The Winter War was 80 years ago. Folks in the eastern half of the United States were also extremely concerned about Russian aggression just 90 miles from our border 60 tears ago. But the USSR is no more.
Joining NATO now is more about leaning on Moscow politically than it is an actual safety need for Finland. That's all I was saying. If you can cut a deal that says Putin leaves and the NATO indoctrination gets put on the back burner.....that's a total victory IMO.
I'll leave you guys to your war-porn thread, my apologies for walking in uninvited!
As for fossil fuels, I think y'all are dramatically underestimating the impact of peak oil demand. The world should be coming to the realization it's passed within 3-36 months. The fallout will be beyond insane, and Russia is 46% oil & gas. The whole place is gonna implide, along with the Saudis.
The oil market is so tightly matched to supply and demand that a sudden shift in either causes large ripples. We remember what happened in early 2020 when some oil contracts were trading for negative numbers, but the decline in demand from electrification is more predictable.
There are also signs the Saudis are seeing a decline in production. They have quietly been implementing secondary recovery for a decade. The Saudis haven't blown the oil money like some countries have and they are investing in infrastructure with the oil money.
Countries like Russia are very dependent on oil money to keep the oligarchs in luxury yachts. They are blowing the oil money just like Spain blew all the riches from the New World they plundered. The gold ran out and the country was left a shadow of its former glory.
When the oil supply is more than the demand, the more expensive to produce oil gets shut in until the cheaper oil runs out or demand goes up again. Unfortunately for the US, a lot of that expensive oil is American. With the world deliberately shunning Russian oil as much as possible, the US oil is beginning to flow again, but American oil companies shut in a lot of production during the pandemic.
Much of the world may shun Russian oil for at least a while and if Russia falls into chaos or has a civil war, the flow may be cut off anyway. That will keep up demand for more marginal oil from other sources, but only if the price stays high. If the price of oil drops too much the more expensive oil will cost more to produce than its worth and producers won't pump it, then the world is back on Russian oil if it's available.
I think most people who understand the oil market know that we have hit peak oil, but demand is not going to drop like a rock, it's going to be a slow, steady decline that will get a little sharper as more electric cars become available, but it still won't drop like a rock. There is also a demand floor that we will hit until new technologies can replace oil for all forms of transportation.
The oil companies can make money just fine with less demand. Less demand means the known reserves they have will last longer and they have less work to do finding more oil. The biggest costs for oil companies is finding and then bringing the oil to market. Pumping it out of the ground and getting it into gas tanks has costs too, but they are small compared to the development costs.
The oil companies know they aren't going to die off anytime soon. They will eventually have to downscale operations, but there will be plenty of refineries near the end of life that can be torn down as they aren't needed and the oil company doesn't need to build another one to replace it.
For the next 20 years or so the primary losers in the decline of oil usage will be employees in the development arms of the business and some producers who hold leases on marginal oil wells that cost too much to produce. The companies will likely ride out the decline with little trouble and probably not all that much decline in profits.
BTW, my sister has been a Petroleum Geologist since 1980.
Joining NATO for Finland is all about our national security. Putin is not rational, he could have easily enough decided to invade Finland first and then Ukraine.
Main reason for past neutrality here has been all those Russian-supported politicians. For most of the soviet era we had russia's puppet president, Kekkonen, he ruled over 25 years! Laws were changed to allow this lenghty rule.
Funny thing about those air raid/bomb shelters: I'm so used to them, that I always thought all developed countries had enough large bomb shelters for all the people. Guess that's not the case
Finnish law requires that every housing complex larger than 1200m2 has to build a private air raid shelter, that has to account for at least 2% of the housing area.
The USSR/Russia has wanted any country on their borders to be vassal states. Their control of Finland was less harsh than the Warsaw Pact countries. Wikipedia even has an article called Finalandization
Finlandization - Wikipedia
Russia has done that to Belarus for 30 years and they did it to Ukraine until early 2014.
There is a part of the war in Ukraine that is about oil (too many wars are). In 2014 large deposits of natural gas and some oil were found off the Ukrainian coast. The Russians took Crimea and Donbas shortly after the discovery. Ever since Putin has been plotting to turn Ukraine into a land locked country so Russia could develop those gas fields and keep the money.
That's why Putin has been so obsessed with capturing Odesa, he want's to take all Ukrainian ports before the end of the war. There are still news stories about how the Russians plan to take the remaining Ukrainian coast and link up with their troops in Moldova. It's about as realistic as conquering New York City at this point, but the Russians are still talking about it.
Finland doesn't have resources Russia wants and it has been much more circumspect in dealing with Russia than Ukraine the last 8 years. Russia probably had no plans to invade Finland. Or if they did, it was way down the list. The only thing Russia would get from conquering Finland would be a buffer zone north of St Petersburg.
The US built bomb shelters in the 1950s because of the threat of nuclear war. The shelters were stocked with rations for people stuck down there for weeks in the event of a war. I saw the civil defense shelter logos around Los Angeles when I was a kid, but I've never been down in one.
In the 1980s the government realized that the shelters were useless and started closing them down. They donated the rations to charities and my mother worked with one that was distributing the food to the needy. A couple of cans got damaged and my mother brought them home. They were 2-3 L cans that were sealed to last. Inside and out they had some heavy duty paint on them to keep them from rusting. Thinking about it now, it was probably lead based paint.
We opened a tin of what were crackers and I ate a couple. They were around 35 years old and still edible. They weren't very tasty though.
Haven't thought about that for years.