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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ā¦If thereās a single sentence to take away from the above, itās:
āFlows feel infinite right up until the stock runs outā.
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But thatās enough for now. If itās too much for you, then sorry, mute or block me.
Iām not going to be not interested in this stuff.
ā¦People who have read the entire thread (most of it are not my words) may have noticed:
āabout one third of the worldās fertiliser demandā is me voicing James Meadway on the podcast linked at he top.
āOver 40% of internationally traded nitrogen fertilizersā 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 intoā¦
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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 worldās fertiliser demand has been met by moving it through the Gulf and out into the wider world.
And now thatās not happeningā¦
@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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ā¦People who have read the entire thread (most of it are not my words) may have noticed:
āabout one third of the worldās fertiliser demandā is me voicing James Meadway on the podcast linked at he top.
āOver 40% of internationally traded nitrogen fertilizersā 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 intoā¦
ā¦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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ā¦If itās not already obvious, we need to be instituting a Dig For Victory style programme, except it wonāt be about āvictoryā, 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 weāll 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. Iām not saying weāll 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 donāt 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. Iām not saying weāll 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 donāt 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, Iām 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. Iāll 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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ā¦āSo hereās another hotter effect: Natural gas.
Qatar sits inside the Persian Gulf. Theyāre responsible for roughly 20% of all globally traded LNG.
Europe spent two years after Ukraineās invasion rewiring its entire energy import infrastructure away from Russiaās 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 LNGā¦
@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.
Donāt forget the recursive effect of oil price increases on shipping which affects costs of everything being shipped. Hello, inflation.
@BashStKid Bash, Iām exhausted, so my post might not explain this well. Itās not āprofiteering to raise prices on goods you do not think you can replace.
If I have gas Ā”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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ā¦If itās not already obvious, we need to be instituting a Dig For Victory style programme, except it wonāt be about āvictoryā, 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 weāll wait until hunger ravages because we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power
@urlyman Yay, golf coursesš¤Ŗ
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@urlyman Yay, golf coursesš¤Ŗ
@annehargreaves yay!
Jonathan Schofield (@urlyman@mastodon.social)
Golf is a vector for humanity scoring an infinite bogey https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/113237090783559099
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
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@BashStKid Bash, Iām exhausted, so my post might not explain this well. Itās not āprofiteering to raise prices on goods you do not think you can replace.
If I have gas Ā”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. Theyāre usually doing the major price fixing, and collusion with other majors. -
@benh thanks Ben. I hadnāt heard about that.
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ā¦āSo hereās another hotter effect: Natural gas.
Qatar sits inside the Persian Gulf. Theyāre responsible for roughly 20% of all globally traded LNG.
Europe spent two years after Ukraineās invasion rewiring its entire energy import infrastructure away from Russiaās 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 LNGā¦
@urlyman "towards US and Qatari LNG" - and thats the key part here. USA's actions mean that the Qatari LNG is unobtainable currently which suits the USA just fine . Trump did say 'we're going to get very rich' .
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@urlyman "towards US and Qatari LNG" - and thats the key part here. USA's actions mean that the Qatari LNG is unobtainable currently which suits the USA just fine . Trump did say 'we're going to get very rich' .
@alanbuxey what are the chances that the Trump admin thinks the US is well insulated but isnāt?
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ā¦If thereās a single sentence to take away from the above, itās:
āFlows feel infinite right up until the stock runs outā.
- - -
But thatās enough for now. If itās too much for you, then sorry, mute or block me.
Iām not going to be not interested in this stuff.
@urlyman do not mute or block him. if learning facts is difficult, pace yourself. a job for chocolate and television.
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ā¦If itās not already obvious, we need to be instituting a Dig For Victory style programme, except it wonāt be about āvictoryā, 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 weāll wait until hunger ravages because we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power
"we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power"
I am 61 and the only change I'd make to that statement is to drop the "one of" clause. (And it's not just the UK. The German government is similarly brain-dead right now. The European right has collectively thrown its hat in the ring with the US right and are being dragged down in the undertow of stupidity.)
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ā¦āAnd sulfurās the feedstock for sulfuric acid and sulfuric acid is what we use to leach copper and cobalt out of the ground in places like the DRC and Zambia. The two of those countries together supply over a sixth of global copper and more than 70% of global cobalt.
So the little oil snafu in the Straits of Hormuz could lead to no marginal copper or cobalt.
No transformers, no grid expansion. No grid expansion, no data centers, which means no EV charging infrastructure, no AI build out, etcā¦
@urlyman so basically they're going to redirect all the remaining copper to data centers, got it -_-
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"we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power"
I am 61 and the only change I'd make to that statement is to drop the "one of" clause. (And it's not just the UK. The German government is similarly brain-dead right now. The European right has collectively thrown its hat in the ring with the US right and are being dragged down in the undertow of stupidity.)
