Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[chrisp65]

5 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I think it's real this time.

Petrol cars are going to be banned in most territories shortly, but even before that people are adopting them rapidly because they're just better.  And they will likely have price parity with ICE vehicles soon.  Very few people are going to pay more money for a worse product that costs more to run.

Oil fired builders are likely to be banned in the near future, and again other than stories in Th Sun/Telegraph/Mail/SKY people who use oil heaters are enthusiastic because they're a pain to re-fila and cost a ton to run.  Heat Pumps make more sense in every metric other than installation cost, and again that's going to plummet.

There have been many false dawns but this is the real deal, there is no turning back because the economics don't stack up to continue.

I genuinely think Russia knows this and the land grab is more about stealing fertile faming land and minerals than anything else.

 

Yes, and no.

In the EU and the US legislation is fast approaching. Rightly so.

But there are 2 Billion people in India and China that will still be using oil, hundreds of millions in Pakistan, Nigeria, Central America and with the best will in the world these countries will be reliant on oil in one form or another for a very long time. What we are doing with car legislation is the right thing to do. I don’t think Pakistan is going to be moving at the same speed, or Egypt, or Afghanistan.

People across sub Saharan Africa aren’t generally going to be using the car for a 15 minute 11 mile commute to and from places with a network of chargers. The million plus people of the Sahel are not using Toyota Land Cruisers to go 3 miles to Asda. I’m not trying to be flippant I’m just trying to illustrate we can’t use our model and project that across a planet of billions all wanting and deserving something better in the short term.

It absolutely is a land grab by Russia and it absolutely needs to be resisted. All those square miles of food production. If Russia gets to keep that land and use diesel tractors to harvest the food, do you think Mali and other countries will decline those crops as they don’t meet the new emissions legislation?

I hope I’m wrong, I hope oil is gone and a thing of the past really really soon. But I can’t help thinking it will be difficult for the vast majority of third world countries to comply.

So there will be a market for a very long time, in my amateur opinion.

 

[Genie]

I think China has more EV’s than anyone else. So much so they are cheaper than ICE cars now. 

 

[mjmooney]

Just now, Genie said:

I think China has more EV’s than anyone else. So much so they are cheaper than ICE cars now. 

 

Massively state subsidised. 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

 

 

Quote

Rogue Russia pilot tried to shoot down RAF plane. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66798508

The interesting part of this article is that the US/UK were listening to the conversation between Russian ground control and the 2 Russian jets involved. 

If that's the level of infiltration we are willing to publicly acknowledge, I wonder how deep our infiltration actually goes. 

The leaked Pentagon documents did suggest that an order given by the Kremlin is known by the Pentagon before its known by the Russian military. 

[Genie]

Just now, mjmooney said:

Massively state subsidised. 

Yeah, but using less oil/petrol than before.

 

[Genie]

Just now, Mandy Lifeboats said:

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66798508

The interesting part of this article is that the US/UK were listening to the conversation between Russian ground control and the 2 Russian jets involved. 

If that's the level of infiltration we are willing to publicly acknowledge, I wonder how deep our infiltration actually goes. 

The leaked Pentagon documents did suggest that an order given by the Kremlin is known by the Pentagon before its known by the Russian military. 

Imagine the terror of the RAF pilot hearing that the Russian jet was firing a missile at it.

I wonder if it had been a US plane that had narrowly missed being shot down would it be interpreted as an act of war? 

[mjmooney]

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

Imagine the terror of the RAF pilot hearing that the Russian jet was firing a missile at it.

I wonder if it had been a US plane that had narrowly missed being shot down would it be interpreted as an act of war? 

It was nice to know that their air to air missiles are as crap as the rest of their military hardware. 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Imagine the terror of the RAF pilot hearing that the Russian jet was firing a missile at it.

I wonder if it had been a US plane that had narrowly missed being shot down would it be interpreted as an act of war? 

I doubt it.   There are a few precedents

The US accidentally blew up the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. 

The US accidentally shot down an Iranian Airliner. 

 

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, Genie said:

I think China has more EV’s than anyone else. So much so they are cheaper than ICE cars now. 

 

That’ll be why they need all those coal mines.

In 2020 the last year with figures available, China opened up more new coal production than it closed.

There is still demand for the stuff Russia sells. It just has to strike deals to trade for other products in return, rather than for rubles or dollars. Hence its desire to expand BRICS.

I’m not trying to be a nay sayer, I’m trying to be a realist. If anything I’m trying to say we have to move faster than the ‘just enough’ that we currently do. We’ve had 18 months now to gear up production of everything we need to put Russia back in its box. We have a count down on the months before Trump could be back in the Whitehouse.

It’s not a good tactic to hope the Russian GDP drop causes them to withdraw from Ukraine in the next 6 or 12 months. That’s only going to happen faced with the barrel of a bigger better gun.

 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

It's off topic - but the US "accidentally" destroying the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade is an odd story.  

The US blamed "a failure in intelligence". The Chinese pointed out that their Embassy address was well know, marked on official maps, listed in the phone book and literally within sight of the US Embassy.  

I think the Embassy was using some sort of radar or communication device which an American weapon homed onto automatically.  

I doubt we'll ever know the true story. 

[sidcow]

42 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Yes, and no.

In the EU and the US legislation is fast approaching. Rightly so.

But there are 2 Billion people in India and China that will still be using oil, hundreds of millions in Pakistan, Nigeria, Central America and with the best will in the world these countries will be reliant on oil in one form or another for a very long time. What we are doing with car legislation is the right thing to do. I don’t think Pakistan is going to be moving at the same speed, or Egypt, or Afghanistan.

People across sub Saharan Africa aren’t generally going to be using the car for a 15 minute 11 mile commute to and from places with a network of chargers. The million plus people of the Sahel are not using Toyota Land Cruisers to go 3 miles to Asda. I’m not trying to be flippant I’m just trying to illustrate we can’t use our model and project that across a planet of billions all wanting and deserving something better in the short term.

It absolutely is a land grab by Russia and it absolutely needs to be resisted. All those square miles of food production. If Russia gets to keep that land and use diesel tractors to harvest the food, do you think Mali and other countries will decline those crops as they don’t meet the new emissions legislation?

I hope I’m wrong, I hope oil is gone and a thing of the past really really soon. But I can’t help thinking it will be difficult for the vast majority of third world countries to comply.

So there will be a market for a very long time, in my amateur opinion.

 

 

55 minutes ago, villa89 said:

The problem with peak oil is that countries like India, Pakistan, the entire continent of Africa, lots of the middle east and Asia won't be able to switch to heat pumps, renewables or electrification. They will buy up all the oil the west used to buy. Oil consumption might go down in first world countries but it will be replaced by growth elsewhere. 

Russia will be able to make money from oil and gas for a long long time. 

I disagree.

Renewable infrastructure is already cheaper and quicker to build than oil and gas.  No country is going to invest serious amounts of money in new oil and gas infrastructure when it's almost obsolete already.  it's much cheaper for emerging economies to invest in micro grids.  Solar panels are cheap as chips, an wind turbine on the outside of the village, a wind farm on the outside of the town.  No need to build hugely expensive pylon networks that are expensive to maintain.  Hell this is happening in Australia as a developed nation NOW, let alone an emerging economy.

Electric scooters are going great guns in India and Asia, they love them because they're cheaper to run and easier to maintain.

China is about to become the largest exporter of Cars in the World.  They've already overtaken Germany and are about to overtake Japan.  This is mainly on the back of cheap EV's.  They'll have the far east and Africa sown up in double quick time.

[villa89]

55 minutes ago, Genie said:

Imagine the terror of the RAF pilot hearing that the Russian jet was firing a missile at it.

I wonder if it had been a US plane that had narrowly missed being shot down would it be interpreted as an act of war? 

No chance, countries typically avoid going to war at all costs. That's why even if a wayward Russia missile lands in a NATO country it will just be ignored as a mistake.

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by villa89

[blandy]

24 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

The interesting part of this article is that the US/UK were listening to the conversation between Russian ground control and the 2 Russian jets involved. 

If that's the level of infiltration we are willing to publicly acknowledge, I wonder how deep our infiltration actually goes. 

Hmm. The entire purpose of the Rivet joint is to listen and capture signals intelligence, so it’s no surprise at all that they were listening to (and recording) the Russian comms between jets and ground. Now, that conversation either took place over standard, clear, RF voice comms in the military UHF band, or it took place over encrypted RF voice comms, with the obvious implication that “we” can decrypt the encrypted messages. Now I have no information as to how Russian crypto keys are implemented, but I do know how ours are, and near real-time decryption is not really credible without access to all kinds of information which is extremely unlikely to be available, and if it were available “we” sure as hell wouldn’t remotely give out any tiny clue at all that we have such info.

Ergo, the Russian comms was over clear speech radio links, probably somewhere in the region of a channel between 200 and 400 MHz UHF and was simply hoovered up and recorded by the Rivet joint and satellites. Anyone with a V/UHF radio can listen in to this kind of stuff as long as they’re within line of (radio) sight of the aircraft / ground transmitters. Plane spotters do it all the time.

[villa89]

3 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I disagree.

Renewable infrastructure is already cheaper and quicker to build than oil and gas.  No country is going to invest serious amounts of money in new oil and gas infrastructure when it's almost obsolete already.  it's much cheaper for emerging economies to invest in micro grids.  Solar panels are cheap as chips, an wind turbine on the outside of the village, a wind farm on the outside of the town.  No need to build hugely expensive pylon networks that are expensive to maintain.  Hell this is happening in Australia as a developed nation NOW, let alone an emerging economy.

FWIW I think you are vastly over rating the pace at which countries evolve to new technologies. Look at how bad most European countries are at going renewable, it's taking decades. And these are the wealthiest countries. It's not realistic to think that second and third world countries are going to be able to adopt the same technology any time soon IMO. 

[Genie]

16 minutes ago, villa89 said:

No chance, countries typically avoid going to war at all costs. That's what even if a wayward Russia missile lands in a NATO country it will just be ignored as a mistake.

 

Not saying you’re wrong but a clearly wayward middle dropping just over the border and shooting down a US plane in international airspace are very different things.

Obviously I’m glad the UK is not so trigger happy but I have doubts whether the US would be so “relaxed” about it. They need to maintain their reputation of “**** about and find out” champions of the world.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Genie

[chrisp65]

9 minutes ago, sidcow said:

 

I disagree.

Renewable infrastructure is already cheaper and quicker to build than oil and gas.  No country is going to invest serious amounts of money in new oil and gas infrastructure when it's almost obsolete already.  it's much cheaper for emerging economies to invest in micro grids.  Solar panels are cheap as chips, an wind turbine on the outside of the village, a wind farm on the outside of the town.  No need to build hugely expensive pylon networks that are expensive to maintain.  Hell this is happening in Australia as a developed nation NOW, let alone an emerging economy.

Electric scooters are going great guns in India and Asia, they love them because they're cheaper to run and easier to maintain.

China is about to become the largest exporter of Cars in the World.  They've already overtaken Germany and are about to overtake Japan.  This is mainly on the back of cheap EV's.  They'll have the far east and Africa sown up in double quick time.

That’s fair enough, I’m no expert.

I guess we reconvene in 2030 and see who’s buying the beers.

I’m just struggling to see how or why Libya would stop producing oil, or Venezuela, or Russia. I can see there are cheap renewables, and the cost of wind and solar in China is lower than the cost of coal extraction. The problem is the demand for all energy is increasing, so they push on with the new renewables and expand them exponentially. Meanwhile, in 2020 at a cost greater than renewables, they also opened more new coal fields than they closed. 

A bit like how we insist on spending eye watering money on dangerous nuclear that is more expensive than actual renewables.

We can’t have it both ways, we can’t say the oil resource in Russia is becoming worthless due to the crashed ruble, and India and China (over 3 billion people) would rather invest long term in renewables than pick up that cheap oil. They do both, for as long as there is cheap oil.

[blandy]

43 minutes ago, Genie said:

Imagine the terror of the RAF pilot hearing that the Russian jet was firing a missile at it.

They’d not just hear it. There are all kinds of sensors on the aircraft to detect and alert the crew of missiles incoming, and defensive aids to  try and prevent them hitting the aircraft. 

34 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

It was nice to know that their air to air missiles are as crap as the rest of their military hardware. 

It’s frankly astounding that (we’re told) one “missed” and a second fell from the launcher when released. Again, I don’t know what particular type of missile was fired, but there are a limited number of seeker types and release types. Seekers will either be infra red/optical or radar. Release type either rail launched, where the missile rocket drives the missile off the rail, or a ram type, where gas operated rams on the launcher push the missile downwards, below the fighter and then a short time after separation the missile rocket then starts and propels the missile towards the target. Sounds like it was this type of missile that was used. For one to miss I think it’s reasonable to assume that countermeasures were used by the Rivet joint, whether the missile malfunctioned or not. 

[blandy]

5 minutes ago, Genie said:

I have doubts whether the US would be so “relaxed” about it.

What did the US do when a Russian fighter downed a global hawk over the Black Sea?  Nada.

[Genie]

48 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

That’ll be why they need all those coal mines.

In 2020 the last year with figures available, China opened up more new coal production than it closed.

There is still demand for the stuff Russia sells. It just has to strike deals to trade for other products in return, rather than for rubles or dollars. Hence its desire to expand BRICS.

I’m not trying to be a nay sayer, I’m trying to be a realist. If anything I’m trying to say we have to move faster than the ‘just enough’ that we currently do. We’ve had 18 months now to gear up production of everything we need to put Russia back in its box. We have a count down on the months before Trump could be back in the Whitehouse.

It’s not a good tactic to hope the Russian GDP drop causes them to withdraw from Ukraine in the next 6 or 12 months. That’s only going to happen faced with the barrel of a bigger better gun.

 

Mixed messages coming out of China because although they are the still running lots of very dirty energy generation methods they are also projected to over perform against their 2030 renewables targets. 

Quote

China is on track to over-perform on its renewable energy capacity targets ahead of 2030. The country will double its utility-scale solar and wind power capacity between now and the end of the decade. 

According to a report published by Global Energy Monitor, the country is on track to “shatter the central government’s ambitious 2030 target of 1.2TW”. The report predicts that China’s wind and solar capacity will reach 1.2TW in 2025, five years ahead of time.  

link

I’d be surprised if any other major nation meets their targets, let alone shatters them 5 years early. In the coming years China’s reliance on coal, oil and gas might fall off a cliff. Bad news for Vlad.

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

What did the US do when a Russian fighter downed a global hawk over the Black Sea?  Nada.

Again, not entirely comparable. 

A drone which Iran says entered their air space versus a plane full of soldiers in international airspace. War is great for the polls back home too.