Trump’s War Will Speed Renewable Transition

My column in the Midland Daily News.
Alternative Title: I Iran the Zoo.

Implications are dire if war continues.
A lot of people will needlessly suffer and die, and it remains to be seen how much the global economy will be disrupted. America’s reputation and economy will be decades recovering, if ever.

Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:

Can we talk about Oil Wars?

Has anyone noticed the pattern of the United States leaping into conflicts with nations that have massive hydrocarbon reserves?

Is there anyone who believes we would be attacking Venezuela or Iran if their primary export was broccoli?

Can we make an assessment based on the last 3 decades of experience as to the effectiveness of these adventures?

25 years ago, the Bush administration believed the Iraq war would be a “cakewalk”, and that, following invasion, Iraqis would rise up, throw off their government, and install a Jeffersonian democracy in Baghdad.
That war, of course, was a brutal, bloody, 6 trillion dollar quagmire.

Forgetting that sad history, Donald Trump indicated to an interviewer he believed that Iran would capitulate, the way Venezuela recently did, in a few days, and that the US would select a new leader that would “make Iran great again”.  

In another interview, the President admitted that the officials he hoped would take over the reins in Iran had been killed in the first rounds of US bombings..

Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth have made public statements that they expect the war to last “4 to 6 weeks” – giving Iran a convenient timeline and blueprint for how to take the initiative in this conflict.

Knowing that timeline, and that an election is approaching, that this war is in large part a distraction from the Epstein files scandal, puts Iran in the driver’s seat, as they also know that, having bombed 7 or 8 countries now in the last year, the US is running short of key ammunition, especially missile interceptors, which are slow to manufacture.
It remains to be seen how much of Iran’s drone capability has been held back while the US punches itself out in the early going.

The unsustainable nature of utilizing million-dollar interceptors against cheap Iranian drones is not unnoticed in strategic circles.
China is watching, and quietly helping Iran replenish its drone and missile stocks. They know that every interceptor we fire over the Gulf is one we don’t have to defend Taiwan.

Continue reading “Trump’s War Will Speed Renewable Transition”

It’s Still Winter, but Spring-like Storms Popping Up

Tornado in Branch County Michigan, reports of 4 dead.
Tornadoes have happened in Michigan in March before, but pictures like these we would normally associate with Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas in April or May.
Tornadoes happening more often in places and at times we would not expect.

I was driving in Southwest Michigan today because O’Hare airport declared a ground stop, my flight got cancelled, forcing me to drive home. Now I understand why.
Can confirm intense rain, unusually thick fog and hazardous conditions. Expecting reports of flooding in South and Southwest Michigan.

Trailer: HBO’s Fukushima Doc

Anyone who thinks nuclear is going to be easier to site than solar, wind, or batteries, might want to give these items a look.
My position is hoping for the best, because I’m downwind of one of the big nuclear restarts happening at Palisades in West Michigan. I wish them all the luck in the world.

Wall Street Journal:

Having directed the haunting “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes,” James Jones, who worked here with co-director and producer Megumi Inman, seems to know his way around disasters both natural and, in the case of Fukushima, unnatural. He has the right people to explain both what happened and was in danger of happening. Reporter Martin Fackler, who said that entering post-storm Fukushima was “like entering hell,” breaks down, step by step, what occurs inside a nuclear reactor when power is lost and the fissionable material can’t be cooled. As it happens, the disaster in the northern Japanese city has left the area uninhabitable even today, but the possibilities had approached the apocalyptic. That the worst didn’t happen does not prevent “Fukushima” from being a thriller, though it is also something short of a cautionary scientific tale: While nuclear power would seem to be the answer to climate change, pollution and resource depletion, the downside, as the film makes quite plain, is people. Although it was also an elite Tokyo firefighting team that kept a nightmare from being realized.

It would be interesting for this viewer to know, from someone more familiar with the Japanese psyche and culture, how to read the interviews with the workers who stayed at Fukushima throughout the crisis and are portrayed as heroes by the film, even as they themselves refuse to be lionized. Ikuo Izawa, an operator at the plant who provides a very personal perspective on the story, spends much of his considerable interview time with his eyes closed. It seems to be a symptom of shame, something exhibited throughout the film by other employees of Tepco, the massive Japanese utility company that ran the plant and ended up apologizing to the nation for its oversights and failures at Fukushima.

Continue reading “Trailer: HBO’s Fukushima Doc”

Mideast War Disrupts Fertilizer – Food Supply at Risk

Financial Times:

The conflict in Iran is disrupting fertiliser production and exports in the Middle East, tightening global supplies and raising fears of higher food prices, industry executives and analysts have warned. The Middle East is one of the world’s largest fertiliser producers, while the Strait of Hormuz is a crucial shipping route for exports.

About 35 per cent of global urea exports pass through the waterway, according to CRU data. Urea is the most widely used nitrogen fertiliser, which in turn underpins around half of global food production. The route also handles 45 per cent of global sulphur exports, a key ingredient used to produce phosphate fertilisers, as well as significant volumes of ammonia, a key ingredient for nitrogen fertilisers.

“We shouldn’t underestimate what this potentially could mean for global food production,” said Svein Tore Holsether, chief executive of Europe’s largest fertiliser group Yara. He added that the focus on oil and gas was “overshadowing” the impact on the fertiliser industry. “If you’re not getting [fertiliser] into the field of the farmers, yields could go down by up to 50 per cent in the first harvest,” he said.

If the disruption continues, consumers could see higher prices for bread within six to 10 weeks, eggs within a few months and pork and broiler chicken within six months, estimates Raj Patel, food system expert at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. 

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Trump Admin Went to War with No Phase 2

Simple.
Go to war.
If it goes off the rails, just declare bankruptcy and walk away.

Is that so hard, smarty pants?

Financial Times:

The Trump administration has given no indication that it has planned for the aftermath of its military campaign in Iran, a top senator briefed on the war aims has warned. “I have never had, from any of the briefings, any description of what phase two would be,” said Virginia senator Mark Warner in an interview on Wednesday.
As the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, Warner is a member of the “gang of eight”, a select group of congressional leaders who receive high-level intelligence briefings on major national security matters. His warning comes against the backdrop of a widening war, as Iran and its proxy groups in the Middle East have rained down hundreds of missiles and drones on Israel and Gulf states, targeting US embassies and military bases, energy infrastructure and hotels in retaliation for an expansive bombing campaign by the US and Israel.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe briefed the group — which includes lawmakers from both chambers of Congress and both political parties — three days before Donald Trump ordered the start of the US war on Iran. Rubio, who was previously the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, called each member of the gang of eight again shortly after the assault began in the early hours of Saturday.

War Tips World Toward Economic Edge

It’s almost as if no one thought very hard about the implications here.

Shenaka Anslem Perera Substack:

Bahrain produces 200,000 barrels of oil per day. That is less than 0.2 percent of global supply. In isolation, hitting BAPCO does nothing to the world oil price. Iran knows this. That is precisely why hitting it is the most sophisticated signal Iran has sent in six days of war.

The BAPCO strike is not about Bahrain’s oil. It is the final entry in a proof-of-concept series targeted at a different refinery entirely.

The sequence runs as follows. On March 2, Iranian drones struck the Ras Laffan LNG complex in Qatar and halted production at the facility responsible for roughly 12 percent of Europe’s gas supply. On the same day, a drone struck Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery, which carries 550,000 barrels per day of processing capacity, and forced a shutdown. Also on March 2, Kuwait’s Ahmadi refinery took missile debris, injuring two workers and igniting fires. On March 5, BAPCO in Bahrain was struck with confirmed fires, despite Bahrain intercepting 75 missiles and 123 drones in the same wave. Four countries. Four refineries. Six days.

Iran just ran a stress test on every major petroleum processing node in the Gulf theater simultaneously.

Continue reading “War Tips World Toward Economic Edge”

Expert: Zero Chance Regime Change from the Air will Work

Robert Pape, a globally recognized expert on Air Power, points out the flaw in reasoning that a regime change can be effected (from the US perspective) in Iran using air power alone.
It’s never worked.
Not seldom. Not rarely. Never.

Renewvn.org:

American aircraft dropped over 5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam– the largest bombardment of any country in history– and more than twice as much tonnage as the U.S. Air Force dropped in all of World War II. Over 4 million tons fell on the mostly rural areas of the former South Vietnam, plus 400,000 tons of napalm and 19 million gallons of herbicides. This compares with approximately 2 million tons on Laos and half a million tons on Cambodia.
—
Spoiler for the young’uns, we lost. OK put a good face on it, they outlasted us. But they didn’t fold.

In the Iranian front – Now that Trump has his mushroom in a wringer, it’s a bad look when you have to beg the Ally you betrayed and sought to humiliate for help.

Daily Beast:

Donald Trump is apparently turning to war-ravaged Ukraine for help in his surprise attack on Iran.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address Wednesday that the United States—along with other allied countries—is seeking Kyiv’s assistance in defending against Iranian drones, Reuters first reported.

“Partners are turning to us, to Ukraine, asking for help in defending against (Iranian-designed) Shahed drones, with expertise and real operational experience,” Zelensky said. “There have also been requests from the American side.

How Iran Can Cripple the West

The economic strength and power of the US economy is based on the policy of the Oil producing countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, that require payment in dollars. The GCC includes Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Those GCC countries?
All the Oil in the world, but entirely dependent on desalination plants for water.

oops.

The speaker, Jiang Xueqin, is a researcher at Harvard.
I don’t fault his logic in the video above, and he seems knowledgeable, but in some other presentations, he has talked about global conspiracies made up of Illuminati and Free Masons, where he kind of loses me.
There is a significant symbolism in some of his videos where a Chinese flag is prominently placed in the background.
Nevertheless, he’s getting a lot of traction in the wake of the American war on Iran.

DW: What Would Clausewitz and Sun Tzu Say about the Iran War?

Safe bet that Donald Trump has never read military strategists Carl von Clausewitz or Sun Tzu.
DeutsheWelle has some historical perspective on what those globally acknowledged experts might have to say on the current fiasco.

The host, who specializes in China, made a salient point towards the end, referring to one of Sun Tzu’s most famous aphorisms.
China watching quietly as its main rival for global leadership tears itself apart in useless, expensive conflict.