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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#871

Post by lxgr »

amarant wrote: post #336
lxgr wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wether it's wind, solar or hydro, a underappreciated property of renewable energy is the energy sovereignty they provide. If your sovereign territory happens to support them geographically. This is true for many, but not all countries. Also, without large storage capacity, you might end up being self-sufficient during sunny, windy days, but find yourself very dependent on your neighbor countries for imports on over…

More countries are able to produce renewable energy than are able to produce fossil energy. As such, renewable energy providers more energy sovereignty than fossil fuels which is what matters. If it's 100% or not is mostly irrelevant for the decision making. If we're being rational. Going for the worst possible option, only because the better options are not 100% perfect, is to be considered irrational behaviour.

> Going for the worst possible option, only because the better options are not 100% perfect, is to be considered irrational behaviour.

I guess I'm collecting all the downvotes because I didn't make it sufficiently clear that I'm absolutely in favor of switching to renewables as quickly as feasible. My point was not to stick with fossil fuels in the interest of "sovereignty" or anything like that. Especially massive solar deployment just seems like a no-brainer at this point.

But as we do that, I'd love to be realistic about new interdependencies and failure modes being introduced, so that they can be mitigated as we transform and build out our grids, not discovered in very painful incidents that "nobody could have seen coming".

Kind of sad to see how ideologically driven discussions around energy policy still are, and maybe always will be.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#872

Post by jmyeet »

CMay wrote: post #843
jmyeet wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is an arms dealer empire. It's economic strength and power come from its ability to sell weapons. The military budget is pushing $1 trillion (and probably will exceed it with supplemental funding for the Iran boondoggle). Rumor has it the administration will be asking for $1.5 trillion in the next Budget. That is a staggering and utterly unsustainable level of spending. Most of that is going to defense contrac…

You have to be corrected on a few critical things. The US' power doesn't come from it making so many weapons. The structure of the government. The principles it stands for. The geographic perfection it lucked into. The allies it has (which, despite appearances, are still there.) The economic influence it has. The human talent it has soaked up from around the world as people moved to the US. China can't replicate any…

> The US' power doesn't come from it making so many weapons. The structure of the government. The principles it stands for.

This is high school propaganda. It's classic "they hate us because of our freedom" nonsense.

What principles? America was established on white supremacy, slavery, genocide, religious intolerance and exploitation. The government we formed was by and for wealthy white slaveowners.

Do you know when the last slave ship survivor died? It was 1940. Slavery survived in practice well beyond Emancipation. Forced servitude existed up until 1941 [1] and that only happened because of the propaganda threat from World War 2.

You're right about the geographical "luck" (other than, you know, the whole genocide part of it).

> [China is] also handicapped by their ideology

No, they're not. The reason the US goes after communist and socialist governments so vehemently is because any success threatens capitalism, not the other way around. If these systems were all doomed to fail, why can't we simply serve as a good example? Why do we need to militarily intervene, overthrow governments and starve countries that dare do anything different? Don't you find that odd?

China has transformed itself over recent decades and brought ~800 million people out of extreme poverty in the last century. All while living conditions and infrastructure crumbles in the West.

> One of the admirals in the Pacific said something along the lines of (paraphrasing), "China is complaining that we're trying to contain them. My question to them would be, 'well, do you need to be contained?'"

I don't know what point you think you're making with this. It can just as easily be used to justify imperialism because "we don't like anyone else succeeding". What kind of argument is that? If anyone needs to be contained, it's the US military, actually.

> China is now communist.

This isn't really true in practice. Sure it's the Chinese Communist Party and you may see labels like "socialist/communist transitional state" but what China really is is a command economy [2]. Chinese people have seen their standard of living change massively in their lifetimes. What do we do? Further concentrate wealth in the hands of the 10,000 richest people because it matters that Jeff Bezos has $210 billion instead of $200 billion.

> If you look back at World War 2, it was in large part caused by communism.

This is hitorically revisionist nonsense. Communism (if you define the USSR as such) saved Europe by defeating Nazi Germany at terrible cost. Stalin tried to warn Britain and France about Hitler and form an anti-Hitler alliance. Britain and France refused.. Japan was imperialist. Germany was imperialist. WW2 started at near the peak of the British Empire. Communism didn't cause the Rape of Nanking or the Holocaust or Japanese internment in the US.

For the rest of it, all I can say is "read a book".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_slavery_in_the_United_S...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_economy

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#873

Post by lxgr »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #435
lxgr wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wether it's wind, solar or hydro, a underappreciated property of renewable energy is the energy sovereignty they provide. If your sovereign territory happens to support them geographically. This is true for many, but not all countries. Also, without large storage capacity, you might end up being self-sufficient during sunny, windy days, but find yourself very dependent on your neighbor countries for imports on over…

> without large storage capacity That's like saying without gas stations good luck getting gasoline to the people . It goes without saying that batteries are an essential part of most renewable solutions.

I'm still reading a lot about theoretical storage ideas, but much less than I'd like about massive deployments, so I think it doesn't quite go without saying.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#874

Post by lokar »

mememememememo wrote: post #778
lokar wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Iranian regime is unlikely to capitulate fully. They don't want to end up like Syria and Lebanon, where Israel can just bomb them at will. Trump has more flexibility. Really all he needs is an endpoint that FOX News is willing to describe as a US victory. He cares more about image and perception than reality. So, in that space, there is probably room for some negotiated outcome.

Can FOX bamboozle my local gas station too to drop 40% on the price?

No, but they can explain that has nothing to do with the war. It's because Newsom won't allow new oil drilling off the CA coast.

And I expect that (or something like it), will in fact satisfy core MAGA voters.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#875

Post by DoctorOetker »

gzread wrote: post #671
DoctorOetker wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what exactly does one learn from hypothetical light-speed motorcycles?

Does the enemy nation have internet? If so, there's your light-speed couriers.

motorcycles can navigate bombed terrain, your fiber optics cables will be torn...

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#876

Post by thrance »

nozzlegear wrote: post #844
thrance wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally anything . They are incredibly passive, we never hear anything from anyone of them. Trump is running the country to the ground live, each day going on unhinged nonsensical rants and doing obviously insane shit. Democrats should be banking on it, counter-messaging 24/7 but instead they're more unpopular than ever. Their leaders are still clinging on to these "moderate" and "bipartisan" lines when the voter b…

So it's just a matter of not following the right democrats on the right social media platform? They just need to tweet storm more where you can see it? > while holding unto their hard pro-Israel line which already cost them the previous election. Kamala Harris lost because of the economy, inflation, and a mismatch in perceived values among Asian and Hispanic voters. She did not lose because the election was any sort…

I find the links you provided uninteresting. Americans only care about what they're made to care about. Trump ran on inflation and oil price, accusing Biden every step of the way, negatively polarizing enough voters against his opponents. This was very successful and got him elected. Now that inflation and oil prices are worse than they ever were under Biden, why are so few complaining about it? Because the Democrats are fucking silent about it. Where are the Trump "I did this" stickers on gas pumps? Why aren't Democratic leaders going on TV daily to blame Trump for the crisis he 100% manufactured?

> Kamala Harris lost because of the economy, inflation, and a mismatch in perceived values among Asian and Hispanic voters. She did not lose because the election was any sort of referendum on Israel or Gaza – progressives want that narrative to be true because it was a core issue for them, but the data doesn't back it up:

The DNC decided to hide their own post-mortem of the 2024 election because it pointed to their unwavering support of Israel as one of the biggest reasons they lost. How do you fit this in your narrative?

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaz...

Also, interesting read if you have some time:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/02/17/opinion/focus...

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#877

Post by nostrademons »

lxgr wrote: post #869
nostrademons wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno about you, but losing 20% of my electricity supply is an annoyance. I just don't run the clothes dryer and hang my clothes on a rack instead. (And yes, I have solar + battery, and have lost 100% of my outside electricity supply on a half dozen occasions since having it installed, and my actual response has been to not run the clothes dryer.)

That would be the situation in an integrated/"smart" grid. The grid could tell your washer/dryer to defer or worst case shed their load. In the grid we have, where most people don't have batteries, nor a way to react to (or even perceive) network-side load shedding commands, you get rolling blackouts at best, and brownouts, damaged devices etc. at worst.

That's the point I'm making with my second paragraph. I'm not dependent on the grid. If we get into the situation you're describing, I just throw the main breaker (actually don't need to do that, the inverters switch over automatically) and my home generates its own electricity. It doesn't quite cover all my usage, but it covers all my usage except the clothes dryer, so I just don't run the clothes dryer.

It's true that there are tragedy-of-the-commons situations where not everybody has a battery, but it's also true that there are higher-level but subnational entities within the U.S. that have invested significantly in renewables + battery storage. This chart of where electricity comes from on a state-by-state level is illustrative:

https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/state-electricity-g...

California, Connecticut, DC, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington are > 95% renewables + natural gas, all of which is produced in North America. If it comes to the point where it's "keep the lights on or sever ties with fossil-fuel states", I'd bet that they choose the latter.

(Note that the table kinda refutes your point anyway: the only states that are > 1% dependent upon oil for electricity are Alaska and Hawaii. Other than natural gas, which is largely produced domestically [1], the other big fossil fuel source is coal, which is also produced domestically.)

[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/where-our-na...

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#878

Post by lxgr »

ms_menardi wrote: post #368
lxgr wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're 80% self-sufficient, you're not self-sufficient.

If a kid lives on their own but their mom buys them groceries once per month and their dad swings by on thursdays with pizza and beer, that kid's still pretty darn self sufficient. Similarly, if a country can use 80% less oil or imported fuel than they would have without renewable energy, I think they're pretty self-sufficient. They don't have to be isolated from trade, it's okay to import some things and export othe…

They have significantly less of a problem with regards to their balance of trade, but any meaningful dependency on imports means that electricity prices will still be entirely dependent on the price of whatever is imported, at any point in time imports are happening. Still not great, and I wouldn't call that sovereignty!

Also, highly depending on what metric we mean by "80% self-sufficient" (peak capacity? long-time average?), there might either be a lot of work left, or this might be "effective sovereignty".

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#879

Post by donkeybeer »

theonething wrote: post #846
donkeybeer wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is the country engaged in Lebensraum, so if you want to make a WW2 analogy, Israel is nazi germany here.

Wow, ok... Iran invaded the US embassy holding 52 civilians hostage, has conducted unprovoked attacks against US, Israeli and other interests for more than 40 years, regularly launches missiles into Israeli airspace, indiscriminately attacks merchant vessels in international waters, massacres and tortures tens of thousands of their own people for the crime of speaking out against their government, sponsors terrorist…

> massacred over a thousand people including children,

That's a classic IDF specialty, Israeli military are masters at shooting and killing children. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqwv9vvzx9o

> Has Israel rounded up Palestinians in concentration camps and executed millions of them in gas chambers?

Yes, jailed for years young boys and even teens without any reason. Why would they need gas chambers when traditional bombing of schools and hospitals is working beautifully and wonderfully to cull the palestinians?

I looked up the claim of seizing tankers and it seems it has only ever happened during context of other wars like with Iraq.

Israel openly celebrates rapists such as when the rapist soldier was released from trial. https://www.timesofisrael.com/5-idf-reservists-indicted-for-...

And you don't need to ask me, just listen to the direct words of Bibi, Bezalel Smotrich and other Israeli government representatives how they want "Greater Israel" and wish for expansionism.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#880

Post by lxgr »

nostrademons wrote: post #877
lxgr wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be the situation in an integrated/"smart" grid. The grid could tell your washer/dryer to defer or worst case shed their load. In the grid we have, where most people don't have batteries, nor a way to react to (or even perceive) network-side load shedding commands, you get rolling blackouts at best, and brownouts, damaged devices etc. at worst.

That's the point I'm making with my second paragraph. I'm not dependent on the grid. If we get into the situation you're describing, I just throw the main breaker (actually don't need to do that, the inverters switch over automatically) and my home generates its own electricity. It doesn't quite cover all my usage, but it covers all my usage except the clothes dryer, so I just don't run the clothes dryer. It's true t…

If a country were in your individual position, I'd definitely call that self-sovereign, but I don't think that's how "80% self-sufficient" would actually look like. (I don't think that 20% of most countries' consumption is entirely discretionary, for one thing, whether measured by peak or average load.)

At >95%, it's probably a very different story. At that point, you basically turn off your aluminium smelter and you're good :) (And note how GP said "renewables", which gas isn't.)

And my point really isn't about oil specifically, it's about GPs "renewables increase sovereignty" thesis in general.

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