A certain highly respected American general wanted to make the border between North Korea and China a literal radioactive wasteland in order to cut off Chinese reinforcements and supplies.
We can all be very happy the US is not the sole owner of nukes lol.
Looked at another way, shale natural gas has largely displaced coal which emits more CO2 and can be burned in the same power plants. This base load allows for more wind and solar. Natural gas is a great bridge fuel.
If you could remove a gigaton of usable coal from the world and replace it with an equivalent amount of natural gas, that would be a nice improvement.
When the natural gas is displacing coal by being cheaper, that's pretty bad in the long run. We're still probably going to use that coal later, and cheaper fossil fuels reduce the price pressure to install renewables.
We probably won’t go back to coal, most of the cheap high quality surface level coal is gone and we have a lot of natural gas. We also may see a resurgence of nuclear power and a lot more solar of course.
If we were running out of cheap coal anyway then we would have been better off without the surge in natural gas.
Higher prices would promote a faster shift directly from coal to solar (or nuclear if the price works out). And there was already enough natural gas production to fill the gaps that solar, wind, and batteries can't fill.
This is some rhetorical thing people say, but you don't actually believe it, right? You're not that wildly delusional? You think that if the air is 4C warmer, we won't have laws, people, culture, or whatever else makes a civilization? And that in the mean time, people being able to heat their homes in winter and not freeze to death, and otherwise afford electricity, are not offsetting pro-social benefits?
As someone that has no stakes in the oil industry, I would describe fracking as deeply anti-social.
NK possessing nukes is the reason there hasn't been a war in the region for so long. Which gives a "good" model for Iran to follow. I'm not happy that NK has nukes, or that Iran is trying to get them, but you have to admit that while the US exists as it is, they are the only way for a nation to protect itself from constant wars and invasions. I would be willing to bet that Iran getting nukes would paradoxically make the Middle East much safer: the US and their allies would be forced to leave it alone, which in turn would shrink the anti-US sentiment in the long term, which would cut into the ranks of terrorist cells, etc.
It makes an invasion of Iran less likely, but it also probably means more conflict, not less.
Acquiring nukes rebalances the power between Iran and the US and its neighbors. Roughly equal pairs of states fight more than lopsided ones, historically. The probability for a win on either side is higher when on equal footing.
Nukes as a deterrent caps escalation. This emboldens the holder of the nukes in lower levels of conflict. See Russia with Ukraine (knowing NATO wouldn’t respond), Kargil after Pakistan got nukes, and NK sinking the Cheonan.
Iran getting a bomb probably triggers Saudi Arabia to follow suite, possibly Turkey and Egypt too. Many of the conflicts in the area aren’t (solely) defined by US presence. The Iran–Saudi, Sunni–Shia, and Israel–Iran rivalries to name a few.
It’s possible the dynamics shake out differently, but color me skeptical.
I'm no expert in geopolitics, but to me the relation between a nuclearized Iran and Saudi Arabia could become like that of North and South Koreas: tense but ultimately passive.
That relationship is (was?) a proxy for two mature superpowers. The dynamic between the mid-tier powers in the Middle East is not that similar, IMO. With the US realigning, I expect to see more activity in that conflict.
I can’t know the future, but if the model I’m proposing is correct we’ll see some NK/SK shake-ups soon. That won’t bode well for Iran.
It's worse than people think. The fact that North Korea-traditionally nuttier than all the Middle Eastern governments combined-gets mean Hollywood movies made about them while Saddam, Gaddafi, and Assad got regime changed sent a certain kind of message, you know? Not to mention, the Iranians, Syrians, Pakistanis, et all could have never got off the ground without massive North Korean help.
I'm saying this as someone who is on the whole deeply cynical about Boomer pearl clutching when it comes to atomic proliferation.
NK nuclear testing has stopped them from being on the active ‘shit list’ like Iran for… decades? Or at least stopped them from being bombed.
I’m sure they’d disagree.
That nuclear devices offer some benefit to the hereditary dictators of oppressed, impoverished North Korea does not actually make them "pro-social."
as I said, i’m sure they’d disagree.
I guess I'm not really interested in Kim Jong Un's opinion.
good thing they don’t have nukes, eh?
A certain highly respected American general wanted to make the border between North Korea and China a literal radioactive wasteland in order to cut off Chinese reinforcements and supplies.
We can all be very happy the US is not the sole owner of nukes lol.
“Pro-social” is a strange way to describe something that’s actively contributing to the death of our civilization.
Looked at another way, shale natural gas has largely displaced coal which emits more CO2 and can be burned in the same power plants. This base load allows for more wind and solar. Natural gas is a great bridge fuel.
If you could remove a gigaton of usable coal from the world and replace it with an equivalent amount of natural gas, that would be a nice improvement.
When the natural gas is displacing coal by being cheaper, that's pretty bad in the long run. We're still probably going to use that coal later, and cheaper fossil fuels reduce the price pressure to install renewables.
We probably won’t go back to coal, most of the cheap high quality surface level coal is gone and we have a lot of natural gas. We also may see a resurgence of nuclear power and a lot more solar of course.
If we were running out of cheap coal anyway then we would have been better off without the surge in natural gas.
Higher prices would promote a faster shift directly from coal to solar (or nuclear if the price works out). And there was already enough natural gas production to fill the gaps that solar, wind, and batteries can't fill.
> and can be burned in the same power plants
I don't believe nat gas is burned in the same plants as coal.
Most "closed coal plants" in the US are really plants that retrofitted to use nat gas.
here's a decent recap (now a couple years out of date)
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44636
Ah, cool.
It’s a straightforward retrofit.
This is some rhetorical thing people say, but you don't actually believe it, right? You're not that wildly delusional? You think that if the air is 4C warmer, we won't have laws, people, culture, or whatever else makes a civilization? And that in the mean time, people being able to heat their homes in winter and not freeze to death, and otherwise afford electricity, are not offsetting pro-social benefits?
As someone that has no stakes in the oil industry, I would describe fracking as deeply anti-social.
NK possessing nukes is the reason there hasn't been a war in the region for so long. Which gives a "good" model for Iran to follow. I'm not happy that NK has nukes, or that Iran is trying to get them, but you have to admit that while the US exists as it is, they are the only way for a nation to protect itself from constant wars and invasions. I would be willing to bet that Iran getting nukes would paradoxically make the Middle East much safer: the US and their allies would be forced to leave it alone, which in turn would shrink the anti-US sentiment in the long term, which would cut into the ranks of terrorist cells, etc.
It makes an invasion of Iran less likely, but it also probably means more conflict, not less.
Acquiring nukes rebalances the power between Iran and the US and its neighbors. Roughly equal pairs of states fight more than lopsided ones, historically. The probability for a win on either side is higher when on equal footing.
Nukes as a deterrent caps escalation. This emboldens the holder of the nukes in lower levels of conflict. See Russia with Ukraine (knowing NATO wouldn’t respond), Kargil after Pakistan got nukes, and NK sinking the Cheonan.
Iran getting a bomb probably triggers Saudi Arabia to follow suite, possibly Turkey and Egypt too. Many of the conflicts in the area aren’t (solely) defined by US presence. The Iran–Saudi, Sunni–Shia, and Israel–Iran rivalries to name a few.
It’s possible the dynamics shake out differently, but color me skeptical.
I'm no expert in geopolitics, but to me the relation between a nuclearized Iran and Saudi Arabia could become like that of North and South Koreas: tense but ultimately passive.
That relationship is (was?) a proxy for two mature superpowers. The dynamic between the mid-tier powers in the Middle East is not that similar, IMO. With the US realigning, I expect to see more activity in that conflict.
I can’t know the future, but if the model I’m proposing is correct we’ll see some NK/SK shake-ups soon. That won’t bode well for Iran.
It's worse than people think. The fact that North Korea-traditionally nuttier than all the Middle Eastern governments combined-gets mean Hollywood movies made about them while Saddam, Gaddafi, and Assad got regime changed sent a certain kind of message, you know? Not to mention, the Iranians, Syrians, Pakistanis, et all could have never got off the ground without massive North Korean help.
I'm saying this as someone who is on the whole deeply cynical about Boomer pearl clutching when it comes to atomic proliferation.