WINTER IS COMING: European Winter of '22

[Trevor Kuntz]

It is interesting how every European government has been blamed here except Russia's, as if this whole situation just happened out of the blue; seems like there is a big fat elephant in the room that is being ignored.

While the consequences of this war are going to be catastrophic for some and damaging on the whole, we are not even close to the pain levels experienced by our ancestors of Europe's incessant intra-continental warfare. If they made it through, then I imagine that so shall their descendants. That said, poor economies and authoritarian tendencies do not make a great recipe for peace.

 

[Niptuck MD]

What the world has is a government problem, and people putting up with what said government forces upon us.

Hence why i am an anarchist. F*ck these useless vermin and idiotic leaders

 

[originalMJT]

EU Economy Risks ‘Full Stop’ on Energy Crisis, Belgium Warns

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo warned that Europe needs to act immediately to address the energy crisis or risk the kind of fundamental economic shutdown that the bloc would struggle to recover from.

www.bloomberg.com

"We could be seeing the de-industrialization of europe over the next few months" - The Belgian prime minister

I've been getting a lot of flak over the past year both for warning that this exact thing could happen due to energy prices and that Europe will crumple like a kleenex tissue if the few industrial enterprises they do have have to shutter due to energy prices........... much like is already happening with aluminum and other metal smelters. However, if the Belgian prime minister says a "doomer" statement that is then ran in bloomberg, does that mean I really was a "tinfoil hat conspiracist and worrier"... or one of the few people who could look past the feelgood BS and see one of the biggest artificial disasters this century?

On the other hand, Germany is having a rocky few weeks as well. Seeing massive amounts of layoffs and insolvency in companies that have existed for at least 80 years... and this is only going to get worse unless their elected officials get their heads out of their @$$es and do something about energy prices beyond telling people to "just take cold showers bro".

The UK is spending £100 billion on paying gas/electrical bills for the next two years so we won’t be shutting anything down or turning the heating off. Great to be able to make your own choices. They should break up the EU fascist club. It was only started as a vehicle for selling German cars and French wine/cheese to Europe and to stop the world selling cheaper goods to the EU with their tariffs.

 

[StrikingViper69]

The UK is spending £100 billion on paying gas/electrical bills for the next two years so we won’t be shutting anything down or turning the heating off. Great to be able to make your own choices. They should break up the EU fascist club. It was only started as a vehicle for selling German cars and French wine/cheese to Europe and to stop the world selling cheaper goods to the EU with their tariffs.

Government spending does not automatically mean the lights stay on. UK government spending doubled during the pandemic. This spending is an increase in government spending by an additional 10%.

 

[msufan]

Fact check: will the Swiss be jailed for heating their homes above 19°C? - SWI swissinfo.ch

A rumour is circulating abroad that people in Switzerland will be fined – and even jailed – if they set their thermostat above 19°C.

www.swissinfo.ch

Thank you for the fact check. People like the dramatic headlines, unfortunately, and the site linked above knows that and benefits from the clicks their clickbaity title brings.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MattR82]

I believe that the solution to all this energy / global warming stuff will be a combination of:

- cold fusion (until then utilization of 4th/5th gen nuclear fission reactors)
- carbon capture (because you cannot eliminate concrete production, plastic as packaging or kerosene as jet fuel in short term)
- electrification of everything possible (like steel production, diesel trains & cargo trucks etc.)

I just can't get my head around carbon capture. Seems like a bad idea to me. That's assuming they can even get it to work properly lol.

I used to work on this Chevron project off the coast of Australia. They don't give a F*ck!

Time’s up on Gorgon’s 5 years of carbon storage failure

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[adnanazmi]

Didn't the World economic forum push this same ESG bs in sri lanka back in the 10s and now for the past year sri lanka has been starving and without fuel and in constant political turmoil and unrest?
The dutch government signed onto some similar guidelines, arbitrarily decided to reduce nitrogen by shutting down farms which ended up in those dutch farmer riots.

Crazy how a few lobbyists trying to make some extra $$$ can cause so much damage.

It's true. I live in SL.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MattL]

I haven't followed events that closely but it's not looking great...

I wonder if there are any power producers that could come "to the rescue". Or if the events of this year have led to a power deficit or just a temporary imbalance because of sanctions and pipelines not being used...

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Jerma]

"The West" is hell bent on Woking itself to death, quite literally.

Ah yes, the big woke agenda of running on gas, oil and coal. Smh.

 

[John TenBrink]

My mom, who lives in southern Germany is bracing for disaster, as many Germans, who cannot afford (or can find) cut logs as a heat source, are now scouring nearby woods and cutting their own wood. Energy prices are rocking the European continent.

 

[RicardoGrande]

I'd love to say "Glad I don't have to be in Europe right now" but have the oddest feeling sh!t like this will be in the U.S. soon. (Didn't california just declare a grid emergency this week after shutting down a bunch of nuclear plants? Ditto for France)

 

[srodrigo]

Sounds like a government solution to a government problem. I am sure nothing would ever backfire by doing that!

That is a good way to have companies walk away from assets, have the government nationalize them, and blame the whole thing on greedy capitalists. Nothing bad could ever come from that!

In Spain, electricity companies are having their profits skyrocket. One thing is charging accordingly for the increase in the cost of generating energy, which has obviously got more expensive. A complete different thing is to take advantage of that and make bank while people can't pay their bills.

It's as if some folks loved being robbed. I'm okay with paying more to make up for the extra costs, but not to make some fat a$$ richer for no reason.

 

[originalMJT]

At least it is common knowledge that, in general, one should always leave the heating on at least "defrost" settings rather than switching it off completely when leaving the flat unsupervised in winter, so it must be a concern.

I heard that there will be quite a few things that need to be done in many households. There were articles that said there won't be enough qualified workers to do all that necessary work. That made it on my father's radar. I personally hear mostly from people who have enough money that they recently bought their new houses and installed solar panels etc, so I don't know enough stories to have an accurate picture.

And yes, there are quite a few people who get what is going on. The media pegs all people who complain as right wing extremists who support Russia and kill kittens for fun. From what I have seen, everybody who has a brain opposes what the politicians decide. People here just don't know what they are supposed to do about it. Recently I head from a former schoolmate who said the only way out of the mess is beheading all politicians. That sentiment is definitely on the rise. But pretty much everybody grew up learning that you can trust the media.

It is a slow and gradual awakening for many and people simply have not learned how to "resist", because it was never necessary. In my youth I learned that only in a totalitarian system opposition is not allowed.
Now democracy is pretty much dead. We are told what we are supposed to think. The only promising pivot would be telling the USA to go f itself (themselves?), which is just not an option. The whole media landscape is made up of pro USA journalists. All the people in power are paid by US institutions.
Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder keeps bringing up Nord Stream 2 and except for the death penalty it feels like any punishment is on the table.

In the UK we are being told they will cap Gas/Electric at £2400 a year for the next two years, lets hope it works out as next month its time to fire up the heating in the UK (October until March)

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[originalMJT]

Had the same idea. I m sure, they find a way ..

They are saying its capped at the normal energy you use, anything over your normal use, you will get hammered at a top rate. So got to stay in your normal range.

 

[JordanK]

Not sure how you took that from my post?

It’s not more power or easier power… its literally the exact same situation. We are no better or no worse than we already are.

 

[Mister]

I did a few minutes of research and here is what I found.

Even in such fields can CENTS be used. Then we have clearly no full control about our heating resources.

Let’s start with the fact that Europe want to be 2030 on a point where there don’t need Russian gas anymore (Press corner)

I looked at a few stats about our gas reserve and how long they can hold.

Which has the biggest gas reserves tanks ?
- Germany
(Gasspeicherkapazitäten - INES Initiative Energien Speichern)
(1Twh = 10.000.000.000 has m3)

Germany has the biggest Tank out of Europe with 4.000.000.000 m3

Total from Germany is 24.500.000.000 m3.
Which is 240 Twh.

They saying that the 240 Twh convers 28% of the yearly use in Germany.
(Erdgasspeicher – Wikipedia)

Something that seems a bit off is the fact that on German offiziell site they state „

• Es wird weiter eingespeichert. Der Gesamtspeicherstand in Deutschland liegt bei 86,84 %. Der Füllstand des Speichers Rehden beträgt 72,01 %.“

Which translated means that our total gas reserves are at 86,84% but the big tank is at 72,01%.

But wait the big one with 4.000.000.000 is only about 20% of the total of 24.600.000.000 ?

So why is Germany already at 80% when we should only be around ~16% ?



Funny

The numbers from wiki are from 2014 so guess they did some changes in that time.



From what I saw a big problem will be that people at home has will have a problem with gas for heating. Around 6.000.000 building ( I guess with 20million people in it) are heatet with gas in Germany.
In France it’s are 30% of all homes.

Energy is here only 15% based on gas.
When we put some nuklear plants on we can conver most loses from that or even more.

But switching from gas to power is a bit expensive, also each citizen need to pay it himself.

4 persons x 6 Million Buildings x 50€ (For a power based heater) = 12.000.000.000€

Perhaps I build content site in the power heater niche

Scary thing but I know my family is save for this winter. Also I don’t think there is much I can do about it.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[RicardoGrande]

The UK is spending £100 billion on paying gas/electrical bills for the next two years so we won’t be shutting anything down or turning the heating off. Great to be able to make your own choices. They should break up the EU fascist club. It was only started as a vehicle for selling German cars and French wine/cheese to Europe and to stop the world selling cheaper goods to the EU with their tariffs.

Just to confirm, you think that government intervention and energy price caps will be a good thing in this scenario?

 

[originalMJT]

Government spending does not automatically mean the lights stay on. UK government spending doubled during the pandemic. This spending is an increase in government spending by an additional 10%.

Here we go, a UK remainiac crawls out the wood work. The world gas is being sold to the highest bidder, the UK will be the highest bidder.

 

[ValueSystems]

Maybe we need this as a society to see how comfortable we were and how we were taking it all for granted.

... "Hard times create strong men" and all that.

 

[ygtrhos]

Governments are not even able to plan for the next few years or to retreat from Afghanistan in an orderly manner. Around the world governments have not been able to sort their problems without war. I find it interesting that there are people who genuinely believe that the world governments will be working together to lower world temperatures with 2 Regress. And without proof of concept at that.

The solution for any climate changes in the forseeable future may rather be to build more airconditioning, more dykes and water engineering and more nuclear energy. Doing what works rather than speculating on solitions that are fashionable, but not viable and reverting to medieval Lifestyle in the hopes of it working.

I have no idea where you connect governments' initiative to my post. I quote my post again.

I believe that the solution to all this energy / global warming stuff will be a combination of:

- cold fusion (until then utilization of 4th/5th gen nuclear fission reactors)
- carbon capture (because you cannot eliminate concrete production, plastic as packaging or kerosene as jet fuel in short term)
- electrification of everything possible (like steel production, diesel trains & cargo trucks etc.)

I did not write these things for a short term solution. I do not think I will see these things implemented in my own lifetime (by whomever). I am talking about my expectation for 2100. (probably highly inaccurate)

 

[ygtrhos]

I just can't get my head around carbon capture. Seems like a bad idea to me. That's assuming they can even get it to work properly lol.

I used to work on this Chevron project off the coast of Australia. They don't give a F*ck!

Time’s up on Gorgon’s 5 years of carbon storage failure

I am not an expert on carbon capture. But if even Chevron cannot make something like this operable, we are probably doomed.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ygtrhos]

Turn your tv off

Had I owned one, I would have done it.

Take your tin hat off.

 

[Andreas Thiel]

Been reading a lot of articles about what Central Banks are doing and feel so retarded trying to wrap my head around all of it.

Can anybody help? I read one thing that sounded like a really huge deal, but only one out of a gazillion articles mentioned that aspect.

The Reserve Bank of Australia realized enough losses that their equity capital has been wiped out. Some articles mentioned that other companies would be insolvent but a Reserve Bank can recapitalize and continue operating - so not a big deal, right!?

One article said that in this situation, the Reserve Bank is no longer able / allowed to pay dividends (I think this just applies to governments - for some reason - not all bond holders), which seems to be what the payments are considered to be. How does the whole thing work and why is that not something that needs to be on our radars? Or did everybody else know this already?

1. Are all the Central Bank balance sheets just so much healthier than than of the RBA?
2. Will it take forever until book losses become realized losses?
3. Are there too few governments that depend on the money from the bond buying programs of Central Banks?
4. Isn't that something that should have been mentioned in all articles about New Monetary Policy?

I think I read that some governments will go from getting money from the Central Bank to having to pay money. Is that because they can be on the hook for payments to other bond holders? That might be an even bigger deal, then and all experts already knew that payments to governments will stop at some point in a New Monetary Policy world?

Posted in this thread, because this seems very relevant for the financing of transition plans in Europe.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ijack]

There is a saying where I am from. "If no one is dying then there is no problem."
Ukraine is suffering so much. Everyone can help them through ᐉ Donate a Car for Ukrainian Army and Medical Personnel ⇒ Car to Donate Charity . If you have an old car, you can donate it and it will be transformed into an evacuation/medical vehicle

 

[Iso]

I believe that the solution to all this energy / global warming stuff will be a combination of:

- cold fusion (until then utilization of 4th/5th gen nuclear fission reactors)
- carbon capture (because you cannot eliminate concrete production, plastic as packaging or kerosene as jet fuel in short term)
- electrification of everything possible (like steel production, diesel trains & cargo trucks etc.)

I watched a video recently about Nikola Tesla he had the vision to create free unlimted clean energy for everyone. That ended up in him being broke and in debt to JP Morgan, Vanderbilt's and the Rockefeller's and other families that owned all the energy production and distribution in the United States. If The Wardenclyffe Tower was allowed to be built and actual works it would be crazy the political strife, economic instability and the endless wars that could be avoided, while at the same time though we would be destroying the wealth of these families.

 

[wyattnorton]

Did you guys go back to the Dark Ages yet?