Markets are now committed than a single pipeline. Germany was importing most gas through other channels - pipelines through Eastern and Southern Europe and shipping - as well as of course plenty of oil. While the NortStream cut had a significant short term impact it took much more effort to wean the country off all the other routes.
Political decisions that lead to that point and geopolitical situation. The russians cut the gas on their terms because it would have happened anyway and they were not stupid. Then somebody else blew the pipe up and the whole discussion conveniently ended. The divestment from russian economy and blocking imports was already established, but germany and others could not phase out the gas that fast.
Still, when did Germany cut off Russian gas back then? I don't think there is particular complexity in the sequence of events back then. Germany back then was not seeking an end to supplies then and there, if I recall correctly.
Russia did not completely cut gas exports to Europa, but reduced in substantially, but this was a reaction to sanctions and the decision in Europa to reduce imports from Russia (but more slowly). In fact, Russia still exports to countries in Europa (to be ended in 2027), but Germany stopped gas imports from Russia in September 2022. So the order of things was that Germany decided to reduce imports from Russia, Russian then gradually reduced and then stopped exporting via pipelines to Germany, and Germany then started to import LNT gas as a replacement but - in contrast to others - not from Russia.
It doesn't matter what they wanted to do. What matters is what happened. As a result of their actions they got cut off. If Germany had invaded Ukraine (via Poland?) the gas might still be on. Of course we don't know that because other countries would likely take offense to that action and I'm not willing to predict how the world would change if they had. (I can't even imagine change would cause them to be willing to invade in the first place, much less how everyone else would respond.)
Politics often are about the unintended consequences. Often they are also unforeseen.
Germany joining the Russian invasion was never anything even remotely in the option space at all - utterly inconceivable in 2022. (Not aware of Russia seeking any such support there either.)
Ukraine would have blown up the pipeline anyway. And the land pipelines would have been cut off to Germany by the Eastern Europeans. So no, the gas would not still be flowing with a high probability. That's so absurd.
If Germany had gone to war Ukraine would be split between Germany and Russia now and the pipeline would be running. It is absurd to think there was any possibility of Germany going to war on Russia's side, but the result of them doing so is far easier to predict.
Of course if they had done that other countries would likely object and so we can go on and on with what could have been (for starters the propaganda would be all different). There are no easy answers and we can never know what would have happened.
Probably not directly invading, but there was a strong possibility of Germany supporting the Russian invasion, just as they're doing with the invasion of Iran.
I think what grandparent is very very fucking poorly trying to say is, Germany/EU could've accepted the "annexation" of Ukraine like it did Crimea in 2014. "Bad Putin! But what can we do."
That is a half truth. A turbine was broken, repaired in Canada, which required a lot of bureaucracy. Then the turbine was shipped to Germany. Then the Russians started their own bureaucracy and came up with excuses why the turbine could not be installed.
During that time Nord Stream was blown up.
The point is moot, since Putin has offered multiple times to open the remaining intact pipe:
And the broken pipes can be repaired, as was determined in the LLoyds lawsuit recently.
I'm not saying that reopening would be reliable, but it would be one diversification away from US and Qatar dependencies. The US just cut the EU off from Qatar gas.
If you take a look at ng prices you will see that the prices went up more than half a year before Russias invasion of Ukraine: https://www.macrotrends.net/3235/eu-natural-gas-prices The reason for this was because Gazprom stopped supplying the spot market and also bought storage capacity and kept it empty. All of that only made sense after the invasion to better blackmail Europe. It was their bad luck that China allowed them to attack only after the Olympics which took most of the force out of that blow. Anyway there was no sane way to continue this business relationship.
And then Russia refused to install the turbine, proving it was a ploy all along. Like the maintenance in the first place. Which is why they acquired gas storage in Germany, then ran it low timed with their illegal war of aggression. This is a theme of course; Russia invented another gas crisis every few years with Ukraine. It should have been a warning sign when they settled them by taking payment in the form of Soviet-era cruise missiles.
The gas was never cheap, either; apart from the money spent now to restrain the military buildup and invasion it financed, even at the height of supplies it was much higher price than China is paying, a price sustained by Russia using military force and more to restrain other (Asian) countries from supplying to Europe.
(This was obvious to everyone, right? A single majority supplier nation state charging a cheap price out of the kindness of their heart? No, of course not; neither cheap nor kind. It was a monopoly, built on blood.)
They installed it and then they took the pipeline down for planned maintenance.
it's a little rich to accuse them of playing games with gas after the stunt Canada pulled and most especially after a western partner subsequently blew up the pipeline and blamed it on Russia.
Clearly certain western allies decided that Germany couldnt be trusted to make its own decisions about where Germany gets its energy.
They reopened the pipeline after the planned maintenance. Then they said there was another issue and suspended supply indefinitely, and then the pipeline got destroyed.
If you want to see their approach to maintenance while prices and needs are high, watch them put oil refineries back in operation days after drone hits.
I don't think the turbine that was serviced in Canada was causal there. The turbine thing was earlier, as far as I recall it. Gazprom announced its decision in early Sep 2022, btw.
Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
> Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
The only people causing conflict is Russia, and Germany had to be dragged kicking and screaming in shutting down Russian supply pipelines, so don't go talking about "security" when the actions from Berlin showed there was zero consideration for it:
Math might get a lot bigger and then there might be proportionately fewer people but not necessarily in total. Unless humans play no role in economics, business, society, etc., I doubt human intermediation and discovery (or direction of discovery) will go away.
Probably not critical, just helpful to be able to understand where the source is willing to cut corners. Helps me understand if the given content source values are aligned with mine without risking wasting time to ingest slop just to come to the same conclusion.
The same way I look at food labels to support local produce and those who don't try to trick me into thinking I am consuming something it's really not.
I personally wouldn't care for AI usage in icons, I don't put a lot of attention to them. Someone else might.
Buying a license for a stock photo vs using AI to create what you need is cutting corners? Don't thing there is much difference in effort (might even be more on the latter)?
Buying a license for a stock photo is paying someone who has put the effort.
Well, okay, I am not sure how much effort goes into creating your typical stock photo, probably not a lot, just still more than 0 effort it takes for the AI to generate it.
And yes, I see difference between an automated system flooding the web with AI generated "news" in disguise vs a niche blogger using AI to iterate on an image with hand crafted prompts. Labels are not perfect, just better than nothing.
My suspicion is that it will quickly not matter in a lot 9f situations for most users, customers, etc. - so might be easier and better to curate places of true human interaction, for example, instead of the other way around.
You will have to tell me how "labelling machine additions" is applicable at all as an example here. Unless your argument boils down to "computer doing things does not require labelling".
That is mostly my argument. I find "computer doing things" generally not a useful category and why here specifically doesn't have enough support. If there are some truly high risk gaps, then why no close them specifically?
As we can store fossil fuels for weeks of demand, we can store the required energy in chemical form, no? Germany has huge natural gas storage, for ezample.
Not sure it is just about inference costs, errors in handling things and beings in the real world have a very different "surface" from immaterial applications - robots might need to have failsafes, independent limiters, etc. there.
Great point, inference is just one variable. It’d be really great to know how much those tasks costs in inference. I’m assuming they cost significantly higher than human labor. Therefore, the inference cost is so high that it makes the other variables seem irrelevant for the time being.
reply