Can't say I can speak for Ukraine and Taiwan as you do but I would imagine Taiwan wouldn't want a status qou with missiles striking Taipei on an almost daily basis.
I think Taiwanese are being pretty long sighted. Sentiment has been steadily shifting in favour of eventual full independence for a long time, but the consensus is still clearly to defer it, perhaps indefinitely.
I also reject the characterisation of Ukraine or Taiwan as chess pieces. In both cases the western policy is not to push either country towards this or that decision, or this or that status. The policy is to support the self determination of Ukrainians and Taiwanese respectively.
The trigger for the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine was not any statement or decision made in the west, it was the policies of the Ukrainian parliament supported by popular demonstrations of ordinary Ukrainians in Kyiv. Likewise China isn't concerned about any US inciting action in respect of Taiwan, it's worried about Taiwan itself choosing to declare independence.
In the referendum on Ukrainian independence in the 90s every single oblast voted for Ukrainian independence, including Crimea. In Donetsk and Luhansk it was over 80% with very high turnout.
The idea that ethnic Russian means pro Russian is propaganda. It’s just not true. Azov may be unpleasant, but they are undeniably pro Ukrainian, were based in and recruited from Russian speaking areas where under 1% of the population spoke Ukrainian at home. Their web sites used to all be in Russian.
Was stuck on level 7 and came back to the thread to read the comments. Can't belive your first prompt actually printed the answer in a such easy manner.
In regarding the Mammoth there is some who claims that bringing the Mammoth back would help recreate the northern subarctic steppe grassland ecosystem that flourished in Siberia during the last glacial period. This would increase the animal density in Siberia and so on.
Since parts of Northern Europe still experiences Post-glacial rebound and will rise faster than the expected rise of the ocean level I find this project unnecessary. (I am still a sucker for megaprojects though)
“the post-glacial rebound of northern Great Britain (up to 10 cm per century) is causing a corresponding downward movement of the southern half of the island (up to 5 cm per century)”
IIRC, the Low Countries also are sinking because of post-glacial rebound.
The United States do not have the ability to degrade or deny a gps signal based on location unless that particular location has a physical GPS jammer. I don't see what the US would gain from disrupting civilian airtraffic navigation. Just stop with your "either is a likely cause here"-spiel.
> The United States do not have the ability to degrade or deny a gps signal based on location
This was a feature designed into GPS from the beginning. They just stop transmitting the C/A code from satellites visible to the battlespace and a device can't bootstrap or maintain a location fix. Approved devices entering the battlespace (say a ballistic missile fired from a ship over the horizon) can continue to maintain high precision location using the P code.
Block III sattelites have also started transmitting M code, which is a second generation of military only GPS that claims to be unjammable and unspoofable.
In a major departure from previous GPS designs, the M-code is intended to be broadcast from a high-gain directional antenna, in addition to a wide angle (full Earth) antenna. The directional antenna's signal, termed a spot beam, is intended to be aimed at a specific region (i.e., several hundred kilometers in diameter) and increase the local signal strength by 20 dB (10× voltage field strength, 100× power). A side effect of having two antennas is that, for receivers inside the spot beam, the GPS satellite will appear as two GPS signals occupying the same position.
That's an ability to improve service for users of M-code receivers, which AFAIK are only available to the military (and it's new technology, so I'd expect it to be unsupported even by most military receivers currently in use).
The M-code is transmitted in the same L1 and L2 frequencies already in use
Nothing says that they have to transmit M-codes from the spot beam antenna.
In fact, since the M-codes are hardly used, it's pretty certain they're using that antenna for something else. How very convenient that those antennae are designed to transmit on the same frequency as the "ordinary" antenna.
Today I took the time to have a closer look. Turns out, the directional antenna for M-code is only present on Block III GPS satellites, and only four of those are currently in service:
So this is definitely not the correct explanation.
Besides, even if there were enough Block III satellites in orbit to provide constant cover of the affected area, it would still make little sense to tie up their most advanced capabilities to jam their own legacy signal, when you could just turn off the legacy signal when transiting the target area and provide your own military with continued service using the directional antenna.
And of course, Russia has its own satellite navigation system
> The M-code is transmitted in the same L1 and L2 frequencies already in use
Let's quote the whole thing, shall we?
The M-code is transmitted in the same L1 and L2 frequencies already in use by the previous military code, the P(Y) code. The new signal is shaped to place most of its energy at the edges (away from the existing P(Y) and C/A carriers).
I disagree with the article you posted in almost its entirely.
> president, Viktor Yanukovich, was forced to flee for his life.
What Ukraine experienced in 2014 was not a coup. The Ukrainian parliament deposed him after he left the country and after the parliament had order the security forces to stand down and leave the capital. I could go on how factually and biased that article is.
What's next? You're gonna claim Cuba is the fault of the Soviet union?
Not necessarily. Northern most part of Scandinavia have among the lowest prices for electricity in Northern and Central Europe. Most of the electricity there comes from Hydropower. It's also the same area where Sweden makes it green steel. Cheap and green electricity is not an oxymoron or impossibility.
Traditionally Swedish electricity has been about equal parts nuclear and hydro. Nuclear usually running full out, with hydro used to regulate for daily and seasonal variation.
In recent years they have built a lot of wind, as of 2019 providing 12% of electricity, today almost certainly more. But yes, like you said, hydro is used as the backup for wind.
I do not understand the argument for hydroelectric. The risk never seems worth the reward. Clean now? Yes. Cheap now? Yes. Potentially catastrophic? Yes. This feels like an unnecessary risk to take on. The lessons of Banqiao Dam, Vajont Dam, and Sempor Dam seem to be forgotten too quickly.
Despite that I think that both nuclearpower and hydropower are good and safe sources of electricity.
Putin has not shown to be an reliable ally. The annexation of Crimea and the ongoing hybrid war in east Ukraine is one such example.
Putin does not want a strong independent ally next to Russia. He either wants puppet states such as Belarus as allies or a weak and fractured European union. For all the faults the US have they are still better allies than Russia by several lightyears.
May be if granted a buffer zone of influence, Russia will be a reliable partner to Europe. To me it is Europe (and the US) that is picking ideological battlegrounds, and showing eagerness to start a new cold war.
Let me rephrase that for you from the perspective of someone who lived on Russia's doorstep for many years.
You mean to say "Maybe if we let Russia subjugate a lot more people and confine them into an evil exploitative system against their will".
That's the big difference between Europe's zone of influence and Russia's zone of influence. People want to be part of the EU (the greatest thing that ever happened to the country I was born in). People want to give their lives to not be part of Russia.
