The world is at a major geopolitical crossroads, and the American media doesn't seem to be knowledgeable enough to understand why Putin is so interested in Ukraine. It always gets played as Putin wants to absorb back into Russian Ukraine and the other countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. That is almost certainly true, but far too shallow an assessment. Take away its nuclear weapons and Russia is at best a second tier country with only one real asset, petroleum, gas and oil. The country's whole economy hangs on this and as the world leaves the carbon era, the fragile Russian economy will be devastated unless something fundamental changes. So consider what Ukraine has to offer and you see what Putin is really up to.
1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores;
2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves;
2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world's reserves);
2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);
2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves;
3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)
4th in the world by the total value of natural resources;
7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)
Ukraine is an agricultural country:
1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;
3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world's volume);
1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil;
2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports;
3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world;
4th largest producer of potatoes in the world;
5th largest rye producer in the world;
5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons);
8th place in the world in wheat exports;
9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs;
16th place in the world in cheese exports.
Ukraine can meet the food needs of 600 million people.
Ukraine is an industrialized country:
1st in Europe in ammonia production;
2-е Europe's and 4th largest natural gas pipeline system in the world (142.5 bln cubic meters of gas throughput capacity in the EU);
3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants;
3rd place in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km);
3rd place in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment;
3rd largest iron exporter in the world
4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world;
4th world's largest manufacturer of rocket launchers;
4th place in the world in clay exports
4th place in the world in titanium exports
8th place in the world in exports of ores and concentrates;
9th place in the world in exports of defence industry products;
10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons).
Source:Ukrainian Congress Committee of America Ukrainian World Congress
Credit: Leah Millis
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by phone Sunday, reaffirming that the U.S. and its allies would respond “swiftly and decisively” if Russia decides to invade the country.
“President Biden reaffirmed the commitment of the United States to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and he “made clear that the United States would respond swiftly and decisively, together with its allies and partners, to any further Russian aggression against Ukraine,” according to a White house description of the conversation.
Biden and Zelenskyy, the White House said, “agreed on the importance of continuing to pursue diplomacy and deterrence in response to Russia’s military build-up on Ukraine’s borders.” The last time the two leaders spoke was Jan. 2.
Their call, which lasted about 50 minutes, came a day after Biden warned his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that the consequences of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which U.S. officials have said could be imminent, would be “swift and severe,” according […]
Stephan: This paper came from nature one of the most prestigious science journals in the world. I mention that to make the point that this warning should be taken very seriously, except it isn't. Climate change is changing the entire matrix of life on earth, and most of us, in government and out, are just worried about who won the Super Bowl or some equivalent trivia.
Where we should be building international structures to deal with climate change globally, we are, instead, looking at another war fracturing Europe and, more locally, White morons enraged because Black people might be treated equally.
Tropical wetlands, such as the Pantanal in Brazil, are a major source of methane emissions. Credit: Carl De Souza / AFP / Getty
Methane concentrations in the atmosphere raced past 1,900 parts per billion last year, nearly triple preindustrial levels, according to data released in January by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Scientists says the grim milestone underscores the importance of a pledge made at last year’s COP26 climate summit to curb emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 28 times as potent as CO2.
The growth of methane emissions slowed around the turn of the millennium, but began a rapid and mysterious uptick around 2007. The spike has caused many researchers to worry that global warming is creating a feedback mechanism that will cause ever more methane to be released, making it even harder to rein in rising temperatures.
“Methane levels are growing dangerously fast,” says Euan Nisbet, an Earth scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, in Egham, UK. The emissions, which seem to have accelerated in the past few years, are […]
Stephan: You would think after the disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima, and the growing problem of nuclear waste that intelligent government planners would decide to let nuclear wither and waste away. But, of course, the corporations that control the nuclear industry still have the power and funds to rent Congress members, and influence the Biden administration, and this $6 billion commitment to nuclear is an example of how that plays out to their benefit.
One of the two now closed reactors of the San Onofre nuclear generating station located south of San Clemente, California. Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy said on Friday it is seeking input from utilities, communities and advocates as it develops its new program to boost struggling nuclear power plants with $6 billion in credits.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed last year tasked the DOE with creating the Civil Nuclear Credit Program to distribute the credits to nuclear plants.
Nuclear power generates power virtually free of emissions blamed for climate change, but the industry has lost 12 reactors since 2013 amid competition from renewable energy and plants that burn plentiful natural gas. In addition, safety costs have soared after the 2011 tsunami at Japan’s Fukushima plant.
“We’re moving as fast as we can,” Andrew Griffith, the DOE deputy assistant secretary for nuclear fuel cycle and supply chain said in an interview about implementation of the credit program. “But we also want to get it right.” The law intends to help reactors in states with […]
Stephan: We are undergoing a major cultural transformation. The rightwing uber-rich have been funding scientists and physicians for years, and from their research have learned that fear can be politicized and weaponized through spewing dis- and mis-information out as news. They learned that conservative Americans particularly are easily manipulated in this way, particularly in an environment in which we are becoming a majority minority nation, and there is already a lot of fear about that amongst about a third of the White people. To anyone who deals with facts not fantasies it is becoming increasingly clear that the entire country is being played by a small group of kleptocrats seeking to change American to an authoritarian country they can control.
A little more than a year after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Americans remain deeply divided about the events of that day and the ongoing congressional investigation into what happened.
Last year, in the immediate wake of Jan. 6, about half of U.S. adults (52%) said Donald Trump bore a lot of responsibility for the violence and destruction committed by some of his supporters that day. Today, 43% say this. The share of adults who say Trump bears some responsibility has changed little since then, but more Americans now say Trump bears no responsibility for the mayhem caused by his supporters that day (32% today vs. 24% then). The new survey was conducted Jan. 10-17, prior to several developments involving the Jan. 6 investigation and Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.
Among both Republicans and Democrats, there have been declines in the shares who say Trump bears responsibility for the violence and destruction at the Capitol. The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say he bears a lot of responsibility has declined from 18% a year ago to 10% today. Nearly six-in-ten Republicans (57%) currently say he has no responsibility at all for the violence, up from […]
Melinda Wenner Moyer, Contributing Editor - Scientific American
Stephan: Over the last 20 years the American culture has undergone a dramatic, but far too little remarked cultural transformation. It is a major anthropological event: The rise of social media and commercial digital media, coupled with the decline and often demise of local newspaper coverage, has allowed for the weaponization of disinformation and fantasies. This trend is far enough along that, as this article describes, it now encompasses children. The American culture has become one of manipulated ignorance. whole industries have developed specifically to spew out this crap, in order to accomplish political purposes. Fox, NewsMax, Infowars are examples.
Credit: Taylor Callery
When Amanda Gardner, an educator with two decades of experience, helped to start a new charter elementary and middle school outside of Seattle last year, she did not anticipate teaching students who denied that the Holocaust happened, argued that COVID is a hoax and told their teacher that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Yet some children insisted that these conspiracy fantasies were true. Both misinformation, which includes honest mistakes, and disinformation, which involves an intention to mislead, have had “a growing impact on students over the past 10 to 20 years,” Gardner says, yet many schools do not focus on the issue. “Most high schools probably do some teaching to prevent plagiarism, but I think that’s about it.”
Children, it turns out, are ripe targets for fake news. Age 14 is when kids often start believing in unproven conspiratorial ideas, according to a study published in September 2021 in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Many teens also have trouble assessing the credibility of online information. In a 2016 […]
