Tag: europe

European ignorance kills

Here’s one for all the anti-nuclear nuts in Europe. Your irrational behavior is killing people.

Coal is gaining traction in part due to the actions of Germany, which ditched nuclear power in favor of coal in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

2019-11-08: Germany Expensive Energy

France’s nuclear energy spending was 60% of what Germany spent on renewables. France gets 400 Terawatt hour per year from nuclear but Germany gets 226 Terawatt-hours each year. 45 Terawatt-hours of Germany’s renewable power comes from burning biomass which generates air pollution.

China has a more recent buildup of nuclear energy. China has spent less than $150b from 2000 to 2019 to develop 300 Terawatt-hours per year of nuclear energy.

Germany’s solar farms will have to be rebuilt every 15-25 years. The wind farms will need to be rebuilt every 20-25 years. Nuclear plants can last 40-80+ years.

2020-01-04: Nuclear Energy Saves Lives

Germany’s closing of nuclear power stations after Fukishima cost billions of $ and killed 1000s of people due to more air pollution

Huge boost to trade

this is the most ambitious trade agreement being worked on in 20 years. usually the chances for this would be slim to none, but with governments on both sides in dire financial straits it could actually happen.

Goods already flow freely between the United States and the E.U. Much of the value of a free-trade pact would come through reducing regulatory red tape so that — for example — the 2 sides would adopt common policies on food safety, pharmaceutical testing, patents and other complex regulatory issues.

Eurovision


Catching up on Eurovision. Laughing so hard it hurts. observations:

  • eurotrash is everywhere. where is the part of europe where hair metal still rules?
  • ~ 70% of the songs are in english
  • this should be held yearly, internationally. cheaper than the olympics and at least as able of bringing people together
  • almost all the songs are the same. this is probably due to most countries wanting to lose, winning makes you host for the next year, so everyone is in a race to the bottom.

2013-05-18: all the tribal tattoos made me think that new jersey was competing, for a very expansive definition of europe.

NATO is weak

“The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country. Yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference.” The underlying reason for these failings is no secret. Most Europeans spend too little on defence, and what they do is often wasted. That Europeans would struggle, militarily and politically, to maintain 10k troops in far-off Afghanistan is understandable. That they should be tiring in a limited air campaign on Europe’s own borderlands (less intense than the Kosovo war of 1999, for instance) suggests something bigger is amiss.

NATO can’t even sustain a campaign against libya.