General estimates are that El Niño is 30-60% more intense due to human caused climate change and will only get more intense.
We are adding energy to the system via our excessive consumption. The ocean sucks up a massive amount of that energy. Warm water expands, among other things(hurricanes).
That would be against the law in the EU, provided the manufacturer is still in business of course. It's I think 15 years after they stop making the model they have to have the parts still available.
Makes sense too as the average age of cars is going up.
There is certainly a bunch of bad stuff in meat (and in industrially produced vegetables too) but that is separate from the established carcinogens contained in processed meat, which is AFAIK mostly nitrates from curing salts reacting with the heme from blood (vegetables often contain nitrates too but they don't contain blood). Which is why the use of curing salts is heavily restricted (and antioxidants added) but OTOH still needed to restrict the growth of Clostridium botulinum.
The other one would be carcinogens from frying.
> I have hope that at some point Russia too will begin to understand that the days of empire are behind us and that it is better to create than destroy.
I don't have that hope but if there is any path to that, it leads through many many coffins.
> how much of this is because of Russian influence in America. That could well have been a much larger factor than we know at the moment
There is some influence but it's not the largest part. It's just the robber barons of the world form natural coalitions and help each other.
Joining the Eurozone makes sense if your country does most of the business in euros. Which Hungary does. Czechia and I guess Poland do too and should have switched long time ago. Worth mentioning also that all of them legally committed to that on accession to the EU back in 2004; of the new EU members from CE, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Baltic countries adopted the Euro and I don't identify a fascist streak there.
> Joining the Eurozone makes sense if your country does most of the business in euros.
It doesn't. As Yanis Varoufakis put it nicely[0] you can't have fixed exchange rate with Germany (or other EU countries), shared customs and exchange union, balanced budget and a functioning society.
When you have two different economical and political policies it's a design guaranteed to generate problems.
> I don't identify a fascist streak there.
> Croatia
See there is your problem. Your fascist detector needs to be recalibrated.
Croatia has a *strong* nostalgia for the good old times of Nazi Collaborations (Nazis were less thrilled and found their handling of lesser races both brutal[1] and lax[2], which makes sense Ustashe hated the Serbs mainly, and Jews weren't that high on their list).
I don't agree with Varoufakis regarding more or less anything he says; he's been consistently wrong for a long time.
You picked one state from seven, while not mentioning fascist elements in Hungary or Poland (before Tusk). Great calibration on your side.
So some other things you failed to mention:
- most CE economies are very open and so big businesses already do internal accounting and/or facturation in euros anyway
- a move to euros would save transaction costs for companies and individuals
- in Hungary at least this would also probably lower mortagage costs (they had some issues with mortgages in Swiss francs in the past as far as I remember)
> You picked one state from seven, while not mentioning fascist elements in Hungary or Poland (before Tusk). Great calibration on your side.
Because I know how off mark you are about Croatian politics. Not going to wade in Bulgarian or Romanian politics that are way less on my radar. But each of them has their own flavour of - if not straight fascist then some far-right tumour.
Also, I didn't state that having your own currency is enough. It's a necessary but not sufficient condition.
What I do know all major Euro economies are experiencing constant crises that never end (Greece, Italy, Spain, France, ...). And that is excellent breeding ground for the populist movement.
Far-right appearing more business friendly is what pushes the scale in its favor.
> he's been consistently wrong for a long time.
He's also been right where it matters. Euro as a whole just produces more and more crises.
> Because I know how off mark you are about Croatian politics.
I am sorry, but what are you on about? Your thesis is that Eurozone accession enables future fascism ("Ngl joining the EuroZone (what Magyar did) is precisely the myopic decision that allows future fascist to rise to power."). What does that have to do with Croatian fascist leanings, which existed long before they joined the EU? Precisely nothing. So why are you mentioning them in connection with the euro?
> What I do know all major Euro economies are experiencing constant crises that never end
Compared to what?
> And that is excellent breeding ground for the populist movement.
Compared to what?
> Euro as a whole just produces more and more crises.
Compared to what?
There is no serious analysis, only talking points about perpetual EU crisis which are exactly what the fascist movements are pushing, so yeah.
> Your thesis is that Eurozone accession enables future fascism ("Ngl joining the EuroZone (what Magyar did) is precisely the myopic decision that allows future fascist to rise to power.").
Not really. I said it creates future crises that the fascists are usually best poised to seize.
If one country in the EU experiences problems (e.g. France/Greece/Italy/Ireland), then the whole EU will experience problems (because they have the same currency).
So rather than one country in Europe having its problems and dealing with it internally, most of Europe has a problem. And worst yet, if the crisis causes the euro to devalue, it will benefit only the net exporter countries, causing massive divergence in economies of different countries.
I hope you can see how this will cause losers to be more spiteful, while making winners more arrogant. That spite is great place for various far-right monsters to spawn.
It's a myopic decision because, as you said, it definitely has some benefits for companies and consumers alike, but long-term it sentences you to joint economic pain, without relief.
> What does that have to do with Croatian fascist leanings
It was a response to your quote:
> ...of the new EU members from CE, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Baltic countries adopted the Euro and I don't identify a fascist streak there.
You obviously are not good at identifying a fascist streak.
> Compared to what?
Stable EU states that aren't in the EZ. Like, say Norway or Switzerland.
> only talking points about perpetual EU crisis which are exactly what the fascist movements are pushing, so yeah.
Fascists can also talk about massive poverty. That doesn't auto-disqualify it. Their approach to solving it does.
This is slightly different from mine: either tighter EU integration or disbanding the Euro.
> I hope you can see how this will cause losers to be more spiteful, while making winners more arrogant.
These are again fact-free arguments based on feelings. Who are the winners and who are the losers? Germany as a big exporter certainly doesn't look like a winner now, does it? Spain is doing better than Germany since Covid in GDP growth.
And of course we need the EU markets to be converging and you can't really do that with 27 currencies and monetary policies. Why do we need them converging? Because businesses like the US or China greatly benefit from having huge economies of scale in their internal markets, which makes it much easier to expand after that. The EU has to come as close as possible to that too, otherwise we have no chance and will suffer much greater economic pain. But I guess Varoufakis doesn't tell you that. He just makes you long for the great times where you had to pay for each currency exchange and every bank transaction to other EU countries.
As for far-right monsters, the nazis are currently the most powerful parties in Italy, France, Germany, Austria among others. So your thesis still doesn't make sense.
> You obviously are not good at identifying a fascist streak.
You still don't understand what I wrote. There is no fascist streak that would distinguish countries that adopted the euro from those that didn't.
> Stable EU states that aren't in the EZ. Like, say Norway or Switzerland.
> These are again fact-free arguments based on feelings. Who are the winners and who are the losers? Germany as a big exporter certainly doesn't look like a winner now, does it? Spain is doing better than Germany since Covid in GDP growth.
You can't just weld two different time periods while ignoring what changed in-between.
Germany around 2008 was an exporter that benefited indirectly (devalued Euro) and directly (rescuing German banks) from Greek crisis. Germany today is basically deindustrialising at a rapid pace. It's exports can't compete with Chinese nor do they have access to cheap materials, and that's disregarding tariffs on their exports.
> You still don't understand what I wrote. There is no fascist streak that would distinguish countries that adopted the euro from those that didn't.
And you don't understand what I'm conveying. Far-right and fascist voices always exist. And no, Euro isn't the only possible crisis that can happen.
But those that happen are spread and amplified.
Want example of this happening? It's happening right now. France crisis turned into a France+Italy+Greece+Belgium crisis.
> And of course we need the EU markets to be converging and you can't really do that with 27 currencies and monetary policies.
You can't have them converge (also converging to what?) even with same currency! If say Gambia adopted the US dollar it wouldn't help Gambia at all. In fact quite the opposite. Only once there is a political union of US and Gambia can we talk about possibility of convergence.
> But those that happen are spread and amplified.
> France crisis turned into a France+Italy+Greece+Belgium crisis.
So first of all what crisis are we talking about here, a fiscal crisis (there is definitely one in France) or the sometimes violent protests? And can you spell out the exact connection to eurozone in this 'spreading'? Also why did it spread only to 4 Eurozone countries and not the rest?
> You can't have them converge even with same currency!
why?
> If say Gambia
We don't have a Gambia here and you understand a common currency is only one part of the project. What we have are many different countries that are indeed converging - for example we've got car factories in countries that never had them before on this scale. Can you without looking it up say which EU member produces the most cars per capita? But we have to do more of that convergence.
And yeah, a political union would help, but then we both know it's not possible currently, so an ever tighter federation has to suffice for now.
> (also converging to what?)
to freely (as freely as possible) doing business across internal EU borders, in this case
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