Say what?
Well, it is not commonly used as a part of dentistry in the US these days. However, you can ask for it. My wife forbade me to get my latest fillings with gold.
I have 4 gold (alloy) crowns (molars) that were installed in the '90s. They are not “teeth”, but they are the primary visible part, and they are fairly large. The price difference between gold and ceramic was – there was no price difference. Gold is more compact than ceramic, and it is a non-bioactive metal.
The use of gold in dentistry seems to common to several quite different cultures around the world. I guess it went out of fashion in the US….except maybe amongst rappers.
It’s basically the ideal material, except for the aesthetic aspect.
So Saudi Arabia has sided with Russia to cut production to raise prices. We need to ramp up production and stick it to both of them. We are at war and Europe needs energy to get through this. What the Saudis don’t realize is that this is going to drive the green movement even harder. They’re cutting their own noses off for no good reason.
I’m starting to think it’s time for us to cut the Saud regime off. No more weapons/weapons systems from Uncle Sam. Oh, and the 101st will be along shortly to take back what you already have. Nice little kingdom you’ve got there, shame if something happened to it.
I like the use of the river to protect Ukrainian flanks. This source predicts they’ll take Kherson City by Dec or Jan.
He admits the Russians may outnumber the Ukrainians after the mobilization brings more men.
9 1/2 min
It’s going to be a tough fight this time. Much different than Kharkiv.
Cite https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/05/putin-appears-to-adm
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It doesn’t help that Biden has been calling Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah state’ among other things, and that his administration has been working furiously to resurrect the Iran deal. It also doesn’t help that the west is planning to end fossil fuels.
The combination of those three things has made the U.S. pretty much the enemy of Saudi Arabia and other gulf states. They are predictably aligning with the other side. We shouldn’t be surprised if we’ve lost clout with them. We’re also losing India and Africa, who want fossil fuels we are trying to stop them from having.
This, and the situation Europe finds itself in with respect to energy and probably the war in Ukraine, was the result of the incredibly foolish way we’ve gone about our energy transition.
Maybe. But I’m seeing credible estimates of the number of men who fled from Russia, in the last month, in the range of 300,000 - 400,000. That is a lot. This is many times – five to ten times – the number of draft age Americans who fled to Canada during the entire Vietnam war, and U.S. population then was around 200 million compared to 144 million in Russia today. The disparity in population would be much more if age adjusted. So – Russia’s mobilization is in trouble.
The absolute shit-show of a partial mobilization so far does not bode well for a general mobilization. And Russia is now digging up old T62 tanks, so they are running low on equipment as well. I don’t see how they arm and transport and train a million men. It just doesn’t seem possible.
off topic hidden by What Exit?
Sounds more like: never do energy transition. And to continue to blame the ones doing the change, not Russia
Three myths about the global energy crisis
The second fallacy is that today’s global energy crisis is a clean energy crisis. This is an absurd claim. I talk to energy policymakers all the time and none of them complains of relying too much on clean energy. On the contrary, they wish they had more. They regret not moving faster to build solar and wind plants, to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and vehicles or to extend the lifetime of nuclear plants. More low-carbon energy would have helped ease the crisis — and a faster transition from fossil fuels towards clean energy represents the best way out of it.
When people misleadingly blame clean energy and climate policies for today’s energy crisis they are, intentionally or not, moving the spotlight away from the real culprits — the gas supply crunch and Russia.
Fatih Birol
Executive Director at International Energy Agency (IEA)
Published Sep 7, 2022
Not to mention the economic effects of so many military-age men moving en masse. Even if they do find suitable replacements (doubtful), it will double the negative economic effects (300k moving out, 300k going to the front line).
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I thought Saudi Arabia was in favor of the Iran nuclear deal?
May I suggest this OPEC/oil price/energy transition stuff would be more appropriate for another thread except insofar as it’s directly related to the war?
off topic post, hidden by What Exit?
No, I’ve already explained what a sane ‘transition’ would look like:
- More natural gas and more fracking, as an interim measure because renewables rely on natural gas to make them work.
- MUCH more nuclear power
- phaseout of fossil fuels as renewables take their place, and not before. And by ‘taking their place’ that means if you are going to shut down baseload power like coal plants you will either need some form of storage, or you need to ramp up nuclear. Or, you need WAY more natural gas.
- Places that have great solar conditions should do more of that. Places with hydro capacity should develop more hydro. All of the above should be the watchphrase now.
- At no point should you put yourself in a position where your grid can crash if the wind doesn’t blow while the sun isn’t shining. Because that happens a lot.
As of today, we should have MORE natural gas than we had before the transition. We should have less coal than we do now, and we should be building lots of nuclear plants.
Natural gas gets phased out when we have a solution for load-following AND the capacity to replace natural gas. But natural gas was always the obvious ‘transition’ fuel. It has half the CO2 of coal, can be ramped up and down quickly, and it’s cheap.
WIthout China and Russia and India onboard, our solution has to make energy MORE abundant and CHEAPER. Otherwise, heavy industry will just move to those countries, and they will find they have a huge advantage over us - so long as they keep burning fossil fuels.
I have been consistant on this for years and years. But if you want to continue this, start another global warming or energy thread. This has strayed away from the war in Ukraine
.
Modnote: I’ll make it official, get it out of this thread or drop the hijack.
No more on oil and renewables unless directly related to this thread.
I hid several posts that were off-topic on oil issues.
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No, Iran is Saudi Arabia’s enemy, and the Iran deal would put a whole lot of money and resources in Iran’s coffers.
Saudi Patience With Biden Running Out Over Iran Deal
The war in Ukraine is part of this. Putin has been empowered with money selling gas to Europe, with new alliances as countries like India and Saudi Arabia pull away from America over energy policy, and by his belief that he could keep major European nations, especially Germany, from getting involved due to energy blackmail.
We are headed for a bipolar world just like the cold war, only this time it’s going to be fought over energy. One half of the world wants to ‘transition’ to a low-energy model, while the other half is starved for it. The war in Ukraine is just the start of the problems we are heading for.
And the thing is, he was aware that if imprisoned for resisting the draft or pressed into service in spite of it, he would anyway be going into an environment where he would be brutally abused and placed in greater danger of death, to put him in his place for having dared to say “I don’t want to”.