moving to a war economy, potentially even executing small scale nuclear strikes on ukranian military positions.
If Putin isn't already looking for a decent way out, no well formulated ultimatum is going to change this. If Putin already is searching for a way out, you don't use an ultimatum, but negotiations.
At this point putin is clearly looking for an exit out of the conflict.
Not really seeing that yet tbh.
Im sure putin would see losing to ukraine more shameful, than being forced to retreat by the whole Nato bloc.
Except if he backs down to NATO, his whole image is gone, he'll be seen as weak and his days in power are numbered. He either has to win or reach a compromise (which should entail keeping Crimea and some arrangement in regards to Donetsk and Luhansk), that or he is done likely done for.
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@ianbirchfield5124 Corruption is existing in European nations (and essentially all nations) already anyways, that isn't going to change. You'll almost never have a nation without corruption, the rate of corruption matters, which in Europe is kept well in hand.
multicultural states don't collapse usually because the complaining minority is conveniently ignored.
Except many of these empires didn't have a majority culture, often these empires practiced a rather tolerant policy towards the different culture groups in their empire, understanding that that is the best way to keep the empire together.
just look at northern ireland; they never wanted to leave the EU, but because they have barely any representation in the UK gouverment they're along for the ride anyway. same goes for Scotland, btw.
The UK has one gigantic cultural majority: the English. The EU however does not. If we look at it based on languages, you get: German 20%, Italian 15%, French 14%, Spanish 9%, Polish 9%, Romanian 6%, Dutch 5%, ... If the UK were still in it, it would have been even more divided (probably with German around 15%). For comparison in the UK you have 84% English, 8% Scottish, 5% Welsh and 3% NI.
So the dynamic is completely different.
if europe unites into a single nation ruled by a single gouvernment, i doubt it will be voluntary
The EU literally has every memberstate ascending by choice and has a provision to allow members to leave. Ofcourse some members might put pressure on other members to accept further integration (be it by flexing their influence or just holding a vote with a majority in favor), however the members truly opposed can leave (or stop it if they can get a majority coalition) and form their own new EU/block based on their vision.
Belgium
Problem in Belgium is more historically (as in problems in the past that are now no longer relevant) and recently more just a anti-establishment mentality causing people to vote more for extreme parties (like Flemish nationalists). There actually is a large part of Belgium voters that wants to go back to a unitary state, more then people who want independence/more power to the regions in fact, there just isn't really a large obvious party for it.
The culture isn't really that big of a problem, the politics in general is. In fact me as a Flemish brabander has more in common with a walloon brabander than with for example a Limburger or a west flaming, with the only exception being the language, but in the EU you'll likely get a more universal second/third language, in fact this is already slowly happening with English naturally, so language will be less of an issue as time goes on.
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@michaelwalsh1278 Clearly you don't know much of how people think of the EU, due to the brexit support for the EU grew. Everyone here agrees that the EU didn't negotiate in bad faith, rather that they protected the interests of the EU, as they should. The US wouldn't have done differently if they were in the EU position. For some reason people (in the UK and outside the EU) expected the EU to be softer on the UK than it is on other nations, that was stupid, the UK has become a 3rd nation like any other. Experts both from the UK and the EU warned that the negotiations wouldn't be as easy as brexiteers said it would be.
Furthermore most of the problems during the negotiations were due to the UK, which was unprepared, with little experienced negotiators, while the EU had many experienced negotiators and more importantly the UK couldn't even get their act in parliament right. It was always said well in advance that the four EU pillars could not be seperated, getting one would mean getting the others and cherry picking wouldn't happen. The UK didn't want several so they couldn't get any. In the end a choice between doing what it s good for the UK, but threatening the single markets integrity and the opposite is a no brainer.
The EU isn't as unpopular as you think it is. There are no indications at this moment that the EU will go down in the next few years. Can it happen? Ofcourse, but it is not as likely as you think. People have been saying the EU is going down in the next few years for decades, it is still here, and stronger than it was in the past.
It has come to the point where most eurosceptic parties that talked about leaving the EU have changed their tone to just reforming it, because they know how unpopular leaving the EU actually is.
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@snowcold5932
This time, since Macron is deeply unpopular and got elected by default against Le Pen for a 2nd time
I disagree with this statement. Macron received more votes in the first round this time than in 2017. Now he might have become more impopular with those who already didn't really support him, but his core base definitely hasn't shrunk since last time it seems. In a second round he was almost always expected to win unless his opponent was too much like him. If Melenchon made it to the second round, the right likely would have voted for Macron, against Le Pen a large part of the left likely voted for him. Macron had the advantage of being in the center, the 'least worst' candidate in most 2nd round scenario's.
Though in the legislative elections his party did receive more votes than he did in the first round in 2017, possibly due to local representatives and it is this advantage his party seems to have lost, though despite this the polling does predict that the loss in number of seats wouldn't be too bad, most likely because if a candidate of Ensemble makes it to the 2nd round, that candidate also gets the 'centrist advantage' bonus.
I'd say these elections might be interesting, it could swing either way, but a full on majority for the left is going to be incredibly difficult considering polls still suggest a (smaller) majority of Macron's party in seats even after this left coalition was already formed.
I'd expect that the best this coalition causes is that no single party gets a majority and thus a coalition will have to be formed. But likely one between Ensemble and Republican if it is possible.
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@mtk77621 The left gained around 1.05 million more votes in total, so even if these were all Macron voters, it isn't really that much. It really is the far-right that gained a lot of support with 2.64 million more votes compared to 2017.
I don't think Les republicains voters mostly inflated Macron, more like the far-right, that or voters from Macron/the left went to the far right.
Yes, the right that Macron and republicains has shrunk a bit, by about 4 million votes, again mostly to the benefit of the far right, not the left.
But so yes, Macron likely has gained from Republicains fall, but he definitely hasn't been the biggest winner there and he definitely didn't lose too much of his 2017 support to the left.
If you look at Macron's approval ratings, they currently are around as high as a few years ago right after his 'inaugural honeymoon' was up. The main difference is maybe that his dissaproval ratings are higher than back then, but for a sitting French president his numbers aren't bad. I don't think any french president will come better out of their term compared to the start.
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@ludovicartu4239 Most polls were around 4-4,5% off, not 5,5%, considering the margin of error which is usually around 3%, that isn't that far out of bounds, especially not considering some left wing voters might have decided to do some strategical voting, all other left wing candidates afterall slightly underperformed their expected results. If we add up the underperformance of the other left candidate you get around 1,6% or the amount outside the margin of error.
You'd need more than double that (4,5%) mistake to turn things around for the polls in the second round. That is a huge difference. And the outcome of the second round polls make more sense than the opposite all things considered. All you have to support your theory is your own opinion that is much less to go on. And remember Macron overperformed his second round polls too.
What you also seem to fail to take into account is that Melenchon has slightly lower approval ratings than Macron (and the same as Le Pen, interestingly around the amount that voted for Le Pen, 43% approval vs 41,5% of the vote), that again would be a thing in favour of Macron. Some other ratings put his approval similar to Macron, but at a lower amount: 35% vs 34%. Though to be fair, I can't really find many approval pollings about him, so maybe there are some that put Melenchon higher.
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@JohnSmith-bf1sq
the entire current EV fleet...not the whole country
No, it was definitely said that the lithium in Nevada was enough to replace the entire US care fleet.
All current electric vehicles just wont have the range that is needed for the US.
Most people drive less then 50 miles per day. So I'd say even current range is good enough for most people. However the EV range is constantly increasing. All that is needed is enough fastchargers for long distances.
windmills kill thousands and thousands of birds and other flying animals
Like someone else said, the amount of birds killed by wind turbines is a fraction of the total amount of birds killed. If you see this as an issue, maybe you should also advocate to kill all cats, get rid of all glas windows, get rid of cars (yes more birds die due to cars).
change air currents
That is neglectable. The amount of energy wind turbines use can't change air currents for more than 100-300m, after that the unimpacted aircurrent just again fills up the gap.
*extremely loud*.
Directly underneath they can be as loud as a lawnmower, at 100m they should be as loud as a window AC unit and at 400m as refrigerator. It depends on the country, but usually wind turbines are not placed closer than 300-400m to residential buildings. In some countries this is even higher.
Solar, hard on the enviroment, depends on what kind but can fry birds as well.
The kind that can "fry" birds are hardly used and usually are found in very hot area's, where you'll already have less birds.
As for hard on the environment. Depends on how it is produced.
i live next to a giant wind farm.
How close?
they are not a stable way to provide power(cant be counted on to provide power at peak times and are often turned off)
Which is why we need energy storage for renewables. And EV's could also help out (being charged when there is a lot of wind/sun.
No doubt you live somewhere far away from them so as long as its not your back yard its ok.
I often am within around 1km of wind turbines and can't hear them at all. And I also have stood underneath them while they were operating in medium windspeed, they aren't that loud, ofcourse there is sound when you are closer to them, but there is regulation as to how loud they can be. For example they normally aren't allowed to be louder than 105db or close to it, which is as loud as a lawnmower. The sound degrades quickly.
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@bowez9 But the difference is in the car. Now if you are talking about an "EV battery" outside the car, fine, though it would be completely irrelevant. If it is in the car, a lot of factors will be in play and you won't just have an industry standard. The battery management system can change a lot, we speak about years of posssible differences, despite the exact same battery being used. And we are not even talking about how the battery itself is used (always fastcharging, always to 100%, ...), which can also add or decrease years.
At this moment I don't know what your point is.
You said the "EV batteries industry listed life at 10yrs" and that "the average consumer keep non EV vehicle 11yrs." saying that an EV battery doesn't last long enough. But that is not true at all. Current data of EV drivers shows EV batteries will very much go on for longer than 10 years. And the real amount of years they can depends not just on the battery and chemistry, but also the battery management system.
Moreover the average lifespan for a car is around 14 years, not 11.
So far I can tell your numbers are not only wrong, but completely irrelevant.
And the reason you can't compare phone batteries and EV batteries is simple: phone batteries don't have a cooling system, EV's do. So even with the exact same chemistry and exact same usage, you will still get different lifetimes.
Now what exactly was the point you were trying to make?
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@ArawnOfAnnwn Yes, once mobilised defending Taiwan will be easier than invading it. Think of the UK during WW2. Taiwan would just have to hold out long enough for the US to get enough troops there.
And once the US has a strong presence on Taiwan, China is going to break their teeth on it if they'd tried to conquer it. And Taiwan isn't so weak it would fall immediately, especially not since they would hold the homefield advantage and the great resolve of fighting off invaders.
And even if neighbours don't participate, the US still has bases in for example Japan from where it can quickly redeploy troops to Taiwan.
How would China hold global bragging rights if it couldn't achieve its goals?
Ofcourse they haven't tried for decades, they know how difficulty it will be even without US intervention, with possible US intervention it will become practically impossible and very costly, both economically and in terms of lives.
wreck of a territory
LMAO
So all they need to do is intimidate it from air and sea to keep it in line
Keep it in line? You mean having no power over them other than a future threat of invasion is keeping them in line?
Meanwhile the US navy would be right where the Chinese would want it.
No it wouldn't, it would be shielded by Taiwan. The US isn't going to be so stupid as to get too close to chinese shore.
Them controlling the seas against Taiwan would be easy for them
Against Taiwan? Yes, but not against the US, not unless they remain close to their shore. Which won't hinder Taiwan, who would have a save corridor to ship from with US help.
Taiwans' govt. to not threaten the legitimacy of the CCP (which in their mind seems to include independence), and Taiwan keeping its head down when it comes to the surrounding waters (and certainly not playing host to any ships from hostile nations)
Both of which has been the case for decades and yet now China seems to increase tensions around Taiwan.
China being concerned about having the worlds' most powerful navy roaming close to its shores makes a lot more sense.
The US already has naval bases in Japan, it doesn't really need a Taiwanese base, at least not unless China threatens an invasion/blockade of Taiwan and Taiwan asks for help.
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@user-py9cy1sy9u
Russia can form 100 thousand strong force in a day and another 100 thousand the next day for Baltic invasion.
I very much doubt that. Can they mobilise 100k of troops in a day? Sure. But mobilising them and then having them ready for an invasion/operation is something completely different. Now with Ukraine they used months to prepare 200k soldiers and still their logistics (and as a consequence fighting strength) is a disaster.
The EU together has around 1,4 million active military personnel, that is more than Russia. So if Russia can mobilise 100k in a day, so would European nations if absolutely needed. In practive every large scale operation/war would need at least days, most likely weeks of preparation and thus time to respond to it by preparing your own defense/operations.
in order for Russia to execute a surprise attack on the baltics, they'd need to use troops already closely located to the border, which I'd guess are overall pretty limited, especially since for example the troops in Kaliningrad can't be risked too much in an offensive, they are meant to defend that enclave, since if NATO forces take it, control over the Suwalki gap is meaningless and the Baltics would have all but a guaranteed land and sea supply route for troops and equipment.
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@fredmanly3122
I'm not sure they would over a nuclear attack in a non-nuclear western european country.
I am pretty sure they would, otherwise they'd lose any credibility and ith essentially would be a blankcheck for using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations without the US intervening. The fact that the US currently already goes pretty hard on Russia for a normal attack on a non-allied nations is pretty telling about this. Though it doesn't mean that the US immediately would launch their own nukes, rather they'll at the very least do everything they can except for that, with using a nuclear option open (like a limited nuclear strike on a lesser target as a show of response).
The US will have to think about how important Poland actually is
The thing is, it isn't about the importance of Poland, rather the importance of NATO and Europe as a whole. Not standing by them would not just make them lose their biggest/strongest allies, but also show the world how weak/indecisive the US is, increasing the possibility for a next hit to be on another more important ally (like for example Japan, France, Germany, ...).
while not getting involved has very little impact on the US.
Actually it will hurt it very much globally. It would instantly lose any credibility the US has as an ally and as a threat/strong power vs a potential adversary. Essentially not responding to it would only have little impact if it already decided to become isolated earlier, but then they'd likely already abandoned NATO and their other allies.
I am not sure that UK/France would get mixed up in a nuclear war just because Berlin was destroyed
I am certain they would. First of all are members of NATO, secondly not responding makes them lose any and all credibility they have and thirdly for France, they are in the EU just like Germany. An attack on Germany would be like an attack on France. It is not just the leadership btw, the regular people wouldn't accept non-action from their government. Despite differences there are still feelings of European unity/comradery and even if it isn't for this reason, it would be because otherwise what stops Russia from just taking out all their neighbours? And ofcourse there would be the issue of the fall out, so a strike on Germany certainly would also impact France and the UK.
If we are talking about a nuclear war, restraint isn't going to be much of an option for most. It doesn't necessarily mean that on nuclear strike would immediately demand nuclear retaliation, but at the very least all other options and possibly a limited nuclear counterstrike, though unless there are several nuclear strikes from eg Russia, I think western nations would keep to a total war without nuclear means untill Russia is punished enough.
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@Fresh Turkey
domestic attacks that already existed does not justify more imported attacks from abroad
That doesn't make sense, these attacks both cost lives and are both fought the same way by the same security organisations. Like I said, terrorists can be homegrown (even people whose ancestors lived here can radicalize) as well as get in even with a strong border control. Europe has had a lot of immigration for decades due to the colonial history, yet the attacks increased only in the last few years due to geopolitical circumstances (isis, middle eastern instability, Libya, ...), plenty of Europeans went to go fight in Syria on the side of ISIS, when they legally return they can also execute attacks.
It is stupid to keep claiming it are "imported" attacks, they would just keep happening, since many terrorists are/were actually already in Europe, either having come here as a child or even born here.
And German And Swedish unilaterally taking mass is not sustainable.
Germany took it upon themselves to take so many refugees after the outer border failed to the point that the border countries were just ferrying the refugees through, their policy was not the cause of the refugee crisis. Sweden had a rather "weak" system, but they too already changed that.
Either way this exactly shows why you'd need a unified policy and reaction to these sorth of things.
They would rather the control to be in their own hands and I believe that is the correct way to go.
Which is exactly why the border failed, the border countries (Italy, Greece, Hungary) couldn't take or wanted to take the refugee streams on, and thus just started letting them through to the rest of the EU.
And the deportation is extremely inefficient and delayed.
Again which is why you need a unified system. Part of why deportations are so difficult is because every country for themselves need to check if people can safely be returned to land of origin, make sure refused asylumseekers don't go into hiding and need to make deals with countries of origin. Do this as the EU and you'd need one deal per country and have more negotiating power, can more efficiently plan return trips and can keep better track of denied asylumseekers through all of the EU.
They were incentified by the "liberal" logic of if you stay long enough or some what grew up here you should be granted citizenship.
Honestly I haven't heard this outside of US politics regarding dreamers. I am sure there are some who think and argue this way, but most (at both sides) are usually just criticizing the time it takes for a procedure to end and deportations to happen. I haven't yet heard people/politicians argue to give citizenship to people who have been in the EU illegally for a long time. But if you have examples I'd be willing to inform myself more.
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@kevinkent6351 The discussion is about how heads of state are elected. Trump got 46+% of the popular vote; Justin Trudeau got <40% of the popular vote.
1. In Canada there were 3-4 parties that really played a role, in the US 2, so ofcourse the vote will be more split.
2. You are comparing two different systems. In Canada voters don't vote directly for a prime minister, but for a party/regional representative. The prime minister is usually just the head of the largest party in the government coalition. In the end his coalition (and him by extension) is elected by more than 50% of the votes. Now, at this moment an unusual thing happened in Canada with Trudeau ruling a minority government with much less than 50% of the votes, but this also limits his power on practically every decision, this isn't the case of Trump. Whether he is elected with 51% of the votes or just 21%, his powers remain the same.
The idea that the U.S. electoral college is somehow less democratic than most of the rest of the world is beyond asinine.
Well it is less democratic than a popular vote, however not less democratic than all other nations/systems. And also how the electoral college is used decides a lot. For example if the electors where in the states divided by proportional representation, it would be barely any less democratic. But now with the winner takes all principle it is very much less democratic if the winner doesn't also gets the popular vote.
And no, coalition governments do not represent "50+%" of the population in many cases. In many cases, smaller parties with nearly no ideological agreement with their larger partner party will get ceremonial or weak posts.
Irrelevant, the coalition represents 50%+ of the elected representatives, thus it represents 50%+ of the voters (normally). If a small party let themselfs be used like you say, it is their fault and usually this will cause them to loose hard in the next election. This is why these smaller parties will not just accept ceremonial or weak posts only.
Let's not pretend like a left-wing gov't in coalition with a small center party is somehow representative of 50+%
It could very well be, it entirely depends on how people voted.
Also, there are minimum thresholds parties have to achieve to get votes in some systems, and in many systems
Yes, this is meant to avoid a complete mess of all parties having less than for example 10% of the seats, causing the need for a government of 5+ parties coalition. The US system basically has a treshold that allows only two parties in all but name.
like the UK, the final tally of MPs doesn't necessarily reflect the popular vote because MP elections are first past the post.
That is exaclty why I also think that FPTP systems are undemocratic too. Basically they are exactly the same as how the US elects its congress and by extension even the president on a state level.
The U.S. is not out of step with the rest of the world.
Did I say that? I just pointed out that comparing a prime minister with a president is ridiculous. The power they have is very different and their position too. A prime minister can be rather easily voted out of office by the parliament (again normally, exceptions might apply), the president on the other hand can't. Not even mentioning the way they come into power. And because of these differences it is stupid to compare prime ministers with presidents.
If you want to make comparisons, do it with other presidential systems, like France.
but at least the US president gets close to 50% of the popular vote
Only because the US system inherently allows only two large parties to truly play a role.
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@elijahculper5522
So I created a long in depth response 2 days ago and then youtube wouldn't load it up (kept on the loading icon) and I couldn't copy paste it anymore either, so I created a new answer.
But there is absolutely no precedent to back that up.
In 2016 Trump got much coverage from the media, so he couldn't set a precedent, and earlier elections were too early. There always has to be a first time.
Senator Sanders is asking the Democratic Party to take a huge gamble by throwing away one of their most valuable tools against Donald Trump.
In the general the democratic nominee will get enough media coverage, especially when running against Trump, don't worry.
There are a field of candidates who would have the media fawning over them throughout their campaign. Senators Warren and Harris, Secretary Castro, Mayor Buttigieg, and Congressman O’Rourke all come to mind here.
Yes, and look where they are now.
Harris has fallen back completely, even not getting any delegates in her homestate and even surpasse by Yang, someone who gets even less coverage than Bernie.
Castro has difficulty to poll higher than 2-3%, despite being covered well by the msm. Clearly this msm coverage didn't help him too great either.
Buttigieg and O'Rourke the same as Harris, despite being msm favorites, they have fallen back from earlier positions spectacularly, often not even beating Yang in the polls.
And as for Warren, msm only started seeing her as a favorite after she already was well into the double digits, so I can't say that she for now really was helped by them. Especially since many progressives have only become suspicious of her now that msm covers her so very favorably.
If any of those candidates were the nominee, they’d run with the advantage of traditional media making their case to every suburban swing voter with cable or a newspaper subscription.
msm is already mostly partisanised, they'll cover every DNC nominee a lot, especially since of they don't they'll risk losing out, we are talking about the primary with only 2 candidates.
*But all of those voting blocs are notoriously flakey. Even if they like a candidate, they are substantially less likely to show up to vote than the upper-middle class middle aged suburbanites watching CNN and reading the New York Times. *
This is indeed true if you look to the past, then again many of those were not engaged by former candidates like they are now by Bernie. Furthermore the young voter turn out has gone up incredibly in 2018, almost doubled compared to 2014. And if we look at young voter turn out, what do we see? When the young voters come out, democrats win. Both in 1992 and 2008 the young turn out was above 50%, the only times that it was higher than 50% in 40 years. So clearly if you want to be certain of a victory, you need to get out the young vote.
I don’t think the media is particularly attached to the status quo. I really can’t think of a bigger shakeup to the old way of doing things than the candidacy and presidency of Mr. Trump. That’s been fantastic for traditional media outlets. They have more viewers and sell more papers than ever before.
That is correct, this change (but actually just more Trump) has been great for their viewcount, however what you shouldn't forget is that behind these news companies you have large companies and donors who do like the status quo. After all, the status quo got them in power and made them able to influence/buy these msm outlets.
Most Sanders speeches sound kind of like an angry political science professor lecturing us on the economic systems of the Nordic states.
People are constantly trying yo equate his ideas with countries like Venezuela, so ofcourse he's going to correct them and furthermore, what is wrong to use an example that has proven his ideas work?
His events are policy driven and boring, which doesn’t do anything for profit-motivated outlets.
This isn't different from Warren, yet you told yourself she's an msm darling.
He’s spent a career building trust with voters.
LMAO. Go outside and ask Biden supporters why they support him. You'll hear things like "electability", unity, defeating Trump, Obama, ... You'll only rarely hear things from his actual record. This trust people have with Biden is because of the image that Obama trusted him and that he was Obama's pall. If people support him based on his career, he wouldn't get a sliver of the african-american vote. The only reason he has the african-american vote is him being associated with Obama, the same happened with Hillary. If Obama comes out tomorrow and endorses someone else then Biden, his support would be gone in a weak definitely from the African-American voters.
This is his third time running for president, so he’s spent more time in early primary states than anybody else in the field.
Hillary spend two elections with her husband and also ran in 2008 and nearly defeat Obama in the primaries. Joe biden dropped out early in 1988 and in 2008 he dropped out in January after getting less than 1% in Iowa. It doesn't seem that running multiple times seriously helps. Furthermore, while Biden ran two times before, Bernie could just continue his 2016 campaign, which in my eyes is much better than running three campaigns with at least 10 years inbetween every campaign.
He’s built relationships with democratic volunteers in those states
And Bernie got a million volunteers from all states in just 6 days. I don't think Biden can trump Bernie in volunteers.
and he’s been listening to what voters have to say in those town halls for decades.
That is probably one of the worst arguments so far. What is said in 1988 is far from what is being said now. If runs based on what is said back then, he'd not even be in the running.
But it’s because he spent 2008 to 2016 connecting with voters and establishing himself as an ally to the black community.
And this was only possible because he was Obama's VP.
And Biden’s just better at retail politics than anyone else in the field.
Really? We are talking about the same person, right? The guy that has twice as few events, meetings and interview than other candidates. The guy that before his VP-ship couldn't get more than a few % nationally (and in most states) and this time (coïncidently after his VP-ship) got in the 30's even before announcing or campaigning.
I’ve seen a ton of progressives on the internet express a lot of mistrust toward Warren. I don’t really understand that. The two seem virtually identical to me on policy.
It's quite easy, she was first a republican and in 2016 she supported Hillary instead of Bernie, a fellow progressive. She doesn't speak out against the military industrial complex, she is definitely not good on foreign policy, she's having meetings with the DNC establishment, she said she was going to accept money from everywhere in the general. Many believe she might cave much more easily to political pressure once president compared to Bernie and they fear Trump will eat her alive or that she will become Obama 2.0, many promises, but not much done or not fighting enough to change things as promised during the primaries.
Progressives were really dissapointed with Obama's presidency and don't want this dissapointment repeated. And the msm suddenly seeing her as one of their favorites only increased the fear with progressives that they are right and that she'll prove to be a sell out, a hidden status quo candidate.
On the other hand, Bernie has proven throughout his entire career to stand by his policies and principles, that he is steadfast and will truly fight to improve the lives of ordinary people.
Honestly from you comment, I can clearly see that you are in what progressives cal the msm/dnc/establishment bubble. And thinking like you do is exactly what lost the democrats 1000 seats and the 2016 election.
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@iareid8255 Have you seen how little wind has been generated this yera fo instamnce?
1590TWh this year worldwide or around 6% of the worlds electricity generation. This while wind in many places is not or barely being rolled out. 3/4th of the current wind production is in China, EU27 and the US and in these nations they are still rolling out wind too. Wind (and renewables in general) is only just starting to become a mainstream part of the grid overall.
Solar is the worst of all renewable generation, particularly the higher the latitude in which it is installed.
Solar is fine up untill maybe 55° latitude, ofcourse it is way more efficient in the lower latitudes. As for higher than that, wind is a great generation tool (it is used in the antarctic for example), Denmark already gets a lot of electricity from the wind (46% and 4% from solar) and can get a lot more. Norway gets almost all its electricity from hydro, Sweden for now gets 51% of their power from hydro and wind, Finland gets around 12% from wind currently (still growing every year) and 23% from hydro.
If really necessary these more northern countries can use nuclear reactors, or import energy from further south using HVDC lines.
It provides power for a limited time and often none when it is most required.
Which is why storage is needed. Also a shift in consumption can help, for example heating/cooling can be done mostly during the day when there is an overproduction of solar.
Therefor there has to be 100% capacity in alternative generation plant.
Not when there is enough storage, which is why it is so important for renewable generation.
Availabilty fcators for solar in teh U.K. is about 10%, pitifully low.
This only increases how many solar panels we need. And while northern Europe isn't well placed for solar, it is overall good for wind. European nations will go to a wind-energy electricity economy, with maybe here or there some nuclear power.
Also, technically it is asynchronous which means it is uncontrollable, a grid can only absorb so much and remain stable.
Again, storage is key.
battery storage has been overhyped. It is not an answer to intermittency as the capacity required is far too great to compensate.
This is completely untrue, even just Li-ion batteries could overtime suffice, ofcourse there are better options for gridstorage, like possibly the liquid metal from this video, or the redox flow batteries, or a number of other batteries being researched. Not to mention non-battery storage possibilities like LAES or hydrogen (bad efficiency though, so a last resort).
what is not readily appreciated is that storage requires extra generation capacity for it to work
10-20% depending on the battery type, absolute worst case 30%.
If you take an installation for a private dwelling and run it free of grid tie, I would expect that it would cost a lot more than drawing from the grid
This depends on location, things like solar efficiency, grid price, ... For example people in the lower part of the US or Australia are likely better of with a selfsufficient system, this not only costs less for them, but also makes them selfreliant. Here in Belgium it for example isn't worth, though maybe if grid prices were 10-15 cent/kWh higher, it might and with reducing battery costs (possibly halving by 2030) and solar panel costs, it might become a no brainer in the future, even here. In the south of Europe, I already could see it being interesting.
even at inflated prices due to renewables.
The inflated prices are actually limited and will overtime dissapear. These prices were higher because renewables were more expensive, currently solar and wind is equal or cheaper than most sources, the main problem being the cost of storage/management without enough storage.
It would need to be of sufficient capacity to run the elctrical needs of the dwelling for 365 days of the year and have the power needed available at all times.
In most places this is not a problem, only depends on cost, storage being the main factor. Solar for most houses under 55° north could probably already be sufficient with +-10kWp heating not included, more or less 10-15k euro, or around 10-15 years of ROI (while the panels are expected to last for 25-30 years or more). The necessary battery is likely something like 10-12kWh for 5-8k. Within 10 years the combination can be around 10-12k in total, more than low enough to earn back the investment
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@reinbeers5322 Most people would use only around 15-20% of their battery in a day on average. That means even if you stay within 20 and 80% charge to lower degradation, you still have 40-45% sitting idle doing nothing. You could as well use it, since you have it. If it is economical, which I'll come back to later. Most people will want a car that can do at least 300 miles on one charge and on average people drive around 30-40 miles a day. So there is a lot of battery you will always take with you, but wouldn't use, with V2G you would be able to use this capacity daily, instead of just these very few times a year where you need to take a long drive and for which you choose a longer range. Ofcourse if you'd rather have a 100 mile car or get a car with a range you reach often (for example if you regularly need to drive long distances), then yes getting more battery for V2G is indeed stupid. But if you have a car where you only use a small part of the capacity anyway averagely, why not just have V2G?
Now as for the economical side, here degredation and savings/income come into play. You could use V2G to just power your own home, in which case you need to look at the savings from charging with low price power and using during high price moments is worth the extra degradation. For this you'd need to know the extra degradation and your savings. If the savings outweigh the cost of battery life time loss => use V2G, else don't.
The second possibility is that you don't just use the battery for your house, but also the grid. In which case there would need to be system to "buy" (charge) electricity at a low price (low demand, high availability times) and sell (discharge) at high price times (peak moments) or you get a certain amount of money from an electrical company per kWh they store in your battery. Either system is a possibility in the future. Again in this case you'd need to calculate whether the decrease in battery lifetime costs less than the profits you make from it.
Will V2G be usefull? time will tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if it will. Would it be usefull for everyone in every situation? Ofcourse definitely not.
TLDR: the only concern is battery degradation vs savings/profit and how you use your EV on a regular basis.
In the end there must be a system put in place that doesn't exist yet, or at least isn't good enough yet, but it can be done. And ofcourse you as the end user have to be able to change settings (when to charge/discharge, maximum/minimum charge at what time, ...). This is for the future.
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Pedro Brexit The first step was mounting legal actions. But because the German government very quickly rectified the situation, it never got any further. The Polish government has made it clear they won't do anything to rectify the situation and are essentially directly challenging the EU. And again, the Polish court ruling directly undermines several fundamental articles of the EU treaties, much worse than the German situation, by a longshot. Thus this comes down to a completely different situation, both in government response as well as severity.
It also doesn't help that the Polish court that made the ruling is in the past few years engulfed in a constitutional crisis, potentially breaking with another EU requirement: the rule-of-law. In fact there is still a constitutional crisis in Poland due to the actions of the Polish government to essentially fill up 5 of the 15 free positions in the constitutional tribunal (who made the EU ruling) with their chosen candidates, against the tribunal's own ruling that this wasn't done in the right way.
3 of these positions were filled up right before PIS took over the parliament by the outgoing parliament (as was their mandate), however the PIS president didn't allow these candidates to be sworn in, after the PIS controlled new parliament took over, they nominated 3 new candidates for these positions. This wasn't accepted by the tribunals president, which denied these candidates to hear cases. As a response the PIS parliament and government made a new law that would allow these new judges to hear new cases, however the tribunal ruled this new law unconstitutional, which the PIS government just ignored.
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What should also be mentioned is that it isn't yet clear whether people who have had covid-19 also have longterm immunity. For all we know now they could only have immunity for a few weeks/months. There are already people who have had covid-19 early on, but don't have significant immunity markers at this moment.
So the idea of immunity might work, but it isn't a certainty. Even if 50% is infected, if there is not longterm immunity, this is basically worthless.
And ofcourse Sweden's strategy can't work everywhere. Just look at Spain, Italy and other countries for example, they already suffered such a high toll, imagine if they followed Sweden's strategy. It seems Sweden is in a rather "lucky" position in terms of population density, social distancing, pre-covid behaviour, ...
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@chibiromano5631
Nothing you said disputes what I said. My entire point is that the US didn't had much problem with the invasion, but only afterwards with the occupation had huge problems.
Russia is still at the invasion part and is having difficulty compared to what every military expert expected.
No, Russia doesn't want to do nation building, nor does it want to occupy Ukraine longterm. However you don't just switch out the government and leave. Before you know it, that government is overthrown and everything start again. So Russia will need to do some limited occupation anyway. And that will be the greatest problems, making sure everything they've gained in the invasion isn't immediately turned around upon leaving.
Either Russia expected most of Ukraine to roll over and accept a new pro-Russian government (possibly mistakenly seeing Zelensky's low polling numbers as a sign he'd be easily replaced) or they need to have planned a longer occupation.
Neither seems beneficial to Russia, just like it wasn't beneficial to the US to stay in Iraq (hell, the US had no good reason to be there in the first place).
And yes, number of casualties play a part. It doesn't matter that you take 100 km if you lose half your army in the process (figuratively speaking obviously). It isn't the only factor, but it is one of the main factors. Especially when you compare to invasion that were/will be successfull, casualties and loss of material are the most important metrics, considering these can have long term effects both on the public at home, military power and the outview of the rest of the world on your strength.
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@hiufgterde
Russia is of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world
This is complete bullshit, Russia isn't even in picture in this regard. Maybe in the soviet era, yes. The US arms manufacturer is around 3 times bigger and while Russia is 2nd, France and Germany together already equal it. There is only 1 Russian company in the top 15 arms companies, and it is at the bottom of the list.
but somehow we say they only have old crap
Yep, because Russia hasn't really been creating "new" stockpiles of modern equipment, mostly keeping their old soviet stockpiles. So if they want to quickly equip many new units, they need to grab that older equipment. The current Russian arms industry is focused on export and limited modernisation, while for example the US is mainly focused on keeping it military modern and exports are just an extra addition.
They watched NATO sending in weapons to Ukraine for 8 years.
NATO barely send any weapons before 2022. Only Lithuania send military equipment to Ukraine in that timeframe. That is one of the main miscalculations of Russia, they didn't expect that NATO nations would react so unified in coming to Ukraine's aid after the 2022 invasion.
Russia never starts a war it cannot win
Except they have in the past.
and they knew they'd also be fighting NATO.
Not at all, since Ukraine isn't a NATO member and NATO's response to the annexation of Crimea and actions in the donbas in 2014 was very weak and completely disunified.
We said they only have old missiles and they would run out soon. Well that was a lie.
People also said Ukriane would fall in days and her we are. You can be wrong about some things. Though Russian missiles attacks have been decreasing in the past few months and them resorting to using Iran made suicide drones isn't promising about the size of their missile arsenal. Not to mention using anti-air defense missiles to strike ground targets instead.
and the ones they have using so far are only the basic ones.
Yeah, because they don't have many of the more expensive/special ones, which they need to keep on hand just in case. Not wasting it on some pretty meaningless infrastructure bombardment.
They have missiles we cannot match over in Europe.
That is a claim from Russia, yes. However there isn't any proof that they have those, definitely not in meaningfull numbers.
If they wanted to they could level every Ukrainian city easily
Only with nuclear missiles, which would completely isolate them on the worldstage, even China would be in complete condemnation and think about joining sanctions. No one wants to allow nuclear weapons to be normalised.
They have the best air defense system in the word as well, a 3 tier approach copied by many other countries.
One the Ukrainians have now repeatedly got past, though obviously not with big numbers or such. Also pretty useless having the best air defense system against an oppenent with essentially no usable air- or missileforce
Brand new tanks, brand new armored cars etc etc.
The manufacturing capacity of Russia regarding tanks is pretty well know, it isn't even enough to replace a fraction of what they already lost. Most "new" tanks are formerly mothballed tanks put back in operation.
It's not for free.
Most equipment has been, though some loans were also given. And in any case these likely will either be dismissed or the seized Russian assets might even be used to repay it.
we said HIMARS was a gamechanger
It truly was. It hampered Russian logistics greatly, destroyed a lot of shells otherwise used to bombard Ukrainian lines, took out several command posts and troop concentrations and especially in Kherson it was instrumental by damaging the bridges in such a way Russian units on the west side couldn't be properly supplied anymore.
then it was the Patriot system
Never really was a gamechanger, at best it helps protect vital area's against missile attacks, but it would never have changed the course of the war. The game changer in this was only that it formerly was rejected, so supplying it meant another step towards pledges of other equipment, like tanks and maybe eventually planes.
now it's the Leopard tanks again.
It is a gamechanger in a certain perspective. It is more modern tanks than what Ukraine currently has and its addition can help in the creation of a stronger offensive force, whereas Ukrainian tanks currently are used to keep the line. Moreover it again is the step towards further aid. If the US wishes (and prepares Ukraine) it can send hundreds upon hundreds of (pretty) modern Abrams to Ukraine (it has around 3000 in storage).
Russia has the same if not better equipment
🤣 that is a quite naive comment.
Russia has destroyed their equipment 4 times over already
Do you not realize how that sounds? How can Russia already destroy their equipment 4 times over? Not to mention doing so without making any real gains.
We're trying to prolong this war, not actually help Ukraine to win it. Then we should do much much more.
Yes and no. We are definitely helping them first with keeping their ground, but also definitely to win. Though we can do a lot more to speed up the process towards Ukraine winning. This is even a complaint at the highest political circles, but as always things are a bit more complex than one thinks.
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Calvin25X
It was an analogy, just like we catogerise and subcategorise nature (plants, animals, bacteria, ...) we can categorise (a)theism, with theism and atheism being the main categories and agnostic atheism, gnostic atheism, agnostic theism, ... being subcategories.
It's a lot more illogical that people claim they belief and don't belief in the same thing at the same time, which is basically what agnostics do when they want to set themselves apart from atheists. Either you belief in god(s) (theist), or you don't belief in god(s) (atheist), there are no shades of grey in regards to believing, either you do or you don't. Here there is no middle ground. The nuances start only after that.
I personally can't be sure there isn't one, and therefor there is no god I specifically can belief in, untill for some reason I would start believing in it (an accident, a relevation, evidence, ...)
I don't believe in a god => atheist,
because I don't know one exists (but it could) => agnostic
==> agnostic atheist.
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@durshurrikun150 What are you talking about? The goal payload capacity is between 100-200tonnes, making it the biggest rocket by payload capacity ever. What equipment are you talking about that weighs too much for Starship to carry?
SpaceX launched 134 rockets in 2024, Starship is supposed to be even more reusable. So why would launching 200 rockets be a problem according to you?
No one is talking about 200 rockets a day, where do you get that from?
I personally am not in favour of using starship as a mars transfer vehicle and neither do I expect that amount of starships to fly to Mars in the next few decades, though purely from a logistical standpoint it can likely be done within something like 20 years, biggest problem would be funding for it and how usefull it is (not that much imo).
Also, good job, you're condemning these people to death because you're sending them without any means to survive on Mars.
Where do you get this from? Equipment always would have been send ahead for them. Based on what we currently know, humans can survive on Mars with existing technology, it just hasn't been completely fleshed out yet (practically).
They'll need to set up the equipment which will take months.
Equipment can be setup by robots before people are even launched/or can be kept in starships/other landing vehicles untill more permanent setups are build up. Robots will always be a key part of building up any kind of (semi-)permanent Mars habitation
Oh yes, you don't understand anything about logistics.
More than you apparently looking at your comments.
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@pauligrossinoz
The Starship is a failure because it had empty fuel tanks, zero payload (*), and still failed to reach orbital velocity.
They never intended to get into orbit with their first attempts, since it wasn't needed to get the data they need. They definitely could have gotten it into orbit.
The fact that you keep hammering this point just shows you know very little about it.
If what you said was true, they'd have scrapped or completely redesigned the starship immediately, since a rocket that can't reach orbit would be completely fucking useless to them.
These first tests were/are meant to get data on its ascent and reusability (heat tiles, tower catching, belly flop maneuver, general behaviour in flight, relighting of engines, ...). Their trajectory given to the FAA never mentioned going into orbit with those tests because it is safer not to without a payload. You don't send your rocket into orbit during tests where things might go wrong, no one wants a large uncontroleable mass in orbit.
The next flight meant for 10/1 is expected to have a dummy payload of starlink v2 satellites, but is again intendend to only take a sub-orbital flight path.
You are just showing your complete ignorance on the starship development with your uninformed statements. I don't think starship is the holy grail of rockets that can do everything as many people think, but you are just taking the piss here.
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@durshurrikun150
And yet the payload capacity of the rocket is 50 tons
Yes, for the versions of the currently tested starship this is correct. However this is with raptor V1's, while the eventual raptors used would be V3's or better, which has a 50% increase in trust, with a 50% decrease in mass (saving around 60tonnes from the SH booster).
At the same time the next starship variants will see an increased fuel amount.
Besides, a production plant and a settlement would weight more than 200 tons.
And that is based on what? What production plant? What settlement?
To launch their own satellites and that's it.
Most launches, yes. However there are also 45 launches for costumers, which is more than any other single country except China who have a total of 68 launch attempts in 2024.
Also that these launches are for SpaceX or its costumers is completely irrelevant, it doesn't change that it is are 134 launches.
They were launching smaller rockets.
Falcon 9 is one of the bigger rockets currently in operation. Yes, compared to Starship it indeed is much smaller, then again it is also less reusable than starship is designed to be.
And they launched them in a year, not in the few weeks of a launch window.
And? The 1000 starships to mars (which again will likely never happen due to financial impractibility and starship imo also not being the best mars transfer vehicle) isn't meant to be launched in a few weeks, but in the 2 years between the launch windows, which even with refueling would take around 30 launches a day, which would mainly be a matter of number of launchpads (ie. funding), rather than something impossible.
What happens when a launch has to be scrubbed due to weather or fails
The same as now? It launches after the weather improved. As for failure, that depends entirely on what the failure is.
Oh yeah, the rocket will never have enough fuel to go to Mars.
Except we already know it will have if you (partially) refuel it, that isn't even up for debate in the space community.
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@durshurrikun150
You do realise that you can't waste time for a launch window? Once it is closed you're done.
You don't launch the rockets from the ground to Mars during the launch window, you launch them into orbit before the launch window and then launch it from earths orbit to Mars during the launch window. Add to this that the ideal launch window is a few weeks and you definitely can incorporate wiggle room. Ofcourse this requires thorough planning.
Or better yet, how about not sending humans to Mars and send rovers which are significantly cheaper and do the same stuff?
I personally think for scientific research sending a small detachment of people can be worth it, they can directly control (instead of a 30m time delay) and maintain robots/rovers on the ground to do what needs to be done outside, while also doing all the experimentation that is needed inside. Ofcourse I am not a scientist/researcher, so maybe they'll have a different opinion, but I just don't think just relying on rovers for this would be enough.
Just again to be clear, I am not in favour of colonizing mars since I don't believe it is worth the effort, nor do I think the 1000 ships during 1 mars transfer is ever going to happen (the next few decades), even if it is technically possible, it just isn't practical nore necessary.
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@pauligrossinoz
you don't understand basic physics!
No, I just got an engineering degree without understanding basic physics 🙄
Firstly, the booster's methane tank was almost full on the ground, so there's hardly any capacity left for more fuel in the first place.
So far I know the tanks were never fully filled, even if it might have looked that from the outside. Furthermore, like I said the the new versions have increased fuel tanks. So even if my information about the not fully full fuel tanks is wrong, the next versions can carry more.
More importantly, adding fuel makes the take-off weight heavier, but does not increase engine power.
And as I said, the first test flights were with raptor 1 engines, raptor v2 and v3 have improved thrust.
all you Musk fans
I am not a Musk fan, maybe I might have been somewhat 3-4 years ago, now at best I don't despise him and his actions/leanings.
I am a space fan.
1. It's a longer distance to return to base, needing more fuel to return to base.
True, but this just reduces the efficiency of adding more fuel a bit, it doesn't negate it completely.
However this is also only the case for the same amount of payload. Higher payload might need more thrust thus needs more fuel for the same distance. Ie the booster doesn't need to travel further, thus making this point irrelevant.
And the 2nd stage doesn't have this problem since it needs to enter orbit regardless.
2. It's got to reverse it's travel velocity from a higher speed, which also needs more fuel.
See previous.
mean that it is never as simple as just adding more fuel to the tanks to go faster
It kind of is, ofcourse it isn't just a linear equation. As long as you have enough trust adding more fuel will increase capacity. It will always be a working with multiple variables like available thrust, fuel, payload, ...
A light/small payload needs less thrust => engines running at reduced % => less fuel use => less fuel needed and vice versa.
And there is barely any capacity left in those tanks right now.
Which is why they have increased it and might increase it even more.
Also, those who understand physics would know that you can still end up in the Indian Ocean after reaching orbital velocity.
And those that understand physics also know that it needs a significantly smaller boost once you have reached sub-orbital trajectory that it did during flight 6, we are talking about a fraction of what they had to do before.
There is nothing at all, other than the rocket being too slow, that stops them planning each launch to attain orbital velocity.
This just shows your ignorance about it. They already achieved orbital velocity, they just didn't raise their perigee (50km in flight 6) enough to reach orbit.
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Bernie must put out tv ads about this so people realize this. It shouldn't be ads just attacking the media, but rather should show pictures of ommisions and so like you did, an entire clip of 1 minute like this with the saying "Media ignores Sanders, keep yourself informed by visiting XXX". with the XXX being a page on Bernie's site with lists of news media not talking about him and those that do. This could also spread awareness of alternate media channels, like the Hill, yours, secular talk, ...
If I was a voter and I saw a minute of example after example of a leading candidate being blacked out by media, I sure as hell would be more inclined to do some research.
Besides this, Bernies ads should highlight his electability, seeing that this seems to be one of major reasons why people wouldn't vote for him, especially thanks to the media.
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@baronvonlimbourgh1716 Can they change nukes to work for them? Yes, but only given enough time, knowledge, funds, ... It is very unlikely many split upt regions would have this or try it.
Most likely they'd just sell them. Enemies of the west (NK, Iran, terrorists, ....) are an option, but then again the western nations themselves could outbid any other player and it is safer to deal with them. If you deal with other actors, you risk the west just attempting military intervention to secure those nukes before they can be used/sold.
It doesn't even need to be necessarily in hard cash or whatever, guarantees of their borders + aid packages + ... in exchange for the nukes would probably be the most interesting thing for most new nations coming out of the break up of Russia, only for authoritarion new nations this might not be the case, but they also can't risk a war against the US etc. if they want to remain in power.
The main real danger might be true fanatics, but these should be few.
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@Jazzcat135
- France is expected to decrease their nuclear % of the electricity mix due to costs of new nuclear, and looking at how long and expensive Flamanville 3 took, this might become a bigger reduction than initially expected
- France NEEDS to export its electricity to maintain its nuclear production and price to make sure their nuclear power plants can keep running as baseload and reach best price. If everyone of their neighbours had the same nuclear % in their grid, things would get quite a bit more complicated and prices would be higher.
- France has had problems in summer past few years with cooling the reactors, to the point it had to import quite some electricity.
- France's nuclear has had a lot of government "subsidies" (it is exploited by a government owned company)
TLDR; France is currently living on their old reactors, their new construction hasn't looked promising and expectations are that renewables+storage will drive out or at least outshine new nuclear in coming decades. This would only change if new nuclear suddenly becomes a lot cheaper or experiences some big development breakthrough (or grid storage cost reduction is less than expected).
As for Slovakia, it seems plans are still in early stages, even if it is built, it will likely not be active in the next 10 years, by which time it will have to compete with cheaper renewable+storage, thus potentially reliant on government subsidies.
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@malikjackson9337
Even the best estimates don't even put renewables at half the global power generation at that time frame.
I didn't say anything about half the power generation coming from renewable, so not sure which timeframe you're talking about.
Many of the developing nations are well placed for using renewable and are often also investing in it. They are definitely more unlikely to go nuclear, unless they cut serious costs somewhere.
Yes, Japan is one of the few nations geographically not great for renewables considering their population. China I don't really agree with. They are just focusing on everything at the moment, despite rolling out quite some nuclear compared to the rest of the world, it is still really small compared to their renewable development. Nuclear only made up 4% of their grid mix in 2023, compared to 30% for renewables (even just talking wind and solar it is at 16%). So nuclear definitely isn't really driving China's grid away from fossil fuels, currently that is clearly renewables doing it.
People forget that nuclear isn't the only thing slowed down by regulation, renewables are too. For example here in Belgium (and likely most of Europe) without regulation it would take around 4-6 months to build a wind turbine from inception to operation, currently it takes in actuality over 3 years due to the requirement for studies, paperwork, build up of local support, ... (which also drives up the costs).
Purely theoretical solar panels can fuel our entire society (for those things that can be electrified) if we also use grid storage and even then it would take only a small part of available ground surface. But ofcourse it is always better to have some diversity and grid storage at the scale and cost that is needed is still 10-20 years off (though roll out of renewable generation can be done before that, so we only need to slot in the storage, theoretically).
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@malikjackson9337
Depends on the time frame and your interpretation of a significant percentage.
Currently all renewables (Hydro, solar, wind, bioenergy, ...) make up 30% of the worlds electricity mix. Ofcourse at this moment half of that comes from hydro, but the other renewable sources are already 50% higher than nuclear's attribution, while having been still very expensive just 10-15 years ago. In 10 years they went from +-5% to +-15% and in many regions of the world renewables are only just starting to ramp up or coming into development.
I do think it will take several decades still for renewables to make up a large majority of electricity generation, but I don't really agree with the "without nuclear" take. There is no reason nuclear would positively change this the speed of low carbon production vs focusing solely on renewables. Even in 50+ years nuclear never went above 18% and has been on a downwards trajectory since the 1990's. The investments that are being/would be made in new current nuclear powerplants would be just as effective, if not more effective, if they went into renewables instead (at this moment). Maybe this would change once renewables start making up 60-70% of the grid mix and storage still isn't fixed, then nuclear might be usefull for that last 30% (though nuclear and renewables aren't really that complementary and overbuilding renewable for green hydrogen production and hydrogen gas plants would be better if costs come down enough, though storage should be fine way before either scenario).
The point is it doesn't have to be slow and tedious like it is in say the US which is one of the longest development times in the world.
It doesn't, but neither do renewables. China is building nuclear powerplants reasonably fast, but then they also are developing renewables even at a lot faster pace. This is more a China (great at big construction works) vs the West (slow and expensive), whether this comes at some cost or not.
And it still is on average 6 years in China from building start to commercial operation. Add another 2-3 years decision making, planning, preparing, .... and you also are at around 8-10 years. Sure some in the west are gigantically overtime, but 8-10 years lead time still seems to be a good assumption under even good conditions.
To say solar is even remotely as regulated is either naive or disingenuous.
It is proportionally. Regulation isn't even necessarily the right term, rather bureaucracy. Ofcourse in pure numbers it most certainly isn't. Wind turbines (and likely also large solar) might take around +-4x times as long to develop and build with the bureaucracy etc vs if you just planned and started building without the need of all the bureaucracy. For nuclear powerplants that would be the equivalent of 20 years vs 5 years (which is around the ballpark or even higher of what we see unless we are looking at the absolute worst).
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+Undercover Genius
If these public services weren't part of a socialized system, they would be provided by private corporations, and you would need to pay for them. You would need to pay private companies for using the roads, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, police, army, fire departement, ... (maybe even to vote, although there probably wouldn't be a reason to vote.).
America is a capitalist country with socialist parts. No pure capitalistic country is succesful. If you weren't part socialistic, but pure capitalistic the companies would run everything and you wouldn't need a government.
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@gungan5822 You do realize the non-mRNA ones that were available (Astrazenica and janssens) are ones that tend to have more side effects and less effective?
Novavax hasn't been available due to production difficulties, though the EU is looking into using it as a third boostershot at the end of this year. This because it is logistically easier to use and there is no clear knowledge yet which vaccins are more effective against new strains, the mrna ones or the ones from novavax.
If rapid tests are cheap, no problem. However the state should not subsidies it. If people need it due to not accepting a vaccination, it is their problem. Hundreds of millions have been vaccinated without problems. Yes, there have been some problems, but we are talking of a few every several millions, this happens for many medications and vaccins, unfortunately not everything can always be avoided. And many more would have died in the mean time due to covid without the vaccination.
Lockdowns will be ended when covid is under control enough, this mostly will be looked at by hospitalisations and deathrate. Considering these days it are mostly non-vaccinated people that end up in the hospital or die due to covid, you can blame them for lockdowns/measures not getting lifted completely.
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Monolithic Juggernaut
But the income has essentially been taxed twice at that point. Once when it was first earned, and again when it was given away.
What do you think happens now? The company pays taxes on their profits and uses this so pay their employees wages, then it is taxed again by a VAT and again taxed with the stores profits, which again is taxed when used to pay employees or buy supplies .....
Inheritance tax also should be taxing money that already was taxed as income once.
In the end it would be up to the people to decide whether they would be willing to give this money and pay taxes again on it. But remember we are talking about a progressive tax scheme (which can become even more progressive than we think about now), like no taxes on the first 15k every year, 5% on income between 15-30k, ... In the end the only people really feeling it would be people who can afford it.
And it is not like these taxes are wasted, they should end up with the people again in the form of free education, healthcare, infrastructure, services (police, fire, ambulance, garbage collectors, ...), ... This is to prevent too much wealth being accrued by individuals/families for decades, even centuries, while there are plenty of people who can't even afford basic necessities.
Taxation and money isn't a linear concept, it is circular, the same money will get taxed again and again, just like it will be used to get stuff/pay people again and again.
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@watershed8685
they are all French
And we are all European.
Meanwhile European identity is not yet fully formed
I think you are underestimating this, especially with the younger population.
and nowhere near the traditional nationalism
yeah, sure. This is exactly what common leadership would also help to achieve. Without further integration you will only get little to no furthering of European identity feelings among people that don't have them yet.
If something is not done to smooth out at least nomination everyone will either scream that the rest of continent has voted for a populist/idiot just to spite Germans
People tend to vote along ideological lines, not regional lines. I don't vote for only politicians from my town/area for the federal parliament, I vote for a party/politicians that I believe best suite my view on things. Where you actually do get regional influences is in the indirect election when the nomination gets done by leaders of the memberstates (as is done now for the commission and current EU presidents), afterall they will be proposing already someone from their nation in line with their view and obviously want to have their nation somehow represented/more powerfull.
or that Germans and (or) French have an unfair advantage of largest populations or maybe even rigged the election
Which would be stupid, considering neither has a too great advantage, Germany represents 18% of the population and France 15%. And again, people will overall tend to vote alongside ideological lines, at least they eventually will. Right wing french people won't vote for a left wing candidate just because he's french.
An option is to (at least to begin) have the parliament be directly elected (as it is already now), but with european parties across borders, so you get EU left, center, right, ... parties instead of just 'blocs' made up of local parties. This can be done by instituting a treshold, forcing parties to truly join together in crossboundary parties in order to reach that threshold.
Then the parliament elects the 'president' (essentially PM at that moment). This will cause people to vote based on the issues instead of nationality and eventually voting for a president not based on nationality will become normal, then you introduce direct presidential elections.
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@makeamericagreatagain3401
raising taxes on hardworking Americans,
But they save more in the end.
forcing them to drop their private insurance,
In return for something even better.
and increasing wait times
Not necessarily true, depends on the situation, life threatening or urgent inteverntions will happen as soon as possible and for the others there are usually already quite some waiting times in the US if you aren't well off. Personally I don't have met anyone who had a problem with waiting times here in Europe.
is a "winning" issue?
Seeing even a fox news poll showed 77% of Americans supported a government run healthcare system, yes.
Bernie has now lost BADLY to two moderate Dems- Hillary and Biden.
Bernie lost in the primary because primary democrats tend to go more for the perceived safe moderate candidate, especially now with Trump dem voters didn't want to take any chances and they constantly were told Biden is the safe electable candidate, add to this that Bernie tries to appeal to non-dems, who probably don't vote in the primary and his losses aren't a good measure for an outcome of a general election. Also Bernie tends to be too friendly to his dem opponents, especially Biden. He could have crippled Biden in them months leading up to the election, but instead he sometimes helped him accidently. He wouldn't have been nice to Trump.
AOC is open to a public option now.
AOC always supported a public option, this just isn't an endgoal for her, m4a still is. This is like the best of bad choices decisions. Public option is better than nothing, so ofcourse she supports it. Every m4a candidate will support a public option.
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@independentpolitics3703 Primary is different from the general. Most democrats would support m4a, therefor it is not really an issue in the primary. The primaries honestly are a bit stupid, since almost always the perceived idea of who is most likely to win the general is more important than the actual policies. Especially now with Trump. The problem is that people and media aren't by far always correct as to who is most electable. When the dems do choose a more risky but inspiring/policy driven candidate in the primaries, like with Obama, they win. Even with the republicans this is true, Trump was far from the safe candidate, but he inspired his voters, riled them up.
Not to mention the fact that primaries only really have democrats voting, thus eliminating what a lot of people like independents (who certainly aren't all moderates) think.
It would in the end be better if the primaries where replaced by a ranked choice voting in the general. Or maybe a system with run offs/2 round system.
In any case the primaries are not a good indicator of what would have happened in the general, the type of voters is different and the way voters think is different. Perceived electability is of no concern in the general, while it is often, if not always, the most important metric in the primary.
It would be better if voters that only or primarily vote on electability just stay home in the primaries since they'll vote in the general no matter what, unfortunately they don't.
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@independentpolitics3703 If the democratic party doesn't support a progressive in the general, it would show a split in the party that might end in the dnc's demise, especially since the progressive wing overall always comes together to support the moderate dem candidate in the general.
It would just show how hypocrite the dems are, demanding unity when it suits them and dismissing it when it doesn't. In this dem primary many were favorable to bernie (even moderates), but still voted for Biden for one thing: perceived electability. This is why I think personally why the primaries are a bad system at this moment, or at the very least how they are executed now.
Also independents were much more favorable to Bernie than to any other dem candidate, so this should have played to his advantage in the general, but not the primary.
Anyway, I personally think that if the next dem presidential nominee isn't a progressive, it might lead to a more permanent split in the party. If it wasn't for Trump I could have imagined it would already have happened this years, the dnc in that regard was lucky with Trump as the opponent.
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@neutrino78x
ok fine then we have HSR. We have one in the northeast. Problem solved.
Why have just one in the northeast? You can connect the entire eastern US (Boston, NY, Philadelphia, DC, Richmond, Atlanta, jacksonville, orlando and Miami) with a HSR that is (slightly) smaller than the lines in the EU (3000km). With 1000km extra you can even connect this line to all major cities in Texas. In total you could connect 21 of the US 22 biggest cities in 2 HSR systems (East coast HSR and west coast HSR) for around 7000-8000km (with +-9000km you could connect all these cities in one network, not really usefull though), that sound like a lot, but this is what the EU's long term HSR plans would end up with.
And I am not saying you need to connect everything immediately (or ever), there are plenty of area's where smaller HSR lines can be usefull, like Texas HSR (forth worth-Dallas-Austin-San Antonio-Houston) of 750km, California HSR (SD-LA-SJ-SF-Sacramento) of 850km possibly extended to Phoenix adding around 600km, Northeast HSR (Boston-NY-Philadelphia-Baltimore-DC) of 650km, Florida HSR (Jacksonville-Orlando-Tampa-Miami, though this one might not be usefull) of 650 km and there might be some others. These would come to around 2250km without Florida or phoenix, 2850km with Phoenix and 3500km with Florida. For comparison the EU has now around 3000km of HSR.
The question is why don't we have a nationwide network of it.
No, that is not the question, connecting the east and west coast would not really be that usefull with HSR (if Hyperloop ever works, that will be something different), the question is, why does the US not have any HSR line.
Unlike China we can't just do it against the wishes of the people.
Getting it done is indeed a pain in populated area's, but this is no different in the EU.
If Australia and Canada are not shitty countries in your opinion
I never said anything about Australia and Canada. In Canada they have been working on plans for a HSR and in Australia this has been a topic for the past 20 years, however there are political difficulties.
I guess the main problem is the very cheap flights due to (hidden) subsidies and tax cuts, whereas things like rail actually do get taxed (at least in the EU this is the case).
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@neutrino78x For one, jets are extremely polluting (7-8% of all passenger km traveled, but 12% of transport pollution). Secondly there are many people on those routes that actually use a car rather airplanes. And thirdly for short routes (+-190 miles) the time it takes will be around the same if not better for HSR, due to all the delays and procedures planes need to deal with at takeoff, landing, boarding, ... this is especially the case if more and more people where to start using planes on these routes instead of their cars. Fourth, rail and road transport is 'easily' electrified and even shipping can be made green with not too much difficulty, for planes this will be more difficult and it thus isn't unlikely plane tickets will increase in price in the future.
If we look at the US vs the rest of the world we see a huge difference in passenger km travelled per capita by transport type.
The US has 2800 airplane passenger km's per capita compared to the EU's 860, Japan 580 and the worlds 480. For railway it is the opposite with only 78 for the US, 750 in the EU, 2900 in Japan and 480 in the world. It seems that the US is using a completely different system than the rest of the world, thus it wouldn't be surprising if this is more due to stubborness, wrong idea of HSR or just the idea that planes are just better everytime, then that they are using the correct system. It is not about distance, all the routes I propose are shorter than some routes in Europe (though these routes are broken in several parts for naming/managing, but in terms of infrastructure it is the same route) and together they are around the same as the EU's whole network (half of the expected EU's future network) and would cover the most populated regions of the US. So distance isn't an argument for this. You can have hsr without having to cover the entire country with it, planes can still be used where hsr is not usefull (enough).
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@neutrino78x
we don't really have any major cities in the USA that are only 200 miles apart dude
Except:
Boston-NY
NY-Philadelphia
Philadelphia-Baltimore
Baltimore-DC
NY-DC (and ofcourse the two in between ie. philadephia and baltimore)
Austin-Dallas
Austin-Houston
San Diego-LA
Indianapolis/cincinnati-Chicago
...
I probably can keep going with US cties (less than) 200 miles apart. And it is not uncommon that cities more then 200 miles apart still get connected by HSR, I'd say more than 400 miles is the limit.
That's why the USA, Australia and Canada don't use HSR to any great extent.
Dude, Australia and Canada are planning/working on HSR or really considering it. There is no logical reason for the US not to use HSR except that you don't want it, geography is really not the issue. Yes, the US is big, but most of its major cities are in the coastal area's or close to it, there aren't many large cities far inland. You could connect the 21 largest cities in the US with two HSR networks that would be around the same size as the now planned European HSR network. The main difference might be that in the EU the HSR network is more of a "spider" network (ie connection multiple cities with multiple lines), while in the US it would be more of a linear network (like a subway line). If hyperloop would work, a hyperloop network would probably be better, just because it is even faster and allows for more of a "spider" network approach.
"Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions" Doesn't sound extreme to me. That's pretty low.
This shows me you have no real grasp of the problems, considering you think 2,5% of global emissions for just airtravel is low.
Let me just put it differently. Air travel is around 20 times more polluting than train travel. Airtravel pollutes more than all shipping combined, that is insane.
And it's only going to get lower as aircraft use more Sustainable Aviation Fuel.
That is a possibility, but it won't happen anytime soon and likely will see a rather high cost hike, making it less competitive compared to HSR.
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@adityaajit2120 can't even go 200kmph
Because you need distance to accelerate to topspeed. At a reasonable acceleration you'd need around 15-20km to reach hyperloops expected topspeed, with a test traject of less than 5km, you aren't going to achieve high speeds, unless you focus on high acceleration (which the winners of the boring company's hyperloop competition for student groups do), but this focus on high acceleration is pointless for real hyperloop developers, since they won't use it.
You'd need around 850m to get to 250km/h at 0.28g acceleration, then you need breaking.
Moreover speed isn't the problems, the technology to reach high speeds is already known, it is everything you don't know you need to look at first, like how to best build your tunnel, keep it at the right pressure, how to switch tracks, ... You don't need speed tests to research these first very important steps. Honestly any hyperloop company that now talks about a speed test is just looking for attention, the companies that just work without seeking attention/focusing on initial speedtestst are the ones I'd watch out for.
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@radiantdragon3789 The only thing the hyperloop and boring tunnel car concept have in common is that they are a transportation method using tunnels proposed/popularized by the same person.
Vegas is a test ground essentially. You aren't going to produce a few dedicated pods for a 1,7 mile long first project. Moreover Tesla is still developing their full automatic driving, give it 2-3 more years and you'll probably get selfdriving pods in those tunnels. The goal is to eventually build pods with the Tesla car bases (ie. drive train etc). Speed isn't really an issue, this normally can be scaled up without a problem if the traject is straight enough. The eventual goal is reaching over/around highway speeds, but this isn't really relevant for only a 0,85 mile traject, by the time you are up to speed, you need to brake again.
It is funny how people decide to ridicule a first attempt because it isn't immediately up to full expectations, not realising this happened to many things that are now common and considered excellent.
This is just how Musk works: start working, get experience, find flaws/ways to improve, build the next improved iteration and repeat process untill you have nailed it down. This kind of method is also clearly visible in starship development: build prototype, test untill failure, build new one with the new experience, test against untill destruction, ...
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@NotJustBikes Still not cheap enough by far for me. Everything above €1000 in regards to a bicycle to me is expensive, most e-bikes are still more than €2000.
And please don't say that a car is more expensive (yes I know that it true), but it is also more versatile: longer range, possibility for passengers, more space for things like shopping (I weekly shop for both my household and my grandmother at the same time, several bags of groceries), independent of weather, ...
A bicycle to me will be independent of whether or not I would get a car, either it would be in addition of my car, or I wouldn't get a car anyway, e-bike or not.
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Should rich people pay more in taxes? yes. However it is disingenious to use wealth rather than income.
A lot of the wealth (growth) of these people is in their stocks, bonds, whatever. This is wealth they can't use untill they either get dividends from it or when they sell it. The money they make from doing this would be their income which is to be taxed. A wealth tax like proposed isn't a good idea, if we just tax any real income and close up the loopholes, together with a progressive tax rate, it will be more than fine.
What does it matter that one person has a wealth of 100 billion if 99,9% of this is in stocks, ie useless untill further actions? That is like saying people should pay taxes when one of their vases/furnitures suddenly becomes more worth, or if the worth of their house increases. Because if you start taxing wealth, this is exactly what essentially should be done, the true wealth of ALL citizens should be determined and this year after year after year.
Now, the great problem now is that the current weak taxation system already allowed the inequality to grow a lot, and so maybe you could do a one time redistribution of wealth, for example with a progressive one-off wealth tax. Although this might not really be necessary with a good taxation system, since much of this wealth would dissapear into taxes during a inheritance (since an inheritance would also be seen as income and high inheritances will thus be liable to high tax rates).
Like I said, the better way is to actually properly tax all income, ie. every transaction (trading/giving stocks for example would also be seen as income, since it isn't just an increase in the stocks worth, but an actual transaction). Add all this income together for a company/person, and tax that outcome progressively.
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@tyronesimon3742
I am not a racist (and not even an american), but the reperations bullshit is so stupid. All it will do is provide a short term boost to these poor black families. Sending just one or two children to college will already burn through these reperations.
Bernies policies (m4a, free education, ...) would provide a long term boost for ALL (poor) people be they black, white, hispanic, whatever.
Yes black people have been treated badly, yes they have suffered and are overall more poor because of it. But guess what, this has happened all throughout history. Are you in favor that the industrialised countries just hand out billions upon billions to african nations because of colonial history, slavery and exploitation after decolonisation? Should the US pay billions to the phillipines? Should the US give Japan reparations for having dropped 2 nukes on them? Should the US give half its land back to the native tribes that survive?
No, what should be done is improving everyones lives, so that the descendants of those who suffered will have a better life now and their descendants even better lives. Reperations will not help this, long term plans will.
And we are not there yet for 1000 dollar a month for everyone, we need a lot more robotisation and automatisation before we get there. And especially in a capitalistic society like the US this won't work, since companies will just up their prices to make more profit and it will be a zero sum operation. In order for the UBI to properly work the US needs to move to a socialist system or at least a social democracy (which Sanders stands for).
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@jesushatesyoutoo
And the US shouldn't be in other countries, so shut up.
It's because of US foreign policy that Europa suffered the refugee crisis, so yeah, europeans do have the right to at least take part in discussions about US politics. Or do americans never get involved in the politics of other nations? Of course they do.
And yet your candidates wants to allow rapists, murders, child molesters, domestic terrorists, you know violent criminals to vote.
The US has the most amount of incarcerated per person in the world. Most of them haven't commited a violent crime, but are in prison for minor offenses that should have never made them go to prison in the first place. Prison is meant to be a place for rehabilitation and eventual rejoinging of society, being able to vote is an integral part of that and voting should in my eyes be seen as a right, not a privilege.
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@benigntumor
Starting your comment by saying you're not a racist doesn't bode well for what you're going to say.
It rather shows what kind of surrounding this is. I know that if I don't speak in favor of reparations people will call me racist. But if I am racist, then so is basically almost the entire world. I never judge anyone based on their skin, only their actions. I have family that is black and I would give my life for theirs. I even once punched someone that was being racist to them. I know for certain I am not a racist, however I know the surrounding I speak in and know that people will paint me racist for this opinion.
but to suggest that simply electing him president will be the cure all for poor Black people is asinine.
That I didn't say. I said his policies would be better than reparations in the long run. Reparations are a short term boost, Bernies policies a long term one.
I can't speak to other atrocities in world history,but I do know slavery in th U.S. stole billions of dollars of wealth from Black people while simultaneously boosting the country to become an economic superpower.
Actually the US didn't become an economic superpower due to slavery, sure slavery helped increase the wealth of the south early on, however it was industrialisation that made the US an economic superpower. In fact only decades after the US revolution slavery was already starting to cost more than it was worth and it stopped the south from industrialising. So in fact slavery had the opposite effect to the US economy than what many claim.
It is difficult to say how much wealth the "US" (more like the slave holders) stole from slaves, however even after +-50-60 years of independence and still an incredible amount of natural wealth in african nations, most africans are much worse of than african americans due to internal problems. You have to understand even before slavery and colonisation, most african people led a very harsh life that was far below western standards. Does this excuse slavery? Ofcourse not, slavery is one of the worst things that happened and I am very happy that it ended (although there is modern slavery, in Lybia there are even open slave markets these days). It is just to put things into perspective.
Also, your rising tide lifts all boats strategy has historically left Black people behind (The New Deal & G.i. Bill specifically come to mind).
That was certain to be the case because of segregation and still very wide racism. However if every african american can go to college without enormous student debt, if every african american can go to the doctor or hospital, this will already help a lot. There ofcourse also need to be other programs that help these poor (black) communities, however a one time hand out isn't going to carry them far with cripling healthcare and education costs. They'll literally burn through their reparations in years, at best one generation. And then what? And reforming both the healthcare system, education system and pay reparations, that is too much for just one 4 year presidency.
Unless you understand the legacy of the mental, emotional and economic pain and suffering of both slavery
I might agree if you said the legacy caused by racism that they still suffer now, however no african american alive now has been a slave and even segregation is something that only the elderly will truly remember (at least official segregation). I just don't think the idea of reparations as it is floated now is a solution, it might even raise racism because suddenly african americans get a hand out for something that they never experienced, while others that suffer racism, hatred, etc. are left out. What's next, pay every gay for the harm caused to gays in the past, or maybe the families of all people that were killed/harm due to sexuality, skin, beliefs, .... the payments would never stop. Should south european nations demand reparations from northern africa nations because in the past their ancestors were enslaved by people in northern africa? Should Turkey pay reparations to everyone from the balkans for the people their took from their into slavery? I can literally go on for pages and pages like this.
Everyone has ancestors that were harmed or treated in a very very bad way in the past, but we can't repay everything from the past, we rather need to look to the future.
Jim Crow (not to mention redlining and White Supremacy overall)
You could say the same of islamic terrorism to victims of their terror, should their nations of origin pay reparations for that? We should fight racism, faith and race supremacists everywhere at all times, but this shouldn't be an excuse/reason for reparations.
don't assume to know what is and isn't in the best interests of Black Americans.
And many of them don't know what is in their best interests either (voting Hillary instead of Bernie sure showed that). That is the problem, many people don't objectively know what's in their best interests (black, white, whatever) and at the same time they are saying to people that actually know it (based on data, research, tests, ...) to stay out of their lifes for the same reason you do now, just because "only black people know what is in their best interests".
His people got 89 billion in reparations but for black people he doesn't know what it means?
Jewish reparations were done closely after the outcome of the war (only years after), and they were paid to the people that actually suffered from the autrocities, not the people that never were harmed by them (for example american jews weren't paid reparations). This is in stark difference with the reparations for black people based on the legacy of slavery. I could fully support (if I were american) a reparations to the older african americans that lived during "official" segregation (everyone +- 45-50 years or so) as a reparation for the time they suffered under segregation, but for slavery, no. Your comparison between jewish reparations and slavery reparations is completely wrong.
then he said reparations is divisive
It is divise. It could litterally spark a new wave of racism towards the black community that is worse than anything in the past decades.
Any white man that is against black people being compensated for centuries of oppression is a racist.
People (not just black people) have been oppressed all throughout history, that is nothing new. The demand that people should be payed for oppression they never personally suffered is ridiculous. Payment for oppression they suffered in their own lifetime, fine.
America has money to go to space and go to war but cant compensate black people for robbing us of the American dream.
America has money for a lot of things. However it has been spending a lot more money than it has (as shown by the rising debt). There definitely should be a refocus towards the people. But don't forget, no space race = no satellites = no many things people take for granted now. If the British never colonised the america's, no US (the similarity is that maybe one day mankind can colonise other planets/space). Besides, the space program has received less than a trillion funding over its 60 years of history, not impressive for a US government program.
But ofcourse I understand what you mean, and yes the US should change their financial focus. However there are next to reparations many other things to be funded (failing infrastructure, healthcare, education, ... )
But yes, the US could pay reparations, the question is, are reparations at this time ethical themselves? Should people that are not racist, that do not/which ancestors did not support slavery, that had no US ancestors during slavery, ... pay for the reparations too, because that is in fact what will happen if it is just the US government paying? Shouldn't it just be the descendants of actual slave owners that pay the reparations? Or maybe just the people that had ancestors in the south during slavery, ... Basically who should actually pay them? Who should be "punished" for crimes far in the past long before they even lived?
I am for actual equality and equal opportunity for all and mark my words, within 1-2 generations the split in race would be almost non existant. Unfortunately we are only human and equal opportunity will never really appear, but we should move towards it as best as we can and look at the present and future, not the (far) past.
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I think immediately trying to get rid of the electoral system is a bad policy, why? Because there will be too much political opposition, it will be too much change at once. A better way to go about it is to now push for changing the winner takes all principle into a proportionally distributed electoral system (ie electors within a state are distributed proportionally). This would make every vote count and as such no state will be left out (ofcourse smaller states might be more irrelevant, however many small states would still make a huge difference, like what is the case now.
I created this proportional distribution in excel for the 2016 election and the results were surprising. Neither Hillary or Trump got enough electoral votes with 261 and 260 respectively. Johnson with 15 electoral votes would be the deciding factor, and therefor he would be kingmaker. He could negotiate with either Hillary or Trump to accept some of his policies (or ask for a cabinet position) in return for his electors supporting them. (Stein and Mcmullin both got 1 elector)
This system allows more third party candidates (or independent candidates) to take part in the election without fearing a "split" of the left/right/center vote. It would also force candidates to negotiate with others if they don't get a full majority, which might make their policies a bit more measured across the field. It might also allow parties to select 2 candidates for the general election if both candidates were closely tied in the primary (or if the candidate who lost the primary is believed to have much support among independents for example).
The reason why I think this would be the best step instead of just abolishing the college is that this might get less resistance overall, because the electoral college is still there, but it would be more fair. And it could make the step to actually abolishing it in the future easier.
I would also have the house representatives elected proportionally in each state, because there too votes in certain districts at this moment don't really count.
As for reparations, seriously? Have any of the people alive been slaves? Are you going to pay reparations in some form to every person on the planet whose ancestors were ill-treated in the past? Should north African nations pay reparations to southern european nations, because they raided and abducted europeans in the middle ages? I understand if you want to improve their situation, because they didn't had the same fair start as others, but why should only black people be helped and not for example latino's who live under similar circumstances?
The better option is just to help all poor people and to give everyone the same changes by free/cheap education that is still to the same standards, by creating a single payer healthcare system for all, by supporting the poor with low taxes in low earnings and higher for high earnings (honest taxation system), by properly funding programs that help the poor with food, neighbourhood playgrounds, .... and also ofcourse fighting entrenched racism that still is around. In the long run this will pay off much better than just paying reparations of some sort.
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+E Lee
Syria is a consequence from the arabian spring, which might have been supported by the US, but was a time bomb to happen either way. Dictatorial regimes this close to europe were eventually going to be challenged. Libya is the same thing. The arabian spring started in Tunisia, not even in in Libya or Syria.
EU migrant crisis is a direct consequence from Syria and shouldn't be put seperate from this. No syrian crisis, no eu refugee crisis.
Don't squarly blame this on Obama, the mess in the middle east can still be traced back to many more previous presidents who probably can be blamed more.
Obama used this many drone strikes because he was one of the first presidents to have the capacity for it, and because he inherited several conflicts, which caused other conflicts, etc.
Obama is now criticised for this huge amount of drone strikes, if he didn't, he'd probably be blamed for not being hard enough on terror. There sometimes is nothing you can do right. Does this excuse Obama? No, but let's now look to the new president and what he does with this power, rather than continuously diverting to Obama.
Oh, and this huge arms deal to saudi-arabia, while I do not agree with it, saudi-arabia is the strongest ally the US has in the middle east, it's not surprising they make trade deals with them, again let's look what trump does first. He has knowledge of the past so he can take a different direction if he want to. Let's stop saying 'Obama did this or that, so what I am doing is ok in comparison'.
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+Loaded Complex
the jacking up of premiums is caused by the fact that the health insurance stayed by the insurance companies. Obamacare didn't regulate these insurance companies enough for it not to happen. But more regulating would probably have meant less change of passing the bill.
I don't know if this already is the case or not, but obamacare should have had something like a government health insurance plan with lower premiums (just like an insurance company, but run by some government departement) so that people can choose between the this government plan or a private plan. Obama's plan didn't change the healthcare system enough because it might not have passed otherwise.
Money to isis? Really? please do you have any prove that obama's government supported Isis in any way? Isis was the richest terrorist organisation because of selling oil, art, ..., taxes, ransoms, material support provided by foreign fighters and some donations from non-profit organisations (saudi-arabia, golf states, ...), I highly doubt that they really needed the us funding.
temporary employement isn't necessarly a bad thing, I'd rather be temporarly employed now and have the possibility later on to get a more permanent job, than to be unemployed untill I can get a more permanent job. And from where does this 90% come from? is this just a guess?
He upped the debt by 68%, while bush upped it by 101%, this while Bush didn't had to face an economic crisis, inherited wars or implemented a new health care plan, please. Before bush the debt went down under clinton when compared to gdp. Bush is much more to blame than obama, so point to bush when talking about debt, absolute numbers don't mean anything without the circumstances.
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Suryavajra
True on your first post, but someone needs to be first and while China is becoming the renewables leader, it is in output/installed, not necessary research. Most research in terms of new renewables is mostly done in universities or the private sectors, most governements don't actively fund new renewables, except in terms of subsidies to actually build them at which point it should already have proven succesful in the research. There ofcourse are exceptions like ITER and other large projects, but these projects are more like the ISS, a cooperation of nations. It's not like there is a race to become the first to find/do/build this or that like it was with the space race.
The energy sector is not really where I have fear that to be the first it's going to be much more costly initially, the military is probably the area where this is much relevant (especially depending on what you wish defensive like Russia or more global offensive like the US)
On your second post, ofcourse every renewable need to have something created and this pollutes, but this is with everything. The renewability's no pollution is in terms of production.
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suryavajra
The pollution during the manufacturing and recycling process is taken into account when comparing renewables to other energy sources, and they come out much better. Many people believe that the pollution from manufacturing these renewables is worse than what they'll safe but that's not true by far. The lifetime carbon emissions for solarpanels is about 0.08 to 0.2 pounds of co2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour and for wind turbines this is 0.02 to 0.04
for comparison natural gas has a lifetime emission of about 0.6 to 2 and coals of about 1.4 to 3.6
If you are talking about the use of dangerous chemicals in the solar panel production process, then yes that's true, however that is nothing that can't be handled if following certain regulations.
There is a lot of little things you can do, sure but the energy and heating industry is responsible for 25% of global co2-eq emissions, a reduction of half (which renewables can easily obtain) would already reduce emission by as much as the total co2-eq emissions caused by transportation. Energy and heat production is the largest contributor to carbon emissions. If you look at my earlier numbers, the emission are not just halved, solar panels alone might be able to reduce more emission more then 5 times, which is a reduction on global emissions of 20%. There are not many things people can do that can match up to that, except if they combine stop eating meat, stop using cars, .... Basically people would need to completely change their entire lifestyle to even come close to try and match the possible reduction caused by renewables.
As for the nokia example, markt leaders in any sector keep their position for usually not to long by concentrating on just one product. One new invention they don't take, they're out, one improvent they can't follow, they're out. But this isn't necessarily because they were the first, but because they couldn't handle the change. The smartphone wasn't just an improvement of the cellphone, it was nearly a completely different product which outmatched the cellphone. Even companies that come second or third or fourth could go under if they don't follow the improvement/change. That's why companies are trying to continuously not just improve their product, but if at all possible find something new. If apple just kept concentrating on the iphone, after a few years they would have been history. At this moment however they are not, because they are constantly improving and branching out.
It's definitely not as easy as you portray it. First =/= loser. Losses from initial research can be recovered just by being the first and by the time others catch up you can already be investing all these profits in new research. Research is THE backbone of most large companies, with the goal to be the first.
As you said yourself, samsung already was a big whale, apple was the next coming big whale. But nokia still is a large company with over a hundred thousand employees, so I'd say they didn't do that badly.
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+ChZe Op
To start nearly everyone would like to enlarge their territory, the question is what will it cost. Trying to invade the US would be a near impossibility to either China or Russia, occupying is even more difficult. There is the economical cost, military cost, human cost, long term cost, ... A war between any of the great powers nearly never comes out positive for any of the involved countries as this point in time.
A war with NK could be quickly over (days) and with almost negligible losses to the US. There are four main factors why the US doesn't want to go to war with NK
1) Almost certainly huge civilian casualties for south korea in the first few hours, before the US can silence the artillery aimed at Seoel and other parts of SK.
2) Possible involvement of China, as long as China doesn't completely withdraws it's support for NK and there is the possibilty it would join the war, the US will not attack unless it get's provoked too much (by for example an active attack on them or one of their allies by NK).
3) The international community, among which many of the US allies, want a diplomatic solution.
4) The possibility of a NK nuclear strike against the US (although this is of more limited concern than the other reasons I believe).
The US wouldn't have to strain their resources even one bit and China nor Russia have the capability to invade the US, even together they most likely wouldn't be able to invade. They might probably only win by nuclear, missiles (or maybe bomber) strikes, but an invasion? No way.
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+Def Operator
India is not going to side with China, Turkey is far away and a member of Nato, Pakistan wouldn't interfere because that might draw in India against them and although they might not be too afraid of india on its own, india and the US? That's something different. As for Iran, they don't have the means to really contribute much to a war outside their own country atm, if they join it would not be before victory is already basicly assured. Russia has no reason to back NK as long as the US doesn't try to occupy it or intends to built military bases there.
So at best it would be only China which is one of the reasons an attack on NK hasn't yet happened or isn't really an option, but China also grows tired of NK's actions and their support when NK attacks is lost and if US attacks first their decision whether to back up NK is murky at best, it probably would again depend on how it plays out (how does the US fight, what are their intentions after the war, what's NK really worth to them, ...). Unless China activily states it will (not) side with NK if it gets attacked we can only guess right now.
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@aaronclarke1434
Bosnian genocide: 25-33k killed, +-1,2m displaced (+-3 years)
Rwanda: 500-700k killed, +-2m displaced (3+ months)
Cambodia: 1,5-2m killed, can't immediately find numbers of displacement (+-4 years)
Armenia: 0,8-1,4m killed (+-1-3 years)
Holocaust: +-6m killed, displaced is again more difficult to tell here but I'd guess around 2-3m (3-4years) (this is just for the Jewish holocaust)
Palestinian genocide (so far): 23-33k killed, +-1,8m displaced
As you can see the Palestinian genocide isn't as bad as the worst ones yet, however it already is as bad as the Bosnian genocide in a much shorter time. Moreover aid organisations (among them the UN) warn that more than 500k people could die due to purposefull starvation in the next few months if nothing changes. This would put the Palestinian genocide in the upper regions of genocide. If the blockade of aid remains longer than few more months, we could be seeing even much higher deathtoll due to starvation and diseases.
And this is the important thing. The Palestinian genocide is ongoing. It isn't as bad as the worst genocides yet and we have a chance to stop it from becoming much worse. But if it isn't stopped soon, we might be witnessing a genocide that will be remembered among the worst ones.
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.'
All the mosques in Gaza have been destroyed, 70%+ of the schools, most of the hospitals are damaged, destroyed or ravaged, administration buildings and the University have been blown up, houses are getting demolished not just by bombs but also bulldozers, .... They are destroying buildings and housing blocks using planted bombs, thus after they secured those buildings, with the main goal of making the region unliveable for the surviving population, hoping to displace them elsewhere. Journalists and other intellectuals (doctors, academici, writers, ...) seem to even be especially targeted, which fits perfectly in the idea of genocide.
In fact it is a very often expressed sentiment among all echelons of Israeli society, even their leaders, that the Gazan population should be "voluntary" displaced to other countries or killed and that Gaza afterwards should be settled by Israeli's, just like the illegal settlements in the West Bank. They tried floating the idea to have western countries take them in as refugees, they talked to south american countries and also african countries to accept them.
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@Rifat.Rafael.Birmizrahi
Well if we are talking about deaths, the number of people who will die or spend their lives in misery will be much higher than the few soldiers who died in the past years.
You can say this about so many regions. So the US should just send in their military in all these places? Why should it be their responsibility.
If you want such an actual world police force, strengthen UN peacekeeping forces and expand their mandate and have all countries around the world give 0,0x% of their GDP to fund it.
USA has been optimizing their military for years.
So what? This isn't really that helpfull against insurgencies like in Afghanistan. In fact the US had to completely change their military to fight such an insurgency, they weren't at all prepared for the reality of it.
So yeah there is a cost but still it is not something USA can't handle
Many countries can handle these costs, doesn't mean they should. This is money they can't spend in the US to for example to battle opoid deaths, lower homelessness, invest in declining infrastructure, ... There is plenty of ways the US can spend it at their own country to also save/improve lives.
The long term plan has always been to develop the Afghan government and build their military.
This plan was only made after the invasion, since they were there anyway, could use it for their overall middle east policy (with invasion of Iraq) and to prevent the Taliban from coming to power again. The main plan/reason to go into Afghanistan was to get to Al-qaida which was allowed to hide there by the Taliban, this plan was successfull. The nation building just never stood a chance, not in that area, not in that way. There is a reason great power after great power abandoned military occupations of Afghanistan after a few years in the past centuries, the nation just is too bad geographically and too divided among regional warlords and tribes, there just is no Afghan identity at this time.
Wheter or not Taliban would get more support and be stronger over time was not certain.
It overall was pretty certain, they could leverage the presence of foreign troops and the large forced on changes in society to grow in followers and support from other islamic groups/entities. Only if you'd been able to almost completely root out the taliban would this not have happened (though another group might have emerged). This just wasn't possible in that terrain, not without massive casualties on both sides and even then the taliban could easily retreat in difficult terrain or mix in with populaces who are sympathetic with them.
Now maybe if there actually was an Afghan identity, but that is difficult to create through occupation, especially if tha occupation forces large changes onto a centuries old societal structure. A more devolved state (with the regions holding most power) could have had more chance, but then again it might be easier for the Taliban to grow if they just get the support of some of these regions.
I'd assume that USA would have better endurance than Taliban.
If the US dedicated insane amount of resources and manpower to it, sure, but this can't be supported unless there was a direct threat to the US themselves. Any president that would devote these resources to it without good cause to the US populace, would get voted out of office. You need to understand that the US needs to spend a lot more resources to even be present in the area than the Taliban. We are talking about probably 100 to even several 1000 times the resources. The US now spend around 2 trillion in the Afghan war/occupation, that is almost 10% of their current yearly GDP, that is insane, any other country would have left long ago. If it wasn't for the fact that the US military industrial complex profited immense from it and then payed off politicians, the US would have been out probably a decade ago at least, once they took out Bin Laden.
You shouldn't underestimate the advantage a patient local insurgency has vs foreign occupiers from a far away nation, especially in difficult geography, and it can barely become anymore difficult than Afghanistan.
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The european council is comprised of the elected memberstates leaders and they basically have the last word in everything.
The council of the european union is comprised of the ministers of the memberstates (eg for financial things it's comprised of the finance ministers of each memberstate)
The eu parliament hasn't got as much power as I'd like, but they can block new laws,. They can't propose new ones, for that they need to ask the commision to do this and the commision can't just ignore them, if the commision doesn't propose this new law the parliament wants in time they need to explain why they didn't do this.
The commision is comprised of a person from every memberstate who get tasks delegated to them (kind of like the presidential cabinet in the US), they get submitted by the national governments and have to be approved by the eu parliament who can also remove a commisioner/the commision.
I personally would like to see the eu political system to move more to a 'normal' parliamentary system with international parties (instead of blocks of many smaller parties), where you have the parliament and a sort of senate with clearly defined powers/jurisdictions (like outer border security, immigration, environment, energy, ...) and the commision being replaced by government formed by a coalition of parties that get a majority in the parliament and senate. However as it stands the eu isn't undemocratic, those who claim otherwise often have no real idea about how it really works.
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@TheShadowOfZama
That is just a bollocks comparison. If Limburg performs poorly then it's because it is a Flemish issue.
And if Wallonia performs poorly it is a Belgian issue.
The Flemish government has full control over Limburg (well in regards to the domains that it has control over of course).
That depends entirely government system of this new Flemish state. Who says it wouldn't see a devolution similar to what happened in Belgium?
The Flemish government can give it money, the Flemish government can decide how to use it to assist Limburg, it can even intervene in Limburg directly depending on what Limburg is doing wrong exactly.
And this is exactly what the Belgian government should be able to do in Wallonia.
Wallonian politicians want Flemish money (be it directly or indirectly), but Flanders has no say about how that money is spent and there's no way they will agree to give Flanders such powers over them.
Which is why we should move to a system with more direct federal control over the regions, instead of essentially going for a nuclear option of blowing up the country.
They would prefer independence for sure if the choice was give Flanders veto power over policies in Wallonia or seperating because that would be the end of the PS and Ecolo by default.
By your own logic seperation would also be the end of the PS and ecolo by default because they wouldn't have the funds anymore for their policies.
They would never agree to that.
If they prefer separation over less regional authority, I guess they would give us now other choice. But currently that isn't even a discussing in the "money transfer" critique. There it is always just more autonomy/independence to stop the transfer, instead of trying to fix the issue as to why the transfers are taking place. This kind of mentality would always lead to more and more seperation, not just in Belgium, but also a new independent Flemish state.
Flemish independence for cultural reasons I can understand (though I don't agree with it), Flemish independence for economic reasons makes no sense at all, unless ALL other options are tries first.
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@TheShadowOfZama
because of the traditional parties wanting to cling onto power
Like everywhere?
And the Wallonian parties flat out refusing to work together with the two biggest Flemish parties
N-VA was literally in the federal government for 4 years last decade. And ofcourse they don't want to govern with a party whose main goal is ending the current nation, which they don't want 🙄
with the result being monster coalitions between a whole bunch of parties with as sole unifying factor keeping the Flemish nationalists out of the government.
The problem more was that N-VA couldn't get the other parties to agree with them. The first government negotiations literally happened to form a government with the N-VA, they just couldn't get to an agreement. There actually for a time was a good chance that the N-VA and PS would form a coalition, but other needed parties refused to support this agreement due to the policies not being in line with theirs.
Your unitary state would just be more of the same old that we wanted to get rid off since the 60's.
Completely different situation. In the 60's the problem was Flemish identity having been curtailed by the Belgian government for decades/since the belgian independence. Currently the Flemish identity is well entrenched. In a unitary state you also shouldn't have French and Dutch parties anymore, but just ideological parties, making government coalitions more easy to do. Ofcourse the transition wouldn't be simple, it would take effort and time and most likely replacing the old guard politicians with a new fresh guard.
What makes you think the very thing that failed before will suddenly start working in an era with even more debt?
Because debt wasn't the problem cultural/lingual identity was.
Flanders is doing alright
So who better to then help Wallonia to do the same?
The federal government, the Wallonian government, the government of Brussels are all failling.
The wallonian government is failing because it is allowed to fail.
Brussels never stood a chance on its own, the wealth being generated in it literally moves to Flanders and Walloon Brabant due to people working in Brussels, but paying taxes outside it. It was always stupid making a city its own jurisdiction, this could only work with tax transfers or a different way of taxation.
It isn't easy comparing to the federal government due to the difference in powers and responsabilities. It could very well be that the Flemish government also would struggle similarly if given the same duties with the same budget. Or not, difficult to tell either way.
They are failling because the system enables parties to essentially side line the Flemish majority.
Does it? From 2014 to 2018 the federal government literally saw a larger underrepresentation of the French speaking community compared to the underrepresentation of the Dutch speaking community in the current government. And ofcourse the parliament still is made up of 60% dutch representatives and 40% French speaking representatives. Hardley sidelining the Flemish majority.
But the current system is indeed not logical and cumbersome, which is why I'd advocate for a more unitary system where the difference in language should play less a role than the difference in ideology.
The Flemish Greens, socialists, liberals and Christian democrats are only relevant because the Walloon parties keep them important by refusing to work together with the parties actually popular in Flanders
I disagree with this take. These parties going into the Vivaldi coalition actually sets them back because it makes them less popular and more likely to lose more in the next election. Staying out of it and acting as the opposition would have been better for at least the Greens and CD&V, potentially some other of these flemish parties too.
The walloons also literally are willing to work with N-VA, though the Socialists would prefer not to. And even N-VA didn't really liked to go into a government with VB. VB in general just are not a likely coalition partner for any party.
The socialists in Flanders their best results was like 20% once upon a time and curretly it's like 11% or so. They are never going to vote for a system in which their outsized influence would come to an end.
They literally wouldn't lose that influence though, together with the PS they'd become potentially the 2nd biggest party in Belgium.
Seperation forces the issue in many ways, all the other ideas essentially requires many parties to essentially vote themelves out of power.
And this is where you are wrong, they wouldn't just vote themselves out of power, unless you think VB and N-VA will get a lot of votes from Wallonia. Rather in that new system N-VA and VB would become smaller parties while the socialists, liberals and greens will become the bigger parties (though PTB/PvdA might also have something to say, but they essentially all already acting like a unitary party). Now the Greens, Socialists and liberals aren't even on the same line often, despite sharing the same ideology, and this mostly is because the current system (and pressure from BV/N-VA) promotes this division.
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@kevinmsft I didn't know of these policies of France and probably neither do most people in France, which is why they get away with it. But this is one country and doesn't reflect the stance/opinion of people in Europe. The only reason this isn't a major issue is because it essentially is something that has existed in the background, silently. If any European nation tries to do something like this now from the ground up, their government would fall almost immediately.
The problem with the CFA is that it is also not all doom and gloom. It has major disadvantages for sure, but also a positive side. The difficulty is keeping the positive, while ending the negative. Just letting the CFA go without good preparation could be more catastrophic for everyone involved. A reform of the CFA to put it in the hands of the African nations involved would be best, but this would be difficult. It seems like the CFA is like the US's middle east, presidents essentially try to mostly ignore it because they have enough problems on their plate already at home and elsewhere and because there is no easy solution (yes, pulling the troops out in the middle east seems an easy solution, but if this causes a power vacuum filled by something like ISIS, you aren't better off, similarly a collapse of the benefits of CFA might be just as bad as the current situation, just look like what happened after colonial powers mostly pulled out, instability chaos, corruption, conflict, ...).
In the end I hope Macron or the next president will fix the CFA situation, so that the remnants of colonialism can truly dissapear.
In fact after looking into it more, it seems such reforms are being executed as we speak, for example the countries will no longer have to deposit half of their foreign exchange reserves with the French Treasury. So lets see how far the reforms will eventually go.
And honestly I wouldn't be surprised if China is hoping they can get influence similar to what France has now (in a different way), but they can't just set this up in a couple of years, they might be playing a long game. I do hope I am wrong about that though.
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@kevinmsft China tried to expanding in the past like everyone else, eventually even having tributary states or something similar all the way to India and I think even for a very short time in Africa. However China has always been busy at home: creating a large nation, trying to keep it together, falling apart, repeat. And besides that facing enemies from their northern steppes and internally (rebels). And for some time they were isolationistic, much like Europe/european nations have been too at times. Furthermore European nations started colonising initially to find more trade (get around Ottoman stranglehold of eastern trade)/get an edge on their neighbours, China never really had this impulse, traders always came to them for trade goods, and due to being either a unified state or having just a few states vying for reuniting the kingdom, there was less need for outwards expansion from a rivalry perspective.
European nations were just the latest and most succesfull colonizers/conquerers of the last 400-500 years. And people keep blaming them like they are unique, eventhough most states would try to do/did the same in the past, just on a smaller scale out of a lack of power to do it at the same scale as late Europe.
How many billions of people did British, French, Russian, Spanish empires used to enslave vs. China?
Rather difficult to know. You are refering to only past few centuries, slavery in many different forms have existed for a lot longer. Furthermore it were Africans selling other Africans to Europeans untill European nations started abolishing slavery. Europe was far from the only ones involved in the slave trade. And before that you also had Europeans being bound into slavery by arabs, often being caught during naval raids, ... There most definitely was also slavery in China at some points in time, though the scale etc. is difficulty to assess, they didn't exactly kept largescale records on it.
At this moment it is estimated around 3.8 million people in China are essentially subject to modern slavery.
Oh, and Europe never could even come close to a billion slaves, the total amount of slaves shipped to the America's is estimates at around 12 million. As a comparison, Arab slavery (slave held by Arabs), are estimated to have numbered between 12 and 15 million. Throughout history Chinese nations have also kept milllions upon millions of slaves, this is a certainty.
And just to be clear I am not trying to justify slavery or European actions back then, I just want to point out that Europe wasn't the only ones doing it and people these days are acting like they did.
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@franciscoshi1968 Ofcourse, you can still use it, but it isn't just the shorter range, you are carrying dead weight decreasing the efficiency. At that point it might be more interesting to just call it quits and allow the battery to be used for stationary purposes (ie. sell it). It ofcourse depends. For example if you aren't going to drive long distances in the next few months, you can wait a bit and also the offered sell price will be important. But if you are going to do a long trip in 2-3 months, it might be more interesting to consider it end of EV life.
That is is still quite usable for most tasks with even 50-70km range is fine, but it is not the usual tasks people think off, it is the unusual tasks/times. Even now many people still have this range anxiety with 300-400km range, not because it will not be fine for regular days, but rather for non-regular days (ofcourse this is not really a problem, but the 'fear' still exists).
Anyway, 60-65% is definitely the time most people would start to think about changing it (battery or car), even if it isn't truly necessary, there is also the mental situation (like what if you need to do a long trip unexpectedly). Also the average daily usage in (sub)urban area's is around 30-40km in Europe, but in the US it is something like 60-70km if I remember correctly. And ofcourse the 240km at 60% is the official range, this in turn can also be reduced further by weather, etc. And then there is also the question is this at 100% or 80% charge.
All in all 60-65% is the time people will start to think about something else, if it is just about the battery ofcourse. There will be more than enough demand for these "expended" batteries.
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@infini_ryu9461 That's cute, but the developing world doesn't have the money to throw at solar panels on their rooftops.
And yet solar is used a lot there, why? Because most of the developed world has a lot of solar, there is no need to develop a large expensive grid (for rural communities not close to urban area's) and it is actually easily installed.
energy from home solar panels is twice as expensive than from solar farms
Yes, roof solar panels are more expensive than large solar farms, but that is just due to economics of scale. As for more dangerous or not as efficient, that you'll need to explain that further.
I said mostly a gimmick, because they are.
Really? There are already a lot of people providing their own electricity with a solar-battery combination. Furthermore almost all solar power is generated by solar panels. Currently around 2,7% of worldwide electricity is generated by solar for around a total of 710 TWh in 2019. Still not much though, since Solar only started to climb recently, in 2010 it was only 0,15% of the generated power worldwide, in 2015 it was 1,08%.
but there's plenty of ideas for using solar panels that are utterly ridiculous and usually scams.
Like?
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@franciscoshi1968 Sure, but an I-MiEV has got a small battery to start with, so there isn't much of dead weight. It would be 40-50kg of dead weight at 50% for it, compared to for example a model 3 long range it would come down to around 250kg of dead weight. This is quite a difference.
This does not only lower your range, but also increases your cost due to lower efficiency compared to using a smaller pack. This decrease in inefficiency can be rather high, possibly even high enough to be more costly not to replace the battery with a smaller one.
Moreover people that do the same as you, one car with longer range and one car with short range, might buy an EV with a small range anyway, since it will be cheaper and more efficient, if their battery depreciates to 50% then the range could just drop too low for them. Now it might be different in regards to second hand ev's, but then you are going to have to buy it at a serious discount due to the inefficiency of using an EV with considerable dead weight.
It isn't just the range, it is the bigger picture, yes, you and many people might be able to do this 2 car thing, however this doesn't take away things like efficiency. Moreover if you need a car for only short distances, it might in the future be more interesting to use something like local robotaxis or such and these kind of cars are certainly not going to use their battery past 65% original capacity, they'll waste too much time with charging.
Normally I'd say we'll see, but seeing the current progress, I'd guess that most new EV batteries won't go below 60% before the car itself has deprecated too much. Only with users that drive and fastcharge a lot is it likely that the battery deprecates this much with still a good car, but these people won't be able to just keep driving with it, then the question is will they just sell the car 2nd hand and buy a new one or replace the battery. Considering the lowering costs of batteries, by 2030-35 a battery replacement for even large packs might be as low as $4000-5000, with the old pack being sold for maybe $1500 or so at 60%, this would mean a cost of +-$2500-3500, this isn't really that much considering what people pay for ICE car repairs and maintenance now. So this could go eitherway depending on the situation. And I honestly doubt a 60-65% capacity battery will be taken out of an old deprecated EV to be put into another newer one. But well, maybe we'll see afterall.
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The problem here is that they don't portray the whole truth. New nuclear powerplants cost between 110-180 $/MWh, wind and solar (definitely in California) cost 40-50$/MWh (onshore), 70-80 $/MWh (offshore) and 30-40$/MWh respectively. The main problem is that wind and solar need back ups and/or storage. Back-ups widely used are gas plants, which California already doesn't want to use, though they are for the moment still necessary, we just don't yet have the battery capacity.
However battery costs are decreasing and production is ramping up. That it takes about 1000 years to create the battery capacity to store US 2-day energy needs in the largest factory is just a ridiculously useless fact. For one there isn't just one factory, secondly we don't need to store 2 days worth of total electrcity needs in batteries, you'd use other storage options for this and there would have to be no sun or wind for 2 day in the entire US to need such capacity. That is just a ridiculous notion. And then there is the thing that within a few years (2-4), this largest battery factory will be outdated and many more and way more efficient factories are going to be build, this was a large part of Tesla's battery day anouncement. And ofcourse I don't criticize these people to no know Tesla's anouncements before they were made, you could expect things like this to happen, it might now just be happening faster than maybe expected. And there also is the option to improve mining conditions/impact. Over time you'd get recycling, cheaper than mining. you can develop cleaner and more environmentally mining techniques, ... Convential power generation also has direct and indirect environmental and mining consequences, some more than others ofcourse.
Comparing the price of storing energy in a barrel of oil to a battery is also ridiculous. For one you don't store the energy in this oil barrel, you mined the energy, which is already different. Furthermore oil is barely used for electricity production, gas and coal would be needed for this and if batteries get below 100 $/MWh (which they will, they are now somewhere between 100-200$/MWh), they'll be able to directly compete with gas and coal plants (definitely those meant as back-up plants) and the combination solar/wind+battery would be as expensive as current new nuclear.
The only thing where the oil barrel vs battery makes sense would be cars. But even there the price gap is quickly decreasing and within 5 or so years EV's are likely to become as cheap as ICE cars over their lifetime.
In the end the problems in California aren't due to renewables, but rather poor planning of the switch from convential to renewables. Germany doesn't have these black outs, yet the share of renewables are higher there than in california, and just like California Germany has said goodbye to nuclear. Yes, Germany uses a lot of coal. But if you add gas and coal together California and Germany have both around 37-40% in the electricity mix, Germany just has more coal due to historical reasons (coal availability).
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp
*For example, you talk about America like if EU/NATO members have not lived through prosperity the past 70 years ...
100million died in WW1 .. 150Milllion died in WW2 ...
Compare that to the past 70 years under America domination over EU/NATO... No comparison .....*
And? What point are trying to to make here?
Like I said, most of America want our troops to come home ..
From so far I can tell from here this mostly is about getting out of the middle-east/conflicts, not necessarily pulling troops out of all overseas bases. The US has a large amount of bases all around the world, no president is just going to pull troops out of peacefull/safe area's.
Furthermore, the total amount of US troops in Europe is around 64.000, the troops in Japan number around 55.000 or to put it diffently, Japan: 4,34 troops per 10k citizens and Europe: 1,27 troops per citizen. So clearly the US isn't contributing that many troops to European defence. Furthermore, it is unclear how many of these US personnel is actually in Europe for NATO (and for example "diplomatic" personnel) and how many for non-Nato operations (like in the middle-east and africa). The main presence of the US in Europe is for a long-range missile defence shield, which doesn't just benefit Europe, but also the US.
That better than being bossed around by Merkel for 15 years !!
What?
they will protect all Japansese internets
Internets?
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp
America spends 300billion every year on its Navy ...
Irrelevant. The spending on the navy is so that the US can project power over the entire planet. Regionally Europe can protect itself well enough on the seas. Neither Russia, nor anyone in the mediterranean can really threaten Europe in its regional seas. If the EU is weak somewhere it will be mostly in ground combat due to its fragmentation.
That Navy ensures that tiny countries like in Europe get their merchandise to any corner of the planet ...
So basically it is about protecting global trade which the US is a participant in. So why would the US not protect its own trade routes exactly? Besides, these global trade routes are vital for all large powers, except maybe Russia, but they aren't a really strong naval power (not weak for sure, but they can't project seapower far past their coast lines), so if the US steps back, the major powers will just take care of their own parts of the seas and if there are piracy concerns, a coalition would just be formed against it.
No, it's going to be Americas 12 Super Carriers ...
Carriers aren't what protect trade, they are meant to project hard power over a large area, especially as mobile strikeforces against far away lands. The ships that protect tradelanes are mostly frigates and destroyers. Anyone trying to disrupt trade on the seas will do so either with submarines or small, fast and spread out ships.
Basically carriers are used to support land operations or in large scale sea battles (although I don't know how much use they are in sea combat these days with anti-aircraft missiles, it has been decades since a meaningfull conflict between fleets, so it is difficult to say).
300 billion is nothing to America, but how much is that for Europe?
About the same I guess. The EU GDP (with UK) is around 18,8 trillion dollar, the US GDP is around 20,5 trillion dollar, so it is 1,6% and 1,46% of GDP respectively.
They seem to struggle to pay their agreed 2% annual GDP ...
That depends from nation to nation. Sure some nations might have more problems, but then again, they are trying to decrease their debt, unlike the US, which is ever increasing its debt. It is not that they can't, it is that the 2% was agreed against 2024, so some nations might be using this time to get there in a healthy manner.
This system of protecting Europe no longer serves American interest ...
I don't know, do I think the EU needs american protection? No, announce withdrawal from NATO with a time of around 5-10 years and Europe will be fine. Even without it, it will be fine. As for it not being in American interest, I don't know. Europe is the US oldest ally, its largest trading partner and it is often used as a gateway into Africa and the Middle-East. Strategically supporting the EU is very important. But what do I care. I'd like the EU and US to take a step back and become regular allies.
*We need nothing from Europe..
Everything is luxury goods..*
But the EU is still your largest trading partner. Do you really need it? I don't know, but you wouldn't just want your biggest trading partner to suddenly fall away, it would cause a great economic crisis. Eitherway, I don't see why we are discussing this, it is irrelevant in the military discussion since even if the US withdraws from Europe, it will not change economic relations.
*& btw American want better health care, better transportation, better jobs, better wages ...
These things will force America to stop protecting Europe & instead focus on domestic spending ...*
Yeah, because the 25-30 billion dollar is going to do a lot for that. Hell, even if you pull out of the EU, you will have to house these troops. So this isn't really about European-US military relations, but rather the US military budget at large. Yet, despite there being no real large threat, the US keeps increasing its spending (and that is certainly not to protect Europe).
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp
wow, are you sure about that one? Didn't we just agree that America sells F35 jets?
How exactly is the US spending more by selling equipment to european partners which will effectively reduce the research burden on the US exactly increasing US costs? Are you saying the US wouldn't have developed the f35 without Europe? Or that they give them away at a discount?
What about those Javelin Anti Tank rounds America gave Ukraine ?
I was always talking about the EU, Ukraine is not in the EU. And Ukraine is a special case eitherway being in a open conflict with pro-russian seperatists.
But hey, i guess American technology doesn't help Europe..
How is this relevant? It is not like the US is just handing technology to the EU.
*What on earth are you talking about? Those soldiers will be back on the workforce … Its much easier relocating thousands of soldiers to American soil than sending them across the world, logistically … *
So they'll be fired? Also you do know European nations pay around 1/3 of upkeep costs for these soldiers on European soil, right? People can't even say whether it wouldn't be more expensive to bring them home. I don't think troops stationed in Europe will cost that much more logistically.
... This will create a crisis in EUROPE .. Because you guys will need to start funding a Whole Air Force, Navy & Army ..
The EU spends already 300 billion on the military, more than any nation except the US. I am quite sure that is more than enough for an air force, navy and army. The EU navies put together is at this moment already the second largest in the world, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same for the airforce and army. The greatest problem isn't spending, it is management and fragmentation. The EU could easily become as strong as the US locally. A major part of US military costs is due to it choosing to be a global power, the EU would most likely focus more on regional dominance, like Russia and China do. A lot more can than be achieved with less money.
As for America, do you think we're going into a crisis just because we have shaky relations with Europe?
Shaky relations a crisis? No, but it would harm US international power if it loses the EU as an ally. It would mean the US will get more isolated on the world stage. Seeing the US is already seen by many people around the world as the greatest threat to the world, that is not that positive. Furthermore the US might now be the sole superpower, but that won't remain that way. China, India, ... will also eventually join it. Hell, even the EU might have more possiblity than the US if we look at population numbers and growth potential (eastern europe).
Keep in mind it was America who placed sanctions on EU for giving Airbus subsidies…
And? A trade war would just harm both. But I guess that is the US way of acting, if there is something it doesn't likes, it attacks it, either militarily or economically. How good will the US economy exactly fare if it starts an actual trade war with both the EU and China at the same time, Its two largest trading partners?
Washington is not afraid of a trade war with Europe since you guys have no leverage ..
Right, so I guess the hundreds of billions in trade isn't a leverage. The US is now basically playing a bluff, I would really like to see what happens if the EU retaliates with its own sanctions. If both the EU and China cuts trade with the US, it would hurt them heavily, but it would cripple the US economy, 1/3 of the US trade would be hit. For the EU it would be less than 1/5 of its trade and for China it would be around 1/8. So the US would be really stupid to start a trade war with both the EU and the US. But again we are going off track. Ending the old alliance or just nato wouldn't result in the US and Europe becoming enemies.
Actually, i take that back, it will ready hurt Washington if you partner with China, but does Europe really want to be a puppet of China ?
A puppet? No, but a partner? well, no, not as they are acting now. But if the US pushed them, who knows how the EU might act. Just imagine if Russia somehow becomes democratic in the next 15 or so years and allies with the EU (maybe in the long term even joining? unlikely but you never know). Russia's military strength with the EU's economical strength would be a real threat for US dominance. But again this isn't the EU's goal. I don't even know how we got so off track LMAO.
This was the case before America became the world leader in shale oil & is Now a net exporter of oil
The conflict in the middle east was never about getting the oil for the US, but about controlling it and by doing so controlling prices.
What you dont know is that we also want them back from Europe & Asia
I am sure there are many who want that, but I don't know how many that would actually be (a minority? Plurality? Majority?).
wow, why do you keep using this "2024" excuse ? that deal was struck because Europe realised that they were wrong for taking advantage of America all these years … they agreed on 2% a looooooong time ago, "2024" is for their lack of commitment to their own security
2% was always a goal, not an agreement. EU nations let down military investment after the cold war, because there wasn't a threat left. Even now Russia is just a slowly re-emerging threat. But whatever is the case, the "2024 excuse" is an actual agreement, unlike the directive/advise. Honestly, 2% is fine for me, but some EU nations are just now recovering from the 2008 crisis and it is/was deemed more important to get debt down, so that a possibly new crisis' impact isn't even worse (which would reduce overall spending anyway, 2% or not). Again, while the US might be fine by upping the US debt just like that, this isn't what EU nations do.
These trade routes are most important to TINY countries .. Look at UK, they colonised the entire planet, meanwhile their homeland was the size a tiny Island … how? TRADE ROUTES .. America doesnt NEED To trade ..
LMOA. Sure trade is important for tiny countries, but also for large countries. Why exactly would the US not need international trade, but the EU which is a larger nation in terms of for example population need it? Besides if anyone needs the seas for trade, it is the US. If the seas are unsafe, the EU/China/India can develop and overland trade network, much less efficient, but better than have nothing at all. But basically we are now talking about basically open war. All large nations trade a lot and have a great deal to lose when trade stops/slows down. This goes for China, India, the EU and the US. Neither of these NEED trade, but all off them are well off with it and would like it if trade remains fine.
oil ? We're a net exporter ?
So in other words, you wouldn't be able to export it without trade, roger that.
Food? We have more farm land than any other country on the planet..
And the EU produces all the food it truly needs. The Netherlands a nation smaller than Maine exports equal to a third of US food exportation, and is at the top of food production efficiency. And you do know that the EU has more arable land than the US, right?
we no longer have to protect you from Communism
Yeah, if only there was a current communist threat, are you still living in the cold war?
I don't really know how this has been reduced to a pissing contest, but lets just end with some polling: 43% of Americans are happy with current military spending, and 25% want to see it increased. This shows me that the reason you have such a high military budget has nothing to do with Europe or its protection, but with what US citizens want and the lobbying of the MIC.
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp
1. https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/eu-agricultural-outlook-arable-land-area-continue-its-decline_en
This link shows that the EU has 172 million ha of arable land which equals to 1,72 million km2. Wikipedia shows that the US has 1,65 million km2 of arable land. Now the total land of the US is twice as large as the EU's, but a lot of it is desert, bad climate, etc.
2. Well, no. I am sorry if I confuse you, often I use Europe when talking about the EU. Just know that I am generally talking about the EU unless I specifically state otherwise (like whole of europe, or something similar). So no, Ukrainian arable lands (as well as Russian, Belarussian and other non-EU european lands) are not included. The thing is, Europe is just a fertile place with fairly little bad land and climate.
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@sarahbrown5073
Russia isn't in a "war economy". Their military spending is only 6% of GDP
Officially 30-40% of russian state budget goes to the war, unofficially we know that a lot of the costs of the war are carried by things like forced loans from banks to make the cost of the war look lower than it is and from savings they put aside just for this war.
The Russian bank already said that unemployement is at an all time low and that there is a labour shortage, with only a growing need due to war demands.
A war economy also doesn't just look at % of gdp spend on the military, but how much the military is prioritised in the economy. For example investments and measures/policies in other fields also can be changed in those fields to suite the war economy.
If you don't want to call it a war economy, fine. But it is still leagues away from a regular economy.
5% of GDP is very high (extremely high in peace time) only basically done during war times or an arms race (like in the cold war) and just another stupid demand of Trump.
Russian official spending is more like 7,5% of GDP. And its GDP is also increased by investment in military personnel and material, increasing it artificially higher than it would be without this spending, so 8% would be more logical following official numbers.
The hope is that all of NATO combined might be able to produce half of what Russia is currently producing, by 2027
Russian production for 2025 is expected to be around 3m shells, the EU 2m and the US 0,5m. The US is also targetting 1,2m/year by 2026.
So that would make 3-4million shells/year for NATO vs 3-4million shells for Russia in 2026. Russia is already having problems with employement, while the US and EU doesn't suffer from this problem.
NATO countries didn't ramp up as fast as Russia, but they have a higher ceiling than Russia, which makes perfect sense since they have a population 6,6x that of Russia and a combined economy 24x times bigger than that of Russia. The idea Russia can outproduce NATO on shell production longterm is moronic.
there is only a finite amount of antimony, steel, and guncotton
Turkey is the 3rd biggest antimony producer and Austrialia is a big producer too.
China and Russia don't even have a majority of guncotton production.
And steel, really? NATO countries have more than enough steel to produce the shells.
From all these antimony is the most likely that could cause trouble, but there is no indication it really limits production increases.
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@Leszek.Rzepecki
Well, the Capitol police chiefs and sergeants-at-arms have resigned
Yes, because of what happened, not necessaily because they or their subordinates didn't do the right thing. It is not unusual that after a failure, be it your fault or not, to take responsiblity and resign.
The National Guard of Maryland says it offered twice and was refused, by Capitol police.
And this goes directly against accounts of both the chief of capitol police and several other officials. So there either was miscommunication or someone from the Maryland national guard is lying.
but police having selfies with rioters does raise more than a few questions.
How many of those have you seen? I have only seen a picture of one agent doing that and like I said, there can always be a few bad apples.
t's notable that Capitol security authorities have held no press conferences explaining their decisions and performance
Why would they? They have to explain it to their superiors and investigators, not the public.
And there are reports of rioters showing their police ID before being allowed in. It's probable, if these stories are true, that there were off-duty military and police among the rioters.
This is something completely different, ofcourse there can be cops and military among the protestors. It is not like they are all immune to Trump fanaticism while many other parts of the population aren't. The US has 1,3 million active duty military personnel and around 700k police officers, even if just 0.1% of them are fanatic Trump supporters, it would still mean 2000 of them. Now they should just all be found, fired and charged if necessary.
and the people responsible will have to await a thorough investigation, which won't happen till Trump and his henchmen are cleared out.
I don't think so, the FBI is now apparently already busy arresting people. The president can't stop an investigation into this, just like he couldn't stop the FBI Russia investigation. Maybe the senators and house members implicated might not be targetted now, but that might also be more because their contribution is circumstantial at best legally speaking. Only the house and senate themselves can probably act against them.
It is very notable, though, that the police preparation for the trumpanzees was a fraction of what it would have been - based on response to prior BLM demos - had the anticipated protests been by BLM.
I don't entirely agree with these comparisons people make, obviously it could hold water, but if you want to compare this to BLM, you need to look at the very first days, during these the police in many places didn't respond well either and there was also a lot of chaos and police retreating to wider perimeters. That feels actually quite similar to this, underestimation of the situation, being overwhelmed and pulling back to regroup and get extra support, problem was, capitol police can only fall back in one direction: the capitol. Better comparisons would be to see what happens during future pro Trump protests.
I believe the first largescale BLM protest at the capitol happened days after they started in general, so it was clear that these protests could erupt in violence (due to a few bad actors mostly), so they were better prepared. However there was no example for pro-trump protests in the days before the capitol push (unless I missed them?). And like I said, according to the interview of the capitol police chief (corroborated by other officials) he did actually request more support in the days before and asked the national guard to be on standby, to be ready and again requested support several times on the day in question. He claims calls for national guards were refused at least 6 times.
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@Leszek.Rzepecki
In my experience, officials resign when they have been caught doing something wrong, not just making a simple mistake
It looks like your experience it quite limited then. Obviously it happens more that people resign because they just want to or make a mistake, but at that level, which such a responsability, it is expected you resign if something goes wrong, even if it is not your fault and did what you could.
It looks better if they quit rather than being fired, or jailed.
There is no way they would ever risk facing jail time unless they actively worked to support the riot. And in that case resigning wouldn't do anything. And yes, Pelosi would have demanded his resignation anyway, not necessarily because he personally failed, but because the capitol police failed in securing the capitol, whether they did what they could or not or whether they failed because of their mistakes or not doesn't really matter, something like what happened demands something to happen and usually it is the highest men in charge that become the fall guys.
I think I'd rather trust the national guard
And I rather trust someone whose story is corroberated by several other people from other departments/instances. But like I said, maybe there was just some miscommunication, or maybe the national guard (or people from it) are trying to safe face/shift the blame. They are still human afterall. Why would you trust them more than an experienced and respected person like the capitol police chief. It is not like there couldn't be some dishonest career people there. To be clear this is not an attack on the national guard in general, but even just one (or a few) person(s) there is enough. I don't really see why you would put their word over others just because they are in the national guard. That is similar to expecting the president to do what is right because he is president. Not everyone is as honorfull as his post/rank might make you assume.
Usually, authorities do hold a press conference to explain their behaviour, if only to spin things their way.
You said it right, usually. This isn't a usual circumstance and what would they say? "We were overwhelmed and didn't get the support we asked for, eventhough others say we didn't ask"? It would just turn into a blame game. Everything that had to be said in public was already said or speculated on, it makes much more sense for the capitol police to just stay quiet publically and report to congress and investigators.
Capitol police is not the same as other police departments, their responsability is to congress, normal police departments is (or should be) to the public. Capitol police are more like guards/protection force. You aren't going to see the secret service bring out a press statement if something where to happen close to the president. No, they do their job, keep quiet themselves, have internal inquiries and leave it to the white house to decide what and how it should be made public.
No, the reason they haven't held a press conference and resigned instead was because they know they were culpable.
And this is a major assumption with the only evidence being your own opinion and others speculation. Honestly are you really this naive to think everything has to how you expect it to be/envision it or otherwise something nefarious is going on?
Amazing. It didn't occur to any of these good police to arrest folk as they were expelled from the Capitol.
Why would they? They were overwhelmed, the capitol was already breached. At that point their main goal is to clear out and secure the capitol, not let it become an even bigger 'warzone' where the rioters act like animals in a corner.
More deaths are likely to occur if not that, then defintely more injured.
What happens if rioters that felt cornered started a fire and the capitol went up in flames? yeah sure, there would be a fire surpression system, but what if they disable it somehow, or make the fires too intense?
With the amount of security cams the capitol must have, images/video's from online, police cams, cellphone data, interrogation, ... It will be much more effective to pick them up one by one when they feel safe and are seperated from their 'comrades'.
Clearly you don't know or underestimate what the situation actually was or you don't know how it is best to act in such a situation. De-escalation is paramount tactic, something the US police force is uses not often enough, causing all these tragic deaths/stories to happen due to police actions. In this case they used it right: first de-escalate and secure, investigate and arrest after.
That's an astounding standard of policing you would never, ever, see applied to a BLM protest. roll eyes
Did a BLM protest ever took the capitol or something similar, with the same number difference? Hell, even during BLM protests the main priorities were to disperse crowds, only arrest when possible, when you can do it in a (for them) safely manner. When the crowds can't overrun you. This is what mostly happens in huge crowds that turn violent (not just the US): make them disperse, identify them later, only arrest those you can in a good and safe manner.
I actually did look at an analysis of BLM protests, it said 93% were peaceful, and 7% had violence associated,
Obviously I refer to the violent ones. I thought this was a given no brainer.
Yet here we have a WLMM (White lives matter more) riot where not only was there violence, but police death as well.
And? Like I said, for so far I know this was the first of this kind (at least in the last several months), if I am wrong please show me. We'll see how police prepares and responds if they try something like this again in the future, for example on the 17th (I believe) they again want to do something.
If you could provide references to the Capitol police chief asking for reinforcements
Here you have his interview in full, open it in incognito and select free and you can read it fully
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sund-riot-national-guard/2021/01/10/fc2ce7d4-5384-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html
What I am saying is that Trump or his supporters had corrupted many, including in the leadership. This is a cancer that needs to be extirpated, starting with it's source, Trump.
Don't disagree with you here, but the chief of capitol police is directly underneath congress, not Trump.
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@nevincharles8189 I don't have much time now, but a bit of googling will show you how they can be recycled. Unfortunately I haven't saved everything I read on it in the past, I am frustrated at myself for that, so I would have to start searching again just like you.
Solar panels can for now be recycled up to around 98%, what remains unrecycled is usually glass. Recycling of solar panels is mandatory in the EU. In regions where this is not the case they often are just discarded, this is still a bit cheaper (for example in most of the US this is the case I believe).
As for batteries, they already get recycled for a while and this is again mandatory in the EU. Tesla even has made recycling part of their future bussiness plans, since the materials needed for their batteries would be cheaper from recycling than mining (much higher concentration, less transportation, less of an environmental and thus image impact, ....)
Both solar panel recycling and battery recycling are expected to become high billion dollar industries in a couple of years/decades.
I wouldn't be concerned about solar panels using up acres and acres of land, there are already test projects that show when properly done you can use solar and crops together with only a small reduction in crops (+-15-20%), but still 75-80% solar vs what it would be if you fully replaced the crops with solar (so 60% increase in land "gain"). In some regions (hotter climates with a lot of sun) agrovoltaics actually helped increase crop growth due to more shade, less evaporation, ....
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@hunterpayne6167
Nuclear has a utilization factor of .9 or above meaning on average over a long period of time for every 1 watt of nuclear deployed you get .9 watts delivered. For fossil fuels, that is .6, for renewables it is .1. So that 90GW of nuclear capacity is worth as much as 135 GW of fossil fuels or 810GW of renewables which is China's entire fleet of renewables currently.
This is pretty meaningless if you can't store or use the constantly produced nuclear power at all times. The main reason to have such high capacity is to be able to deal with peaks/variability and maintenance downtime. You can't just lower the needed capacity because nuclear overtime can produce more, this is perfect to get brown outs at some time and overproduction at other. Also your utilization factor for renewables is very low, should be more between .2 and .6 depending on which specific renewable we are talking, some even close to nuclear (hydro).
You are using capacity numbers which are meaningless unless you are the one financing the plant.
The fact you think capacity numbers are meaningless in grid management already says a lot about your knowledge on this topic. Having the right amount of capacity is crucial. Too low and you are going to have black outs/brown outs for certain at times, too high and you are just wasting money.
I am measuring delivered power which is what counts.
This definitely isn't at all what only counts. That is just a part of it.
This is why Germany has 2x as much renewables capacity as peak load
This is more to do with renewables being more variable in output than something like a nuclear, gas, coal, ... powerplants. You install higher capacity to deal with that variability. And sure you could take this into consideration in switching to nuclear, but China only has +-530GW variable renewables installed, meaning you still have 1500GW to account for and at least half of the renewables, so more like 1700GW. You also can't just put in place the bare minimum, you always will need redundancy in the system in case one or several reactors fall out.
but still have to import power from France most of the time.
Germany actually isn't a big electricity importer at all. In 2019 it imported double of France, but in absolute numbers it was low. France imported around 2 TWh (0.5% of demand), Germany 4TWh (1%) and the UK around 20 TWh (7.5%). That Germany is a big electricity importer is more an argument people like to use against renewables. Only 5 other EU countries imported less as % of demand. Overall speaking Germany in 2019 was the 2nd largest net exporter in absolute numbers and 6th in % of demand (France being 5th).
on average, only 20% (that's 200% x .1) of German power comes from renewables
What year did you get those numbers from? On average 40 to 45% of power in Germany is produced by renewables in the past several years, it has been the largest powergeneration source since 2014, more than double the TWh of the second source (lignite) and nearly triple the third (natural gas)
despite the fact that they are more like 70% or 80% of the capacity.
More like 61% actually.
Nobody cares about capacity.
Anyone who doesn't care about capacity shouldn't take part in a discussion on grid management. But fine I looked into it deeper and I found a max demand of around 844GW in june this year. I can't say for sure this was the highest ever, but I'll use this as a benchmark. Considering that you'd rather never have brown-outs or black outs, you better take some reserve and talk about around 1000GW certain capacity availability, this is still +-12-13 years of building nuclear powerplants at the pace you propose, which already was an insane pace considering you'd have to finish the same amount of commercial nuclear powerplants currently already active and this every year! You can be lucky if you even reach 10% of that, nearly a miracle for 20% that amount.
Power delivered to the customer is what counts,
And you can't deliver the power if the capacity it too low to match the demand.
Hope you learned something from this. And next time you try to act like you have the knowledge/understanding the other side doesn't, make sure the other side didn't actually study the topic at university
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@loki2240 The thing is that I have no idea what happened before or how they got into the house. So I don't talk about the entering part. That to me is probably the only thing that really might be wrong in this situation and but we/I don't know about that.
Police officers in the US seem to get trained to be able to immediately react with deadly force if needed. Maybe the high amount of guns are a possible explanation for this? I sure as hell wouldn't go into a situation unarmed when there can be a gun around every corner, especially when investigating a possible crime. In many other countries (like mine) that risk is almost none existent in normal operations, thus police wouldn't immediately point a gun (though they do carry one). The second amendment can be blamed at least partially for cops quickly reacting with pointing their guns.
They handcuffed him as a precaution, to make sure the situation couldn't escalate. They don't know this person, for all they know he's lying, is a burglar and might turn violent when he's found out. In other countries this happens too, to protect the officers and de-escalate a situation. Him being cuffed meant he was definitely not posing any risk anymore and gives the opportunity to put away the guns and just talk in a safe and less tensioned way. The officer even untightened the cuffs when requested. He wouldn't if this wasn't just a precautionary measure. Putting the cufs on isn't an escalation, but a de-escalation, if they used force to do it, that would be a different story.
My brother had a mental breakdown a couple of months ago, we called an ambulance, and they also send some police officers to ensure the safety of the medics. After they arrived we/they were able to calm him down very quickly, but they still handcuffed him for his own and others security. Cuffing is just a great way to diffuse/secure a situation. It doesn't do harm and could prevent a lot of harm in the long run.
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@loki2240 Lets make this short, I just got new information I missed/didn't have before from other people in another comment which made me lean towards it being racism, with only mental problems with the woman being another possibility. That was all I needed more information.
Guns drawn tends to be US officers standard action from what I gather, I don't agree with it, but I am not daily faced with the very likely probability someone opposing me has a gun, better safe than sorry probably is what they are thinking.
I am personally for other things first, like a tazer or batton for more regular "use"/protection (meaning not necessarily in hand, but ready) and guns truly being last resort or outright not used. I just don't see this ever happening in the US as long as the second amendment exists and there are so many guns in the US.
There isn't a violent gunman around every corner in the U.S.
I guess from the point of view of a police officer this doesn't necessarily seems true, though a lot might depend on the area also.
*There was no indication that the young man intended to physically harm the police or anyone else. So, there was no valid basis for using deadly force by pointing guns at him. *
The problem is that the officers can't know that for certain untill they see him and interact with him. It seems one of the cops is pointing the gun a bit more to the side and downwards, ready to aim and fire when necessary, but not directly aiming at him. Though might also be the camera angle, I am not an expert on that. The moment it is clear that he doesn't seem to pose any danger the cops holster their fire arms. If there was even the slightest doubt, I'd expect the second police officer to keep the gun drawn untill his partner has cuffed him. In hindsight ofcourse they might have acted less hostile (not exactly the word I'd want to use, since they seem to remain calm overall, but can't find a better one).
As for the next part of your comment, like I said earlier in this comment, I didn't have all the facts and changed my view on the situation. One of the problems I also had was that the camera seems to cut out between them announcing themselves and entering the house, thus it isn't clear whether he just didn't respond or that they entered the house immediately. I also didn't knew the situation outside the house (still don't fully) or what the officers knew/saw before the clip we see.
Your experience with the cop is what it should be ideally. But then you most likely didn't have a open door with possibly a car or truck in front of the house with stuff in it (since he was unloading, something the officers migth not know yet). Discussing police actions often is very situational, the only thing they should do differently is the guns imo and maybe entering the house but for that the video isn't clear, but again I am not a cop in the US and I don't know the neighbourhoods they patrol in.
The cuffs, sorry but that I will not change my mind on, it helps to de-escalate a situation in the long run and can be done for the safety of all parties involved. At least the way it was done here: not thrown to the ground or pulling the arms on the back violently, but just "gently" putting them on, even making sure they aren't too thight.
This was a lot longer than intended.
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@toemas8
Just read the definition.
*By your definition every prison in America is a concentration camp. *
No, just read the definition.
"especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities"
Although this might also be correct for the US prison system, so lets read further.
"small area with inadequate facilities"
Prisons in the US (and everywhere else) have adequate facilities: beds, toilet, food, toothpaste, .... If they don't, they'd indeed could be called concentration camps, but I think this also against US law in regards to prison, I am not certain though.
These detention camps regularly don't have adequate facilities according to reports, so they do fit the definition.
does being able to walk out of said concentration camp if you don’t claim asylum?
The definition doesn't say anything about being able to walk out, besides by that point the situation changed.
"members of persecuted minorities" in the definition in this case refers to illegal immigrants. The moment they refuse asylum they get deported. So they don't leave costudy untill they are no more a member of the persecuted minority. And I actually don't know when people in these centers actually get a chance to wave their asylum request and what exactly happens after that.
But either way, everyone has the right to ask asylum and while this asylum request is being processed they have rights to adequate facilities, especially if they are being detained.
Every example of concentration camps involves local populations being interned... the Jews, the Japanese In America and the Boers. Some Jews were sent to Poland but Poland was part of Nazi Germany. By your definition every prison in America is a concentration camp.
And again the definition doesn't require it be local population and to say that Poland is local to western europeans just because it was taken over by the Nazi's is bullshit. Polish camps were not local for western europeans. Don't misconstrue distance and locality.
These camps are concentration camps pure and simple, just because it isn't exactly the same as the camps in the past, doesn't suddenly make it something els. If it fits the definition, it is like that.
American POW soldiers were treated harsher and yet they weren’t kept in concentration camps.
And? They were prisoners of war, they were in camps for prisoners of war. And normally if the geneva convention was applied, their situation would actually have been better.
This doesn't change the definition of concentration camps.
People detained at the border are detained because they have broken the law
Then put them into an actual lawfull prison, there situation would improve.
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@ralphraffles1394 And it had to face bombardments, sabotage, partisans, two front war, ...
The germans might have had control of a lot of Europe, but besides a small amount of volunteers troops, most troops fighting in Europe were from Italy or Germany. No large contingents of French, Belgian, Dutch, Polish, ... fought for the Germans. The Germans were woefully outnumbered in fighting manpower and had to even dedicate troops to force these large amounts of workers in conquered regions to work for them and to not rebel. Honestly if you think Germany had almost all of Europe on its side just because they conquered these large regions, you are completely ignorant on the situation in Europe during WW2 (or about the situation in recently conquered regions period).
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@rvanzo925
The US has never in its history faced an enemy the size or strength of a united EU. Not even the axis in WW2 were so strong. And during WW2 the eastfront is where the axis truly lost the war, without the eastern front, there never would have been a succesfull amphibious landing, because Germany would have 10 times the amount of troops guarding the coast regions.
The US has recently fought mostly guerrila/terrorist forces or vastly weaker countries. It hasn't fought any significant war recently (and even then they struggled). The US sure is stronger than the EU, I have no doubt about that. But the EU wouldn't invade the US, they'd just try to take the UK and wait out untill the US agrees to sign peace, they don't need to project their power across the Atlantic into the US. The US on the other hand would have to project its power across the atlantic, which would vastly diminish their strength factor vs the EU.
The US has more warships, yes. But it will need to have them operate across the atlantic and if they invest all their warships in the Atlantic, they'd lose control in other area's, like the south china sea, allowing China to grow in power.
You shouldn't underestimate the difficulty of fighting a war across an ocean. The UK tried that and failed during the war of independence. Also, Germany had nearly no army before 1933, seven years later they probably have (one of) the strongest army in the world.
An advantage the EU also has, it is connected to both Africa and Asia by land and thus a blockade would most likely fail.
As for Russia joining, why in gods name would they accept this proposal of the US? This didn't work out well for them the previous time in the long run, why would this time be different (and last time Russia and the US weren't old rivals before the war). It's more likely that Russia would support the EU against their long time rival, the US.
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@arnekristian5704
Im not aware of any proposed solutions that are anywhere close to being able to supply enough power to actually realistically do this.
There are a lot of promising and very realistic solution already, from purely mechanical/physical storage systems (like LAES, CAES, ...) to chemical ones in many forms.
Too many to really start a discussion about really and honestly, it has been a while since I looked into it. but plenty used existing materials and processes and showed great promise, more than SMR's at least imo. Several of these promising ones had large scale first prototypes in the pipeline around this time. All of these are specifically being developed/deployed with gridscale storage in mind, so no need to think to much of power to weight or power to volume as with many current popular energy storage devices (current batteries like Li-ion etc essentially).
The main thing here is that most of those are still in their infancy and need to grow/really proof themselves in the coming years. Next to that even the "convential" batteries like lithium-ion etc could do it to some extent by then cost-wise and at pretty large scale, but not at worldwide scale.
The points you mentioned also are an option and should be used to really to get an efficient and reliable grid imo.
First of all we would need a lot more EVs
EV's will be pretty much standard by 2035, you'll be hard pressed to buy gas cars anywhere in the western world, and likely even in countries like China.
a change in mentality around we use the cars
True, but that can happen, especially if there is a financial incentive (be it the option to save cost by charging at low cost times and discharging into you house at high cost times, or just the provider giving a fee/buying back the electricity at an extra cost, ...).
very low efficiency solution
What de you specifically call a low efficiency solution? It still has an overall efficiency of around 75-80%, which is pretty good. Also considering how cheap renewables are, you could double its production and still have a significant lower cost than nuclear, especially since renewable is still expected to decrease in price while nuclear is expected to even increase or at best plateau.
Ive also read something about salt-based batteries where we store heat in melted salts, but still not that efficient and scaleable?
That is an option, but not really looked into as a stand-alone one I think, there are much better options being developed/deployed currently for this. What molten salt storage is usually used at is in combination with concentrated solar power (CSP), where you heat it up using solar energy being highly concentrated in a single point, which can reach high temperatures at that spot. It is pretty effective, but only usefull in hotter/arid regions like southern Europe etc. it also is still pretty costly (similar to nuclear) and consequently not really used compared to the cheaper and easier installed and maintained PV panels (eventhough these don't have storage built in). It has the ability to essentially provide power consistently (also during the night).
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@brandonwright1791
Even the most ardent europhile must agree that the eu cannot make a rapid decision on anything at all
Which is why I am also in favor of political reforms within the EU. Obviously an EU army wouldn't just be created seperately from other reforms. At the least, there would be a comprehensive system that allows for quick decision, at best the EU would reform to have something like a federal government.
I'm afraid I just cannot trust any political machine which is not fully accountable after the fact.
The EU is just as accountable. The council is made up of national leaders or national ministers who can be kept accountable during their national elections. The EU parliament is directly elected in European elections, thus accountable. The EU commission functions more or less like an EU government, just with the council acting like its head of state/president, it is accountable to both the EU parliament and the council. How is for example the US government more accountable?
AFAIK member states have already undertaken to source kit from European countries
Partially yes, however many EU states still buy military equipment from the US.
that's why we had to adopt the A400M as opposed to the older but equally effective and far cheaper C130.
The C130 was introduced 64 years ago, the A400M 7 years ago, I am certain this has a lot to do with it too. The A400M is meant as the replacement for the C130. It was most definitely meant as an improvement (though a more expensive one), ofcourse focusing on EU produced equipment will certainly also have played a part.
25 years from idea to service
Isn't this similarly in time to F35 development?
There's nothing wrong with buying the best kit available for your blokes.
Not if it comes at the cost of reliance on a foreign entity, even if this is an ally currently. This could eventually in the longterm be a problem. Also while EU produced equipment might be more expensive, the payment ends up in your own economy, so part of those costs could be indirectly recuperated, if you buy from foreign companies, that money is all gone. And it isn't just sale price costs, but also costs for part replacements, upgrades, etc that would flow to outside the country for decades.
It's all well and good trying to support your own arms industry but when their product is either less effective or far more expensive or both than foreign kit then your soldiers will end up paying the hidden cost.
I think the main problem might just be that EU developed equipment has a problem with the divided nature, with several countries having to cooperate, compared to the US who doesn't need to care about that. Also for example the C130 can be cheap because 1. It is older and 2. it is widely used worldwide, not just by one or a few nations. The A400M for example doesn't have this (yet).
Eurofighter Typhoon?
This went into operation +-25 years ago as a 4.5 gen fighter, well before a fifth gen fighter was ready. At this moment only the F35 is a 'widely' deployed 5th gen fighters, of all other 5th gen fighters only a few dozen combined have been made.
I feel like when you compare EU productions with US ones, usually there is a stark difference in number of produced items. Possibly because in the EU only a few countries worked together and it are only those who mostly buy it, this is likely to be at least partially a reason for why it usually is a bit more expensive, lowe scale. In the US you already usually have a large buyer with just the US military, let alone the many allies that also buy it.
I think the Yanks would like to see the back of NATO
I think this is a general feeling with people across multiple countries, though maybe not the end of NATO, but a pull back of US troops for example? Yes. However NATO is politically still very important, both for the US and other members.
in fact Germany would suffer economically if every high spending US troop departed.
I highly doubt that. There are around 35k US troops stationed in the US, their total yearly salary will be somewhere between 1,5 and 2 billion euro, they won't be spending all that and I believe Germany also pays something like 1 billion or so (I forgot the exact amount) for the stationed troops every year and thus net financial benefit won't be that high. And not all these troops are stationed in Germany for NATO, there are also troops stationed in Germany as operators for different theaters, like Northern Africa and the Middle East. So even if all NATO forces are pulled out of Germany, it won't have a huge financial impact, maybe a loss sure, but not one that will be really noticable.
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@brandonwright1791
But the eu is wholly and demonstrably incapable of any reforms which result in decentralisation of powers,
Why would the EU want reforms to increase decentralisation? That doesn't make any sense, that is the exact opposite of its goal.
And the EU has gone through several major reforms in the past few decades, I doubt you can point to many countries that can say the same.
The council discuss stuff behind locked doors, they trade off against each other and eventually after much horse trading and many months come to some sort of compromise, their electorate in their home countries rarely get to learn what was discussed, for example I do not believe German voters wait with baited breath for the return of Merkel from an eu summit and keep or discard her based on what she tells them happened.
Is this not similar to what a governments cabinet meeting is? Are these not behind locked doors and do many people wait with batied breath for what is discussed there?
The eu 'parliament' is irrelevant in the extreme and not worth discussing.
Clearly you have no idea about the actual power the eu parliament has. It is true it was quite powerless a decade or so ago, but no it is not anymore. It can fire the commission if it wants, it needs to verify commission members, needs to ratify the EU budget, EU laws, regulations, trade deals, ...
The commission is completely unelected and unaccountable to anybody.
The commisionmembers are put forwards by the elected national governments, they need to be accepted by the directly voted for EU parliament and they can by fired by said parliament. How many countries directly elect their ministers?
As long as US kit is the best available Europe SHOULD buy from them.
Which is why the EU need to produce better kits, which would be better done by a unified EU organisation, instead of just 3 or so countries. It also depends on how large the difference is between US and EU produced kits, within an acceptable margin the EU should always prefer to buy European, not American.
A new C130 is not 64 years old
Dit I say that? Obviously I know a plane is not 64 years old, the main design however is. Therefor costs can already have gone down.
is at least as good as a new A400M but well proven and considerably cheaper.
I can't speak about this, since I neither know the known specs of them, nor am I closely involved with them, are you?
Yes but at the end of that 25 years the USA had an aircraft at the bleeding edge of aerospace technology while we had a very good 25 year old 80's era fighter.
There is only one newer/better model in mass production currently, the F35. At this moment there is a European cooperation project between Germany, France, Spain and maybe by now some others (though I don't know) to create a European 6th gen fighter, first flight expected around 2026 and in mass production by 2035-2040, meant to be more capable than the F35. Untill then the typhoon will be more than capable for the possible enemies we'll face. There are several reasons imo why the typhoon had delayed development, France stepping out of the project will have had a rather large impact, considering their experience with fighter planes development and the lost investment from France. Secondly the end of the cold war made several participants question whether they'd continue with the development.
This is why I am in favor of a more united EU military and military research and development system. Pooling resources and knowledge can greatly improve development time and capabilities, while possibly keeping costs lower due to a larger certain demand. This is the advantage that the US has: resources, pooled experience and certainty of scale.
No, buying European means the money ends up in the German/French/Italian economy.
Which is better than in the US, seeing that Germany, France and Italy also pay into the EU budget, the US doesn't. And stronger economies of EU memberstates also mean a stronger economy of the EU as a whole.
The first Typhoons entered squadron service in 2008/9
More like 2006-2007
It was designed to counter MIG 29's and SU 27's which were already overmatched by US F15's.
And the F15 is considered overmatched by the typhoon. Overcourse it is unfortunate that the typhoon suffered delays in development, but so did the F35.
By the time Typhoon became mainstream it was already obsolescent.
It is still not obsolescent, when facing off vs F35's? Sure, but not compared to other planes that are currently used in large numbers. Besides, the F35 too can become obsolescent rather quickly, even within 10 years, 15 years after it really got deployed and many F35 buyers don't even have theirs yet. This doesn't sound to different from the typhoon, which got "obsolescent" as you put it essentiall when the F35 came around, more or less 10 years after.
Eu defence procurement is politically driven
So is the US', Russia's and China's, they just have the advantage that they are one single large nation and don't need to worry about international cooperation in development etc. You think Any of these nations would ever buy an aircraft or equipment not produced by them, even if it were better (I am not talking about small parts like electronics FYI)? Ofcourse not. Being reliant on other countries for military equipment will always be seen as a potential threat by larger countries/blocs. It is different if you are a small/medium sized country on your own, especially if you have an alliance with for example the US/China/Russia. The EU however is not a small entity, it just has for now never played out its size in military matters, especially not military development for example.
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@brandonwright1791 The eu has most definitely not gone through any reforms these past decades.
If you really mean this I see no point in talking about the EU further with you, because this statement is ridiculous.
it has done nothing to improve its accountability
it has done nothing to improve its accountability, it has done nothing to make it more answerable to the European citizen.
The parliaments powers have been enlarged in the two past decades and these have actually been used. Since the parliament is directly elected, this is the easiest example of the improvment of accountability.
No, a cabinet meeting takes minutes that become accessible to all
And ofcourse everything is taken up in the minutes, right? Please, don't tell me you're this naive. And it definitely not common practice to make public everything said in a cabinet meeting.
all while the eu go to great lengths to pat people down at the doors for recording devices
This is absolutely done in other private cabinet meetings too, this is to ensure security, for example when discuss something relevant to national security etc.
The whole thing reeks of politburo and you know it.
Apparently not. This is how it happens in most countries.
Give me an example of the eu 'parliament' putting this fabled power to good use.
I am not going to give an entire list of things they've done, that would be too long and I won't waste my time searching for all that. Just look into it here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/elections-press-kit/2/achievements-2014-2018 and yes, I know it is a site of the EU, but that doesn't take away what you can find there.
The completely pointless bums on seats elected Ursula Wonder Liar despite her being the only name on the ballot paper without even blinking,
And? How do you think a prime minister appointment goes? Do you think MEP just get to vote for several people? No, they vote whether to support the proposed PM/government or not. I don't particularly like her and personally I'd like to see the system of the commission change completely, since now it is about a compromise between what the council wants and the parliament. They raised no protests, because this already was discussed up front to make sure she'd get the necessary support, as is often done in coalition forming.
Does it not occur to you that they will accept only fervent europhiles and reject any who might have shown hostility to the eu project in the past?
They can't just refuse people like that. They need to give a good reason why they refuse someone, Mainly not having the required skillset or values for the proposed post (for example the first rejection ever was in 2004 of a homophobic nominee with outdated ideas of women's role meant to take among other civil rights). It is more easier in the US to block cabinet appointees if the majority in the senate is hostile to the president.
No, I'm neither an A400M nor a C130 pilot but I am quite capable of looking up their capabilities as are you.
And ofcourse al capabilities are known as well as flying experiences etc.
But ok, lets look at the capabilities:
Speed: 325 knots (C130) vs 421 knots (A400M)
Range: 2047 nautical miles (C130) vs 4698 nautical miles (A400M)
The A400M also has a larger carrying capacity: 37 tonnes vs 19.
The A400M also needs a smaller minimum crew: 3 vs 5.
The A400M also can take off from a slightly smaller airstrip
Now as for price, yes the A400M is more expensive, yes. However it is also has a better fuel economy, around 40% better, so costs can be saved here in the long run. If the plane flies around 10% of a year (+-780 hours) it would after 30 years be as cost effective (initial price + fuel) as a c130. Now obviously this isn't necessarily the goal. Also taking into account the other advantages where the A400M is clearly the better (sometimes by a lot), I'd say based on specifications you can't just dismiss the A400M as worse than the C130.
There is only one reason for the incredible delays in the Typhoon entering service.............Europe and its comical squabblings.
Yes and no, the typhoon indeed had a terrible development, I admit that. It initially being meant as an interceptor/close fighter and after the fall of the USSR being changed to a more multi-role plane definitely didn't help. Furthermore France stepping out is a huge blow to the development too. But the bad development of the typhoon doesn't invalidate EU cooperation in military research and development. The US too has had it fair shares of bad and costly developments in military hardware. And in the end the typhoon isn't a bad plane, it still tops of most lists right after the F35 and maybe F22 if you don't consider the gen 5's from China and Russia that don't exist in numbers yet, just a more expensive one, which also could have been lowered if it had more certain sales, like any US developed plane will have (and a european developed plance could have with a larger cooperation).
but the Russians will kill it at their leisure as will the Chinese.
Well, we'll never know, will we? A fight between Europe and China is highly unlikely to nearly impossible. A war between Russia and the EU (in the next 2 decades) is also unlikely, despite the tensions.
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@lamebubblesflysohigh
Yes, but there are also 5 representatives. You could also do district of 2 million and one representative, but then you get FPTP which is terrible. Or you could increase the number of representatives and do 5 per 5 million people districts. But then you get a senate of 445 people. You can't go much higher than that. Honestly the current parliament is already too large. 500 representatives to me should be the maximum in any parliament/senate.
And the goal is to give everyone a voice. in the end they will get as much a voice in a 1 000 000 people district and a 10 000 000 district, since it would scale similarly in the number of representatives. The main goal must be to group regions with similarities in districts.
For example Malta would be in a district with Sicily, calabria, Basilicata and half of Apulia. These regions are quite close to eachother, thus will have similar geographic concerns. With a 5 million district, it would just be Sicily and Malta, which could be fine too.
In the end Malta in a fair system would never have much power on a federal EU government. Their vote will be dilluted in the district or in the senate. If a nation doesn't want this, they don't belong in the EU imo. Now these districts would only matter for the EU senate, for regional (national) powers they would still control themselves.
In the end there will be powers given to the EU and all other powers remain with the nations, they do with it what they want (for example Germany might decide to give most power to their states, since most national powers went to the EU and thus the federal german government would become more symbolic, but the Maltese government would very much remain relevant seeing its size).
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@helpinghand9127 Nothing to do with naivity. I am well aware a large nation can use its soft power to get votes from smaller nations. But that will always be the case unless we move to a system where all "districts" are of around equal strength.
In my opinion the power to be able to stop something on your own (veto) is much more dangerous and an abuse of power than the larger countries would ever be able to do in a 2/3rd vote.
the reason the vetos are there are so that hte large countires with vested intrets cant bully others into things that would harm them.
And? With a 2/3rd vote 1/3+ just have to not let them be bullied. If large nations are able to bully enough smaller nations into voting their way to reach 2/3rd, then either the vote isn't so bad for (most of) the smaller nations, or the larger nations are willing to go so far that no small nation would dare to use their veto.
If large nations can bully other nations so easily, the EU would already be as good as over. The ability to veto decisions by one nation is an existential danger to the EU in the long run. Just look at Poland an Hungary who can just ignore EU rules because they know the other one will veto any sanctions against them.
Even without the EU (and thus a veto) larger nations would be able to bully smaller nations into doing what they want. They don't (or at least not to the extend to really worry about it), why? Simply because this would show all other nations that these larger nations can't be trusted and the smaller nations would bind together. An ofcourse it is not like the larger nations always are on the same side.
In theory larger nations can bully smaller nations into doing anything. In practice however the potential loss of soft power these large nations would suffer would impact them too negatively in the long run.
As for your example about the UK, what if France and the UK worked together to bully other smaller nations into only allowing UK and French fishers in the nordsea and the other large nations wouldn't care? The veto power would be worthless, afterall who would (dare to) use it? To stop a 2/3rd majority you would always have multiple people opposing the others, which would make it easier for smaller nations to band together as a stronger unified force. With a veto, the one using the veto would be targetted.
And well, what stops the smaller nations from exactly doing what you expect a large nation to do and bully the larger nations into giving large concessions in exchange for not vetoing something? A veto essentially could just turn the tables around, a 2/3rd majority is much better, safer and more democratic.
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@maxkick7656 I think you misunderstood the spitzenkandidaten system. The idea was that every group put a frontrunner (spitzenkandidat) forward. Then the council would nominate one off them based on their own dealings (who would be assigned for what post). Now they had to balance I believe three groups that were necessary for a majority in the parliament and each of this group had to be given something. The problem was that certain spitzenkandidaten were just not a possiblity, for example the candidate for the left group was unacceptable for certain countries due to past "problems" (punishing them for going against EU rules). But at the same time other candidates weren't possible due to nationality, group => other positions. As such the spitzenkandidaten system was shown to be ineffective due to the political reality of how the EU functions at this moment. They should have upfront insured that all the candidates were possible to be nominated by the council (which in Timmermans case was never going to happen) at the very least. But even then it could have been the candidate from the second or third largest group that would have been nominated. Never have I read that the goal was to have the largest group candidate to be "automatically" be nominated.
But honestly, who cares? I doubt more than a few voters actually knew who the spitzenkandidaten were.
actually because of Macron not liking any candidates
Incorrect, Timmermans was not possible due to eastern nations and EPP opposition, Vestager due to Charles Michel (right liberal) being put in as president of the council and Manfred weber due to again eastern nations (although Macron might not have like him). The other candidates were just from "irrelevant" groups.
In the end, the system was just a non-binding tool to make it seem that the voters had a more direct control over the next candidate. In reality, it never truly mattered, I doubt voters voted for any of the spitzenkandidaten.
In my eyes the entire political system of the EU needs to be reformed.
My vision would be:
- EU parliament reduced to 300-400 MEPs, but chosen in (at most) 4-5 EU districts (for example: south-east/south-west/north-east/north-west), so they represent the entire EU and not have to split loyalty between both home nation and party/ideology. (Seated in Brussels)
- EU senate consisting of around 200-250 senators who are elected in regions of around equal size (9-11 million people), 5 representatives per region. Their job is to represent the regions of the EU when creating legislation and other things. In essence they'd take over the "daily" job of the council. (Seated in Straatsburg)
- The EU council would be reduced to a "constitutional" organ in that they decide (together with the other bodies) far reaching decisions and reforms to the EU itself (like which powers does the EU have, the structure, funding, ...).
- EU government replacing the commission created by the parliament.
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@MrAapasuo and nations would feel left out as smallest nations get pushed to blocks with multiple other nations or next to a much bigger populations that drowns them entirely.
That's effectively what happens with small towns vs cities which are in the same district. By that argument nations should split up their nation even more (politically) than it usually already is. The idea is that in this nationality doesn't matter, because the people who get grouped together will generally have the same regionally concerns.
The EU's progress and reforms have ultimately always been about taken some powers from the nations and bringing it to the EU level. If the EU remains a union of nations instead of federalising, it will become stagnant and eventually this will cause so much problems that it might even lead to the fall of the EU within 2-3 decades. It can't remain that 11% of the population can in fact stop practically everything.
And the entire point of how the senate would operate is that most concerns will be regionally and thus there should be no "drowning out". Also that large nations would have more districts shouldn't matter. The entire goal is not to think anymore in terms of this or that nation when it comes for EU powers/level, but this or that region/district. This might initially feel weird to some, but after a while, people wouldn't really care and get used to this.
But this is also the reason why I wouldn't just abolish the council, only limit their regular work/power. If necessary something could be included like that the council can stop any decision of the senate (and thus EU level) with a majority if there was less than a 2/3rd majority in the senate.
Now I understand your argument, but we just shouldn't think about that, but rather how we proceed into the future, and if the small countries aren't happy with it, I'd say that the other nations should just tell them they are free to leave. Nations like Malta and Cyprus don't really offer a benefit to the EU anyway, it only offers them major benefits. And most other small nations wouldn't probably mind being in larger districts.
And in the end most nations aren't politically homogenous, now in the council it would seems like they are, but in reality even a government with bareky a majority would represent their view as that off their entire country, which also is again a great democratic deficit that can't really remain on the EU level.
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Janet Baker They asked if it was his house, it wasn't, he was just allowed to stay there from the owner. Moreover he wasn't arrested but detained temporarily so the cops could verify everything was in order, without the risk of it escalating (like he getting shot, or they getting attacked if he was lying).
And if the woman truly believed the house was broken into, she didn't file a fake call, just didn't know the situation, which can always happen. It is better that people call the cops if they think a crime is occuring and them being wrong, then the opposite, where no one calls the cops, even when needed.
If she knew that he wasn't breaking in and still called the cops, that would be a different matter ofcourse.
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@peanutawesome1 if you call the police on a black man assuming he is doing criminal activities, that has everything to do with race.
What the hell? And if you call them an a white person assuming they are doing a criminal activity, it has nothing to do with race right? What a double standard. Now if someone calls the police only because the person is black, it has to do with race. If there are also otherpossible reasons, like I don't know a strange man being in a recently deceased neighbours house, this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with race, it could, but it isn't certain. The cops could just as well have been called on a white person in similar circumstance.
That racist that you are defending didn’t have any proof of any crime but saw a black man and called the police.
Or she just called the police to tell a unknown person is in a recently deceased neighbours house. Do you have the transcription of the call? I don't know if she's a racist, I don't know anything about her and I don't know anything about what she told the cops, I expect you do, since you immediately call her a racist.
Don't you see how ridiculous you are acting now? You are assuming she is a racist based on nothing, just like racists assume black people are criminals based on nothing. You might not be a racist, but you definitely are differentiating based on race alone, which at least brings you closer to racists than people who just want to now the truth by looking at the facts, not caring about race as just another possible factor.
I don't need to do any gymnastics, people that automatically make everything about race, without any proof other than it involves a person of color have done the gymnastics for me already. On the other hand, I use the data and evidence available. If you can convince me she called the cops on him because he is black (for example with the transcript of the phone call, or her testimony or anything else), I will accept that and agree this was a racist act, but if there is nothing but your opinion and the suspect being black, you have nothing but an assumption, no better than the woman who called and possibly even worse.
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@peanutawesome1
It’s not a double standard since it doesn’t fucking happen.
Ofcourse it is a double standard and ofcourse it happens, or do you now say whit people don't commit crimes and are called on it? I bet you there are daily just as many wrong calls to the police involving a white suspect as black suspects if not more. But this obviously don't make the news or whatever because they aren't worth it, they are not sensational enough.
There was no other reason that racist called police because a black man was walking around a house he lived in.
If you see a stranger in the house of a recently deceased neighbour and you are a more or less paranoid person regarding crime (like my grandparents) they sure as hell might call the police, whatever the skincolor. breaking and entering into an "empty" house happens more than you think. Ofcourse the better thing to do is to call the owner, but it is likely the woman didn't have the phone number of the son/owner and thus called the cops to be sure.
Can there be racist motive? Ofcourse there can, but I don't have seen or heard any proof of this other than that the "suspect" is black. Guess what, many white suspects also afterwards were innocent and nothing was going on. Do you have actual proof that it was racially inspired?
Also he was living there for two months so the neighbor being deceased means nothing.
This I was not aware off, I must have missed that bit. This might change something, though the question would be if he was living there for 2 months, why did this woman call the cops now and not earlier? Maybe she didn't knew he was living there? Maybe she didn't knew him? If she only knows the son, maybe she did think he was an intruder?
Also it was clear that the women said black men to the police
Where? when? Again this is what I was asking for, proof that it was racially inspired and not just an assumption.
Also why is it everytime you make up hypothetical to defend your twisted views.
Because it matters if it is just your view against mine? If you have proof I am not aware of, I'd like to know.
the police as they broke into the house so technically the police are the ones commuting a crime as always
And again I have always been saying I don't know how the cops got into the house or what happened before the clip. And I said this might be a crime if they didn't ask entry first or something else. However if the police isn't let in and there is the suspicion of a crime going on, it would be logical to enter the house. Though since I don't live in the US, I am not fully aware of the specifications of police procedure/legality.
because he was black that’s all the proof needed.
And this is what I have problem with. This is an assumption based on race. Unless you know for a fact that his skincolor was a factor (like her telling the police a black man was commiting a crime or something like that). Just because he happens to black is not a reason. It can be the reason and in that I case I would definitely condemn her actions, but no one has actually come with anything else but "he is black, thus it is racially inspired".
the only movement was him putting things inside the house.
This again I was not aware of, and might chance the how I look at the situation.
You’re pure evil defending some racist women you don’t know instead of the young man traumatized by two thugs aiming guns at him.
I don't know the young man or the woman. Thus I will treat both without prejudgement untill I get all the facts. That he got guns aimed at him is definitely not good, but this to me is more of a general US problem due to the multitude of guns. Police tend to more quickly use draw their gun in an unknown situation compared to other nations.
If anything it should be illegal for white police to bother black people with their history of terrorism
So in other words you want segregation in policing? I'd rather just change the education/training of police officers so they treat all people equally, irrelevant of skincolor. This is just like with feminist that somehow seem to be treated equally in some situations, but better in others. I just treat people equally.
Should have never integrated with you demons
Calling people demons is certainly going to help :|
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@magnetohex703 look at my new posts. And ofcourse not everyone would call the cops white or black, but there definitely are people that would call the cops white or black. Some people are just paranoid of people they don't know and if they misinterpret a situation? It could even just be a mental condition. My sister has a mental "condition" where she always thinks the worst outcomes medically and that really affects her, sometimes almost throwing her in a slight panicked state, where other people wouldn't care at all. There are people that will have the same in regards to crimes and unknown people.
And if I am a racist, then at least more than half the world is racist. I always treat people equally, no matter skincolor, sex, sexual orientation, ... or I definitely try to, unfortunately not everyone is perfect and no one can treat everyone exactly the same (we're not machines). It is this equal treatment that causes me to first know the facts of a situation before judging, something that apparently ticks of people who either already have the facts or don't seem to need them.
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Honestly, I'd take that deal too. Sure, your viewership numbers might go down. But the contract is only for a few years and with possibly a 100+ million dollar, you're set for life, as well as your family. After the contract ends, just go back to the other platforms and reinvigorate his audience. With the money he might also possibly improve his show, though I am not sure if money was a limiting factor before.
I don't see it as selling out, everyone can still watch him and he maintains full control of the show.
But it also depends on what kind of show you have. If you have show that aims to spread news, it can be seen as a duty to reach as many people as possibly, in which case such a deal would indeed be selling out. For Rogans show though, there isn't really a problem.
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@al rode
your 45% is not even remotely close to beeing 45% of the actual eletric power we'll need.
Correct, neither was this the case for nuclear. However EV's could potentially even help renewable adoptation. The main problem currently with a renewable roll out is storage. Without proper storage getting more than 50-60% renewables is going to be really hard and expensive. However the moment we have cheap enough storage in large enough quantities we can quickly up this to even 100% renewable (though I am not going to say that would be the best option).
Grid storage wasn't an issue up untill 3-5 years ago, so its field is relatively new. Yet there are several storage systems that are quite promising, they just need a bit of time to develop, prove themselves, scale up and decrease the price in the process. This is certainly possible.
cause unlike you I am not using one against the other.
Except you did: "or we could go and construct 15 nuke power plants during that time". So clearly you are putting nuclear vs renewables here. And considering you use Germany's renewable, I used France's nuclear as a comparison.
20%nuclear, 60% renewables
This is something entirely different from what I infered. I now see why. You made it seem like an OR OR proposition (or however you want to call it), which made it look like it was renewable OR nuclear.
however in that case I'd have to say that your reasoning isn't entirely correct either. You essentially just proposed spending more. There was no OR needed in your proposition, since there is no other option than building those 15 nukes extra, other than not spending that money, which wouldn't happen.
It should have been:
we could do the same for another 20 years and get to maybe 45-55% of the overall energy needs beeing covered bye non fossil energy or and we could go and construct 15 nuke power plants during that time and add another 20% of non carbon intensive energy to the mix
or even better:
we could do the same for another 20 years and get to maybe 45-55% of the overall energy needs beeing covered bye non fossil energy or we could invest more and construct 15 nuke power plants or more renewables+storage during that time and add another 20% of non carbon intensive energy to the mix
So, yes. I am not against your proposal, it is just a misnomer since you just proposed a larger investement and how to use it. The way you phrased it also made it sound like it was renewables vs nuclear.
I am sorry for the misunderstanding and part renewables and part nuclear indeed can be an option.
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@al rode
I just highly doubt that private businesses will actuallyy pick up on renewable exoension to a speed where it's gonna be sufficient
I'd say this is the same for nuclear, private bussiness isn't going to fully go on renewables without serious government intervention.
we had 15% in 12 yeas.
Sure, but in the beginning solar was still 10 times more expensive than currently and wind also more expensive.
In the first 7 years (2008-2014) only around 17 TWh of wind was added, in the last 6 years (2014-2020) 73 TWh was added, so in regards to wind, using the past 6 years as a reference seems better. As for solar, this is different with a more steady growth over the 12 years, however the question now is whether this will remain the same or go up. I think a lot will depend on the future costs of (grid)storage.
A nuclear reactor construction likely wouldn't go faster than 10-12 in Germany, so most likely you'd at best seen the same number of added low carbon energy. The next decade will show what would have been best.
* just highly doubt that we'll get to the necessery 5% anual expension that we'd need to get to 100% bye 2040.*
You ignore the fact here that fossil fuels are less efficient. For example an EV has 2-4 times the efficiency of an ice car, so the transition to EV's could drop the energy use of cars significantly. The same with heating using a heatpump/electric boiler (and good isolation) vs gas or fuel oil burner. So the overall energy consumption should also go down. Just by moving to BEV's for cars and trucks, we could cut energy use by 10%
Currently electricity makes up around 33-34% of Germany's total energy consumption. Meaning that even if you'd make 100% of the grid renewable, you'd still only got 1/3rd renewable. Now it is more difficult for renewables to go above 50% of the electricity mix without good storage. At this moment renewables are around there. However if you'd electrify transport and heating, it would currently make up around 20% of the electricity mix, giving 30% more growth room before storage is really needed, vs the +-5% growth room now.
Essentially the rate of renewable adoption is now mostly dependend on 2 things: electrification of fossil sectors (transport, industry, heating, ...) and rolling out storage.
I'd much rather juist pay more
In that case we could also pump more money in renewables and especially storage. Storage by far is what holding renewables back and considering grid storage is a pretty new sector currently, they certainly could use the money to speed up the roll out of cheaper storage. Similar to how Germany's subsidies and transition helped reduce costs of for example wind and to an extent solar.
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@glennvdh2348
*Almost all girls i know vote for Vlaams Belang with these reason: *
Anecdotal and thus worthless, it could be that there is a lot of support in just your area. A poll showed that among girls it was about 12% for VB and another 12% for N-VA, with boys it seems to be double.
the working class pays to much for our social system while the rich people can avoid a lot of taxxes
And yet while VB claims to be for the working class, their voting record shows a bit of a mixed message on that front.
a lot of money is spend on the southern part
Which is why we need to go back to a federal government with much more power that can directly improve the economic situation in Wallonia. Ther will always be transfers from a rich to poor region. What if in the future money flows to Limburg (already happening btw), what then? Split Flanders from Limburg? You know what, let's split Vlaams-Brabant, Waals-Brabant, Oost-Flanders en Antwerpen of from the rest of Belgium, after all these are the provinces that give money to all other provinces and that in the order I put them in.
they are much more lazy and are the first ones to strike.
Or you know, there are less jobs opportunity which causes higher amount of unemployement? And/or there economy is much more reliant on industry where strikes are more frequent in general? Or maybe it is just the political climate there, ie. the socialists are in power and to remain in power don't fix the economic problems? Either way most if not all of these problems could be fixed with a much stronger federal government where the right will hold quite some power.
Also paying a lot of taxxes for immigrants who call you a hooker on the street because you are a western girl...
Numbers please. Also is it immigrants or refugees? Further I agree things like this shouldn't happen and there must be a better integration and immigration policy. But what has VB done other than shouting about it? What has N-VA done the last few years they were in charge of that department?
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11:15 this graph shows movement of inventors and only in one recent decade, it is practically irrelevant to what you are saying. But yes, it seems the US has just slightly above half of the inventions of the last century on their conto, though it might be mostly from recent times (for example 1950 onward), in that case a decrease in inventions due to christian/religious socialism could actually have a major impact. Not to mention that improvements on existing systems/inventions might not be counted as inventions, but still plays a majore role.
Also it is a stretch to just assume that christian socialism doesn't spread to the US. It is impossible to know. At this moment the US is probably one of the most religious western nations, it could very well have been introduced by the church somewhere around 1900-1930 if it was strong in Europe.
11:55 I wouldn't put almost any of these regimes under atheist ideologies. Whereas with religious deaths, religion often was a main cause, this isn't the case for the "atheistic" ideologies. Maybe irreligious would be better, ie the deaths weren't caused due to any religious reason be it the adversion of religion or the support of religion. Most of the deaths under communism weren't atheistically inspired, the state just happened to be atheistic. If you classify all communist deaths under atheism, you should classify all deaths caused by a religious nations under religious deaths.
Also facists often were christian, they definitely were not atheists, maybe just irreligious at best as in that they don't practice their religion. Also the japanese empire might not have had an official state religion, it was stil in practice shinto supported by the state. Classifying it under atheism is also just wrong.
I don't see why you used this slide, it doesn't add anything and is full of mistakes.
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@permaculturemom8706 True leadership is knowing when to make a choice between two bad options and when not to. In this case abstaining is basically acquitting Trump in all but name. She didn't change anything at all. This decision wasn't principled, it was childish. Just because you didn't get what you want you are going to spite others/betray some of your own principles? A jury during a trial also has to either vote guilty or not guilty. If she believed he wasn't guilty or that there was reasonable doubt, she should have voted against, else she should have voted for impeachment.
She does believe that he is guilty of much more (and more serious) crimes than was on the articles of impeachment
Does a jury not convict a rapist, just because he is also a murderer? No, if he is guilty of rape, and is in trial for that, you vote guilty on this. Abstaining shouldn't even be an option at the end of an impeachment trial
Her vote is a position that she wasn't going to participate in this sham trial
If it is a sham trial, doesn't this mean Trump is innocent of the crime and thus she should have voted against? If he isn't innocent it isn't a sham trial, even if the trial came purely out of political/partisan reasons.
No one cares about the precedent this sets, or the consequences of 'winning' or 'losing'.
This precedent has already been set in the past, and would be set again in the future, no matter what. As long as the system doesn't changes. Beside, I'd say that forcing another government to investigate a politicial rival is an impeachable offence, sure it is a weak one seeing what Trump has all done, but it is impeachable nevertheless. In the end every impeachment proceeding, no matter what it was about, would have been partisan.
He stated that a Pence presidency would be much worse than what we have now.
Like I said, impeachment was politically really stupid. But does what you say now not mean that you are politicising the process? Because if you don't want to vote guilty while you believe he is, just because a conviction would be worse, you are basically putting politics above justice.
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She could really harm the EU and European cooperation, which imo can be much worse, not just for France, but all of the EU.
Problem seems to be that no French president is able to solve the problems in France (not a right wing, left or centrist, all
3 have passed in the last decade or so), possibly because they are almost unsolvable with the power of the many different groups (unions, environmentalists, bussiness, farmers, ...) and the real situation? If that is the case there is no certainty any president can do better, but many can do a lot worse.
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@robynjackson348
The UK existed long before
And the Roman Empire existed long before its decline and collapse, this is an irrelevant argument, times change, circumstances change. One of the reasons UK joined the EC was because of declining trade with the commonwealth. And now the UK's main sector is financial services, for which access to the EU was a major benefit.
our Country
I don't live in the UK.
and how the EU are still trying to stop us becoming a global economy
This is a joke, right? How the hell is the EU trying to stop the UK from becoming a global economy? By not surrendering its economy to the UK?
*Not me I want a free Country able to make our own choices *
You are still tied by by other treaties, for example WTO rules, FTA agreements, international laws,NATO, ... The EU was only a small part of this. And the UK was one of the nations with the most say in the EU and actually was responsible for much of EU rules and regulations brexiteers criticise. And the UK for example was the driving actor to get eastern Europe into the EU.
and how we can spend our money
Oh, please, this is like people from Manchester or so saying they don't want Westminster to control how their money is spend.
In the end a negligable amount of UK money went to the EU, and this was easily made up by the economic benefits of being an EU member. We are already seeing capital leaving the UK to the European mainland and the predicted GDP hit makes the contribution to the EU budget seem like almost nothing.
Trying to keep us down.
LMAO, you clearly are delusional.
just look at Article 16 last week
The EU didn't activate article 16 last week, there was just some talk that they might do. And you do realise Jonhson threatened to activate article 16 over a month ago, and again a few days ago. British talking about article 16 are rather hypocritical, fine if you do it/threaten to use it, but if the EU does the exact same, oh my, the outrage.
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For now Nuclear is too expensive compared to renewables and the price is expected to increase in the next few decades when high concentration mines (or something similar) run out and you need to use low concentration sources, making the process of gathering the fuel more dirty and expensive.
Next gen still has to prove itself, theoretically it shows promise, however so did older generation plants. So I'll wait untill there are actual commercial gen plants running for a few years before making up my mind.
Land use isn't really a big problem. Solar can be put on already used land (houses/buildings, storage "depots", parking spots (though for now this isn't really done so far I now), but it is possible), even above some crops in more arid climates (eg. Arizona, California) where it even helps water use and plant growth due to the shade, ...) or on land that isn't really rich ecosystem wise. 1% of agricultural land covered in solar panels would already produce enough to cover the worlds electricity (or was it energy?) need.
I think if nuclear becomes cheap enough it might be used to power industry and replace fossil fuels there, since there nuclear being a base load might really come in handy. For regular consumers? I think renewables combined with battery storage will be the future, untill cheap fusion power comes around at least (and even then the self reliant nature of renewables might still appeal to many).
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@MrElifire84
Can you link or tell me the costs of the SK reactors? I can't seem to find them. Overall LCOE costs for nuclear are usually between 120-180$/MWh, well above renewables.
Even with a gas back up it could equal out (30-40 for large solar and 40-50 for onshore wind + 70-90 for gas power plants). As storage becomes cheaper, so can the renewable mix including back-up/storage. Even with hydrogen storage costs should already be around 150-200$/MWh for large scale solar/onshore wind + storage.
And as you brought up on fuel costs for Nuclear? It’s a veritable non issue.
Maybe now, but what happens when we not just have the 10-15% electricity by nuclear, but rather the 300-500% if we would need to replace all energy uses with nuclear, not including growing demands? It increases fuel demand by a possible factor of 20 and that will overall be a very low estimate. That might completely change the discussion.
Well we need to decarbonize the entire energy sector, not just electricity. When you account for this and run the numbers, you very quickly run out of rooftops
Roof tops are just one part of already used land that we could use for solar panels. Not to mention that renewables aren't just solar panels. And I did say that nuclear might have an application in industry, if prices are low enough. At this moment we use a fraction of possible (already used) land for solar, even in countries that already have a high renewable part in the electricity mix. And then there are theoretical possibilities to put solar fields in orbit and send down the energy in a different highly concentrated form. Though this is for now very much just a theoretical possibility, not practical. However if SpaceX can make space launches cheap enough this might be possible in the future. And even just filling a small part of deserts world wide with solar would be enough to power the world.
There are many ways renewables can power our society. The problems aren't land use, materials or costs, but the variability/storage. If this get fixed nuclear will have to get really cheap. Growing amount of EV's, batteries becoming cheaper and other storage options being improved/invented, I wouldn't be suprised to find really affordable renewable + storage in 10-15 years. Almost the time it takes to build a nuclear power plant.
Even if next gen lives up to the expectation, at best it would be a competitor, it wouldn't push renewables out. I believe only cheap fusion might be able to have a chance of succeeding in that.
For the record I have nothing against nuclear and truly hope it will be able to compete with renewables in the future. The more clean sources the better. At this moment in time though, new nuclear doesn't stand a chance (at least definitely not in the west), both due to costs and public opinion.
I once calculated the cost for Germany going nuclear instead of renewables based on the current average costs. Just building the reactors necessary to reach 70% in the electricity mix costs more than 1 trillion. Currently the "energiewende" has cost Germany an estimated cost of around 600 billion and it had 45% of renewables in the mix in 2019. If you extrapolate this to 70% renewables, it would cost a little less than 1 trillion. And these estimated costs include costs that might also have been needed with nuclear (like upgrading a dated grid for example). And Germany started the "energiewende" when renewables were still much more expensive then they are now.
I might definitely read the book. Though no local library has it and the service to ask for a copy from another library in the network to temporarily ship a book to my library here has been suspended since corona outbreak. So it might have to wait a few months.
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@ninemilliondollars And current taxpayers probably are/were allowed to pollute more than future generations will be. It isn't exactly black and white. It is at this moment very likely that even with great efforts now, future generations might have to pay even more to deal with the 1,5-2° rise and the consequences of this.
This is what part of the taxes or meant for, not just shortsighted "lets only do what is good for us now", but also do what is good for the future. BTW in Germany a pretty large majority supported and still supports the energytransition, so it is not like it was forced on them. And in the end pollution from fossil fuel energy has a direct impact on people now too. It is calculated that 3-5 million people die every year due to air pollution, and this is a conservative estimate. This doesn't take into consideration people that don't die from it, but do get ill/medical conditions because of it.
And all in all it doesn't really cost that much when comparing it. The US spends more into the military every year than Germany has spend on the energytransition in a decade, this while the energytransition is considered vital to combat climate change and climate change is considered one of the greatest threats humanity faces today.
And the fossil fuel industry worldwide also still gets loads of subsidies ironically. IMF estimates that in 2017 fossil fuel subsidies (direct and indirect) worldwide were around $5,2 trillion, it is estimated renewable subsidies were 19 times lower than direct fossil fuel subsidies. So I wouldn't be attacking renewable subsidies just yet, there are much bigger subsidy fishes to fry first if you truly care.
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While there is no way to kick them out, if Poland doesn't back down it will happen. In the end the EU is made up of states, if a large majority of the states want Poland out to preserve the EU, they will find a way. This can go from levying sanctions against Polish officials to even just pushing them out in a defacto way, only letting them be in the EU in a symbolic manner (for example not including them in any future budgets and decisions and maybe even closing the borders for whatever made up reason). Sure these things might not be in line with the EU currently, but then again Poland doesn't accept the EU either according to this ruling.
In fact one can argue that by going against all these articles, the end result is that Poland sigining up the EU treaty wasn't lawfull, and therefor Poland was never actually a member of the EU, thus they can either sign up to all these articles (and if necessary change Polish constitution) or just leave/be kicked out as somekind of squatter.
In the end it will likely be up to the Polish people, if they don't force their government to back down or elect a new government that will do what is necessary to remain, they will bare the brunt of a defacto exit.
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@greeny202ab
Our influence obviously has not suffered in fact disassociating ourselves from the other Europeans has probably improved our influence around the globe
And why would that be?
In fact the newly formed Italexit party is actually using improved British influence after Brexit as one of its slogans.
It is easy to state something like that, doesn't mean it is true. Furthermore it is likely more about british influence on internal affairs, rather than international influence and this new party isn't even being polled yet, it isn't impossible they'll completely flop, it is waiting untill the next election to know that, somewhere in 2023.
and looking at the figures
Which figures? Hopefully not just the ones the UK government promises, because promises can easily be made, but are much more difficult to keep.
Erasmus was actually a British creation
Ehm, no? The idea of erasmus originated from Italy and was advanced by a Belgian councilmember in the 80's. Germany, France and the UK were actually rather opposed to it, because they as large countries already had their own exchange programs
and there are moves to allow Erasmus countries into the much larger Turing program
Again, at this point everything about the Turing program are rhetoric lines, there is no actual layed out plan released yet, so why the hell would the EU even consider opting in to it at this stage? It would make much more sense for them to expand the erasmus program instead.
How the UK will be able to get 30k students and more of all backgrounds in it with only 100 000 million pound in spending and to more regions accross the world is baffling. This would make around 3300 pound per exchange student. Even just the flight might (depending on the country, but considering they don't work with erasmus, most likely it will be focused on further destinations) take up a fifth of that budget, leaving around 2700 pounds for all other expenses, that is very low. And this obviously doesn't take into account administrative costs, getting exchange rights, ... From everything I read about the Turing program I can only get the feeling the UK government is, like with so many other things, underestimating everything or maybe they know it is bullocks and just want to have some speech lines.
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@uclamnguyen1459
You literally said nothing as to why the US would absolutely be necessary. Yes, Russia is the second most powerfull military in the world. But the EU + UK together would take that place together. Russia would maybe initially have momentum, but once that stops and it turns into a war of attrition the EU is very much in a better position, it has the economy, manpower, industry, ... to outlast Russia.
China is 3rd, but Japan and South Korea would probably be right beneath China in power (together). Considering that they would probably also have an alliance with India who now is right beneath China, it would at best be an equal fight for China, at worst it would suffer. India would cut of Chinese trade in the indian ocean and Japan and South Korea in the Pacific.
Both China and Russia would need (for now) a fast win, a war of attrition would be detrimental. China isn't capable of quickly taking out Japan and SK, which would be the minimum, maybe in the future this might be different.
Russia only has a chance of quickly defeating the EU if they can't come together fast enough.
Neither Russia nor China have anything to gain with open warfare. Rather they would do what they do now: cyberwarfare, claiming sea territory, skirmishes/invasion of neighbouring countries that are not allied to a strong faction, ... Taiwan is probably the most reliant on the US, since SK and Japan might not be willing to defend it if it means open conflict.
Now, that being said, ofcourse an alliance of sorts with the US is preferable compared to going it "alone", but it is not truly necessary. It is the same for the US, do they need their allies? No, is it best to keep those allies? absolutely.
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Essentially we need more government action on this. It should be made mandatory that EV's can easily communicate with a charging station.
1) The ev should be able to tell when to charge. This might not be important for fast chargers, but for regular/medium chargers this definitely can be an asset. You can have your ev plugged in constantly when parked and charged when there is lot of production => cheaper prices.
2) All Ev's should be linked to a bank account. This way you don't need to worry about paying or how to pay. Ofcourse you should still be able to see the price of a specific charging station.
3) All prices should be /kWh
In the end it shouldn't be more hassle than just plugging in your EV. If you can put a charging profile on your EV with your EV phone app, you should be able to set when to charge, how much to charge, what is the maximum price you will accept, ... Possibly even having multiple of these profiles (for example casual vs long trip). And if V2G were to actually take off, you could also set when to discharge, how much max, ...
In the end you should always have to just plug in and do nothing more or at worst work with your dedicated EV app, which ofcourse will always be the same app (possibly different apps for different brands, though an android like version wouldn't be unexpected).
The thing is, I don't see how this would ever come to pass without government regulation, or at least the hint of possible government regulation like this.
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I am for a parliamentary system, but doing that in the EU would take away power from the memberstates, fuelling the anti-eu even more and thus making it unlikely to come about soon.
And I did cast a vote, for my national government, which then appointed a commisioner. By your logic I should find the EU council bad, because I couldn't vote for the other 27 (soon 26) governments or the European parliament because I couldn't vote for MEP's from the other countries. Or even closer to the UK, should someone not agree with the UK parliament system because they couldn't vote for a member outside their region?
We are talking about just different forms that are still democratic, eventhough one might be better than the other.
Because the Commission forms a de facto government over the whole of Europe without a single vote being cast.
Isn't this the same for the UK ministers? Forming a government, check. Over the whole of the UK, check. Without being personally voted for, check.
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did the german states become worse when Germany was unified? Is the UK worse of with scotland, Ireland and Wales?
throughout history one of the major themes is the growth of nations. They rarely become smaller and are better for it, on the other hand, when regions are part of a larger nation they often are better off (there are exceptions ofcourse).
You have the right to think that the abolishment of your nation as a selfgoverning political and cultural entity is a terrible thing. And if this happened due to war and conquest, you would be even more right. But I am not talking about abolishing your cultural entity, only about unifiying the countries under a single higher government in terms of politics (and this only for certain things). This is already the case in the UK with the UK government and the lower governments of scotland, wales and NI. Is your country worse because of it?
Furthermore holding onto your system because it is your system is only going to lead to stagnation which is shown in the past to not be so great. We are coming into a new age where larger nations and economies will be more important than ever, where the west is if not in a decline or stagnation, at least in a time of lower growth, while other nations are quickly catching up and might eventually outgrow us. Globalisation and progress is what's pushing us to unite more, ignoring that will only lead to you slowly decline both as an economy and a world player.
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This video kind of reflected my feelings, there are a lot of problems and it might never become a thing, but just outright dismissing it is at this moment stupid. It would be like people dismissing planes a 100+ years ago (and yes, there certainly were people doing that). It can at this moment still go both ways.
And 'cheap' tunneling would be the holy grail for the hyperloop, I personally don't except anything from above ground hyperloop systems (except maybe in vast open spaces, like the desert?), too much problems with land rights, slopes, turns, pressurization, safety, ... Underground would have massive advantages in structural integrity, no turns needed, slopes not needed or very gently, less problems with pressurization, ...
But maybe I will be proven wrong and above surface hyperloops will work?
If the boring tunnel can achieve their cost goals and someone can fit hyperloop systems in their tunnels, that might be the best way. It would cost around 7-14 billion to tunnel (two way) from LA to SF, that is not much, obviously you need other infrastructure too for the hyperloop, but seeing that shorter trajects of highspeed rails can cost up to 80-100 billion, it might be achievable.
I do really hate it when people just dismiss it as it being technologically or scienctifically impossible/economical, we at this moment can't say whether that will be the case. Obviously hyperloop isn't going to be here in the next 10 or probably even 20 years, even if it proves viable, maglev had decades of development to get to the point where it is now. And it again might just be a case of getting tunneling costs down, which might again push something like the hyperloop to the future.
The main problem now is that hyperloop was hyped up, instead we should just ignore for the next several years and see what has happened then.
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@beastmaster1219 I guess the future will tell. But (mass) migrations isn't new. It happens. You can't really stop it shy from putting up a wall and/or killing all those people. So it will come down to just manage it as best as you can: integration and giving another option (improving lives in parts of Africa that are livable for example). At this moment integration is done with a laissez-faire attitude, it can be done more strictly and much more regulated. For example not allowing immigrants to live closely together already might help, since it would prevent small ' immigrant block socities' from forming, where immigrants have no reason to really adapt. Also putting more punishments/rewards regarding integration might help, ... Honestly the laissez-faire attitude was probably the correct way untill this decade, since then most immigration either was due to colonial ties or because these immigrants were specifically brought in (for example to work in the mines). Currently this is a bit different, more to do with jus fleeing really crappy situations, so stronger handling of integration might be really necessary. Will things change? Likely, though that isn't necessarily bad, as long as we can make sure that our core values don't.
There are plenty of immigrants (1st/2n/3d generation) that have properly integrated to the point they are not different from indiginous people (not exactly how I wanted to say it, but can't remember the correct one) except heritage, so it certainly is possible. We just haven't been ready for the large amount of immigrants from the past years and the need for a strong integration policy wasn't apparantly as high as it is now and will be in the future.
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@ArawnOfAnnwn Luxury is everything that is non-essential.
Not if that foreign power caused that economic downturn due to your own governments actions, especially if your own government was well aware of the consequences of their actions. Ofcourse propaganda could change things, but this happens regardless.
China is doing great regarding regarding renewables. But that doesn't mean at all it has a monopoly on it. Everything they do regarding renewables is technology they got from western countries. And like it or not, every important part in renewables (solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, ...) is also being produced in the west. At best it would just be a matter of scaling up the existing production. In the west really only the roll out of solar panels would get delayed with 1-2 years at most if China stops renewable exports. However this would also mean that China loses the costumers for these panels and might need to compete more with western production in third party regions afterwards. And don't think that the prices from China's solar panels would change things. Studies already showed it is the scale of production that makes Chinese panels cheaper, not wages or resources. So if a western country produces the same amount, the price would be similar.
Also China currently is able to produce things cheaply, however this won't be the case forever. Even now several asiatic countries already boast lower prices and things like wages will go up in China too with increasing living standards. When China becomes overall as prosperous as the west, there likely won't be much of a price difference to speak off, except maybe due to things like scale.
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j na You do realize that in case of a power outtage battery swapping won't happen either, since these batteries also still need to be charged?
As for car being dead after x charges, that doesn't change with battery swapping, in fact in regular use most people will just charge at night, putting even less pressure on the battery than what happens in battery swap stations where they also overall need to use fastcharging, maybe just a bit slower if they hold enough batteries. In most regular uses new car batteries can be expected to last a lifetime of the car (at least for Tesla this is most certainly the case, and likely also for most other brands). EV batteries always have at least a warranty of at least 8 years or 100-150k miles, whatever comes first.
Charging stations being full should also not be a problem, that is like saying fuelling stations are constantly at full capacity, and they would if it weren't for the fact that supply follows demand. If they aren't enough chargers, more will be placed. And overall in regards to fastcharging, most people won't use it for more than a few times a year when they need to take too long trips that are outside the range of their car.
Ofcourse there can be multiple solutions, that doesn't take away the fact that practically all large car manufacturers have their own batteries and will produce their own batteries (in conjunction with battery producers) and that several of those (Tesla, VW, ...) already announced that the batteries will be an integral part of the structure of the car due to cost reductions, the opposite of easily swappable.
And comparing the batteries with the gas tanks is just laughable. Gas tanks have no other point than holding the fuel, there isn't really anything special about it and nothing you do with it would give you a really good advantage, completely the opposite of batteries, which are the most important part of the car and will have an important impact on the cars performance, from range to acceleration to charging/refueling rate to ...
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@NotJustBikes Obviously there are other things too. Public transport isn't always too great, for example my boss when I interned in Brussel used a car because despite the traffic it was faster than the train due to a bad connection. And he only lives maybe 25-30 minutes from me by car. I am in Brussel by train in 15 minutes (from station to station).
The tax incentive corporate cars have been a problem for a long time, unfortunately no politician really seems to dare touch it.
Brussels is now trying to change things, but you don't just turn it around. And to add to the complexity is that Brussels is an amalgamation of 19 different communities which probably doesn't help things either.
Honestly I don't really see an easy way to fix Brussels connections, at least not with public transport. The train infrastructure can't really handle much more trains from what I could gathered using it and putting extra rails isn't easy. At least they are now starting to increase cycling infrastructure, but I don't think it will help with the commuters too much.
And it isn't just Brussel, I live right outside brussel in the "rand" and we here get a lot of traffic to and from Brussel everyday. Especially if something happens on the highway (E40 or R0). Is it really just Brussels fault? I don't think so. The car centric mindset wasn't an cosncious choice imo, unlike in the US, it was just something that happened and politicians/planners acted on. Unlike in the Netherlands, there just wasn't/isn't a cycling mindset in Belgium (definitely not in this region).
Also Brussels is essentially a focus point for both train and car traffic within Belgium. Where as Amsterdam and Utrecht seem to be more to the edge (at least when considering major population centers). This too might have played a roll in Brussels car centric layout. This also causes the train network in Brussels to soak up more trains that might not necessarily need to be there.
In the end there just was shit poor public planning in Belgium in the previous generation. And even now this isn't fixed. Here in Asse there have been plans to build a mini-ring to keep car traffic out of the town centre. The problem is that there is a lot of resistance against it. Not because people don't want it, but they don't want it where the politicians want it. It would essentially go right outside the core center cutting off other area's, while a larger one is less destructive (people's homes), possibly better in mobility and more importantly helps reduce traffic coming through for a lot more people. This discussion has already been going on for 25-40 years now. After the first part (out of 3) was finished, the plans for the other 2 were destroyed by the raad van state in 2008. Now they are pushing essentially the same plan again with only minor alterations :(
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@andyinsuffolk
One constituency choosing our executive leader
That's why I am a proponent of PR and not FPTP. But you can hardly say he's elected by just his constituency, since the tory members also voted for him. However, yes it still would be better with PR.
Do we need a PM?
Yes, simply because you need someone to govern the country. Basically the PM is supposed to take care of day to day affairs and executing the laws, while parliament is supposed to create the laws, make the absolute important decisions and be a check on the PM. Honestly, I don't immediately know a nation that doesn't have one person as a "leader". Maybe smaller countries can try to use a council or something, but a large country? no, probably not.
give veto
The US president has veto powers, but for so far I know the PM doesn't, unless you are talking about something else than I am thinking off.
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@bruceharvey8118
Ehm, no. In every single payer system or something like it, people with life threatening injuries etc will get priority. If there are patients of several different injuries, the hospital will prioritise: 1) A person dying, 2) a person having his leg mangled, 3) a person with a broken arm, 4) a person claiming to have a cold (or something). Depedending on the seriousness of your injury you will either get priority or be pushed to the back of the line.
The emphasize in single payer systems is on saving lifes, since the hospitals are ensured to get payed through the government. In the US either they bill you a lot or they need to first be certain you have the appropriate health insurance.
The US health system is more expensive and has worse outcome than any western industrialised nation.
Btw: the better How about the Republicans pay for the wall. About 6 billion dollars. And the Democrats pay 4 free healthcare. Free college. 38 Trillion over 10 years. would be something like how about republicans pay for the wall (about 40 billion) and get to enjoyed the benefits), while the democrats (and independents and all others that want it, for healthcare that is around 70%+) fund medicare for all, free college, ... but are the only ones enjoying the benefits of it. I can assure you, republicans would en masse change sides.
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@bruceharvey8118
But we're going to have to build more hospitals who's going to pay for that.
So, you're saying that as it stands the US doesn't have enough hospitals to help all its people? That's messed up even in the current system.
not all US citizens are taxpayers so that means more taxes on the middle class.
What? Really? 3% is unemployed, everyone else pays taxes, so that isn't a problem. And again studies showed that money will be saved and healthcare costs in nations with universal healthcare are lower, so quit talking about it being more expensive without backing from actual studies/evidence.
Every time I turn around I'm being taxed on something else.
Then you'd need to push for tax reform. And again overall people will keep more money, because while taxes go up, there will be no more other healthcare costs.
how much do you think it's going to cost the taxpayers to have free healthcare.
32 trillion over the next 10 years according to this conservative study, however the current system would cost around 34 trillion over the next 10 years. But to be fair another possibility in the study puts it (medicare for all) at 36 trillion or so. So according to the study it will depend on how it is implented. Then again this is a conservative think tank, so they might have inflated the costs a little bit, hard to tell. And medicare for all will be better for most americans. So even if the costs are a bit higher (unlikely, since the for profit would be out), health standards across the board would increase.
But again, look at other nations that implemented it, look at the data and the human improvement. Everything speaks in favor of universal healthcare.
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@666Tomato666
The thing about heating, that electric heating, especially with heat-pumps is less carbon intensive than direct heating with gas, even if you use gas turbines for electricity generation.
I know, but that takes decades to transition. So while it has to be done and currently is being done, it wouldn't have changed anything in the short term.
Yes, certain industrial processes need natural gas specifically, but that need could easily be met with LNG.
LNG is way more expensive, which is why Germany didn't use that. And currently they don't have the infrastructure to import it, though they are working on getting that as fast as possible to replace Russian gas. Even then, there needs to be enough and the increased demand for LNG will drive up the higher price even more.
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@666Tomato666
You can deploy heat-pumps far faster than you can build nuclear power plants
Possibly if a nuclear power plant takes a long time to buid. But you can't just install electric heating everywhere in a few years. First you need the skilled labour force to do so, then the necessary equipment, ... but more importantly, not all houses can function with electric heating, they need to be isolated well and most people won't switch from gas to electric just like that, they'll only do it once it is needed, thus why it takes decades. The government can mandate that in new building and renovations electric heating should be installed, but they can't force owners to replace their gasboiler with electric heating just like that.
Also electric heating and the nuclear phase out argument have nothing to do with eachother. Obviously it would have been better to keep the nuclear powerplants open untill the end of their lifetime +-50 years lets say. However this wouldn't have changed anything about the current situation, since like I explained, electric heating wouldn't just suddenly replace gas in all buildings and nuclear would replace coal, not gas in the grid mix.
Sure, LNG is more expensive, but there's a difference when 1% of your economy has to pay 400% more for gas than when 15% of economy has to do the same and pay even more because they drove the demand higher.
This is pretty worthless statement. The gas price going up like this wasn't forseen and could have happened with LNG too depending on the situation. Actually LNG is already hit by price hikes due to the Russia-ukrainian conflict too if I am not mistaken, because that conflict send ripples over the entire world economy. For example Belgium imports most of its gas with non-Russian LNG, but the gas price still spiked here too.
And not importing for Russia would mean higher strain on gas demand from elsewhere anyway.
Also your 1% pay 400% more vs 15% ... doesn't even make any sense.
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Obviously these things wouldn't just fix the traffic issue, they'd just be another means to lowering the problem.
I think a problem with a lot of segments like this is, is that it doesn't properly take into account the time that is needed for systems like this to be developed, even if overtime they'd prove good. Maglev needed 40 years to get to the point it is now and despite its advantages, it still is only being rolled out in a limited fashion. Cars took decades develop and to be really transformative, the same for planes, trains, ...
You don't just build out something new in transportatio infrastructure easily and without first fixing problems and overcoming hurdles.
The hyperloop hasn't reached high speeds since it needs more length to reach them and break after both with an acceptable acceleration. Virgin Hyperloop isn't the only company working on it, however almost all other companies are keeping a much lower profile working on the problems behind doors.
The boring company tunnel has changed design idea several times, but overall it always seemed to eventually come down to autonomous electric vehicles (both private and passenger pods) as the carrier, something not yet possible without autonomous vehicles obviously. Moreover the Vegas loop was also meant as a first test prototype, it does the job that it supposed to do, but took some time due to the "unforseen" problems showing up and currently is not as efficient as imagined due to (among others) the lack of autonomous vehicles and specific passenger pods with a larger capacity and ease of use (which would only come once the boring tunnel concept really is set in stone more or less.
Both these ideas obviously can proof to be flops in the future, but it really is too early to tell and obviously initial development and prototypes are never going to be as low cost as the proposed final price, since you have no economies of scale, constant, iteration and improvement, problems to be solved, ....
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@LjubomirLjubojevic Yes, there are several different kinds now, however diesel and petrol essentially requires the same infrastructure, transportation, ... it is like having different charging stations for different ev's. I don't know what TNG is, did you mean CNG cars? If that is the case, you need to know that these represent around 2% of all cars worldwide and it is quite a regional thing (for example mostly asia-pacific and latin america). As for EV's, yes they currently exist next to the other types, but this is because we are in a transition stage to EV's. During the past 100 years petrol and diesel where by far the most widely used car types and they overall don't differ that much.
EV charging is not really a problem in terms of trucking or public transportation, it just means you need to have a different style of management. In China a major city with a larger population than several countries has already fully switched over to EV busses, so clearly that isn't really a major problem.
For airplanes and ships hydrogen can be usefull, but not necessarily due to charging (though it might help for airplanes), but mostly for other reasons that make batteries impractical, like weight and the size of the otherwise needed batteries.
The middle of nowhere is not something that is often visited/traversed, this is more of a niche thing. And then you're more likely to still use a fossil fuel car or something similar. As for people living in the middle of nowhere, there are plenty of people that have gone off grid with batteries and solar. This middle of nowhere argument really depends also on the kind of middle of nowhere, if there is more than enough place and sun for solar panels, a solar panel-battery combination can actually be thought to be better than a H2 'cistern'. You need to remember that it is not just an H2 cistern, but also all of the infrastructure needed to actually transfer the H2, which isn't little. A H2 fuelling station costs several million dollar.
Solar power H2 electrolysers? Really? It would be more efficient to then just have the produced solar energy be directly stored in a battery. And any H2 vehicle has a battery to regulate the power produced by the fuel cell and the required power to drive better. This btw isn't any advantage compared to a BEV.
Military usage is also very big possibility, when they NEED to switch to something, because if you are out of electricity in the middle of the battle...
This can be said about H2 easily too, if you run out of H2 in the middle of a battle... And considering the explosive nature of H2, that is the last thing you'd want to use at the front line. If it is not the frontline there are many ways to provide electricity. But it is most likely the military will keep using fossil fuel for front line military operations then switch to batteries or H2.
The number of tires you say a car needs is really high. Did you actually get this from a statistic or made it up? Regular drivers need to replace their tires around once or twice during a car's lifetime due to degredation. And tire companies have even come out saying an EV's aren't worse for tires, that it is a common misconception. On the opposite, due to better traction control the tires slip less, reducing their degredation over a prolongued time apparently.
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@D R actually an EV isn't that much heavier than a hydrogen car. The mirai has a curb weight of around 1850kg vs a model 3 longe range AWD performance's 1847kg and both have around the same expected range.
The environmental side of EV's isn't ignored (this is almost always taken into account when comparing ICE vs EV), however once enough materials are mined, a lot will be recycled (we already achieve high recycling efficiency and it keeps improving), lowering the mining needs overtime. Where as for ICE, there would be ever going mining for oil. And hydrogen cars also still need some rare minerals, not as much, but still. And ofcourse with the energy efficient factor of around 40% well-to-wheel, you'll need more energy production => more material => more environmental impact.
As for the recycling of batteries and that energy use, several recycling companies actually are able to just use left over power in the batteries to power their operations for a significant propertion, the rest can be provided by renewables. At least, this is the case with the recent recycling factories/companies that are likely to be the future, not the old recycling techniques.
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saiswarrior
Sure, everyone who has an opinion about immigration, crime, religion and so on that doesn't agree with the progressives ideas are being considered a nazi
That is not true at all. If you think this, you are essentially blind. N-VA aren't called nazi's and yet they too want a harder stance on immigration, crime, religion, ... It's how you go about it and how far you're willing to go that determines whether someones a nazi or not. VB aren't nazi's, at least most of them not. Many are racists though.
The cordon is nothing more than an instrument to keep the status quo
The cordon when it was formed had a good reason. The program of the VB was most definitely racist and borderline nazi (if not already crossing that line). Now the main reason the cordon still exists isn't due to their being a cordon, but because no one wants to work with VB except for N-VA. It is kind of hard to break the cordon if the VB doesn't align at all with your goals. Greens and socialists can't agree with VB on separatist issue, the liberals can't agree with VB on both economical and separatist issues, N-VA on its own isn't strong enough to break it and the CD&V just doesn't give a shit about anything other than how it would look if they work with VB and the possible blowback they might get, especially if a VB/N-VA/CD&V government fucks up.
So it is not that parties don't work with the VB due to the existence of the Cordon anymore, it is that the Cordon still exists because no one wants to work with the VB. The cordon itself is essentially meaningless and is only talked about because it is easy to use as a reason why parties don't want to work with VB. If the cordon was still in effect VB would never have been involved and wouldn't have been invited to the palace initially together with other parties.
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The store probably kept the food as long as it can be sold, they aren't going to pre-emptively hand it out, because if the power comes back on before it goes bad too much for it not to be sold, they can still just sell, maybe at a discount if necessary, so the food thrown out most likely is so bad in quality they can't sell it anymore (legally). As for not handing it out afterwards, I can sort of see why they wouldn't do it, for example what if people become ill due to consuming this food, the store could be held liable. Maybe they could have better worked together with organisations that hand out old food, passing off the possible risk of lawsuits, but it could just be that they didn't think of it, didn't know how to reach such organisations, ...
Essentially it seems they wanted to be too protective out of fear for possible lawsuits or similar things. I could definitely see a store manager of a larger chain wanting to overreact rather than take any risks.
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@DishNetworkDealerNEO
like many devices made, mass production of millions of pieces, drives down per unit costs.
Which begs the question again, why doesn't this happen for the larger applications, where they might use many smaller ones instead of large ones. Either the benefit in cost will be tiny, which will still make it much more costly than batteries, or it doesn't lower costs at all. Ofcourse it could be due to some other factors, maybe.
as there is only a fixed amount of need for that hardware
As for demand, like you said yourself, if you make it smaller you could create new markets: cars, homes, bussiness, ... So why isn't it done yet? Why isn't any EV company using it? Probably because it just isn't cost efficient enough vs batteries.
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@andrefasching1332 My point is that your points were not entirely correct or relevant.
That European countries were superpowers 100 years ago doesn't really matter that much, what matters is the current and future situation, which would make European power more similar to that of the colonies at that time, than a high power status (individually).
There was no unified language at that time, sure maybe less differences than in Europe, but enough that the difference doesn't really matter, the main reason why it wasn't a problem, was due to much less travel and communication over distances. Even now there still are a lot of people in the US with a different native language, they just use English as a common language when needed. This is also already happening in the EU slowly with English being used as a common language next to native regional languages.
Yes, the US was a republic from the beginning, and so is the EU essentially. The differences in 'local' government systems isn't really that important as long as they don't clash (which it shouldn't if all are representative democraties).
Embracing the US identity was logical
This is also just not correct. It took a long time for a real general US identity to establish and many people that left for the colonies did so to be free to have their own identity/religion, their descendants just adapted to a new reality, which is also happening in the EU with younger people feeling more and more European than past generations, identity is formed over generations.
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@lordekker But this isn't about democracy, but international agreements. And it is not like the EU wouldn't renegotiate, the problem is that when you draw out of one part of an agreement the other parts also can be voided. Else if someone can unilaterally cut one part of the agreement, but the other remain, they can essentially cherry pick. And also the entire agreement(s) being voided would happen after renegotiations failed within a certain time frame.
The Greek situation is a terrible example. They needed help, the EU offered help. They did talk with eachother, but ofcourse the EU can't just hand over money without any consequences.
And yes, the EU should have reacted more in the Catalonian "troubles" or whatever you'd call it, but this has nothing to do with negotiating international treaties/agreements.
I honestly don't understand what the point is that you are trying to make. The agreement stated that there would be renegotiations, but if these didn't work out within a certain time, either of the two parties (EU and Switzerland) can unilaterally withdraw from a part of the agreement, but this would also void the rest of the agreement and negotiations would essentially start fresh to form a new agreement. To say that the EU doesn't negotiate/talk with smaller partners, but only with larger ones is stupid. And brexit is a clear example that the EU won't negotiate on several things seperately, but rather that many things are interlocked and are necessary to be discussed together, whether a partner is large or small.
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@lordekker
I was talking about the bilateral arrangements with Switzerland, which has nothing to do with Greece or Catalonia, but fine.
Ofcourse Greece can't just default, they are part of the Eurozone, them defaulting would cripple the rest of the eurozone and have a huge negative impact on the EU. Ofcourse if they decide to default they should first leave at least the eurozone. Leaving the EU for that might not be necessary, though I don't know what rules there are regarding defaulting while in the EU.
Any new nation would fall outside the EU. This is just how it is. A new nation also falls outside the UN untill it is recognized. That is just the normal procedures. This has nothing to do with keeping them down. Else you might see larger nations leaving the EU out of fear that they will be broken up into more regional nations. The EU should have definitely condemned the violence against Catalans and the refusal to have a referendum. However a newly independent nation shouldn't automatically enter the EU, they should follow the same procedures as any other new country. Maybe a quick deal could be made to essentially have bussiness as normal while they try to enter the EU. This would be the logical thing. However this would be blocked most likely by the original parent nation. Whether you or I like it or not, existing members of the EU have tremendous power in this, and it mostly is the fear of nations with independence movements that will never accept this. This is not the fault of the EU itself.
Swiss have overcrowded issues? EU again doesn't care.
There is a good reason why freedom of movement and free trade are interlinked. Honestly this is up to the Swiss, what is worse, the too large amount of EU migrants or economical pains. This isn't any different from a member of the EU or how any nation works for that matter. It is not that the EU doesn't care, it is that this isn't easily fixed.
And if they try to address it by their own they'll be completely cut out of trade with all their neighbors.
No, they can still trade, just as a third nation. Again nothing different from how bilateral deals work. What is your solution maybe?
Those deals should not be used as weapons to compel small partners to not even try address their issues.
How is it used as a weapon? The free trade and freedom of movement are interlinked, period. You can't have one without the other. This is also the major problem with brexit, and I wouldn't call the UK a small partner.
But they should at least be acknowledged and discussed.
And how is this not happening? After the previous referendum in 2014(?), the EU and Switzerland talked to see what could be done, how the demands of the referendum could be enacted. It is not like the EU just refuses to talk. This isn't and has never been the case.
Without no so subtle threats.
That the things in the deal were interlinked and would be null and void when either party goes back on any part of the agreement unilaterally is not a threat, just a fact. One both parties agreed to upon signing the agreement. This is to protect against cherrypicking. And again there is a period for negotiation before going down this route.
So in the end, what is your proposed solution?
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@lordekker
It won't be ignore just because the current regulations say so
And how is this different from the situations? The EU continuously enters into talks when necessary. However this doesn't mean these talks always get to a solution. There often at that level are no easy fixes and sometimes there are just not fixes except status quo or reverting back.
EU is dysfunctional because it's all about bureaucrats and legal binding agreements, while it ignores souls and feelings of the people.
Oh please. The EU is at this moment a complex international organisation. Unfortunately it is just baked in with such organisations that things move slowly. And it definitely just ignored the feelings of the people. The problem is that it needs to think about the feelings of so many people that it is much more difficult to act in a way that it seen as good by all. Do please offer examples, those are easier to discuss than this abstract saying that the EU doesn't care except bureaucracy.
In Switzerland (and most of Europe at a different degree) you have an issue and this issue is discussed.
This also happens in the EU. The problem is just that it is at a much bigger size, and many people don't even know what goes on there. Switzerland is actually one of the few countries where you often have the people deciding directly or where discussion about this happen at a lower level. Most often these discussion are limited to the political level and people just vote for the politician they think represents their views best.
Also, you are comparing nations with international relations. These just don't work the same way. Do you really think the US or any other large country works differently in regards to international agreements? Now, they all cover their side in a similar way.
EU today is built to deny exactly that. Don't listen, don't discuss, stick to status quo.
The EU is constantly changing things. People just don't notice this really.
Because entire slices of population are being denied representation or at least their representatives are denied agency to make their represented interests.
What the hell are you talking about? The European council and council of the European union are the elected federal governments of the memberstates, the EU parliament is elected directly by the people. Only the commission isn't directly elected, guess what? This happens in most non-republican parliamentary democracies.
First it lowers EU popularity Then grows resentment. Eventually it becomes hate.
EU poularity has grown in the last few years. And what you say applies to many nations, this isn't something just EU. You can't always make everyone happy.
I'm no Catalan being denied the right of self determination
The EU doesn't deny them that. Spain does. Though the EU should take a stance against that and mediate more between Spain and Catalonia. And if you talk about them dropping out and having to re-apply to join the EU, this isn't denying the right of self determination. This is a consequence of making a specific choice. Self determination doesn't mean you don't get any negative side effects of your choice, it just means you can make you own choices and then live with the consequences. It means they should be able to become independent of they want (and I agree with that), it however certainly doesn't mean the EU needs to keep them in the EU.
nor Greek being denied right of default and rebuild my life
Again, defaulting would seriously harm all other eurozone members. If you put it to a vote "should Greece be able to default while in the eurozone" in all those nations, what do you think the outcome would be? A big fat no.
Nor I am a Swiss being forced to migrate because house prices in my native village became to high.
And? Shouldn't this be something the Swiss government needs to adress? By putting a cap on house prices or something similar? Again, you can't have the benefits without the negatives. This is unfortunate, but nevertheless a consequence of the real world.
Political institutions are supposed to fix issues.
And they do, just maybe not always to everyones satisfaction, or as fast as people like. This isn't as simple as flipping a switch or just have some conversations.
Bureaucrats are the one keeping things as they are.
They are necessary to keep things as big and complex as the EU running. I'd like to see it slimmed down, but this would mean a kind of federalisation of the EU, something the EU can't do, only the memberstate governments.
n the case of the Swiss arguing the the single market is a single thing and one can't cherrypick is a disingenuous lie. That's Bruxelles stance. Not a fundamental issue in the market mechanics.
Then please tell, what is the magical solution you have?
UK were given special exemptions to prevent Brexit.
The extension? Just a delay of what would happen. The same could have been done with Switzerland if necessary and if both sides want it. Though I believe the Swiss government would be able to accept that even if the EU offered, because they'd have to honor the outcome of the referendum. Though I don't know enough about swiss law to know for certain. And well, brexit is essentially so far the only situation where all agreements between the EU and a partner would dissapear, so I can't see how you can claim it wouldn't do the same with another nation in a semi-similar situation.
And after that covid demonstrated time and time again how single countries can regulate people movements to address internal issues without hurting the single market.
Covid never saw borders close completely and/or not for long. Many nations still allowed trucks to pass the border and allow border crossing with a good reason. Furthermore any borderclosures were very short, closing the border with Switzerland permanently would be completely different.
The free trade and freedom of movement are simply NOT interlinked. Period.
They are in the EU period, and these days in most far reaching trade agreements., period.
I am going to end the discussion here, since to me it seems like you are talking about a very idealistic frame, while ignoring how the real world works.
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@inbb510
the very idea that you feel Taiwan is also not Europe's strategic problem
I said it is not solely Europe's problem. Europe should neve go to the other side of the world to defend a nation against someone lik China on its own. Even if the EU were to spend a similar amount of GDP to defence as the US, it likely wouldn't be succesfull in defending Taiwan on its own without allies. And to defend allies you don't need a global spanning military with military bases all over the world, allies already suffice.
When it comes to being a military power on a scale like the USA or China, might is right.
China isn't trying to become a world military power (yet) either, they are focused on being a regional super power in military terms.
And might is right only works when you actually can use that might. Otherwise general influence (politically, economically, ...) is just as valuable.
If the supranational military isn't the global power, then in the eyes of other adversaries you are weak and something to be exploited.
That is completely bullshit. In that way currently the US would be the only strong nation, and yet it even fails to take on someone like the Houthi's.
This is why I'm saying not helping Taiwan is still essentially freeloading off American defence.
I never said "don't help Taiwan", I said not to help Taiwan on its own. Taiwan is figuratively speaking in the US' backyard, so it always should be the US to take charge first and for the EU to help out the US with that. Just like a Russian invasion of the EU would be first and foremost be the EU's responsibility to fight it, with the US just providing help. (Though a better comparison is with Ukraine, and it is clearly shown here that the divided nature of the EU's militaries is a detraction).
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@CraftyF0X Well the problem with solar being put on buildings and roofs is that its rarely truely efficient because as the sun moves on the sky during the day there is only a small portion of the time when it gets the direct sunshine
This really isn't a problem. sure the yield might be a bit lower, but it is more than high enough to keep costs low enough. Also a lot depends on the kind of roof. Usually roofs of larger buildings (store, industry, offices, ...) is flat, so you can put the panel in the most optimal position and even have it turn with the sun.
However often it is cheaper to not use a sun tracking system, even in large scale applications due to extra costs and maintenance.
Ofcourse as you say they are constantly looking into improving that sun tracking to make it more economical.
here is also the problem (and this is for wind turbines too) with the connection infrastructure to the grid (which also takes up land)
Yes and no. It really depends on the circumstances. When used on buildings, parking lots, ... it is usually rather easy to connect it to the grid without really using any or much space. Now when we go more away from buildings etc., sure this is a minor thing to consider, but it isn't the main problem, unless you mean country wide management (like in Germany where a lot is produced in the north and needed in the South). There is indeed investment needed in the grid overall, especially if you want to focus on renewables.
as well as energy storage
That is a problem now indeed, though within 10 years this can be completely different. There currently are different kinds of storage being developed, tested or having first large plants installed. Overall the grid storage sector is relatively new, there wasn't really a need for it before renewables came to be a good possible player in the grid, so it needs some time to grow and drop in price.
but I would caution anyone to not buy into the hype of certain "silver bullet" technologies when there is no basis for overflowing optimism.
Agreed, to me nuclear and renewables can both get their role in a future grid. The kind or to what extent will be shown in the next 2 decades or so, it is just that many people see nuclear as this sole answer and that renewables can't really work, at least not for a majority of the grid and they generally base this on current problems renewables have, ignoring the fact that renewables and everything around it are fairly new and constantly in flux/improving. In reality if grid storage progresses enough, we could see 100% renewable being viable in 15-20 years. Whether this will be the case and/or be the best choice will depend on a lot of factors in the coming decades.
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Русс град Just because it wasn't called Ukraine in the past, doesn't mean the idea/entity didn't exist under a different nation. Russia came from some of the principalities of the Kievan Rus, not all of them. The southern principalities (who make up current day Ukraine more or less) weren't part of Russia when it was formed.
Kievan Rus to Russia is like the Frankish carolingian empire to France. Or in other words, both the Ukrainian and Russian territories were part of the Kievan Rus in the past, but the southern principalities (ie. Ukraine) weren't historically part of the Russian kingdom/empire up untill somewhere in the late 17th century.
Russia claiming Ukraine based on Kievan Rus heritage is like France claiming Germany based on the Carolingian/Frankish empire.
And if you would like the Kievan Rus claims to be used, it would be Ukraine that would Claim the former Kievan Rus principalities (ie. modern day western Russia), not the other way around, since Kiev was the leading principality in the Kievan Rus untill the mongol invasion and subjugation, after which it was soon annexed by Lithuania.
Upper Ukraine was almost as long part of Lithuania/PLC as it was part of Russia.
And their is no 'Russian' religion. Orthodoxy existed long before Russia, in fact it is one of the older forms of Christianity and was adopted by the Kievan Rus leadership (and forced on the people) to become friends with the Byzantines (which btw always kept calling themselves romans, since you are so hung up on names), the original orthodox Christians.
There was not really such thing as Russian land or Russian people before the 16th century (You could argue that the slavic are Russian, but these also lived/live in the Balkans and Poland/Lithuanian regions, which were never part of a 'Russian' entity up untill recent history (or just never regarding the Blakans) and Southern Ukraine definitely wasn't part of 'Russian land', it was constantly inhabitated by tribes from the east up untill the Ottomans took control of that region. The Kievan Rus leadership were mostly Scandinavian vikings which took control of the Kievan Rus lands.
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@Some Thing
The Netherlands' full name is Kingdom of the Netherlands and their political system is NOT called Democracy but it's called Constitutional monarchy.
It is still a democracy though. Constitutional monarchy is just like a federal republic a form of government. Whether it is democratic or not depends on how the government is formed, laws changed, ... and The Netherlands is definitely a democracy, saying otherwise is a serious insult.
Britain has not got a Democracy either. What they've got is called Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy.
I'd say the UK is half democratic imo. However this has nothing to do with their government form, but rather how their MP's are elected, the house of lords and the fact that they don't have a written constitution.
And are you sure it is "unitary", because Scotland, NI and wales also have their own parliaments, which would make it more like federal.
you cannot have an inherited head of state and call it Democracy.
I am sorry, but you are confusing democracy with republicanism, it is not the same thing. A republic can still be undemocratic and a monarchy can be democratic.
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@Some Thing
Monarchy and Democracy are exact opposites.
No, they are not. Monarchy and republic are opposite. Whether a nation is a democratic nation depends on where the power lies. Normally with a constitutional monarchy the power effectively lies with the parliament, which is elected by the people and thus it is democratic.
Monarchy is a form of government in which a legal person, the monarch, holds sovereign authority until death or abdication.
What you are talking about is an absolute monarchy, there is no such thing anymore in Europe. With constitutional monarchies the sovereign authority lies with parliament and the powers of the monarch are determined (and can be changed by) the parliament. Or in other words, the powers of the monarch are either symbolic or can't be used without permission of the government or parliament (depending on the constitution).
But you cannot call it Democracy because Democracy (rule by people) is a system of government where the citizens exercise power by voting.
Exactly, and if the power lies with the elected parliament and the government formed by this parliament, it is a democracy.
In a representative democracy the citizens elect representatives from among themselves. These representatives meet to form a governing body, such as a legislature. In a liberal democracy the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but the constitution limits the majority and protects the minority, usually through the enjoyment by all of certain individual rights
This is correct and almost always the case in a constitutional monarchy, therefor these monarchies are ALSO representative democracies. I live in a country with a king AND a representative democracy. Just because you seem to think they can't be combined, doesn't mean that's the case, but just a (wrong) opinion.
It's either Monarchy or Democracy. NOT BOTH!
Again completely fucking wrong. There are many non-democracies that aren't monarchies and there are plenty of monarchies that are democraties. You are completely missing the connection between both. Now if you had said "it's either absolute monarchy or democracy" I agree, but constitutional monarchies can be (and most often are) democratic.
And don't say again they can't be, because reality already has proven you wrong (and your own words for that matter).
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@coen270
about 100 km of battery range for work traffic, which you can charge at home or at work, + 400 more from hydrogen for long distance rides.
Problem with that is that hydrogen actually doesn't offer that much extra range with passenger cars.
The benefit of hydrogen over using superchargers is that hydrogen is much more friendly for the grid
The thing is that the grid can manage if it is updated/reinforced, it just requires funds. However this wouldn't be any different for these fueling stations and everything around it.
as the gas station could simply produce hydrogen at a steady rate during the day and store it
Except hydrogen needs around 3 times the electricity, so you'd still put some extra strain on it. And then you also need add the infrastructure to produce the hydrogen which won't be cheap either. And lastly most people can just charge their car whenever it is best for the grid, all they need to be able to do is plug in their car as much as possible. Fast charging really only should be done on longer trips or when you have no other options, so overall the fastcharging shouldn't put that much extra strain on the grid compared to your proposal.
it might even be possible to use the fuel cell as an electrolizer
A fuel cell doesn't have that capability and even if it could, the pressure in the hydrogen tank of your car is very high, so you'd also need a strong compressor in your car. If it was that easy to produce hydrogen at home and refuel your car, hydrogen cars might be more popular currently.
There is also the point of storage, something we will need quite a lot of to overcome the seasons unless we go full nuclear. And since batteries are not a viable means of long term energy storage, you will have hydrogen produced anyway for during the winter.
No, you really don't want to use hydrogen for that application, you'd need a shitload of storage space, making it very expensive. There currently are other storage options coming to market at this point that are more viable for something like this and in the worst case you'd just create a link to for example north African countries.
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Don't compare the semi to non-EV trucks, ofcourse electric has advantages, which is why even legacy automakers are starting the switch to either BEV's, FCEV or both. And no, not everyone that can drive a car can drive a Tesla semi, the gears aren't the most important thing at all.
Here in Europe people still drive manual more often than not, the transmission in a truck if done well only increases it from 5-6 to maybe around 8. It would just need a bit of adaptation. The main difference and difficulty between a car and a semi are things like the weight, size, visuals, ... Essentially the entire driving experience.
0-60 in 5s is meaningless for a semi. There is no scenario where this is needed. Even for a regular car this kind of speed is rarely to ever needed. In fact it is dangerous for something as big as this. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla will need to limit it due to safety concerns in some parts of the world (like the EU). The ID's are indeed slower, because there is no reason to go faster. If you think the ID's are so slow because they couldn't get it higher, think again, this was a specific design choice, and imo a good one. Only sportcars or GT versions really need these kind of acceleration and even then it is mostly just a spec that is only used once in so many time. The 0-60 fully loaded in 20s is something different, then again you'd have to ask a truck driver about that.
65mph on 5% grade doesn't really matter either imo, at least not for where I live. In most EU countries a truck is allowed to do only around 50-55mph on a highway anyway. I also wonder what the difference in consumption is. A truck driver might choose to go slightly slower up a hill if there is a huge difference.
I wonder what the price of the glass is. And how easily it gets really damaged after repeated impacts. Where do you get it from that every truck gets a damaged windscreen once every year, some sources I found speak of only around 4% of truck getting a damaged windscreen annually and usually isn't that costly to replace. Moreover this kind of thing will normally be covered by insurance and unless it happens more than normal it is unlikely to change the price of the insurance. And strong windshields exist, if they aren't used it is for a reason.
Actually the middle driver position has many drawbacks. You have less view through your sidemirror on one side and it only improve on the other side marginally, you can't see past objects in front of you (like another truck) as easily, you can't access something/someone as easily through the window even if it designed for trucks, ... Most of these can ofcourse be overcome by better sensors and camera's (and maybe a sliding chair), however you need to show these camera images also on extra screens. Essentially the costs will be higher than really necessary.
And ofcourse you lose space. For example in trucks that don't have a second row of seats in the back, suddenly you only have on seat instead of 2-3. And while most drivers might drive alone most of the time, there can be cases where someone needs to drive along with you. There are likely other disadvantage too. It isn't like the center driving position is something other companies didn't think of, rather the disadvantages never outweighed the benefits, maybe now with more advanced sensors this might be different, but I guess time will tell.
As to the range, as you said most routes are actually under 250 miles, so 500 miles isn't really necessary, if other companies can do something like 300 miles fully loaded, that is more than good enough for most cases, especially since like you mentioned drivers are usually not even allowed to drive for longer than that even in perfect circumstances (constantly max allowed speeds) before taking a mandatory break (thhough this might depend on the part of the world, in the EU this at least is standard regulation for so far I know).
The charging you are again missing something imo. From what I gathered these fast charging times are with special charging stations that use something like 1 MW, now the most normal way this likely would work is to have the battery split up in 4 or so packs and charge them simultaneously at around 250kW each. Now for the competition you mention, this is with a regular EV charger I'd pressume, thus if they'd use a similar idea as Tesla, they'd increase their charging speed to very similar amounts imo (maybe 10-20% slower). However there is no network for trucks yet, so they don't incorporate a special charger yet in their designs, so you get lower speeds. The new batteries ofcourse give Tesla some edge in charging for now, but this isn't double of what the competition can do.
Also comparing current EV semi's with the Tesla semi is not correct imo. These trucks already are produced today or will soon be, the Tesla semi likely won't be build in numbers for another 1-2 years due to battery production capabilities. The trucks of the competition are now just regular trucks with parts replaced because they can then quickly start producing them and use the same production line as their regular trucks, reducing costs and development time.
Currently their trucks don't need long range or quick charging times to compete with the Tesla semi, they just need to lay some ground work and start the transition to electric. I wouldn't be surprised if behind the scenes they also have started developing a dedicated semi EV platform to compete within 3-5 years.
Making an electric version of their old truck/car isn't a mistake of these legacy companies, it is a deliberate choice to start the transition to EV's. They can't just flip a switch, they need to do it methodically, creating an EV version of existing ICE models brings for them some serious advantages in production, both to costs, speed to launch and to produce, as well as give them learning experience they can use for their future dedicated EV platform (experience Tesla might already have).
The truck being just like any other also isn't necessarily a bad thing for now, it decreases transition difficulties for the drivers used to regular ICE trucks, especially the older ones who might have more difficulty adapting to a nearly fully digital car. And belief it or not, some people don't like doing everything on a screen, they might prefer physical buttons and switches, even younger generations could prefer a mix, which Tesla does not offer.
We don't know when someone comes out with a breakthrough in batteries again, for all we know a legacy car company or one of their affiliated battery partners comes out within the next 2 years with an even better new battery that will start mass productions in the next few years. And while the new battery is definitely a great improvement it is for now not a complete revolution that will see everyone far behind. And did people knew about the new battery 2 years before? No, they didn't, so we can't know now that there won't be a great improvement by someone else in the next 2 years that will surpass Tesla's battery. Stating that Tesla is ahead in battery tech for years to come is pretty dangerous imo. It could be correct, but it could also be completely wrong
Again yes, this gives them and advantage for now. But don't make the mistake to think that other companies are just sitting idly doing nothing, they likely are pushing for future development or batteries and other things even more since Tesla's battery day announcement. I wonder if it wouldn't have been smarted for Tesla to come out with it untill they actually are close to large scale production and take everyone by surprise.
No way semi's will be allowed to drive autonomously anywhere but on a highway in the next 10-15 years, at best there will always be the need for a driver to be present. The autonomously drafting after a lead truck seems more likely, with the front truck being manned and others not, though even that will need huge certainty it can deal with any situation (for example what if one gets a flat during this drafting train, etc.). And ofcourse it might be easier to learn trucks to draft after a lead vehicle than having full FSD, making it less difficult for other companies to catch up/compete in such a situation.
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@aspiringscientificjournali1505
I really don't remember everything Thunderfoot said in his video, just that there were plenty of things wrong, shortsighted or bad conclusions/links.
There are still quite a few hyperloop companies out there and most of them are keeping their progress quite close to the chest, plenty of thunderfoots problems might already have been addressed inside (some of) these companies.
I don't really see a lack of viability at this moment, everything is technologically perfectly possible. As for costs, that is still to be seen, even things that might costs much now, might be improved on by this companies as we speak.
I don't agree with your last statement at all. While hyperloop companies have seen a lot of funding, I don't think it is anywhere near close enough to build a loftsrom loop and remember, funding doesn't mean expense, a company might have only used 10% (undershooting it on purpose) of their funding for now, leaving the remainder for future projects/development.
The loftsrom loop honestly is much more ambitious than a hyperloop, it is not even close. If the loftsrom loop was seen as truly viable now, it would see plenty of money influx from many different directions and entities, irregardless of hyperloop.
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2% sure, even 2,5% can be reasonable. But above that is not needed if we are just talking defence. Going above that is for creating the ability to be (lets call it) adventurous. Like the US currently is spending +-3,5% and much of that also goes to maintaining their massive fleet and enormous amount of foreign located bases all over the world, something EU doesn't/shouldn't do.
Russian PPP might nearly 300Bn on paper, but PPP is mostly usefull for things like troops and local supply/production. It doesn't quite scale the same when talking about more complex technologies or items using (partially) foreign imports. Things like tanks and planes don't benefit anywhere near as much from PPP as regular troops payment.
Also Russian performance in Ukraine shows that it isn't as much a threat as their PPP numbers might make seem.
Main problem isn't too low spending (targets), but rather too much division and duplicative processes (like working on 2 6th gen European fighter planes at the same time).
Also one of the main reason the US might want to see an increase in spending is that it very likely will go hand in hand with increased procurement spending, which for a large part would likely go into US military companies.
To be blunt, if european nations ever get to 3,5-4% without an insane (competent) build up of Russia or any other direct nearby entity, it wouldn't even need NATO and the US at all to start with (militarily speaking), even at 2,5% the EU should be able to defend itself on its own with no need for US support.
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@martinboskovic1009 "The Russian army is there as a deterrent in case Ucraine invades Donbas."
For that even a 1/10th or max 1/5th of the troopconcentration is necessary. No way Ukraine would try anything with that and if it does that are more than enough troops to stabilize the Donbas front and gather troops for a further invasion of Ukraine.
wars are expensive
You know what is also expensive? Mobilizing so many troops at the Ukrainian border. Sure a war is more expensive, but it isn't like this isn't.
By which standards?
Usually you compare it to a high in recent times, like 2013, when GDP was 800 billion dollars higher, or a drop of 35%. Though to be fair, compared to other European power, the Russian economy on average has taken a similar trend (or better yet, between nations hit hard by the economic crises like Italy and those that recovered, like Germany), and it is more that the 2013 high was unusual. Nevertheless is the the impact of the European sanctions following Crimea's annexation and the Donbas/Luhansk conflict clearly visible. And considering this and the fact that around 20% of Russia's current GDP is dependent on trade with the EU and the US, future heavier sanctions could really cause another great fall in Russia's GDP (and thus spending power for example into its military). If countries like Turkey, Korea and Japan can also be convinced to participate in sanctions (unlikely for the eastern countries, but you never know in case of war), this would be even more problematic.
In the end Russia is always better off if they have friendly relations with the west, or at least Europe, both from an economic and geopolitical aspect, not even conquering Ukraine would trump that. This likely is just a play in internal Russian reasons more than anything else, invading Ukraine would at best be a side effect.
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@lomax34
1. I don't know if the anglo-saxon were more prosperous than the frankish kingdoms (seems rather odd to me, but ok), but your argument is a little light either way. The english isles weren't just being raided, but more invaded. Large parts of the isles were taken. It's one thing to have an enemy on the border ready to invade and another to 'just' expect raiding parties along the coast/rivers. If you could pay the opponent off with money he would take anyway if he won, why not just pay him, he doesn't have to risk his men and you have gotten yourself more time. Ask yourself, would a peasant rather have a little more taxes or raids, plundering and war?
The franks mostly just needed to answer raids and already had a cavalry heritage, especially seeing the vastness of their kingdoms (compared to the rather small kingdoms in england).
2. A fleet is expensive, but also strategically interesting in englands case. It can be used to travel along the coast and rivers and give you the same mobility as your opponent. And as I said earlier, the english kingdoms were rather small but with a large coastline (again in comparison).
3. It's not so much riding on your horse into battle that might get expensive, but possibly losing it in battle and needing to replace it. Horses might have been quite common, but not cheap and properly protecting them with some armour would also become expensive. Also why risk your horse if your enemy is also fighting on foot? And we aren't even talking about tactics, try to make a horse charge into a shieldwall, he won't like it. You could try to use them to outflank, but eventually after one or two times the norseman will be ready for it. Horses could after the battle still be mounted and used to chase of the enemy (if that happened I don't know).
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Paying money would only be something done (in this case) to delay an invasion and to give you some more time to prepare. Ofcourse it probably might get more expensive everytime, but as long as it's doable why not? Also warriors are not cheap either, so if you can get money by just threatening someone and without losing men, you would prefer this above invading, taking maybe a lot more, but also possibly losing a lot of warriors that aren't easily replaced.
You would only then invade if eithe:
1) You wish to actually conquer to rule and not just raid
2) Because the enemy stops paying
3) if you are much stronger than your opponent
4) if the oppenent is becoming too strong for your liking.
Armour was expensive too, but the only reason you have armor is to protect you in a fight, for anything els it's basically a worthless expensive thing. Horses can be used for so much more, fast and easy travel being one of them (and maybe after a lost battle a way to flee).
Cavalry throughout ancient times usually is used as a skirmishing force or to protect you flanks/outflank your opponent. And like I said the norsemen aren't stupid either, they would find a way to deal with flanking cavalry. Heavy cavalry was not used that much, hell in europe heavy cavalry was almost primarily used by the franks (in this period). Infantry is rather effective too if used/trained well. I am quite certain some cavalry might be used to skirmish and protect the flanks, but overall light cavalry (which is what we would speak of in wessex now) isn't usefull against well organised troops that use tactics such as a shieldwall. So again why risk a horse. especially for the less wealthy which would make up most of the fighting force. Even in early medieval france heavy cav would probably number just in the hundreds up to perhaps a bit over 1-2 thousand. Now put France against a small country like wessex where perhaps at most a few hundred could even afford a new horse (while many more could have owned a horse and might have used it to travel, couldn't afford a new one, like farmers using a horse that might perhaps also be used to do work).
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@nigeljohnson9820
How the hell did the EU fail the UK?
Before joining the EU (or eec back then) the UK as underperforming compared to EU members, while inside the EU, the UK outperformed EU members.
And then we have all the special arrangements the UK had. The UK had a dream position in the EU, not all the "burdens"/integration parts, while still having the economic benefits and a a strong voice in the EU (only Germany has a stronger voice, France maybe equal to the UK).
It isn't the EU that failed the UK, it are the UK governments that failed both the UK and the EU.
freedom from the domination of the EU is a price worth paying
How does the EU dominate the UK precisely?
typical EU supporter, shrug and say "don't blame us"
With good reason, the richest place in western europe is london, this while the 9 poorest regions in western europe are in the UK. It seems this is more of an internal problem than an external one (uk governments favoring london's financial service above the rest). Hell, it is the EU that actually send money to improve some of these poor places, instead of the UK.
while a major portion of UK law made in Brussels.
And 95% was voted for by the UK, 3% abstained and 2% voted against and several of the laws that the UK voted against were not even instituted in the UK.
It is just a coincidence that the period of EU membership corresponds to a dramatic decline in UK productive industries.
Yes and no. During this time several european nations saw their production shrink in favor of service work. Some nations (like Germany) choose to support industry, to keep the decline at a minimum or even increase production, while others (like the UK) choose to favor the service markets (london financial services). So this was a domestic policy. However, the EU increased the consequences of this decision. Because people weren't going to buy less, so the lower production in the UK had to be replaced somewhere else, and ofcourse the nations within the EU that support production could easily fill in the gap (thanks to easy cross border trade), causing the UK to focus even more on the service sector.
In the end, it were decision by the UK governments that cause the "collapse" of UK industry, not the EU.
At the very minimum the EU is complicit in the UK goverment's actions.
What? How? In what way? Please explain further.
Outside the EU, the government will have more opportunity to renationalisation in the national interest.
That entirely depends on what party is in power after Brexit. The conservatives would rather privatise more, while labour wants to renationalise certain sectors.
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Empires in itself aren't bad, they can be good things. The real question about whether an empire is good or bad is 1) how did you form it? (for example a marriage or peacefully coming together like the EU vs conquest and force) and 2) how do you govern/use it (do you exploit regions, do you treat the people inside badly, do you threaten/harm other countries in an unjust way vs providing stability, helping and improving the lives of your citizens, no divisions based on race, ...).
But besides this, most empires in the past weren't black or white, they had both positive/good and negative/evil traits, consequences, etc. The roman empire for example expanded in a harsh and "evil" way, had bad practices like slavery, ..., but they also spread knowledge, brought reasonable stability, increased the living standards of many people in it, ...
So honestly, I am a bit dissapointed you seemed to just portray empires as evil.
For example an EU that would form diplomatically and then use its power to the benefit of all its citizens, to prevent conflicts or end them, to increase stability and cooperation, ... could possible be an example of a good empire.
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@gordonsmith8899
Once you start that game of re-runs you open the door to all sorts of problems.
Not if you make the next referendum legally binding and make sure that the outcome will be followed and a new referendum can't be called in at least 155 year or something. The problem is that leave is rather afraid for another referendum, the last time they won with a very slim majority and after the mess that brexit has become for now, it might have switched to remain. Especially if you give people the chance to have more control over the outcome (ranked choice), because people voting for leave with a deal might choose remain as second choice above a no deal.
The referendum resulted in a majority opting for the UK leaving the EU.
A very slim majority. A referendum change requires 2/3rd of votes in most parliaments, it would in my eyes have been better if 55% was needed to win, and less than that should be followed by a second referendum a few years later or so after the winning side prepared everything (or at least that if leave won with less than 55% a referendum on the leave option should have been held before leaving).
In the following three years we have been faced by an EU determined to frustrate us leaving by offering us a 'deal' that would deny is a vote whilst still having to pay an "EU membership fee"
Where do you get this from? The 39 billion pound is basically a debt made up of already made commitments, its like you went to a bussiness, made a contract to invest in it, the bussiness created its plans based on this (and already paid things) and suddenly you decide you want to get out of the deal and want to take the money with you.
The UK could have never gotten a better deal than being inside the EU, that was a certainty. At best you'd get some kind of Canada+ deal if you wanted to be really out, and you basically still can with this deal. The problem is the irish border, even with a Canada+ deal, checkpoints are still needed.
The EU just can't offer a better withdrawal deal at this point without endangering the entire future of the EU.
Boris Johnson's request for negotiations to be re-opened was turned down by the EU.
The EU was clear for several months now, renegotiating the withdrawal deal that already took 2 years of heavy negotiating was impossible, the EU couldn't give anymore, despite what the UK might thing. And in the current deal the backstop would dissapear if there was a good solution for the irish border, Jonhson proposed non, so there is nothing to negotiate on. This isn't the EU being unwilling, it's the UK expecting too much from the EU (which it just can't give) and not having its bussiness in order during and after the negotiation of the deal.
Now the EU is moaning that we are being undemocratic by breaking the deadlock.
But you are, you are breaking the deadlock (or trying to at least), by going around parliament. There was at least one legal democratic option that wasn't tried before this: a GE. And if this failed, clearly it is the british publics divisions on brexit that is problematic.
Democracy:
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
or
control of an organization or group by the majority of its members.
Seeing these definitions, how can it be democratic to suspend parliament in order to push brexit through? If this is the way you want a no deal to be pushed through, fine, but at least be honest about it and admit it isn't democratic. If the referendum was binding, it would be democratic (there would be no counterargument and no problems except on how to leave), but it wasn't and the way this is being done is undemocratic.
Just think about this. What if the next government can somehow rejoin the EU without any problems in a few days (hypothetically) and prorogues parliament to do this, would you consider this democratic.
What if a government prorogues parliament for three year? Because this is the legally established time a parliament must come together (at least once every 3 years). It would be perfectly legal, but would it be democratic? Ofcourse not.
In the end it comes down to this: there is a majority to leave, there is no majority to leave with no deal (and I am not just speaking about parliament).
And I wouldn't be surprised if this move will cause Jonhsons government to fall, that a general election will be triggered (after a care-taker government tried to get an extension), the tories lose and eventually independence in Scotland gains a majority. I fear the UK will break up over this, seeing how Scotland voted in the previous referenda.
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@gordonsmith8899 No, it is not legally binding, it was only advisory. And a badly created advisory referendum for that, because it left too much room for interpretation. For example the blockage in parliament isn't brexiteers vs remainers, since remainers have a minority of the seats, be it a slight minority. The division in parliament brexiteers vs remainers almost perfectly represents the referendum (which is both ironically and maybe logical), however while in the referendum there was no division between no deal and a deal, soft or hard, there is one in parliament. And honestly this is where the original referendum is a failure and why there is a deadlock in parliament: no deal vs deal. After all, as long as article 50 isn't revoked, you can't say the MP's (especially those that identify as brexiteer) have failed or betrayed the vote. Even with a second referendum they actually wouldn't betray the vote, because according to the previous referendum, leave would win.
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@gordonsmith8899
The Question was do we want to be in or out of the EU.
Indeed, however it didn't ask HOW. Because of this parliament is in a deadlock eventhough there are more brexiteers than remainers.
Question: Would you be 'marketing' the same argument if the referendum had been a "Yes" to remain?
Yes and no. If you ask whether I'd accept a second referendum is the results were just reversed, yes because the difference was very slim. If you ask whether I at that point would be saying that there was too much rool for interpretation, than probably no, because there is basically just one option if remain had won => status quo, nothing changes.
That is the problem with this referendum, a choice for remain was unambiguous because everything would have just stayed how it was. However leaving can be achieved in multiple ways (with a deal and what this deal should look like and no deal). This last thing is causing the problems in the UK parliament now.
If they had asked a second question like "if leave wins, how do you want us to leave" it would already have been better, the best option however would have been ranked choice.
The 'deadlock' has been created by the EU - Brussels does not want to lose our huge financial contribution.
That statement is just stupid, the UK can leave whenever they want, the problem is the deadlock in parliament where brexiteers are to blame for.
That has been obvious from the opening day of the negotiations when the EU wanted us to sign an open cheque.
Do you people still don't know what the withdrawal payment is? It is basically like paying an outstanding debt.
It is like we planned to start a bussiness together and even made a contract stating our initial contributions for it. Then suddenly I want out after you already signed for a building. Now, should I pay you the share we had agreed it for, or should I let you sit there with an enormous amount of unforseen debt?
This is ofcourse simplified, but is should get the point across. The EU didn't just made up a number, it determined this amount based on commitments the UK made to the EU and the EU to the UK.
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@gordonsmith8899
Juncker actually advised Cameron to ignore the result
Can you give me you source for this?
Your suggest that the electorate should have been asked 'how' we were to leave is nonsense as the electorate (as such) has no knowledge in depth.
You can say the same about the entire referendum. In fact this is why government are formed of parliaments, elected officials. And you can just as well use this argument in favor of parliament now. They know better the impact a no deal will have, etc.
Chaos and delay has been the result of the 'losers' refusing to accept the referendum result.
Are you really that surprised that remainers will stick with remain if 48.1% of the vote. Would leave have given up with this result? Ofcourse not, the referendum result was too close for anyone to suddenly just change their side. Had leave won with for example 55%, things would be enormously different.
Are you suggesting that in a parliament comprising of a majority of Brexiteers, there would have been this degree of deadlock?
Brexiteers HAVE a majority in parliament, the problem is part of them want a (very) hard brexit (the ERG, DUP) and other want a brexit with a deal (moderate conservatives). The ERG and DUP voted against the presented deal (while it would have passed with DUP and ERG support), and now some of the moderates will (try to) stop a no deal. The problem is therefore not with remainers who hold a minority, but with the brexiteers who can't agree.
EU has already introduced 'rules' that would make it even more difficult for a member state to leave.
What kind of rules? Because for so far I know, the UK can leave the moment it has made up its mind. The EU can't stop any nation that wishes to leave, only division within that nation can stop that nation from leaving. The UK could leave tomorrow with no deal if parliament votes for it.
The EU's opening gambit was a demand for a guarantee that the UK would pay a "severance fee"
Like I said before, the "severance fee" consists of commitments the UK made BEFORE the referendum and the triggering of article 50. It is in essence outstanding debt (part of it for example is for pensions of UK officials who worked for the EU). This isn't just something they made up at that time.
If Scotland leaves the UK, would the UK just take on Scottisch debt and/or let them get out of previous financial arrangements for no reason even though this would mean extra costs for the UK? No, ofcourse not. It would not be up to the UK to be "nice", only practical and defend their interests.
the actual figure went up and down like a yo-yo
This was before the actual figure was looked into by the EU and UK negotiators, while people where still just talking about it in general without actually looking deep into it.
As someone pointed out at the time it was like asking someone leaving a golf club to promise to pay for facilities not yet built, and the use of which he would be denied
More like someone promised to help pay/invest for new facilities that would be built and then afterwards decided to leave, leaving the golfclub with the bill and unforseen debt.
How can you claim the figure has been carefully worked out
How can I claim this? Research it, it is basically just looking at the books and working out how much the UK still needs to give the UK and vice versa.
You're also avoiding the question of whether the EU should buy-out the UK's investment in EU real estate.
No, didn't because you never asked a question about that. And this is already taken into account in the divorce bill. It accounts for a few billion. If you are surprised it is so low, remember we are talking about just office buildings (or the like) and the costs were divided over many nations, among which other large nations.
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@gordonsmith8899
Juncker's comment was made in the immediate aftermath of the referendum result.
I didn't ask when, it's obvious it was immediately afterwards. I asked for a source.
Your suggestion that the electorate should be asked to make decisions on complicated issues is unrealistic.
I never said that they should, that that's why government exists with elected representatives. I might have said that if you do have a referendum, either you give enough detailed choices or you must accept parliaments interpretation of it. Which is what has caused the current problems.
As in a General Election we are given clear policy objectives.
I agree and based on that, we have a majority brexiteers, who are divided in the way forward and a minority remain, who can't stop brexit at this point.
The current chaos is being orchestrated by a determined group of parliamentary 'remainers' who cannot accept the fact that we will be leaving the EU at the end of next month.
Again look at the goddamn composition of the parliament, the remainers are a minority, so the only way they can stop the UK from leaving is if they get brexiteers support. Which might happen if they continue on the no deal path. And if all brexiteer MP's didn't want another extension, there would be no more extension, period.
I am really getting tired you keep blaming remainers in parliament while they can't stop anything without brexiteers. And if they get support from brexiteers, clearly the problem is in the brexiteer camp.
The EU has 'tightened' the exit procedure.
This is not an answer on "What kind of rules?", this is just a repeat of what you already said. I want to know what they specifically did to 'tighten' the exit procedure.
As for the UK being free to leave whenever it pleases - are you suggesting a one 'take-it-or-leave-it deal wasn't designed to make a 'clean' exit impossible? If the EU was so eager to see the back of us why throw in bull shit such as the Irish backstop?
First thing first. The backstop was a british idea because they couldn't find a solution for the irish border problem. The backstop is now only kept in place by the EU, because the UK still doesn't have a realistic solution to the Irish border.
Secondly the UK can crash out the EU without a deal whenever it wants at this stage, because the 2 years are up. The problem is, there is no majority in parliament for a no deal brexit. That is not the EU's fault, but a problem of the british government itself.
Thirdly, the "take-it-or-leave-it deal" as you call it, was negotiated for 2 years, by both the UK and the EU. That the UK government didn't work closely together with parliament in this and has reaped the problems of that failure to work together.
The EU isnt' going to re-open negotiations because the only reason the UK wants to re-open them is to get a better deal for the UK (obviously) but without having any real plan as to how. They want the backstop removed but don't have an alternative, they want the divorce settlement lowered or removed but again don't have anything to offer in return. Basically the UK has still no real plan except trying to 'cherry pick' what they want. Ofcourse the EU is then not going to re-open the negotiations, possibly for years, without anything changing.
The fact that Johnson thinks he can negotiate a better deal in a few days/weeks is laughable. Just negotiating individual points took so long previous time. And that was when the EU and UK actually tried to work together to an outcome that is agreeable for both, johnson doesn't, the only thing he has is no deal.
There are electronic methods that are capable of monitoring cross (open) border movement of goods - the EU has reserved the right to veto every suggestion made so far.
Because this is never succesfully used (not in the way it should be used at the Irish border) and even if it might work, it would take many years to set it up. That is exactly why the backstop is there. So that if a proposed solution doesn't work as intended, there is a fallback system.
If brexiteers truly believed this could work, they'd accept the deal, the backstop would be implemented, then this electronic system is rolled out, tested and if succesfull, the back stop is removed. The reason they don't accept this deal (with a temporary backstop) is because they know they are full of shit because this system will not work, but is only an excuse to being able to blame the EU.
*The question of money was the first issue that the EU wanted "guarantees" on before negotiations could be started. That stalemate continued for weeks because the UK refused to sign an open cheque. The sum demanded fluctuated all over the place *
Ofcourse it was the first point, something had to be be, why would you negotiate other points if you might not get out of this one. And other points also caused a stalemate for weeks, like the irish border.
The sum fluctuated all over the place, because they were still negotiating over it. More specifically over what financial commitments the UK and EU made to eachother, which ones should be wiped of the board and which ones should be payed, ...
Should Scotland leave the Union, the chances are Scottish debt would be written off as a gesture of goodwill.
I doubt that, but I guess we'll see. Ofcourse you are now saying it would be, you are arguing against the backstop and you are not the one that would take care of this debt. So, I guess this will remain a difference of opinion in either perpetuity or it will be shown who was right in a few years.
Paying for facilities - you must be aware that the EU is leaking money like a sieve - corruption is rife and the Commission has admitted it is too deeply entrenched to clean up.
I am in no way a fan of the current commission system or how they spend the money, I believe in the EU idea, not the current system. However I believe that the UK would either way be one of the nations who would stop the necessary reforms (or try to get reforms in the wrong direction), so personally I am glad the UK will be leaving. I believed the previous/current commission reduced some red tape and unnecessary expenses this term, but I don't know of they did and if so by how much.
The only sensible response to the loss of the UK's contribution is to cut back on spending commitments
Actually talks like this have already been done. One of the suggestions is to reform the agricultural spending/policy. But as long as the UK is in, they can't do this yet.
sadly the Commissioners believe they're the spiritual heirs of Louis XIV.
A bit too critical I think here, if they did, it would be even more obvious. They are more like most politicians with power. Although I also have to add, the EU budget is also under jurisdiction of the EU parliament, so it isn't like the commission can just spend as it pleases.
I'll ask you now, shouldn't the EU be putting in a bit to buy out the UK's share of common holdings?
I said they already have in the divorce bill, if they didnt it would be around 6 billion euro higher.
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@bobbysbits2575 It probably is. It might be due to stringest criteria for their tally (like not too old, operational, at the frontline, ...).
Ofcourse we know that they already lost something like 2000 tanks at minimum (verified losses) and likely more since the start (maybe up to 2500?). Considering they started with around 3000 operational tanks in their total army (definitely not all send to Ukraine), they could actually have very low amount of operational tanks in Ukraine, it all depends on how many they've since then put back into service from their storage, new tanks produced, how many tanks are also out for maintenance/repairs, ...
So while it likely is an underestimation, it also might be close to reality for all we know.
If we trust Russian sources, they push out around 1500 new tanks/reactivated from storage out in a year time. That together with the 3000 tanks at the start would make 4500 tanks. Let's assume that they keep 1000-1500 in reserve outside of Ukraine in case they are needed elsewhere and you get 3000-3500 tanks. Assume 2500 have been taken out since beginning of the war and you get 500-1000 tanks. Then you also can assume quite some tanks are out for maintenance or repairs and you might get something like 300-800 operational tanks.
Ofcourse these numbers are only crude estimates, they for example might be willing to keep a lot less in reserve. But you get how they actually could have a much lower amount of actual operational tanks in Ukraine than most would expect.
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@MSD Group Bush didn't even oversee NATO expansion to the east, so I don't see how he didn't keep his words. And later presidents are not beholden to any promise of an earlier president if it isn't set in an agreement (even then a president can step out of that agreement whenever they want, nullifying it, though that goes with a diplomatic hit and so many other potential consequences, so it rarely happens).
Moreover I'll trust Gorbachev, you know the president of the USSR when this promise was supposedly made, when he says that no such promise was made rather than Cohen, someone who got everything second hand (or with even more people inbetween). Cohen first mentioned this broken promise in 2006, so after Russia started bringing out this narrative of a broken promise.
Baker's statements of 'not one inch to the east' where entirely about NATO's presence in Germany, since that was the deal they were negotiating on: the reunification of Germany. And in that agreement an exclusion zone was stipulated in which there would be no NATO bases/troops: the former eastern german republic. At that moment the warsaw pact still existed, so an Eastern NATO expansion at that moment wasn't even considered a possibility.
Most historians came to the conclusion that there never was a promise or agreement over expansion of NATO into eastern Europe, but that sometimes Russia might have wrongly perceived US communication in the 90's (not 1990, then it was clear it was only about Germany), this due to the US supporting NATO expansion but also trying to create new good relations with Russia, causing some mishaps in communications/policy, it didn't help that US itself wasn't sure about what direction to finally take, but never has the US promised not to expand NATO into eastern Europe.
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@mattayele1906 you can not just discredit the financial situations the US is in
Yes and no. This economic situation was always coming. The US has the idea that because they have the worlds currency, they can get away with this a lot more and that is at least partially true. Also on polling Americans consistently have a majority of people who say the US military has the correct funding or needs more, so cuts into it are unlikely. So at worst the US government needs to get a bit more creative in supporting Ukraine with funding from the military budget. Also again the amount of support the US is giving Ukraine is pretty low, so doesn't really impact the economic situation in the US in any meaningfull amount.
record level of inflation rates, high levels of everything
Which was mainly caused by the high gas and oil prices, these have now dropped and inflation levels are normally going to come down again this year to more normal levels, apparently even expected to dip really low (around 1.5%) somewhere at the and of this year to than pick up to the normal 2-3%. So by US elections, inflation will have normalised.
and the US debt was $3 trillion at the start of the afgan war and $2.4 trillion in 1992 at the gulf war
True, overall US debt/GDP spiked twice: the 2008 economic crisis and the covid crisis. As long as support for Ukraine isn't going to up this by any meaninfull amount, the US government will see it as a good way to weaken a rival (potentially for good). I also doubt the average American is going to think a lot about this.
and i think to defeat Russia it will const a lot more (possibly a lot longer) than the afgan war.
Except there is a huge difference in the fact that it isn't the US fighting a war on the other side of the war, just aidding an 'ally', as part of a bigger alliance. The US isn't going to need to spend anywhere close to the Afghanistan amounts to support Ukraine in defeating or at least significantly bleeding Russian forces.
The operational cost for 1 US soldier in Afghanistan was really high, between 400-1000k dollar per year This isn't something the US needs to care about for Ukraine, for Ukraine we are likely talking about a fraction of this. The US only needs to provide some equipment, training and information/intelligence and that as part of a much larger aid alliance.
but now if trump comes he can stop Ukraine support overnight.
Theoretically yes, but he'll have to make sure he has the support to do that. As it stands support for Ukraine is still strongly represented in congress in both parties. And even if this is the case, we are talking about something almost 2 years away. If it seems that this is how Trump will go, the current government could sanction a huge suppport package for Ukraine to arrive right before Trump (or rather another anti-war president) takes office, blunting any impact he/she will have for some time.
if someone comes along and says "America first" i wanne give you that $1.5 billion and "build the wall" rather than send it to Ukraine, i think people with go with that.
You think the US stopped with military operations under Trump? It certainly didn't. And $1.5b is quite low in the context of the wall cost.
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@jend5271
why would they continue to waste money on a war they can never win?
Who says Ukraine can never win? It was expected it would fall in weeks or even days and a year later not only are they still holding out strong, but they've retaken quite some territory too.
It all comes down to numbers. N in the end Russia just has more.
Even if it all comes down to numbers (it isn't, inferior forces have defeated superior forces quite often throughout time), stating Russia has more is just bullshit. Yes, theoretically Russia has more. More population, more tanks, more artillery, planes, ...
However its manpower pool is limited compared to Ukraine due to it being an attacker in an unnecessary war.
The amount of tanks is much lower than claimed, and Russia is losing tanks quite fast thanks to anti-tank systems from the west (which are much cheaper and easier to produce than those tanks).
Regarding artillery, Russia is currenlty using up its soviet stockpiles, once that is finished, it isn't entirely certain its new production can keep up with use, since they like almost everyone else too have cut back on production of things like this in the last 2-3 decades. As for the actual artillery systems, barrels do need maintenance overtime and the question again is how well Russia can keep up with it using artillery at this rate.
Russia has a lot more planes and missiles, but it cant really use it effectively. It's airforce is kept at bay by airdefense systems and missiles stocks are getting depleted for little to no gain.
Next to this one of the most important numbers is funding, here Ukraine is much better than Russia thanks to western support.
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@mattayele1906 No, most military equipment that is so far being send to Ukraine is from existing stockpile. I did read that US tanks might be newly produced items due to taking out certain state of the art things, but this might also be talking about reserve tanks needing a slight overhaul, not sure about that one.
all countries are saying they are low in the weapons stock and they needbto kick up manufacturing.
That is mostly for ammunition, and ofcourse most nations don't have production going for a prolongued war, if they send equipment that was in active use, they will need to replace it obviously. But this also goes for Russia, it too can't keep up with losses for much of their equipment/weapons.
inflation=interest rates
And like said, inflation is going back down to normal levels. More than a third of US debt is owned by US government institutions itself too.
Also a lot of debt isn't necessarily in variable interest rates, rather more static, which means for most of the debt interest rates are not likely to soar with inflation. New debt aqcuired this year might be at that higher interest rate due to inflation, but if that is only for one year, we are talking about something like $1.38T new debt this year and assuming an interest of 10%, that would make $138B in interest on top of lets say $660B, so $798B. Not even close to the crazy amount of your $2.79T.
sending $100s of billions to Ukraine every month
Who is talking about $100s of billions a month? The total US aid for Ukraine for the entire war (start to january) was only around $80B, that would make something like $6.5B/month, peanuts for the US and will definitely not have an impact on the everyday live of average Americans.
Ukraine needs $5 billion every monthly to run the gov, not excluding anything to do with the war
Which is the main thing the aid is given for, ie supporting Ukraine in the war/defence? So why act like this is only a tiny part of the equation?
Trump almost pulled out of NATO in 2019 he said" America first", time is not in Ukraine side.
There is a whole lot different between Trump threatening to pull out of NATO because of perceived injustice in members funding and something else entirely to abandon a friendly nation to a long held rival, especially when the needed financial aid is very small in comparison to what the US 'gains'. Quite a lot of Trumps decisions (or the shown intention) have been stopped because of what his advisors told him, definitely in regards to the military.
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@terron7840
The roman empire didn't collapse due to diversity, there just were a lot of people profiting from it being weakened by many other factors. Most important factors were economic troubles, civil wars for power, pressure from outside the empire, ...
The USSR also didn't fail due to diversity, rather the problem was that it couldn't keep up with the western world in terms of economy and socially. It mostly was the economic factor. Also the USSR isn't a good example to use. Most of it started fracturing in nations that were only under their control for a few decades.
The austria-hungarian empire definitely wasn't helped by its multicultural nature, but in the end it was economic problems caused by WW1, its bad action in the war and Wilson who refused to allow Austria-hungary to remain united that really caused the collapse. There were (possible) plans to make the slavs the third entity in the empire (like hungary), but there never was time for it to materialize.
The Ottoman empire is also a great example of how diversity at the end causes an empire to rupture. However it wasn't the diversity that actually started it to weaken, the diversity became a negative after it weakened and showed this weakness. Hell, the ottoman empire didn't collapse completely untill world war one when it was carved up by the entente.
The thing is that empires are made up of several different cultures/people, if that isn't the case they aren't really empires to begin with. Now, you could say the US might be an exception (if you want to call it an empire), but that is because it was created by people that mostly come from one culture group and even in the US there are distinctions between the regions. They have an overall culture and then different subcultures. In the end all large empires were diverse and eventually all empires fall. It is easy to just point to diversity, but that is much much too simplified.
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If we expect it to be similar adjusted for PPP, then for lets say 700billion it would be 3,25% for the EU, 3,09% for the US and 2,63% for China. Ofcourse this is the case now, how it is in like 10 years is depends on the gap growth in GDP and PPP changes. It for example isn't unlikely China will move closer to the west in terms of PPP overtime as prosperity in China increases.
It definitely is unlikely to be as big a difference as 1,7% vs 3,6%, because then there should be a difference in budget in favor of the US, even accounting for PPP.
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@bademoxy I don't know Ontario's green plan, so without more information I can't comment on it, but costing 8 times more than nuclear is ridiculous, either you are using way too cheap numbers for nuclear or Ontario must have started the transition really hard several years ago when renewables were still much more expensive.
After looking into it, it indeed looks like Ontario was just really early. By 2015 they had 9% renewable, by 2018 10%, 7% being wind. Now lets look at how the prices evolved, in 2009 (when Ontario launched the GEA) wind LCOE was around 135$/MWh, for solar 359$/MWh. In 2015 it was 55$/MWh and 64$/MWh respectively and in 2018 42$/MWh and 43$/MWh (large installations and for solar prices might be higher in Ontario). Considering this Ontario just installed "a lot" of renewables at a time when its prices was still very high. And the installed capacity isn't becoming cheaper overtime, only newly installed capacity. So all the renewables installed before 2015 will remain costly for their +-25 year lifespan, at best being drowned out by more cheaper generation in the coming years.
As for nuclear, which prices did you use? Those from the old powerplants or actual new figures?
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@jcmazrizona No, the infrastructure isn't far far away, the only thing really missing is storage, which by 2030 is expected to be cheap enough for renewable+storage to be competitive with most other generation methods. As for nuclear, that has over time only increased in cost, current new nuclear plants in the west are rated at something like 60-70$/MWh when construction finishes, while renewables are rated at around 40$/MWh (large scale) and still falling, though much slower now than in the past years, probably going to truly flatten out at around 10-25$/MWh by 2040.
Now, overal system costs for renewables are still more expensive once you get to more than +-25-30% renewable, but that is between 25-100% more, definitely doable to get down enough by 2030-2035
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@Froudd I don't really see how hydrogen is more scalable then batteries. If you add more storage tanks without increasing the electrolyser and fuel cell capacity, you just add more storage hours/time. That might be fine, but only up to a certain point for day to day operations. At that point you'll go into long term storage, which might not be what they'd need, thus they'd also need to increase their electrolyser and fuel cell capacity too if they want more than just storage time.
Yes, hydrogen is a storage medium, as are batteries. Batteries however tend to be much more efficient than hydrogen storage. Usually the main advantage argued for hydrogen is the 'easy' and fast transferance between storage options, completely irrelevant in a static storage project.
Hydrogen can have its place in the future, though more for things like shipping, aircrafts, ... niche sectors. Long term storage might also be an option, but then it will essentially come down to what is most efficient cost wise: overproduction during times of the year with enough capacity for any weekly/daily operation or storing something like hydrogen for weeks or even months, essentially letting it sit there doing nothing but cost money during that time.
And it is not like there is only one battery type out there, there are plenty of batteries coming up exactly to deal with grid storage. Personally I'd expect it to become more between what kind of battery, rather than battery vs hydrogen.
As for size, I honestly don't think that hydrogen storage would be much smaller than something like liquid-air storage and batteries (depending on the kind) might be the most size effective really, since you can also just stack them up high. Batteries are quite good volume density wise, just not mass density wise.
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@sc3304 That is true and is also abhorrent, but this doesn't really influence the Saudi's. And the US also has the 5th highest incarceration rate (4-5x that of the EU) after countries like El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda and Turkmenistan, for a total of around 1,7 million people. It isn't entirely the same obviously, but China also doesn't try as much as the US to claim the moral highground and as clearly shown by their support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, they are willing to drop pretty much all pretenses etc if it suites them.
In the end for the Saudi's it is choosing between China, Russia or the US, neither of them fantastic choices, thus overall they might be smart to just cozy up to all three and see who eventually to side with when necessary.
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I think you give Cameron's choice too much honor. Cameron didn't initiate the brexit vote because he realised that it entails more than the parliament could decide (there wasn't a decision necessary really, because there was no real issue and parliament has made a lot of other important decisions throughout history), but he rather saw it as a way to shut up the parts of the tories that were leaning to Ukip and anti-EU. He never really thought the people would vote to leave (no one did, not even the leave campaign thought they could win, but they hoped they could manage it nevertheless).
Ofcourse they aren't going to put "Do you think we should start thinking about, talking about, or considering, leaving the EU." on the ballot, the entire campaign was meant to consider and talk about leaving or not. It would have been the most ridiculous and stupid referendum ever.
The difference between manifesto mandate and referendum mandate, is that a manifesto mandate never asks the electorate a question.
The general election is in my eyes more important, because you basically elect the people that will make a lot of decisions that can influence your live, not just one.
The people responded in record numbers. That is called a mandate.
And what if in another referendum you have a record number of voters and remain wins? Doesn't this give a stronger mandate to overturn the previous mandate? That is the problem with referendums, if the difference is too small, within a few years, the mandate can be invalid and different and because of the "the referendum needs to be followed, another referendum is undemocratic" bullshit you can't ask a mandate to overturn the previous one, even if you'd probably get one.
Now if Leave won by 55%+, it would be different, because how is that going to be overturned in another referendum in a matter of years?
It is the manifesto mandate that is an advisory
No it is not, an elected MP can't be voted out untill the next election and untill then their vote has legal authority and definitely isn't advisory. If a referendum was the legal mandate and the election an advisory one, you'd need a referendum on basically every little thing. Every month there would be multiple referendums. However there is no set time between a referendum about a previous referendum and the previous referendum. Besides, if the outcome would be same, what's the harm? Similar outcomes in both referendums: case closed and decision undoubtably made, but if the previous referendum is overturned with either 1) a much larger majority or 2) a much larger voter turnout, the previous referendum should be overturned.
There is a reason why referendums are so rare: it's inefficient governing because people are fickle and often don't even know the far reaching consequences of their vote.
If Parliament has the power to overturn the power of the vote, then we have an Oligarchy, not a Democracy.
If there isn't a general election between the referendum and the overturning, it would be foggy whether it be democratic. However if the parliament that overturns the vote is elected after the referendum, you could make the case that the people have voted in a parliament that is meant to overturn it (or at the very least offer another referendum) because people made a mistake/changed their minds, or at the very least that people took the risk of voting in people that might overturn the vote and therefor it is a risk they took willingly.
If there is evidence of election fraude (be it in the campaign or voting booth) or the vote was really close there definitely is a reason to hold another referendum.
In the end your entire post basically comes down to the fact that parliament should be disbanded (seeing that they apparently have no right to make decisions about the nations future) and the UK should only be ruled with referendums. Or am I wrong?
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stupid take that is caused by your bias. He doesn't admit treating his employees bad or whatever. He only speaks of the fact that without the success of Amazon (which is obviously only possible with employees and costumers) he wouldn't have had money/wealth to fund Blue Origin. He could say the exact same thing even if Amazon workers were treated great.
Every new company/organisation is founded or grown by money that come from employees work and/or other ventures, be it profit from other companies, stocks of companies that have grown, taxes payed to the government, ... If you don't realize this, honestly you are going too far into the woke society.
And you should stop using this wealth growth to look at payed taxes. Do these billionaires pay too little taxes and use loopholes to pay even less in taxes? Yes. However using wealth growth is not a good metric. The rise of stocks for example will contribute to their wealth growth, however they can't do anything with their wealth in stocks untill they sell it, which is when they should pay taxes on them, however these kind of tax avoidance articles generally don't take this into account. It is like saying a vase in someone's house suddenly is worth 100k instead of 1k, you'd see your wealth increase by 99k, but you won't pay taxes on it as long as you don't sell that vase, since it is virtual wealth, not cash in hand if you will. Or even better, someone's house goes up in value from 100k to 300k, you don't pay taxes on this increase in value untill you actually sell the house.
Also he went to space to proof the rocket is safe to use for space tourism. And before you wish to claim it is polluting more, the fuel used is hydrogen and oxygen, which creates water vapor, no other pollutants. And it isn't jsut meant for billionaires, millionaires? Yes, for now only for millionaires, but overtime the costs can go down so even regular people might be able to use it (though it will likely never become really cheap in our lifetime).
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@istvanglock7445
Yes, but these "answers" were purely token slaps on the wrist
Russia lost around 45% of their GDP in the years after sanctions for the Crimean annexation were introduced, hardly a slap on the wrist. Currently they only reason there economy isn't completely going down the drain is the influx of money from gas and oil exports to Europe being used to artificially keep the economy up. The EU already is going to phase out Russian oil by the end of this year and plans to move away from Russian gas as soon as possible. Next to that the EU and US have supported Ukraine with billions of dollar in financial and military aid.
Calling all this 'token slaps on the wrist' just shows you have no idea of what actually was done. It isn't that the West/EU isn't doing anything, rather Russian leadership just doesn't seem to give a shit, underestimated what would be done and are now forced to see things through to the end.
which Russia would have regarded as a price well worth paying - which is why it continued
At this moment Russian leadership has little to gain pulling back from Ukraine. The hardest sanctions are essentially going to remain, namely Europe moving away from Russian gas and oil in the next year(s). Moreover European nations are still going to spend more on defence, NATO will still be strengthened and Ukraine will still be supported by the west. Next to that Russia already has lost a lot of military equipment and troops and getting out without gaining anything is thus a net loss for Russia, they don't get any benefit from it, while having suffered all this losses for nothing. And then we are not even talking about the fact that such a loss could destabilize Putins support with the Russian people.
If anything earlier sanctions were too effective, they forced Russia to become already less connected to the EU and they have not much more to lose with the current ones.
Short of getting directly militarily involved, which likely would just escalate things causing more casualties, the west has no real options left to push Russia to a peace agreement/witdrawal, short of helping Ukraine make the invasion too costly on the ground.
Appeasement is when the cost you inflict is less than the benefit the aggressor receives.
That is completely wrong, in that case you could say that even going to war with Russia could be appeasement if they think they'd gain more from it than they'd lose, which is obviously ridiculous.
Appeasement in an international context is a diplomatic policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict. The opposite of what the EU and US have done, since instead of giving concessions (like withdrawing nato from Eastern Europe), they have only doubled down on NATO presence in that regions and have instituted some of the harshest sanctions on such a large nation in decades, maybe even since before WW2.
Until this war, the west has never inflicted serious costs on Russia in response to its aggression.
Losing half of your economy and going to lose another 1/4-1/3 of the remainder in the next years is hardly a non-serious cost. Like in that case Russia could have lost up to 60% of their economy since 2014, that is massive.
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@DomR1997
and some easily circumvented trade sanctions that had no real impact on Russia's continued aggression.
These aren't actually easily circumvented and the Russian government has to push billions upon billions into the economy to just keep it artificially stable, that is money that doesn't go to for example the military. Russia also had to stop production on quite some of their weapons production since they lack the parts due to the sanctions (for example their tanks production is completely shutdown according to reports). If you think the current sanctions are weak, you don't know a single thing about it.
Russian leadership just don't care about the sanctions since they are still pretty well off with what they have within Russia and accepting a loss in Ukraine would put them in a much worse position with the Russian people. Russia is hurting, badly, they just had prepared quite some financial reserves to be able to last a bit despite the sanctions. The west even froze half of these reserves, worth a total of more than 300 billion dollar, 1/3 of the entire yearly GDP of the Russian economy.
I remember the allies also giving Hitler a stern talking to and imposing trade sanctions on Germany though
Actually they didn't. They accepted Hitlers annexation of Austria, Sudetenland, ... Only once he kept going did they start to slowly go against him. Currently the west hasn't recognised any of the Russian annexations and has impose sanctions of such a severity that no one expected them would do so.
it's that the west's approach was as effective as appeasement in ww2.
Except that is complete bullocks. If Hitler stopped with the sudetenland and Austria, Germany could have kept these lands without any sanctions and negative consequences due to the appeasement policy. The sanctions after the Crimean annexation caused Russia to stop its modernisation of its armed forces, which likely helped out Ukraine currently. Moreover it caused the Russian economy to weaken. More than likely without these sanctions Russia would have gone into Ukraine years ago, not long after the annexation of Crimea. At that moment Ukraine's army was much weaker than it is now and Russia might have been able to take Ukraine in a much shorter time. However the sanctions back then showed Russia that the west was willing to impose hard sanctions and they needed to take time to create a high amount of currency reserve funds to withstand worse future sanctions with the coming conflict.
Moreover even if Russia is (semi-)successfull in Ukraine, the sanctions essentially hamstrung their future. They will have to reduce the military budget after their military already was hit hard, they can't keep their economy artificially stable for long, likely causing internal problems, .... In the end they won't be able to keep Ukraine or a large part of it occupied at all. Hitler on the other hand saw the Germany economy increase and also its potential military increase, the opposite of what is the case for Russia now.
Whether you like it or not, there are no sanctions the west can impose on Russia that will stop the war in Ukraine on the shortterm. If the west wants to do more than they do now, it would be sending in military troops, but this would be essentially a declaration of war in Russia's eyes and is more likely to spark WW3 and having Russia use tactical nukes against ukraine, thus a big escalation, rather than ending the war.
What do you think the west could currently do to force Russia to stop the war?
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Solar roof panels should require little to any maintenance beyond just cleaning it once in a while, which usually is just up to the home owner, and regular roof maintenance. If you only need to pay 10c/kWh, you have indeed very cheap mains electricity, though this seems to be the case for most of the US (except NE and pacific region). Where I live (Europe, Belgium) it is around 25-28c/kWh for residential and around 12-15c/kWh, which gives a completely different dynamic.
Then again in some US regions (or US as a whole, I don't know), brown-/black-outs seem to be happen more frequently than here in Europe.
I also don't see how the system wouldn't be watertight, since it is almost always based on already existing shingle roofing, just with PV in exposed parts of the shingles.
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@nc3826
Since the small percentage of battery packs needed to be kept at a battery swapping station, is more than offset by the lower capacity battery packs needed by most swappable EVs most of the time
Not really, smaller packs also means more swappings per time unit, thus more needed reserve batteries to ensure that there are enough available. Overall it is going to be linked to total kW use, rather than battery size. Moreover a swapping station can only swap so many cars (which means bigger battery sizes might be better). And then there is the fact that barely anyone will swap their batteries during the night, you'll get peak hours where most will want/need to swap (probably right before/after peak hours, so that makes it less interesting for V2G). This means either long waiting times or a lot more stations (and thus available battery capacity).
No matter how you spin it, swapping stations on their own will require more battery capacity.
performs electricity arbitrage FAR more effectively than VtoG
Does it? Why do you assume that?
china's already validated it
China is a mixed market, like I said swapping stations can exist next to integrated battery EV's, but not really on its own. Also the quantities Nio services in China are still overall "small scale", so the impact of extra batteries is still limited. Also China is probably one of the best places to roll it out in, since the amount of personal garages where one can install chargers is also lower (overall higher density cities than eg. Europe/US). Moreover China has almost 15 million plug in vehicles on its roads, with only around 0,3m being Nio ones that can swap. Next to that Nio estimated around 60% of their owners have used/generally use the swapping ability, or around 0,18m cars.
And Nio isn't using smaller batteries fyi, in fact their batteries are bigger than quite some models sold well in the west (or at least Europe).
I don't see Nio's model at all as sustainable big scale, it is more to service specific groups of people (like those without charging possibilities or often on long trips).
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@superamazingexpertfantasti6593
"Do you promise to not need to drive more than 10 miles today?"
10 miles would be like 3% of a battery. That is just a ridiculous number. First most people won't drive more than 50 miles in a day (usually way less), so if you ensure 60-90 miles range in regular circumstances it would be fine (when never going below 20%, this would mean you never discharge lower than 40-50%). However since you don't normally drive this 50 miles in one time, but spread out over the day, you can for example just have 40% in the morning to get to work, charge during the day and leave work with 80% charge. Do shopping, whatever and discharge to 40% during peak and still have more than enough to do regular travel (like meeting someone in the evening).
Do you promise to not drive until tomorrow at 7 AM?
You can still drive. It is you who decides when the battery can or must charge. The example Fred talked about is how he decides to use his EV, however he could just as well say "charge now to x% and do the next somewhere during the night" or whatever. This is something you as the driver decides.
Building all the infra for this (v2g at work, predictive modeling, and overbuilding car battery capacity) is expensive
V2G won't be that more difficult or expensive, seeing it is already planned/done for home batteries. Especially since otherwise utilities/electricity producers would need to build battery farms themselves. Predictive modeling is again not really an issue. They already need to predict demand, production, ... to keep the grid properly functioning. If anything this V2G would make it easier to deal with unexpected loads/demands. And again you don't need to overbuild a car battery capacity. Even the base capacity (+-300 miles) everyone will want to have will be mostly unused in regular day operations/driving.
when the core value of a car is being a car and all research and investment is acting on the assumption that cars will move even more in the future. Does V2G have a place if self driving happens? Not really.
This depends, there will always be people owning a car. robottaxi's are great for the cities and maybe part of the suburbs, but there always will be regions where people will need/want a car themselves. Not to mention that some people don't want to be dependent on robottaxis. And there won't be a constant demand for taxi's. Just like with electricity consumption there will be peak demands and low demands. The amount of robottaxi's will need to be able to deal with peak demand times, thus you will have many robottaxi's sitting still during low demand times. How better to use them at that moment than V2G.
Peak demand in electricity will likely fall partially together with low taxi demand, afterall the reason electricity demand spikes is because people are home. So robottaxi's could perfectly synergize with V2G battery storage.
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@lagflu Even with better batteries you'd want to not use too much capacity. Lets say that they can make batteries twice as energy dense, instead of increasing the range of the standard EV from lets say 300 miles to 600, you'd better use the same range with lower weight, since this cuts back on the usage and increases efficiency. If you only need to drive more than 300 miles a few times a year, it would most definitely be a waste to buy an EV that can go 600 miles, unless somehow the efficiency loss is minimal, which I'd doubt. Moreover logically it would cost a lot more to get a battery for an increased 300 miles, compared to just get the same capacity as a home battery, since the home battery could be for example an old EV battery or just a less energy dense battery that is easier and cheaper to make.
As for autonomy, I don't think they'd prefer robottaxi's (I don't know what else you were thinking about) with insane range. The extra cost might be more than they'd be worth. Hell, if you can choose between 2 taxi's that can 800 miles, or 3-4 for the same price that can go 300 miles? Which one would you get? Sure, they'd need to charge sooner, but even then it will probably be not more than 2-3 times more. If they don't constantly use the highway, they probably be able to drive 4-5 hours at least with a 300 mile range, and if they can get charging time down to lets say 10-15 minutes, they'd lose maybe 45-60 more minutes to charging, but you'd almost constanly have an extra car on the roads. More cars would be prefered over less charging times.
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@lagflu
I was thinking autonomy in the sense of me having my car drive me long distances in one session.
Why would range and autonomy be linked in this case?
when it gets down to real people most people don’t care as much about efficiency
But they do car about money and costs.
Every review of Tesla’s I watch says to get the highest range possible because road trips are a little better not stopping as often.
You have to take into consideration that even long rang Tesla's now are around 400 miles. I was always talking about 300 miles as an absolute base, though this could as well be 350 for example. However compared to 800 miles (which I believe you mentioned once) this would be a huge difference. And it is unlikely reviewers will say to definitely get an 800 miles Tesla instead of for example 400 miles. Most reviewers I've seen actually say their range is more than enough, and while ofcourse it would be nicer to have longer range for long/road trips, it isn't that much of a problem.
Also, when I move I don’t have to worry about moving my powerwall too I just take my car to the next house... it’s the little things.
I guess this is usefull when you move a lot, but if you don't move more than lets say every 5 years, I don't really see this as a good reason.
Now ofcourse what I say is taken into account averages: average travel per day, average times people drive longer trips, average times people move, ... If you for example regularly drive more than 300-400 miles (more than once every 2 weeks lets say), or you move regularly, ... that is something else.
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@superamazingexpertfantasti6593 When you have 60% of 300 miles range (for best battery management don't go above 80% or under 20% if not absolutely necessary) and need only around 20% on daily basis (60 miles), 10% is nothing and even giving up 30% is more than acceptable. You shouldn't forget that there will be financial incentives, otherwise I wouldn't do it either. However these incentives might just be the profit you make from charging at a low price and discharching at a high price.
Companies are more than likely to install chargers. Even now companies install chargers for employees. As more and more people get an EV, you'll get chargers popping up everywhere. And V2G doesn't require that much extra.
People buy cars with a range they only infrequently need. For example 300 miles is probably what most people will demand on average at the very least, this while they'll most often won't drive more than 50 or so miles in a day. Yes, purely from a logical standpoint a 100-150 mile EV would be enough for them on regular days, but then they'd have to recharge too often when going on a long trip, people don't like that. Whether you like it or not, people will get an EV that has a much too large rang for their daily needs, but it will average out around 300 miles I'd guess.
So yes, people could easily give up 20-30% of their range to energy arbitrage and home discharging. And they will. Only if it degrades a battery too much they won't, but staying between 30% and 80% will decrease the impact of extra degradation and it is expected that over the coming years batteries will be brought out with much more cycle capacity and in that case degradation due to V2G will be practically a non issue.
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@LancesArmorStriking Then again Ukraine is unlikely to ever get Crimea back unless something fundamentally changes in Russia, so it doesn't really matter what the people in Crimea think.
Also since we aren't talking about a natural river, but a canal, Ukraine can just say that it is not their bussiness to supply Crimea, which wouldd cost them in maintaining the canal. It is essentially up to Russia to make sure Crimea has the necessary water supply. It isn't about punishing/convincing the people in Crimea, just let Russia deal with the consequences of their actions. At the very least Ukraine can demand payment for the water.
If it was a river, it might be different, since there actually are international laws on that, not on this canal. It would make most sense that the court rules that it is up to Russia to provide water to Crimea, however they need to, be it a deal with Ukraine, ferry water from Russia or build a new canal/pipeline from Russia.
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@Chikanuk But not with water
Ofcourse it can be supplied with water, there are thes things called pipelines, canals, trucks, ships, ... The romans even built aquaducts 2000 years ago, imagine that. ofcourse Russia can supply Crimea with water, it just will not be cheap to do so, but that is not Ukraine's problem. I am pretty sure the Russian territories right next to Crimea also need water. Russia has a very large lake around 200km from Crimea and several smaller ones even closer. FYI, the canal in Ukraine from the Djnepr to the Crimean border is around 100km long, so it is not like Russia can't build something similar themselves.
And btw, the main reason for that water that came from Ukraine is for agriculture, not drinking water, to survive Crimea has enough water of itself. And food can even more easily be imported by Russia then water if truly necessary.
All this "they cut of the watersupply" is just Russia trying to stick it to Ukraine, I really doubt it will hold up in court.
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@Chikanuk closing down a canal that wasn't even there originally is not a violation of human rights, especially when it is mostly used for agriculture. Crimea itself should have enough water themselves in terms of crucial need.
And ofcourse it is about Russia. Now that Crimea is under Russian control it is up to Russia to provide Crimea's basic needs.
(which was build by USSR btw)
So? The USSR is collapsed and no more, moreover it is Ukraine that needs to pay for its maintenance and operation.
Yes. So its violation of human right
No, it is not, and the court will rule as such.
Also it was doing by purpose and with evil intent, so its also is a crime agains humanity.
This again is incorrect, Crimea doesn't have an automatic right to this water or the usage of this canal. As long as the crimean people have enough water for basic necessities (which they have even without Ukraine's water), there is no problem.
And this will fail in court, cuz such courts have nothing with justice.
So you know you are full of bullshit, realize the courts will also know this and are already covering your arse by blaming the 'bad' courts LMAO.
Before that 85% of crimean water supply come from ukraine.
And a lot of that was used for fields. You see Russia already provides around 73l of water per day per citizen in Crimea since 2017, basic needs according to the WHO are between 50l and 100l, so apparently basic needs are already fullfilled according to the WHO standards.
In fact households before the crisis used around 100-450million cubic meter of water per year, Crimea's water resources are 430-915 million cubic meter of water per year. So their is enough water for households, just not for agriculture, industry and expanding military.
And the Geneva convention btw states that it is the occupier (ie Russia here) that needs to provide the basic necessities (ie drinking water).
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@Chikanuk
85% of water IS basic necessity.
What exactly do you mean with this? I can't respond if I don't know. 85% of what water?
If for example China will block all water supply to India (from Tibet) - t will be a crime against humanity too.
Except this would be blocking rivers, natural waterflows. Like I said that is regulated by international laws, human made canals like in Ukraine-Crimea are not.
Russia 100% will lose court battle simply cuz West is currently rusophobic and hypocritic.
You already proved my point, Russia had nothing to lose. Eventhough they knew they'd almost certainly lose the case, they could respond the way you do now, claiming they just weren't treated correctly.
Like USA biggest "paladin" in the West in the past decades illegally invade several countries and cause more then million of deaths (at least)
I am not going to defend the US actions in the middle east, since I never supported it. Just one thing, the USSR/Russia did this too, remember Afghanistan among others.
And remember how they made a fake proof of bio weapon in front of whole world in UN?
It was nuclear bombs, not bio weapons if I remember correctly. And the UN refused to give the US go ahead to invade since there wasn't enough credible evidence, they attacked despite this anyway.
Saudi arabia have laws what made homosexuality and sorcery (lol) a death penalty crime... But nobody cares.
I care, I just can't do anything about it. And this has nothing to do with this discussion.
Cuz they big friend of West
Friends of the US. For most other countries they are just a trading partner. I hope that the electrification of our society will cause SA lose the power it now has thanks to oil and actually be held accountable somewhat, even if just by some sanctions. I however do not want any kind of invasion or whatever in that region.
Its kinda funny how much hypocrisy western world have right now. "Kinda", cuz this cause real deaths and suffering.
Except I am not hypocritical, I agree with you on those things. They weren't/aren't right.
For example if West didnt overthrow Ukraine president and didnt treat Russian military bases,Crimea would still be Ukrainian.
Oh sure, if only Russia could have kept their puppet in charge in Ukraine, they wouldn't have to take over crimea and supported the Don Bass rebels (since they already would control it indirectly anyway). Does this make you feel better, thinking this way?
I don't know exactly whether the removal of the president was justified, or whether it was actively done by the West. What I do know is that according to the polls these days most people in Ukraine are looking more favorably towards the west than to Russia. Even most people in the Don Bass region would like to remain part of Ukraine, either as it was before or with special privileges (and there is a generally support in Ukraine for giving Don Bass and possibly Crimea after a reintegration such special status, like an autonomous region within Ukraine).
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@Chikanuk @qe qe Blocking access to drinking water is a crime. Ukraine did it.
Except, they didn't. Crimea has enough water to provide their own drinking water, the water from Ukraine is used to water the crops/fields.
And when I talked about natural rivers, I was talking about water that was used for more than just drinking water/basic needs.
at least USSR build infrastracture.
It must not have been good infrastructure if they did. The US pumped hundreds of billions in projects to improve live in Afghanistan, but sure they didn't do anything.
Not nuclear weapon.
I have to admit, we were both wrong. They said weapons of mass destruction, with which they meant/insinuated both. Though they knew Iraq didn't have nukes and they had no evidence or knowledge about biological weapons.
According to polls it was literally 50/50 west-east split in Ukraine.
Not according to latests polls, I guess this might have to do with Russia annexing a part of Ukraine and supporting the Don Bass rebels, which causes the conflict to still linger after all these years. I have no doubt this antagonised many neutral people or even people slightly pro-Russian, causing them to look more favorably on the west now than Russia.
Ukraine government for 25 years talk about this autonomy and privileges
Except there now is widespread support for it and it could end a conflict that has been raging for years and hinders Ukraine immensely.
EVERY, literally every big ukraine politician (inc presidents) says (mainy for ukrainian public on local media ofc) what Ukraine will not follow Minsk Protocol.
You mean the protocol that the Ukrainian government actually tried to implement, but that time after time was violated by the rebels and time after time they denounced them, that protocol? It was doomed to fail from the start, since the rebel leadership doesn't want it, they either want independence or become part of Russia.
every big power, no matter - Russia, USA, China, or else will have puppet states, or client states, or junior partners, or vassals - call whatever you like.
And? How does this make it better that Russia went after Ukrainian territory the moment they lost their pro Russian puppet president. It is not like they try to reinstate him or such, they are just using it as an excuse to take more direct control over Ukrainian territory.
Russia btw ensured Ukraine's territorial and political integrity in exchange for Ukraine handing over the nukes left in their country after the collapse of the USSR. So, by annexing Crimea and supporting Don Bass rebels, Russia broke that treaty. If only Ukraine had kept their nukes, Russia wouldn't have dared what they did now.
And if big power half the globe away from you try to overthrow your puppet state goverment right at your doorstep
Can you please prove to me it was the US that was behind the overthrowing? If I remember correctly it was more about the treaty with the EU that was about to fail due to the president wanting to keep his ties wit Russia intact. This sparked large protests. Yanukovych tried to crack down on them and several dozen Russian agents have been implicated in helping with that. Russian involvment just made things way worse. It lost the President any trust there still was among pro-EU protestors.
P.S. - forceful illegal removal of legit president is never justified. Never.
Bullshit, there are certainly situation in which it is justified to illegally remove a president. Whether this was the case in Ukraine I don't know. Personally I don't think so, then again maybe it would be different for those who actually were there protesting and met with harsh crackdowns.
It would have been best if the mediated deal the EU helped to achieve was accepted by the protesters, which would have led (among other things) to earlier presidential elections. Maybe it just came too late, I don't know.
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If you ever have an idea and think to yourself, “why hasn’t anyone done this yet?”, there is a good chance someone already has.
That however doesn't mean much without context. Besides it just being an idea that isn't feasible, it could also be that the person before did it badly or that the time back then didn't allow it to be done properly or so many other reasons it could have failed. Context in this is everything.
And ofcourse there are times you think “why hasn’t anyone done this yet?” and it turns out no one actually did think of it or people thought in a similar way and just thought because of that, that it wasn't a feasible idea. This actually happens quite regularly, that you read of someone inventing/developing something actually very simple or obvious, but no one else just thought of it or did it before.
Why do we always see Africa as a continent that we can just go loot whenever we feel like it?
This idea has nothing to do with just looting Africa because we felt like it. The Sahara region just happens to be a great region for largescale solar that happens to be in Africa. Moreover it isn't like African countries had no say in these projects, for them it actually is a great possibility. They could make a lot of money from exporting/letting others export this electricity to Europe that then can be invested in their own country, possibly even creating jobs in the process. Not to mention that they themselves can also directly profit from this by using the skills and means of these companies to also build these solar power plants for their own local use.
It is kind of sad that people see every relation between Africa and Europe that is positive for Europe these days as new imperialism/colonialism, without looking into whether this also couldn't just be beneficial to Africa.
BTW, there is not much lithium gained from Africa, there are only 2 African nations in the top 8 producing countries and their amount is very low. Australia actually is by far the largest lithium mining country (40-60k tonnes vs Zimbabwe's 1,6k tonnes). The same for gold production, only 1 African nation in the top 10 gold producing countries.
Furthermore there is only 1 African nation in the top 10 of known lithium resources (Congo), which has around the same amount of lithium resources as for example Germany or Canada.
Ofcourse Africa still gets exploited in a lot of ways, you won't here me say differently, but please at least be correct regarding the resources or way they are, you're examples were just blatantly incorrect. And Africa isn't just being exploited by foreign entities either, but for a large part by their own leadership. Every region with weak corrupt leadership will get exploited by unscrupulous persons, be it through personal, corporate or national ways.
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@rehurekj
It are indeed mostly Vlaams-Brabant and Waals-Brabant that get their wealth from Brussels.
And nothing from above erased this unprecedented level of unemployment in Brussels
You do know that unemployment in Brussels is lower than in Antwerp and Ghent right? It is apparently more of large city problem than just a Brussels problem.
Also you say splitting is coping out while sentence before you say Walloons would demand splitting Brabant even further
No, I said Brussels would want that, not Wallonia. What do you think Brussels would want more, living in a dutch speaking nation that will overtime force dutch upon them, or staying with the french speaking community? And ofcourse if Brussels remains with Wallonia, it will ask for a corridor. Even if this is just a highway (E19 between Brussels and Wallonia) that becomes Brussels ground, or/and maybe they'll want for example the part of the Zoniënwoud between Hoeilaart and Sint-Genesius-Rode. But this obviously is all just speculation.
As for the stats, even more reason for Wallonia to want Brussel, many jobs in Brussel might be moved from Vlaams-Brabant to Wallonia. If Wallonia at the same time makes a deal with Brussels to give lets say half of income from people working in Brussels but live outside it to Brussel, Brussel could become a rather wealthy region. And if people from Vlaams-Brabant keep working in Brussels, they'll have to pay part of the income tax there in case Brussels and Vlaams-Brabant are not part of the same nation.
Why not keep Brussels bilingual capital district of Flanders instead
Honestly if Belgium splits it will be under pressure from flemish nationalists, do you really think Brussels with a majority french will just trust that Flanders would keep Brussels bilingual?
In case of partition Walloons would have to grant similar autonomy to their own German speaking Eastern Cantons
And? That region is straegically irrelevant on practically all things compared to Brussels. The eastern cantons won't be an issue. They'll either rejoin Germany or stay with Belgium (Wallonia) like it does now.
and as i said before Flemish ppl have bad history and past bad experience with being left at mercy of Walloons so I dont think they would agree with condemning their compatriots in Brussels to be assimilated.
And Walloons would trust them after seeing Belgium split under impulse of Flemish nationalism? You forget that Brussels is mostly french. If it come to it, it was Flanders choice and this gives enough reason to Brussels to decide for itself who to join and whether to remain bilingual. Losing the last vestiges of dutch in Brussels would probably be a cost of Flemish independence.
Maybe you should look at historical, cultural and underlying political and socioeconomic reasons why significant number of Flemish vote how they vote
I am Flemish, I know how Flemish people vote and why. Many of the current votes for VB and N-VA have nothing to do with seperatism, or anti-Walloon tension, but more as a protest vote against the traditional parties and against things like the immigration problems. Only around 15% of Flemish want independence and only 33% want more power going to the regions.
In the end if Belgium ever splits I see two possible solutions for Brussels:
1. They remain with Belgium (or Wallonia + Brussels then), they possibly get somesort of link to Wallonie, be it one town, a piece of forest and/or the E19 highway. Whether they remain Bilingual in this scenario will be up to Brussels itself most likely.
2. They become a European capital district similar to Washington DC, government by the EU and will most likely remain Bilingual or possibly even losses a main language and becomes just multilingual (which it already kind of is, just not officially) or a language like English is added to give it 3 languages.
Now after all that, I don't see Belgium splitting up anytime soon, so this is just a theoretical exercise/thought process.
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@AnaIvanovic4ever
Why in the world would the EU bureaucracy improve if we gave it more power?
Because now the system is created exactly to keep the power with the memberstates. For example the reason why there isn't a directly elected EU president is pretty simple, he would replace the commission. Considering the commissioners are proposed by the council (ie national government leaders) this already takes power away from them both the choice and because they can't appoint one from almost any country. Secondly it would mean a redistribution of power. Some powers from the commission would have to go to the EP (for example proposing new legislation) and other powers will have to be taken from the council to make the office of the president not just a seemingly empty thing. This is just one easy thing to point at.
The areas where they the EU has lots of power (farming, fishing) are catastrophes of bad policy.
Except you just proved my point. These are areas where memberstates (like France) are executing a lot of their influence/power. Any change proposed to it by the EU that isn't positive for France, will be shot down by it, even if the change overall is an improvement.
Also, Europe is diverse without a common language.
And this obviously has stopped us from cooperating for the last several decades, right? And if that is a problem, just choose a common language that all memberstates will teach in schools as a secondary/tertiary language. English makes most sense, since many people can already use it, it is the most used language in the world and in several large sectors, the language of our allies and there aren't any major english speaking nations in the EU (anymore).
Sweden and Ireland do not have the same view on abortion, for example
Also not difficult to solve, just either not make any EU laws on it, or a law that allows memberstates to deviate from it if their is enough support for that in their country. Or whatever. In the US the states also have many of their own laws. Sure they can be superseded by federal law, but clearly this happens not with everything.
but the European Parliament should be abolished and it should go back to being a cooperation between soverign nations.
This is going backwards, the worst thing that you could do.
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@ArawnOfAnnwn Where do you get from that the Russian army is larger? The combined EU armies are larger both in active/reserve manpower and military investment (even in PPP, ie accounting for lower prices in Russia for the same equipment).
The only place the Russian army is larger is military ground equipment (ie. tanks, SPG's, towed artillery, ...), though the question is how much of that is old stuff from the soviet era that might have seen only limited updating?
Now, if you were to add the US to it, there is no question between which armed alliance is larger, not even close. Even the old manpower advantage Russia historically held is now in the hands of the EU. Or the industrial strength from in WW2, also in Europe's favor now.
The only real thing were Russia could really hurt the EU in the shortterm is import of gas (and oil maybe). Though in wartime the US likely would try to quickly jump in and the EU would also quickly try to get it from the middle east. In the end Europe might maybe suffer 1-3 seasons of real difficult times regarding power supply and heating. Russia however likely would never be able to sell fossil fuels to Europe again, no matter how the conflict end. And this export makes up 15% of russia's entire GDP.
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@dousiastailfeather9454
If it was workable then somebody else would be doing it already.
This is such a weak argument, if flying was workable someone would have done it before the wright brothers, if smartphones were workable someone would have done it before apple, if reusing rockets was possible someone would have done it before SpaceX, ...
There are plenty of things that can work, but are not done untill some company/person causes a spark on its development/idea.
As for thunderfoot, I once wrote a comment about his problems with hyperloop, most of it is just stupid and either is a problem that can/is fixed, that is not really a problem or is situational. He might have brought up some good points too, but these didn't discredit the entire idea, rather forces more thinking on it. And him going after some bad companies as to show that it is a stupid idea overall is just pathetic, you always can have bad companies, or companies that put too much emphasize on show/publicity. There are several hyperloop companies that are actually keeping their development close to their chest too.
Overall Thunderfoot to me comes across as the kind of guy that decides first whether something is possible, stupid, ... and then start finding reasons for it. Often these kind of people are right, because they mostly focus on controversial ideas, technologies, ... and most technologies etc never get past development due to unforseen problems, so betting against new ideas/technologies is much safer and easier than betting for them. However there are times these kind of people are shown to have been completely wrong. He is like someone that would have said plane travel could never be a thing during the 1910-20's, except maybe for the few very rich. I can perfectly make a video about this that would perfectly fit on his channel, ofcourse it would be seen as ridiculous today, with all the problems they talked about back then having been solved, proven to not be a problem.
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@maxblinkhorn Musk has had nothing to do with hyperloop since proposing the idea (which since is changed a bit by companies), the past few years critique was not meant for Musk's idea, but the idea of the hyperloop in general. If people only criticizes musk original idea, I'd have no problem with it.
We should be seeing systems being built
Like I said, development of these kind of things usually takes a decade or multiple decades, to expect results within around half a decade is rather stupid. There are at this moment something like 5 to 10 hyperloop companies around the world, we only hear about/from maybe 2 of them, because the others keep their development more secretive and put less emphasize on promotion/publicity.
and yet there is no full speed test track in operation.
it took maglev decades to get to full speed test tracks to be put in place, yet hyperloop is expected to do it in around 5 years, do you realize how foolish that sounds? And there are already plans by several companies to built a full speed test track. For example the hyperloop company hardt in the Netherlands plans to have built a 3 km track by 2022, just like another company plans to do in France.
Most of the problems with hyperloop is with these tunnels, so it is rather normal that the first real test tunnel prototype take some time to get built, if these are successfull, they can speed up the building process in the future.
He handed the job to students, ffs!
This already shows your ignorance. Musk wants to promote the idea of the hyperloop system and because of this started a yearly contest, however a requirement of participating in this tournament is that the technology and designs used become public knowledge, usuable by anyone. Therefor we only see university teams playing part, who don't mind this requirement, but like the challenge, the knowledge the students can gain from it. The professional companies obviously are not going to let their proprietary knowledge become public property/open sourced and thus don't participate.
The technology that will carry passengers has not been created!
Again you seem to be focused too much on the competition, where passenger aren't central, rather the technology and speed is. And because of this teams focus now more on acceleration than usefullness due to the short competition track. This competition isn't any good indication of where the companies really stand. The pod that will carry the passengers isn't the difficulty, the propulsion and tunnel is.
If anything runs before 2025 I'll be amazed
I do expect longer test tracks (3-5km+) by 2025, however true passenger travel should not be expected before 2030 even if hyperloop is successful.
Meantime, trains are making progress around the world
You mean the thing that exists for longer than the car, tram, subway, airplane and even bicycle, which is essentailly almost only outlived by ships in largescale transportation methods? Who would have expected this. You are comparing a mature system with a completely new one. Also hyperloop isn't meant to replace trains, or rather not most trains, at best it would be long haul high speed trains that travel between major cities and don't stop between these. Its main focus though would be to replace (short to medium) continental flights between large cities.
Hyperloop will die - it's several steps too far - the technology is not ready.
Again, easy to claim, one I could have made about planes 100 years ago, which people actually did and which is why they focused on airships for a time instead.
I don't really see any lack of necessary technology, the main question is, will they be able to deploy the technology in a way that is economical enough.
Personally I'd expect a combination of somthing like boring tunnels with hyperloop to stand the best chance long term, since
- it will be easier to maintain a vacuum,
- tunnels normally are better protected in case of natural disasters like a flood or earthquake (I know, doesn sound logical, but it is apparently),
- it doesn't need to care about aqcuiring land right/getting through urban area's,
- no need to follow the geograpghy too much (shallower curves and gradients),
- apparently the boring company has been able to reduce tunneling costs significantly (similar to the cost of highways) and usually the stations are part of the largest cost of a tunnel, less of a problem for the hyperloop.
There might be some other advantages too, just like there obviously will also be disadvantages, but hey, this is the case for everything, including cars, ships, planes and trains.
Again to be clear, I am not saying the hyperloop is a certain success, but there is nothing really that at this moment shows it will be a definite failure either, other than people's pre-conceived notions which they then try to find (stupid) reasons for.
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Regarding those pollling numbers, I also wonder if many Europeans equate war to offensive conflicts since the only wars European nations (outside Ukraine) have been involved in were offensive excursions. I can definitely understand why people would be unwilling to fight in such a war.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a major difference in response if you frame the question more like "would you be willing to fight for your nation in war if you (or an ally) is attacked (ie. defensive war)?"
As for mandatory service, I indeed don't think most militaries are up for it and it would also be expensive, pulling funds away from other fields like regular recruiting, equipment, training, ...
I think a hybrid system like trying to get x% of population into temporary conscription might be more interesting, with focus on those with motivation and skill set. With those not doing military service doing compulsary social work (though should be at least 1-2 years imo to be effective, just like minimum military service) or by even just paying a certain amount in higher taxes when between 30-40yo which goes directly into the military budget (which could immediately offset the extra cost of introducing limited mandatory service). The "easier" the choice, the more expensive it should be (eg. sacrificing 1-2 years in military service or hard social work is harder than just paying some extra tax, thus this tax should be high enough to offset this).
This way people have no easy 'cope out', but you also prevent too much strain on the military or other services.
I do think a +-4 week compulsary military camp after finishing high school could be a decent idea, but to try and instill some physical discipline in young people (and maybe things like first aid), while also testing for who might be good candidates for mandatory service (both from military and individual side).
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@ste16kam35 The reason why Europe cares more about Africa is because of Chinese and basically most superpower influences penetrating the continent
This ignores that Europe has been sending aid to Africa since the end of colonisation. Europe cares about Africa because its a neighbour and tradingspartner. China isn't giving money to Africa, they are extending loans that eventually will have to be payed back one way or another. If Europe had done this at the same scale (it would be both in their and Africa's interests to do so imo though), they'd probably be blamed of trying to colonise Africa again. Hell, these claims are often already/still made now.
You look at France, what stability do they bring beside still have colonies there and you say colonisation is the past, this is ignorance im afraid. Go tell that to people in these 14 countries with CFA currency where Macron talks to them like kids.
CFA isn't great, to be sure, but it has some advantages too, it just needs to be reformed/handed over to these nations. Reforms to CFA are already being done, for example the need to keep half of their reserves in the French bank is removed last year. It is shocking it still existed like it did untill this day and I hope its negative side will end soon.
Countries like DRC ate in chaos because Europe and other nations have too much interest in this country.
These countries are in chaos due to corruption and general instability due to internal tension caused by ethnic differences. Maybe multinationals from western countries are to blame for a lot of problems too, but this isn't something Europe should do about, rather the DRC itself by regulating, ofcourse here comes corruption again. The wealth of these nations ends up with their corrupt elite and multinationals, not Europe or its people. I fear only a revolution or large scale 'cleansing' of the elite and corruption can truly help African countries in the long run.
Lybia was part of your stability too? It was just 10 years ago.
Lybia was a disaster, but it was already in a civil war when foreign powers (Europe and the US) started to truly engage in it. They should have worked with the UN and AU to assemble a large international peacekeeping force consisting of European and African troops, either UN blue helmets or a general coalition, that or just stayed out. Now the intervention was completely pointless, it neither provided stability nor safety and is an increased danger to itself, neighbours and Europe.
Whose the reason of first Lybia being in chaos
Well, initially the Arab spring, whether this was caused by western intervention is up for debate, but even then there were a lot of underlying tensions in Libya that would eventually boil over. Lybia could still have ended in chaos without intervention, that or Mubarak stayed in power, neither are desirable outcomes (though Mubarak might have been more desirable shortterm for Europe, if it weren't for 'anti-dictatorstance' we've adopted there would never have been an intervention). The problem is the follow up, there was none due to fear of a new middle eastern mess with troops stuck there for a seemingly endless time and the PR nightmare it would have caused.
And now the surge of djihadists in Africa? Europe
Oh please, sure some foreign policies didn't help (Especially those of the US/UK in the middle east), but these are hardliners that would have come out somehow, they are religious fanatics, these have existed forever and still exist now unfortunately. Europe is just an easy target for them (compared to for example the US), why? Because the EU doesn't just send away African and Middle Eastern refugees and is located closely to these regions (as well as historical relations that are regrettable).
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@ste16kam35
You don't help a country to develop with aid.
I disagree, a lot of the aid is precisely meant for development of, for example, infrastructure, not all, but a significant part. However unfortunately a large part of this aid often ends up in the pockets of the leaders in those African countries. And to be clear, I do think it would be good if the EU offered largescale cheap loans to African countries, kind of like an African Marshall plan.
A country that doesn't possess its currency is not a sovereign country.
Like the eurozone countries? I don't think the CFA countries have a problem with having a united currency, rather it would be better if they had full control over it as a group.
The only reason they changing is because of pressure of civil movement and because more and more population realize that France in this case still want domination and still acts like its their colonies.
This is ofcourse a possibility, though dismissing the views of new leaders who didn't had anything to do with its creation is not a great thing either, it takes away from them if they did something about it, not because of the pressure, but because their own conscience. I don't know what to think of Macron's stance in this, it feels like he just doesn't know what to do with it, or sees it as just a small headache compared to problems at home. Or maybe he just doesn't care, difficult to say.
Talking about reforms, it was agreeed in the Senate of France that the CFA currency will be changed to Eco few days ago ? IS that normal ? In the senate of France. THis is plain colonization.
It seems the ECO is meant as a step to slowly give the CFA countries complete fiscal and monetary independence from France. Since the CFA still was guaranteed and managed by France, I guess it is logical this also had to be passed by the French senate. This is what good reforms will involve, both parties working it out, not just cutting it suddenly.
ECO btw is an idea of the West African nations, to create something similar to the Eurozone in West-Africa, it would include even non-CFA countries. The French senate essentially just agreed to let CFA flow over into ECO, which I guess was necessary because up untill it becomes ECO France was essentially guaranteeing CFA's stability/monetary policy.
In fact it seems ECO includes the reforms I think are needed to end the CFA's colonial history background.
Gadaffi had a big project to unite Africa adopting a common currency backed by gold.
It was a goal of him, whether it was to just get more power for himself or to improve Africa as a whole, I don't know, I guess no one will. But he wasn't even close to succeeding in this. This wasn't a concern for Europe at all. Ofcourse there will be many that will have turned it into an issue to paint a different picture, as is done so often.
African leaders were not even informed of this attack as they would have been against it.
The Western operations in Libya weren't somekind of stealth/secret operations, every African leader knew about it before it started. It was the UN who called out a no-fly zone above Libya, and NATO decided to enforce it. The UN security had reached an unanimous decision, with 10 in favor and 5 abstaining. The reactions in Africa were mixed, from supporting to neutral to condemning it.
And the problem is that African nations who were in favor of it, at the same time didn't want ot get involved militarily themselves, for example Egypt. They let NATO essentially do the dirty work so they could take the blame.
You need to remember that there was no djihadist issue in Africa
There have been jihadist issues in Africa for decades, these just don't get the attention of those in for example the middle east.
The collapse of LYbia increased rebels and djihadist powers/influence
I agree with that, which is why I believe they should have send in UN peacekeeping forces consisting of many nations, including African ones. By imposing the no fly-zone, which essentially made sure the rebels wouldn't immediately get squatched, but not looking further, they let Libya slip into chaos, which no one wanted. But Europe obviously didn't want to be the one advocating for groundtroops/peacekeeping troops in Libya, because it would be very negative image wise, African nations didn't want to do it, because they didn't want to spend troops/effort on it and nations on other continents just didn't care.
Now France intervened but situation just got worse and worse.
You mean in libya? I don't remember any recent foreign intervention in Libya.
as they financed rebels in Mali at the beginning
Please cite a source, since I haven't heard of this before.
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@ste16kam35 An exemple is all these French multinationals ( Total, Bolore, etc.)
You think there are no Chinese companies/resources active to develop the infrastructure China lends them the money for? This is exactly something China does: lending them money, 'letting' them use (cheaper) Chinese companies so the money flows back to China and helps keep infrastructure costs low for construction in China due to economies of scale for these companies and in the long run China even gets the money they loaned back. This a great money maker system, so they'd even lend money for infrastructure projects that will not pay off, and if the countries then can't pay back the loan, China just offers to take over some infrastructure for around a century or so as payment. China is definitely not in this for the good of other countries, it is all about how they can benefit from it.
No, as you mention, we cannot compare Euro with Cfa. It is an outsider country that has control over Cfa.
I am not comparing CFA with the Euro, I am saying why a common currency isn't a bad thing, even if you lose some sovereignty due to it, like which happens in the eurozone, the members can't just set out their own policy either.
I believe that is totally wrong, this is just neo colonalism. This is also implying the countries can't think for themselves and do something about themselves. No Other ex colonist countries still do something like this, why France should still has its say?
Eco is literally thought up by these African nations. Why is France still involved? Because it is currently involved with CFA and the African coalition wants to try and introduce eco as smooth as possible, by essentially just changing CFA into eco, but during this change also transfer the monetary policy power from France to these countries. The same happened with colonialism, countries leaders didn't just cut ties with the colonies, they had to go through voting in their parliaments and work together with the new governments to hand over power. This really isn't unusual, even outside a colonial context.
Second, with countries like Ghana and Nigeria in it, France is defo not needed, both these countries have their currency , same as the rest of Africa except these ex French colonies.
France will not play a part in eco (except for ensuring a stable exchange rate between it and the euro, which the CFA nations asked for to keep inflation limited), they just play a part in the transfer of CFA into eco.
and its also why they actually rejected the plan
They rejected the plan because of turmoil with some other West African nations, the fear essentially is that one or two nations would be too strong in this monetary union. It seems the problem more is with the two monetary blocs (Uemoa, the bloc currently using the CFA and WAMZ, those not currently using CFA) not agreeing with eachother, for example Uemoa unilaterally decided to rename/reform the CFA franc in the eco (and then reform it into the single curreny envisioned, contrary to the original plan to create the eco and then merge the eco and CFA france), without consulting WAMZ, even after both groups already came together in a common group ECOWAS with the goal of creating a unified currency. There also seems to be a struggle for the leadership, Ivory coast is now the defacto leader in Uemoa due to being the largest economy, however if they combine with WAMZ, Nigeria would take this place easily. Nigeria would make up around 2/3rd of the groups total GDP, possibly giving it way too much power, something Uemoa countries might want to try and curb, else they'd just be exchanging France for Nigeria.
How would you know he would no t suceed?
Why would you assume he would succeed? He'd have to get dozens of countries agreeing to get a single currency, countries in many different situations. And that is just the start/easy part.
Why did Sarkozy suddenly decide to kill him?
Did France kill him? Why do you think France suddenly decided to kill him?
Without that, Europe, UN would have not done it and find another way.
So you're saying that France convinced 9 other security council members to vote in favor of a no fly zone and weapons embargo to get rid of Gaddafi and also the other 5 countries to abstain instead of voting against, please, this isn't realistic. France doesn't have such a large cloud.
Maybe there was no intention because it was insignificant
Or maybe there just was no attention because people didn't really care about what happened in Africa, seeing the chaos and conflicts that happened in Africa since decolonisation. Jihadism was just hidden by everything else, it was just one tree in a forest.
These was definitely not something to worry population before 2010 in most of countries concerned now. It was defo not a thing in the 1990s.
Because jihadist in Africa limited themselves to Africa, now with the destabilisation of Libya they became a threat for Europe too.
I can't read you link. It is a blank page.
Maybe I am too optimistic, and maybe you are too pessimistic, I guess the next decade or so will show us who was right.
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@ste16kam35
For instance, China is so far involved economically in Africa
If you think China isn't involved in Africa politically behind the screen you'll probably be in for a rude awakening in the future. And it is logical Europe is more politically involved in Africa, Africa is its neighbour, what happens in Africa can have a huge impact on Europe. And ofcourse ties created during the colonial era still exist, not necessarily as neo-colonism (though possible in some nations), but also as partners. China is so far from Africa, what happens in Africa they'll only feel indirectly ie. economically.
in general they never needed Africa to develop and they seem less dependent
What does this mean? Do they need a developed Africa, no, they just help Africa develop because it is in their own economic interests, which is imo worse than if they needed Africa to develop inorder for attaining future stability.
I believe countries like China in Asia are in the future the ones with who Arfica should trade most as it used to be.
I don't really see why this would be the case. Africa should just trade with everyone it wants/can trade with. And African-Asian trade in the past often was just as part of the Asian-European trade routes.
Asian countries and African countries were trading long time ago.
And European and African regions with eachother even longer, don't see your point.
Europe, we know what happened
So again only refering to the last 200-400 years. In which Europe essentially did what others have done in the past, just as a much larger scale due to the growing globalisation. Before Europe entered in Africa, African nations/tribes were also often at war, creating their own empires, sacking eachother, and bounding eachother in slavery (Europe essentially could set up the Atlantic slave trade, because African slavery has existed for centuries before, always Africans sellling other Africans into slavery). If you think Europe were somekind of unusual evil boogyman, you are just doing a reverse whitewashing of history.
After, it's true, perhaps as Europe has pretty much destroyed Africa and it benefited them before
While Europeans commited attrocities for sure, they didn't destroy Africa, in fact they helped build it up, even if just for personal gain. Africa got 'destroyed' because after colonisation ended the administrative colonial borders remained how they were, which was stupid seeing it didn't account for the many different ethnicities/tribes, which started conflicts, be they militarily of politically. This wasn't a problem before due to colonial troops. And while they did benefit from Africa, the true wealth of Europe came from industrialisation, much of the African wealth ended up with the elites, not western countries in general.
Decolonisation essentially went too fast, a slower one over a span of 1-2 decades might have seen a much stronger and more stable Africa now.
I believe they will never change anything.
So essentially you are judging people by the actions of some of their ancestors, I guess Europe should never trust Germany ever again due to the nazi, and the low countries shouldn't trust Spain, China shouldn't trust mongolia, etc.
Yes but in Europe, you don't have for instance China deciding for European countries.
Which I was talking about a common currency, like eco, and not the CFA. While what you said can easily be interpreted as if common currencies aren't a good thing, because they reduce sovereignty. BTW there are countries that use the currency of other blocs/nations without having a say in the monetary policy by choice.
No, Nigeria and Ghana are the ones that initially rejected months ago
I know, because the CFA countries wanted to play a greater part in eco, which is why they decided to change the CFA into eco, so they can set the rules and ensure that when Ghana and Nigeria join it, there are rules/structures preventing the large nations (like Nigeria) from having too much power.
Also, there is no need to keep your exchange rate fixed to Euro, many countries have floating exchange rate.
Yes, however a fixed exchange rate allows for lower interests rates, which can help development and economic growth. It is essentially a trade off. Once the eco countries can guarantee low inflation levels and a stable currency for themselves, they can just cut these ties. It isn't something France can hold over them, if it tries, the ecowas countries would just cut the ties between the eco and the euro.
At this moment the WAMZ countries (ecowas countries not using the CFA), have 3 to even 6 times the inflation rate compared to countries using the CFA franc.
Look at Mali as one exemple where a month ago theere was a protest telling french to leave the country.
A protest of around a 1000 people says nothing. I couldn't find opinion polling of how Malians see the french, maybe you can find one?
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@ste16kam35
But it is known, even many people in France knows.
So I guess you can point to proof then, seeing so many people know it was France that killed Gaddafi?
Rebels existed, it is totally different.
Religiously inspired rebels, or rebels that attack people based on faith are jihadist.
They were a threat to Europe before Africa.
Then you can point to terrorist attacks in Europe perpertrated by African jidahist
But the fact that you defend a country like France
I am not defending them, I am just saying I think you see it too much as black and white, to me it is grey. There are good and bad things that France does in Africa. And I dislike that you are condemning people by things that happened in the past and just dismiss any possibility that things can change, that policies can change, for the better and not just due to outsided pressure.
Other regions of Africa are already much more developed and advanced than these countries.
Only North Africa, South Africa and parts of western central Africa are doing much better (several of these countries were French colonies), most of the rest of Africa isn't doing much better then most former French colonies when looking at GDP per capita.
but i honestly do not believe in a great future for Africa with Europe has close partners.
And I believe being close partners with Europe is Africa's best bet, while at the same time ofcourse keeping just as good relations with nations like China.
Also, i believe anw Africa doesn't need Europe as much as Europe needs Africa.
I completely disagree on this. I believe both will need eachother equally, for different reasons.
Africa needs foreign investment
And Europe is by far the greatest foreign investor in Africa.
They have got the people, the demographic dividend will play if they manage to tick the two bowes highlited above, young population, they have got most of resources in the world, so basically they barely need anyone.
The problem is that you see Africa as a united bloc, it is far from that. Different regions from Africa will have different needs and different best paths forward. North and West africa for example will have a much greater need for Europe, than for example East Africa, for whom China/Asia might be more interesting.
and as i said they use to trade long time ago
Like I said, Africa traded just as much with Europe in the past. And a lot also depends on what part of Africa you talk about. It is only east Africa that traded with Asia/China in the past, North Africa traded with Europe (as it is was part of the European/mediterranean theater) and West Africa didn't really trade with neither untill Portugal started building trade outposts there, the only trade they had was with north Africa through the desert, and with East/central Africa. And Central and South Africa were cut of from the world in regards to trade even more, untill European nations came around.
Now Europe. Its a falling continent with Asia rising
This laughable, yes, Europe isn't the behemoth it was in the past, this however doesn't mean it is falling. Rather other parts are rising (again). The question really is how high will they rise. A lot can happen in a few decades. 100 years ago Europe was master of the world, and China rather weak, now the normal distribution is just coming back. However there are many things that can change predictions a lot. For example if a nation/region is able to really mine asteroids, they could become the most wealthiest region ever, one certain asteroid is estimated to hold 30 000 times the wealth of the entire earth's economy currently. Now am I saying that Europe will take this? Ofcourse not, it is just to show that while people couldn't have predicted the situation of today 100 years ago, we can't say how the world will look like a 100 years from now.
For all we know Europe turns around its aging population into a young one again. Also it is possible that Africa too will see a similar trend (again population) once it reaches developed status.
No Uranium for France at discount price
France gets more Uranium from Canada and there are also other countries with overall cheap uranium.
no oil at discount price
Oil is going to play a much lower importance anyway. And currently only a fifth of Europe's oil comes from Africa.
no cacao at discount price
Cacoa is already facing possible problems in terms of future production anyway. And who knows, maybe we'll just have to find a way to grow cacao in Europe inside recreated climates (or by genetic modicification). And Africa isn't the only part of the world that can grow cacao, it just happens its production was historically placed there.
And who says cacao is being sold at a discount price? Can you point me to a source?
not coltan and cobalt for phones
Africa actually isn't that rich in Coltan reserves, they just have some rich veines (easy to mine), it is because of this cheap manual labour can be used ot mine it. As for cobalt this is mostly used for oil refinement currently, which will decrease with electrification and battery manufacturers are already slowly moving away from it, exactly due to the pr of the bad labour conditions. And ofcourse there is something like recycling.
In the end I personally think this discussion is pointless. The future of humanity is in space. Eventually we'll built large space habitats and start mining space. The possiblities in space are nearly endless, massive amounts of resources, space habitats will be able to allow a population of trillions, cheap energy from the sun, ... It ofcourse won't be easy, but eventually Earth might become a (very) small part in a much bigger human civilization.
As for your article, it is a few years out of date to be usefull. The MNLA has signed a treaty with the Malinese government not long after this article came out and nothing points in this article to France helping the MNLA, rather not taking a military stance against them, since the jihadists were France's objective, not the MNLA.
It is rather clear we'll not be able to agree with eachother, so lets end it here.
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What a bunch of bull in this video, clearly just meant as a hitpiece, not e genuine attempt to inform people.
Efficiency: there already are high tech solar panels with over 40% efficiency, though these are very unlikely to go into the mainstream. Any predicted improvement regarding solar panels is mostly in costs, material use and easy of installing. Regarding wind, it isn't about the physical efficiency of catching the wind, it is about how much power a turbine can produce, there are ways to increase this without a need to change the efficiency of capturing the wind.
Gridstorage is unlikely to use things like Li-ion batteries for anything but fast action ie. as a means to immediately provide power in ms while other gridstorage options ramp up their output (seconds to several minutes). Anything long term storage is going to use other storage means currently being tested or being rolled out.
Less than 3% of the worlds energy need after billions in subsidies and 20 years, except in 2020 it was already around 4% (so when this video was posted here) and nuclear for example makes up a similar amount of the primary energy generation while having several decades more to develop and roll out and also receiving massive amounts of subsidies overtime. And then we don't even go into the public and hidden extremely large subsidies and tax cuts oil firms rack up.
Non-renewable materials, except we can recycle solar panels and Li-ion batteries with efficiencies above 97% and except for the blades wind turbines are built out of components that are also recyclable. And the problem of wind blades recycling is being worked on currently and is likely not going to be a problem in the future.
The numbers stated in this video mean nothing without some comparison and are just meant to overwhelm people.
The lifetime of modern wind turbines and solar panels is around 25-30 years, these days closer to the latter. Battery life depends on how it is used and managed. Gas turbines get a lot of maintenance and refurbishment over their lifetime and are quite expensive machinery, around the same as a similarly sized windturbine. And you ofcourse still niet to pay for the gas.
Yes, solar panels waste will be high in the future, but they can be recycled (mandatory in the EU). Irena and similar institutions usually talk about disposal numbers as a warning, to not wait too long putting plans in place to deal with the waste, like a mandatory recycling program and creating recycling facilities.
Almost inexhaustable source of hydrocarbons? This alone is already a clear indication this guy is a fossil fuel company shill. At current rate we are expected to run out of oil in around 200 years, even if we find some more reserves (which will be more difficult to access and thus more expensive) we'd just be delaying the end a bit. Gas is a similar thing, a few couple hundred years and we run out. Coal can last us much longer (more than a thousand years), but ofcourse by using a lot of destructive mining and increasing pollution a lot.
Regarding the comparison of the oil well and the wind turbine, oil has a lot of energy, but we can't efficiently extract it. Efficiency of oil use is around 25-30% vs the +-90% of electricity, meaning in the end it is more like 3-4 barrels of oil equivalent energy for the well vs wind turbine. And then we aren't even talking about everything between extraction and use.
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@altumurnemtzra2026 A war would at first be a conventional war, no one wants to be the first one to fire a nuclear warhead exactly because of the certain retaliation. And they would also make most of the world that was still neutral hostile to them. In any case, using nuclear weapons wouldn't help at all. If you lose a conventional war there will be damage, reperation payments, possibly some loss of land and a possible government change, but it is more than recoverable, losing/winning (doesn't matter) an all out nuclear war would be so devastating your nation will essentially seize to exist in all but name.
So no, it is unlikely that a war would immediately/automatically end up in a (full) nuclear war. Only if you have a leader either in Russia who doesn't give a shit and has an 'if we don't win nobody does' mentality, it is not going to happen. And Putin for example is not such a person, more than likely he'd just try to get as favorable terms as possible, trying to either hold onto power or retire in a comfortable way.
Ofcourse a war would be the very last thing people will resort to when nuclear weapons are possibly involved exactly because there might be such a crazy egotistic leader (for example I could see Trump have been such a one).
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I honestly have double feeling about this. This is discriminating against certain people. What if there was a billionaire that also actually beliefs in m4a, student debt, free college, wealth tax, ...? Is that person not allowed to support the candidate he/she wants? As long as they don't give more than the maximum amount I don't really see a problem. Ofcourse this woman donated for a ridiculous reason, but still I don't actually feel too good about this. How would people react if it was a transgender whose donations gets rejected? Or whatever? You shouldn't discriminate based on skin, religion, sexuality, wealth, ... period.
Where the money in this fashion doesn't come from doesn't matter, whether it is 400 dollars from a billionaire or someone from the workingclass, I don't care. All we need to know is that Bernie won't be influenced by this and if a billionaire donates to him thinking he/she will be able to influence Bernie, that would be their loss.
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I think this is disingenious, Corbyn was and still is heavily disliked overall. In 2019 labour didn't had such low amount of seats (%) since 1935.
Moreover when you look at polling on both Corbyn and Starmer, it is -37% vs -11%.
It is easy to now blame Starmer (and well it is for a large part his fault), but do not insinuate the Corbyn certainly would have been better. If local elections were held in 2019, labour might have lost worse than they did now.
There are huge different circumstances between 2017, 2019 and now.
In 2017 May was a terrible campaigner and there was the aura of the opportunistic call for an election, when it wasn't at all needed. If you look at it, Corbyn was in 2017 sitting around 0% and by 2019 he was bungling between -30% and -60% approval, Corbyn just plummeted between those two elections.
What was worse is that by the 2019 election Boris Jonhson took over, he was (and still is) more popular than any well known labour politician in gross approval numbers and worse than only one labour politician in net approval numbers and a good campaigner (even though you wouldn't say that at first).
Now they replaced Corbyn with someone that is barely any better, taking on a better conservative leader than in 2017 while the brexit impact is limited due to covid lockdowns etc and with the conservatives capable of boasting about their covid vaccin roll-out and the consequent easing of restrictions, essentially wiping out their bad covid policy/reaction from last year.
Corbyn wouldn't have done better than Starmer, he would likely have had the same results if not worse. This moment just played greatly for conservative and terrible for labour. Another thing, if Starmer is said to be the biggest reason not to come out, this also must means the local labour politicians might not have been convincing either (at least were I live local politicians play a major part in the local elections decisions).
I find that sometimes you are acting a bit too biased, especially when it is Corbyn concerned. Corbyn near the end was terrible for labour as leader, that is just a fact. Starmer just isn't much better. In fact at this moment labour just doesn't seem to have any good leader available.
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In most medieval societies there wasn't meritocracy at all and when meritocracy got used after, it definitely was a step up, not just for class mobility, but also efficiency (for example compare pre-revolution France with Napoleonic times when many (comparitively) in the army and civil structure where promoted on a meritocracy system rather than just inheritance/static class structures).
Meritocracy isn't a bad thing, the idea of pure meritocracy is a bad thing. In essence pure meritocracy would be great, the problem is that we'll never be able to achieve it, yet if people think they have, this can lead to thinking like many Americans (or people in general) have, namely that people achieve everything due to themselves and hard work, completely ignoring that not everyone by far have the same opportunity/start and like said in the video, even if they have the same start, something like luck can change everything.
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@answerman9933 Well, in terms of larger systems/arms, it indeed is mostly limited to air assets, though remember, this still goes about tens of billions. Looking into the smaller arms systems (or parts of it) would be quite some work considering it depends from country to country. Overall Europe makes up around 15% of US export (so low mostly due to middle eastern nations being such a large buyer, which is no surprise with SA and Israel being their main costumers and Iraq also after the occupation), but the US obviously hopes to increase this by getting nations to spend more.
For example Germany now seems to be looking into buying F35 with the increase in their military budget, something that before was never really a consideration.
And remember, a fighter plane for example isn't just the sale price, but also income later on from spare parts, advice, changes, ...
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@albertrogers2506 I Always have to laugh when people use France as an example.
For one it is the only country with overall more than 50% of their electricity mix being nuclear, secondly France has access to a lot of hydro, before they went for nuclear big time, hydro made up almost half of their electrcity mix. This access to hydro really helps them regulate power greatly. furthermore when they produce too much power, they export it to their neighbours, who happily buy it because electricity from old nuclear reactors is cheap. If they however wouldn't buy it, the price of the nuclear electricity would go up by quite a bit.
And for now France is having serious problems with their first new nuclear reactor in almost 2 decades. This while renewables are slowly rising. Whether France remains on the nuclear rotue, goes renewable or a mix is yet to be determined, though a mix is most likely.
In the end current nuclear technology either needs massive storage like renewables or overcapacity, which will put the already high costs for new nuclear production even higher.
Gen 4 shows promise, however since not a single of these reactors are online yet and gen 3 reactors prove to be rather more difficult and expensive than expected, I'll wait untill gen 4 reactors have run somewhere for at least a couple of years, hopefully by 2030-35 we will know, by that time it is expected that storage costs will have come down enough to be competitive with peakerplants and even new baseload gen 2/3 nuclear reactors.
And wind worthless? This really shows you ignorant bias.
Using ships as an example is stupid. For one, yes nuclear reactors have a high energy density, thus more suitable for ships, however they are goddamn expensive. Commercial shipping already looked into using nuclear for large containerships, they quickly abandoned the idea due to costs. The reactor alone would be several times more expensive then the entire ship. Then you also need to ensure safety (what if a nuclear powered ship gets highjacked, what if a meltdown occurs on a ship, ...), nuclear engineers on all of these ships, ... This while shipping companies are actually looking into using windpower to reduce consumption, from a kite pulling the ship and reducing between 5-10% of consumption to using special windmills. These are now in test phase, but seem promising, especially the kite might help, since it requires only little space and offers easy use.
In the end, at the moment nuclear is not THE power source because of costs, maybe it comes down with 4th gen, but untill that time renewables are (at least up to around 40% of the electricity mix) more economical and with reducing costs of storage eventually this will climb close to 95% eventually.
Personally I expect a mix of nuclear and renewables, however this is if gen 4 reactors indeed proves to be less expensive.
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@toddfulton2280
When has enriching our adversaries worked?
You aren't just enriching your adversaries, but also yourself. And the EU is a clear example of it working out.
The UK and France also did so in 19th century, turning into allies after being rivals for centuries before.
Let's take the Islamic Republic of Iran as an example. We've had that country almost entirely isolated for almost half a century.
And still they haven't changed, while also now working with Russia.
They haven't been able to pose a threat to the scale of Russia or the PRC
Because they never could be? They don't have the economy or technology to become so. You are comparing a former super power and a rising superpower with a regional power.
North Korea, as an example, is interesting. With the level of isolation, it's hard to tell, but I would guess that by the cult of personality and lack of information from outside NK, the citizens may not be as opposed to the regime as they are in Iran.
And that supports you viewpoint how? It imo shows more that isolating a country completely isn't necessarily going to make it change, but rather turn more into itself and more steadfast in their own beliefs.
I'm sure lots of people thought similar things about the Soviets and Germany
And that wouldn't have been a problem if they acted like the EU has done now: no appeasement as answer to violence. Appeasement was the problem.
When good negotiates with evil, only evil wins
And when good doesn't attempt to turn evil good with all possible means, evil will remain or will have to be eliminated by force. It isn't as black and white as that statement makes it seems. People are too complex to categorized like that.
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@toddfulton2280
Containment isn't about regime change
Where did I talk about regime change?
Containment is about limiting the threat level an adversary poses.
Yeah, because that worked out well with NK who got nuclear arms, and Iran also would have gotten them without deals being made to prevent it and if only isolationism was done.
Engagement is about regime change
Or interconnectivity. You don't necessary need regime change to foster decent to good relations.
I find it odd that people will do whatever they can to avoid buying American gas or oil because "America bad"
It is often actually more about costs. The US gas and oil often is more expensive when shipped to Europe and other places around the world compared to many other sellers.
but are perfectly fine doing business with the PRC because "it's just business, who cares if they are fascists, communists, or religious fanatics, as long as it's not in my backyard".
No one in Europe makes a problem of trading with the US out of ideologic reasons, rather the US usually is more expensive and tries to force/push their products on others in several ways.
Yes, France and the UK became allies, but it wasn't economic trade that did that. It was shared enemies and resolution of colonial disputes.
It was both. If you don't improve relations with a rival, you aren't going to ally with them against other rivals most of the time, rather try to play them against eachother.
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are all very much interested in a return to old style imperialism and a degradation of the world order that France and the UK helped to establish.
Russia, certainly. Not sure NK and China belong in that list, at least not more than the US and some other western nations.
As soon as Trump says he's going to invade Greenland, everyone is ready to go to war with the US
Not going to war, protecting if acted against. Also this is due to regional concerns. Tibet isn't exactly close to Europe and definitely not part of it. The annexation of Tibet also was criticized, but it is kind of hard to not look hypocritical if European nations still had many colonies at that time.
or threatens to invade Taiwan, crickets
China's goal to annex (or retake as they see it), is quite often criticised and several nations indicate they would support Taiwan without openly saying it. Currently China has already been talking about Taiwan for decades without really moving towards it, ofcourse it then will not be talked about and definitely not as much as when Trump suddenly comes out with or hinting to wanting to annex Greenland, Canada, Panama canal and potentially invading northern Mexico all in the span of maybe a month. And this is even worse than China, because it is backstabbing and threatening who are supposed to be you closest allies.
Israel fights a war against Hms after 10/7
Israel is commiting a genocide, has been illegally occupying the Gaza strip and West Bank for decades and is an apartheid state. You can be against Hamas' tactics, but they are actual freedom fighters that have international right on their side much more Israel.
Hell, the genocide in Gaza and western reactions to it has damaged the established international order more than anything else in decades by far.
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@toddfulton2280
Their militaries are stuck 70 years in the past.
Their militaries likely wouldn't be in much better shape without that containment. It isn't like western nations would have sold military equipment to them and Russia doesn't give as much about the sanctions anyway.
Nuclear weapons have limited strategic value other than ensuring mutual destruction
And yet they are strategically much more significant than a strong conventional NK/Iran.
Neither NK nor Iran have the capability to expand their territory
They wouldn't have that either way. The only way for NK to expand is into SK, facing a coalition that would still be vastly superior to its own.
As for Iran, they already fought a long bloody war with Iraq in the 80's for basically no gain. Moreover any war they'd openly start against their neighbours would likely end up in proxy war with the other side supported by the west if they deemed Iran action dangerous. There is a reason Iran focusses on using proxy's.
No, Israel is not committing genocide
It is. This is already confirmed by basically every major independent international organisation. Anyone still refusing to call this a genocide is just refusing to see the truth because it doesn't fit their narrative. Even jewish holocaust survivors call it a genocide. Some even call it worse since at least the Germans didn't have gall ot openly brag and celebrate it. But I am sure you know better than all the genocide experts and those who lived through other genocides 🙄
and the Palestinians in Gaza were not under occupation
According to international law, the UN and even the US they have been under occupation for decades. Just because Israel didn't actively place troops in Gaza doesn't mean it isn't occupied. It still controlled all trade, food, water, energy, travel, ... in and out of Gaza, which still made it an occupied region. Don't talk about things you clearly have no knowledge off.
Ireland literally wants to change the legal definition of genocide just so it can apply to Israel
Ireland doesn't need to change the definition of genocide for it to apply. Most experts on the matter already pointed out it fits to the recognised definition of genocide.
People are intentionally confusing legitimate acts of war with genocide
There is nothing legitimate at purposefully targetting civilians, blocking aid, blowing up all major government buildings, mosques, schools, ... (even after securing them), bulldozing still standing houses, cutting off food and water supply, ... The ICJ literally told Israel to stop many of its actions and Israel only intensified those soon after.
Israel currently is one of (if not) the most lawless countries concerning violations of international and humanitarian law and the only reason it gets away with it is the support of the west.
the CCP is actively engaged in gross human rights violations of the Uyghurs, including forced labor, internment camps, and cultural suppression
Compared to Israeli violations, there is little evidence of the large scale persecution of the Uyghurs. Not saying it doesn't happen, but there is no evidence whatsoever it rises to level of what Israel has been doing against Palestine.
*Yes, China and NK want to overthrow the current world order that is preventing them from attaining their imperialist ambitions. *
And yet it is the west that has show much more disregard to the current world order and imperialistic ambitions/actions than China and NK.
and they have proven they are not to be trusted to play by the rules
Currently China is more playing by the international rules than the US is. But ofcourse if you are blinded by US propaganda you'll likely not realize this.
Maybe to help you understand, I'm starting to think that the US should go back to the relationship we had with Russia in the 1800's, start buying their resources, selling them advanced technologies, giving them access to advanced American weapons and platforms, advanced manufacturing technologies, etc. Let's see how Europe does with that.
What has that do with anything? Are you maybe that kind of person that if they don't get their way with someone, they'll just try everything to spite them?
I have no problem with the US buying Russian resources if they want. Selling them advanced technologies etc, that wouldn't make sense from any perspective, politically, financially, ...
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@archcollie5708
Does the levelized cost of solar include the disposal of panels? That cost is extraordinary (the video confirmed this)
Yes. And no the cost is not extraordinary. It is only extraordinary compared to throwing it away. Recycling the panel costs around $20, which is around 7-10% of the total panel price, however throwing it in the dump costs maybe less than $1.
if left unregulated, and if not done properly, and dumped into landfills, the toxins and heavy metals in panels remain uncaptured for millenniums.
So just push to have it regulated. The EU already did it, so it isn't like it is difficult or would be controversial. Also there aren't really toxins in the regular most used panels for so far I am aware. The most dangerous substance was lead I believe. And that makes up only a tiny fraction of the panel. Normally a regular PV panels substances can only become dangerous when burned at high temperature or when grounded into dust.
Also check out why solar is cheap. Silicon is mostly mined in China with poor OHAS
Actually research shows the cost from China is so low due to the high scale and everything that comes with it, not the cheap price of Silicon, which seems about the same. The difference between a US manufactured solar panel and a Chinse one also isn't that big, only a round 23%.
Essentially bussiness in China saw an opportunity in the market and quickly acted on it, easily becoming the market leader in the world, which allowed them to reach a higher scale than anywhere else and get the benefits that go with large scale.
We should be paying a much higher cost for solar,
No, we really shouldn't.
and then compare the levelized cost over a sixty year period between Solar and mass produced SMR's.
Which is essentially what LCOE is all about, it is total lifetime cost divided by the amount of electricity produced in that lifetime. The time the plant runs is incalculated in the total amount of electricity it produced. If you looked at solar for 30 years or 60 years, you'd still get the same LCOE.
And at this moment there isn't a single commercial SMR running for so far I know, so any LCOE regarding that would have to be completely estimated on potentially wrong assumptions. Most likely only SMR companies have a real idea of the LCOE of SMR's and even their numbers might be more educated guesses at this moment.
Its not a level playing field when one technology must include waste disposal and the other does not.
except waste disposal should be included in the LCOE. If it isn't, that would be because there is no clear knowledge of that cost and should always be mentioned. We are very aware of the recycling/end of life costs of PV panels and thus this is included in the LCOE.
Research how and where lithium and cobalt are mined,
More than half of the lithium is currently mined in Australia. Cobalt isn't really necessary for lithium batteries, it just improves some of its specs, like storage capacity density, which can usefull for EV's, but for stationary storage Li-ion batteries without cobalt would actually be prefered due to cost and ethical or pr reasons.
and how batteries are disposed.
Currently most Li batteries aren't disposed of that well. However with the fast increase in scale of Li-ion batteries there are already several companies that have recycling process with an efficiency of 95% in an environmentally friendly way. Several EV manufacturers already adopted battery recycling in their future business plan as a means to reduce battery costs (due to the lower material cost coming with recycled high grade resources vs raw mined resources).
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@narff0292 The deficit under trump has skyrocketed to post 2008 levels, this while Obama had lowered it to almost half that. Trump doesn't care about the deficit or debt, if he did, he might now already have had a budget surplus. That the deficit increases while (according to himself) the US has the strongest economy ever just shows how incompetent or uncaring he is towards US debt. Claiming otherwise is just foolish.
Trump: hate him or like him he has made America great again.
Except generally outside of the US, the US is now seen at its weakest position since the fall of the USSR. Its support in the world and among allied populations have drastically decreased, while the aversion towards the US has just grown. Politically Trumps action have made the US seem less reliable and has opened the way for nations like China or even Russia to gain influence and in case of China taking a step to a possible future leadership role in the world. Livingstandards in the US have decreased, causes life expectancy to go down. Huge drug crisis and suicides, ... If the US now is great again, I hold my heart for when it slips below that. The only thing in the US that is great is its GDP, incarceration rate and its military.
Mexico is paying for the wall, USMCA
Bullshit, USMCA is a minor upgrade of NAFTA, which might be beneficial to the US, but will never cover the costs of the wall even in the slighest, maybe a very small part of it. That USMCA cause Mexico to pay for the wall is a talking point, no more than that.
How is it good for bunch of in-elected bureaucrats running the institute that passes laws
I guess you mean unelected? The commission is appointed by the elected governments and approved by the parliament. Basically this is just like the US cabinet.
The parliament is directly elected by the voters in an election.
The European council is comprised of the elected heads of states (or their ministers) and is basically like if you put the presidential powers in the hands of the governors in the US. Not really effective, but definitely not unelected.
Are there unelected bureaucrats working behind the scenes? Ofcourse, just like is the case in the US. The unelected bureaucrats talking point is just an unfounded popular myth.
The EU is a cancer to Europe
Then I guess the US would be a cancer to America. The EU is now essentially where the US was early in its existence, while the system is a bit different due to the way it has moved to this point, the essence is the same. The states still want to hold the power, but also understand the need for a larger united entity.
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@davidgutierrez8297 the materials, employee hours, machinery maintenance, ... are definitely part of the production cost. Now the other things, sure, but everything else (including the same "usual" tool) has these costs too. Basically you could probably quite easily get things like this to a sale price of half a dollar, a dollar at most. Disposable plastic cups have a sale price of one cent. Now ofcourse this tool is a bit more complex, however similar very cheap methods would be used. As for storing, it shouldn't really be an issue, not for something as small as this. Packaging can be done really cheap if you go for large quantities and automated process, like I'd be surprised if this costs more than 2-3 cents per tool.
Also plastic when bent enough just snaps.
The entire point of this techniques is that it doesn't happen here. Their switches can go through a million cycles. I'd doubt you use it that often. As for bending it too much, how would that happen exactly? Only improper use would cause that.
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@weirdshibainu and I disagree with that premise.
You are allowed to your opinion, but you are now just denying facts.
As far as not having to come out with newer improved cars, is a foolish strategy.
Lets set things straight, considering you're opinion seems to be based on subjective feelings, not obectively. The model Y is not 1,5 years out, the model 3 4 years. That isn't a long time. And ofcourse Tesla can't come out with several different cars every 4-5 years, they don't have the capacity yet. VW sells around 10 million cars a year, Tesla's best year was building 500k. And it isn't like Tesla isn't coming out with new cars in the future, the cybertruck is slated to come out in 2022 once the Texas production facility is finished building and installing. The Tesla semi will also be produced there, so I'd expect it to come out in deliveries around 2022-23. And they already announced they aim at 2023 to bring out a sub $25k dollar car, though this is likely going to be 2024 imo (it honestly wouldn't make sense to come out earlier with it, such a low price car needs numbers, something Tesla can't even produce now even if they wanted to). Honestly this isn't a bad situation for a 12 year old car manufacturer (counting from the moment they really start selling cars). They'll have brought out around 4-5 new vehicles in around 7 years and 8 in 8 years, 9 in +-12 years if this schedule works out.
VW is bigger, so they can bring out more models. Furthermore VW had to do a catching up manoeuvre anyway in regards to EV's.
Charging networks might be easy to roll out, though it takes quite some investment and ofcourse Tesla has the advantage currently to be a private network vs other networks being public. I am not saying the charging network will remain a trump card for the next decade, but the next few years, yes.
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@weirdshibainu
I'm not denying facts. You are.
First off, I was refering to you not accepting the fact that Tesla is in fact more than just their car department in regards to denying facts. Tesla has already built grid storage battery plants and is selling battery banks for at home and they also are selling solar panels. This is just a fact, not my personal opinion.
Every project you've mentioned lives in Musks mind.
Except it is in development and scheduled by Tesla. No matter what, Musk can't just come up with a ridiculous idea and let Tesla come out with it. Either he'd have to start another company or they'd first work on it in secret to make sure it is actually viable. Tesla isn't Musk personal private company like SpaceX is.
The semi? Not feasible due to lack of range.
LMAO. Tesla is already using semi's on the road to test and improve them. Lack of range? It would either have 500 or 800 km of range depending on the version according to specifications. You know how many km a truck driver could possibly ride in a day in the EU driving constantly at the max speed for semi's on the highway during the hours they are allowed? Around 800km. And they are forced to have some mandatory breaks during that time, so if there is the proper charging infrastructure rolled out, they can charge for 15-20 minutes twice during these breaks, possibly getting half a 'tank' extra.
And there are already several other companies also bringing out electric trucks (so it isn't just a crazy musk idea). I am sorry to burst your bubble, but electric trucks are fine for much of HGV needs, while also at the same time being much cheaper to operate, especially as gas prices go up. Hell, there are even companies that had looked into hydrogen trucks, but went with electric trucks anyway.
The cyber truck is a joke
The cybertruck has at this moment over a 1,25 million reservations listed, even if you take half that number, that is more than Tesla so far has produced in their best year and probably around half of what they have produced in total so far. You might find it a joke, clearly many people don't.
Continue being a musk fan boy.
Oh ofcourse, the "I don't have any real arguments based on facts, so I'll just call the other guy who actually does base his arguments on facts a musk fan boy, eventhough I don't know him".
Just to set things straigth, I don't know if I would ever get a Tesla, personally I like cars like VW's id3-4 more in terms of price, but also convenience (except the buttons they did away with) and look. And I have shit quite often on Tesla, Musk, etc. too depending on the topic/discussion. I just don't care for people misrepresenting stuff and acting like they know what they are talking about when they clearly are just talking out of their arse.
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@phantomphlyer4417
You are obviously are a solar zealot.
You clearly don't know me. Solar is great, but far from the end all be all, it will just be part of the larger system together with wind turbines, hydro and possibly nuclear.
but it’s biggest strength is it is renewable and most suitable for off grid or smaller scaled grids.
That is definitely one of his biggest strengths, yes.
I don’t want an energy grid that is interesting
With interesting I didn't mean like a curiosity, more like attractive, ie that gridoperators find a good choice.
it needs to be reliable, affordable, scalable and meet demands 24/7
It is reliable when paired with storage, moreover the output is very predictable, both the cycles (day/night, summer/winter) and impact from weather are/can be well known. It is affordable for larger plants and while it is more costly in smaller scales (roof installations for example), it can be cheaper when directly using it because you avoid grid and distribution costs and taxes, ofcourse you need to pair it with a battery at that point, not send it into the grid. With storage (and other renewables) it can perfectly meet demands 24/7, however not yet now except for small scale systems (off grid houses etc). Storage prices still need to fall more for that to happen gridwide, which is expected to be the case around 2030-35.
If know people aren’t serious about reducing CO2 emissions if they don’t mention Nuclear power.
I fully disagree with this statement, personally I do think nuclear should be part of the mix if the costs aren't as high as they currently seem to be for new plants. But you can certainly be serious about reducing co2 emissions without nuclear. Maybe not immediately, but then nuclear plants aren't build in a year either. There are plenty of people (and studies) that believe/show that around 2035 you have everything you need to eliminate fossil fuels from power generation without nuclear at a more than acceptable price. Will that be the best option? I don't know, maybe nuclear will remain better for 24/7 applications, like industry, partially EV charging, hydrogen production for shipping etc,..., but we'll have to see that within 10-15 years to be sure.
And yes mobile and scalable, the U.S. military is researching units that can power small communities and help in natural disasters.
Ofcourse mobile reactors exist, these however are usually considerably more expensive by the time they actually get into production. Can you point me to mobile and scalable reactors that are sold now at a decent price?
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This imo is a very shortsighted view. Yes, you can say "we are thinking about longterm survival, bla bla bla". The problem is, if you can't even challenge your side to do better, what is the point? It is not like Biden is going to take drastic action against climate change. He's going to do just more of the same, at best small steps and that is it. If even with Obama, someone who promised change you get Biden's neraly status quo policies, what are you going to get with Biden worse policies?
Furthermore what got you Trump? What if this incrementalism gets you someone like Trump but just more competent in 4-8 years? How will you be better off then?
Also, yes you can be ignored and maybe you not voting Biden but third party doesn't mean anything now, but you have to think longterm. If everyone thinks like you, third parties will never ever stand a chance, they will never ever even be able to get to 5% allowing them all these extra things in the next election. Furthermore that they don't care a fraction of the left not voting democrat is just not true. Just look at what happened in 2016, the left was blamed for H's loss. However if this were to happen time after time after time, eventually other voters might think "well, maybe we should listen more to the left and vote with them to have shot". And yes, Trump is almost certainly going to lose this election, whether a fraction of the left votes for Biden or third party, better to support third party in that case, then Biden. If Trump does somehow pulls off a reverse and wins, you just have to have made sure you did everything to get the senate and house blue.
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@siraff4461 I don't know anyone who would see a 10-12 hour drive as a two day event.
No, that is on the edge, however if you include regular stops along the way (which you should do to drive safely), the trip from this video is more 13-14 hours, unless you are eating in your car, but even then you save maybe 30-45 minutes at most.
1000km in a day for regular cars/drivers is about a good daily limit if you do the advised regular stops. Also I don't think this really matters in the ICE vs EV discussion. An EV might take slightly longer, but also offers more resting periods due to charging, so likely more easy to go 'an extra hour longer'
There was only 10 years of oil left 30 years back
I'd be surprised if anyone with real knowledge said that, currently the average expected run out time (at current use rates) is withing +-50 years. Ofcourse some new oil field/sources might be found, usage might change overtime, .... But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that we will one day run out, so just continuing as we do know is foolish, especially considering oil is used for so much more than just burning it.
My doubt is about its affordability and overall effect on the environment.
That is only a matter of time, plenty new promising battery tech is being developed. You need to remember that we are still in the early stage of EV adoption and EV battery development. It's like talking about ICE vehicles in the 20-40's (figuratively, mostly in terms of battery tech and infrastructure).
I also wonder why there is no pragmatism in all this.
Really? How often are people pragmatic about cars? Few need the acceleration they seek, or the power they want, or the size/model they eventually choose. People (and thus cars in general) aren't really focussed on just the pragmatism side. I'd say that the aptera goes the more pragmatic route for many, but might also be more niche (and thus more costly) due to its special look etc.
Why not a 30-50kWh battery for all the day to day stuff and a small range extender for the long stuff?
Well, the average EV battery size is around 45kWh, though this might include (plug-in) hybrids, For a pure BEV it might be a bit higher (50-60kWh?), but above that you'll already get in the higher priced/longe range EV's.
As for the small range extender, I'd guess the biggest problem is the battery management system (like cooling etc), so you can't just put a range extender in your trunk and plug it into a designated socket, maybe if a company truly designs for it, there could a possibility (a socket for power and heat management stuff, like fluid transfers), but that hasn't happened yet.
There also are some 'new' interesting batteries in development for this problem, like I believe one was Alu-air batteries, they have a much higher density (apparently potentially 8 times the range for a lower mass), but are one use and pretty expensive, though potentially interesting as one off range extenders that you just pick up, plug in for the occasional long trip and drop back off. They can be mechanically recharged.
With the tech we have now it would need around 500kWh and around 2gW charging to make them competetive
That is ridiculous, with that size a decent EV should be able to go around 2250-2500km on one charge, there are barely normal cars that can do that. Put 200kWh in a normal EV and you already have something like 1000km range (high way speeds, urban more likely +-1300km). Ofcourse still way too much kWh, but you make it more than double that to be competitive, which is ridiculous.
The average US car range is 665km, that would be around 130kWh at 20kWh/100km highway use, again this is about the competitiveness part, still too big of a battery. The Tesla model 3 long range AWD is probably the one that comes closest at lowest price (+-60k, still higher end) with a battery pack of 82kWh and 575km range.
Hold on to that idea that its cheaper. Thats already debatable and in the next few years it certainly won't be.
It can already be cheaper over the cars lifetime depending on the type of EV, how much it is driven, charging costs, ... Ofcourse for many the still initial higher price might not get set off, but for others it defintiely might.
I also don't see why you think it won't get cheaper in the next few years. BEV prices will go down with scale and improvement of currently problematic supply lines caused by sudden demand increases and covid/economic shortages. Fast chargers aren't going to increase in price with likely more competitors coming in over time, ...
Even around town shopping cars tend to have hundreds of miles of range. You may not know why but plenty of people do.
Which is mostly because people don't like to go to the fuel pump every other day or so (and there aren't really ICE vehicles with a really short range anyway), if you have a permanent parking spot (garage/driveway) where you can install a charger, you can charge every night with no real extra effort, if a store you go to has some level 2 chargers, you can even use these to top off during shopping.
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@BartoniusAustinius
considering there was a 30% biological boom in Earth's plant life in 2017;
Dont believe so, think it is plant life in general
Your own source says that this increase in greening is primarily caused by the same thing that is also causing climate change. That the earth is greening at this moment is only logical. Plants don't mind climate change (and definitely not high CO2 quantities) as long as they have everything else they need (like water, sun, ...), this is litterally how the earth keeps an overall stable climate throughout the ages (and don't go fully out of control, like keep heating and heating). It is just like the wolfs and rabbits: many rabbits => wolf population increases => rabbit population decreases => wolf population decreases => rabbits population increases => wolf population increases => .... In fact this is one of the reasons why humanity couldn't grow very fast untill the industrial revolution, at which point we literally broke the system.
But it is common among Western liberals that you must believe that a person is physically the sex/gender they identify with, or you are a bigot. Attracted to girls but don't want to have sex with a trans-woman's mutilated penis?? You are a homophobe!
No, if you don't want to have sex with someone of the same gender you're aren't homophobe if you fully respect gay and transgenders rights and as persons. I think you mess up the criticism. People don't call other people homophobe because they don't want to sex with the same gender, they call people homophobe if these people are actively against gays and transgenders only because of their sexual orientation.
considering that they have used the man-made global warming lies to levy carbon taxes and make trillions, TRILLIONS!
Carbon tax map, its global and yes, worldwide trillions have been made over the years.
The carbon tax is just like a pollution fine. If someone dumps waste into a lake/stream/whatever, they need to pay to clean it up, not the public. It is the same idea here, why should the public pay to fight pollution of co2, while the companies that actually profit of it don't need to pay a damn thing? A carbon tax might "force" companies to think about ways to limit pollution, afterall why waste money on prevention when it isn't necessary? And at the same time the money made from the tax can be used to combat climate change.
Well, seeming that scientists have been caught manipulating weather data
Are you saying 99% of the scientist base their motivation for supporting the theory of climate change only on studies that have been manipulated. This would be the greatest magic trick in the history of mankind.
Ofcourse some people might have cooked the numbers (you have people that might do this everywhere) and this cooked research gets ignored or is actively fought against.
considering that it's not just Earth's climate, but all planets' climate changing together;
This doesn't even make sense.
considering that we've been told since the 70's that we only have a few years before our climate destroys us;
There always are and always will be doomsday people. Just like at the EU, people have been claiming it is going to fall/fail in the next few years for decades and it is still here (and yet people keep claiming the same thing over and over).
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Also it will occupy a lot bigger land than usual petrol station for cars to recharge.
Yes and no. Yes, it will take more land than just the petrol station. No, it will not take more land, since you can just place the charges at already existing parking lots. Also a lot of people will charge at home, whereas with an ice these all still go to the petrol station.
The other thing is the price tag on EV is way too expensive compare to conventional cars.
I agree that currently it is still too high. It was expected to drop and reach parity (sale cost wise) by around 2025-2026, but that is was before the pandemic and economic troubles. In fact the price only increased by quite something in the last 2 years in my country. However this eventually will change, it is just a matter of time.
Finally does it really environment friendly?
Yes, it is.
That is a quesiton mark as the recycle of battery isn't a easy process not mention it's very toxic.
There are several companies who already reach very high recycling rates (95-98% with usually only non-interesting things like plastic etc remaining). Recycling it isn't really a toxic process.
And one more, the power grid of the UK isn't really sufficient, imagine if everyone is on it.
BEV's would (based on total distance traveled by cars) overall increase the electricity demand by 10-15%, but they could even help out the powergrid if they use V2H or V2G, which would reduce the overall strain on the grid.
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@Livestream Fail
Garbage "hasn't been a poll" we don't base things or garbage polls
Honestly then you are not even worth discussing with. Since polls are the only thing we can use to discuss about how much support x or y has. Polls might not always be accurate, but there are more often right or not. And often if they are wrong it is just with a few % points. So if no poll has shown even close to 40% support for independence, it is extremely unlikely, more like impossible that there is a 50%+ support for it.
that have been wrong about basically every election and referendum for the last 4 years
really? like what exactly?
If you're so confident about your side winning why don't you support having a referendum on it then?
Because it is a non-issue? Why would I support a referendum on a non-issue? There are plenty of things more worthy of a referendum than this. Especialy since referendums cost money, time and sometimes even social unrest. You wouldn't support a referendum being organised about Belgium becoming a fully socialist state or authoritarian, eventhough there will be people that might prefer that, or do you?
because you know you would lose and the fake country of Belgium would finally end
I am certain that the separatists would lose. Just because I don't support a referendum that I do so because I am afraid of the outcome. I also don't support a referendum about taxing everyone 90-100%. Not because I fear enough people would vote yes, but rather because I know that there is no way it will win and would thus just be a waste of money, time and effort.
VB is going to be the largest party majority
So is it going to be a majority and/or the largest party. If it is the first, no that won't happen. If it is just the latter, yes that might happen. Will it? I don't know. Would it mean something? Yes, that people are fed up with the traditional parties and don't like the way things are going. Does this mean all VB voters want to split Belgium? Not at all, many are just protest votes. The best thing would be to get rid of mandatory voting, this might already show how many people would actually be willing to stand in line for VB (and other parties obviously).
N.WA voters only voted for N.WA because they hoped one day they would have a referendum on seperation
No, if they just wanted separation, they'd remain with VB. A strong VB might show more strongly the support for separation, this while a vote for N-VA might just be people who either want a more economically right party, want stronger immigration, want more powers to the regions but no separation, ... N-VA voters are a mix of people who vote on many different issues. Separation is probably one of the last ones. And even if separatists voted for N-VA initially, they would already have shifted back to VB in the 2019 election, seeing how weak N-VA actually was in terms of Flemish nationalism.
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@pavlom4745
UK left. This is definitely sign of critical disagreement, and as soon as strongest powers Germany and France still in EU, this indicates who was not agree with UK the most.
The UK always was one of the most eurosceptic nations, which is not surprising considering UK governments often blamed the EU for their own failures and many UK citizens still have this imperial UK in their mind/memory, this anglo exceptionism.
It also wasn't like the governments of the UK and other EU members couldn't agree, Cameron campaigned against leaving the EU and he actually believed they wouldn't vote for brexit. He thought he could safely call the referendum as a political move, which backfired in his face.
But it increases trade supply from Russia
Yes, so? At the same time there still are also are embargo's and sanctions against Russia/Russian officials, it just so happens that Russian gas can be gotten for much cheaper than other sources of gas. And btw Russian gas is a necessity for many eastern European nations. Should we just tell them they can't import that anymore?
Same time in Normand Four format Germany and France was not able to provide legal peaceful solution for Ukraine
So they tried but weren't successful, what's the point? That they should just bully Russia into a peaceful solution? Yeah, that will certainly work.
If would EU stop trade to Russia for 1 year there would not be a war in Ukraine at all, because Russia don't have own resources.
This is the most stupid thing you said, the entire thing is that Russia does have massive amount of resources, it doesn't truly need the EU trade, would it hurt their economy? Ofcourse, just like it would hurt EU's economy. Would it force Russia to the table? No, it wouldn't. Russia would just try to find other trading partners (like China etc) or just stick it out. The crucial things they need, they have. However, Europe would suffer from large gas shortages, which actually will lead to people dying of the cold and people not being able to cook food, you are underestimating the importance of Russian gas to European nations.
Germany for decades seems pushes "green energy" taxes
Decades? They didn't impose more green taxes than many other nations untill the last decade, when extra green taxes were needed to pay for the then still expensive renewables.
Same time we saw Dieselgate
Which was the action of a company, not the German government or the German people. This is completely irrelevant in this discussion.
This is huge sign of corruption
No, it isn't. Volkswagen just figured out a way to cheat on emission tests. They didn't need to bribe politicians or whatever to get that done, just the necessary software, knowledge and "guts".
Few EU countries understand Russia threat and see Germany is a major Russia trade partner, which secures Russia military budgets.
Russian military budget is around 1/3 of the budget of the EU memberstates combined, realistically Russia shouldn't be a military threat to the EU. The main reason it still can be is because the EU military is divided into many different armies. Germany is exactly one of the countries that isn't entirely against an EU army and probably would even support it, unfortunately it is politically just unfeasible at this time.
Could you believe Germany as NATO member would get in war with Russia if would Russia invade any east EU member?
Yes, absolutely, if not the EU would collapse almost immediately and Germany would be ousted by every close ally it has. Germany literally would have no choice but to defend that member, both due to the EU and NATO. That you don't believe Germany would act to defend them, just shows your anti-German sentiment. In no way would it make any sense for Germany to try and sit that one out.
Russia is Germany's 13th largest trade partner in terms of export and 15th in terms of import. If they don't honor their pledge to defend fellow NATO or EU members, it would get into a huge diplomatic (and possibly economic) conflict with 9 of its larger export partners and at least 10 of their more important import partners. In no way would the trade with Russia be worth risking the relations with those close allies and trading partners.
I believe we see something similar to Hitler - Stalin relations at 1939, when they was partners and agreed to divide Europe.
This is just ridiculous, this must be a joke. We couldn't be further from that situation.
Russia act in a very similar way as Hitler in Czechoslovakia 1939.
Not illogical, since this is the only way to try and get some territory (back) without causing a large scale war.
Same time Germany and France not provide sufficient efforts to stop the war in Ukraine.
Because Ukraine is neither a NATO member, nor an EU member. Nevertheless, the EU did impose trad sanctions on Russia as a result of the situation in Ukraine. More then that however would mean a more direct involvement, which would also allow the Russian troops to drop the pretenses and just openly support the rebels en masse at a scale that would make the current support seem like a joke.
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@pavlom4745
Now I get you. You think Russia not invaded Ukraine, but took Ukrainian Crimea back.
Nope, that is not what I think or said at all. I indicated it shouldn't be surprising that it reminds you to Nazi Germany, since this isn't a new tactic. The best (or only way) to get a territory (back) without causing a larger war is by doing what Russia and Nazi Germany (and other countries in the past) did: claim they came as 'saviours/liberators' to protect their people from this oppressing regime and that these people wanted that.
Unlike with the 1930's, countries haven't just given their permission, there was no appeasement politics, the EU and US rather quickly put economic sanctions in place against Russia.
they left that is it. If would they see more beneficial to stay, they would do.
Don't really see how this is response to me saying they always were more of a eurosceptic nation, but ok. And btw, personally I think this will help the EU in the long run. The UK always demanded special treatment, they always wanted to be in for the advantages, without all the disadvantages and they also would work against further EU integration time and time again.
Problem is somebody who talks about green energy increase carbohydrates consumption.
It is not mutually exclusive, one can roll out renewable energy at a large scale and still need fossil fuel to meet increasing demands. FYI, this gas isn't meant for something like powerplants, it is to supply private needs. So far Germany (or any country) has not put a ban on gas for private use (heating and cooking), the only thing they'd do now is increasing taxes to get people to use less. Besides the pipeline is mostly to cut the large transit costs that now exists for existing pipelines, not to increase the amount of gas necessarily, in fact natural gas use has slightly gone down compared to the previous decade in Germany.
Germany has set deadlines regarding emissions for both 2030 and 2050 (fully neutral), so it is not that it can just increase its gas consumptions, at best the pipeline will be used for the coming 3 decades, more likely would be around the next 2 decades or less.
as there is no any embargo, but sanctions
Part of the sanctions was an embargo on certain goods.
By the way in occupied Ukrainian Crimea works German turbine produced by Siemens. Also there works German Metro network supermarket.
Considering Germany doesn't recognise Crimea as part of Russia, one could argue that this is a loophole in the sanctions. Moreover the sanctions aren't on everything, that would be a complete embargo, which would just cause the situation to escalate further.
Russia steals Ukrainian natural gas in Crimea and Germany happy to buy more stolen gas.
Russia has more than enough natural gas of their own to sell (Crimea's reserves would respresent around 0,06% of Russia's natural gas reserves. Russia will never even be able to sell most of their natural gas, by 2050 European nations would only import it for certain specific reasons, those imports will be a fraction of what it is today. So for Russia these reserves are worthless, they are unlikely to sell them, probably not even mine them for now. It is just unfortunate for Ukraine that they can't sell it. But this wouldn't change by Germany (btw Nord stream is meant to supply other nations than Germany too) buying Russian gas or not. Russia isn't going to give Crimea back unless it falls apart, has a complete political shift (like becoming more like other European nations) or it is taken back in a larger war, which would be far more disastrous for Ukraine than the current situation.
This shows how Germany regulators works. This shows like Germany applies strict regulations, to limit foreign manufacturers competition on EU markets, while fails to control own manufacturer. Yes Volkswagen created the problem, but we cannot just ignore the regulator failure and it does related to German government.
You do realise this weren't German but European regulations, Germany has around 13% of MEPs, one seat in the commission and 1 seat in the council, they can't just push through regulation that suits them. They'll have to influence a lot of people. And Volkswagen didn't just fool German tests, but European tests and even US tests.
This is a problem of/caused by one company, not Germany.
Germany is the second Russia trade partner
Which means Russia needs to be very carefull to anger Germany, this just means Germany and the EU by expansion have a larger power of Russia through this trade relation than the other way around. However Russia would rather bite their tongue and receive a hit to their economy than to just lose their plans with Crimea and the Donbass region.
An embargo would hit both sides hard, without certainty of success. In fact it is even possible that it would entice Russia to react by pouring more troops and material into the Donbass region.
Once Ukraine would fail East Europe can get in fire.
Ukraine won't fall unless there is a massive escalation from Russia's side, at which point the EU and US can also escalate things, however they won't escalate it themselves.
Most dangerous USSR ballistic rockets was built in Ukraine as well as a lot of other military equipment.
Irrelevant.
It just feels like you don't understand geopolitics that well. You think you can just use a stick to hit an animal to chase it away, however the animal can also react differently than expected and instead attack you with a much greater ferocity than it showed before, and then what?
Lets say we completely Embargo Russia, Russian imports are mostly non essential things, sure they are needed, but Russia can survive without it. Then as a response Russia would cut of all gas to European nations, it would cause deaths due to freezing in winter definitely and possibly even cause starvation/diseases because many people can't cook their food anymore, not to mention the still needed gas powerplants would fall silent causing electricity shortages. At the same time russia likely would send in much more troops to the Donbass region and execute a massive assault they likely already have plans for. By the time the NATO can react, Ukraine most likely would already be overrun. What then? A full war between Russia and Nato with Ukraine being one of the main battlefields? I am sure that will be much better for Ukraine than the current situation.
You don't just go for something that it supposed to be the last resort before open war, if you play that hand and they bluff you, you're in trouble. If you really believe Russia would cave with an embargo, you really underestimate them. What is happening now is move and countermove without trying to let things escalate, since that wouldn't be good for anyone.
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@looinrims
ie overwhelming air power, somehow the ground troops will have that while the majority of planes (because the Chinese have more and better planes than the Russians and equal amounts of SAMs) are over in the Far East, while the carriers will just teleport as needed
US navy has a larger airforce than China alone. Moreover what you also fail to consider is that in a two front war (Russia/China), Europe would fight also against the Russians, as it happens the combined European airforces are little larger and overall more capable than the Russian airforce. Meaning the US could get overwhelming superiority in the European theater even by just sending 20-30% of their airforce to Europe (possibly even less).
If we add all military branches for the three countries, the US has 2 times more planes than Russia and China combined, and overall they should be more technologically capable 1v1.
Moreover in both cases the US would likely act as the defender, mostly performing actions in friendly airspace or close to it, mostly deterring hostile ground or sea forces from doing anything (like advancing into Europe, invading Taiwan, ...), meaning SAM systems would be more in favor of the US and recovery of pilots who need to evacuate their plane is more likely.
The main limitation the US might face vs China isn't the number of planes, but rather the airports it can use to launch and service the necessary planes. Which is why you'll most likely see most if not all operational US carriers being sent to that theater of war, elsewhere they'd not be needed. Ofcourse this redeployment would take time and you likely would never have more than 4-5 carriers operational at that theater of war at any given time, with the others being maintained, resupplied, under way, ...
Also the Chinese at the moment have a smaller airforce (even when combining all branches) than Russia, whether they are more capable is difficult to say.
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@eddietat95
Each NATO and EU country has a different set of defense requirements that may or may not vary greatly, depending on the piece of equipment. A "joint" plane, "joint" ship, etc. will more often than not be made in different configurations unique to each customer and may or may not have attached contractual obligations behind them (i.e. some parts must be produced within the customer nation with customer labor). As a result, the project gets more complicated, costs increase, and delays result. Look at Eurofighter, for example.
I doubt this would be the case for the smaller nations who likely have more similar objectives. Regarding bigger nations (Germany, France, Spain, ...) sure that can be a possibility.
Also this would be why you'd also try to maybe create more of an overarching plan, rather than working as small individual nations who barely can do anything by themselves, focus on more joint structures. For example the Benelux countries already have an agreement to switch protection of benelux airspace every 6 months between Belgian and Dutch airforces, so for that they already need similar planes. Also it is unlikely either of these nations would have completely different objectives for their airforces. They don't need naval airforce assets like France for example.
Obviously if it was an easy group purchase, it would already been done. Doesn't mean it isn't worth working towards something, especially between countries that don't tend to have specifically different needs.
Production costs and scaling are the problem of the contractor/company, not the military.
Yes and no. It doesn't have a direct on which item the military would want to have, but the price will influence their decision whether it is worth buying the best product for them. If they need 50 items of x and can only get 20-25 of them due to the price, they might look at the second best option instead. Quality vs quantity only goes so far. It is useless having the best ship for the job if you needed several more ships to do the job required. Furthermore obviously if you can get more of the best item for the same price or a lower price for the same, why wouldn't you do that?
The remainder of that paragraph really isn't usefull in this discussion. Essentially the difference would just be that the military would first check if their aren't other militaries in the framework that have similar requirements, or requirements that will likely end up with the same outcome.
You are stating how it is done now, not how the current system is better compared to if it is somewhat changed.
You aren't going to tell me that all European countries that bought the F35 for example all had completely different demands, requirements, ... that couldn't be converged on for some. Obviously it would require some discussion, but depending on the value of the deal, a bit of effort and time wouldn't matter much compared to possibly paying more for the same.
By and large, this method of procurement works.
So because it works, it can/shouldn't be improved if possible?
Most NATO and EU members, especially the poorer ones, will adopt the same equipment because one country already did the testing and found a company's piece of equipment to be the gold standard.
Exactly, so why not do joint procurement programs that could see a lower overall price per unit?
You seem to think this is just about procurement programs to develop something new, it is rather about procurement programs to buy stuff you already were likely to buy anyway, but now can maybe do it at a better price due to working with other militaries that also were going to buy it.
Other countries have the right to adopt different equipment depending on their operational requirements which, again, can vary from member to member.
And again, you obviously would first look at what other countries operational requirement are and then work with those with similar ones to converge to one procurement program.
I am not saying it should be one procurement program for all these nations for all procurements, rather the procurement programs would shift on an as need basis. One day Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, ... create a joint procurement program for planes that need to be capable of doing XYZ (for example to buy F35's), then for another procurement Belgium works with Poland and Greece to procure military vehicles that can do ABC.
Essentially it would be like a military put on a joint server that they need within the next x to y years item A with requirements C, D, H, ... and then other militaries can go: we require something similar within more or less the same time frame, lets see if we can't cooperate on getting it. Again oversimplification, but you get the point.
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@ronvonryan
There was just two questions, leave or stay, no mention of deal, just leave or stay
But no deal was also not mentioned, in fact a deal was constantly mentioned by brexiteers, no deal almost never. The entire fucking reason the first referendum was flawed, was because there are several options of how leave, and these weren't addressed in the referendum. And no, voting leave didn't automatically meant agreeing to no deal.
and in a democracy
The is a reason why a democracy usually works through representatives in a parliament. In the case of referendums the problems are details and knowledge, as is shown with the brexit referendum. And either way, there has been a GE afterwards. In a democracy the latest election/vote is what counts. And if a former vote can't be overruled by a newer vote, you aren't living in a democracy anymore anyway.
Yes it did!! the Government spent £9 million of tax-payers money on leaflets
There are fucking papers of dozens or hundreds of pages about the different brexit options, etc. most of which came out after the referendum. Claiming people knew what they voted for because of a fucking leaflet is just laughable. And no deal wasn't even mentioned in the leaflets, only some possible deals and the impact (read loss) of these deals compared to remaining.
Cameron laid it on the line on TV before the referendum when he said it would mean no single market, no customs, there was no mention of a deal, or a soft or hard brexit
Cameron wanted to make people afraid uncertain, and this was called project fear and lies by the brexit side. Maybe rather quote what brexiteers said or did, because leave voters would have listened more to them.
and remember they need us much more than we need them!!!
I can't believe brexiteers still think this. Yes the EU economy will take a hit, but it will be spread out and minor compared to the fulle EU economy, the impact on the UK economy would be several times worse. If it comes down to the EU can go on without UK trade, I'd like to see the UK go on without EU trade.
a million illegal immigrants
Off what nationality? European? If they are there illegal, the government can kick them out. If they are not European, they are most likely from the commonwealth. The EU has fucking shielded the UK from the migrantcrisis, other EU nations took the brunt of the crisis, not the UK.
This would be much more a failure of your governments inaction, than any EU action or rules.
I voted to leave the EU, and so did the millions of others, we won the vote, we want out, no compromise, no deal, just out!!! that's what we voted for and that's what we want.
That's what you voted for. Do you know the mind of everyone of these 17 million leave voters that they want brexit at ALL COST? How do you know that some of them don't prefer remaining over a no deal? The only way you could know this is by having polls that put support for no deal higher than support for remain, guess what, that is not the case. You are projecting your own opinions and interpretations on millions of other people just because you happened to vote the same way as you in a fucking 2-way vote. The fucking hubris you're showing.
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1) The "far left" (Sanders is regular left in most countries and many of his policies are supported by a majority of americans) not being possible is bullshit. Hillary was a centrist pure sang and lost from Trump, also Trump is not as much to the center (at least not campaign wise). Taking Clinton into account is also rather stupid, this is nearly 30 years ago, times change.
4) The economy is doing good for the corporations and rich people, for regular people, this doesn't translate down, and that is specifically what progressive dems focus on, "yes the economy is doing great, but not for a majority of americans"
10) Most media are in the center and pro-status quo, because they aren't just going against Trump, but also Sanders.
You missed: supporters (Sanders appeals to voters who went Trump in 2016), fervour (how a candidates base is actually going to be, can a candidate get more people out to vote), ...
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@jackthegamer4019 A lot of those 3 million troops where overall poorly trained draftees. Since then there is more of a push towards a smaller but better trained army and an emphasize on logistics (although looking at Russia in the last month, you wouldn't say it). Russia has around 400k actual combat troops, it obviously can't deploy them all in Ukraine, say that NATO suddenly decides to intervene and invade all Russian territories they have borders with to put pressue on Russia, clearly you can't just let them overrun these territories, thus you need combat troops there to defend it.
Also the USS was a lot bigger. Even if we assume the USSR was Russia + Ukraine, 700k of those 3 million likely came from Ukraine, that would have made 2.3 million from Russia. Currently Russia has an armed force of around 1 million troops, but these include also navy, airforce, nuclear, ... So the land forces already have quite a lot less and then you need a lot of background personel for logistics administation, ....
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@Teknomanslade2 * and lets say i end up only using 50% of it capacity for that trip what you going to do with the remaining amount?*
The answer to that is pretty easy, there are several solutions.
1) you just use up that specific battery during your daily life. No problem with this. Afterwards only get another Alu-air once you actually need the range.
2) you bring this back to a battery swapping station, where they can give it to someone else that doesn't need a full range battery (and thus pays less and ofcourse you get something extra back too, how much depends on the economics).
3) you use modules, with every module being worth lets say 200 miles and a possibility of adding x modules in your car at the same time (x depending on car to car). For example do you need 1000 miles, you use 5 modules, do you need somewhere around 200 miles, you put in 1 module. Everything below 150 miles should be doable with a 100 miles lithium battery, even if this means a one time 10-15 minute fastcharging break.
so in terms of the average people it would make more sense to have a swap station for the aluminum battery and use that as your daily consumption and the lithium as your backup with a 2 compartment skateboard design
There is just no sense in using your lithium as a back up, while using alu-air as your standard battery. The advantages of Lithium batteries is best used as in a daily use case, while that of Alu-air as an extender. Why would you even want to have a Li backup? Just get to the swapping station in time just like with gas now.
you could still have regenerative breaking that would then recharge the lithium when not in use or in use while aluminum is your primary source of driving
Except that Li battery will quickly be fully charged if you only used it as an essentially non necessary back up. So you quickly will make no use of the regenerative braking advantage.
3. the overal weight of the battery skateboard design would actually be less than current 100% lithium batteries.
As it would be when using a smaller Li battery as the main battery and using the Alu-air as an extender for longer trips.
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@TheBenj30
That's not remotely true though
Isn't it? What else is the reason for it to incorporate these other nations? It isn't like these have essential know how or industry the British lack/need for the development. This also is to ensure/increase the possibility that these nations are likely to buy the Tempest aircrafts instead of the French and German FCAS aircrafts, thus diminishing development costs.
the UK wanted to create a plane that did pure air superiority and so did Italy
The UK wants a general multi-role 6th gen plane, a document from the MoD literally says:
An aircraft, manned or unmanned, whose prime function is to conduct air-to-air and/or air-to-surface combat operations in a hostile and/or contested environment, whilst having the ability to concurrently conduct surveillance, reconnaissance, electronic warfare and command and control tasks.
Sounds to me pretty similar to what the other FCAS project wants. Though not sure if Tempest forsees close operation with unmanned drones as FCAS envisions.
Of course, cost-sharing is part of the programme, but it's the exact same with FCAS - if money wasn't a problem then Dassault would do it alone without Germany, fact.
Well, yeah. But the issue was that the OP was surprised the UK was part of a European project to start with and not just doing it on their own or maybe looking for the US for a 6th gen fighter plane. The FCAS cooperation makes more sense since this is also done on other projects to attempt to create more cohesive EU militaries and equipment and independence from US equipment.
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@TheBenj30 because you said it in a way where it seemed that Tempest was and FCAS wasn't
FCAS was never even mentioned, Tempest was. The main thing was the UK overall has been cutting ties with the EU and now went into a partnership with EU countries for Tempest. The OP literally said he was surprised to find the UK in such a programme with other EU nations, this s what I responded to.
which is an air superiority fighter which can dabble in hitting ground targets and FCAS which will mix those roles whilst having the capability to carry and launch nuclear weapons and operate of Aircraft Carriers
1. Where did you find it was a predominantly air superiority fighther with the ability to hit ground targest being secondary? Any 6th that isn't multi-role will loose out in the end.
2. FCAS needs to be able to execute nuclear strikes, but this doesn't mean the fighter itself should be able to do this, rather its accompagning drones might also be enough. This isn't necessarily different from future Tempest capabilities. Hell, the Eurofighter can be made nuclear capable. You can be damn sure the Tempest will have nuclear cability build in, one way or another.
because even an amateur will tell you that the cost of making a plane carrier capable and nuclear capable are some of the highest costs for capability and yet from your response you'd think there is very little difference between Tempest and FCAS.
Like I said, nuclear capability isn't necessarily build into the main fighter itself, rather the entire program, this will decrease such difficulties and can push it longer term to drone carriers.
Yes, carrier capable will drive up costs, but also increase capabilities. And some of the older demands put on carrier capable aircraft in the past will be negated by using new technology and France also already said it will develop a larger carrier type, since the FCAS will not be carrier capable for their current carrier. This means that the carrier will be build around the plane (more or less), and not the other way around (though obviously some care needs to be taken to make it future compatible).
I also said it to be pretty similar, not exactly the same. Some capabilities may differ, but the overall role and how it operate will be the same. In Tempest case it just will not be carrier capable.
so framing FCAS as right because it's an EU project is simply untrue
Where did I say the FCAS program was right and Tempest wrong? I said the FCAS cooperation makes sense since France and Germany already are working more together on other projects too and both wish to decrease US depency within the EU.
you've framed it like that to justify your original argument and it's not really a logical point.
My original 'argument' didn't even mention FCAS, it only mentioned Tempest and why the UK works on it with other EU countries despite recently having moved away from the EU/Europe on many other fronts.
stating that FCAS is better for each country because it's fully EU isn't a valid point
Never stated that it is better, rather a more logical partnership.
otherwise Germany wouldn't be buying the F35, it'd be buying the Rafale for nuclear weapons carrying
Both are nuclear capable, so I don't see what your point here is.
You're arguing that countries will buy FCAS because it's an EU project
Again never said that. How many times now have you claimed I said something that I didn't. Maybe you just start with properly reading what I actually said.
If any of the other 23 EU countries are looking at a fighter jet they're looking at more than just origin
I don't disagree with this, nor did I say that they are more likely to buy FCAS.
especially when they can get another European fighter jet developed by 2 EU members and one of the key European defence members which does pure air superiority with the potential for additional packages like ground strike over a fighter jet which can carry nuclear weapons which only France needs and land on Aircraft carriers which only France needs.
And this is just a speculative opinion. The F35 is carrier and nuclear capable and yet countries that don't need this buy it.
The fact that 2 other EU countries being involved in Tempest also is irrelevant, they are mostly tag along countries in the project and if it comes to influence within the EU, they are irrelevent vs France and Germany combined.
That the plane does pure air superiority is more of a detriment to a gen 6 fighter which will use stealth and long range fighting, using drones to protect it and engage targets. Air superiority should be a given for gen 6 fighters, as well as the capability to strike ground targets.
In the end a pure superiority fighter with additional packages will only be more interesting than a plane that does that and more if it is cheaper to buy and operate.
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@TheBenj30
That's from the UK's own outlook for the project, they don't need it to replace the capabilities of the F35, it's meant to gain air superiority and once achieved have the ability to hit ground targets through use of it's accompanying drone systems and payloads such as Brimstone.
Clearly we're talking about different things. I am talking about not just the fighter, but the entire package, ie. the use of drone support also. Clearly first thing a gen 6 need to be capable of doing is getting air superiority (or stealth) and then focus on ground targets (though these two are intertwined with air defense ground systems). What you just said, is basically the same thing FCAS will aspire to do. It are literally the logical steps to engage adversaries.
No country in Tempest launches nuclear weapons from planes at all, which means if they are doing it they are using American nuclear weapons - making a non-American plane nuclear capable for American nukes requires you giving them full access to every aspect of the plane
Not if they launch it from drone, then they need to give access to the drone aspects
which is why Germany didn't buy the Rafale from France for carrying Nuclear Weapons, because France would rightly not hand over the designs.
Sure, but Germany could use other planes. It intended to aqcuire f-18's for that role and considering Airbus is willing to make the Eurofighter capable of carrying US nuclear payloads. Moreover it isn't popular in Germany that there are US nukes stationed there, it isn't entirely unlikely that in the next few years Germany withdraws from that arrangement, making the choice of their new fighters less about nuclear payloads.
Why do you seem to think that Tempest is going to spend money on the ability to carry nuclear weapons when every country involved doesn't use aerial launched nuclear weapons
I never said they would, I said they could by using drones next to the Tempest as part of the overall Tempest program, but not the fighter itself. "Like I said, nuclear capability isn't necessarily build into the main fighter itself, rather the entire program, this will decrease such difficulties and can push it longer term to drone carriers."
So this can be an offshoot/part of the program entirely payed by the UK itself or by countries willing to pay for it. I specifically said the fighter itself doesn't need to designed to carry nuclear payloads, neither for Tempest nor FCAS. By using dedicated drones you'd also eliminate potential problems with France's nukes vs the US nukes stationed in Germany.
who could use them under the nuclear umbrella system already has the F35
By that idea FCAS also doesn't need to be nuclear capable since it has Rafale's in France and F-35's in Germany. These new fighter systems aren't meant to work in conjuction with current gen 5/4.5 planes their entire life, they are successors to these planes, meant to eventually replace them. F35 is meant to operate untill around 2070-2080, 30-40 years after Tempest/FCAS will be properly introduced.
Anyway, if you want to get your gram here, fine. I've no need to keep discussing about something I didn't even want to discuss about when I first responded to this thread.
Which is an irrelevant comment considering the United States couldn't even figure out a way to make carrier capable planes work or be launched more effectively and essentially spent 10s of billions modernising the current system they have
I never spoke about more efficiently launched, I spoke about which planes. The US incorporated many new systems in their carriers to make them more effective, not to allow the F35 on it. And the technology hasn't stood still since the F35's development, since then a lot has changed and improved already.
Unless France is willing to spend billions on an Aircraft Carrier
That is a given if they want to keep Aircraft carriers in the future.
and then billions on a unique new launch system nobody else has thought of, FCAS will be a carrier launched plane like the F35C.
Pretty sure people thought of things that before just weren't possible but now might be. Anyway, yes it be be a slightly changed version of the normal FCAS plane, which France is likely to pay for. Afterall Dassault already talked about 'a naval variant'.
you're purposely pretending like the carrier capability isn't a big difference, Carrier capable planes are heavier, less manoeuvrable and have shorter ranges than conventional fighter jets
Rafale is lighter with a bigger range than the eurofighter and as maneuverable and it is of a similar size. Sure the F35 has a range around 700km less and heavier, but is also a gen 5 fighter vs gen 4/4.5. The difference between an F35A and F35C in weight is only around 1360kg on a total of around 13150kg for the A. Yes, it is slightly less maneuverable, but if you get to that stage that it is too low with a gen5/6, you are already doing something wrong.
but considering the United States who spend money equivalent to the annual French defence budget on these types of projects and still haven't figured it out
To be fair, the US defence department (and other's like Space, hell the US government in general) isn't exactly known for good low budgetting of programs.
have miraculously figured out how to make a 6th Generation Fighter which revolutionizes how carrier capable aircraft work.
It wouldn't say revolutionize it, nor is that necessary. It would just take away design constraints that were needed in the past due to the inaccessiblity of modern day technology back then. Selfdriving cars were impossible just a few years ago, and yet we might have it in the next decade. Technology doesn't stand still.
one plane does exactly what they need
Like the FCAS does also.
and is built by 2 EU members and the largest defence spender in Europe
Don't see how this is relevant to a logical relationship.
you're acting as if the rest of the EU will by FCAS purely because it being Franco-German-Spain
No I am not. I was talking in a political sense. Germany and France have looked more and more at eachother for combined defence projects to share costs and get modern EU alternatives and wish to create better ties within the EU (militaries). Both are large scale nations and leaders within the EU.
Compared to this, the UK the last few years has actively been cutting ties with the EU and angering EU nations with its stances and behaviour (including those partners).
(See next comment)
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The ability to carry nuclear weapons is linked into the design of a fighter jet
Yes, I admit I made a mistake here. Didn't think about the differences between French and US nuclear delivery systems.
France will never agree for FCAS designs to be shared with the United States for it to be made ready for American nuclear weapons
I don't really see a problem if FCAS uses a drone to deliver the nuclear payload, though I guess that is something that we'll have to find out about in the future. If a drone delivery method is used however, this too can just be payed for by France seperately or by having France pay a higher % of the development costs if Germany can't use that capability. Again Germany might not even need that capability by then.
The Rafale is nuclear capable (and carrier capable) and its development still was cheaper than the eurofighter.
You've repeatedly referred to FCAS as more logical of a choice for the EU
The more logical partnership, not the more logical for the EU as a whole.
and referenced the ability to produce them in direct reference to the Tempest
Don't know where you get this idea from.
you did that by bringing into it the EU and mentioning it being logical because of EU military plans on equipment
From a French-German standpoint on the EU, its further military cooperation and dependence on US equipment. This doesn't mean all EU nations will buy it, just like many didn't buy the eurofighter. This just refers to what France and Germany might envision to achieve with it.
you wouldn't be discussing their policies on equipment acquistion
I didn't? where did I discuss their policies on equipment acquisition if there is not really a European policy on military hardware acquisition?
maybe you should read your own posts before replying.
Or maybe you should stop readings things in my responses that isn't in there.
You said it was more logical though
The partnership, not the project or the aircraft. If both projects come to fruition, they seem pretty competitive to me. In which case it would likely come down to price, other competition (like the US) and influence of the sellers.
That depends entirely on the version you buy
Which would likely be the same with FCAS.
these types of production lines aren't possible with FCAS because even if the entire EU bought planes, it's still not enough to make the cost of the planes come down enough for people to order them
Bullshit. France already has its own seperate plane. At the very worst you'll get a general version that isn't carrier or nuclear capable (which again for nuclear would make more sense to just use an accompagning drone). With France producing the nuclear capable (drones) and carrier variants on its own based on the general model and then selling it to who'se interested themselves (for the carrier version ofcourse). For example there seems to be some interest from Spain for a carrier and carrier versions of the FCAS, though ofcourse this is still some time away and likely won't be much further interest for from other nations.
It's also entirely worth mentioning that most European navies field Carriers without catapults
FCAS carrier variant is likely not even going to work on the existing european carrier models, which is one of the reasons France is designing a new carrier capable of it.
if everyone has an F35 then they don't need another nuclear capable jet
The FCAS, Tempest and the US 6th gen program is meant to be a successor to the F35 and other current fighters and thus be in service for longer. Ofcourse it is possible to just get the US 6th gen plane later on for the nuclear capabilities or try to wait out for the 7th gen fighters later on. Anyway, I don't expect the nuclear demand to really be a big problem if they go about it in a smart way.
That's a load of nonsense - a 6th Generation Fighter should excel in air superiority
Ofcourse, just not ONLY/PRIMARILY air superiority, it should excel in everything. That it is entire point of the connected drone system, to be able to be expert in air superiority AND ground attack.
but they're kind of irrelevant if your enemies control the skies and can knock them down.
The entire point is that the base fighter should be more of a command vessel with the drones capable of taking out enemy opposition. You shouldn't be involved in close combat with a 6th fighter, it should be more like snipers hunting eachother down. Thus you use a multitude of drones for carrying air-to-air missiles, radar, jamming, ... potentially even remote controlled dogfighting if absolutely needed, though that would be a more difficult thing with having to account for potential small delays, jamming, ...
you've diminished the effects of making a plane Carrier Capable and Nuclear Capable as if they have no effect at all
Again this depends entirely on how you go about it if you have drone network capability. You are still stuck in a mentality that should completely change with the use of drones.
despite this you've also pretended as if France who have no experience in 5th Generation Design have cracked the problem to carrier capable planes being heavy
I never said they cracked the problem with carrier planes being heavier, I said some of the older demands fall away with technological advancement, which might also influence US 6th design. But this also doesn't seem to be a problem to start with currently, considering that the Rafale carrier version is still lighter than the Eurofighter and only 500kg heavier than its normal variant. Ofcourse how it will be for the FCAS vs Tempest, we can only guess at this point.
And yes, France doesn't have experience in the 5th gen design, but neither does the UK. Though Dassault apparently had already done preliminary research into 5th gen systems well before the FCAS project was announced.
If you're a mid-sized European country there is absolutely no way you are going to value a plane which can do Carrier Capable landings and launch nuclear weapons
No, but other nations might (for the carrier capability), though I'd assume it will be the almost only the general variant that will be sold. But still, if I have to choose between a primarily air superiority system that also can do ground strikes and a system that is aimed at both, I'd choose the later as any nation, unless there is too much of a difference in price. Not to mention countries might be able to negotiate behind doors buying the FCAS in exchange for political capital from Germany and France in an EU issue, again if the 2 fighter system are more or less of similar price.
I was thus more thinking of the multirole aspect of FCAS vs the primarily air superiority role of Tempest, not the nuclear or carrier options.
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@wtfamiactuallyright1823
Since Brexit, the EU has show its hand. It functions more like the USSR
LMAO. You do know that the EU strategy regarding brexit comes from the leaders of the memberstates? With advisory imput from the EU parliament because they'll eventually have to verify any deal.
I was ALWAYS adamant that the EU should never form an armed forces
We disagree on that.
they keep demanding more controls from the nations of Europe in order to "let them function better".
This is called federalisation, which has happened in nearly every well functioning country. And the EU can't demand shit, since it is the memberstate leaders that decide what powers the EU get and the EU itself has not a single way to force the memberstate to do what the EU wants.
There's a major difference between the EU and US btw, US citizens refer to themselves as Americans first
Except this wasn't the case around 150 years ago, back then state often came before the US. You can't really compare the US today with the EU, since the EU in terms of a nation is at best the US from 150 years ago.
when talking to a foreigner
Many Europeans would just call themself Europeans or from Europe when talking to foreigners, ofcourse, again the EU isn't even close to what the US is now, nor is it meant to be there.
and that flies in the face of EU intentions in relation to Europe and its rich history.
What are you refering to?
The elites run the show
Just as much as in the US. And I'd personally put the EU above the US in terms of the people in power.
and stamp on those that don't follow suit.
Oh, please. Most Europeans agree with the EU stance regarding brexit. It has always been said by the EU that is won't just fold and that a deal wouldn't be easy. It is UK politicians that were stupidly saying that a deal would be easy, and that it would be the UK that comes out great. Guess what, the EU did what every other nation would do: protect the interests of their own nation(s) and citizens.
those nations who would want to continue to trade with the UK are threatened to not do so unless the EU wills it
What are you talking about? The EU won't block trade, nor threaten nations that do, The nations trading with the UK are among the most powerfull in the EU (France, Germany, Benelux, ...). That the EU and UK can't reach a deal isn't just the EU blocking everything, since their stance barely changed, and when it did, it was to the benefit of the UK to compromise. There just are some things the EU can't compromise. The EU wouldn't compromise on these things with other potential trade partners either.
the UK were one of the few nations in the EU that are economically strong enough to do so.
I'd personally say the UK was just one of the only countries where people didn't really the importance of the EU and what it actually was. When I look at how the EU is discussed in the UK media, I am quite baffled.
UK regulations and standards are still more inline with EU regulations
But one of the issues brought up in brexit is the capability of changing regulations once out => take back control. Obviously if there is a trade deal this is less easy to do and the UK will once again be bounded by these standards.
and many of those within the bloody thing,
Countries within the EU should follow EU regulation, however EU regulation in fact is often the bare minimum in regulation and often replaced already existing national regulations in many countries.
yet they're willing to try and us Ireland as leverage to screw over the UK
Ireland isn't used as leverage, since Ireland itself has a veto and a strong voice regarding EU strategy on brexit. And it isn't like the EU is being unreasonable about Ireland, since in the US democrats and even republicans were clear that the good friday agreement had to hold for any future of a UK-US deal. The EU can't allow an open border in Ireland to threaten the entire EU system, obviously. The US wouldn't just say "have an open border with Mexico and New Mexico", would they. So why would the EU do so in Ireland? There either needs to be a border somewhere or the UK would have to agree with everything needed to be a functioning member of the EU market, similar to Norway, but ofcourse this goes against their "sovereignty" goals of brexit.
It is the fault of the UK government that it wasn't prepared with a good plan for Northern Ireland.
I could go on and on about all this
You mean spewing bullshit? Yeah, most people can keep doing that.
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@wtfamiactuallyright1823
Yep, and your point is?
The point is that in the USSR this would never happen. But maybe I am didn't quite get what you were refering to by "It functions more like the USSR"
Then you're part of the problem.
Not really. Why does the UK have combined armed forces instead of seperate armed forces for Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales? Also according to polling in the countries with the highest support around 75% are in favor of an EU armed forces, in the lowest around 35% in favor. In most EU countries it is above 50%. Ofcourse there are exceptions. In the end researches even found that is due to politicians hesitance/resistance to the idea and not public support that there isn't really much happening in terms of an EU army.
How do US elections work, remind me. You sound stupid here.
And this is relevant how exactly? The US is already a federal nation, the EU is not. If you want a comparison, fine. The US house is directly elected, so is the EU parliament. The senate is directly elected, this can be equated to the leaders of the memberstates, though obviously prime ministers are chosen by the elected parties that form the government, nevertheles people directly voted for these parties. As for the commission, that essentially functions like the US cabinet, with the difference that it is not the president, but the state leaders that select the possible options and the parliament that approves them. It is definitely not that the EU is less democratic. In fact with gerrymandering in the US and the FPTP system I'd say the EU is more democratic. And obviously if the EU truly federalises/centralises, it would have to change its government system either way.
Part of which was in my first post to you, how did you miss it?
You mean the "Hhhmmm... The chat is highly reminiscent of an American group screaming "Build a wall". You should just hand full control to the EU now, what's the point "fighting" it anymoe" that says literally nothing on european rich history?
You couldn't be more wrong here.
Oh no, I am very much right. But then I guess you might just not realize, since it is the same in the UK.
I'm pretty certain if you ask around countries like Greece, Italy, Romania etc, you'll find that what you say here is not entirely true, quite the opposite. You're making may case for me here btw, out of touch.
You are now listing countries that are almost farthest away from the UK and thus would be hit much less. Their stance on brexit negotations is overall less meaningfull. And well, you are ofcourse also mentioning countries that are these days more eurosceptic due to other reasons than brexit, which colours their overall view of the EU. But even in these countries there is a much better approval for the EU regarding brexit than other things like the economic and refugee issues. In Greece the favoribility for EU brexit handling was at 32%, for economy 14% and for refugee 7% in 2019, Italy was similar with 31% vs 20% and 16%. This for the record is higher than the british support for their governments handling of brexit at 28%. Ironically it seems more British like the EU's handling of brexit more at 36%. Possibly due to different things, hardliners who don't want a deal might like that the EU takes a hard stance, while those more pro-EU might be more thinking that the EU is just doing what it must.
Also I'd like to point at that some might say it is handled badly because the EU isn't strict enough (in the UK too), or maybe they just don't care. Since the polling didn't show whether some people just didn't respond to the question. Looking at other questions of the same polling data, it does seem like there often is a third option that it not mentioned, which is very likely "don't care".
But yeah, I shouldn't have said most Europeans, but still more than British people their own government.
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@wtfamiactuallyright1823
I don't agree. Can't compromise, on British waters, seriously. It's not even worth going into this with you if that's you assessment of the situation. The EU already sanctions nations within the EU.
While british fishing waters (which are actually international waters when not talking about fish) is a contentious topic mostly for France and maybe the benelux/ireland, not the EU as a whole. The reason the EU needs to hold a firm line here is because otherwise France can just veto any deal they don't like. Furthermore it isn't just about fishing the fish, but also where it ends up. Around 75% of fish from UK waters is exported to the EU, so this will also have on impact on a trade deal. In the end the fish is a much more complex topic than you ore I might think. Personally I'd think it would be easily fixed, but that obviously isn't the case.
As for the EU sanctions, yes they can. However these are either rather minor sanctions that are layed out in clear agreements earlier on and only can be used in certain situations and even then most often it needs the full support of the other EU members. This is exactly why the EU can't take a stance against Poland breaking certain EU rules, Hungary protects them and refuses to support any penalty. Sanctioning by the EU is thus not as easily done and definitely impossible to do something like forcing memberstates not to trade with other nations (unless all nations agree on the sanction, but then it isn't really just the EU and sanctions would have come either way, EU or not).
UK media has been slamming Brexiter's since the beginning and before. I was a remainer and changed my stance to vote for Brexit party, after the attempts to go against the will of my nations people. Don't try feeding me your rubbish, Sir.
Oh please, there might be certain media against brexit, but the media in the UK has been mostly anti-EU, at least before the referendum, often times even telling things about the EU that weren't even remotely true, but literally invented it. Honestly the lack knowledge about the EU of the average English person is rather astonishing.
So why can't we continue to trade as is.
Simply because we need a free trade deal to do this. In order to get one the EU needs to be certain the UK doesn't suddenly lowers it standard, possibly causing these lower standards products into the EU markets. UK politicians have repeatedly said over the years they can change regulations if needed. And the US has specifically said UK standards should be lowered for any US-UK free trade deal to happen. In other words the EU wasn't certain the UK would keep the standards, this while the UK didn't want to be bound by these "EU" standards.
I wonder how and why it even became an issue, since we're on the EU's doorstep and no different to most of North America, in fact, less so. Lets add in the addition of threatening to dismantle the UK via incorporating their demands, but that would never be their intention now, would it. So much for standards. Get bent, Sir.
This whole part doesn't make sense, honestly I can't decipher what you are saying here.
Then there shouldn't be an issue trading with the UK, considering our standards have often been of a far higher level.
Like I said in this comment and the one before, the problem isn't the current standard/regulation, but rather the risk that the UK lowers theirs.
But honestly at this moment I thought standards/regulations problems have already been dealt with mostly for some time. Ofcourse the brexiteers won't like not being able to lower standards below the EU's standards. The main problems however is for example the border in Ireland.
You making my point again. Treat us like Canada, the US etc but... Since we're on your bloody doorstep, you don't have much adaptation to do when it comes to treating us like Norway, Switzerland, Ireland even.
The EU is doing that, but the UK doesn't like it. A Norway style agreement was rejected by the UK, a Switzerlands style deal again doesn't fit UK demands and Ireland is an EU memberstate, the UK had a better deal than Ireland when in the EU. Do you not know what actually happened during the negotations. There were several options for a style of deal based on already existing deals with other nations, and any deal that resembles one that the EU already has with its (friendly, not Russia, Belarus, etc) neighbours was impossible due to British demands. The EU negotiators even made a slide with all these deals in a waterfall style, going from closest deal to less close deal, everytime there was a UK demand in the way, eventually the closest deal possible was what is called a Canada+ deal.
Dear EU, Never criticise Russia, ever again, you clearly agree with what they did to the Ukraine and as for Turkey... Why so protective of Ireland, but not Greece lol. ;)
Ukraine is not a member of the EU, not even a member of Nato, and ally or even a trading partner (in regards to FTA), what could the EU do that it hasn't done already. In fact the EU put in place economic sanctions against Russia due to the situation in Ukraine. Sanctions are not considered for the UK. As for Greece-Turkey, what specifically are you talking about?
And for Ireland the problem is the Good Friday agreement, which for the record the US too are protective off, not just the EU. The Good Friday agreement requires an open border between NI and Ireland. Obviously there can't be an opend border between the UK and EU without an FTA. And since the UK will have created a border by leaving the EU and if no deal is reached, it will be internationally seen as the UK breaking the GFA. This is exactly why the EU proposed a trade border between the british isles and NI during a transition phase and give time to get an FTA. This was btw agreed to by Jonhson, but which he now is stepping back from if I remember correctly.
the UK didn't intend on changing anything that hindered the GFA.
Yes it did. The moment it decided to leave a hard border has to be put in place between NI and Ireland if there is no FTA between the EU and UK. The UK can't even choose to keep it an open border without and FTA, since this would break WTO rules, under which most countries in the world trade if they don't have special deals. Thus it very much was a problem that could and should have been perceived. But it seems the UK government ignored it (or didn't even notice it) because they seemed to think an FTA was so easy to acquire, except it isn't.
Hence, the UK is not responsible for anything wrong on this one.
Apparently even the US disagrees, so who is wrong here? The US and EU? Or the UK/you?
I'm unlikely to respond to your posts again out of boredom of this topic
Good, because I am getting tired of responding to your bullshit.
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@mordokch
the reality is that when combining the power station emissions with the serious damage done in the manufacturing processes involved in ev battery production, plus the problems of disposal and subsequent toxification of the planet caused by said end of life battery disposal, there isn't much, if any benefit in over all real terms.
Completely wrong.
For one, these power stations can be those that emit much less pollutants than ice cars, like renewables and nuclear.
Secondly, while battery production is more polluting, it makes up for that in a few years.
Thirdly, once enough resources are in the battery life cycle, most batteries will be produced using recycled resources, seriously bringing down the impact of battery manufacturing.
Fourth, these batteries are almost completely recyclable, especially regarding the rarer minerals, that is precisely what this video is about. So no toxification of the planet at end of life (how can it toxicate the planet btw if we first get it out of the planet, I guess you mean environment rather than planet).
and when further coupled to the severe inconvenience of battery technology
That is your personal opinion. Many would find the ability to charge at home or in the future while going to the store quite convenient. Only during longer trips should you fast charge for 30 minutes or so (and this time will reduce overtime). As for the range, even now it is quite suited for most people, though many people look more at the occasional longer trips do decide how much range they want.
yes they explode and burn rather easily
Actually, no they don't, it is just that everytime this happens, it ends up in the news. In reality BEV experience less fires per mile than ice cars. Though it is true that fires from batteries are usually more intense and they require a different way of dealing with.
Anyone who could really be called an 'expert' in such matters knows that Hydrogen is the only viable way to go, but it's far less profitable so
So much wrong about this sentence. Hydrogen is not a good alternative for personal transport at all, it is way too costly and much more cumbersome than EV's. The reasons most automanufacturers have dropped it is simply because it doesn't have a future on the road except for maybe trucking or very niche applications. Also how is hydrogen less profitable according to you?
no charge time - just fill up and go
Except if the pumps need to repressurize, then you can wait some time. And ofcourse the station needs to be fueled up enough and work properly. And during daily driving you just charge you EV at home, for hydrogen you need to go to the actual station, losing yourself time (and no people won't just be able to do it on the way. Hydrogen stations are so expensive you'll see much less of them compared to gasoline stations or fast chargers.
The infrastructure already exists in the form of regular fuel stations, it is a relatively simple matter to install the necessary equipment to dispense hydrogen instead of petroleum, so that's just a non issue.
No, it doesn't exist yet. Except for the ground you can use almost nothing of a regular fueling station for a hydrogen station. You need different tanks, pumps, pressurisation equipment, ... Any fueling station that needs to be revamped to a hydrogen station needs a complete overhaul. This is actually one of the largest issues, a hydrogen fuel station is crazy expensive compared to fast charging points or even just regular fuel stations (around 3 times more expensive). This is exactly one of the reason hydrogen will have great difficulty getting mainstream (even if we ignore the other problems). People won't invest such a large amount of money in a hydrogen station without a guarantee it won't be wasted, ie. there already need to be enough hydrogen cars on the road. However people won't buy hydrogen cars at all unless there are enough hydrogen cars. So you have the chicken and the egg problem. This wasn't the case for EV's that could/can charge at many homes even if there isn't enough other infrastructure yet. The only ones investing in hydrogen fuel stations currently are car manufacturers that have already invested a lot in hydrogen cars, like Toyota.
Of course, hydrogen being literally the most common gas in the universe doesn't hurt it's prospects as an alternative fuel
It might be the most common in the universe, it isn't the most common on earth. All hydrogen we use, we need to produce from something else here using power.
look more closely at this battery recycling story being told in this vid - these people have been outed, and their claims well and truly debunked already
Except they haven't been debunked as of yet, despite receiving some attention. The way you look at is exactly the same way people thought that these wireless phones wouldn't amount to anything and were just a rich scam.
using solar to charge and use a car is only somewhat viable in places with a lot of sunlight, and I do mean a lot.
Not true at all. People don't use up their entire battery every day. Most people would only use maybe 10kW of power daily, possibly even less. Ofcourse you need the necessary solar panels, which not everyone can, but many do are able to get it. It depends on situation to situation obviously.
Of course most car usage occurs during the day when you would need to be charging them, so the only way is to store energy from solar until you need it, ie at night, ie in batteries - more batteries.
This I can understand, which is why using your own solar panels to charge your car can only happen with an extra house battery, working from home or during weekend days. In other words it is situational. However most cars or stationary for most of the days, thus if they are plugged in during that time they can charge during the day from the grid with power derived from solar panels.
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@English_Dawn They lose £12.5 billion p.a. and that is being subsidised by England.
Just out of interest, does this include federal taxes that go to westminster? Or are they not tallied as scottish 'income' before going to Westminster?
Britain (mainly England) was being used as a "milch cow"
No, it wasn't. It was even given special treatment in that that payed less into the budget net than they usually should have done. The UK was 9th in net contributions proportional to their economy.
The UK didn't leave for money, they'll (people) just never were into the EU to start with, they were always rather anti-EU, this was in stark contrast to their government, which actually was pretty pro-EU but had to keep up appearences.
Even in Britain there are poor regions, probably that you never hear about.
It's funny that you mention this. I believe the UK had 9 of 10 poorest regions in (north) Western Europe, but also the wealthiest one (London).
Not sure some in the EU have really grasped that as they carry on expansion Eastward.
You do know the british government was one, if not the, biggest supporters for Eastward expansion. The UK leaving might actually slow down new additions, especially with Macron first wanting to focus on internal EU issues.
How many EU counties are putting in money, net? About 5 or 6. With the rest taking money out.
For the 2007-2013 budget it was 11 countries contributing net (minus the UK would be 10). These nations (UK not included) represented 60% of the EU population. Thing is that while only +-1/3 or net contributors, many receivers are smaller nations. Most of these net contributors btw also gain a lot economically from being in the EU, if you account for that, most of these likely also were net beneficiaries in the end.
Britain has a lot of poor regions which once were industrialised with high unemployment and social problems. It was largely those regions that ran out of patience and voted to leave.
Which was rather stupid, since it is internal UK policies that cause the inequality and poverty.
10,000 bureaucrats in Brussels on more money than the British Prime Minister.
Just out interests, where do you get that from? Also the EU's bureacracy might seem large, the UK's is still much larger in terms of employees/bureaucrats I believe.
Not sure the EU populace feel they have a link to their country's political "appointees" as they do those parliamentary members (MEP's) they have a choice over electing.
The EU parliament is elected in a way similar to the process in many nations (and thus by the british people). The council is made up of elected leaders and the commission is essentially just the cabinet, do the British people vote for the cabinet composition? Thing is, the EU doesn't by far have the same competences/powers national governments have, so ofcourse people aren't even really interested in their EU representatives. And I doubt labour voters feel represented if their representant is a conservative and vice versa.
Have you seen Scotland's? Boy the EU will love Scotland.
Ireland wasn't doing great either for a long time, now it is thriving, who knows where scotland is in the future.
Scotland are currently running a10% debt to GDP ratio.
Can you tell me were you got this number from? I found 4,4% or 7% depending if you include capital investment and including nord sea revenue share and 5,7% or 8,5% without north sea share revenue for the year 2018-2019.
EU reform that Claude Juncker promised but never carried out
Thing is, as soon as the UK voted to leave, reforms were more or less shelved untill the UK actually was out of the EU. It is probable that now there again will be more of an emphasize on reforms.
hard-core Remainers tried an effectual coup
When was this?
England doesn't
Because it doesn't need to, it has a massive majority in Westminster, 82% of seats are English.
any idea why the Scots are in the Union in the first place? Look it up! The SNP will never admit it. In 1707 they crashed their economy in the Darian Scheme (modern day Panama). They were bankrupt. They asked England to pay their bills.
The Darian scheme was only one part. The Scottish economy was also hit hard by privateers during the seven years war and spanish succession war and the seven ill years causing 5-15% of the population to die of starvation. To make matters worse, the english actually imposed trade restrictions on Scotland to "entice" them to agree to the union. In essence the UK just saw it as an easy way of annexing Scotland, where other invasions/attempts failed.
they want independance at any price even if it makes them poorer
Kind of like many brexit voters, many of whom literally said that they'd take the economic hit in return for sovereignty (which the UK never lost).
England will be considerably richer.
Which was also claimed about brexit, only for it to get reputed/ignored afterwards when every expert (including UK government institutions) found the opposite.
Honestly I don't know what is best for Scotland, but I think you are also making it seem a bit worse than needed. And who knows, maybe this is exactly the jolt Scotland needs to put in some necessary economic reforms.
The EU had done little for Provincial England in 43 years of membership.
This is a wrong way of looking at it. The EU helped the UK prosper, it is the UK government that just didn't made sure this prosperity was shared around England, why would they, the tories most often are in power and are in favor of "little government" and austerity. It is also the UK government that facilitated the transition from heavy industry to services, because they saw the writing on the wall for UK heavy industry at large. They just failed to help the regions hit by industry dissapearing.
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@geordi5054 The marshall plan came years after the war ended, +-3-4 years later. It mostly helped speed up reindustrialisation in for example western Germany, since it allowed them to focus less on food production and more on industry. Without the marshall plan, this could have happened maybe 3-5 years later then now, that is hard to know for sure. Als don't overestimate the marshall plans budget. In today's currency that would be around 114 billion dollar, or less than 1% of GDP (though at the time it was around 3-4% due to a lower US GDP though it was also spread out over 3 years, so around 1-1,5% of GDP yearly). The GDP growth due to it in the countries involved was less than .5%.
Even to this day the actual financial impact it had is still disputed. However it had a great influence propaganda wise and to strengthen US influence of Western European countries.
Just because you throw money against problems, doesn't mean you can effectively eliminate them. Just look at Afghanistan, it actually received more aid than Western Europe did I believe, and it barely had an impact, if it had one at all. (The afghan army alone got 80 billion dollar, that is only 34 billion less than European nations got in total under the martial plan in todays currency)
And were did I claim it trapped Europe?
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@Yora21 Definition of a disaster: "a sudden accident or a natural catastrophe that causes great damage or loss of life."
What happened in Belgium and Germany is very much a disaster and seeing it is a natural one, it is a natural disaster.
There are only exceptional weather events that people dealt with poorly.
If you have extreme exceptional weather events for a region, that is a natural disaster, no matter how yo wish to spin it. Especially if such weather events haven't occured in hundreds of years or even longer. Even if people dealth well with them, they would still be a disaster since you can't evacuate houses and infrastructure so the damage still occurs and you can't prepare for the extreme never seen weather events, then you'll have to prepare against everything, which is impossible.
Haiti constantly has massive disasters, while the Dominican Republic has not
That is quite stupid. Geography plays a role, as well as other things like wealth. Even on the same island you can have different outcomes for exactly the same circumstance, as long as the island is large enough. Hispaniola is a pretty large island. It is the same size as the benelux and this recent disaster hit the south of Belgium/Germany, but not for example the north of the Netherlands or even the north of Belgium (except for some minor flooding in some regions).
The reaction to this recent disaster might not have been great, but even with a perfect reaction it would still have remained a disaster, afterall who is prepared for a situation that has never happened in recent history (several 100+ years or more)?
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@a.a.6203 It is not used as an excuse, rather as an explanation. For decades scientists have warned that climate change will make the weather more erratic/extreme and have said that stopping it/slowing it down is much cheaper than facing its consequences. Overall the recent flooding is impacted by climate change, but compared to the actual long term consequences of climate change, this is a minor thing, which shows the emergency of fighting climate change. Afterall this minor thing still caused billion upon billions in damages and around 150 lives with just one event that can in future happen more often.
Ofcourse climate change isn't the only thing to blame for what happened, bad reactions, underestimation and bad management in general made it worse.
I need to know why there wasn't a good preparation and response!
The answer to this is rather easy: no one expected this huge result. Sure there were warnings, but flooding like this hasn't happened for hundreds of years, never in the lifetime of many of these villages that were hit. How could they be prepared for something like that. They probably never realized how bad it CAN be. Maybe just some slight flooding, some minor damage, ... was probably thought off. Give the people all the information that was known before and they wouldn't have done much different, except maybe put some stuff on the second floor and maybe place some sandbags.
No one is going to evacuate large amount of people for some minor flooding, at best they'll inform emergency services to be prepared to help when needed. It is only after everyone else saw what happened in other regions, they started thinking of evacuating people lower down the streams/rivers.
In several places they had even heightened dikes around the rivers in the past years thinking it was high enough by a long shot. When the water reached it, it just didn't overflow with maybe a cm to spare, this was never envisioned to be a possiblity in our lifetimes.
It is easy to criticise now, but don't just willy nilly ignore the fact that this was a never seen occurance in these regions and one never even thought to be possiblity.
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@a.a.6203 that's great and all, but why are you insisting in changing the subject ?
I didn't, you just doesn't seem to understand it.
I don't need to know why it happened, these things will always happens
Except this thing has not happened in this region for at least a few hundred years, possibly a lot longer, so they no, they don't always happen.
climate change or not, natural is our true enemy
But climate change makes it much worse. It can be the difference between a decennial flooding causing only basements be flooded to annual floodings that can cause houses be flooded away. And the way you react to both is obviously a lot different.
What I need to know why the lack of concern and response
Like I said, this has never happened before and no one could even imagine something like this would happen, that caused the slow and inadequate action before they started realising the true scale of what was happening.
Do floodings happen? Yes, but usually no more than maybe some basements that get flooded. People losing their lives in a flooding is rare to non-existing here or large scale damage to housing as well as even cars being swept away have never happened here in even my grandparents lifetime, so why would we/the leaders be prepared for floodings of this scale and think it might get this bad.
Furthermore getting a warning is one thing, but it matters a lot what kind of warning you get, is it "you'll get X meter of flooding that can cause this kind of damage", or is it more obiquous warnings like "chance for severe flooding", which can be interpreted quite differently. This kind of warning should have been labeled "chance or a 1 in several 100 years flood", doubt they used such a warning.
people have lost their lives and you are only concern about climate change !
Maybe because climate change can cause this kind of events to become more frequent, with a lot more people dying as a consequence? Ever heard of the greater picture? Are you trying to be ignorant of the larger scheme of things?
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@Yora21 Rain and rivers aren't natural? If you say so.
Netherlands didn't had the same event in the slightest. The only thing they had was that the rivers height and water throughput increased and this with much more time to prepare, afterall it took around 1-2 days before their critical point was reached after the damage and scale in Wallonia was already shown. They were warned a lot more and had to deal with water confined to large rivers, not all small rivers and creeks and even roads overflooding just due to the rain.
I live in Flanders Belgium, just a bit north of the affected area's. If the Netherlands was hit the same way Wallonia and German regions were, so would my region, yet is wasn't. A lot of rain? Yes, but no flooding, since the amount of rain was a lot less.
If you make these claims in front of those that were hit, they'd slap you in the face for daring to minimise what happened, which is exactly what you do with your comments of it not being a natural disaster. Houses collapsed due to the flooding, houses got flooded up to the 2nd floor, roads flooded, railways damaged, bridges integrity threatened, a lot of rubble and filth everywhere, ... This would have happened no matter what the authorities did.
Not a natural disaster, what a moronic thing to say.
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@hmthisisit
Slowing it down is much cheaper, they say?
Just to be clear, I meant more like limiting the effects, rather than just slow them down, though both will be cheaper then doing nothing.
* I mean, it doesn't seem to be cheap on the consumer's end but fine*
Then just imagine you paying 10-100 times more in the future to deal with the actual effects.
It is like installing sprinkler in your garage when you know there sometime will be a fire. Sure the sprinkler installation cost money, but not as much as getting a new car after it burned down. This is a rather silly metaphor, but I guess it gets the point across. Just this one event will likely cost tens of billions in damages, not mention the lives lost and that is just one event. Climate change will make events like this more common by making weather events more extreme. Moreover the actual changing of climate will hit some countries especially hard, completely flooding it, increasing the overall temperature causing crops to not be possible anymore, pushing more refugees to the less affected parts (we are talking about possibly a billion or more people getting displaced and having to move to other regions), ...
Slowing it down pushes it further down in the future but it's still inevitably gonna happen, right?
I meant more limiting its effects/change rather than slowing it down, my bad.
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@f3tsch906 2 hours isn't much, it would probably take much more than 2 hours to take all that food and bring it to food banks or do something similar, especially during a power outage and a winterstorm.
Now they could tell people to just come and get the food, but 1. They need to get the word out and get those people to the store in 2 hours and 2. it won't be only people in need getting this food, hell, it is very likely people who don't need the food but just want to save some money would get there first, with better transport, access to news/power, ...
There is a lot more logistics coming into play than just handing out the food. Also it depends at what time the power went out. If it happened at night/during closing hours, the food might have gone bad by the time they get there.
It is easy to point fingers, but unless we are aware of the exact situation, it is only a hypothetical. Yes, it would have been best if this food wasn't thrown away, but I can't say whether this was the best thing in this particular situation. For all we know does this store in normal conditions send food that can't be sold to a food bank, but was now just not possible.
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@dirkgonthier101
both parties are interested in a political seperation without a referendrum.
They might try to do that, but if they try to split without at least a Flemish referendum on it, they would get destroyed (figuratively).
They claim, quite rightly so, that a referendum was organised, right before they'd seperate the Belgian state, namely the elections.
This is bullshit. For starters not every voter of these parties want seperation, so that is already a very flawed assumption. If that is their thought process they should go to the election with independence as their only point and nothing else, this is not the case. Secondly N-VA's first clearly stated goal is confederacy, not independence, so they can't claim that they got a mandate from the voters to separate.
No independence party that has something else in their manifesto would move to a declaration of independence without a referendum, unless the referendum is opposed and disrupted by the federal government (for example Catalonia). This wouldn't happen here, since it would only fuel Flemish seperatist feelings and Flanders is the largest and strongest part of Belgium, unlike Catalonia in Spain.
If you paid any attention to their political proposals, you would have known this. Apparently, you don't.
Apparently you don't, else you'd know that N-VA's first goal is confederation, not independence. Independence is their endgoal.
I've seen the vote for the Flemish Movement rise continiously over the past 40 years from 14% until almost 50%;
The problem is that N-VA isn't just a flemish independence party, it also has many voters who voted on it for other reasons, unlike VB (who btw also gets a lot of protest votes recently of people who aren't happy with the other parties, but who don't necessarily want independence when it comes down to it, according to polls, 40% of VB voters would not go to the polls if they don't have this means they aren't really for independence). In 2014 N-VA even clearly put their flemish demands aside and still got more than they ever got.
If the Frencophones keep rejecting the NVA in the federal government
The N-VA was in the previous government, so this comment is laughable.
As for this time, the problem is multifold. The liberal parties don't mind N-VA's socio-economic points, but can't agree on their communautair points, whereas apparently the PS can agree more on a split of competences (afterall they gained more power in Wallonia because of it), but can't agree on their socio-economic points. The greens can't agree with the N-VA on essentially anything. And the centrist parties weren't large enough to really make a difference. That is the problem for N-VA, it doesn't have federal allies other than maybe VB, unless they give in on either their Flemish demands or their socio-economic demands.
You can't honestly say the N-VA didn't have a chance, they had multiple chances. At a point it seemed like an N-VA/PS government was going to happen, but the moment they couldn't play out the greens and liberals against eachother it fractured, probably because they promised eachother things that the liberals or greens would not agree with in a straight (non bidding) negotiation (like Flemish demands in return for a more left socio-economic policy).
After all, it's a disgrace that it's forbidden for the two biggest parties of Flanders to enter the federal governement.
This again is a ridiculous statement that comes from a past mindset. Again N-VA was literally in the previous federal government and yes the VB was at one point actively kept out, however this isn't the problem here now. The problem is that neither the N-VA and VB have federal allies (hell, the VB doesn't even have Flemish allies except for N-VA) that agree with them. In the previous government the N-VA could agree with the MR because they shelved their Flemish agenda, however as soon as they unshelved it, they essentially lost the MR as a potential ally. The fact that it was the N-VA that caused the fall of Michel I didn't help either, it showed they couldn't be trusted. Especially the way it happened, with them suddenly turning 180° on a non-binding agreement they themselves helped influence, only because VB started to make a great fuss of it.
VB can't get in a government for the same reason PvdA can't, they don't have (enough) allies to potential form a coalition, at least not with their current manifesto.
Just as it is to place Flanders under a Frencophone dictatorship, like it currently is.
Oh, please. The French were more underrepresented in the previous federal government than we Flemish are in the current. What is next, making sure every province is not underrepresented? Every city? Every town? It can always happen that an area isn't as much represented as others proportionally.
By the way, you have to do something with your English. 'There is no independence for a split' makes no sense at all.
Anyone with a bit of interpretive reading skill knows that I just made wordtypo there and that it clearly was meant as "there is no support for independence/a split". This is more due to my writing not keeping up with my mind and changes mad during writing, this also sometimes happens when I quickly type a text in dutch. That you need to bring it up shows you either can't interpret it, or are someone that is trying to split hairs, which doesn't reflect well on you either in my personal opinion.
In the end polling on independence has remained stable between 10-20% in regards to Flemish independence for decades, so while seperatist parties are gaining voters, their message isn't, they are just winning over voters with other things (like immigration rhetoric, anti-establishment, confederation instead of independence, socio-economic points, ...).
In 2014 I voted for N-VA, not in the previous election and I most likely will never vote for them again. If VB might not have had their Flemish independence and (slightly) xenophobic stance, I might have considered voting for them, which already shows not all people have to be attracted to them due to their Flemish stance.
Imo all it would take is for VB to get in a government once for it to crumble down almost completely in the next election, since then they actually have to govern and not just promise and then people might see that they aren't actually so different. It would also get rid of the outsider/underdog sentiment that the cordon sanitair has given them and has actually helped them in recent elections imo.
Personally at this point I am a unitarist. I don't see many differences that can't be overcome. The language difference obviously isn't going to change, but neither would that happen with independence. The economic and political differences can for a large part be attributed exactly because of the divisions of power. The PS is more than happy to keep poor regions poor and reliant on the state, and without a federal government that can do things to change this, it won't change. If you improve the economic situation in Wallonia, especially in regions like Charleroi etc, old industrial centers, you could break PS hegemony in those regions and bring it closer to a center or even right political situation. Ofcourse the PS realises this and therefor is slowing any effort there down. A stronger federal government could change that.
A problem I have with current Flemish nationalists is the idea of a Flanders identity. This 'shared' identity is actually younger than Belgium. Before that it was more about the Flanders, Brabantian and Limburgian identities, these were different. Hell, Flemish brabanders probably have more in common with Walloon Brabanders than with West Flandrians, if you ignore language.
The 1302 battle that is celebrated as a Flemish national day, didn't even include (many) Brabantian and Limburgian troops. Most troops that didn't come from current West and East Flanders mostly came from regions which are currently in France, Wallonia or the Netherlands, not the rest of current day Flanders. So for me this isn't a special day for example, not more than Belgian independence day, probably even less.
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@dirkgonthier101 And who would destroy the NVA and the Vlaams Belang?
The Flemish people who do not wish independence, do you really think they'll just sit by and do nothing? Any attempt to reach independence without a referendum will spark large scale protests and probably riots. And in consecutive elections people will vote based primarily on independence, which would hit the N-VA and VB hard.
I think you are mistaken. Belgium isn't a popular country in Flanders.
I think you overestimate support for Flemish independence vs Belgian unity. According to polls there are as much Flemish unitarist as Flemish seperatists (+-15%), they just don't have their own large party to vote for. It seems you might be living in a political bubble that supports your view, but gives a distorted picture. I personally know only 1 or 2 people who'd support Flemish independence, and they both are elderly.
Belgium never gave the Flemings reasons to be proud on the country.
Or in other words, Belgium gave you no reason to be proud on it. Personally I see no reason to be more proud on current Flanders than Belgium. Maybe you need to tell me why I should be more proud of it.
It's a completely legitimized way of thinking
It isn't for the very reasons I stated, if you don't understand this, then maybe you live in political fairyland.
They go to the elections with Flemish independence in their political program.
They go with Flemish independence as a PART of their political program. Parties all the time have goals in their programs that aren't really popular, but which also don't deter voters enough. Rarely if ever do they therefor follow up on these goals. And especially on something as impactfull as independence can you not just assume alll votes for party X where for independence, if independence is only one of many points in their program.
Confederation does not stand in their political program
Confederation is N-VA's first main goal, if they skip it to go immediately for independence without a referendum it will be a political betrayal of the worst kind and very easily pointed out. There is more than enough evidence from the N-VA itself that it is confederalism and then independence.
I know that Flemish indipendence is inscribed in their political program and confederation is not.
Again irrelevant and even incorrect. Confederalism is literally a top issue in N-VA's 2019 program. And if you mean VB, that is irrelevant, because they are definitely not getting 50%+ on their own.
By the way, I've written about this, but if you don't read what I write, then what's the point of having this conversation?
I've read what you wrote, it was just wrong.
But, if it can't and if the NVA finds itself blocked from the federal government (cordon sanitaire), like it actually is
Do YOU not read what I write? I clearly explained that the N-VA isn't blocked from the federal government, it just didn't get enough support for their goals this time, if N-VA+VB gets more than 50% in Flanders, that will likely be different, because one of them will most definitely be needed in the federal government.
What is the use of having a succesfull political party if you're getting confronted with a cordon sanitaire?
The original reason was that VB was back then against essential values other parties accepted as the limit. VB even got investigated for it. And whether these parties instituted cordon sanitaire or not, that wouldn't have mattered, since no one wanted/wants to govern with VB except for N-VA, unless VB drops several of their demands/goals for the duration of that governing period.
And N-VA most definitely is not and won't be in a cordon sanitaire. It didn't get in the federal government this time, boohoo how bad. They were in the previous federal government and are currently in the Flemish government. There is definitely no cordon sanitaire against the N-VA, not officially and not in actions.
certainly if you can also choose for another tactic which gives you on a democratic way undeniable governmental power in a part of the country?
What? What is this supposed to mean?
It's not a problem that the NVA is just an independence party in Flanders. 'Cause Flemish independence will be voted in the Flemish parliament if there is a majority to be found for it.
And they'll first go for a referendum so they are sure they have popular support. Anything else would be stupid and would only damage an independent Flanders in the long run.
When people know of a party that it stands for independence of a certain region and they vote for it, they know the consequences of their vote.
Apparently clearly not. Who are you to decide what people would accept and for what reason people vote for a certain party? This is a stupid way of looking at it and won't be followed by anyone smart, which I'd hope the N-VA leadership is.
There isn't a vote that is purely made for one reason only.
Except a referendum on independence, which is exactly why a referendum would be called first.
Yeah, and in 2019 the NVA paid the bill. But that's alright. 'Cause the Flemish Movement grew with 5%.
The Flemish seperatist parties grew with 5%, polling indicates that movement itself didn't or at least not much. But if you only want to make it a one issue thing, fine, just know that you are deceiving yourself and your expectations.
True, they were once (but also 1 time) in a federal government.
And they have been around as a seperate party for a decade, there have only been (with current included) 3 full governments since then.
In which they couldn't realize one thing of their political program.
What? Ofcourse they could realize parts of their program, they were the largest party in that government. They might not have been able to realize anything of their Flemish demands then, but that was their choice.
Fact remains that in the Belgian government (who excludes them from playing a normal role in the government) they aren't welcome (for any reason).
Which again is just wrong. They don't have enough support among parties in the federal government formation and that is it. That is what happens in coalitions, parties most closely aligned form together. No one is closely aligned with VB except N-VA and N-VA has the problem that is closely aligned with parties on one thing, but not another. Which essentially means negotiation and dropping certain things, they just couldn't negotiate good enough this time.
A cordon sanitaire remains cordon sanitair, no matter how 'nice' you propose to present it.
You really are thick if you can't see the difference between a deliberate cordon sanitaire and just no support currently for a coalition.
Your explanation is just Belgian propaganda.
And yours Flemish seperatistic propaganda.
It's the way Belgium wants the Flemings to see it.
It is the way seperatists parties want you to see Belgium.
I have news for you: Flemings see right through that.
I am Flemish, and no, Flemish don't need to see through that, only those who can't accept facts.
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@dirkgonthier101 If a people is ruled against its majority, it's called a dictatorship
So then you accept that under the past government Wallonia lived under a dictatorship which was led by the N-VA, right?
You clearly don't understand or are willing to understand how representation and coalition forming works.
unless they have a government that hasn't got a majority behind it, but such a government needs support from at least one fraction of the parliament and we don't have such a government
We haven't? The current government has the support of 88 representatives out of 150. I don't know what the hell you are smoking.
Well, you know, it was Di Rupo who started with ruling over Flanders without a majority.
And he just continued the tripartite government from the years before, he was just 2 seats short for a Flemish majority representation. Michel I was 10 franchophone seats short for a francophone majority representation. And now we are 4 seats short of a Flemish majority representation in the government.
I'm sorry, but your explanation is nonsens. We're talking about a distinct people who have all more or less the same culture, carried by the same language.
Ehm, yeah, no. I live in Flemish Brabant, I know what I am talking about. I have more in common with Walloon Brabanders than with West-Flandrians or Limburgians if you ignore the language. The only historical cultural ties current Flanders has is from
1. being the southern Netherlands/Spanish Netherlands, which included current day Wallonia and
2. Flanders after the formation of Belgium.
That's why every poll shows support for that idea of 30% - 40%
Please link me the polls that suggest there is 30-40% support for independence.
During the previous governmental crise
exactly during the crisis. Tensions always increase during a crisis, this doesn't mean there is widespread support long term.
but I'm sure that Belgium forbid such a polls.
They don't have that authority.
Well, you didn't vote for the VB, did you? What else do I have to proof?
What is this supposed to mean? Because I didn't vote for VB as a unitarist, others that don't really care about Flemish independence or unitarism can't vote for VB for other reasons than independence?
Yes, I reckoned that already. I've seen your political wing shrink and shrink in Flanders over the past 40 years.
I don't have political wing, there have been no parties outspoken unitarist for the past 40 years. Except PvdA/PTB and recently groen/ecolo. However I have seen now thatthe liberals are starting to take a more pro-Belgian stance too, finally, though this wasn't really visible before the election.
I suggest that you seek another (any other) milk cow, 'cause Flanders won't be much longer available to play that part.
I live in the part of Flanders that gives more net than any other part (Vlaams-Brabant). So this is clearly not directed at me.
We are paying for Wallonia's recovery since before 1976.
And this is exactly because of the split of powers from that time. Pro-Flemish parties were so stupid to split the powers, which made sure Wallonia could spend the money as it wants, while it would have been much smarter to have it controlled by a federal government, that is usually mostly Flemish, and the federal chamber, which is always around 60% Flemish. If not for the split Wallonia might have recovered by now, or at least have been better.
My forfathers came to Flanders , on the run for the French revolution.
And mine have been living here well before that. I don't see how this matters?
By not giving us linguistic rights for more than 100 years
Which was stupid, but we have it now. And this was more the elite making these rules. The same elite that also exploited Flanders and Wallonia, since a lot of the gains from the industrial growth in Wallonia didn't end up with Wallonia itself, but mostly just rich people and institutions. And anyway these people that opposed giving linguistic rights are now probably dead or at least not in the picture anymore. I am not going to let my future be decided by what happened in the past. Otherwise I should start hating the Germans for the holocaust, the French and Spain for the occupations in the past, ...
I've seen the last discrimination against the Flemings (the obligation to talk French before our supreme court) fall away in my lifetime.
Then I guess this might explain why you are so anti-Belgium, you are still living or at least thinking of the past. Most people don't. Especially with younger people the linguistic situation from the past is irrelevant, just history and not much more, maybe this is why you also overestimates the support for independence, since support is quite fractured around age, especially with those born after 1980 support drops quite a lot. The only exception to that are boys between 12 and 24, but that is not illogical. People in that age are more easily attracted to nationalism, they keep a more idealised idea of it. I can know, I was one of those when I was around 18, but as I grew older and learned more, this changed and now I am instead a unitarist.
I sincerely hope it gets only worse for Belgium.
I sincerely hope not, otherwise we'll be in for a very bad economic situation. If it gets worse for Belgium, it gets worse for Flanders. And if Flanders becomes independent our economy will collapse, since we'd also automatically leave the EU. The harbour of Antwerp will bleed dry with it not being able to function as a transport hub anymore. Brussel most likely would remain Belgian, probably with a small corridor to Wallonia (even if it is just one road), cutting of employment for so many Flemish who work in Brussels or at least are tied to the Brussel economy. It would be a disastrous situation. The reason why Vlaams-Brabant and Waals-Brabant are the 2 wealthiest regions in Belgium is for a large part due to Brussel.
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@dirkgonthier101
But Di Rupo started with goverrning Belgium against the majority of one of its peoples.
It was 2 seats, that is nothing, especially seeing parliament still was 60% Flemish. It doesn't really matter whether your underrepresented in the government, as long as you are not underrepresented in parliament, why? Because the government is kept in check by the parliament. Democracy doesn't demand that everyone is represented in the government in an equal of majority way, only that they are equally represented in the parliament. Personally I wouldn't mind a government made up of experts who find changing coalitions depending on the policy being voted on, in this case no one would be over- or underly represented in the government. I really don't see this as an issue, the parliaments representation is what counts, not the governments.
under Frencophone dictatorship
Please, stop with calling it a dictatorship, you use it completely wrong here. Either you are trying to gaslight, or don't understand what a dictatorship actually is.
Just so you know a dictatorship is: "form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations." Di Rupo I was clearly limited by the constitution and certainly didn't hold absolute power. It didn't even get close to a dictatorship.
The NVA couldn't realize one of its topics, so why were they in the government?
You really think that? Are you that delusional? This is probably why the N-VA members nearly unanimously voted in favor of the coalition agreement, because they didn't get anything, really? You really think they were so stupid they got nothing? Yes, they didn't get anything in terms of Flemish demands, because they purposely put this aside even before those elections.
It only led to their defeat in the 2019 elections.
What happened to N-VA is what will happen to VB probably too if they govern once. It is easy being in the opposition, constantly criticising the government and promising you'd do better, but once actually there, you're very much limited by reality and suddenly people understand your promises were just too good to be true. This is exactly why I wouldn't mind VB participating in a government, so they either have to achieve what they said (some things of that are still good) or they'll be exposed as just another faux populist party that promises things it can't achieve.
Flanders isn't governed by the majority of its people.
Flanders is still represented 60% in parliament, as it should be. That is what counts. Which government formed doesn't matter, because the people decided the distribution in parliament and by extension what governments are possible.
I know that you call your blood-brothers, the Frencophones, as a part of the Belgian majority, but I most definitely don't.
Blood-brothers, LMAO.
According to me, Belgium is foreign, hostile occupier that always has treated Flemings like shit
So rebel, fight. See how much support you will actually get. Your view of Belgium is represented by even less people that want independence. I sincerly laugh at such an idiotic and shortsighted stance.
Flanders is my country
So your country is a country that has never been a country and was never a unified entity untill after Belgium was formed? Ridiculous.
and it's ruled against the majority of its population.
Quit with this, it isn't doing anything but making you looke like a complaining child who doesn't get what they want.
This situation is what the international community calls living under a dictatorship.
No, it is not, not even close. Say this to the internal community and you'll be laughed out of the building.
Yeah, a culture gets almost completely defined by its language.
A culture is much more than just a language, it is how you behave, your traditions, art, architecture, ... If you really think culture is almost completely defined by language, you have a very shortsighted idea of culture.
No common language, no common culture.
So there is no western european culture? No Canadian culture, no US culture, etc ? What about dialects? What if I don't understand West Flemish dialects, does that mean we don't have the same/similar culture? Please. This definition of culture is what Flemish nationalist try to make of it, so they can use this reason for independence and to claim there is a unified culture, where there isn't.
My sister in law is Francophone (she learned dutch for us) and the boyfriend from my sister is from northern Antwerp, close to Limburg. There are more cultural similarities with my sister in law, than with him, they are small ofcourse, but this doesn't take away the fact that this is the case.
The unification of Flanders began much earlier.
When?
Read the book the Burgundians
You realise that Wallonia was also controlled by the Burgundians, right? They have always been part of what was considered the southern Netherlands, or Austrian/Habsburg Netherlands. For example the county of Hainaut, the county of Namur, the duchy of Luxembourg.
You 'forget' the Beeldenstorm and the resistance against the Spanish from cities like Oostende
I didn't, the union of Utrecht did involve several cities in Flanders and Brabant, the larger trading cities, several cities in those regions didn't join the union, neither did much of the rural areas. It is important to see the difference between the trade cities, which tended to be more in favor of the reformation and the rural country/towns, which not necessarily were in favor of it.. And regions like Limburg never joined the union of Utrecht.
We were not alone then, the Dutch fought with us.
So what? The cultural ties between me and the dutch are even smaller than between me and West-Vlaanderen.
we would have become protestant
That is far from certain, it was mostly city centers that joined the reformation in our country, not the rural population. Without the 80 years war it was certainly possible that an intern religious war would have erupted.
What also happens is that people need some time to get used to an idea.
The idea of independence as been around for decades and everyone knows of the idea.
You see that with the independence referenda of Quebec (each time the Parti Quebecois reaches a majority in the parliament of Quebec, they organise a referendum).
There have only been 2 refendums. Since then the support of independence has drastically shrunk again to levels lower than during the first referendum.
You notice a gradual increase in the support for it, throughout the years.
What I notice is rise and then a sharp downturn, not a continuous increase.
If things continue like they did in the past, that means that next time the Parti Quebecois has the majority in the parliament of Quebec they can tip the scale in favor of independence.
That is in the expectation that there is a next time. Overall speaking current younger generations do not seem to favor seperation in general. In Quebec since last election in 1994, the PQ only have gone down to just 17% currently. And ofcourse the time between the first and second referendum was filled with campaigning to convince as many people as possible.
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@dirkgonthier101 You see the same thing happening in Scotland
In Scotland the situation currently is different. One of the reasons they voted no in 2014 was to remain in the EU, with the 2016 brexit vote, they can feel betrayed, especially since they now start to feel the economic impact of it.
As for Catalonia, polls have been consistenly higher than here in Flanders, furthermore Catalonia once was in fact a country, unlike current day Flanders. The same applies to Scotland too btw, officially Scotland still is a country.
Sure, people can have lots of reasons to vote VB. But loosing sleep over what happens to Belgium, isn't one of them.
I guess no know every VB voter to be able to say this, or maybe opinion polling to back you up on this? Or is this just your subjective personal feeling?
so no way it will surprise them that the party wants to realise its intentions
That Vb wants to try and achieve it will not be a surprise, that they wouldn't first do a referendum would most certainly be a surprise.
Sure, you have a political wing. You're a conservative.
Actually not at all, I am a progressive.
You want everything to remain as it is.
No, I don't, I just want to move in a different direction than you.
in a battle for independce their are two sides. The ones who want it and the ones who reject it.
Obviously, there is no inbetween, unless they just don't care. I am however not against independence, I just don't think it is the best way forward. If a majority votes for it I will accept it. However if a majority of for example Vlaams-Brabant votes against it, I will try to keep them in Belgium, even if Flanders overall votes in favor of it.
Now, I invite you to think: if there was widespread support for your vision (unitarism) one political party or another would have used it as a way to collect votes.
Not necessarily. It is easier for a party to come in on nationalist feelings than unitary. Also most established parties are not in favor of independence, so unitarists for now just voted for them. It might also be that the unitarists aren't as deadset on bringing us back to a unitary state as the seperatists are about getting independence. This however doesn't mean in a Unitarist, status quo, independence vote, they wouldn't vote unitarist. Personally as a (recent) unitarist I voted for larger parties which are against further division.
Flanders (as a whole) is getting sick and tired to be used as a milk cow for the Frencophones.
I have been hearing this my entire life, I have looked at the politics and at the current sentiment and while yes there are tensions, these seem to be mostly stoked by politics, nothing else. Change the politics and you change how many people view this relationship. In every country you have money transfers, that is not unusual. What are you going to do if Limburg in an independent Flanders uses the rests as a milk cow? Expel them? Another independence call for Flanders - Limburg? Or actually try to fix the situation instead of blowing it up?
But the Frencophones don't give a shit about that. They have a one track mind: give me money, give me money, give me money, give me money, give me money is all they think about (according to Elio Di Rupo).
And Elio di Rupo is ofcourse a great source for this. Have you actually talked to Walloons about how they think about it? And from different area's? For example Waals-Brabant has the second highest transfer after Vlaams-Brabant. Limburg for example gets more money from transfers than Luxemburg and Namen and West-Vlaanderen also is a net beneficiary of the transfers. It is mostly the provinces of Liege and especially hainaut that are a problem, which should be dealt with. The problem is that they can't be dealth with without a strong federal government.
If you want to stay in such an abusive relationship, I wish you luck. But I want out.
Leave, sure. Just understand that economic losses from independence will far outweigh any savings on transfers. But I guess this doesn't matter. Just like this apparently didn't matter to brexiteers, despite the talks about better trade deals, etc.
I am going to finish it with this: there is no popular support for Flemish independence and I am certain the future will prove me right. But if you want to believe differently fine, just be not too dissapointed in the future after a failed referendum.
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In certain nations the ID.3 and model 3 are in different price categories. For example here in Belgium you'd pay 38k € vs 48k €.
Also honestly the ID.3 isn't meant to challenge the model 3, but rather to ensure that VW has at least something in the EV market and doesn't let Tesla or other companies get everything, which would be disastrous.
Also it is possible that the car is partially more expensive due the manufacturing process. Something VW "bragged" about is that the production process of the id.3 is fully durable (or however you say it). Now if this did increase the price and is an explanation for the kind of materials used, it was a mistake, people don't just care about that at this point in time. Maybe the touch buttons and sliders also increased the price a bit, I certainly hope not, because that was a mistake too. I think VW wanted too much change too fast, which made the id.3 average, whereas if they just focused more on turning a regular car into an Ev, they might have gotten a good car instead, possibly even with a lower price.
As it stands, the ID.3 failed in expectation, though the question is what VW goals were and whether they really care about it at this point in time.
Also Tesla is in the EV game for 12 years or so, while VW is only in it since about 2015-2017. The experiences VW has now with the id.3 could greatly improve future EV models in the VW group (at least that is my guess).
If Tesla were to bring out a smaller hatchback, that would be in direct competition with the ID.3. Because except for price, there also is size, practicality, ... Because honestly for me the model 3 would probably be a bit to large.
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One thing that also should be considered when looking at the influence of cavalry vs infantry is rarity and writings about battles.
For examples battles were the cavalry soundly beats infantry, but has no major impact on history/a region, might not be written about, whereas if infantry defeating heavy cavalry is rare, battles where infantry beat heavy cav will be written about, even if that battle didn't have long lasting implications in terms of regional/historical changes. It is essentially the age old tale of rooting for the underdog/describing rare events.
This ofcourse might distort our views on the past, since if we have for example 80% of battles won by heavy cav and 20% by infantry, but only 20% of the heavy cav victories is written down/preserved, while 80% of infantry wins is preserved, it might seem that battles won by heavy cav and infantry were more or less equally common, even if this is far from real history.
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@phylismaddox4880
Because Germany tried to appease competing segments of its green movement
This is the problem in your argumentation, the anti-nuclear movement is much more than the green movement. The political decision to close the nuclear plants was specifically to avoid non-green supporters/movement who are anti-nuclear from going to the green party just because of their anti-nuclear stance. If it were just the green movement, the green party would have dominated the last decade of German politics (or at least the elections at the time) regardless of the nuclear decision.
irrationality convinced that wind and solar could work at the grid scale
Except it can work, even today. However if you want to do it today it would become prohibitively expensive (100% renewable would be around double the cost of 100% nuclear). However within 10 years from now a pure renewable grid is a possibility. There are at this moment multiple types of grid storage coming up with test/prototype and first operational plants in many different countries around the world which promise to be in the right cost level. Even just Li-ion is expected to drop enough in price within the next 10 years to be viable (though not prefered due to better suited to other applications/limited amount).
Closing the reactors is a stupid decision regardless, I definitely agree on that. However whether they remained open or not, it wouldn't have changed the renewable roll-out most likely and it would definitely not have changed the amount of NG being used today. What would have happened is that they would have caused other baseload plants, ie. coal to be closed down instead (which would have been a good thing).
As it is now, NG in power production is around the same as it was 10 years ago, so the decision to close the powerplants didn't affect it, since it were the upcoming renewables that filled up the slack from the nuclear powerplants. After that NG use went down thanks to the growth of renewables, and then went back up as coal powerplants were getting closed (with NG being cleaner than coal and all that).
So the decision to close them was stupid because you couldn't close coal plants instead of it, however without renewables NG use would have remained the same or even increased, so choosing renewables was a great decision.
To close, if I am correct, power production only accounts for 10% of Germany's NG use anyway. Most of it is used in industry and households (for heating/cooking). If I am wrong, please correct me.
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JetNmyFuture
Sure it is damn expensive to go to the moon now. Who knows how expensive it is to go to the moon within 100-300 years, it might be same price as crossing the world in an airplane now. A little over a hundred years ago we didn't even had airplanes. We have made enormous progress over the past hundred years that no one would believe is possible a hundred years ago (hell most wouldn't even been able to imagine many things we have today). Hell electricity (and electric lighting) was first seen by many as some novelty only for the rich. Times change, technology changes, the impossible suddenly becomes possible.
To say something will not stick because it isn't economically feasible (in terms of consumerism) is defeatism or ignorance in my eyes. If it fails, it fails. It wouldn't be the first thing to fail after a lot of investment. But if it succeeds, even if it isn't a viable way of transporting people, think about transporting goods and cargo. From china to europe in hours instead of weeks (also interesting for China if they aren't reliant on sea trade, think the new silk road project). From somewhere in Africa to Siberia (not relevant, just to make a point) in hours, buy something in china online frome europe, next day delivered. Only ships needed to transport goods over the pacific, atlantic and indian ocean. This in itself would already be a large leap ahead and it wouldn't need many of these safety necessities as for human travel.
It's easy to disclaim hyperloop now, just like it would be easy to disclaim airplanes before the wright brothers testflight, just give it some time. Putting money in hyperloop is in my eyes much better than so many other things money is put in right now, even with its many difficulties and high chance for failure.
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@hallejulia5657 So a cylinder Bundle could cost around 2000 dollar, an electrolyser machine possibly up to 9000 (this is one I found, others were much more expensive, if you know a cheaper one, tell me) and then you also need a fuel cell, for which I couldn't immediately find a price. But while looking I came across an article from 2018 from a company that started installing fuel cells in homes at a cost of 54k, but lets assume this is for something likge 5 homes or so. So I wouldn't be surprised if even for a smaller setup that is still large enough for your house you need to count at least 10-15k if not more. Besides this you obviously have to count the cost for the extra solar panels.
After all that, unless you want to be fully off the grid, if it is about economics, you can probably just have a smaller solarpanel system with a battery that is more then enough during spring, summer and autumn and take more from the grid in winter. And let larger companies use the electricity you put back on the grid during summer to use h2 to store for the winter months.
In the end I don't think smallscale H2 storage will take off, the costs and effort will not be worth the gain economically, unless you want to be completely energy independent year round. Otherwise let larger installations deal with it. Maybe if microgrids become more normal you can do this for an entire community, for one house? Don't think so.
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@gofar5185 for me, russia is a genuine superpower
It might be a regional superpower, but globally it is "just" a great power. This is even the case when looking at objective parameters.
Its large population isn't that large anymore these days, economically it isn't even in the top 10 anymore, technologically it is also falling behind except for a few area's. The only reason Russia still plays such an important role and can even be called a great power is its military, but as the Russian economy shrinks/is left behind so will its military eventually. Russia mostly is just playing on its history and the drive to become a superpower again/remain a great power.
russia is an adversary of washington
This is more of a historical consequence then factual, it still is a lingering of the cold war mostly and Putin's authoritarian rule vs democratic nations.
russia lands are acknowledged by its east asian neighbours as legitimately owned by russians
I don't see why this is relevant.
ancestral legitimacy to lands and seas and holding on era after era is what defines the power of a state
No, it doesn't. This just defines their history. Byzantium wasn't a superpower anymore in the 14-15th century despite its great history.
america can ONLY go on doing what it wants for so long as it is super wealthy to afford manipulating any nation
Any superpower needed wealth, without wealth it couldn't be a superpower, at best it would have been a wannabe superpower.
on the other hand for russia, oppulence times or non-oppulence times, russia is still the same doing its own matters
This doesn't make them a superpower, a small nation can just do its own matters.
but by cultural(ancestral) definition/s that base on demographics and legitimacy, russia is fair and square a superpower
You seem to confuse history and current day. Being old doesn't make a nation a superpower, demographics (only) don't either (and Russia hasn't got the demographics to be called a superpower anymore anyway) and legitimacy, what kind of bullshit it this? Most nations these day have legitimacy, even smaller ones.
The definitions you like to use for being a superpower are nonsense. Essentially you just personally think Russia is still a superpower because of these things, but that is you personal preference. And by your standards there would be plenty of superpowers these days.
At this moment the US is the worlds sole superpower, but there are several great powers, some of which have been superpowers and some who are growing to become superpowers. Russia at this moment is a great power and at best stagnating in this place, it isn't growing to regain its superpower role, just hanging on to what it has.
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@frederikjrgensen252 Ofcourse it won't have influence now, no one expected them to get any real influence in this election. Why this result is important is because it shows it is a party that can win seats and now will/can be more taken seriously. There are many people that wouldn't vote on a party just because they are afraid their vote wouldn't matter (because the party would win no seat), however now in the next election Volt will get more recognition. It is not the gained influence in the parliament that is important now, rather the result itself, the growth and the effect on their image for future elections and growth.
And btw Volt isn't an outright leftwing party/organisation, more of a center/center-left party. On the right btw you also have some fragmentation with FvD, JA12 and some others. There are at this moment only +-4 larger parties and it is not easy to just classify them left or right. For example D66, CDA and PVV are economically center parties, but on social/cultural issues they are much more seperated, with D66 being very progressive (left/very left), CDA conservative (center-right/right) and PVV extreme right.
VVD is probably the most traditional right wing party, both in terms of social and economical issues.
So overal D66 could be classified as center-left (Volt is in a similar position as D66), CDA as center-right, VVD as regular right and PVV as right to extreme right (though probably the most difficult party to classify on a simplistic left-right scale).
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@ihl0700677525
Look, in the end, Germany still need oil/LNG, or H2, or ethanol, or nuclear power due to the inherent problem with wind and solar, that is on demand availability that can deal with sudden surge.
1. Nuclear would be the worst for surges, since it are baseload plants.
2. Oil isn't used to produce electricity, except in emergency generators.
3. Peaks will eventually be dealt with by using storage, be it batteries or something else (or a mix). This might now not be economical, but it isn't going to take long. Battery prices already dropped from an LCOE of 800$/MWh to around 220$/MWh in 2019. It needs to drop another 120$ and it will be around even to H2. And this is gridscale new batteries. Good management could also use EV batteries to level the grid and 2nd EV batteries are also good enough to be used for things like this, while probably a lot cheaper.
Since Germany had foolishly abandon nuclear power to pursue the pipe dream of pure wind and solar power
Nuclear wasn't abandoned due to renewable energy efforts, it was abandoned due to political games. The ruling parties were being pushed electorally by oppenents of nuclear. If they wanted to replace something with renewables, it would be coal. It was foolish to close down the existing plants too early, though new nuclear is much more expensive than renewables, so it is doubtfull they'd build new ones either way. Even France is probably going to phase out of nuclear energy when the current plants reach their end of life and replace it with renewables, unless new developments causes nuclear costs to reduce dramatically.
And you can call pure renewables a pipedream, it is not. though to replace all fossil fuel energy (not just in electricity) a mix of different systems would be best used, but this is more likely going to be nuclear than H2, similar price, but nuclear causes selfsufficiency.
3. Buy/Import electricity from neighboring country during surge in demand (which is what they do rn, which is the reason why electricity in Germany is more expensive than in neighboring countries).
You do know Germany produces more electricity than it uses, right? It is a net exporter. The main reason Germany's electricity is so expensive are taxes. Around a 6th of german electricity cost is due to "renewable" tax, which was caused due to the fact that Germany started the transistion with large subsidies when renewables were still expensive. This tax will within a decade have dissapeared most likely (it is going to lower every year from 2021 onwards). And another reason for the prices (and German imports) is that coal is becoming more expensive due to EU emission trading systems. This while coal represent 1/3th of Germany's electricity production.
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Like you said, he is there on his own with who knows how many lunatics. We know people (including a cop) have been killed, if he acts hostile towards them, he could have become just another victim. As long as they don't start vandalizing the chamber, I might have done the same thing, keep an eye out; hope for back up and act 'friendly' untill you can afford differently. No if he has back up, even just one person, that might change things, because then you have at least one person watching your back, but on your own? No. I would like to see what people that comment on this would do in his situation and how that plays out, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out worse or the same.
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If you incorporate the mining of the nuclear material, I believe it was only around 8 times better in land use. But ofcourse if you just talk about the plant alone, not the fuel acquisition, sure. Then again while Solar panels can be placed on area's that also can be used for other things like roofs, parking lots, even agricultural fields (in hotter regions even increasing the agricultural output of those fields), this isn't the case for nuclear. And ofcourse for now nuclear is geographically restrained to a few area's (close to a body of water, not to close to a large population center, ....), whereas solar panels are essentially only restricted above certain latitudes.
TLDR: while saying that nuclear takes up (much) less land is correct, it is so simplistic it is essentially just a useless talking point.
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@BineroBE The executive is the Commission which is responsible for executing EU law.
You'd think that (and you're partially right), but in the end the commission lacks crucial powers to truly be an executive branch. Basically the parliament is purely legislative body, while both the commission and the council are a legislative and executive body. So the legislative is made up of: the commission, the parliament and the council. The executive is made up of: the commission and the council.
The eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis where two instances where the EU was not allowed to act. The most it could do was mediate. That's why many people within the EU Parliament want the EU's power on fiscal matters and immigration to be extended.
Fully agree with this assessment and personally I'd like to see a proper senate to replace the council (though the council should still be able to veto some things and should always play a part in reforms, the council needs to be abolished and replaced by a proper government, either run by a directly elected president or prime minister and there should be a clear division in powers (for example things like energy, transportation, foreign policy, border protection, immigration... should be transferred to the EU level, eventually also the military).
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@UCRCGpyFupwLoWw5er5MmBeQ The result of raising and lowering taxes is not a zero-sum gain. You can lower taxes and increase government revenue.
The theory is that lower taxes increases productivity and thus income, but this takes time, longer than Trumps presidency. Any increase of the income due to the increased economy is an after effect of Obama era policies. Moreover time after time it has been proven that this trickle down theory holds no merit in the end.
He lowered taxes across the board which increased government revenue to the highest levels in US history at the same time lowering unemployment to the lowest levels in US history (before the pandemic).
The unemployment under Trump just followed the same trend already happening during the later years of the Obama administration. Moreover I believe under Trump the definition of unemployment as used by the government was also changed in his favor. The real unemployment under Trump right before the pandemic had just reverted to pre-2008 economic crisis levels, again, following the curve that started under Obama.
After the great depression, it also took around 10-15 years to revert back to normal levels.
Also if we compare 2016 Obama revenue vs 2019 Trump revenue, accounting for inflation, 2016 saw a greater revenue than 2019. Government revenue almost always increases year after year in absolute numbers due to an increase in inflation. If we compare it to the GDP, in 2019 government revenue was equal to 16,1% of GDP, while this was 17,4% in 2016. Moreover when we look at the deficit, Obama's deficit in 2016 was around $585 billion dollar, Trumps in 2019 was $984 billion. Even accounting for inflation or GDP increase it would be (a lot) higher under Trump.
Moreover Trumps tax cuts actually will automatically increase taxes for the middle class after few years, to a higher level than before, only keeping taxes for business lower than before.
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@dalibornovakovic93
1) this isn't at all going to bring in enough money, just a fraction of the needed funds.
2) people are not going to like that they work, but don't get any benefits/securities. Especially the highly educated workers are likely going to act on this and move to another country, and these are exactly the kind of immigrants you want to have.
3) If it were to save so much money (which again I seriously doubt), that also means a lot of people would lose benefits, which will cause great unrest. Even if we are very generous and say that on average such a person would lose around 20k in benefits annually (which is highly overexaggerated), we'd be talking about 2,5 million people losing benefits, or around 3-4% of Frances population. The yellow vests movement will be nothing compared to what this would cause. Even if I lower the total cost of Le Pen's program to 10 billion (which is even lower thna Macrons, so unlikely), we are talking about 500k people losing 20k annual benefits, that still is an insane number.
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@varkenshaasje4014
there is not enough space for solar and wind in most countries
There is plenty of space for these energy sources, maybe not everywhere, but then you just place it a x miles further. You can't put a nuclear powerplant in the middle of a large city either. Just a small space of the sahara filled with solar power (which in this case isn't panels, but rather mirrors and heat) could power the entire world. Main problem is the transer and storage of the electricity provided.
they are ugly
Subjective personal opinion, I don't think they are ugly, on the contrary I like seeing them. Ofcourse you don't need to place it on every piece of nature. But again ugliness is a personal opinion.
kill animals
And so do so many other things. Even nuclear probably causes a lot of animal deaths, just not as visible.
destroys the sea
How exactly does it get "destroyed". The impact of them on the sea is much less than fishing, sailing and just general waste.
landfills with toxic waste worse then nuclear waste
Some sources, maybe. But wind energy doesn't, and several solar powered plants neither.
Germany example, really? Germany has actually reduced its coal power production. Germany always was a country heaviliy reliant on coal. Half of Germany's nuclear power is still running. Much more energy from renewable energy has been created than the loss of nuclear power.
they get subsidised a lot in europe.
Like many other emerging sectors. Besides these subsidies are lowered year after year and might in many cases already be negligable or non existent for new projects.
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@haschkeo
Putin stated already that he would use nucelar power if the existence of Russia is threatened.
ofcourse he is going to say that, why would he say any different. Besides the existence of Russia is unlikely to be threatened, a conventional war probably will more end up with some territorial loses/gains (like Kaliningrad for sure in case of a Russian loss or maybe it would just get demilitarised), maybe demilitarised zones and possibly a change of government structure. It is never going to end up in a full permanent occupation/annexation. It is exactly for this reason a war is unlikely, you don't gain much anymore with a largescale war, not compared to the possible devastation and losses. If a war between Russia and NATO happens it is because either has properly invaded a country like Ukraine or so.
Also, and people even within the NATO tend to forget this, the NATO is a defensive alliance
Sure, but this doesn't mean NATO members won't work together in an offensive manner if there is good reason. All this means is that the US (and maybe others) need to convince other members of the necessity. For example if Russia invades Ukraine, it might be enough reason to say that they declare ware to protect Ukraine.
it would be a VERY VERY expansive war for the NATO.
Ofcourse, it would be very expensive for everyone. Honestly I don't think NATO would push into Russia, rather they'd push back to/protect EU borders and for example Ukraine and cause a stalemate. Isolate Russia, maybe just the occasional air sortie/bombardment and just try and force Russia to make peace, possibly with some concessions (like a demilitarisation of Kaliningrad, handing back Crimea to Ukraine, ...).
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The reason for a wealthtax is good, the idea of a wealthtax isn't. Much wealth of people isn't liquid, meaning they might need to sell stuff to pay the tax, which imo doesn't make sense. Better is
1) just a much more strict tax on income (less exceptions/loopholes),
2) a much more general meaning of income (essentially everything you get in new liquid assets: wages, dividends, sales, inheritance, gifts, ..., this forexample doesn't include increase an increase in stockwealth/properties/other owned commodities, since you don't get anything from this untill you sell it after the increase in worth) and
3) a much more progressive tax rate (up to for example 70-80% on income above 5-20 million)
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@thepenguin305 You tell me, how much has the economic benefit been?
Also remember that the US uses German bases not necessarily to improve the safety of Germany/Europe, but rather also as a hub to support their missions in the Middle East and Africa. If the US didn't had these bases in Germany, they'd just need to put them somewhere else in a similarly close and secure region and pay for it nonetheless.
Unless agreements are written in black and white about something and not just a promise or such, a change in situation can allow this promise to change, be it a difference in government, economy, ... This is also why a new US president essentially always can just choose to get out of NATO, breaking the treaty and why it is important for a US president to iterate their standpoint on many different things (before and after the election), like NATO and article 5. No nation is completely bound to any agreement, they just need to deal with the backlash of changing it and a good argumentation is paramount. The 2008 economic crisis was a good reason for many countries to reneg on their earlier promise to up defence spending (especially considering the crisis mostly originated from the US).
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@reverendroar Jesus, so much bollocks.
Le Pen is losing from Macron in polls with around a 16-18% gap. Merkel leaving is indeed unfortunate, but it isn't like this will suddenly see the EU collapse.
AfD, Vox and national front are strong not due to euroscepticism, but rather their anti-immigration and strong security rhetoric. And AfD has actually been losing ground in polls during the last year. Vox is either remaining on the same level or even losing a bit of ground, and they are soft eurosceptic, as in they want a different EU, but an EU nonetheless. And FN's rise has more to do with French internal problems, than euroscepticism.
Spain isn't even close to eurosceptic, let alone leaving it. Poland and Hungary will not leave either. Their whole thing is more of a "want the benefits, not the burdens" stance. When it comes down to though, they won't leave. The EU is economically too important for them and they also fear possible Russian aggression if they are on their own. Italy is a bit more difficult, but if their internal problems can get fixed, everything will be fine. To me it seems more like the Italian people are dissapointed with their leaders and their policies and are just trying out other possibilities.
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Yeah, I indeed don't think the capability or costs were an issue, rather creating more ties between the US and Germany. Personally this is why I don't like that my country (Belgium) went for it, eventhough I can understand the decision. The alliance with the US is important, but I'd rather support a European industry, not just for now, but also the future and also to not be tied to the US in future. Taking a stand against the US on certain issues might be a lot more difficult with ties like this. And I also would prefer Belgium to step out the nuclear sharing policy, so I can understand this might also be a feeling in Germany, especially since nuclear in general (personally I don't have a problem with nuclear power generation) is even more of an issue there.
I wonder whether another reason might be that they just want to maybe coast the next +-20-25 years untill the FCAS system is ready and then really replace things, untill then just having a "placeholder" airforce, one that eventually might be best able to support the FCAS system best (better European planes than American ones in that regard I'd guess). Essentially just hoping they won't really need their airforce in an active conflict for the next 20-30 years.
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@russbg1827
Seeing that losing private insurance is the main attack on M4A and that is mostly this loss of choice that apparently hurts m4a as time goes on, I'd say most people believe it is universal healthcare without private insurance, which isn't even exactly true, since it only forbids duplicative insurance. So if you don't get everything you want, you can still choose to get a private insurance on top of it.
As for eliminating private insurance possibly not being the best path forward, like I said only duplicative care would be outlawed. And no, the government wouldn't out compete private insurance, because PI will just lower the coverage and the prices, pushing sick people to the public option and inviting the healthy people (who ofcourse will change insurer once they get sick). Furthermore if private insurance remains as it is now and the government just becomes another player, the administrative burden would still remain, keeping a major cost that otherwise could be cut. A,nd it will also limit the governments ability to negotiate drug prices effectively.
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@USAACbrat Panel recycling costs are normally included in LCOE. As for land use costs, they are not much compared to the overall costs of a PV system, exactly because you can still use the land for the same function it originally performed, or it is worthless land not used for anything before. Does it have a price? Ofcourse, is it a problem or a major factor? No. I've never heard or read about land costs being any issue for PV systems.
You aren't going to buy the most expensive land or so. You are buying worthless land, hire the land for a small price or you are the owner of the land. You aren't going to build in prime ground with high costs, if you would, you'd build some usefull buildings (industry, office, housing, ...) first and then as an extra put the solar panels on top of the building. It might lower the energy output of the site vs just blanketing with PV panels, but what does that matter? You just increased the potential economical value of your project immensely either way.
So no, land costs aren't a problem in regards to PV panels.
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While I liked the video, I am baffled by the conclusion. The entire video clearly shows the Romans could conquer it if they wanted too, there just wasn't a general interest in doing so vs other more prosperous regions could be taken/plundered or secured.
If the Romans really wanted to, a genocide like that emperor envisioned would in essence have been a viable and usefull, albeit ofcourse brutal and ruthless, strategy. If there are no more people to resist, not only could it be colonised by your citizens, but you also might not need as many troops to secure britain as a whole.
And genocide wouldn't necessarily be that difficult, burn the crops and store houses, kill the animals and ofcourse kill or capture and enslave any person in that region. There might be a lot of opposition initially, but they can't hold out for a few years without food and safety, the Romans can manage a multi year campaign if they wanted to. At best you get very small hidden communities which don't pose a risk surviving or some strong points the romans can focus on.
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@publicenemy9326
were constantly given sanctions, they weren’t lifted not once after they started introducing it
Ofcourse the sanctions don't get lifted if the reason why they are introduced didn't dissapear. Can you point me to sanctions on Russia that were kept in place after the reason they were put in place dissapeared?
and you keep pushing and don’t calm down even if we go to meet you
I am sorry, but European leaders (well most) are pushing for a diplomatic solution all the time, Russian leadership keeps blocking it off, maintaining their unacceptable demands and clearly untrue paranoidal claims. Putin himself said to Macron that he'll continue untill all his demands/goals are met, refusing to give into his absurd demands even an inch.
You don’t know Russians and think that we will hold on to iPhones and McDonalds, but this is not so
I don't think that at all, I wouldn't need McDonalds or Iphone either, hell I have never had an iphone and haven't been to a McDonalds or similar for several years now. There however are a lot more important companies that decide to get out/stop trading with Russia.
You should have just left us and let us live in peace
Sorry to tell you, but no one gave a fuck about Russia in the west untill Russia started antagonizing/invading Ukraine. Even Ukrainian membership of NATO and EU was in doubt or would be a long time off, now the opposite is the case.
but you jackals are used to robbing and humiliating someone all the time.
Only after you (or better your leadership) pushes us to do so as an alternative to armed conflict. You rather we send troops into Ukraine to protect its borders and start WWIII? European nations want peace and trade the most, yet now we are essentially being forced to take measures and increase our defence spending. Germany for example wasn't at all inclined to see Russia as an adversary, rather as a trading partner and wasn't at all likely to get to 2% military defence spending anytime soon, now with Ukraine they were essentially forced into it.
The truth is, European nations don't like conflict with Russia at all, we'd prefer friendly relations rather than ddverserial ones. The US was more and more focused in China rather than Russia. It is only the annexation of Crimea and now the invasion into Ukraine that pitches the West again against Russia, but I guess if you live in Russia propaganda about the 'evil' West putting all the blame on us can be a bitch.
Even nations tht are friendly/allies to Russia have taken a neutral stance since they understand Russia is acting stupid currently and they don't want to support that, rather at best not damage relations too much.
Someone in the world imposed sanctions against the United States and NATO for their invasion and unleashing wars?
No, because it would hurt the country sanctioning it the most, be in inconsequential and likely lead to a worldwide economic crisis. Though if these days the US again tries to do something like Iraq, I wouldn't be surprised if it was condemned and that European nations move away from the US as much as possible, eventually trying to take a more neutral stance.
The EU also didn't put sanctions on Russia during the Russian invasion in Georgia. The fact is that the EU before wasn't exactly as united or willing to take such actions before. Moreover now it concerns a nation directly bordering the EU and the rhetoric coming from Russian leadership is pretty bad, nearly like they want to antagonize the EU in taking actions. Even after Crimea the EU held back, with just limited sanctions, considering the annexation at least could have some validation, with maybe just the way it was done completely unacceptable. The reasons now given for the invasion into Ukraine are just blatantly stupid, like they think the EU are stupid idiots or they don't care about giving a good reason, just reasons they can make their own population swallow with propaganda.
some can destroy the Indians from behind the earth and use nuclear weapons against entire cities and they will not get anything for it ...
I don't see what you are trying to say here. Do you mean that US could execute a nuclear strike and get away with it? If that is the case, it is moronic. If the US does that, it would get even more quickly isolated than Russia now, likely facing complete trade embargo's rather than partial ones and condemnations from all corners of the world, it economy would get completely destroyed, since even its allies wouldn't support them anymore. It would be similar, if not exactly the same to if Russia would use a (limited) nuclear strike now in Ukraine or elsewhere.
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@anastasiskarlis1282 China has such an amazing growth because it is catching up. It is doing in 3-4 decades what western nations did in the last 150 years or so. Because they already have the west as an example, this can happen much faster than if they had to discover/find out everything along the way (like western nations had to do). However now that China is catching up to the west, its growth is starting to steadily decline (from 10,6% in 2010 to 5,9% in 2019, every year a decline), as is normal. Eventually if they reach western standards in terms of economy/GDP, living standards, ... growth will slow untill it is likely similar to that of western nations. And this is a problem for the ruling party. For now they get away with such an authoritarian regime because people see their lives improving/growth happening. Once this slow down enough, support for the party will start to erode. And this is exactly why Chinese leadership are becoming even more authoritarian, trying to prevent any problems before they happen and also why they are shifting the focus more to other external matters, like Taiwan and the west.
Also time is not on China's side regarding Taiwan. The more time passes, the less people in Taiwan are identifying as Chinese and/or wish to re-unite with China. The more time passes, the more Taiwanese people are likely to not identify as Chinese, making integration (be it through force or diplomacy) all the less likely and way more difficult to achieve.
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@anastasiskarlis1282 You mean they have the full support of the west since the 1970s.
I meant they already have the example of the West industrialising and all the industrialisation technology/theory/... at their disposal. It is just like with for example the space industry. Countries that only started it the last 20 or so years were able to progress much faster than the US or Russia in the same inital stages, because they already had the initial stages of the US and Russia to look at (regarding what works and don't works, the technology, ...)
China ofcourse was in a great situation: cheap plentiful labour, access to a lot of raw resources, huge coastal regions, plenty of space, ...
My point is that we shouldn't say that they're using the west as an example.
Except you just said it yourself: "in exchange you'll give up the technology to us". That is what I am refering too. China didn't had to develop the technology, they could use already existing Western technology, really speeding up their growth process. Something the West obviously could never do, since they developed the technology in the first place.
Just look at how fast and effectively they took care of the covid situation.
This was because of an authoritarian regime being able to do whatever it needs to do (even in a capitalist society an authoritarian regime can do what China did), like instituting mass hard lockdowns, quickly building cheap new emergency hospitals wherever they'd like, ...
Moreover it seems China has smudged the numbers quite a bit. For example there was supposedly at the same time a large outbreak of pneumonia at exactly the same time. Most likely most of these pneumonia cases were actually just covid cases. There is no way China has that little deaths due to covid compared to the rest of the world (not just the west), however it isn't too difficult for China to smudge over the numbers a bit.
Anyway it is likely that China just got away good also due to the harsh and quick measures authoritarian regimes can do. Even now when there are a few cases a very hard lockdown is often instituted.
As for Taiwan what I meant was that there will be elections in a couple of years. Until then it will keep the tension up to avoid any surprises and it will try to build relations with the new government.
I don't really see how this is a tactic that benefits China, these tensions only increase anti-Chinese sentiment, which might find its way to the polls. Now if we were talking about a Chinese election, that would have been different.
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Tesla announced on battery day that their new tabless batteries would have 6 times the power capacity, which would mean if they now have a 150 kW power capacity, than the new battery cells could possibly achieve 900kW. This could definitely mean charging time for 20-80% could be reduced to less than 10 minutes. Ofcourse it isn't as easy as just scaling this, there is also infrastructure, duration of this high power (it probably can't be kept for more than a minute, maybe even just a few seconds, I don't know), ... but even reaching 300kW for a large part of the process will put it close to 10 minutes. Getting EV's that need less than 10 minutes fastcharging in the next 2 decades or so isn't unthinkable.
The question is, how much will it be needed? Truck drivers already need to take mandatory rest periods every 3-4 hours (at least here in Europe), which will go fine with charging their trucks during this rest. They also can't operate for more than +-10 hours at a time, then they need a long rest (several hours). If their battery packs are divided in 4 packs, charging simultanously, they might already be almost fine with current technology (and tabless batteries will first be used for semi's and cybertucks anyway). The average person only does around 2-6 or so longer trips a year and during longer trips many people (especially with families) will stop every 2-3 hours to take a small break, if they then can charge up in 15-20 minutes it is fine.
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@Allen Loser I made a mistake and didn't accounty for the size difference, so it is probably more like 350kW max. But due to the way the new cells are made, it might be possible to use maximum power for longer than now. 15 minutes 20-80% is what it should be capable of doing.
As for the chargers, there are already 350kW chargers being rolled out, they will be more expensive to use, but it would probably be comparable to gas in price. And ofcourse you only use these high power chargers when really needed.
Stonger chargers will definitely be possible, though the question is whether that is usefull. People might now think 15 minutes is long, while in the future thinking why it was a problem.
As for being tethered to your home. Aren't you already? There isn't really a problem with this unless you are almost never home, but you need to sleep somewhere, and eventually you'll find chargers everywhere. Regular charging is really no issue if you can charge at home. If you don't have access to a charging point, that is something different, though as time goes on eventually everyone will have access to overnight charging capabilities.
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@Allen Loser
Capacity of a battery pack has little to do with the ,maximum charging rate possible.
I was talking about the power capacity, not the energy capacity, ie. what power a battery can take and for how long.
And the rest you said about batteries I already knew. Clearly you misinterpreted what I said and thought I knew nothing about the batteries (or other things involved).
I am not tethered to home. I can sleep anywhere I please, limited only by the number of miles which I can drive before becoming too tired to drive and my ability to pay for lodging. You must return home if you are to refuel at home.
Either you are disingenious on purpose or I don't know why you would write this. Obviously when you are taking a trip away from home you would use a fastcharger or a charger at your lodging. It is not like you can only charge at home, that is just your primary charging area for regular use.
The charging rate is in excess of 14,000 kilowatts at the charging facilities which I patronize.
Are we going to start like this? First off all, everyone knows filling up with gas is faster, that is not a debated issue. Secondly if you compare fuelling to charging it is better to use miles per minute rather than kilowatts. The way you put it, you make it seem like filling up with gas is 140 times faster than most regular fast chargers or 40 times faster than the fastest charger available, that is clearly not the the case due to the inefficiency of your car engine. Eitherway this is irrelevant. A fastcharging time of around 15 minutes would be fine for almost everyone, since you'd only use this when making a longer trip, other times you wouldn't leave your house for it and would spend maybe 5-10 seconds on it.
No, you don't incur damage to you fuel tank, you however do incur damage to your engine, clutch, drive train in general by using gas, where as with an EV other parts of the drive train rarely need to be replaced or serviced in the cars lifetime. You can have thousands more maintenance costs with an ICE vs an EV. You can literally save the costs of a new battery in maintenance savings. And when a battery is unsuitable for further driving it can still be used for non-mobile applications (it still would have 65-70% of the energy capacity remaining), so you can get quite a bit of the value back. Even when it needs to be recycled you can still get some money back, since recycling a battery is cheaper than getting all the resources from mining.
Furhermore at this moment battery packs with proper management are expected to last longer than the car itself unless you drive a lot with it, in which case you save more on other things like fuel, maintenance, ...
Those refueling facilities are ubiquitous
They are now, they weren't in the past. They needed a roll out, so do chargers now.
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@Allen Loser
Your original post was about charging rate improving by a claimed factor of six times.
And I later corrected myself. I didn't at first take into account the +-5 times increase in volume of the new battery. It is kind of stupid that Tesla then touthed 6x increase in power instead of being more clear. Still 15 minutes is expected with 350kW chargers
Let me know when recharging facilities supplying power at a rate in excess of 14,000 kilowatts
It seems it is useless to discuss things with you. if you charge at home this speed doesn't mean anything. Most people would use a fastcharger only a few times a year, and usually when they already need a stop to rest as is advised for safe driving (ie. after 3-4 hours of driving). In that case a 15-20 minute charging time can even be seen as a benefit, increasing road safety by decreasing drivers who never rest and start making mistakes (and if you want to say anything, yes, maybe you are a superman who doesn't need any rest and can drive as long as you want, studies prove this isn't the case for most).
The engine in my 1986 Volvo 240 wagon outlasted the body of the car which rusted out after 18 years of use.
And what where the maintenance costs on it? The miles? Ofcourse an engine can outlast a car, doesn't mean there were no costs on it. I can easily tout xx years of operation, while only driving 100-150 miles with it too.
A manufacturer can overcome my consumer resistance with a fully transferable, unlimited lifetime warranty for as many battery replacements as needed at no cost to the owner.
This is unlikely to come around, maybe increasing it to something like 15-20 year, but never a lifetime, since an EV could possibly last much longer than an ICE car depending on the body. At this moment it is set at 8 years or 150.000 miles (around the average lifetime of most cars btw apparently), which already is longer than most warrantees out there and ofcourse car manufacturers aren't going to use a warranty that is close to the failure time, so you can add at least 15-20% to that time/mileage. And ofcourse that is only using the economics of warranty, car manufacturers would also like to be known for their product. If one company can have a battery go 1 million miles (which is what Tesla is aiming at) then they might reap extra economic benefits from this too. Based on current known data from Tesla cars purely on degradation, the battery should easily last 500k miles and might flirt with a million miles.
So then why not offer a longer warranty you might ask? Well, economics. Tesla is a company, so they rather limit any possible expense as much as possible. Why use a longer warranty than officially needed. Almost no company will offer longer warranty than required unless you pay extra for a longer warranty.
Ford built flex-fuel vehicles in the early 1900s. They could be fueled on kerosene, gasoline or ethanol (corn squeezins).
And? Like we have free land to spare already, right? The entire world production of corn isn't even enough to power the entire US car fleet with ethanol. It is now already being used mixed with gasoline (at least here in Europe) to decrease pollution. You know what is happening? People start using the fuel with less ethanol in it (which is a bit more expensive) because their garage tells them to and there is a slight increase in consumption when gasoline is mixed with ethanol.
Something else to take into account, which you seem to not think about. With current consumption and current known oil reserves we'd run out in 50-100 years. And that is with no rise in consumption, obviously without EV's the consumption will increase worldwide. But sure, you keep using the exhaustable fuel that is also necessary/usefull for so much more in the long run.
You like so much people seem to lack long term vision and caring, as long as it doesn't interferes with your current routine, right? Even if it would barely cost you time and will (once EV's are on price parity, expected around 2025) cost you less. But ok, if you want to keep paying more and fuck over future generations more, you do you. And just to be clear, I don't expect you to buy an EV immediately or before you need a new car, I don't have an EV yet either and will probably not get one in the next 5 years, after that? Absolutely.
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@Allen Loser
Power output of 150 kilowatts is not impressive. That is 200 horsepower. No Tessla currently offers an output as little as 200 horsepower. A P100D already offers an output in excess of 500 kilowatts (~700 to 750 horsepower). An output of 900 kilowatts from a new battery pack is not an increase of six times over a P100D battery pack.
I never talked about the power the battery could give the engines, I always talked about charging power (at least in relation to 150-350kW).
A battery pack which is five times larger in volume and presumably in capacity, will take longer to charge at the same charging rate of 350 kilowatts of existing chargers.
For one it isn't the battery pack that is larger, but the cells in it. And the cell saw around 15% of energy capacity increase per kg. These cells also changed design (tabless batteries) so there is less problems with batteries heating up during the charging process. So no, it won't take longer, but shorter since it should be able to charge at max capacity for longer. Batteries usually only charge a small time at max capacity.
A fully transferable, unlimited warranty is a no-cost way to overcome consumer resistance / consumer skepticism if the new battery packs are as good as claimed.
Except it is not needed. As it stands now Tesla can't keep up with car orders and regular car manufacturers still focus mostly on ice cars and hybrids now, however they are jumping on EV's in a limited way, because they realize EV's are the future and they don't want to be (completely) left behind. So why already trying to overcome consumer resistance / skepticism if they have enough consumers already (for Tesla)? Or if they are still also selling ICE cars (regular manufacturers)? Maybe in the future they might try it to pull the last ones skeptics over the line. Though by then most people will have EV's, so then it most likely wouldn't be necessary, there will be more than enough prove.
Concern for warranty liability is an admission that Tesla believes the probability of a warranty claim is non-negligible.
I just said Tesla is a company, a company will never give a longer warranty, even if the chance of there being a problem is negliable.
There was plenty of corn to fuel all ICEVs in existence in 1910 as were stores selling kerosene.
Really? They could power all 500 000 vehicles in the US back then? Consider me stunned, but not really. There are now 273 million cars in the US. Really, it is not so difficult to find out, google a bit and make some calculations and you'll find I was right. Or let me do it for you.
1 bushel of corn = 3 gallons of ethanol
Wordwide yearly consumption of corn (in bushels) = 44 690 000 000
44 690 000 000 * 3 = 134 880 000 000 or 135 billion gallons of ethanol
US yearly gas consumption for cars = 145 billion gallons
And considering that ethanol also has lower energy content it is even worse. This would make the needed amount of gallons around 217 billion gallons of ethanol needed.
And we aren't taking into account that this corn is needed for other things, so you would need a lot more land use, water use, energy use (transforming corn to ethanol), ... No, ethanol is not going to be viable replacement, not even close.
Drivers who expected to travel in areas where fuel was unavailable carried additional fuel in jerry cans. That there was not yet a chain of recognizable gas stations was not a showstopper for early drivers.
It most certainly was for quite a lot of people. You do know the jerry can was invented in the 1930's for the German military right? It wasn't something in use in the 1910's since at that point oil was only just becoming a usefull resource. Sure they had cans, but they weren't as easy to use, needing a wrench, a funnel and spout and easily punctured causing leaks.
And honestly how far will people be from electricity? Like if a car is meant to go into the wild or in an area without electricity, I can understand gasoline vehicles remaining in use, this however is/will be the exception.
Lack of a sufficient number of recharging facilities is a deficiency of BEvs which can be fixed by allocation of sufficient capital.
What do you think is happening? The EU is planning to have 3 million public chargers by 2030, where there are now around 200 000, so a 15 times increase. This is to support the goal of at least 30 million EV's on EU roads by 2030 (currently a little less then 2 million).This falls in their green deal plan, which would also for example forbid short plane flights from 2030 onwards (less than 500km), 80.000 EV trucks, ... According to their estimates 10% hydrogen and 10% e-diesel would increase the necessary renewables by 41% by 2050, thus instead they go full on battery powered vehicles for the road.
Gasoline and diesel fuel can be synthesized from CO2 and water.
And how energy inefficient is that? Since they essentially just work as an energycarrier/storage, you could as well use hydrogen.
The primary reason that synthetic fuels are not in widespread use is the production cost exceeds the retail price of fuels refined from crude oil.
Exactly. And electricity is even cheaper then fuels refined from crude oil, with the added benefit that is doesn't exhaust co2 (and other pollutants) at the place people live, which synthetic fuel would. Then Hydrogen would be better than synthetic fuels too.
Advocates for renewable energy have not yet delivered on the promise of electricity which is too cheap to meter
Except it is. The problem is that renewables were expensive just a few years ago, these expensive renewables are still in the mix and often times government get subsidies for these expensive renewables from the past back through the electricity bill. In Germany the cost of production of electricity is only 2 eurocent/kWh higher than in France which uses old nuclear, which is supposed to be cheap and comes down to around 8 cent/kWh, however at this moment the government adds another 5-6 cent/kWh to the bill to recover spent subsidies and in total Germany has more than 52% of the bill being taxes at a total bill cost of 30 cent/kWh.
Eitherway, you need a price of around 40 cents/kWh (here in Europe) to break even. Even the highest bill is only around 30 cents/kWh. Here in Belgium it is around 25-28 cent/kWh and the average for the entire EU is around 21 cent/kWh (or around half as expensive as gas). This is taking into account current efficiency of EV's however this is also still increasing (a bit).
You can see the amount of EV's increasing with lower electricity. For example the Netherlands only have 14-15 cent/kWh and EV's are sold there much more than here in Belgium.
Producing fuel from the ashes of burned fuel requires a lot of energy. Nordic Blue Crude uses hydropower
Which is essentially just a waste, it would be better to use this hydropower to directly power something. The only reason you wouldn't is if the electricity market is saturated by for example other hydropower. But that is not a bussinessmodel for creating gas for cars, but rather to use gas as an energy storage option that is easily transferable, in which case it will likely go into competition with hydrogen and possibly be used to fuel powerplants then cars in the long run or other maybe will find some other uses.
I am willing to pay more for synthetic diesel fuel if it were available at a retail pump near me. I am unwilling to sacrifice conveniencne and mobility to drive a BEV which is inferior to my seventeen year old VW TDI in providing mobility.
You wouldn't sacrifice your mobility or convenience, it is just that you seem rusted in the idea that only fuelling at a pump provides mobility and convenience, while this is certainly not true. This is similar to people that wouldn't give up their bike/horse and cart in the past for a car or people who still want a landline when everything can be done with a mobile phone. It just needs a change of how you view/experience things. Personally I'd find plugging in my car at home much more convenient than fuelling up at a gas station, even if I now live within 5 minutes of several fuelstations. And charging my car during an otherwise also advised reststop is also not going to inconvenience me or feel like I sacrifice mobility (with a 15-20 minute charge time). Again I am talking of 5-10 years from now with a build out infrastructue (though for me already good enough now), I can understand people's hesitance of buying an EV now, they are still quite expensive and not everywhere is the infrastructure build out enough, but in the future an EV is a no brainer for everything except the very special exceptions.
Are you conceding that Tesla lied?
They didn't, it can just be deceving, probably due to my own faulty interpretation though.
And well, depending on the country you might not get a choice (if you live in the US, this is unlikely), for example the UK plans to ban sales of new ICE cars by 2030.
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@Allen Loser
What fraction of the retail price of a new battery pack are you willing to pay for a salvaged automotive battery pack with 70% of the original capacity, if purchased for stationary use?
I'd say personally around 25-30%, but it most likely would not be private persons buying them, they are too big overall as home batteries in capacity (though maybe the original owner can use them as homebatteries instead of selling it), but large companies might be willing to pay a bit more (maybe with a clause to refund x% in case the battery fails in the next x cycles or so). But even 25-30% would still be more than fine.
Three salvaged battery packs are needed where two new battery packs would do if 66% to 70% capacity remains in the salvaged battery packs
And? Size isn't really a huge concern, if it is, you ofcourse are going to buy a new one. Neither is weight a concern if it is stationary.
A market for salvaged automotive battery packs will develop only if the discount compared to the retail price of buying new is sufficient that consumers choose salvaged battery packs over new for stationary uses.
Ofcourse, and maybe in the next 2 decades that might no be the case with dropping battery costs, though this also means your new battery is cheaper, great. Once battery costs are more or less stable, I don't see a reason why people would not want to possibly save 70% on the costs of a new battery (again maybe with a guarantee that it will still work x cycles, or pay per month untill either the battery fails or a certain amount is reached).
However about salvaging/re-use I do have to add that Tesla is against this for probably 2 reasons: they sell powerwalls to be used in homes, if people re-use car batteries this means less income and secondly like I said, recycling is less expensive than mining, so they want to recycle these batteries as soon as possible to decrease their costs. And now that they are planning to build the batteries into the car body itself, it will be more difficult or even impossible to re-use them.
This a beef I have with Tesla, just like Apple they are going against right-to-repair which aims at making it possible for third parties to work at a car/item to repair it, even with genuine parts. I can understand them somewhat, an EV is not as safe to work on if you don't know what you do and if something goes wrong due to 3rd party changes Tesla could be still be hurt, even if indirectly. However I do also need to add that the battery being put immediately in the car body is meant as a cost savings feature, not an anti-repair/anti-reuse measure.
that a BEV may be competitive in selling price by 2025 is a disincentive to buy a BEV now.
True, which is why I don't mind if people say they'll wait to buy one for a few years. There however are enough people for who the extra costs is worth it as seen by the sales. Also several countries offer great BEV incentives and if your electricity costs are low enough, the extra cost might already be earned back in less time than the car's expected lifetime. This however isn't the case here in Belgium, thus my mother just this week bought a new ICE. Seeing an average cars lifetime of 8-12 years (and her old car's time of 10 years) she'll probably buy a new EV somewhere around 2030-32, which is more than fine by me.
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@Allen Loser
Building million mile battery packs is pointless unless salvaged battery packs are reused, not recycled.
Few cars are driven one million miles before the rest of the car wears out or is wrecked beyond repair.
Possibly yes, which is probably why we haven't heard of it on batteryday, though I don't really agree.
For one when batteries will be used in semi's, the amount of miles driven will quickly increase, reaching on million miles with a semi isn't so weird. Driving on average 275 miles a day will put you at 1 million miles after around 10 years.
There isn't so much that degrades in an EV, not the engine, not the brakes (not as fast as least), ... Everything that does were out can be rather easily replaced except the body, but for semi's that should easily last the 10 or so years they need to operate it to reach 1 million miles.
Add to this that the cybertrucks body is expected to last much longer than normal body frames and it could keep going for a million miles with limited maintenance. But ofcourse we won't know untill it actually is being put in use somewhere in the next 2-3 years.
Maybe Tesla will re-use them first. It is not like I know everything about it, though if the million miles are a consequence of the other needed characteristics of a battery design (like with the tabless batteries), then it is just an extra advantage.
I already have a million mile fuel tank at a fraction of the cost of a battery pack.
Yes, but with an ice the engine, clutch, gear box, ... is the battery in terms of degredation. Can they all last 1 million miles without replacement?
you don't save 75% but only save 62.5% of the cost of purchasing new battery packs.
And? you still save a lot vs 2 new battery packs. Again if you rather buy 2 new battery packs, that is obviously your choice. Or don't buy any. Honestly this isn't relevant to the discussion we had. That you wouldn't be interested, doesn't mean other people/companies/organisations also aren't interested.
The cost for three salvaged battery backs exceeds the cost of two new battery packs if you were to pay 70% of the cost of new for salvaged battery packs with 70% of capacity remaining.
Yes, but you also would have a larger capacity than 2 new battery packs. If it costs 70% for 70% capacity remaining, there is no discount, it is just like you are buying a new one, which obviously wil never be done.
$672 in lost dividend income on 400 shares of common stock in a green utility company.
Don't know where this comes from, must be a special case for you, your region? And I don't understand what this has to do with a solar panel set up.
My cost basis of $7,864 was comparable to the fully installed cost of a three kilowatt (grid-attached) system in 2016.
2016 is a long time ago in terms of solar panels. Since the end of 2016 solar panel costs halved.
Demand for heat can not be ignored in most climates if the intent is to go off-grid.
I agree, though I personally never talked of going off-grid untill you now brought it up.
No battery backup is needed if not going off-grid.
That is not entirely true, though it depends. If there is a variable electricity price you could take advantage by charging the battery when costs are low and use it while costs are high, though this is not yet usefull in most countries/regions. Ofcourse a bit of battery storage ensures that in case of a power outage, you don't lose power. And if you have solar panels and only get a small amount of the energy back for free upon sending it on the grid, storing it in a battery might be better. Also in the future it is possible that utility companies will offer money to home battery owners to use their battery to store and use power from it (though limited to a certain % of the battery) essentially integrating your battery in a "virtual powerplant" configuration.
But I do believe most US states have feed in tarrifs (or whatever it was called) where you can get the same amount of energy from the grid free of charge as you put on it with your solar panels, and thus making battery storage useless for solar panels, since you're using the grid as a battery.
Reject the subsidies offered to the oil companies from which you buy fuel for your car.
Don't buy or use their products.
You do realise this would mean you can't fuel up your car anymore, since all large gasoline suppliers are in this subsidie chain.
Help manufacturers of BEVs attain economy of scale and price parity.
Buy a BEV now, not five or more years from now.
Now I can't follow, is this meant sarcastically?
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@Allen Loser
I thought that I was agreeing with you that a huge discount is needed to make purchase of salvaged battery packs economically viable.
Yes, but 62% savings is still great, especially considering the size.
Doing so costs more than buying new if the price paid is above 70%
Yes, and on 70% it would cost the same as new battery packs, and I agree you wouldn't do this. No one is going to buy it at 70% if the pack is only 70% left. I also don't know why you'd bring this up, since I never remotely gave such a high number for a used battery pack.
Meaning that the market value of a residential PV system purchased in 2016 has depreciated by half, or more, while the shares of stock purchased appreciated.
What stocks? Like this seems to be just something for you personal which I can't speak about. As for a depreciated by half, not necessarily, it still is installed and even if it is, so what? When you sell your house it isn't going to come down to this $3500 or so. And if you don't plan to sell, the same conditions apply that you accepted/estimated when you had it installed.
This is really irrelevant.
I would still be making money on my investment if I had not been forced to sell at a profit.
Again, this is about something I can't talk about. And is completely useless for this conversation. I don't know why you've shoehorned this in here.
Analysis of a NEW investment must be made using current data. Perhaps the price of a new PV array will drop in the future to a point at which it makes sense.
In the US (at least states with feed in tarrifs or whatever it is called), if you live in a region that will guarantee the same amount of free energy from the grid as you put in, it really makes a lot of sense to get solar panels, you will definitely save money with it.
I can still fuel my VW TDi on suitably processed soybean oil if all major oil companies go out of business.
And what will happen if everyone does that, suddenly there will be a shortage of it.
Don't continue to purchase and use gasoline or diesel fuel for my benefit.
Since I don't live in the US I don't need to care about subsidies to large US fossil fuel companies. Neither would my buying gasoline or not change anything. I just mentioned it since you think EV's incentives are bribes, so this should be the same for subsidies, which are much larger.
Economy of scale will not develop if you, and many others, do not put your money down to buy a BEV now.
Economy of scale is not a problem for EV's, this is growing every year at a rapid pace and most (new) EV's models are being manufactured at peak production. I don't see why you suddenly come with this.
You continue to support oil companies by your purchase of their products, pollute the air and promote climate change while you continue with the same behavior which you disparage.
And? In +-5 years this will change. It doesn't matter whether I switch now or within 5 years. Furthermore I need to be capable of buying an EV, that is at this moment not the case. You try to paint me as a hypocrite, yet I have always been clear that I was talking about 5-10 years from now, I don't know how often I need to say this. If you only buy an EV within 10 years, fine by me. If you just outright dismiss looking at EV's in a few years because of a stupid preconceived notion, that annoys me.
Like me, you are waiting for a product to be offered which meets your needs better than what you already use.
An EV would atm already better suit my needs, it just isn't where it needs to be for me to be able to afford it.
Pointing out your hypocrisy
I guess you failed in that, since I have always been clear on my stance and there is nothing hypocritical about it.
Where do you live that the grid is so unreliable that it is worth the cost of battery backup?
This is not the case with me personally, but there are area's, for example California, Australia, ... And again it depends a lot on solar panels, electricity prices, .... whether a battery storage is financially interesting, it isn't just interesting to either go off-grid or in case of black outs, it can be economically interesting in other cases too.
Do you permit oil companies to siphon gasoline from your tank during a shortage on a promise of replacing the gasoline later?
This is completely different and disingenious. But well, looking at the last few replies I am starting to expect this from you.
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@cuginidifrancia94
what is not clear to you is that Germany wanted to replace coal with gas, a plan that vanished at the time of the war.
They wanted to phase out coal considering it is one of the most pollutant ways of producing electricity and they knew renewables aren't there yet to pick up all the slack, which meant using gas too. They didn't plan on replacing coal with gas just because they wanted to.
Renewables cannot replace fossil fuels and the German government is well aware of this, which is why it was aiming for gas for the future.
Renewables can't fully replace fossil fuels yet, but eventually it will, the gas was a temporary stopgap option.
A work like Nord Stream 2 was certainly not designed to be used for a few decades
Actually it was meant to be used for 2-3 decades, this was taken into account before building it. The cost savings from not paying transit fees to eastern european countries would make it well worth it, even in that limited time. Also Nord Stream 2 was meant to deliver gas not just to Germany, but also several of its neighbours.
The truth is that nations that are serious about decarbonising will aim for an energy mix composed of nuclear + renewables.
Nah, not really. Nuclear and renewables don't really match greatly, at least not unless you want high cost nuclear. Renewables+grid storage is the goal, it isn't possible yet, but is expected to be commercial vs nuclear around 2035. Many countries have abandoned/limited nuclear not due to any public opinion, but the current high cost for new ones (considering the high safety requirement and high interest rates for loans for it).
Even if Germany now decided to add nuclear, it wouldn't be operational in high enough quantity untill around 2040-2045, by that time gridstorage should already be outcompeting it, coal phased out and gas getting phased out.
We could even arrive at the paradoxical situation that in 2050 Germany could be the only European nation with gas and coal-fired power plants still active.
No way, Germany went from 16% renewable to 44% renewables in around 10 years. The main limiting factor now is the grid storage, but that is being worked on bigtime and once that is dealt with, Germany will quickly amp up their renewables much higher. Their current goal is full coal phase out by 2038 and that will likely happen, since they'll now just replace Russian gas with other, while gridstorage gets on point by around 2035.
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It depends on how you look at it.
Conquest is a not good reason. By that sense you could say the ottoman empiror was also roman emperor, greek emperor (or whatever you'd call the successor of Alexander), leader of the mamluks, ... basically an endless series of titles of people who had ruled before in the regions under their control.
This also counts out the the HRE, the only real reason they should be considered is that Charlemagne held France, northern Italy (with Rome) and proclaimed himself roman emperor. To that extend, Napoleon has a just as strong claim by controlling France, the HRE, Italy and being crowned emperor by the pope.
Russia could claim the title, due to the marriage, similar religion, ... But the fact that they don't really own much territory that once was part of the roman empire, that they actually originate in the east and don't have a roman culture excludes them for me.
I can agree that the byzantines can be seen as a succesor and you could follow that lineage, however not completely. While they are a continuation of the roman empire, they are more greek/eastern than roman in my eyes and while in practice the roman capitol became constantinople, the true roman capital (in my eyes) remained Rome, especially with the split east/west. Thus any descendent of the last Western roman emperor would in my eyes be the true roman empire and the eastern roman emperor would just be that: the eastern emperor, not the true emperor. But this just depends on how you look at it.
Because of this the king of Spain logic already stumbles for me. Furthermore, while the Romans where very much about law, succession (both in the old roman empire as in the eastern empire) often had happened by the sword and fuck the law, therefor THE LAW just isn't a good enough argument.
In the end I'd say the best claim for Roman Emperor is someone who acts in the same way as roman emperors did and is of the roman culturegroup, so not eastern (like the ottoman, russians) and not greek (like the eastern empire), rather than looking at the bloodline or line of succession.
In the end the one most fitting to these criteria is Napoleon Bonaparte, just like the most known and greatest emperors he expanded his influence by conquest, divde and conquer, had great interest for law like the romans and he acted like I'd imagine a "modern" roman emperor might have acted like. However this doesn't automatically mean that his descendent have a claim to the roman empire imho, just that Napoleon had.
Today, there just is no truely possible claimant of the roman emperor seat.
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@terron7840
The problem with renewable are that they are first of all inefficient, unreliable and can not cover the ever growing energy demand of an entire nation?
They are not that bad on efficiency compared ot other methods. A wind turbine is around 50% efficient compared to a gas powered plant being around 55-60% efficient and coal even in the 30%. But I guess you meant low energy density, and you are right. But this just means spreading it out more. PV can just be placed on roof, Wind turbines along highways, industrial area's, fields, ...
Unreliable? Yes, that was there is huge development in storage. However eventually we will be able to get more than enough storage and battery storage would actually even better for the grid than regular power plants. EV's will also play a major part in this, since they'd offer massive amounts of cheap battery storage.
As for not being able to cover the growing demand. Sure it can, it is just a matter of scale.
which would cost Trillions od euros,
You do know renewables are cheaper than almost any other source to produce electricity, right?
Renewable energie also has to be stored in batteries, the materials for batteries can only be obtained from Barsil, Turkey, China and certain parts of Africa
Not true by far. While batteries are a favorite for obvious reasons (and they are important whether you use renewables or not), there are plenty of other storage being worked on for the grid. And battery composition can change. Honestly in the long run we'll probably even get many of these rare materials from space. And once you have enough batteries, you can build new ones from recycled old ones. So in the long term Europe won't even need to be reliant on imported resources for batteries.
Assuming the EU would run on 100% renewables, it would still have to export gas and nuclear energy to cover the energy demand.
Ehm what? Do you mean import? And why would Europe need to import electricity if it is 100% powered by renewables.
Renewables may be used to substitute certain sectors, but the 100% goal is stupidly impractical and unrealistic unless they can make renwables more efficient and cheaper.
Renewables are already way cheaper than the alternatives, only storage really is a problem and that could change rapidly in the next few years, with all this research into several storage options and batteries for EV's, ...
The notion to increase birth rate is that countrys should close the gender gap, offer extended maternity leave and more benefits, something that Sweden and Germany do a lot, yet their birth rates are still declining. It seems that this is not the fertility boosting model people think it would be.
Because of 2 issues. It doesn't go far enough and because in nations with higher living standard, gender equality , there is more "emphasize" on women working than having children, exactly because it doesn't go far enough. Women lose a chance for experience and climbing the ladder if they stay at home with the kids, so having less kids helps to not "slow them down" in their career. It is a consequence of gender equality and better living standards ironically.
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@terron7840
way higher than what renewables can cover in the long run.
I don't think you understand the scale of what renewables can cover.
The construction, the quantity and the mentainance isnt.
Actually yes it isn't. Full lifetime costs for onshore wind turbines are around 40-50 $/kWh, offshore 70-90 $/kWh, concentrated/large scale solar 40 $/kWh, hydro 20-25 $/kWh and private pv (regular house roofs) 120-170 $/kWh.
For comparison coal is 60 $/kWh, gas 70-90 $/kWh and nuclear is 120-180 $/kWh.
They could also extend maternity leave and give them more subsidies but that comes at a price for which taxpayers must pay for.
Yeah, that is essentially it. In the end this will happen if ever necessary.
But another are the marriage rates
People can have children even without marriage. In belgium for example around is 57% unmarried and 43% married (I didn't count divorced or widowed), 50% of births happened with unmarried couples. The difference between married or unmarried doesn't really seem that large. So I'd say that that is not the main issue. Just because people do not marry, doesn't mean they don't get children.
europe does not legalize surrogacy,
I think this should be allowed, though this probably more a national than european issue.
Another factor is birth age. In 1970 it was around 25-26 years, now it is around 30 years. Probably a cause of higher education and not wanting a child in the first few years thay start working.
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@terron7840
people in europe already pay a lot of taxes as they are, crushing the middle class and working class families.
You are overexageting. And people don't mind paying taxes if they get enough in return.
These kind of couples have fewer kids
I just gave data that shows that the difference isn't all that large. While yes, marriages are slinking, this doesn't mean people don't end up together. It is very common these days for people to be unmarried, but still live together as if they were married. Many see marriage these days as just an unnecessary symbolism.
older first time mothers arent willing to have more children, most usually have only 1 or 2, rarely 3 or more.
exactly my point.
But lets leave the birthrate topic for what it is, I am not going to continue that anymore.
Solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear plants,
But unlike nuclear plants, you can place PV on roofs and many more places. And this could even be more usefull if the houses/buildings have batterystorage, since then they can become selfsustaining.
wind farms take 700 times more land than natural gas wells
And? it is not like there are many gas wells in Europe. And wind turbines use aroun 5 to 10 times more surface than gas power plants. Seeing in how many places it can be put, not so bad. Especially if you consider this is only about onshore, offshore space wouldn't be used eitherway.
Wind plants also come with a myriad of issues like birds flying inside
Except compared to the total amount of bird deaths, it is really nothing. And even regular power plants kill birds, just in a less direct way.
a constant noise disturbing locals
Only in direct surrounding, which is why there are rules for how close it can be to houses.
changes in wind direction.
Oh, please, this doesn't matter at all.
Large scale electrticity storage is as of late ineffective and expensive,
For now, it is expensive. Though I wouldn't call batteries ineffective, they are considered much better back-ups for the grid. And in terms of price, batteries are now around similar price range as nuclear. Ofcourse you'd need to add part of the renewables cost to it. It is highly unlikely we'll not fix storage in the next 2 decades.
Overall efficiency is below 40 Percent
Batteries have an efficiency of over 90%. Some other storage options also go well above 40%.
no viable business can be made out of this.
Not yet. That is why there is a lot of research being done into storage.
but as long as sotrage is like this, no country will be able to cover the energy demand
But then renewables won't cover 100% for several decades, so there is still plenty of time to improve storage.
the end of the century.
By then a lot can have changed. Fusion can be made economically, we can have large solar fields in orbit around earth sending down the power with microwaves, renewables and storage can have improved enormously, ...
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@terron7840
Thats why income inequality is widening across europe, particulary central europe.
It is growing everywhere in the world. In Europe it is actually growing more slowly, so that is a positive.
In most europeans countries, most people pay lots of taxes, but as a result, many young people do not own property as there is little to no effordable housing.
I can't speak about other European countries, but that isn't for sure true everywhere, neither is this a cause of the systems necessarily, but also many other factors, like the economic problems of the past decade. Taxes aren't necessarily a cause of this, since taxes cover many costs that aren't covered elsewhere. For example if you compare many european countries with the US, overall people in EU countries have more to spend in the end (compared to cost of living in the nations).
Problem is, its for once expensive
Roof PV is as expensive as nuclear and the cost is decreasing, while that of nuclear has only increased in the past decades. Maybe new generation reactors will change this, but that is to be seen for now.
and many europeans do not own a property to beginn with, particulary young people and students.
And? how is this a problem? Students often live at home or in student facilities. This had nothing to do with my statement.
And then again, solar panels also absorb no energy at all when the sun doesent shine,
True, this is why storage needs to be improved, but with the decreasing cost of batteries and the arrival of EV's, by 2030-2040 there will be rather cheap home batteries available able to power a house for several hours to days. Even now in several countries combining solar PV with home battery storage can be a net benefit compared to taking from (and putting solar power on) the grid.
which is problematic in eastern europe and Germany, which arent particulary sunny places during autmn and winter.
Most months a solar roof "field" combined with storage could deliver enough power to power a home independently of the grid. Ofcourse it depends on how many pv panels you install, your usage, ... but averagely most regular homes are likely to be able to power themselves and in the end it might be cheaper than taking from the grid and if not now, than it will be in the future. Afterall you don't have to pay taxes. For example in Germany you pay around 16 cent/kWh in taxes of the 30-31 cent/kWh. But again all depends on the regional cost of the PV and battery storage, .... and time. If we'd speak about this five years from now, it can be much cheaper, afterall both PV and Batteries have become much cheaper since 5-10 years ago.
On the other hand, Batteries arent green or renewable, Lithium ion, the most important material for a batterie is hazardous and only exists in finite numbers.
And these days most of a battery can be recycled and there are constantly new process being developed to increase the efficiency of this recycling. Furthermore there is done a lot of research in both alternative batteries to replace lithium batteries and more large scale storage options that don't use rare resources. It is not a matter of if, but when are we reaching full scale cheap recycling of these batteries. There for now just wasn't really a market for large scale battery recycling, but it is expected that it will become one of the largest bussiness in the next few decades.
The only other possible substitute for Lithium ion can be only obtained from Brasil or Turkey. So batteries are not renewable.
They are very much renewable when they are being recycled.
There would be no need for solar fields when you have fusion plants
I was stating possible options, I wasn't claiming renewables would be needed when fusion plants are economical. Then again they are unlikely to just dissapear, they can be usefull for people to become energy selfsufficient and batteries are likely going to find their ways in home either way. Though if fusion is commercial, renewables will become an extra, not the main power source (if fusion price is low enough ofcourse).
However, we need nuclear power plants in the present. If you look at Germany, who dared to transission to renewables, energie prices have increased to 50% for germans
Citing costs to support current nuclear is a selfdefeating argument, a current new nuclear power plant would produce electricity at a cost 1,5-2 times higher than renewable energy. If Germany wanted to get 50% of their electrcity production from current new nuclear, it would cost around 700 billion euro, much more than the energy transition has cost Germany now while they reached 45% renewable in 2019. And this while Germany started the transition when renewables were still much more expensive. That being said shutting down already built nuclear powerplants too early is a stupid decision, most of the costs already would have been made with these plants.
renewables are cheap in itself, but they are more expensive for the end consumer, who will suffer the costs for this project.
No, they will not. The problem is that Germany was a frontrunner, they went full in when it was still expensive (it is partially due to them costs decreased in the past decade), the costs of being one of the first are now still born by the German consument. However if another nation now does what Germany did, they'd reach the same result at a much cheaper end cost.
It may profit rich people and the state, but it will put a great burden on poor, working and middle class people.
This wouldn't be problem of renewables but the capitalistic system and corruption, this can be found with all electricity sources.
Another problem with renewables is that they are inconsistent due to the limitations.
Production of renewables can be predicted by using weather forcast not too difficulty. But yes they are intermittent. That is why it must and will be fixed by storage and smart grids.
we arent so far from getting nuclear fusion energy
Unfortunately that is really true. ITER will at best be ready in 2025 and it is meant to just prove the ability to produce more than it needs and to be a stepping stone to the next plant, it isn't even going to incorporate electricity production. After that another testplant is planned that is expected to still be far away from being commercial. I fear that at best we won't see the first true commercial and competitive fusion reactor by 2050-2060 if nothing pushes this further back (very much possible). And the goal should be to be nearly 100% renewable by 2050, so fusion will come to late to fix the discussion. At best it will just cause another transition from renewables/fission to fusion, like is happening now from fossil to renewables.
In the end it is now waiting to see what ITER will teach us. For all we know ITER will prove to be an inconsequential small step that shows problems we haven't even considered yet. Though I really hope to see commercial fusion soon and I hope the findings of ITER will really spur things into a higher gear.
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@leighharveycabatic8791
1. To get to melitopol you also will have to punch through strong defences, in fact that likely is the case over nearly the entire front now. But often the defense lines don't seem too deep. If that is the case, once you punch through you could quickly take a lot of ground if you can move fast enough (which is where western mobile equipment (like the bradleys, tanks, ...) comes in.
2. Obviously breaking through established defenses isn't easy, but you'll need to get through it eventually else we're just in a stalemate. Not sure what you are pointing at regarding Tokmak.
3. The partisan movement can be a help and a reason to focus on melitopol, however the presence of these civilians can also be a hindrance, with Russian troops potentially using them as human shields. The distance between the existing frontlines and Melitopol and Mariupol is more or less the same, though Melitopol has more roads going to it (but also heavily defended and potentially dangerous for advancing).
But yes, both have advantages and disadvantages. If that wasn't the case, the best target would have been clear to everyone know.
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@vincestithit381
Now you are just talking shit, people don't keep themselves poor because of government programs, but rather because they can't get out of poverty (for example by not finding a decent paying jobs). UBI isn't going to do uch more than these government programs for people in poverty, they'll still need other income or remain living in poverty. At this moment US poverty line is just below 12k (although with VAT price increase, this most likely will go up a bit). The only difference is that they get this UBI also after finding a job, however it certainly doesn't help finding a job, there are just no strings attached. If you really want to incentivize people in poverty to get a job, you'd do better by lowering (or just eliminating) income tax for every income under a certain amount (eg. 15k) and strengthening the programs so that everyone who remains under the poverty line with a job, still keeps these programs.
UBI is also just a program, just one with no strings attached. In the end the UBI as is, is a middle class program, not so much for the poorest in society.
And Gwolf is completely right, a left UBI mixed with welfare programs would be great and definitely much better than Yang's current UBI proposal.
It is really simple, at this moment if you are in the middle class, Yang might be as good as (or even better than) Bernie for you, however if you are in the lower working classes, Bernie is infinitely better.
So at this moment choosing Bernie over Yang is overall better. The even better thing would be to push Bernie to look into a leftist UBI which might scale more with income or something and harmonisation with existing welfare programs for those who need it.
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@csking6377 I disagree that time isn't the problem (ofcourse it is not the only reason). Rather the role of women in society is the reason. In the past womens main role was to give birth and take care of the children while the husband financially cared for the family.
However with women having become more active in the workforce, this changed, especially if we are talking about careers and not just menial labour. Now every child a woman has sets her back in her career, even with the current policies this is still the case. Less productive during pregnancy, having to take pregnancy leave, giving actual birth and recovering and taking care of the child after. Because even if the husband does a lot to take care of a child after birth, the mother still needs to breastfeed every several hours for example.
In the past having many children was not just because of family values, but rather necessity, they were an insurance for late in life when you grow old and need more support, and many children died in infancy back then and women in childbirth, this is why despite women being much pregnant much more often the population growth still was rather limited. The 20th century is the turning point, which can also be seen in the exponential population growth. People still had this old mindset of getting many children, but due to lower infant mortality and maternal deaths you got this population boom.
If people work less hours in a week, this could reduce the stress and exhaustion of work, keep pregnant women fully productive for longer and thus having a smaller impact on the career. Also after the birth, women could for example make up lost time easier, by for example working more hours than normal (if they want), something that now would be very difficult to do if they already work 40 hours a week. There could be more flexibility also, like having a coworker put in more hours during the pregnancy, and making this up later or so.
For example, I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters, 3 of my aunts all have 4 children, so we certainly a big family (though their generation 2-4
children was normal, it is the current/my generation that now sees a drop in amount of children. My cousins wife who has 2 young children now just last week said she in the past wanted 4 kids, but is now likely going to stop with the 2). My mother stopped working and remained home to take care of us for 23-25 years, and even then she was busy all the time. My aunts the same, they stopped working for years (though not as long as my mother) just to take care of the children. My mother works again now, but it wasn't easy to get started again.
Another important thing is financial. These days even families of both parents working full time might have difficulty making ends meet, really not enticing family growth. Either a parent will need to work even more, reducing time for the family, or really having to cut on expenses, not something parents would want to do either (both for their and their childrens sake). With less work hours a week, opting for a second job (temporarily) when necessary is more possible or even better turning a hobby/interests into an extra income also could be possible.
It certainly isn't just family values, there are plenty of people with the same family values as their parents, but who still get less children. And btw, most of people I know still get married after being together for a few years, and honestly marriage these days isn't that much difference from just living together a long time, both still will be difficult and hurtfull if it ends.
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@DK-vx5co
I don't really see panels as a 'clunky' solution, after all panels are used nearly everywhere (even in new builds) currently. The only reasons you might get a solar roof instead of panels are:
1) esthetics, which most people will not really care that much about, at least none that I know.
2) roof geometry doesn't allow for many panels.
3) this is the most important point: cost. If a solar roof is cheaper than putting up panels, ofcourse people might go for it. But if you don't need a new roof roof, there is no need. And if a regular roof + solar panels is more cost-effective, people are unlikely to go for the solar roof option.
The smartphone example doesn't really make sense. That is similar to saying "well, you'd pick a new roof instead of on old one, because why wouldn't you?" If my old smartphone/roof is still fine, why would I need a new one? You'd not compare an old roof + solar panels with a new solar roof (otherwise the former is most likely less costly), rather a new roof + solar panels.
Also I don't know where you live, but where I live roofs tend to not be replaced before solar panels reach their end of life, 45-70 years is likely a good estimate for when roofs are replaced here, with a solar roof it would be around 30-35 years.
So imo if the costs aren't in favor of a solar roof and my roofs geometry allows panels, I'd go with the 'clunky' panels.
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@DK-vx5co I didn't say that. Panels are better, they have better efficiency, easier to replace, ... But in essence this will just play into the price equation: You'll need more solar roof tiles than panels (efficiency), which increases solar roof costs. Easier to replace means you might be able to keep your roof for 60 years and just replace panels after 30 years vs changing out the entire roof with a solar roof after 30 years (ofcourse people need to look into this, since the roof installers might not point this 30 vs 60 years out, especially not the solar roof installers).
So panels are better in anything but maybe aesthetics and possibly price if you need to redo your roof anyway + need new PV, though this will depend on the kind of roof and the efficiency of the solar tiles.
Personally if the price isn't in favor of the solar roof, I don't see any real advantage to taking it, unless again aesthetics (which I nd probably most people don't care that much about) or roof geometry preventing panels (which on a new build is unlikely). The idea that solar roof is better is imo a hype, its only real benefit to me is possibly price and that highly depends on many factors.
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The point would be that 'regular' cars can drive in it, ie. people get there car into the tunnel to avoid above ground traffic, they still need to have the rear view mirrors for regular driving. Also dedicated transport vehicles for these tunnels are unlikely to have rear view mirrors.
As for a disabled cars with injured passengers, that only seems possible in case of an accident, we'll still have to see how often this happens and if necessary they'll create specially designed emergency vehicles and trained personnel, though again, the question is how likely of an occurance this would be. If you get injured passengers due to something not caused by the car, the car could just drive them to the nearest exit point (an emergency button might be nice) and maybe even raise an alarm beforehand. As for a disabled car in the tunnel without injured passengers, it probably would depend on how it is disabled, in most cases it would just be towed to the nearest exit most likely, though I don't really see many reasons as to why a car would have this happened.
In all cases I guess there likely will be an emergency protocol clearing the tunnel and if on that location you have multiple tunnels (different routes or for extra capacity), cars would likely get redirected untill the tunnel is clear.
Ofcourse there isn't just a great solution for these kind of problems, but that isn't really different from accidents above ground, which can cause massive traffic jams etc. and with the accident site not always easily reachable due to this traffic.
I do think any car entering the tunnel most likely would need to be certified (ie definitey yearly check up etc), it helps that EV's have less things than can break and cause a car to crash/come to a standstill on its own. And automated systems tend to be safer, especially when they all are automated and thus no real unexpected behaviours happens.
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@JayVal90
I just plain don’t believe that they aren’t hiding costs with those renewable numbers
And I can say the same about nuclear. Do you have any proof that they hide costs? Or is it just your oh so reliable gut feeling?
AND assuming that grid storage via battery becomes a thing
Actually grid storage isn't likely going to use batteries, at least not for anything but shortterm (quick responses). Grid storage is most likely going to be dominated by physical system using temperature differences. Though there are also batteries that might be usefull as gridstorage too. So it likely will be a mix. But definitely not Li-ion batteries.
investing the same effort and regulatory favoritism towards nuclear with take us WAY further than renewables in terms of cost reduction and greening the energy supply.
That is far from certain. There is already being don't a lot of research and investment in improving nuclear, possibly as much as the most likely gridstorage possibilities currently, if not more. Btw, for large scale nuclear you'll also need some gridstorage. For example France now at 70-80% is using hydrostorage and essentially its neighbourse as 'batteries' during low demand times. If they didn't, their nuclear plants wouldn't operate as much at max capacity and thus produce more expensive power. Nuclear will need grid storage at aroung 75-80% or higher of the grid mix, for renewables it is a bit earlier at around 50-60% of the grid (depends on the kind of renewable though, hydro can go 100% without grid storage).
Towards your point about decommissioning, I’ll point out again that if you keep nuclear power plants online and/or retrofit them, you save a TON on both construction and decommissioning costs.
I think you underestimate the cost of upgrading old nuclear plants. Here operators said they'd need subsidies to extend the nuclear powerplants past their set decommisioning date by 10 years.
I am definitely in favor of using nuclear power if it makes economic sense, however often (and currently especially for new plants) it doesn't really.
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I am still sceptical. Hell, this would be the perfect thing for the US. And the way the US reacts doesn't say much, it is actually the best way to handle it.
If the US uses this to increase tensions, they rally Iran even more against time, however by talking about an accident, they still blame Iran which might cause internal turmoil in Iran (government, military and population), all while they will be seen by everyone as "de-escalating" and being humane, ...
I don't know what happened, but untill there is tangible proof that doesn't come directly or indirectly from US intelligence, I'll keep an open mind.
What I also find weird is that a video of the take down only appeared +-36 hours after the crash and that you can't see blinking lights from the plane and that it first shows a huge flash, apparently something on fire for a few seconds and then nothing but darkness, while the plane crashed down as a fireball. Hell, why wouldn't they keep filming or post the entire clip?
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Since there is no way around the discussion that a carbon-tax will further burden those who are already financially burdened
This entirely depends on what how it is taxed. If you tax the production, producers will move to cheaper alternatives, like renewables. Only production that has a monopoly and can increase costumer price without the possibility of people moving to other producers would be able to actually increase the end cost, that or just every producer decides to just increase prices, but this leaves a gap for new producers to fill (essentially what Tesla did).
As the lower-income households are those with lower carbon emissions
This is actually not entirely true, at least not in terms of per dollar. Often times lower income household have proportionally higher emissions because they can't afford the lower emission alternatives like solar panels, ev's, cleaner cars, investment in heat pumps instead of natural gas, ...
It remains better to just tax the producers, however use the income from these taxes to compensate the poorest/lower incomes that might get hit by price increases through social systems/benefits. For example if you tax gasoline more, then use that income to offer better access to public transport for lower incomes and/or by giving them a gasoline tax reduction, offer more benefits for lower end EV's, ...
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@reaemishi2278
Your legal power is different from your military power. The fact is that legally speaking EU regs are not something member states can ignore.
I never said anything about military power. The EU itself can't really enforce anything, at best they can take a memberstate to court. For almost everything else (like sanctions) they need consent from the council (ie. national leaders). This is exactly the problem now with Poland and Hungary. Many people in the EU find that they are violating EU laws and values, but the EU can't do anything because Poland veto's any sanction against Hungary and vice versa.
The reason England leavng the EU was not punished or opposed with arms is because there is no reason to belive Europe would prevail.
Quite ignorant statement. They specifically created an article to allow any member to leave the EU in a peacefull manner. Even a small country like Luxembourg can, since it is a legally allowed proceeding. Also I think you are really underestimating unified EU arms. The EU most definitely could take on the UK, but what would it win with a war? Only opposition since no one in the EU would support it.
The EU was founded on a principle of cooperation. If a nation wishes to stop this, so be it, it is there choice. There is no reason to not allow a memberstate to leave. No one wants something akin the US civil war.
Historically speaking no European states have much success against Britain
Yes, because the UK is an island and had a powerfull fleet and almost always was facing just one major enemy. This isn't the case now. An EU fleet would be more powerfull than the UK's, not to mention the airforce. In a conflict between the EU and the UK, the UK would lose, but in the end no one is benefited by a war (at least none of the participants).
not to mention the very real possbility that the US would likely align against them
It is really difficult to say what the US would do. If it opposes the EU, the EU would just point to their own civil war and laws not allowing secession. And the US definitely hasn't been on UK's side now. In the end the US most likely would either stay out or choose the stronger ally (the EU). Again, a military conflicted is unwanted, it goes against the core principles of the EU, would never get supported by EU citizens and the EU would gain nothing but keep a very reluctant nation in the EU that is just as much (or more) a headache as an advantage.
It is called nulification.
This is only a theory, namely that a state can ignore federal law IF it believes the law contradicts the constitution. Obviously if the federal government wants to create a law that contradicts the constitution, they'd first try to change the constitution. Moreover the theory of nullification has for now always been rejected by courts at the state and federal level, citing the supremacy clause in the constitution which states that federal law always takes precedence as long as the law follows the constitution (obviously). If someone/a state believes a law is not following the constitution, they can instead go to the courts to fight this law for being unconstitutional.
So no, states can't just ignore federal law if the want, the opposite has always been upheld by the courts.
Without the power to propose or repeal legislation the EU council is basically a rubber stamping organization.
No, it is not since it can request the commission to propose a new law, and the commission will never refuse this, since the true power in the EU still lies with the memberstates, ie the council. Moreover no law gets passed without their permission and they can also adapt proposals for a new law (once proposed the commission doesn't amend a proposal, the EU parliament and council do. If you really think the council is just a rubber stamping organisation, this just again proves you know nothing about the EU.
The unelected commission is the only ones who can actually do anything.
The 'unelected' commission is appointed by the council, which consist of the elected heads of the national governments, and approved or rejected by the EU parliament. Furthermore it can be disbanded by the EU parliament. The commission is comparable to the US cabinet, with the council being the president AND senate.
it is specifically designed to keep the member states from opposng the interests of the Union.
The interests of the union are set by the members, they still hold basically all the power in the EU, nothing happens if the council doesn't agree with it. This exactly is one of the weakness' of the EU, they can't quickly respond to problems/incidents, since the commission always needs to peddle back to the national leaders.
This is a meaningless power. Say member states want to oppose the agenda of the unelected council. Say they want to put a tariff on Russian oil, but the council doesn't want there to be. What can they do? Literally nothing.
This is literally the opposite of reality and you once again show you don't know anything about the innerworkings of the EU. It is the council that will decide whether or not sanctions will be imposed. The commission can't ignore the will of the council in this. If the commission ignores the council, the council could just withdraw all support for the EU/commission, they'd end up with nothing but an empty shell.
You really don't understand that all power the EU has comes from the memberstates and their leaders (the council), do you? The EU is essentially where the US was around the 1800-1820s a confederal model were the states still hold practically all the power.
or if it is a total impasse they can just wait for the next election. They will remain, but there will be a new elected body.
Again you're showing that you know nothing. After every EU election a new commission is installed, which is appointed by the council and (dis)approved by the newly elected parliament.
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@reaemishi2278 @Rea Emishi @Rea Emishi The question is, can they be violated legally.
You can never legally violate a law/rile, unless another law/rule makes it legal, which means it is legal. You aren't making much sense with what you are trying to point out.
The idea that smaller states would be allowed to leave is an assumption.
An assumption based on the fact that it is written into fundamental rules of the EU. And no memberstate is going to be so stupid as to go against this. Honestly, it is rather stupid to call this just an assumption. It is like saying that it is assumed the US (supreme court) will follow its own constitution, ofcourse it will. If it doesn't, you'll get a major cry out and protests, possibly even causing a civil war.
For example, if German SAM systems were being supplied to it's allies divisions in production it would be necessary to accommodate for both complex things like integration into their local systems and simple production matters, like the controls all being labeled in German.
In this case we obviously were talking about German units operating German SAM systems, but coordinating with a higher unified command. So you're example doesn't make any sense.
What currently exists is an astonishingly heterogeneous mixture of colonial style armies
Which would take on a "colonial" style army. French military forces are overall ranked higher than the UK's, and this is just one of 27 nations. In terms of naval strength the UK is just stronger/equal to France. Add the italian fleet to that of France (and naval cooperation isn't uncommon, either now or throughout history), and you get a stronger navy, again not even counting 25 countries.
The fact that the "EU forces" consists of many several diffferent armies might be a problem against a major military power like Russia, China or the US, but not against the UK, which is around equal in strength to individual EU members, let alone the entire bloc, even with an efficiency reduction due to having seperate armies.
and you begin to understand the problem just at the factory level.
Again I don't know which point you think you are making here. In a current conflict with the UK you won't suddenly have all armies reforming into a european army, you'll have the armies operating and supplying themself, but cooperating together were needed. This might not be great in a long war of attrition, but this wouldn't be the case against the UK. Furthermore if you are in a long war of attrition, there would be enough time to actually start the development of more uniform equipment.
Perhaps you should read up on the complications of integrating even small numbers of foreign units (British/French/Arab) during desert storm.
You are talking about operations that take place quite far from their home regions, this time it would literally be on their own ground/doorstep, that makes a major difference.
The EU fleet having the possibility of being more powerful is not meaningful. They currently are not.
Stupid response, they are more powerfull, all they'd need to do is to move even just the Italian fleet to the Atlantic to link up with the French fleet and the UK is already in trouble, and the other navies wouldn't sit by idle either.
I do not think any navies aside from the US and UK have had major fleet operations within the lifetime of anyone serving today
Which major fleet operations are you refering to in regards to the UK? And do you really think other navies like the French just sit by doing nothing?
The abilities of raw recruits against consummate veterans in naval affairs is a result that has not changed. I see no reason why that would have changed.
Raw recruits? This would mean these other navies all just hired their crews now, which ridiculous. Ofcourse the other navies also have experienced personnel and veterans. That you think this isn't the case is just you underestimating everyone but your favorites.
The husbandry between the people aside
This is not a reason for the US to go to war with most of its other allies/strongest ally.
it is actually standard that the US chooses the weaker side and ensures their victory.
Yeah, no. The US choses the side that best suits there interests. Ofcourse this is usually the weaker side, because if it is the stronger, they have no reason to interfere anyway.
That is why the US sided with Iraq, not the more powerful Iran.
You do realize the US sided with Iraq because Iran had just undergone the islamic revolution, turning it from a pro-western monarchy into an anti-western islamic theocracy. Before this revolution Iran was greatly supported by the US.
Isreal over the Arab League
The US has always stood by Israel, even now, while it is clear that Israel is by far the strongest in the current conflict, the US still supports it, while most of the rest of the world are more sympathetic to the Palestine people and Gaza. This already shows you they don't always choose the weaker one. Also the Arab league was quite anti-western and more sympathetic to the USSR than the US, this is why the US supported Israel back then.
Well...duh...That doesn't even contradict my point.
Then wtf is the point? It is clear that no US state can refuse to adopt a law unless it is against the constitution and they'll have to fight it/explain their decision in the courts. If the EU creates a law that is against the treaties of Rome, Maastricht and Lisbon, memberstate also can refuse to to adopt it and fight it in court. These treaties essentially function as the EU's constitution.
as per the 10th amendment
The supreme court already has classified the 10th amendment as a truism, meaning what is says is so self-evident that it is essentially a worthless amendment. You do realise the EU functions on the same principle? The EU only has the powers that is granted to them.
A request can be denied and obviously does.
If the commission refuses a request, it needs to explain why in the EU parliament, if it doesn't have a good reason, this can lead to the parliament firing the commission and starting the process to put a new one in place. So the commission can't abuse this power, or they'll just be sacked.
Otherwise there would be no factions at all.
There are always factions. Are the conservatives and democrats in the US in the same group/faction? Are all the parties in the UK? What the hell are you trying to say here?
There would have been no need for a nation to leave if everyone's requests where being fulfilled.
Obviously not all request are fullfilled, they need to make sense. Furthermore the commission initiates, but the parliament and council are which actually have to adapt/give form to these new proposed laws and need to pass them. The commission has no say in whether or not a law can pass or not.
The frugal 4 vs the major states obviously have opposing agendas
And? Are claiming all US states have a same agenda? All UK regions?
That means one of their agendas is being pushed and the other is not.
Which is why these factions talke and negotiate with eachother.
* Since some states have financial control over others and can impose austerity upon them (Germany is big on this one) there is an obvious hegemony.*
No memberstate has financial control over others or can force austerity upon them. What happened in Greece isn't that simple. Greece essentially had a choice, leave the eurozone and declare bankruptcy, or accept aid from other members of the eurozone in the forms of cheap loans, which ofcourse had some demands attached, like austerity measures. This was essentially a negotiation between memberstates, not the EU and a memberstate, nor one member imposing its will on another.
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@reaemishi2278 If you think Germany and Estonia get equitable treatment by the council
Yes and no. Yes in that for certain decisions Estonia has a veto power just as powerfull. No, since for one in certian decisions population play a role, ie. all in favor needs to also represent xx% of the EU's population for the decision to pass. And ofcourse Germany has a lot more influence it can use/lever than Estonia, but this latest is a non-EU related power. Even without the EU Germany would have more influence than Estonia. This isn't any different to for example US influence vs UK influence on the worldstage.
Yes appointed, that is what unelected means.
Nope, this means indirectly elected. Just like many prime ministers are not directly elected into that position, but rather appointed/elected by the largest faction/coalition in parliament. This isn't any different from US cabinet members, they are also not directly elected, rather appointed by the elected president (EU elected national leaders) and approved by the senate (EU parliament).
The cabinet are special advisers.
This shows you don't even know what the US cabinet is. US cabinet members are the ministers of the US. The secretary of state if the foreign minister, the secretary of defence is the defence minister, ... This is exactly like the commission, which act as the EU's ministers.
They don't have legislative authority
No, they don't, they are the executive branch. However they'll lobby and work together with members of their party/presidents party to get what they need introduced in either the senate or house. Honestly the commission having the power to initiate is a leftover from when the EU parliament essentially had no real power. In future political reforms this almost certainly will be changed to also allow the parliament to start the initiation process.
And while US cabinet members can't initiate drafts for new laws, there are plenty of countries where ministers can.
and yeah, combining the Legislative and Executive powers (president and senate)
This is currently only the case because memberstates still want to keep control over the EU. I don't know it you realize it, but the EU isn't a country or a state yet, it is in essence between that and an international organisation, fairly new ground and still continuously progressing and improving. If it becomes a state/country, it is essentially certain that the commission will be replaced by an actual government with either a directly elected president or an indirectly elected prime minister and the council will be replaced by a senate like body.
It is funny though, first you criticize the EU for not giving the members enough power, now you criticized it because they have too much power, make up you mind.
“The 'unelected' commission is appointed by the council, which consist of the elected heads of the national governments, and approved or rejected by the EU parliament. Furthermore it can be disbanded by the EU parliament. The commission is comparable to the US cabinet, with the council being the president AND senate.”
no European republic has survived a single century.
What? I guess all those republics in Europe's history didn't exist then. Neither does the French republic apparently.
If only there was a way to divide vital state functions to a single body and not tie it to legislative bureaucracy, which always and everywhere must form hegemonic self interest to bypass deadlock. Like maybe you could take all of those bodies and split their powers up. Put vital functions in an executive independent of a legislature.
You are talking about a state/country government for the EU. I am al in favor for that, one problem: the EU isn't a country yet, it still is an international organisation.
Not like we figured that out nearly 3000 years ago.
You do realize most often the executive and legislature were one throughout history, right?
Can they make independent motions?
What do you mean? Do you mean they can ask the commission to initiate a proposal? Yes, they can. And if the commission just swats it away unjustly, they'll have to turn to the parliament. Can a senator doe anything if his proposed initiative is rejected by the senate?
Call a referendum?
Referendums are national matters, if there is anything like a referendum on EU level, that is only happening after the national leaders agreed to it.
This is just more wrong stuff because you did not read the question.
You said: "They (the commission) will remain, but there will be a new elected body."
I responded: "After every EU election a new commission is installed, which is appointed by the council and (dis)approved by the newly elected parliament.", which means, your entire idea of how the commission can blackmail, wrangle the council is wrong.
Really, if there aren't less stupid remarks next time, I am not going to waste my time responding.
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@reaemishi2278 @Rea Emishi
That means no. You cannot be 30% equal. It is an absolute, you are equal or unequal. That is the end of the matter.
That means it is situational, in a vote where you can use a veto, every memberstate has an equal power, because every single one of them can stop the decision for passing. Apparently you aren't smart enough to understand that not everything is black and white all the time.
This is not a thing. One is either elected or not elected.
Ehm, yeah it is. Someone that is elected by another person/group that was elected is indirectly elected. People elect others to represent them, so when they elect someone for a position it is as if the original group did so. By your definition the president of the US currently isn't elected, since people vote for electors, who in turn vote for the presidential candidate.
No, I think my point still stands, the foreign minister does not have ultimate authority in matters of diplomacy.
Neither does any commissioner, why the fuck do you think the EU takes so long on important diplomatic affairs, because the commission practically always need to circle back to the council/parliament.
An no ministers collective or individually have legislative powers.
Tell that to the countries were ministers actually can initiate law proposals. Obviously they can't vote on it, but neither can the commission.
"No, they don't, they are the executive branch. However they'll lobby and work together with members of their party/presidents party to get what they need introduced in either the senate or house."
any member state of the United States can introduce any legislation.
Can you give me a source? And don't come with the senate, that is not states introducing federal legislation.
The only thing that keeps a single body holding executive and legislative authority from becoming a despotism is military weakness.
It will never get military power without turning into an actual country like the US, in which case political reform is necessary anyway, even if only to smooth out decision speed.
Yes, appointed. You did not vote for them. That is what unelected means.
The US president is appointed by electors, does this mean he isn't elected.
The current French Republic is the 5th government of France to go by that name
Doesn't matter, it has been a republic for much longer, a name change and some reforms don't change this. Just because the US doesn't say it is in its x'ed republic doesn't mean it never changed during that time.
It does not matter what you call it. The body which has ultimate legislative authority over an area
Yes, it does, since the EU is ever evolving, it started at a point when it was an international organisation, were you don't have systems like in a nation, but you still have rules. There are several international organisations currently that has rules that its members follow, that too is legislation, just in the way an international organisation does. And it doesn't matter, in the end, any legislative effort can be controlled by the elected EU parliament. They keep an eye on the commission, they can amend laws and request new legislation be proposed and if the commission refuses, it can be sacked by the parliament. There are plenty of checks and balances within the EU frame to make sure no part of the institution can become dictatorial. Just because it doesn't fit with your limited idea of how it should be, doesn't mean it is wrong, not working, a risk.
Yes, because most nations are monarchies. However we are discussing republics.
The same was true for most republics in the past, the executive almost always had legislative powers too and not too limited either.
great republic of Rome corrected it
You do realize the consuls still were members of the senate and could initiate legislation, right? I couldn't find whether they were allowed to vote or not (for example in case of a tie). Not to mention the fact that they also had power over the judiciary branch. They essentially participated in all 3 branches of government.
That is not what I asked. I did not ask if they could ask another body to make a proposal. I asked if they themselves could so it.
No, can states initiate a federal bill, ie. the governor or state legislature?
That was a long no.
True, but referendums were never a European power, exactly because it isn't a nation yet. Can the UN (security council) hold a referendum?
The proposal for appointments is not likely to change because nothing about the election changes the agenda of the states doing the appointing.
Which essentially is a way of saying that the commission is a rubber stamping organisation for the members/council and parliament, so why all the earlier fuss about it being able to do what it wants is useless? Also it isn't true, like said earlier, the parliament needs to approve the commission, meaning a change in its composition after an election can have an important impact for the commission composition. For example if the former parliaments was controlled by the right and had a mostly right wing commission, the election of a left wing parliaments isn't going to just accept a rightwing focused commission. So just like the elected parliaments, the commission is prone to change depending on the voters choice.
Calls people stupid, thinks France is still on its first republic. Ok then.
I never said France was still on its first republic, I know damn well it is currently called the 5th republic, however it is a republic since 1870. Reforming it from one republic to another (which mostly is just a regular reform where most countries wouldn't 'change name'), is not the ending of a republic. And I don't count the years under German/vichy occupation as meaningfull, since it essentially was just a puppet government during an occupation.
The oldest still existing republic is Switzerland. And it isn't suprising that Europe has not many long lasting current republics, it has a history of monarchs for thousands of years. It is much easier to change to a republic if you are far away from any royal ruler, like in the overseas colonies, and essentially have no real history spanning more than 100-300 years. Republics closeby were always quickly attacked and squashed by nearby monarchies out of fear of it spreading (which is exactly what happened during the French revolution). Considering this, there actually have been quite some more republics in Europe than you'd expect (at least post classical times). And all republics are based on the same principles/functions/ideas of these earlier european republics (like the dutch republic being a great inspiration for the founding fathers of the US).
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@reaemishi2278 The only difference between you and me is that you don't know your system is undemocratic or why, and I know mine intentionally curtails democracy and why.
I know the system isn't perfect, but it still is democratic, more than enough checks and balances by elected officials to make it democratic. Anyone that calls the EU undemocratic doesn't understand democracy.
The EU takes a long time to do anything because it lacks the ability to enforce its laws within it's own boarders, not because particular member states have an outsized control in the agenda of the governing body.
yeah, no.
We were only talking about the members of one country. The United States.
No, we weren't, at least I wasn't, the US was just one example. If you were only talking about the US, it wasn't clear at all.
The Senate are the representatives of the state.
Theoretically, in practice they are just like the house elected by the people and they don't have to do what the state governor, legislature demands. They are the representative of the citizens, not the states, just in a way that every states population has equal representation. Which I find stupid, since less than 20% of the population can theoretically block what the rest of the population wants. The senate can ensure rule of the minority.
If senators were appointed by the state and had to follow what the state said, this is something different.
But currently the same applies to state and US senators as there is between memberstates and the commission. The first can ask the second to do something, but the second isn't legally required to listen.
then either you wish me to show every member of a state government collectively moving to Washington to introduce legislation
So you're saying state legislators can introduce federal bills? That is whay I am asking a source for.
Either a state must be represented by a representative or by the whole body. It cannot be both or neither.
Ofcourse it can be neither, ie. no representation of the state. In fact this is what is the case for the US. The states have no legal representation on the federal level, the people have.
the 3rd republic was destroyed militarily by the Nazis, and certainly that must count.
And it was revived immediately after in exactly the same way, this isn't a new republic, just the reinstatement of the same.
They could only request legislation of the Senate, debate for it.
No, they could initialize legislation, maybe not vote on it, I don't know, but they definitely could initialize it themselves.
The right to draft and pass legislation was held solely by the Senate.
Nope, consuls were allowed to draft legislation, just possibly not pass it.
Even during the Empire this was often true.
Yeah, no. Maybe theoretical, in practice the emperor couldn't just initiate legislation, but could also pass it himself. For most of the empire the senate was symbolic, the main reason it still had some power/influence was because it was made up of powerfull land owners, ie. the aristocracy.
One of the ways the Roman Emperor Commodus son of Marcus Aurelius was undone.
You use commodus, the person that literally had Rome temporarily renamed during his reign, as well as the months of the year to show that the emperor had no legislative powers?
Commodus knew the troops loved his father, so to attempt to earn their loyalty he requested that the Senate pass land acts to give the soldiers farms. The senate, resentful of Commodus and his use of the treasury did what he asked, writing and passing the legislation. However they wrote and passed it in their own name, causing the soldiers to abandon their loyalty to Commodus who it seemed had neglected their pay in favor of the Senate who corrected the error.
Never heard, nor can find anything about that. Generally Commodus had the loyalty of the armies and the people, however he was often in conflict with the senate, among other reasons because he taxed them higher to pay for his lavish lifestyle. In the end he was killed by those close to him, not because they were dissatisfied with his rule/loved the senate, but to grab more power themselves.
If you have a source for you story, I would be really interested to read it.
Yes, that is why there is a house populated entirely by state representatives.
So in other words no, since they still need to go by another federal body that can just ignore them.
The House represents the population, the Senate represents the will of the state governments.
Theoretically, in practice this isn't the case anymore since the senators are not appointed by the governor, nor have any legal requirement to do as their governor or state legislature request.
That is why the Senate is often slower, more litigious, and less partisan.
Less partisan? I guess we aren't looking at the same senate, it is at least as partisan as the house.
No military organizations hold referendums.
The UN isn't a military organisation.
This is also not possible. During the Napoleonic era Napoleon himself saw to it the the Helvetic Republic met its end in 1803,
The helvetic republic was created by the French after a french invasion and occupation 6 years earlier. Like I said earlier, I don't recognise a puppet government formed by occupiers. There was much resentment towards the helvetic republic by the swiss and the moment the french were forced back, they continued their normal republic.
Especially since one is a government imposed upon the population by a foreign emperor.
This exactly, most swiss didn't recognise this government, so it wasn't a swiss government, it is more French government. A temporary interruption doesn't end something if it is afterwards immediately reinstated.
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@lizerat
For now Ukraine has already accpeted in the peace talks to not join nato in the future
Well, NATO membership for Ukraine was still quite far out anyway. And if Ukraine ever joins the EU, NATO membership is pretty much irrelevant considering the EU also has a defence clause and when that gets activated, other EU members might try to call in NATO (and especially the US would likely be willing to join in that case). Now if Ukraine is forbidden from joining the EU, that is different, but I don't think Ukraine will just accept that demand as easily.
demilitarise the country
Ukraine already stated they'd be willing to accept this if there are ironclad guarantees from western nations/NATO that it would protect it in case of an attack on Ukraine. This wouldn't really be a bad situation for Ukraine to be honest. They wouldn't need to put money into their military and in case of new Russian aggression, it would be a much bigger war than the current one, one Russia is unlikely to win. But without those guarantees, Ukraine will never give in to this demand.
Ukraine hasn't given up yet but Russia effectively control until now the areas they want to conquer/liberate as his sphere.
This is exactly the thing, just because Russia controls it, doesn't mean Ukraine would just fold and give those up.
Even if Russia achieves there goals (and I am pretty certain a government change was initially a goal, just one that failed and they now seem to have backed away from) doesn't mean that Ukraine is just going to accept the peace deals that includes these goals. Especially not considering that Ukraine is growing stronger as time progress (more troops due to mobilization, western military aid strengthening them, ...) and Russia weaker (Putin said he wouldn't send in new conscripts and Russia only has so many professional combat troops it can afford to send, not to mention that is can't compete with the west in an arms race like this), though drawing it out would be at the cost of suffering for a large part of Ukraine's population.
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Germany is one of the countries in the world that did most to transition to renewables, however without further improvement in storage, they almost went as far as economically possible +-50-60% at most. So it would be better to replace the existing coal plants with gas powerplants. Moreover the US would probably be the worst one to criticise, since they also have grown the amount of gas in their electricity supply more than the renewable part. At this moment Germany gets more out of renewables in terms of electricity production than gas and coal combined. The US isn't even close to that. And no it wasn't just because of Trump, because gas increased under Obama too.
And the gas is also used to heat homes, prepare food, ... in fact that is where most of the increase in gas imports went in the last decade in Germany.
As for the gas coming from Russia, it isn't like Germany has ample choices economically speaking. And the US has also a personal reason, if the gas doesn't comes from Russia, from where then? Well at least partially from the US fracking industry. And else all the way from the middle east (Iran, SA, ..), yeah these countries are really much better.
As for diplomatic power, it is a double edged sword. If Russia tries to play the gas as a trump card, Europe will be weaning of and looking for the gas elsewhere sooner rather than later, causing a huge economical loss for them. So at the very least they'll need to be carefull. And it isn't like Germany is just abandoning their zero fossil fuels goal by 2050 (at least I think that was the case), they just need something to fill the gap for a time.
Honestly the pipeline consequences are a bit overblown and is more about countries personal interests.
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@derorje2035 That is caused by a counter-movement. Parties against renewables were gaining traction, partially because of the push for the transition, so they had to take it back a notch. And not everything is decided on the federal level. Unfortunately politics is a real thing to consider in terms of climate policies.
Anyone that criticises Germany on renewables either doesn't know what he's talking about, is a hypocrite or doesn't live in reality.
At this moment Germany already produces 45% of its electricity with renewables, getting higher than that isn't just about increasing production, but more importantly having access to enough storage. Any country with a higher renewable production has abundant access to more dispensible sources, like geothermal power (eg. Iceland) or hydro. Without these you need to rely on wind and solar and storage is need to use these in a high proportion renewables mix.
The thing Germany could do better on is supporting renewable heating more, like geothermal heat pumps, but this is expensive for existing homes, for new homes, it should be made the norm in every country honestly. Air heating pumps are more easy to integrate, but also more inefficient.
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@mjferroni
The world electricity production in 2019 was around 27 000 TWh.
One solar panel has a power of around 300W.
if we take 5 hours/day of sunshine we get 1825h in a year
production per panel = power * time = 300W*1825h=547500Wh =+- 550 kWh/panel over a year
number of panels needed = world production / production per panel = 27 000 000 000 000 kWh / 550 kWh/panel = 50 000 000 000 panels
1 panel is around +-1,6m2 or taking into account mounting angle and distance between rows 3m2 per panel
surface area needed = number of panels + surface per panel needed = 50 000 000 000 panels * 3m2/panel = 150 000 000 000 = 150 000km2
If we take a safety factor of 2 to be safe total surface needed would be around 300 000km2
New Mexico surface area is around 314 917 km2
Now ofcourse you can say we need storage etc. too, but you can put this in the safety factor probably.
Now if you search a bit you can find others that have made these calculations, I quickly did it here myself using real numbers so I don't have to go look where I exactly read this. If you think I used incorrect numbers or made a mistake, please tell.
Ofcourse there will be a rising demand, but for example Africa has plenty of space and a good overall climate for it (available sunlight). China too has still plenty of space. India would be more difficult seeing its population density, however there still is quite some place, it is just a matter of using space efficiently. And ofcourse solar isn't the only supply of green energy. Personally I think there will be a mix of green power with nuclear power, though this depends entirely on nuclear development.
If Europe can become completely powered by green energy, then no other continent except for Asia should have a problem, and honestly Asia shouldn't really have a problem either. Even if the African population doubles in size, they still will have more land per person than Europe. Ofcourse you can argue that the sahara is a large part of the continent, but this isn't entirely a wasted space in terms of energy production, in fact energy production there might help combat desertification or even help shrink the desert, when done correctly. Though the last part is more speculative based on the fact that solar panels helped crops grow in warmer climates by providing more shade. I didn't actually looked up research on the environmental impact of solar power in deserts.
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