This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is optimistic. Land borders are irrelevant, the Caspian is irrelevant: because we're talking multi million barrels per day, the only thing that matters is existing pipeline capacity, available short term. And there's really only three pipelines in the area that matter: the Saudi East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline to Oman, and the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to the Med. Their max capacities are around 7 million barrels per day, 1.5 mb/d and 1 mb/d, respectively. But they all already carried fuel before Hormuz was closed (albeit not at full capacity), so if you want these pipelines to substitute for crude carriers through the strait, you might get an additional 4 mb/d through them, 7 mb/d if you're lucky (that requires the Saudi to do some real magic to their pumping stations, and you need to unfuck the political trouble between Iraq and Turkey that prevents them from using that pipeline - and even then, it doesn't even connect to Iraq's major oil fields in the South).
That leaves the global market short 13 mb/d, -13% in total. And that's a major oil crisis, almost double the shortfall of the Arab oil embargo of '73, which quadrupled oil prices. Once the strategic reserves run dry, the oil price is going to do violent things.
And then there's, of course, the matter that pipelines are extremely large, effectively impossible to protect and thus really easy to bomb with drones.
More options
Context Copy link