Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
Trump’s “war of whim” gets crazier by the day.
– US warplanes have attacked Iranian military installations on Kharg Island. They left the oil installations alone. And why not? The USN has enough warships in the Gulf to stop Iran from exporting crude simply by boarding undefended tankers at sea. It has not done so, and Iran – alone among the Gilf petrostates – continues to sell its oil unimpeded. (Lawyers, Guns and Money blog, extensively quoting the paywalled WSJ: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/03/towering-political-supergenius The reason is presumably that Trump rightly fears that the rising oil price – up over 60% already – is turning the already dim electoral prospects for the GOP in the midterm elections into a likely wave loss.
– The USN is moving a warship designed for amphibious expeditions, the USS Tripoli, from Japan to the Gulf. It carries 2,200 Marines. These are capable and well-equipped soldiers, and Hegseth will post Warrior porn video clips of them doing one-armed pushups and waving machine guns. But what are they supposed to do in the Gulf? Capturing Kharg Island is pointless, see above. Capturing Bandar Abbas in the Straits of Hormuz, a city with a population over 300,000, or clearing 100 km of rugged coast on either side, would obviously be quite impossible against any organised resistance. The ship would make a very tempting target and it could easily be lost.
– Trump has appealed in desperation for international support to unblock the Straits of Hormuz, mentioning China(!), South Korea, Japan, France and the UK. This would make them co-belligerents in an illegal, unwinnable, and barely planned war by an unreliable ally they have conspicuously failed to support when it was going well. Trump gas doubled down by issuing vague mafia-style threats of repercussions in NATO, the Atlantic alliance he has been busy dismantling.
– There is another group of people the Trump court has forgotten whose cooperation would be essential in breaking the blockade: those involved in shipping, from shipowners, insurers, ship’s captains and ordinary sailors – who typically sign up for specific voyages, and are free not to do so if they think it too risky. In theory Trump could commandeer the tankers, staff them with navy sailors, and lead them in a slow banzai charge through the swarm of attacking drones. This would not tum out well, and they clearly have not planned for it.
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There is a quite large silver lining to the oil crisis. LNG prices have gone up as much as crude oil, with more regional variation: https://www.iru.org/news-resources/newsroom/war-iran-fuel-prices-remain-high-and-volatile In many, perhaps most countries, marginal electric generation is from gas turbines, very often supplied from tankers not pipelines. Last year about 655 GW of new solar was installed globally , on the basis of ROI cakulations using the then current relative prices of gas, solar, BOS costs like inverters and grid hookups, and batteries. The reference Netherlands gas price is up by 57%. The calculations have changed, in favour of solar (wind too, but the lead times are much longer).
The IEA gives global production capacity of solar modules at 1,155 GW in 2023, about twice actual output, and it has grown since. The industry has plenty of spare capacity to meet the higher demand we can expect. Even on the most optimistic scenario of an end to the war in the coming fortnight, closed wells will take time to restart, and the assessment of risk has changed. Solar demand went pretty flat in 2025, admittedly at a high level. Is there any good reason why 2026 should not see 1 TW of installations? By the same logic, EV adoption everywhere should accelerate, and electric heat pumps in homes. Just possibly, the Iran war could become the shock that at long last drives the world to the fast energy transition the climate data are shouting for.
From your lips to God’s ears!!
As the saying goes, living well is the best revenge.
UK Covid-19 coverup. It’s worth reading this (just 2 pages):
https://www.bapen.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/cata-press-release-march-2026.pdf
Some Issues:
“How much of the £100 million spent by Government on evidence to the COVID-19 Inquiry was actually to cover up decisions which led to avoidable death?”
“We despair when we read that the current NHS pandemic strategy (NHS England » Framework for managing the response to pandemic diseases) says, “it will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so.” Clearly, nothing has been learned by the NHS, but hopelessness.”
The Strait of Hormuz is closed. “I broke it, you fix it,” is the mantra being invoked by you know who. It’s hard to tell currently but it appears the Strait might be hard to open soon without certain parties backing down. This is due to a little thing called asymmetric war. In this form of asymmetric war, it appears that lots of little things defeat a few big things, especially when there are big, inflammable slow moving and sitting targets. As an aside, I think it will take even more littler things (smaller and smaller drones essentially) to defeat lots of moderately little things in future. This is the direction of military development. Legacy big things begin to appear very cumbersome and far too expensive.
Since the world might have to operate with 20% less oil and gas for an indefinite period and since we need to use much less oil and gas anyway (to try to halt climate change) then the smart thing would be to start implementing new policies aimed at that target immediately. Australia needs to do this for sure. But neither our government nor our population appear ready and willing to do so. The addiction to our climate-destroying over-consumption of fossil fuels is still far too great. And 20% of this addiction, at least, involves discretionary spending like travel, tourism and too lavish lifestyles. We can do make this change the voluntary, discretionary soft-landing way now or make it the hard crash-landing way way down the track. No prizes for guessing which way Australians will go. I hate to be Hanrahan but we are “rooned” (ruined) unless we change radically and immediately. There is no time left for further delay.
Things that matter;
Roger_f,
Most of your points are strong tendencies rather than absolutes. Yet, given the broad validity of what you write, we have to note that China sits in the centre of its web and waits patiently for its enemies to destroy themselves. This too is a tendency and there are many pitfalls that China is not safe from either. Its lab creation and accidental release of COVID-19, much denied but a plain fact nonetheless, was an own goal of epic proportions as well as an infliction on the whole of humanity.
I am not making any overall predictions except that climate change will make losers of us all and micro life will plainly dominate over macro life in the denouement.