question: When does all this hit the fan? Been reading for months that gas will rise to astronomical prices. When?
answer: it depends heavily on China. If China were to jump into the global oil market with both feet, prices would shoot upwards. To date they have largely stayed on the sidelines.They have huge amounts of oil in storage. Their behavior so far has been the big surprise. They have been providing a pressure relief valve for the entire globe.
I wouldn't call what they're doing "staying on the sidelines". It's a very big thing they're doing to stop global oil prices from shooting up by using up their stockpile for as long as they can. As to why, it's just the... I dunno, Chinese? thing to do. Quietly fix someone else's fuckup and not seek glory. Whatever you want to attribute it to, it's an ethos and makes total sense to some, because things are gonna get fuuuuuucked if gas prices go to the moon.
They can use this ability to keep oil prices down to sort of back up their strategic goals. They could block a strait themselves while taking Taiwan. They could open the stores for concessions in other ways. They can also use this current Iran War to study how the US handles economic problems like oil-inflation. By having their finger on the scale they can push and pull and see how the US reacts in a war scenario.
China’s economy depends on exporting to the world, as it will never have enough domestic demand to meet domestic supply. If the global economy crashes from an oil price shock, China goes down with it.
Power is better than money though. China is communist in name only now, but they could extract huge concessions out of the rest of the world right now if they wanted to.
They could, but they’ll wait, they’re not ready yet. Until then, they’ll continue to electrify their economy, build out domestic energy supply, rebuild their oil inventories from Russia and Iran when able (at below market prices, dominated in yuan, avoiding dollar systems and sanctions) and prepare to take Taiwan as the US continues to weaken itself.
If Taiwan toasts TSMC when that happens, well, that’s part of what China is rapidly building out their domestic chip industry. China will then have a monopoly on that chip production besides what can be produced in the US and Europe, and have achieved reunification. And who is going to stop them? Nobody, based on the evidence and current trajectories.
You can bet that all TSMC chip factories in Taiwan have strategic installs of explosives just for this scenario, China will get nothing, and the US has multiple TSMC chip factories now and will gladly accept Taiwan victims.
As mentioned, they won’t need the fabs. They’re spending tens of billions of dollars to advance their own vertical chip industry.
The US just pulled temporary status from hundreds of thousands of Hatians, so I wouldn’t be so confident what the future looks like for Taiwanese refugees in the US.
TLDR China is going to build whatever chip technology they need to accomplish their technology and geopolitical goals. They have the resources, the will, and the time.
interesting why usa wants to keep escalating, muat be some strat behind it maybe to induce strategical global recession or try and slow down china or something else
The Iraq war lasted nearly a decade. Afghanistan 2 decades. And the US accomplished nothing. They made things worse, I don't need to go into details because that is an easy lookup.
That's ultimately the purpose of this war. Israel wants us to fight Iran because "Iran was close to making a nuke", which is an excuse they have been using for nearly 30 years.
Have you seen how much money AIPAC has in US politicians' pockets? Nearly every other office in congress has an Israel flag on their door. Poured $36M (Million) into Haley Stevens. A complete nincompoop and incompetent person, but she would have further supported Israel's agenda.
The US is a destructive war machine beast that needs to be constantly fed. Unfortunately, we are going to see tons of US armed forces personnel and Iranians die in a needless, wasteful, illegal war.
I think it's giving more credit than is due to assume there's a strategy. At this stage, it seems pretty clear that a number of people are using insider knowledge of these negotiations to enrich themselves. To me this is representative of a broader pattern of looting American institutions pervasive in this administration.
At the same time, we've purged our military leadership of anyone who said "no" to Trump's plans of antagonizing Iran. A conflict many military thinkers consider un-winnable.
Iran, having spent decades preparing for this type of situation, has the clear advantage and is pressing it hard. Shy of boots on the ground (itself an incredibly bloody and possibly futile avenue) there doesn't seem to be anyway to overcome their hold on the Strait.
There is no secret strategy. The country is led by inept people who believe might makes right, and take every opportunity to enrich themselves. People are bending over backwards to make meaning of this blatant corruption and it is one way we're enabling the destruction of America.
The only way for the US to win is to concede and acquiesce control of the Strait to Iran, but the administration has too much pride and hubris so they’ll keep bullying until stopped.
It’s not a complex geopolitical game, it’s saving face.
It’s Trump, not the USA, and he seems to be ruled by passions rather than logic. Mostly, his goals seem to be to seek wealth and adoration by any means necessary. Now that he’s in it, there’s no way out, and particularly no way out that doesn’t make him look like an even bigger fool. So he’ll stay in it until things get so bad he has no other choice. But that won’t stop him from lying about progress and enriching himself through the resultant stock market swings.
The American right has wanted war in Iran for decades, it was added to the "Axis of Evil" for that reason. Plenty of Americans support war with Iran in concept at least.
It's true that Trump is deranged and this war is driven partly by ego and partly by the Christian dominionist Department of War's slavish obedience to Israel and fetish for holy war.
But let's be real - gross negligence and incompetence aside war with Iran was always going to happen, somehow, under some pretext.
I suppose when you live under the constant threat of American imperialism, and when the US has already ginned up a revolution in your country, you have to be prepared.
And I suppose when you're the world's last superpower you start believing your own hype and assume you're invincible.
We can. It’ll be hard, but sometimes you gotta buck up and do hard things instead of being lazy. We won’t do it unless we’re forced to, business as usual is simply too cozy for decision makers, politically, in capital markets, and at multinationals making decisions. Wealthy and powerful people want to remain wealthy and powerful, a tale as old as time.
2-3C means potentially >2-4 billion excess deaths over the next ~50 years from climate change. As long as global oil supply chains are low volatility and low risk, we continue on that path.
Ukraine has disabled 30-40% of Russia’s refinery capacity almost entirely with drones, for example.
TLDR it is not bad for the global oil supply chain to experience pain, it’s the primary factor in accelerating electrification and decarbonization.
That's not really the argument they are making I believe. The issue is if you suddenly cut back oil countries pivot to bringing coal back because it's the fastest to scale up.
Some places may scale up natural gas but unless a regional already has a lot of LNG infrastructure in place, a sudden drop in oil means bringing back coal.
And coal is of course far worse than oil.
Gradual sustained economic pressure will push a move to cleaner alternatives but a sudden shock leaves countries with exactly one option: bring back coal so the lights and heat/AC stay on.
>The issue is if you suddenly cut back oil countries pivot to bringing coal back because it's the fastest to scale up.
That may have been true a couple of decades ago, but as of 2023[1] it was significantly cheaper to build new solar than to continue operating existing coal plants. And building new coal plants takes 5 years.
Asia is cancelling LNG plans for renewables, and many markets have seen EV sales explode. Coal plants are more expensive than new renewables and batteries, existing generators may run longer, but aren’t going to be built in any material amount.
China, Europe, and the US can build ~25-30M EVs per year with existing manufacturing capacity, as of this comment. That is 1/4th of global annual light vehicle sales. We can deploy ~1TW of solar PV globally annually. The world reached 3TW of total solar PV generating capacity this year. China's energy from coal has declined below 50% this year. Energy storage production continues to ramp right behind renewables. These are straightforward systems problems, there are no blockers or technical limitations.
TLDR Strongly agree existing coal generators might generate more and longer than they otherwise would, but clean tech trajectory will only get pulled more vertical from further oil energy supply shocks.
I feel as if you missed their point. Their point from my understanding is, coal might be more expensive than new renewables/batteries, but it's significantly quicker to get up and running so if you have a choice between quick coal and nothing, coal will be chosen.
I am not missing the point. You can deploy hundreds of megawatts of solar and batteries providing firm generation in 12-18 months. You cannot build a coal generator that quickly (usually takes 2-5 years). If you can turn on or up an existing coal generator, yes, faster. If you must build it from scratch, no, slower. Solar and batteries are not only the cheapest form of new generation, they are also the fastest to deploy.
* Since the war in Iran began in February 2026, a surge in oil and gas prices has triggered gas-to-coal switching in Southeast Asia, pushing Asia’s coal benchmark nearly 20% above the pre-war price levels and highlighting the links between the coal, gas and oil markets.
* Gas-to-coal switching also pushed coal prices up after the 2022 gas crisis, when Asia’s coal benchmark surged to a record USD 443 per tonne in September 2023.
* Renewables sit apart from the price volatility of coal, oil and gas, as they do not require ongoing fuel inputs. In 2024, solar was already cheaper than coal in 7 of the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), according to LCOE data.
* The current gas crisis is already causing a decline in LNG demand across ASEAN countries. New ZCA analysis shows that were ASEAN to replace its planned 45 GW gas expansion with coal, costs would rise; in contrast, we found the Association could save USD 4 billion if gas expansion plans were instead replaced with solar and storage solutions by 2030.
* Even in countries with large coal reserves and coal subsidies, including China, renewables are already meeting a significant share of new electricity demand.
You can deploy solar and batteries rapidly, Australia is doing it.
Australia has the highest number of solar panels per capita in the world. Batteries are following suit with government subsidies. Yet, Australia has some of the highest energy prices in the world, its not a fool proof solution.
My comment wasn't even really about coal, it was about oil (and fuel). I'm talking about transport (even public transport) but planes & massive tankers are the big consumers. The original point is simply we cannot just stop ships.
When ships stopped due to the routes being blocked, we pushed ever closer to a recession and people starved and died because they were denied critical produces, equipment, food and medicines all over the world. Not to mention cost of living. This is what I mean by we "cannot afford" to not use oil.
We cannot afford for the routes to be shut, we cannot ban boats, cars, planes without major economic downturn.
question: When does all this hit the fan? Been reading for months that gas will rise to astronomical prices. When? answer: it depends heavily on China. If China were to jump into the global oil market with both feet, prices would shoot upwards. To date they have largely stayed on the sidelines.They have huge amounts of oil in storage. Their behavior so far has been the big surprise. They have been providing a pressure relief valve for the entire globe.
I wouldn't call what they're doing "staying on the sidelines". It's a very big thing they're doing to stop global oil prices from shooting up by using up their stockpile for as long as they can. As to why, it's just the... I dunno, Chinese? thing to do. Quietly fix someone else's fuckup and not seek glory. Whatever you want to attribute it to, it's an ethos and makes total sense to some, because things are gonna get fuuuuuucked if gas prices go to the moon.
It is to their benefit in several ways:
They can use this ability to keep oil prices down to sort of back up their strategic goals. They could block a strait themselves while taking Taiwan. They could open the stores for concessions in other ways. They can also use this current Iran War to study how the US handles economic problems like oil-inflation. By having their finger on the scale they can push and pull and see how the US reacts in a war scenario.
China’s economy depends on exporting to the world, as it will never have enough domestic demand to meet domestic supply. If the global economy crashes from an oil price shock, China goes down with it.
Power is better than money though. China is communist in name only now, but they could extract huge concessions out of the rest of the world right now if they wanted to.
They could, but they’ll wait, they’re not ready yet. Until then, they’ll continue to electrify their economy, build out domestic energy supply, rebuild their oil inventories from Russia and Iran when able (at below market prices, dominated in yuan, avoiding dollar systems and sanctions) and prepare to take Taiwan as the US continues to weaken itself.
If Taiwan toasts TSMC when that happens, well, that’s part of what China is rapidly building out their domestic chip industry. China will then have a monopoly on that chip production besides what can be produced in the US and Europe, and have achieved reunification. And who is going to stop them? Nobody, based on the evidence and current trajectories.
>If Taiwan toasts TSMC when that happens ...
You can bet that all TSMC chip factories in Taiwan have strategic installs of explosives just for this scenario, China will get nothing, and the US has multiple TSMC chip factories now and will gladly accept Taiwan victims.
As mentioned, they won’t need the fabs. They’re spending tens of billions of dollars to advance their own vertical chip industry.
The US just pulled temporary status from hundreds of thousands of Hatians, so I wouldn’t be so confident what the future looks like for Taiwanese refugees in the US.
TLDR China is going to build whatever chip technology they need to accomplish their technology and geopolitical goals. They have the resources, the will, and the time.
China’s EUV Lithography Progress: Parsing Signal From Noise - https://thediplomat.com/2026/07/chinas-euv-lithography-progr... - July 2nd, 2026
China begins mass production of homegrown DUV chipmaking tools - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49076684 - July 2026
China Tells Telecom Carriers to Phase Out Foreign Chips by 2027 (2024) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48767466 - July 2026
US tells ASML it is concerned China may have top chip tool - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48602369 - June 2026
when the rich people stop talking to their LLMs and realize their hand servants have access to guns.
They know that. And they know that Americans won't do a damn thing with those guns except shoot one another.
[dead]
interesting why usa wants to keep escalating, muat be some strat behind it maybe to induce strategical global recession or try and slow down china or something else
Military–industrial complex and Israel.
The Iraq war lasted nearly a decade. Afghanistan 2 decades. And the US accomplished nothing. They made things worse, I don't need to go into details because that is an easy lookup.
That's ultimately the purpose of this war. Israel wants us to fight Iran because "Iran was close to making a nuke", which is an excuse they have been using for nearly 30 years.
Have you seen how much money AIPAC has in US politicians' pockets? Nearly every other office in congress has an Israel flag on their door. Poured $36M (Million) into Haley Stevens. A complete nincompoop and incompetent person, but she would have further supported Israel's agenda.
The US is a destructive war machine beast that needs to be constantly fed. Unfortunately, we are going to see tons of US armed forces personnel and Iranians die in a needless, wasteful, illegal war.
I think it's giving more credit than is due to assume there's a strategy. At this stage, it seems pretty clear that a number of people are using insider knowledge of these negotiations to enrich themselves. To me this is representative of a broader pattern of looting American institutions pervasive in this administration.
> https://liccardo.house.gov/media/in-the-news/house-dem-sam-l...
At the same time, we've purged our military leadership of anyone who said "no" to Trump's plans of antagonizing Iran. A conflict many military thinkers consider un-winnable.
> https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/news/in-the-news/why-trumps...
Iran, having spent decades preparing for this type of situation, has the clear advantage and is pressing it hard. Shy of boots on the ground (itself an incredibly bloody and possibly futile avenue) there doesn't seem to be anyway to overcome their hold on the Strait.
> https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/analyses/war-no-one-can-win...
There is no secret strategy. The country is led by inept people who believe might makes right, and take every opportunity to enrich themselves. People are bending over backwards to make meaning of this blatant corruption and it is one way we're enabling the destruction of America.
The only way for the US to win is to concede and acquiesce control of the Strait to Iran, but the administration has too much pride and hubris so they’ll keep bullying until stopped.
It’s not a complex geopolitical game, it’s saving face.
Because politicians rape kids and because the world has been hijackers by Nazi Israel.
Solar-and-nuclear based energy sovereignty, is the most charitable interpretation I’ve developed.
It’s Trump, not the USA, and he seems to be ruled by passions rather than logic. Mostly, his goals seem to be to seek wealth and adoration by any means necessary. Now that he’s in it, there’s no way out, and particularly no way out that doesn’t make him look like an even bigger fool. So he’ll stay in it until things get so bad he has no other choice. But that won’t stop him from lying about progress and enriching himself through the resultant stock market swings.
The American right has wanted war in Iran for decades, it was added to the "Axis of Evil" for that reason. Plenty of Americans support war with Iran in concept at least.
It's true that Trump is deranged and this war is driven partly by ego and partly by the Christian dominionist Department of War's slavish obedience to Israel and fetish for holy war.
But let's be real - gross negligence and incompetence aside war with Iran was always going to happen, somehow, under some pretext.
> But let's be real - gross negligence and incompetence aside war with Iran was always going to happen, somehow, under some pretext.
And they prepared for it for a long time. And that preparation has paid off for them. We seem to not have prepared for it in the same way.
I suppose when you live under the constant threat of American imperialism, and when the US has already ginned up a revolution in your country, you have to be prepared.
And I suppose when you're the world's last superpower you start believing your own hype and assume you're invincible.
Do it, please. The world can't afford to keep burning oil.
The country making the most pollution is unaffected by this.
China? No. They have massive exposure to gulf oil production.
https://www.northerntrust.com/europe/insights-research/2026/...
We can't afford to not keep burning oil.
We could if didn't keep pissing our money away and built an entire fleet of nuclear reactors.
yes we can. it will hurt but it will be cheaper than the consequences of continuing.
We can. It’ll be hard, but sometimes you gotta buck up and do hard things instead of being lazy. We won’t do it unless we’re forced to, business as usual is simply too cozy for decision makers, politically, in capital markets, and at multinationals making decisions. Wealthy and powerful people want to remain wealthy and powerful, a tale as old as time.
2-3C means potentially >2-4 billion excess deaths over the next ~50 years from climate change. As long as global oil supply chains are low volatility and low risk, we continue on that path.
Ukraine has disabled 30-40% of Russia’s refinery capacity almost entirely with drones, for example.
TLDR it is not bad for the global oil supply chain to experience pain, it’s the primary factor in accelerating electrification and decarbonization.
https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p... (page 32 risk impact matrix)
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Ukraines-...
That's not really the argument they are making I believe. The issue is if you suddenly cut back oil countries pivot to bringing coal back because it's the fastest to scale up.
Some places may scale up natural gas but unless a regional already has a lot of LNG infrastructure in place, a sudden drop in oil means bringing back coal.
And coal is of course far worse than oil.
Gradual sustained economic pressure will push a move to cleaner alternatives but a sudden shock leaves countries with exactly one option: bring back coal so the lights and heat/AC stay on.
>The issue is if you suddenly cut back oil countries pivot to bringing coal back because it's the fastest to scale up.
That may have been true a couple of decades ago, but as of 2023[1] it was significantly cheaper to build new solar than to continue operating existing coal plants. And building new coal plants takes 5 years.
1. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/01/30/building-new-solar-pr...
Asia is cancelling LNG plans for renewables, and many markets have seen EV sales explode. Coal plants are more expensive than new renewables and batteries, existing generators may run longer, but aren’t going to be built in any material amount.
China, Europe, and the US can build ~25-30M EVs per year with existing manufacturing capacity, as of this comment. That is 1/4th of global annual light vehicle sales. We can deploy ~1TW of solar PV globally annually. The world reached 3TW of total solar PV generating capacity this year. China's energy from coal has declined below 50% this year. Energy storage production continues to ramp right behind renewables. These are straightforward systems problems, there are no blockers or technical limitations.
TLDR Strongly agree existing coal generators might generate more and longer than they otherwise would, but clean tech trajectory will only get pulled more vertical from further oil energy supply shocks.
China's EV Boom Is Quietly Undermining Oil's Biggest Chokepoint - https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Chinas-EV-Boom-Is... - August 4th, 2026
China’s LNG and coal demand slows as renewable energy surges - https://www.rinnovabili.net/policy-and-affairs/environmental... - August 3rd, 2026
Renewables To Squeeze Oil And Gas Imports In New Electric Age For Asia - https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2026/06/23/renewables... - June 23rd, 2026
From Australia to Vietnam, the Iran war is fuelling demand for EVs - https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/4/27/from-australia-t... - April 27th, 2026
EV demand is getting a boost from the Iran war — just as auto giants pivot back to combustion engines - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/02/evs-autos-energy-oil-iran-wa... - April 2nd, 2026
I feel as if you missed their point. Their point from my understanding is, coal might be more expensive than new renewables/batteries, but it's significantly quicker to get up and running so if you have a choice between quick coal and nothing, coal will be chosen.
> coal might be more expensive than new renewables/batteries, but it's significantly quicker to get up and running
How so? I can have a crew out installing panels tomorrow.
I am not missing the point. You can deploy hundreds of megawatts of solar and batteries providing firm generation in 12-18 months. You cannot build a coal generator that quickly (usually takes 2-5 years). If you can turn on or up an existing coal generator, yes, faster. If you must build it from scratch, no, slower. Solar and batteries are not only the cheapest form of new generation, they are also the fastest to deploy.
Citations:
Economics of coal versus renewables in Southeast Asia’s energy crisis - https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/energy/coal-vs-renewables-a... - April 8th, 2026
Key points:
* Since the war in Iran began in February 2026, a surge in oil and gas prices has triggered gas-to-coal switching in Southeast Asia, pushing Asia’s coal benchmark nearly 20% above the pre-war price levels and highlighting the links between the coal, gas and oil markets.
* Gas-to-coal switching also pushed coal prices up after the 2022 gas crisis, when Asia’s coal benchmark surged to a record USD 443 per tonne in September 2023.
* Renewables sit apart from the price volatility of coal, oil and gas, as they do not require ongoing fuel inputs. In 2024, solar was already cheaper than coal in 7 of the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), according to LCOE data.
* The current gas crisis is already causing a decline in LNG demand across ASEAN countries. New ZCA analysis shows that were ASEAN to replace its planned 45 GW gas expansion with coal, costs would rise; in contrast, we found the Association could save USD 4 billion if gas expansion plans were instead replaced with solar and storage solutions by 2030.
* Even in countries with large coal reserves and coal subsidies, including China, renewables are already meeting a significant share of new electricity demand.
Coal Power Is Replaced by Renewables, Batteries, and Modern Electronics - https://www.renewable-ei.org/en/activities/column/REupdate/2... - September 18th, 2025
You can deploy solar and batteries rapidly, Australia is doing it.
Australia has the highest number of solar panels per capita in the world. Batteries are following suit with government subsidies. Yet, Australia has some of the highest energy prices in the world, its not a fool proof solution.
My comment wasn't even really about coal, it was about oil (and fuel). I'm talking about transport (even public transport) but planes & massive tankers are the big consumers. The original point is simply we cannot just stop ships.
When ships stopped due to the routes being blocked, we pushed ever closer to a recession and people starved and died because they were denied critical produces, equipment, food and medicines all over the world. Not to mention cost of living. This is what I mean by we "cannot afford" to not use oil.
We cannot afford for the routes to be shut, we cannot ban boats, cars, planes without major economic downturn.