Putin's losing his last leverage.

[kpete]

Just a sample of some of the charts I'm watching today.

Both European electricity and natural gas prices are collapsing.

Electricity futures down -50% in a week.

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=mn1Yp5aZjDmhjVZb3Br8tA

[Irish_Dem]

1. Probably why Putin is cranking up the nuclear plant threats.

He is losing his energy hold on Europe.

[c-rational]

2. The EU (Germany in particular) should restart those nuclear reactors taken off line in the last 5

years or so. This may also be humanities best short term measure to combat global warming.

[NNadir]

3. It is humanity's only viable long term solution.

It is ironic that the first country where fission experiments were carried out has embraced the kind of ignorance that is literally killing the planet.

[dalton99a]

4. +1. The anti-nuclear movement in Europe is widely believed to be funded by Russia

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2022-001275_EN.html
The role of Russian-funded environmental organisations in shaping EU climate policy
29.3.2022

[onlyadream]

7. I always wondered if Cherynoble was on purpose for this reason. nt

[erronis]

10. That's a very interesting article. I'm sure that the same forces have been working in the US.

Witness the Green Party and Jill Stein sitting with Putin for dinner. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein#Russia_probe

[Farmer-Rick]

14. Yeah, I never understood how the supposedly ecologically minded

Green party leader could be so chummy chummy with a man who was responsible for one of the worst nuclear disasters in the world. Strange (or lying) bedfellows?

[vlyons]

12. Just like the anti-green energy move in the US is funded by -- guess who

Fossil fuel industries.

[hunter]

20. The fossil fuel industry can't get enough greenwash.

The natural gas industry knows damned well that "renewable energy" will only prolong our dependence on natural gas.

The only energy resource capable of replacing fossil fuels entirely is nuclear power.

[Demsrule86]

22. Nuclear power is a bad idea...dangerous.

[hunter]

24. Fossil fuels are worse in every way.

There's enough natural gas in the ground to destroy whatever is left of the world as we know it.

If we had any sense we'd leave it there.

Hybrid gas/wind/solar power systems will not save the world.

Wind and solar energy system are not economically viable without the gas.

Reducing fossil fuel use isn't enough. We have to quit fossil fuels entirely.

[Celerity]

23. The author of that parliamentary question, Witold Jan Waszczykowski, is a member of the far RW party

Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) (PiS). They are forced birthers, homophobes, climate change deniers, racists, Islamophobic, anti immigrant, etc.

Surely you can find a better source.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Waszczykowski




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_Justice

Abortion

The party is anti-abortion and supports Poland's abortion laws which are more regulated than other countries in the European Union. PiS opposes abortion resulting from foetal defects[85] which is currently allowed until specific foetal age. In 2016 PiS supported legislation to ban abortion under all circumstances, and investigate miscarriages. After the black Protests the legislation was withdrawn. In October 2020 the Constitutional Court ruled that one of three circumstances (foetal defects) is unconstitutional. However, many constitutionalists says that this judgement is invalid. The party is against euthanasia and comprehensive sex education. It has proposed a ban of in-vitro fertilisation.

Gay rights

The party opposes LGBT rights, in particular same-sex marriages and any other form of legal recognition of same-sex couples. In 2020, Poland was ranked the lowest of any European Union country for LGBT rights by ILGA-Europe. The organisation also highlighted instances of anti-LGBT rhetoric and hate speech by politicians of the ruling party. A 2019 survey by Eurobarometer found that more than two-thirds of LGBT people in Poland believe that prejudice against them has risen in the last five years.

Refugees and economic migrants

PiS opposed the quota system for mass relocation of immigrants proposed by the European Commission to address the 2015 European migrant crisis. This contrasted with the stance of their main political opponents, the Civic Platform, which have signed up to the Commission's proposal. Consequently, in the campaign leading to the 2015 Polish parliamentary election, PiS adopted the discourse typical of the populist-right, linking national security with immigration. Following the election, PiS sometimes utilised Islamophobic rhetoric to rally its supporters.

Examples of anti-migration and anti-Islam comments by PiS politicians when discussing the European migrant crisis: in 2015, Jarosław Kaczyński stated that Poland can not accept any refugees because "they could spread infectious diseases." In 2017, the first Deputy Minister of Justice Patryk Jaki stated that "stopping Islamization is his Westerplatte". In 2017, Interior minister of Poland Mariusz Błaszczak stated that he would like to be called "Charles the Hammer who stopped the Muslim invasion of Europe in the 8th century". In 2017, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm Joachim Brudziński stated during the pro-party rally in Siedlce; "if not for us (PiS), they (Muslims) would have built mosques in here (Poland)."

[Submariner]

5. In the Three Mile Island days

there were unwarranted fears of uranium scarcity, so the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Demonstration Project was on the drawing boards.

I was looking forward to my move to Tennessee, that didn't happen because of the fears and ignorance then.

https://thebulletin.org/2019/02/the-rise-and-demise-of-the-clinch-river-breeder-reactor/

[NNadir]

11. Irrespective of uranium scarcity, the breed and burn fast spectrum...

...reactors are the future.

I have calculated that we good go for centuries without energy mining with the uranium and Thorium already mined.

Some breed and burn ideas are better than others, but all of them are better than dangerous fossil fuels. I'm trying to direct my son's attention in this direction. His advisor of course will have the final say.

[OMGWTF]

16. The largest nuclear plant in our solar system is the sun.

All government buildings at a minimum, should be solar powered.

[NNadir]

19. That niave idea and rhetoric has led to the collapse of our planetary...

...atmosphere.

It's reactionary, not progressive. For centuries humanity depended on the weather. That practice was abandoned for a reason. It was abandoned because it could not support a population 1/8 the size of the world population. The Faustian bargain was to burn dangerous fossil fuels and dump the waste directly in the atmosphere, with the result that weather is vastly destabilized. Now we want to return what didn't work in the 19th century and frankly isn't working now?

This human and environmental disaster will not be addressed by reciting cute platitudes popular in the 1970s. It's far more serious. It requires high level engineering and scientific work, not slogans.

[demigoddess]

25. AGREE TOTALLY

how do these things get ignored by the government? If every house was powered by solar panels, then we wouldn't have power lines all over that put hundreds or thousands in the dark when they go down. Even better if all government buildings. We recently saw a hotel that had solar panels on the roof. Good idea there too. we should look into powering our cars by solar, on our garage roofs or on the car roofs.
Without all the gas and oil running all over, fewer fires in the forests just might happen.

[Kablooie]

6. Will Trump and Putin go down together?

It sounds like their strengths might both be eroding right now.

[kentuck]

9. They seem to be both on a downward spiral.

Strange how that happens.

[calimary]

15. Wouldn't that be lov-er-ly!

That refrain is kinda dancing through my mind.

[Crowman2009]

8. The EU needs to work on accelerating the renewable energy infrastructure.

So the prices can tumble even further.

[hunter]

21. That's what got them into this mess.

Germany's aggressive renewable energy program was dependent on Russian natural gas.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Gosh, the prices are down to those last seen ... two weeks ago

Obviously, that means the effect of a six month war has been completely wiped out. I mean, he was wiped out in July, right? Right? Must be a different Putin who cam along in August.

[Pepsidog]

17. Nice to hear. The Putin era is done, we have had enough.

[CloudWatcher]

18. Well, no. Math people

Not to quibble with another feel-good tweet, but that looks like a drop of under 25%
from an all-time high (348 * .75 is 261), not 50%.

And it's still substantially higher than the average price from before the war started.

Perhaps this is true if you look at more data, but it's not true from that one chart.