Fossil gas is a feedstock for the Haber-Bosch process used to make fertiliser (but invented for making early 20th Century munitions).
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…“And Secretary of State Rubio said publicly that Iran is producing offensive weapons faster than the US and its allies can manufacture interceptors to stop them. And the Secretary of War suggested this war may go on for months.
The US is historically structured for periodic high intensity bursts, not
sustained engagement. The assumption has always been overwhelming force, short duration, then restock. But that model does not hold if a conflict drags on. Especially a large conflict.”@urlyman and with the US stock of weapons quickly depleting, what will happen in other regions? North Korea against South Korea? China and Taiwan? Russia in Europe? Who will use this opportunity to use force?
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@urlyman and with the US stock of weapons quickly depleting, what will happen in other regions? North Korea against South Korea? China and Taiwan? Russia in Europe? Who will use this opportunity to use force?
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…“And by the way, each of those interceptors cost millions of dollars and takes months to manufacture.
A PAC-3 interceptor costs like $4 million. In contrast, a Shahed drone made in Iran costs around $50K. That’s a cost-exchange ratio of about nearly 100:1 in Iran’s favor. So Iran doesn't need to win the Air War outright. They probably just need to keep up intermittent launches long enough to limit what the US can shoot back with…
@urlyman One should obviously compare with the cost of the damage the incoming drone or missile is likely to do, not with the cost of it.
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@urlyman One should obviously compare with the cost of the damage the incoming drone or missile is likely to do, not with the cost of it.
@tml Sure.
My point of the above thread is not to cast false certainties or wash away complexity. It’s to try and bring to the fore the fragile interconnectedness that the Secretary of War and his dick-swinging colleagues are blowing up
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@tml Sure.
My point of the above thread is not to cast false certainties or wash away complexity. It’s to try and bring to the fore the fragile interconnectedness that the Secretary of War and his dick-swinging colleagues are blowing up
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@martinvermeer the Straits of Hormuz are the epicentre of the mother of all flows. Nothing in that context is about one thing only. Everything has nth-order effects.
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…“And Secretary of State Rubio said publicly that Iran is producing offensive weapons faster than the US and its allies can manufacture interceptors to stop them. And the Secretary of War suggested this war may go on for months.
The US is historically structured for periodic high intensity bursts, not
sustained engagement. The assumption has always been overwhelming force, short duration, then restock. But that model does not hold if a conflict drags on. Especially a large conflict.”They are producing defensive weapons. The USA is firing on their homes.
Typical of a US pol to use language to spin the narrative.
They are , amazingly enough, permitted to produce weapons to defend themselves, and to strike at the people who struck at them first, including if those persons are based in someone else's country, because their own country is too far away, which in turn begs the question, WHY DID THE US START DROPPING BOMBS?
The rant took over: I decided to let it run -
…If there’s a single sentence to take away from the above, it’s:
“Flows feel infinite right up until the stock runs out”.
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But that’s enough for now. If it’s too much for you, then sorry, mute or block me.
I’m not going to be not interested in this stuff.
…People who have read the entire thread (most of it are not my words) may have noticed:
“about one third of the world’s fertiliser demand” is me voicing James Meadway on the podcast linked at he top.
“Over 40% of internationally traded nitrogen fertilizers” is me quoting Nate Hagens.
Obviously, whatever the actual numbers are matter and are consequential. But for the purposes of this thread, please treat them as a heuristic, a window into astonishing complexity and fragility focused into…
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Fossil gas is a feedstock for the Haber-Bosch process used to make fertiliser (but invented for making early 20th Century munitions).
Gas has been plentiful and cheap in the Persian Gulf and so it has made sense to build out decades of infrastructure to make fertiliser at point of source.
Consequently, about one third of the world’s fertiliser demand has been met by moving it through the Gulf and out into the wider world.
And now that’s not happening…
@urlyman funny how as we have an excess of animals and dung was used to enrich the soils, plus crop rotation, now usurped in favour of man made stuff shipped half way around the world to feed plants bred specifically for yield over quality, sprayed with man made pesticides and herbicides, because profit is more important over quality and health. We live in a sick world.
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…People who have read the entire thread (most of it are not my words) may have noticed:
“about one third of the world’s fertiliser demand” is me voicing James Meadway on the podcast linked at he top.
“Over 40% of internationally traded nitrogen fertilizers” is me quoting Nate Hagens.
Obviously, whatever the actual numbers are matter and are consequential. But for the purposes of this thread, please treat them as a heuristic, a window into astonishing complexity and fragility focused into…
…the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, bodies of water 200 miles wide at their widest and about 750 miles from Basra in the north to Muscat in the south.
Which makes it roughly the area of the UK.
Map courtesy of https://thetruesize.com
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…If it’s not already obvious, we need to be instituting a Dig For Victory style programme, except it won’t be about ‘victory’, it will be Grow Food To Live.
We need national communal regenerative farming started now. Which means compulsory land orders on wasteful tracts of privately owned land.
But I guess we’ll wait until hunger ravages because we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power
On this, I recommend listening to relevant experts like @sarahtaber : https://mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/116233564682293022
Donald Trump's disrupting global fertilizer supplies by tariffs and by war is one of the many many reasons he needs to be stopped & removed from power.
But this is not a matter of not being able to feed everyone.
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On this, I recommend listening to relevant experts like @sarahtaber : https://mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/116233564682293022
Donald Trump's disrupting global fertilizer supplies by tariffs and by war is one of the many many reasons he needs to be stopped & removed from power.
But this is not a matter of not being able to feed everyone.
@michael_w_busch thanks. I’m not saying we’ll imminently not be able to feed everyone. However, some countries are more precarious https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116234479598267213
What I do say is we desperately need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels including gas. And for once in my life it would be great if instead of it only being psychopaths who don’t let a crisis go to waste, we actually sieze this moment to overhaul our food systems for what we materially need to do anyway
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@michael_w_busch thanks. I’m not saying we’ll imminently not be able to feed everyone. However, some countries are more precarious https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116234479598267213
What I do say is we desperately need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels including gas. And for once in my life it would be great if instead of it only being psychopaths who don’t let a crisis go to waste, we actually sieze this moment to overhaul our food systems for what we materially need to do anyway
@michael_w_busch fwiw, I’m personally confident that people like Jason Bradford (https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116109003091295792) and Chris Smaje (https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/115671995353061541) understand where we need to go and are trying to walk the walk. I’ll not be surprised if their perspectives continue to be met with ridicule even as we continue to throw ~40 billion tonnes of GHGs into the air each year
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…“So here’s another hotter effect: Natural gas.
Qatar sits inside the Persian Gulf. They’re responsible for roughly 20% of all globally traded LNG.
Europe spent two years after Ukraine’s invasion rewiring its entire energy import infrastructure away from Russia’s pipeline gas towards US and Qatari LNG.
So European dependency now runs directly through the closed Straits of Hormuz. And unlike oil, there is no overland alternative for LNG…
@urlyman hurray
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@urlyman Any current shortages are just profiteering.
But if the current stupidity goes on for some months, then yes, there will be a simultaneous uptick in energy prices and fertiliser prices. Anywhere dictatorial that relies on rural voters to outweigh urban voters (hello, Turkey, Pakistan) will be in trouble.
Don’t forget the recursive effect of oil price increases on shipping which affects costs of everything being shipped. Hello, inflation.
@BashStKid Bash, I’m exhausted, so my post might not explain this well. It’s not “profiteering to raise prices on goods you do not think you can replace.
If I have gas ¡in the tanks at my service station purchased at price x to sell at price y, the moment my ability to procure more is threatened, the more valuable that gasoline becomes. It now has to pay my immediate AND my future bills. This happens immediately, when supply is threatened, not a few months down the road.
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…If it’s not already obvious, we need to be instituting a Dig For Victory style programme, except it won’t be about ‘victory’, it will be Grow Food To Live.
We need national communal regenerative farming started now. Which means compulsory land orders on wasteful tracts of privately owned land.
But I guess we’ll wait until hunger ravages because we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power
@urlyman Yay, golf courses🤪
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@urlyman Yay, golf courses🤪
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@BashStKid Bash, I’m exhausted, so my post might not explain this well. It’s not “profiteering to raise prices on goods you do not think you can replace.
If I have gas ¡in the tanks at my service station purchased at price x to sell at price y, the moment my ability to procure more is threatened, the more valuable that gasoline becomes. It now has to pay my immediate AND my future bills. This happens immediately, when supply is threatened, not a few months down the road.
@MiriShuli That is literally the definition in most European law, strengthened by any evidence of anticompetitive collusion with other vendors.
The practical point is that regulators rarely target the end of the supply chain, but higher up, in this case the regional oil suppliers, linked to ports and the primary or secondary oil storage for distribution. They’re usually doing the major price fixing, and collusion with other majors. -
@benh thanks Ben. I hadn’t heard about that.
