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After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

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Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#221

Post by dkga »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #183
dkga wrote: post #5

I grew up in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, a region full of natural resources and, thankfully, aquifers and natural water reservoirs. However, centuries of extraction mismanagement and, more recently, over exploration of mineral resources puts these water resources into jeopardy. (Other problems include mining in open pits and with sludge dams that led to two of the worse environmental disasters in the world i…

I'm also from Minas Gerais. Mariana and Brumadinho were truly devastating... The sludge is still visible in the rivers to this day. What gets me is how unnecessary it was. Could have been prevented.

Yes, it was heartbreaking. The gut-wrenching book "Arrastados"[0] by Daniela Arbex does a good job of retelling some of the stories from the Brumadinho disaster.

[0] For those that do not speak Portuguese: I think the book title can be translated as "The Dragged Ones".

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#222

Post by neoromantique »

alistairSH wrote: post #55
neoromantique wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clean water use for data center use has literally zero impact on water situation in Iran. Datacentres don't consume water.

Yes, they do. For example, only 60% of Equinix’s DCs use closed loop, non-evaporative cooling systems… https://www.cdotrends.com/story/4492/balancing-energy-and-wa...

So? If anything, evaporated water could lead to more rainfall in Iran, not less.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#223

Post by neoromantique »

alistairSH wrote: post #114
yonixw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I missing something? How data centers in US/EU evaporating water thousand of miles from Iran affect it? Does it disturb the rain cycle in Iran or something?

The grandparent comment asserts that as data center roll-out continues, water scarcity becomes an even bigger issue globally. The parent comment said DCs don't use water. This claim is easily proven to be incorrect. But, correct, DCs outside Iran have little/no impact on the situation in Iran today.

If I asserted that datacentres dont consume clean water, then that would be incorrect, but I did not, I said water.

Water is evaporated and not consumed.

Also, I hope you apply same standard and scrutiny to the water impact of the food you consume.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#224

Post by alistairSH »

neoromantique wrote: post #223
alistairSH wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grandparent comment asserts that as data center roll-out continues, water scarcity becomes an even bigger issue globally. The parent comment said DCs don't use water. This claim is easily proven to be incorrect. But, correct, DCs outside Iran have little/no impact on the situation in Iran today.

If I asserted that datacentres dont consume clean water, then that would be incorrect, but I did not, I said water. Water is evaporated and not consumed. Also, I hope you apply same standard and scrutiny to the water impact of the food you consume.

Being overly pedantic doesn't help make your point.

And, yes, our food supply also has an impact on water availability in areas where food production occurs.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#225

Post by wahern »

pphysch wrote: post #191
wonderwonder wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst part is the agency never returns. Anything that goes wrong for the next 500 years is due to that original western intereference. Tragic really.

The West hasn't stopped interfering in Iran though. They did massive terrorist attacks there just a year ago. Israel would openly salivate at the prospect of destroying Iranian agriculture and water supply. China is an interesting counterfactual. Circa 2010 when Xi came to power, the CPC also essentially destroyed the CIA's footprint in the country, something that was not widely reported in the West. And PRC has done…

> Circa 2010 when Xi came to power, the CPC also essentially destroyed the CIA's footprint in the country, something that was not widely reported in the West. And PRC has done very well since...

The PRC was doing just as fine before they executed all the CIA's agents. I don't see any relation. There's never been any hint from either the US or China that those agents were doing anything other than passive intelligence collection, as opposed to actively interfering in domestic Chinese politics. And in any event, the scope of historical CIA operations has always been overblown. In every case I'm aware of, the CIA leveraged a tipping point already well underway to nudge things one way or another. Developing countries are often already highly unstable and prone to regular disruptive power shifts; it's a major cause of their poverty and inability to fully develop. And in many of the outright coups the CIA has been implicated, the extent of the CIA's involvement was simply talking to and making promises to various power players already poised to make a power grab, Chile being a prime example--the Chilean Senate was the architect of the coup, and the CIA merely offered safe harbor to nudge Pinochet, who was waffling because he wasn't convinced it would succeed. The exceptions were during the middle of the Cold War, ancient history in modern foreign affairs.

The KGB/FSB has always been lauded for opportunistically taking advantage of preexisting situations with small but smart manipulations, but that's just how intelligence agencies have always worked in general. When your interventions are too direct and obvious, which they always will be if you're creating a crisis from scratch, you risk unifying the country, Iran being a prime example.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#226

Post by bonzini »

scythe wrote: post #144
bonzini wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanctions in the 1950s?

Sanctions, including an attempted blockade [1] of oil exports, imposed by the British Empire, still in existence at the time, in response to a dispute over the ownership of Iranian oil fields, which were a primary factor in the fall of Mossadegh. See e.g.: https://harpers.org/archive/2013/07/the-tragedy-of-1953/ It should be noted that while the Shah obviously benefited from the coup, he remained suspicious of the We…

Thanks!

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#227

Post by mattnewton »

therobots927 wrote: post #193
mattnewton wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally am not well read on this, but I know lot of people blame the US and the UK since after they overthrew the democratically elected socialist government and installed a brutal dictator[0], the only elements that survived to oppose the dictatorship were hardened islamists, who later took power from the US backed Shah[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat [1] https://en.wikipedia.…

This is basic, commonly accepted history. That’s why all of the comments defending US actions deflect and blame the accomplices within Iran like the Shah.

Absolutely, the qualifiers are mostly because I am not knowledgeable to say what caused the situation _now_, not because the facts of the US backed coup damaging Iran are at all in dispute.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#228

Post by dredmorbius »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #203
dredmorbius wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NB: "West" is less a term of hemispheric fidelity (Australia and New Zealand are typically seen as "western" countries, despite being in the eastern hemisphere), than it is of cultural derivation (on which Brazil has additional claims, via Portugal), and far more prominently, geopolitical and industrial significance , focusing on the industrial, colonial, and financial powers of the world, largely the US, western Eur…

"Rich countries" might be a better shorthand term.

That's ... somewhat freighted as well (less in the positive than the implied negative framing).

"G-n", where n is typically in the range of 6--20, and most canonically refers to the G7 nations of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, is another formulation, though that omits Australia (reasonably significant) and NZ (a small country, though quite "western" in a cultural sense). Other significant exclusions are of course China, as well as South Korea, any South American states (Mexico and Brazil would be the most likely candidates), as well as numerous European states which aren't as dominant but are still internationally significant commercially and politically, though those last can claim some inclusion under the EU, the "non-enumerated member".

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#229

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

smugma wrote: post #173
corimaith wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah (who was still head of state), but his own autocratic actions such as dissolving parliament and giving himself autocratic powers pushed most political forces against him that a confrontation was inevitable. There is a reason the military stood back as he was disposed. Furthermore, the Shah did actually have the legal right to fire Mossadegh, when je ignored that the situation w…

From my understanding your retelling of history is a minority view. For instance, it is in conflict with Wikipedia. It’s commonly accepted that Mossadegh was thrown out by a coup and that Khomenei seized power through a revolution.

"it is in conflict with wikipedia" is a wild thing to read.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#230

Post by breppp »

stocksinsmocks wrote: post #217
breppp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't say it's a cultural oddity, western culture had its fair share of self-destructive regimes which ideological underpinnings created great disasters, especially in the 20th century

I feel like I may be insulting your intelligence with how obvious this is, but the Israeli government has had turning Iran into a failed state as an open policy objective since the 1980s. Given that Israeli interests have achieved this end in basically every non-monarchy in the region, I think this is a credible threat. Israel has a highly aggressive and influential lobby in the United States, which has posed debilit…

I think that's an overly simplistic and false view of Israeli-Iranian relations since 1979.

Israel had tried to help Islamist Iran negotiate with the US through the Contra debacle, shared intelligence with Iran against Iraq (failed reactor bombing) and outright sold weapons to Iran to support them against Iraq.

There was a naive belief in Israel that the daily "Death to Israel" chants are just rhetoric like in the arab countries it used to deal with, and Iran can be a quiet ally like before 1979

At the same time Iran fought Israel through their mercenaries in Lebanon up to the point where all of Iran's resources were consumed by the failed attempt to encircle Israel, which has collapsed completely in the last two years

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