Expert forecaster sees Putin’s moves with energy as a power play in anticipation of global cooling 20-30 years out.
By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
1/6/2009 8:23:25 PM
It’s not often that meteorology intersects with geopolitics – but Europe could be in store for another Cold War, literally.
Accuweather.com’s chief long-range and hurricane forecaster Joe Bastardi observed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent cut of gas flows to Europe via Ukraine may have been done so in anticipation of a global cooling cycle on the Jan. 6 “Glenn Beck Show” radio program. Bastardi has a solid reputation among Wall Street traders for understanding weather’s impact on energy commodities.
“The thing I want to bring up here – very interesting – most of the solar cycle studies that we know about and that guys like me read have come out of the Russian scientists,” Bastardi said. “But when Glasnost developed, the Russian scientists, a lot of their ideas on the coming cool period that a lot of us believe is going to occur – ice, rather than fire is the big problem down the road here 2030, 2040, and the reversing cyclical cycles of the ocean – it came out of the East.”
According to Bastardi – Putin is relying on the data from the Russian scientists and wants to bring some European nations to their knees by exploiting their reliance on natural gas when the weather is at its coldest.
“Now my theory – something that I put out and it’s something that’s not something that people want to hear is that Putin knows what is going to happen – or he believes the same way I do about the overall climate pattern. So, if you control the pipeline into Europe, you literally can control Europe without firing a shot – if you control the energy.”
Bastardi cited former President Ronald Reagan’s 1982 Cold War-era staunch resistance to a then-$10 billion pipeline that was proposed to deliver natural gas 3,500 miles from Siberia to the heart of Western Europe, as a July 12, 1982 Time magazine article pointed out. Reagan’s stance was criticized by Western Europe Cold War allies and was said to be “riding roughshod over Western Europe’s economies,” by Time.
Bastardi also noted Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 was evidence of Putin’s willingness to use energy as a strategic tactic, since the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, located in Georgia, transports about a million barrels of oil a day from the Caspian Sea through Georgia to ports in Turkey – and then throughout Europe.
“That is why Reagan was so dead set against the Europeans looking east for their energy,” Bastardi said. “And now we’re seeing it. I believe the invasion of Georgia was nothing more than saying, ‘Hey I can take that pipeline whenever I want’ and he shut the gas off to the Ukraine when it got brutally cold.”
In a follow-up interview with the Business & Media Institute, Bastardi explained that a lot of Putin’s personality traits are at play here – that he is using intelligence, going back to his days as at the KGB.
“The weather’s most certainly involved in this,” Bastardi said. “If look at what those Russian scientists, where a lot of these studies on it getting cold come from – you can see that, what makes you think that Putin doesn’t have some knowledge of that? Here’s the head of the KGB – and forever what you want to say, I’m sure he’s privy to the same kind of information the head of the CIA is privy to here about studies and what people are thinking on a scientific nature.”
And according to Bastardi, Putin’s use of the flow of energy into Europe is just one of the weapons in his arsenal of tactics that he, as the head of Russia, has perfected using – comparing him to a wrestler with a perfected move.
“He’s definitely a type-A alpha male and we can both agree on that,” Bastardi said. “I mean look at him and he is more likely to use weapons – and I use weapons in terms of for instance a wrestler – a single-leg take down is a weapon. If you perfect it, you can use it the entire match. He’s more likely in the art of war to use what he knows how to use, even if it’s only two or three things than try to go use something he doesn’t know how to use or try to create something – that’s a waste of time to use it.”
It’s not a personality fault Bastardi contended on Beck’s program – but just what he considers proper for his country.
“And so, there are a couple of things that line up here that indicate the guy is trying act on behalf of his country and what he believes his country should be,” Bastardi said. “And I believe that he wants to use nature, rather than change nature and that may be what’s going on over here.”
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Przemysław Pawełczyk (P2O2) (14:25:28) :
Dzien dobry!
Thank you for the link. I will read later tonight.
By the way, I worked as an engineer in Poland in 1979 in Wlotswawek (sorry, only English keyboard) at the big petrochemical complex on the Wistula river; at the time it was Polimex Cekop. Coldest winter I ever experienced! Love your country! Very friendly, hospitable people. Shared a couple of bottles of Old Krupnik, too.
I had a full-time interpreter assisting me 24/7, it was quite a wonderful experience. My Polish technical guide was Engineer Mr. Andre Starchevsky (spelling different, I am sure).
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
One more thing – military spending in 2008:
USA $711 billion + Europe’s $289 billion vs. Russia’s $70 billion.
USA’s slice is 48% of the world’s total.
So, where’s the threat really coming from – East or West?… Geez, a tough one, no?… 😉
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending
Reply: The blogmasters want you to stop. You’ve strayed way too far into murky territory with this and your previous post. This goes for all subsequent posters. Please do not dissect Freezing Finn’s points or address them. No back and forth anymore please. ~ charles the moderator
@roger Sowell
Dzien dobry! (Although it is 0:10 AM here now!)
Reading your post I think you are decidedly Polish in nature! 🙂 The Old Krupnik, the Vistula River, Polimex Cekop, etc.
BTW. You dropped in to Poland during the coldest winters after the WWII. From WikiAnswers:
The coldest winter in Poland after the second world war happened sometime between 1977 and 1979 and it measured below minus 40 degrees celsius. Any water vapors froze instantly on your face and clothing and the snow made very interesting loud echoe sound. Schools closed due to extreme weather conditions. There was no problem with water or electricity.
At those temperatures the Old Krupnik was an essential item, I know. 😉
Best wishes from Poland and from Cracow (Kraków).
Przemysław Pawełczyk
Roger E Sowell
“we have no experienced nuclear power engineers”
Not exactly true. The Navy graduates many out of training every year. Also, in 1940 there were exactly 0 nuclear engineers on the planet by 1960 there were many. And finally, the latest plants are *much* simpler than the plants built in the 1960’s. Compared to plants in current operation:
And you don’t need to be a “nuclear engineer” to assemble a plant built out of pre-fabricated modules the way the AP1000 is. You need good civic and mechanical engineers.
I keep hearing tired old arguments based on 1960’s technology but nobody seems to recognize how the industry has advanced since then.
Oh, and there are plenty of “nuclear engineers” in Japan, France, India, and Eastern Europe that might not mind a position in the industry here in the US if we can not train them fast enough here. We are a global economy and just because we might be short a skill right this moment is no reason to abandon the technology.
Nuclear engineering enrollments and graduation rates are up at US universities. Where did you ever get this idea that they were all dead? There were 413 bachelor’s degrees in nuclear engineering granted in the US during 2007.
Read carefully what the comment says. It says that the people who built the original reactors are dead. That is true. But we still have dozens of reactors today that are maintained by a younger crop of engineers. So I guess we can toss out our TV sets, too, because all the TV pioneers are dead?
Why should The Ukraine pay below market rates for it’s gas? … which it does.
Why shouldn’t Russia want what is the market price for it’s product?
Simple as that.
Happy New Year
– Jon
crosspatch: all good points.
I am not a nuclear engineer, but a chemical engineer with oil refining and petrochemical experience. Therefore, I defer to engineers with experience in the nuclear industry.
Perhaps those 413 grads with their BS will do a fine job, I don’t know! Mr. Hails seems to think differently. Also, engineering design is one thing. Produces lots of paper. Fabrication, procurement, and construction is quite another. I do have experience in both.
I am on record at http://www.energyguysmusings.blogspot.com with my views in opposition to nuclear plants, based on plutonium production, the very real environmental opposition, the extremely high construction costs, and cheaper alternatives. My personal choice is natural gas fired combined cycle cogeneration. According to the U.S. EIA (energy information agency), roughly 90 percent of all new gas-fired plants in the U.S. use CCC technology. No wonder, really, as they achieve around 60-70 percent thermal efficiency, or even higher if steam is sold also.
As with the climate change debate, is it warming or cooling? time will tell on the U.S. nuclear issue. Perhaps some new nukes will be built. I suspect that existing plants will simply expand by adding one or two reactors. But, if those published cost estimates are correct, at $8 billion per 1000 MWe, any utility would be nuts to build one.
I believe I read Mr. Hails’ statement correctly. He said the experienced engineers are gone. No one passed the torch, so to speak. Those young engineers will do their best, I am sure. Engineers are a fairly gung-ho bunch. Hails predicts there will be “delays, disasters, and overruns, which will not be pretty.”
One last point, to tie this in to the global warming/cooling theme. Nuclear plants emit great amounts of heat into the atmosphere, relative to other technologies. The low fuel cost tends to result in a low thermal efficiency, as I recall nukes run about 20 percent. This means that 4000 units of energy-equivalent go into the sky for every 1000 MWe produced. All that heat has to go somewhere. Maybe it will radiate into space, or maybe clouds will act as a blanket and keep it in the atmosphere.
I have always wondered how the global climate models address this.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Thanks P2O2 for the Russian web sites. I bookmarked them. By the way, I love the way you write in English. It sounds so Russian.
Really? Bridges? Plural?
new nsidc report is out
http://nsidc.com/arcticseaicenews/
No mention of trend
Phil (21:35:15) :
“Wind turbines are especially useless in very cold weather as icing of the blades can be a hazard. Maybe too paranoid?”
No you’re not.
With the current High Pressure Area that brought the cold to Europe we saw extreme cold and NO WIND.
The consequence: No energy when you need it the most.
The back-up for wind in Europe exists of gas powered plants because you can bring them on line quickly and shut them down quickly.
The costs however are staggering. You have to maintain two capital intensive energy systems where only gas is efficient in economic terms.
Besides that, wind makes us more dependent of Russian gas.
Europe should go nuclear and forget all about the solar/wind hype which will not deliver under hard winter conditions and snow packs (as bio diesel) see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/business/26winter.html?_r=2&th&emc=th
Playtime is over.
Roger Sowell (09:52:06) :
“Btw, I believe Ron de Haan (02:15:53) intended to write LNG, not CNG. LNG is liquefied natural gas, and it is indeed shipped and regasified upon arrival”.
You are correct Roger, I meant LNG.
David Porter (12:18:47) :
“One of the things that struck me in this thread was the price that is being paid for gas via Russia. It seems low in comparison to the price I pay for my domestic gas. First of all I need to explain that I live in the UK and our domestic gas price is based on KWHrs at 3.69p. Therefore a cubic metre of gas becomes:
3.69 x 31.6 = 116.6cu ft x 35.315 =4117.9p/cubic metre
That’s£41.18 cub metre.
At an exchange rate of 1.5$/£ this becomes: $61 77/cub metre.
And therefore by my calculations I pay $61,768/1000 cub metres.
That’s compared to $270/1000 cub metres. Two hundred and twenty nine times more expensive than wholesale prices.
Somebody please tell me I’m wrong”.
I think you make a mistake.
In the Netherlands the price at the beginning of 2007 was Euro 0.65 per m3
In general you always pay too much. Consumers always pay the high end prices.
You pay for your connection, the transportation and storage fees, the administration costs, the billing costs and a (very high) end price which probably includes the carbon taxes since burning gas results in CO2 emmissions (although it’s one of the cleanest fuels)and VAT over the total amount.
How do they say it? If you have a home number and a ZIP code, you’re screwed.
Jeff Alberts — thank you for pointing out my error. It was one bridge in Minnesota, across the Mississippi river on Interstate 35W.
Here is an excerpt on some other U.S. bridge collapses, and an assessment of bridge conditions from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board:
“In 1983, a 100-foot section of the Mianis River Bridge in Connecticut, a part of I-95, plunged 70 feet into the water. The failure of crucial holding pins was blamed for the collapse that caused three deaths.
Perhaps the deadliest bridge collapse occurred in 1967. The Silver Bridge connecting West Virginia and Ohio gave way during rush hour and tumbled into the Ohio River, killing 46 people. The cause was eventually determined to be corrosion.
Steel corrosion on bridges is still a major concern. Infrastructure experts worry that thousands of American bridges are dangerously outdated and overburdened. In 2006, approximately one-fifth of interstate bridges were rated as deficient, either structurally deficient or obsolete.
Overall, one-quarter of all bridges in the U.S. are considered structurally deficient, and 80,000 bridges across the country need some sort of reconstruction or rebuilding.
On April 5, 1987, a bridge on the New York State Thruway near Amsterdam, N.Y., gave way, killing 10 people.”
source:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/02/earlyshow/main3126226.shtml
Other bridge-related incidents, from NTSB, include:
Passenger Vehicle Collision With a Fallen Overhead Bridge Girder, Golden, Colorado, May 15, 2004
Collapse of the Harrison Road Bridge Spans, Miamitown, Ohio, May 26, 1989.
Collapse of the Northbound U.S. Route 51 Bridge Spans over the Hatchie River near Covington, Tennessee April 1, 1989.
Collapse of the S.R 675 Bridge Spans over the Pocomoke River near Pocomoke City, Maryland August 17, 1988.
The collapsing bridge list gets rather long, so will stop here rather than use up more storage space on the blog server.
As was famously said by an astronaut, Houston, We have a Problem.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Bill Marsh (08:46:32) :
A question I have never seen adequately answered: who gives away the rights to Russia, China, or any other country to sell “carbon credits” and/or “CO2 offsets”?
It appears that these fabricated out of whole cloth ‘credits’ were invented by one of Elmer Gantry’s descendants, who is now employed by the UN.
If I am wrong, would someone please explain the mechanism, and how it is verified, audited, and accounted for? Thanks.
Peter Taylor (05:20:35) wrote: “I would like to make a request that Watts-up sticks to climate science and forgoes these forays into energy and geopolitics!”
And by your full post you shoot yourself in the foot, Peter. The information and opinion you provide is valuable and appreciated ~ and we would not have had the benefit of it if Anthony had kept WUWT? as tightly focused as you suggest.
I hope you write more here.
Smokey, re Carbon trading.
This may help.
http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/3145.php
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Smokey, re Russian carbon credits: Russia has a target of Zero, and EU must reduce to meet their target set by Kyoto. So, anything Russia does to cut GHG can generate a carbon credit for sale to EU.
Here is a Bloomberg article from about a year ago:
Jan 29, 2008: Russia’s government set the rules needed for businesses to start trading carbon credits earned by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, creating a market that may be worth more than $1.5 billion a year. “The necessary framework is in place as of today,’’ Vsevolod Gavrilov, the deputy head of the Economy Ministry’s natural resources department, told reporters in Moscow on Monday.
So-called Joint Implementation Projects established under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol allow companies to earn tradable credits for reducing emissions at mines and factories. Russia, the largest producer of greenhouse gases after the US and China, is home to thousands of Soviet-era plants that could generate credits through efficiency upgrades. Curbing gas flaring and modernizing heating systems are among the projects that “will improve the efficiency of the national economy and make it greener,’’ Gavrilov said. Russia ratified Kyoto in 2004.
Though many Russian projects are in the pipeline, until today companies had no way of officially submitting them for approval by the Economy Ministry, said Steve Eaton, director of C6 Capital, a Moscow-based investor and developer of projects to reduce greenhouse-gases in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
“Theoretically, the potential for Russia is enormous, but due to the delays in getting the regulations in place some companies have focused on developing projects in other markets’’ such as China and India, Eaton said by phone.
Russia could produce 300 million tons of so-called carbon dioxide equivalent reduction units in the next five years, former deputy economy minister Andrei Sharonov said in June. That tonnage may be worth 5 billion euros ($7.38 billion), Eaton said. The global market was worth 40 billion euros last year, he said.
The power industry accounts for a quarter of Russia’s greenhouse-gas emissions, according to Anatoly Chubais, chief executive officer of OAO Unified Energy System. Russia’s national power utility is seeking to raise $1 billion by selling emission credits for cutting coal use.
Chubais said in June Moscow-based Unified had 40 investment projects that would cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 35 million tons through 2012 and create credits under Kyoto.”
source:
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/russia-sets-rules-for-carbon-credits/266901/
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Roger, what if CO2 turns out to be a bust in terms of cause and effect? Wouldn’t that put those emission credits into something akin to a junk bond? It seems to me that this scheme reminds me of an illegal pyramid that lines the pockets of only those who get in on the ground floor.
It’s not just the energy. What about food production? I was just watching a video of Robert Taylor who predicted there are going to be huge shortages of food, especially if we continue to use biofuels for energy.
I worry much more about the negative effects of biofuel production than windmill and solar energy production. I can find ways to heat my house. Getting enough to eat may be much harder.
“Wouldn’t that put those emission credits into something akin to a junk bond?”
Not really. It would be more like the last person holding a tulip contract in February of 1637.
“Perhaps those 413 grads with their BS will do a fine job, I don’t know! Mr. Hails seems to think differently. Also, engineering design is one thing.”
One thing to keep in mind. We have never stopped designing and building reactors. We just aren’t installing them on US soil. Westinghouse Nuclear (now owned by Fujitsu, BTW) has been designing, building, and maintaining reactors globally all along. Just because they haven’t built one inside the borders of the US doesn’t mean the US can’t design and build reactors.
Military reactors are built all the time as are reactors for use in space. The New Horizons spacecraft on its way to Pluto is nuclear powered and built in the US. Solar cells don’t work past Mars.
I think the comments by Mr. Hail are myopic. He apparently isn’t aware of the scope of the nuclear industry inside the US and the fact that we have been building reactors all along.
Pamela Gray,
Good questions. Because I am an attorney, I must give this disclaimer. My answer does not constitute legal advice, nor should anyone act upon this. If anyone requires legal advice, they should seek a qualified attorney.
What I believe would happen, if CO2 is found to have no effect, is that the buyer and seller of carbon credits have no recourse against the other. The buyer is the one holding the bag, as the seller has his money. Some have argued for a fraud cause of action against….and there lies the problem. Who ya gonna sue? And in what court?
Also, fraud probably is not a winning argument because there must be intent to deceive. The seller could probably argue he had no intent to deceive, rather, he was just following the existing law.
This is a big issue, and we (lawyers) are arguing about it.
I do not believe the emissions credits are like a bond, because a bond matures someday and can be exchanged for cash, in the amount of its face value. The carbon credit has a life-time, perhaps one year. So, you pay your $30 per metric tonne, and that is good for one year. Then, next year you buy another metric tonne worth, at whatever price it is selling for.
Here is a website for the EU ETS (Emission Trading Scheme).
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/emission/index_en.htm
Another thorny issue is, when companies are forced to invest huge sums to reduce their carbon emissions, who reimburses them when the globe keeps cooling as CO2 content rises? In other words, if this really is bogus, can a business sue anybody? Some companies are going out of business rather than spend money to meet the emissions caps. Do they have a cause of action?
This is a very complex matter, and a lot is riding on those temperature measurements. I don’t have many answers, but then, neither does anyone, to the best of my knowledge. In all the long and loony history of mankind, there has been nothing like this.
As you know, California is the first state in the U.S. to pass a law that requires GHG reductions, and currently is finalizing the details on implementation. A cap-and-trade mechanism is likely, in conjunction with a wider geographic area including most of the Western U.S. and part of Canada.
The reduction for California is more draconian than is Kyoto, as California must reduce GHG by approximately 30 percent by 2020. The actual language is “reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and then an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2050.”
In practice, that works out to California emitting roughly 12 percent of what would be otherwise emitted without the reductions. Imagine an economy powered without any CO2, or at most 12 percent of what is emitted today. No coal. No gasoline. No diesel. No jet fuel. No natural gas. No agriculture (gaseous emissions from the animal’s end that does not chew). No steel or iron. No concrete because manufacturing cement releases huge amounts of CO2, and burns coal or other fuel to provide heat. And that, sports fans, is a problem, because building nuclear plants takes a lot of steel and concrete.
Obama has promised a federal law to mirror California’s law.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
crosspatch, re nuclear plant construction in the U.S.
You may be right. Hails may be myopic.
All the environmental opponents may fold their tents and fade away.
All the regulatory attorneys may have a stroke of conscience, and refuse to bring the lawsuits even if the enviros maintain their tents.
The U.S. congress could pass laws cutting out all the environmental studies, forbidding all lawsuits, and capping the interest rates on construction loans. They could even set prices for construction materials and labor rates so the as-built price truly is $1 billion per 1000 MWe. Or, they could pass a law that mandates all new power plants be nuclear designs.
A year ago, I would have said all those are impossible. Today, after watching Washington bail out some but allowing others to fail, I am not so sure.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Roger E.Sowell, thank you for the link and for your explanation. I have some reading to do now. But as I understand the carbon trading scheme from your description, a country such as Russia, which has $Billions to gain in free money from selling “carbon offsets,” is the same entity that verifies its reductions in CO2. How convenient. There is no independent verification. We are expected to fork over our money and take their word for everything.
Quis custodiat ipsos custodes? Barack Obama? Nancy Pelosi? James Hansen? Elmer Gantry?
This UN CO2 scam is nothing but a massive transfer of wealth from responsible Western taxpayers to gross polluters. Or am I missing something?