Cyprus-Forum.com

[Tim Drayton]

Turkey is engaged in "political blackmail," Michael Glos was quoted by AFP as saying at an energy forum in Berlin, calling on Turkey to stop using the pipeline as leverage to boost their bid for EU membership.

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/finance/10815233.asp

Even Turkish newspapers are referring to it as blackmail!

Do you understand the use of inverted commas in English?

[Get Real!]

You couldn't have missed the following article at the exact same news-source :
Turkish PM says EU deceived by Greek Cypriot administration

The Greek Cypriot administration deceived the European Union when it rejected a United Nations reunification plan for Cyprus in 2004, the Turkish prime minister said on Monday.

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/world/10811004.asp?gid=23

Since when is the outcome of a DEMOCRATIC referendum deceiving?

Perhaps someone who thought otherwise has some explaining to do…

[CBBB]

Turkey is engaged in "political blackmail," Michael Glos was quoted by AFP as saying at an energy forum in Berlin, calling on Turkey to stop using the pipeline as leverage to boost their bid for EU membership.

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/finance/10815233.asp

Even Turkish newspapers are referring to it as blackmail!

Do you understand the use of inverted commas in English?

Yes.

[Tim Drayton]

Turkey is engaged in "political blackmail," Michael Glos was quoted by AFP as saying at an energy forum in Berlin, calling on Turkey to stop using the pipeline as leverage to boost their bid for EU membership.

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/finance/10815233.asp

Even Turkish newspapers are referring to it as blackmail!

Do you understand the use of inverted commas in English?

Yes.

Well, come on. The newspaper isn't referring to it as blackmail; the newspaper is referring to a German who is referring to it as "blackmail". That should be within your grasp if not doesntmatter's.

[RAFAELLA]

Turkey blackmailing EU over gas pipe: German minister
http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1232457422.01

Turkey Blackmailing EU Over Gas Pipeline, German Minister Says
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3962409,00.html

[paliometoxo]

is that hwo turkey will join europe? by blackmailing the eu?????lol keep it up turkey not even their army can do anything about it now.

Ankara has opened talks on 10 out of the 35 policy areas it needs for EU entry but has provisionally completed negotiations on just one. The EU has frozen eight chapters as Ankara refuses to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriots.

lmao refusing to complete the chapters and still hoping for eu... not in a million years will turkey join

[YFred]

All this anti-Turkish sentiment, goodness gracious me. Well, are we not forgetting the oil-pipeline from Iraq through Turkey. What about the most important commodity of the future? Water? what a successful venture that turned out to be. But than again it was Hellenic water, see. It was blessed by the two Archbishops, and you paid 4 times as much for it. Beeing pig headed is not an easy matter. Judging by the current climate change indicators sooner or later, you will need Turkish water. I suspect you will pay Greek price for it though.

Enjoy it when it happens.

[Get Real!]

Judging by the current climate change indicators sooner or later, you will need Turkish water. I suspect you will pay Greek price for it though.

Enjoy it when it happens.

Y-fronts has done it again! You need to stop attending class without preparing first... The RoC has more desalting plants on the way with the first either completed or near completion.

[YFred]

Now think of the probability not only fuel but also WATER being provided by the likes of Erdogan and the deep state of Turkey.

Obviouslhy there is no coercion. There was no coercion in the case of Russia and the Ukraine, just old fashioned bazaar mentality and pressing home an advantage. In the case of Turkey it is the advantage of cheap non Russian gas from central Asia. If you want it you will have to accomodate us, is the message.

Trying it on is Erdogan's prerogative. Accepting it or not, is a challenge for Europeans to prove they are not pimps. We wait and we see.

The meaning of coercion:

Coercion (/ko(ʊ)ˈɝ.ʒ(ə)n/) is the practice of compelling a person or manipulating them to behave in an involuntary way (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation, trickery, or some other form of pressure or force. These are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way. Coercion may involve the actual infliction of physical pain/injury or psychological harm in order to enhance the credibility of a threat. The threat of further harm may then lead to the cooperation or obedience of the person being coerced. Torture is one of the most extreme examples of coercion i.e. severe pain is inflicted on victims until they give interrogators the desired information.

The term is associated with circumstances which involve the unethical use of threats or harm to achieve some objective, but maybe equally often applies to other means of influence such as sweet talking, begging, charming, lying, and seduction. It may serve as a form of justification for a conclusion in a logical fallacy or non-logical argument.

Since when did EU become a victim of Turkey?

[zan]

Judging by the current climate change indicators sooner or later, you will need Turkish water. I suspect you will pay Greek price for it though.

Enjoy it when it happens.

Y-fronts has done it again! You need to stop attending class without preparing first... The RoC has more desalting plants on the way with the first either completed or near completion.

Don't know the date!!!!!!!

Water, but at a terrible price
By Elias Hazou
CYPRUS is dangerously close to incurring massive EU fines for its carbon dioxide emissions. Already, the Electricity Authority of Cyprus has set budgeted €20 million for the inevitable penalty, and guess what, consumer—it’s going on your electric bill.

Under an EU directive, by 2010 Cyprus is required to generate six per cent of its total energy production from renewable energy sources (RES) and the preliminary target for 2020 is even higher, at 13 per cent.

Two years away from the 2010 target, the island is generating just 1 per cent in RES. The government is banking heavily on private investors to take an interest in wind farms to make up the deficit, but the project has yet to take off the ground.

They may not be the primary suspects where carbon emissions are concerned, but it’s no secret that desalination plants are notorious energy guzzlers.

Electricity is generated by burning heavy fuel oil. Desalination plants draw power from the grid. The more electricity is produced, the more fuel is burned, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere. Thus desalination plants indirectly contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions.

There are currently two plants on the island, one in Larnaca, the other at Dhekelia, each churning out some 50,000 tonnes of potable water per day. And their capacity is to be upgraded to 60,000 tonnes.

According to Andreas Manoli, head of the Electro-Mechanical Division at the Water Development Department, the Larnaca facility uses up 4.52 kilowatt-hours (kWh) for every cubic metre of clean water produced.

The plant at Dhekelia eats up 4.6 kWh, and a third facility at Moni (which goes operational this week with a capacity of 20,000 tonnes a day) will burn 4.73kWh.

The kWh is the product of power in kilowatts multiplied by time in hours.

Doing the maths, for the Larnaca plant the total consumption over a year would be: 4.52 x 50,000 x 365 = 82,490,000 kWh.

To put that into perspective, the combined energy consumption of the plants in Larnaca and Dhekelia would be the same as 5,000 air condition units working at full blast

Incidentally, two more facilities are in the pipeline: one in Paphos with a capacity of 20,000, and another at the site of the Vasilikos power plant, with a capacity of 50,000. These are expected to go operational next year.

The Sunday Mail has seen government figures indicating that the contribution of desalination plants to the island’s greenhouse gas emissions has risen three-fold since 1997. In that year, the Dhekelia plant (the one in Larnaca was not ready yet) gave out 1.02 percent of total emissions. In 2002, the figure rose to 3.77 percent, and in 2005 it was 3.45 percent.

It goes without saying that the imminent addition of new plants would further burden the atmosphere.

While conceding that desalination plants are energy intensive, Manoli calls them “a necessary evil”.

This, he added, was not out of the ordinary, as it applied to most such facilities around the world. The plants in Cyprus, he said, employed “relatively efficient technology”.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a government source told the Sunday Mail that it was not “fair” that Cyprus was being asked to comply with EU emission quotas.

Like Malta, the source argued, Cyprus should also have asked for an exemption on joining the bloc.

“Being cut off geographically from the European continent, we have no access to European power grids or natural gas pipelines. We cannot buy energy from others, like most European countries do.

“Nor of course do we have access to France’s nuclear power plants, which feed electricity to neighbouring countries, meaning that these countries automatically get to cut their carbon emissions.”

But this argument, though it may sound valid, is actually deceptive, says Environment Commissioner Charalambos Theopemptou.

“Actually it sounds more like an excuse. The real question we should be asking is what we are doing to reduce our CO2 emissions.

“Are we promoting renewable energy sources? No. What about all the hype over photovoltaic systems? It has stayed just that - hype. Overall, the picture is not good,” Theopemptou said.

The commissioner also commented on the argument that Cyprus could not do without desalination plants.

“Again, that’s not entirely true. With better water management over the years, we might well have avoided building all these plants. We have 50,000 boreholes across the island, and we’ve virtually exhausted them all.

“And why should water, such a scarce resource in Cyprus, be so cheap? Why do the Germans, for example, charge consumers twice as much as we do?”

To play the devil’s advocate for a moment, one could say that the government does seem to be trying to get its act in gear. It has expressed a “keen” interest, the Sunday Mail is told, in a proposed project where concentrated solar power is used to feed a small electricity plant as well as drive a desalination unit.

President Demetris Christofias referred to the project during a speech at a EuroMed summit this summer, where he highlighted the fact that Cyprus would be breaking new ground in the field of RES.

Technology harnessing the sun’s rays has been applied elsewhere, but this would be the first time that engineers would be building an all-in-one facility.

But the plan is still very much in its infancy. A feasibility study is currently being carried out by the Cyprus Institute, a Nicosia-based research foundation, in collaboration with scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois.

The idea was discussed during a seminar organised last week by the Cyprus Institute.

It would take some 16 to 18 months for the study to be completed, and assuming the design got the OK (read: location, town planning permits, etc.) it would be three years before the facility went online.

That might prove to be too little, too late.


Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2009