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Russia/Ukraine conflict

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1. That physics professor (Cambridge) was wrong on some things. I do wish I had $10 for each time people have told me I should read his book because it would explain to me why what I (and others) was trying to achieve in renewables (or BEVs for that matter) was doomed to fail. Unfortunately his work has been quoted many times by the anti-renewables people as a good reason why the world should stay on dino-juice. He is dead now so he cannot write an apologia.

I believe it was David MacKay who died a few years back. I thought he made some good points, and he wasn't anti-renewables. In fact he professed to be very pro-renewables. I don't have time to rewatch the talk now, but if I remember right his point was that all renewable energy sources were fairly low KWH/m^2 of ground compared to other sources.

It's quite possible he was wrong, but a deconstruction of his case is probably the subject of another thread.

2. Simply getting the ships safely into port and the troops etc offloaded would take one day. Getting them onto trains in the correct order would take another day. Then go look at a map of the Russian rail network, look up the capacity of the rail switching yards, look up the average speed of a Russian goods train, look up the headway between trains on Russian networks, look up the availability of railway wagons in Russia, think for a moment about the likely rail network congestion as you work your way anti-clockwise from Crimea around to (approx) the Belarus border .... and accept that it would take about a week to do properly (minimum !). There is a reason they say that WW1 started because of railway timetables, and they are not wrong. If you go back to my post #549 on this thread you will find a note I wrote here commenting that the Russians were going to experience difficulties with lateral troop movements (such as this suggestion of yours).

Unlike WW I flying troops to a new location and have them take over some other units vehicles is also an option. Though, again, it's possible they have not been transferred.

3. Yes, some marines units will likely be in the North since the beginning, but not a full-on redeployment.

4. I note the fact of what is happening, as far as I can observe them. I deliberately do not suggest (much) as to how the Russians might improve things (except for surrender / run away / make amends). If you look around the OsInt networks you will see similar caution and restraint.

Whatever happens the Battle for Kyiv is going to be brutal. Flattening a city and then rolling in works when the defenders have been demoralized by the bombardment. The Ukrainians so far seem to be reacting like the British did during the Blitz and the Germans did during Allied bombing of their cities.

The Russians have an advantage in vehicles and artillery, but both of those are muted when the troops enter the city. And the Russians probably don't have a numerical advantage in troops going in. In an urban fight vehicles are often more of a disadvantage than an advantage. Armored vehicles are stand off weapons, when the enemy gets close bad things often happen to the vehicle. And calling in artillery strikes when your own infantry are engaged with the intended target is usually risky. Considering how much trouble the Russians have had with communication and coordination, I doubt they can call in artillery strikes with the efficiency and accuracy NATO can do.

Dumb artillery rockets are not precision weapons.

Kyiv might end up looking like Stalingrad for a while. Maybe the Russians solved their supply problems when nobody was looking and their forces are adequately supplied? That is possible.

But force numbers don't lie. The Russians brought around 200,000 troops to this war, which is 80% of the entire standing Russian army combat force. They have reserves they can activate, but that's going to take time to gather them, arm them and send them to the front. I have not heard any stories coming out of Russia that there are any significant call up of reserves. Leakers have said that Putin doesn't want to call up the reserves in case the public starts to get wind of how bad this war is going.

The Ukrainians have 300,000 regular troops active now with foreign troops coming in. The foreign brigades may not be sent directly into combat, but may be held in rear areas allowing more Ukrainians directly into the fight. The Ukrainians also have thousands of organized militia armed and ready as well as many unorganized militia who are civilians who were given an AK-47 and some molotov cocktails. The civilians are the least reliable troops, but there are a lot of them and they are very angry. They will do some damage.

The Ukrainians also have excellent intelligence on what the Russians are doing. They have a hotline people can call with information on Russian troop movements. This may have contributed to the Ukrainians hitting some of the Russian supply convoys. The Ukrainians are also listening to most of the Russian comm chatter because the Russian encrypted system failed. That is also contributing to Ukrainian intelligence about Russian troop movements and plans.

Except for the Russians nuking Ukraine until it glows there is no scenario where a smaller force with generally poorer morale is going to beat a larger force defending their homes with good morale.

The Russians did not bring enough infantry to hold Ukraine. Their only hope was Ukraine was going to roll over and give up. That didn't happen.

It looks like the Russians are going to get a lot of people killed (on both sides) trying to take Kyiv. The next few weeks are going to be very messy in Kyiv. As long as the Ukrainian morale doesn't break, the Russians are almost certainly doomed. When the defenders are in the mood of the Ukrainians now, they don't break.
 
I've been concerned about this since I first heard about it.

The ads could be slowed down with laws that only allow legitimate political organizations based and solely funded in the United States from buying political ads. And require audits of those organizations' books.
I only deal with Facebook for our local county political party and thanks to the trolls it is difficult for us to do any advertising on Facebook. First they did away with being able to select an ad audience based on a specific party. So when we do rare promotion of an event we end up getting complaints and threats because the ad popped up on the wrong person's page. We have no workable way to target audience.

Then 4 or so years ago Facebook required that the person posting political ads has to be verified. That requires uploading photo ID and then having Facebook mail a letter to your address with a code that takes a week or 2 to arrive because, you know the US mail, you have to enter to get verified. And this is for each person who would be allowed to post a political ad. That process surprised a number of real candidates who wanted to use social media to promote their actual real campaign, so that delayed their plans.

Then 3 or so years ago Facebook decided that the organization itself has to be verified so our county party treasurer had to go through something similar. So despite the fact we represent one of the 2 major political parties in the country we had to jump through their hoops to prove it. OK fine, we did it. We are not a well financed PAC or government controlled troll farm, so this is all volunteer time and effort.

Then they required that we have a specific disclaimer on every ad, even if all we were doing is promoting our annual picnic. I've yet to see a promoted post that says it was paid for by Putin or China. I'm guessing the AI they use to check content isn't concerned about actual troll posts.

All this does is make it difficult for actual political organizations and candidates to actually use social media advertising, but doesn't seem to do much of anything to stop fake accounts from posting outright lies as long as they aren't promoting a political party or candidate. I hate Facebook, but it's pretty much the only way to reach people today. Our local newspaper is just about dead. We have no local TV, just regional area stations that cover a huge area most of which is nowhere near us. We need our own troll farm but that we can't afford.
 
I only deal with Facebook for our local county political party and thanks to the trolls it is difficult for us to do any advertising on Facebook. First they did away with being able to select an ad audience based on a specific party. So when we do rare promotion of an event we end up getting complaints and threats because the ad popped up on the wrong person's page. We have no workable way to target audience.

Then 4 or so years ago Facebook required that the person posting political ads has to be verified. That requires uploading photo ID and then having Facebook mail a letter to your address with a code that takes a week or 2 to arrive because, you know the US mail, you have to enter to get verified. And this is for each person who would be allowed to post a political ad. That process surprised a number of real candidates who wanted to use social media to promote their actual real campaign, so that delayed their plans.

Then 3 or so years ago Facebook decided that the organization itself has to be verified so our county party treasurer had to go through something similar. So despite the fact we represent one of the 2 major political parties in the country we had to jump through their hoops to prove it. OK fine, we did it. We are not a well financed PAC or government controlled troll farm, so this is all volunteer time and effort.

Then they required that we have a specific disclaimer on every ad, even if all we were doing is promoting our annual picnic. I've yet to see a promoted post that says it was paid for by Putin or China. I'm guessing the AI they use to check content isn't concerned about actual troll posts.

All this does is make it difficult for actual political organizations and candidates to actually use social media advertising, but doesn't seem to do much of anything to stop fake accounts from posting outright lies as long as they aren't promoting a political party or candidate. I hate Facebook, but it's pretty much the only way to reach people today. Our local newspaper is just about dead. We have no local TV, just regional area stations that cover a huge area most of which is nowhere near us. We need our own troll farm but that we can't afford.
Have you thought about getting rid of political parties and gloated state/local governments? Maybe this will all end up having a positive impact in the end?
 
I don't know enough to make heads or tails of the ruble, but it smells like they can't even open the stock exchange with things as they stand now.

Money markets were open today and things seem somewhat down/stable, but if the stock exchange were to open it's all going to hell. Interesting times.

Putin clearly did not think the isolation would be anything remotely close to this. What a wonderful lesson to not only China(regarding Taiwan), but also folks like Saudi Arabia who may get equally desperate as the oil & gas world begins to crumble.

Does anyone see a chance the Moscow stock exchange is opened this week? It's been shuttered for eight(8!) trading days now.
 
Anyone know why the Ukrainian air force haven't bombed Moscow to get back at Putin?

If 40 million Ukrainian citizens waved white flags and walked up to the 40 mile long convoy and said they want to surrender, it would be over a million people per mile. How would the Russians handle that? Or if they all decided to take Putin's offer and go into Russia. How would their infrastructure handle that. The US Mexican border has only a fraction of that and has trouble placing people on planes in the middle of the night to get them dispursed.
Would Putin just kill them all and be worse than Hitler or would his economy take a major hit from the cost of keeping them in his country?
 
The above is making the assumption that the storage would be focussed at centralised large-scale locations, and for the UK that would be approx 50-100 sites. As a thought experiment you can figure out that it is doable by thinking through the alternative situation if the storage were to be de-centralised to the end-user level. To do this think how many Tesla Powerwalls would be used to run your own house for one week, and whether you could find room for them. Most buildings/locations in the UK could absorb this and it would (again) be a relatively small fraction of each site/building. So scaling tells you that this is do-able either way. And that is for one of the most densely populated countries on the planet.
I don't work in the renewables industry but I do find the transition of significant populations into an all renewables grid to be fascinating.

I like to follow Australia's efforts along these lines via reneweconomy.au. You'll find just about everything possible going on in Australia from the really aggressive efforts of South Australia to federal efforts to stymie progress, and a bunch of stuff in between. All stuff I expect the rest of the world to face as they make serious efforts at all renewable grids.

South Australia is the most interesting to me - they've got a 100% net renewables target for 2030 and are already clearing days that are 100% net renewables (usage + exports - imports). They've had a situation where a major interconnector went down for a couple of weeks, isolating the South Australia grid along with a significant aluminum plant. The grid ran just fine with the Tesla big battery (Hornsdale Power Reserve) supplying the grid making capability (frequency control and stuff). Including keeping the aluminum plant running normally - that was the real surprise.

My guess is that South Australia reaches their 2030 goal by 2025. Or at least are seeing weeks and probably months at 100% net renewables.


Australia is also fascinating to follow as you've also got significant regulatory resistance in some states and at the federal level. You've got major problems with way too many renewables projects to all connect to the grid (and solving that problem). That state level resistance is fading as the South Australia grid is proving to be more resilient and reliable than the grid elsewhere in the country.

You've got, I think more unique to Australia, so many households putting solar on their roofs that the demand destruction is a serious problem for utilities to stay in business. And the more *messed up* the regulatory and utilities get about it, the more that people get solar at the household level. Now there is talk of a virtual power plant where batteries at the household level can be recruited into a grid wide big battery for grid services.

The batteries are primarily acting as a provider of grid services rather than a significant time shift for energy generation. The market for those grid services that was being regularly and reliably abused by gas generators / spinning reserves has been destroyed by the Hornsdale Power Reserve. At the very least the market is no longer being manipulated to produce half hour stretches of $20,000/MWh prices.

I expect the batteries plus wind will be providing overnight shifting of energy generation on a regular basis, but batteries as the solution to week+ long outages of renewables is quite a ways off. In the meantime I think the solution is mostly a well developed interconnected grid so that regions act as backups for each other. The folks providing the resistance are still trying to claim coal as their grid stabilizing presence.
 
WTI and Brent both down 12% in the last half hour. Think Putin is at the table?

It makes sense for him to jump in a deal right now before trying to reopen their stock exchange and before all these boycotts have a real impact.
I'd guess that it's just due to general instability in the crude oil market as companies switch sources.
 
I don't know enough to make heads or tails of the ruble, but it smells like they can't even open the stock exchange with things as they stand now.

Money markets were open today and things seem somewhat down/stable, but if the stock exchange were to open it's all going to hell. Interesting times.

Putin clearly did not think the isolation would be anything remotely close to this. What a wonderful lesson to not only China(regarding Taiwan), but also folks like Saudi Arabia who may get equally desperate as the oil & gas world begins to crumble.

Does anyone see a chance the Moscow stock exchange is opened this week? It's been shuttered for eight(8!) trading days now.
Money markets opened, but Putin made a law that Russians cannot purchase foreign currency with rubles. Can only sell foreign currency, ie exchange to ruble.

Have to admit that they are pretty efficient when it comes to drafting new laws.

I'm not sure if MOEX will ever open again.

Some Russian polticians are talking about nationalization of the assets of those foreign companies that have now left Russia. That would be a sure way to make certain that no one will ever again invest in Russia.
 
WARNING: Crazy Idea.

What if, IF, Ukraine announced war against, say, Poland (and even "attacked" some remote place).
NATO would automatically declared war and occupy Ukraine, demand total capitulation.
While Ukraine will resist Russians, they will allow NATO to occupy without resistance.

Yes, its nuts idea
The idea is get NATO into the conflict, without legally being there on behalf of Ukraine to stop Russia.


(still, in long run NATO might still become involved)
 
WARNING: Crazy Idea.

What if, IF, Ukraine announced war against, say, Poland (and even "attacked" some remote place).
NATO would automatically declared war and occupy Ukraine, demand total capitulation.
While Ukraine will resist Russians, they will allow NATO to occupy without resistance.

Yes, its nuts idea
The idea is get NATO into the conflict, without legally being there on behalf of Ukraine to stop Russia.


(still, in long run NATO might still become involved)
Getting NATO involved in the conflict would be a big win for Putin.

Right now, war against Ukraine is really not popular in Russia, that's why the whole operation was kept secret until the very beginning.

If NATO gets involved, he can say that war is between Russia and NATO, instead of Russia and Ukraine. And russian public would buy this.
 
WARNING: Crazy Idea.

What if, IF, Ukraine announced war against, say, Poland (and even "attacked" some remote place).
NATO would automatically declared war and occupy Ukraine, demand total capitulation.
While Ukraine will resist Russians, they will allow NATO to occupy without resistance.

Yes, its nuts idea
The idea is get NATO into the conflict, without legally being there on behalf of Ukraine to stop Russia.


(still, in long run NATO might still become involved)
Didn’t Hitler do something like this with false flag ops on the border with Poland bck in 1939?
 
Honestly, if it wasn’t for both Elon Musk and fracking, the west would be completely screwed right now.

Elon/Tesla probably pulled forward peak oil demand by at least five years by proving you can make electric cars that don’t suck and produce them for less money. Also ended the west’s dependence on Russia for space launch and leapfrogged the world to wholesale dominance of the sector.

North America being a net energy exporter gives the west huge geopolitical leverage. I know fracking isn’t popular here, but if the US needed to import ~70% of its oil like it did back in the Bush years, we would currently be living in a 1939 nightmare world.
 
WTI and Brent both down 12% in the last half hour. Think Putin is at the table?

It makes sense for him to jump in a deal right now before trying to reopen their stock exchange and before all these boycotts have a real impact.

Oil plunges as much as 17% as UAE says support output hike | REUTERS


USA supplies concerns instantly vanished. EU will probably get the oil they need too.
 
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