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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#631

Post by hansvm »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #497
nostrademons wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge difference between buying a solar panel once and having it generate energy for the next 30 years vs. buying a barrel of oil now and consuming it by next week. It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy of your landlord, or buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years vs. renting a SaaS subsc…

> buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years I'm wondering how that works. I have written software that was still being used, 25 years later, but it was pretty much a "Ship of Theseus," by then.

Not all software can be sufficiently insulated from external changes, but almost all software I care about can be. My normal update cadence is every 2-3 years, and that's only because of a quirk in my package manager making it annoying for shiny new tools to coexist with tools requiring old dependencies. The most important software I use hasn't changed in a decade (i.e., those updates were no-ops), save for me updating some configurations and user scripts once in awhile. I imagine that if I were older the 18yr effective-update-cycle would happen naturally as well.

My gut reaction is that the software you're describing relies heavily on external integrations. Is that correct?

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#632

Post by nl »

I think the correct way of viewing this war is around internal White House power games.

I don't think Trump himself particularly cares about Iran (or indeed Israel) - as in I don't think he has strong heartfelt views or moral convictions that cause him to act one way or the other in the strategic sense.

But there are those in the White House who do.

My impression from afar is that JD Vance wouldn't have been very supportive of this war, but his faction lost some power after the success of the Venezuelan adventure.

I think that particular move was Marco Rubio, but I'm not sure he would have been crazy enough to make the jump from that working to thinking that war with Iran was a good idea.

It doesn't seem to have been Stephen Millar's idea either.

So maybe it was a bunch or fairly random people from the pro-Netanyahu faction in the WHite House (not sure of names? Maybe Hegseth?) who really believed that this would be a quick bombing attack to take out the Supreme Leader and degrade some Iranian military capabilities, and it would be quickly over?

Maybe it was just Pete Hegseth trying to seem extra macho and people actually listened?

Writing it down makes it clear how very confusing this it. Maybe no one actually wanted this and they just went along because no one was actively saying it was dumb?

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#633

Post by Starman_Jones »

dotancohen wrote: post #609
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US succeeded in reducing their oil dependency and the country is now a net exporter. That doesn't solve the environmental concerns, nor hermetically seal the country from trends in global oil markets, but the US's energy independence agenda has definitely been successful on its own terms. Unfortunately, it hasn't diminished the number of American foreign policy experts who think it's very important to fight lots…

It seems to me that the current war in the middle east has more to do with ensuring those who chant Death To America do not develop nuclear weapons and to set back their ballistic missile program.

It's kind of a problem if you can't definitely say why a war of aggression is being fought, no? But if we do say that this war is being primarily fought to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, then it has to be considered an unmitigated failure. The current outlook is immeasurably worse than it was at the end of the Biden administration, and I'd charitably describe Biden as having done next to nothing to stop them.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#634

Post by Terr_ »

pstuart wrote: post #449
abraxas wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they are not as intelligent as you think they are.

I believe that highly intelligent people can do incredibly stupid things -- I've seen it first hand. The correlating factor for those two acquaintances is that they are both devout Christians . I find that to be beyond ironic but also makes sense, as that devotion parallels the appeal to authority and many churches are run by leaders who believe in Supply Side Jesus. I don't mean this to be inflammatory as it's only…

> correlating factor

There's a free ebook from 2006 that tries to dive into it as a personality spectrum:

https://theauthoritarians.org/

It has some interesting assertions/observations about issues like double-standards and fear as a motive.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#635

Post by Forgeties79 »

triceratops wrote: post #562
Forgeties79 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the US to start going that route we need a certain group of politicians to stop telling everybody that windmills are killing whales and birds en masse, claiming solar "isn't there yet" (somehow it never is), and that there is such thing as "clean coal." Literally the only thing I don't hear them fighting (loudly) against is hydro power.

The politicians say what the people with money want them to.

Or they could just do their job in good faith because most of them come from money and have a good salary. A dream, I know.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#636

Post by hansvm »

scoofy wrote: post #622
hansvm wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, CA is one of the only places that's true, largely due to PG&E fuckups paired with a legislature keen to grant them unlimited money to kick back to shareholders.

That’s just not true, there are plenty of places where the math works easily without subsidies.

Every place I've lived other than CA has had >3x cheaper electricity. If the max break-even period in CA is 20yrs, that's 60yrs in those other places, which is both longer than I practically care about (not that I'm not a fan of non-renewables for other reasons, but we're in a thread talking about costs) and also far beyond the useful life of any of the renewable tech involved, meaning I wouldn't achieve a full 60yrs of benefits in the first place, even if I let the system run for an indefinite period of time.

I know there are other places with high energy costs, but for the majority of the US (both by land area and population count) solar doesn't make economic sense without additional incentives.

And even that analysis assumes that you're forced to use electricity. Many home appliances are vastly more efficient dollar-wise when powered by various petroleum products.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#637

Post by overfeed »

poisonarena wrote: post #599
ardit33 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is to benefit Israel (so it can anex more territory in Lebanon), and it has no benefit to the US. The US had already a deal with Iran, which didn't threat its own interests directly. It is like leave a snake alone, but once you step into it, it will bite you. This war is only to benefit Israel, and right now indirectly Russia (due to the rising prices). Basically, the US is the main loser/sucker in this war, and w…

why would israel want to annex territory in Lebanon? Israel has fought in southern lebanon at least 2 times since I have been alive to fight hezbullah, they always go in, try to remove hezbullah and go back. From a geopolitical perspective what would israel gain by permanently annexing a this area?

> why would israel want to annex territory in Lebanon?

Why are Israeli settlers annexing land in the West Bank? Why is the right wing government letting them?

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#638

Post by JumpCrisscross »

scoofy wrote: post #616
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> system already pays for itself No, it yields savings. This is a massive difference. > You also likely don’t want to be an early adopter of the newest tech anyway if this is a concern for you This is a real concern for any long-term investment, particularly when we're talking at utility/industrial scales. Dismissing it like this is basically arguing that solar is too new to be properly talked about, which is nonsens…

I guess, though, the actual “solar” part of the solar set up is by far the cheapest part. The vast majority of the set up costs are just getting electrification done right. Like, even if LNG becomes crazy cheap, a battery set up will still save you money in the long run just by allowing off-peak demand. This is why I’m confused: for this to me remotely a bad investment, basically everything possible has to go wrong f…

> even if LNG becomes crazy cheap, a battery set up will still save you money in the long run just by allowing off-peak demand

See Uruguay. Bet heavily on renewables [1]. Baked in a high cost [2].

If LNG becomes crazy cheap and you're stuck with expensive solar and battery, the countries with cheaper power will eat your industry. On a household level, you wasted money. The alternate you who didn't put money into the solar and battery set-up could have earned more from other investments and had cheaper power.

Put another way: if you remove the decommissioning costs, the same argument could be used for nuclear. Once you've built it, it's sort of "free." Except of course it's not. Building it took a lot of work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Uruguay#Electricity

[2] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Uruguay/electricity_price...

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#639

Post by andriy_koval »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #606
andriy_koval wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> KSA went it alone in Yemen. there were many countries involved in coalition. UAE specifically sent troups to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aden_(2018) But the issue is that KSA just didn't perform on the ground, well equipped troups were overrun by Houthies with AK consistently. Not clear if they changed anything. > Loving oil money means wanting to export your oil. right, if Iran will take reasonable cut…

> if Iran will take reasonable cuts, gulf states won't escalate Unlikely. Again, a reasonable cut today can turn into any ask tomorrow. It's worth tremendous costs to the Gulf to ensure the Strait returns to at least neutrality.

If there is a good time for unreasonable ask its today, Iran has strong incentive to say: you withdraw US troupes/bases or no tankers through the strait. If they don't do it today, they won't do it in next few decades.

Also, I don't think controlling shoreline will give anything: tankers are easily strikeable via drones/missiles from inner-Iran.

The only solution: is deep invasion supported with internal uprising with full defeat of current regime.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#640

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

dotancohen wrote: post #609
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US succeeded in reducing their oil dependency and the country is now a net exporter. That doesn't solve the environmental concerns, nor hermetically seal the country from trends in global oil markets, but the US's energy independence agenda has definitely been successful on its own terms. Unfortunately, it hasn't diminished the number of American foreign policy experts who think it's very important to fight lots…

It seems to me that the current war in the middle east has more to do with ensuring those who chant Death To America do not develop nuclear weapons and to set back their ballistic missile program.

I agree those are big problems! That's why I supported JCPOA. The US foreign policy blob wanted to bomb Iran instead, though, with very unclear explanations of how bombing Iran would cause a kind and non-belligerent government to take over. The more articulate members seem to take it as an article of faith that people react to American bombs by doing what the American government wants; the less articulate members have just been insulting journalists when they ask basic questions about whether there's a plan or what the goal is.
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